Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun A woman chief, especially in traditional Hawaiian society.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun A female chief. Carver.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun Hawaii A female
chief or the wife of a chief.
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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She was his living alii, his alii kapo (sacred chiefess).
SHIN-BONES 2010
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Yet, as she returned, the high pose of head, the level-lidded gaze of her long brown eyes under royal arches of eyebrows, the softly set lines of her small mouth that fairly sang sweetness of kisses after sixty-eight years — all made her the very picture of a chiefess of old Hawaii full-bursting through her ampleness of haole blood.
ON THE MAKALOA MAT 2010
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She was a grand young woman with a body generous as that of a chiefess and more wonderful, as she came upon us, across the wet sand, in the shimmer of the moonlight.
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Shorter than Bella was Martha, a trifle, but the merest trifle, less queenly of port; but beautifully and generously proportioned, mellowed rather than dismantled by years, her Polynesian chiefess figure eloquent and glorious under the satisfying lines of a half-fitting, grandly sweeping, black-silk holoku trimmed with black lace more costly than a Paris gown.
ON THE MAKALOA MAT 2010
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I thumbed through a photo album of Wallace and Delia with their new baby, named after the Maui surf chiefess in Hawaiian mythology.
Cupcake Rachel Cohn 2007
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I thumbed through a photo album of Wallace and Delia with their new baby, named after the Maui surf chiefess in Hawaiian mythology.
Cupcake Rachel Cohn 2007
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Her birth parents were high chief Kapaakea and chiefess Keohokalol, but she was adopted at birth by Abner and Konia Paki.
Woman Making History #56: Queen Lili'uokalani (What if No One's Watching?) 2006
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Her birth parents were high chief Kapaakea and chiefess Keohokalol, but she was adopted at birth by Abner and Konia Paki.
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“Will my spirit never die, and can this poor weak body live again?” an old chiefess exclaimed, and this delighted surprise seemed the general feeling of the natives.
The Hawaiian Archipelago Isabella Lucy 2004
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Gwenny Goblin, with similar guidance, had become a goblin chiefess.
Up In A Heaval Anthony, Piers 2002
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