How to Use Maori in a Sentence

Maori

noun
  • Bennett’s thriller dives deep into Maori culture and gives voice to its complex characters.
    — Staff, The Christian Science Monitor, 22 May 2024
  • Tupe, one of the Maori competitors, won a silver medal in wellness massage, and the whole group sang a victory chant.
    — Sarah Larson, New Yorker, 8 Sep. 2025
  • It’s been used for centuries by the Maori as a natural and effective remedy to treat everything from wounds to sore throats.
    — Mélanie Defouilloy, Vogue, 26 June 2024
  • Several tours are given by Maori guides, who view whales as magnificent creatures and ancestors.
    — Catherine Garcia, theweek, 25 Nov. 2024
  • Commonly featured in Maori stories, tuatara may signify knowledge or warn of a coming calamity.
    — Elizabeth Preston, Scientific American, 16 Dec. 2025
  • The intrepid rider was a Maori octopus—the largest octopus in the Southern Hemisphere.
    — Sara Hashemi, Smithsonian Magazine, 21 Mar. 2025
  • The Maori King or Queen is considered the paramount chief of several tribes, or iwi, but is not affiliated with all of them.
    — Reuters, CNN, 5 Sep. 2024
  • Proving, once again, that penguins are beloved by animators all over the world, the duo was also excited to explore New Zealand and the Maori culture.
    — Marta Balaga, Variety, 14 June 2023
  • For many, the All Blacks are well-known for performing an intimidating pregame haka dance, a Maori ritual used to fire up the players and fans before a match.
    — Robert Channick, Chicago Tribune, 19 Feb. 2025
  • The haka is a ceremonial Maori chanting dance of defiance that is a cherished cultural symbol of New Zealand.
    — Matt Lavietes, NBC news, 14 Sep. 2025
  • These findings are based on a careful study of the oral histories of the Maori and other related cultures, which describe encounters with a land to the south that probably was Antarctica.
    — Stephen C. George, Discover Magazine, 27 Sep. 2023
  • The Rotorua area is home to a living village and an arts and crafts institute that continues the artistic practices of the Maori, with offerings like traditional wood carving and weaving.
    — Evie Carrick, Travel + Leisure, 23 Nov. 2025
  • Members of New Zealand’s indigenous Maori community staged what ceremonial dance to stop a vote from happening?
    — CNN, 21 Nov. 2024
  • The trip continues with tea ceremonies, wine tastings, Maori cultural immersions, and a slew of stays at 4- and 5-star hotels up and down both North and South Islands.
    — Brad Japhe, Condé Nast Traveler, 22 Oct. 2024
  • Tuatara are also culturally significant to the Maori, the Indigenous people of New Zealand.
    — Elizabeth Preston, Scientific American, 16 Dec. 2025
  • Those from the Indigenous Maori community were especially vulnerable to abuse, the report found, as well as those with mental or physical disabilities.
    — Reuters, NBC News, 12 Nov. 2024
  • Bezos and Sánchez spent much of the summer island-hopping in the Mediterranean on Koru, a five-hundred-million-dollar superyacht whose name refers to a Maori symbol for new beginnings.
    — Clare Malone, New Yorker, 12 May 2025
  • Forty-seven people were on Whakaari, the island’s traditional Maori name, at the time of the blast, including honeymooners and families, who either died or suffered severe burns in the incident.
    — Hilary Whiteman, CNN, 13 July 2023
  • The interpretation of clauses in the document still guides legislation and policy today, with rulings by the courts and a separate Maori tribunal expanding Maori rights and privileges over the decades.
    — Reuters, NBC News, 19 Nov. 2024
  • Meg and Andrew skipped the presentation and stayed in the hallway to look at photographs of the cave’s discovery by white settlers, in 1948, some two thousand years after it had been discovered by Maori people.
    — Ann Patchett, New Yorker, 29 Sep. 2025
  • The idea of developing a national Maori flag first arose in the 1980s, inspired by the use of the Aboriginal flag in Australia, also as part of an Indigenous protest movement.
    — Rachel Pannett, Washington Post, 20 July 2023
  • As Simeon and Tupe engaged in soothing effleurage and loudly vigorous tapotement, respectively, six Maori women surrounded their tables and sang folk songs in harmony, guided by an elder in the audience with a long, gnarled cane.
    — Sarah Larson, New Yorker, 8 Sep. 2025
  • Caught up in grief, and pulled by a dark attraction to her late-sister’s fiancé, Mia soon uncovers the wider tensions and mysterious forces cleaving apart a rugged mountain community, setting environmentalists and Maori farmers against one another.
    — Ben Croll, Variety, 9 Oct. 2023
  • New Zealand – or Aotearoa as it is known to the Maori – recently hosted a public consultation on whether to include te reo Maori on 94 types of road signs, including for place names, speed limits, warnings and expressway advisories.
    — Chris Lau, CNN, 29 July 2023
  • Advocates of Maori in New Zealand and of Hawaiian have emphasized the importance of inculcating these languages in early childhood development and education as part of their successful revival.
    — Ross Perlin, Foreign Affairs, 23 Apr. 2024
  • At stations five and eight, Rita Tupe, an older woman with tattoos on her lips and chin, and Harata Simeon stood with their peers—a group of practitioners of rongoā, traditional Maori healing, who had travelled from New Zealand.
    — Sarah Larson, New Yorker, 8 Sep. 2025

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'Maori.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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