tohunga

British  

/ ˈtɒhʊŋə, tɒˈhʊŋə /

noun

1. a Māori priest, the repository of traditional lore

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Example Sentences

The voice all through, it is to be remembered, was not the voice of the tohunga, but a strange melancholy sound, like the sound of a wind blowing into a hollow vessel.

From Myth, Ritual and Religion — Volume 1 by Lang, Andrew

At night the tohunga invoked the familiar spirit, he became inspired, and in a sort of hollow whistle came the words of fate:—"He will return, but yet not return."

From Old New Zealand A Tale of the Good Old Times; and A History of the War in the North against the Chief Heke, in the Year 1845 by Maori, A Pakeha

Then Kawiti, who is himself a tohunga, threw a rakau for his own path—he threw one for himself and people, and one for the soldiers, and one for the town.

From Old New Zealand A Tale of the Good Old Times; and A History of the War in the North against the Chief Heke, in the Year 1845 by Maori, A Pakeha

The light was little better than darkness; and the part of the room in which the tohunga sat was now in perfect darkness.

From Old New Zealand: being Incidents of Native Customs and Character in the Old Times by 'A Pakeha Maori'

The heir-male was always regarded as the head of the family, and in the olden times was its priest or tohunga.

From Narrative of the Circumnavigation of the Globe by the Austrian Frigate Novara, Volume III (Commodore B. Von Wullerstorf-Urbair,) Undertaken by Order of the Imperial Government in the Years 1857, 1858, & 1859, Under the Immediate Auspices of His I. and R. Highness the Archduke Ferdinand Maximilian, Commander-In-Chief of the Austrian Navy. by Scherzer, Karl Ritter von