toa

plural toas

1. A small painted artifact made by the Diyari people of Australia, believed to have been used as place markers or signposts.

   It seems that on leaving one place people would place a toa in the ground to show other people where they had gone.

   2005, Bill Arthur, Macquarie Atlas of Indigenous Australia, page 22

   1 more example

   These thirty-four toa constructions, made from urban debris and ceremoniously installed in a circular (or sometimes oval) bed of sand, bring together the multiple themes centred on reclamation that preoccupied his life.

   2000, Lin Onus, Urban dingo: the art and life of Lin Onus, 1948-1996, page 21

plural toas

1. New ZealandA brave warrior.

   The toa or brave who distinguished himself was thought very highly of.

   1902, Journal of the Polynesian Society, volume 11, page 211

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   Thus in Polynesia, the toa (warrior) could challenge the ariki (priest/chief).

   2011, Robert N. Bellah, Religion in Human Evolution, page 261

plural toas

1. countableuncountableA Polynesian tree of the genus Casuarina, or its wood.

   The toa wood of the South Pacific islands is similar to Eastern walnut in color and texture, but is much finer in figure.

   1882, John Shertzer Hittell, The Commerce and Industries of the Pacific Coast of North America, page 604

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   It happens that nature has assembled in this spot, not only the wildest profusion of the vegetable kingdom, over which the lofty toa tree stands pre-eminent, but also objects of another description, overhanging rocks, hollow-sounding caverns, and steep precipices, calculated to give an aspect as bold and sublime as the imagination can well conceive, and constituting a species of scenery, which, in proportion as it is more rare, is more admired by the natives.

   1817, William Mariner, An Account of the Natives of the Tonga Islands in the South Pacific, page 302