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Find a modern word—or search sideways through reconstructed roots, historical forms, meanings, languages, scholars, sources, claims, disputes, and witnesses.
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MODERN ENTRY POINTS
WORD DOSSIERS
noun · adjective · verbexact headword
taboo
An English borrowing recorded in 1777 from Tongan tabu, now tapu, within an Oceanic family whose reconstructed form joins ritual restriction with sacredness.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗stative · modifier · nouncontrarian claim
tapu
A Māori word for what is sacred, prohibited, restricted, set apart, or under atua protection, inherited within the wider Oceanic *tampu family.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗021
ATTESTED / RECONSTRUCTED / BOUNDARY
HISTORICAL FORMS
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WHERE INTERPRETATION IS TESTED
CLAIMS & DISPUTES
SCHOLARLY DISPUTES / 3
resolvedestablishedexact word
Did taboo originally mean only “forbidden”?
No. The Tongan reflexes and wider Oceanic reconstruction carry a semantic field that includes prohibited, under ritual restriction, sacred, holy, and consecrated.
resolvedestablishedposition text
Did Hawaiian kapu directly give English taboo?
No. English taboo is traced to Tongan tabu. Hawaiian kapu is a cognate reflex whose resemblance reveals family history, not the borrowing event.
resolvedestablishedposition text
Did English taboo come from Māori tapu?
No. Merriam-Webster identifies Tongan tabu as the English donor. Māori tapu is a related Oceanic reflex, not the borrowing source.
CONTRARIAN TRUTHS / 2
RANK 159GRADE Aexact ranked word
It did not begin as merely “forbidden.”
Tongan and reconstructed Oceanic evidence joins prohibition and ritual restriction with sacredness and consecration.
RANK 145GRADE Acontrarian claim
English taboo did not come from Māori tapu.
Māori tapu and English taboo meet deeper in the Oceanic family. English borrowed the Tongan reflex; Māori independently preserves sacredness, prohibition, restriction, and atua protection.
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BOOKS / DICTIONARIES / ARTICLES / DATABASES
SOURCES
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FIRST USES & HISTORICAL OBJECTS
ATTESTATION WITNESSES
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