whare

wha·re
W4H4A1R1E1
New Zealand/ˈfʌre/New Zealand/ˈfʌri/UK/ˈfɑːɹeɪ/UK/ˈʍɑːɹeɪ/

noun

A Maori house or other building.

UncommonFirst used 19th c.Scrabble 11

Meanings

nounwhare (plural whare or whares)

plural whares

  1. New ZealandA Maori house or other building.First known use 19th c.

    At the far end of the whare there's a wooden bed.

    1983, Keri Hulme, The Bone People, Penguin, published 1986, page 348
    2 more examples

    The dwellings of the chiefs are surrounded with enclosures of pole-fences; and the Whares and Wharepunis, some of them exhibiting very fine specimens of the Maori order of architecture, are ornamented with grotesque wood-carvings.

    1867, Ferdinand von Hochstetter, translated by Edward Sauter, “Ngawhas, and Puias; boiling springs, solfataras and fumaroles”, in New Zealand: Its Physical Geography, Geology and Natural History […], Stuttgart: J. G. Cotta, →OCLC, page 423

    We were on the brow of the hill, and below us there was a whare roofed in with corrugated iron.

    1912, Katherine Mansfield, The Woman at the Store
  2. New ZealandhistoricalA rough shack or hut built (by Europeans) using traditional Maori techniques; a workman's shack.First known use 19th c.

    Many New Zealanders will know that a whare is a house. But in this context, the whare were being built for a summer hunting and gathering expedition. It was the 1880s, so timber houses also featured, but here the whānau were travelling to tribal lands and building makeshift whare to camp in.

    2014, Tina Makereti, “He Taonga te Reo: How ngā Kupu Māori Contribute to New Zealand Writing in English”, in Jolisa Gracewood, Susanna Andrew, editors, Tell You What: Great New Zealand Nonfiction 2015, Auckland: Auckland University Press, →ISBN, pages 118–119

Origin

  1. Māoriwhare“house, hut”
  2. Englishwhare

Borrowed from Māori whare (“house, hut”).

Full word history & related roots →
Cite this entry
APA

whare. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 3, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/whare

MLA

“whare.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/whare. Accessed November 3, 2026.

Chicago

WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “whare,” accessed November 3, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/whare.

Source: whare on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.