Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A honeyeater (Prosthemadera novaeseelandiae) of New Zealand, having dark plumage with a tuft of white feathers at the throat.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun See tue.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun A New Zealand honeyeater, Prosthemadera novaeseelandiae

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Maori tūī.]

Support

Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word tui.

Examples

Comments

Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.

  • "If the researchers manage to put the huia's genome back together, they would insert the genes into artificial chromosomes, then inject the packaged DNA into the egg of a surrogate. That might be a magpie or a blackbird, or perhaps native New Zealand birds such as the tui or the kokako. She also hopes someday to bring back the moas, flightless birds that appear to have been hunted into extinction about 600 years ago."

    —Richard Stone, Mammoth: The Resurrection of an Ice Age Giant (Cambridge, Mass.: Perseus Publishing, 2001), 167

    September 22, 2008

  • The name Tui is from the Maori language name tūī, which is the species' formal common name. The English name, which has fallen into disuse, was "Parson Bird," describing the dark feathers of the bird, its small tuft of white feathers at the neck, and the small white wing patch--which namers took to resemble religious attire.

    September 22, 2008