Meanings
plural whares
- 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 3482 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 423We 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 - 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
- Māoriwhare“house, hut”
- Englishwhare
Borrowed from Māori whare (“house, hut”).
More words from Māori
Full word history & related roots →Cite this entry
whare. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 3, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/whare
“whare.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/whare. Accessed November 3, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “whare,” accessed November 3, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/whare.
Source: whare on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.