From Proto-Polynesian *tuqu-taki (“to join together” – compare with Hawaiian kūkaʻi “rope fastening fish nets together”, Tongan tuʻutaki “to join or tie together”, Samoan tutaʻi “to join or knot together [of ropes]”), reanalyzable as tū + taki.[1][2] Sense “to shut an enclosure, to block, to lock” is influenced by a homograph of taki “to stick or plant in the ground, to stake” and its reduplicate form takitaki “fence, palisade”.
tūtaki
- to join together
- to meet
- to shut (of a enclosure), to block, to bolt
- Synonyms: whakarawa, rawe
tūtaki
- bolt or bar between two sides of a double door, latch
- Synonyms: whakarawa, koropā
- ^ Tregear, Edward (1891) Maori-Polynesian Comparative Dictionary[1], Wellington, New Zealand: Lyon and Blair, page 566
- ^ Ross Clark and Simon J. Greenhill, editors (2011), “tuqu-taki”, in POLLEX-Online: The Polynesian Lexicon Project Online
- Williams, Herbert William (1917) “tūtaki”, in A Dictionary of the Maori Language, pages 541-2
- “tūtaki” in John C. Moorfield, Te Aka: Maori–English, English–Maori Dictionary and Index, 3rd edition, Longman/Pearson Education New Zealand, 2011, →ISBN.
