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Polynesian   /pˌɑlˌɪnˈiʒən/   Listen
Polynesian

noun
1.
A native or inhabitant of Polynesia.
2.
The branch of the Austronesian languages spoken from Madagascar to the central Pacific.  Synonym: Malayo-Polynesian.



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"Polynesian" Quotes from Famous Books



... timid, like a child dodging a blow, then down again, and presently smiled. She had a wide mouth, the lips and the chin cut like any statue’s; and the smile came out for a moment and was gone. Then she stood with her head bent, and heard Case to an end, spoke back in the pretty Polynesian voice, looking him full in the face, heard him again in answer, and then with an obeisance started off. I had just a share of the bow, but never another shot of her eye, and there was no ...
— Island Nights' Entertainments • Robert Louis Stevenson

... member of the French Academy in 1891, succeeding to the chair of Octave Feuillet. Some of his writings are: 'Aziyade,' written in 1879; the scene is laid in Constantinople. This was followed by 'Rarahu,' a Polynesian idyl (1880; again published under the title Le Mariage de Loti, 1882). 'Roman d'un Spahi (1881) deals with Algiers. Taton-gaye is a true 'bete-humaine', sunk in moral slumber or quivering with ferocious joys. ...
— Madame Chrysantheme Complete • Pierre Loti

... authority on its ethnological interpretation, says of it: "To illustrate the continuity of culture and the identity of the elementary human ideas in all ages, it is sufficient to point to the ease with which the Polynesian word tabu has passed ...
— Taboo and Genetics • Melvin Moses Knight, Iva Lowther Peters, and Phyllis Mary Blanchard

... H. S. Roberts of Oamaru, author of a little book called Southland in 1856. In the matter of explanation of the origin and meaning of New Zealand terms, Dr. Hocken of Dunedin, Mr. F. R. Chapman of the same city, and Mr. Edward Tregear of Wellington, author of the Maori Polynesian Dictionary, and Secretary of the Polynesian Society, have rendered valuable and material assistance. Dr. Holden of Bellerive, near Hobart, was perhaps my most valued correspondent. After I had failed in one or two quarters to enlist Tasmanian sympathy, he came to the rescue, ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris

... were able to stand close enough in to observe the fine sandy beach extending round it for a considerable distance. Along the shore we saw no canoes, but a number of natives appeared, waving green branches—emblems of peace. As we watched them through our telescopes, we saw that they were of the Polynesian, or brown race—fine-looking fellows, unlike the Papuans, who inhabit the islands we were about to visit. As it was not likely that they could supply us with either cocoanut oil or sandal-wood, we did not communicate with them, but continued ...
— The Cruise of the Dainty - Rovings in the Pacific • William H. G. Kingston

... world. The missionary's peace of mind may require that the Samoan should wear trousers, or the trader's pocket that he should drink gin and live under corrugated iron. But the Government has discovered that these things are not good for the health of the Polynesian, so the Samoan wears his lava-lava and drinks his kava, and lives in his cool and lovely thatched hut, and is happy. And—final test of administration—the population is no ...
— Letters from America • Rupert Brooke

... servants, who adored him; for the English policeman even, on whom he often tried, quite in vain, to pass himself as one of the criminal classes; for the shepherd, the street arab, or the tramp, the common seaman, the beach-comber, or the Polynesian high-chief. Even in the imposed silence and restraint of extreme sickness the power and attraction of the man made themselves felt, and there seemed to be more vitality and fire of the spirit in him as he lay exhausted and speechless ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... which was associated with remains of the cave-bear, hyena, and rhinoceros, is, with one exception, the most ape-like human relic yet found. Yet its cranial capacity is far above that of the highest apes, and is assimilated with that of Hottentot and Polynesian skulls. ...
— Man And His Ancestor - A Study In Evolution • Charles Morris

... to follow the congratulations, to give them weight, the inference prevailed that the white potentate and the black had taken simultaneous leave of their fourteen senses. For the gift was a pearl of price unparalleled, picked aforetime by British cutlasses from a Polynesian setting, and presented by British royalty to the sovereign who seized this opportunity of restoring it ...
— The Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung

... written in the Arabic character. It has been estimated by that most painstaking and learned scholar, Mr. Crawfurd, that one hundred parts of modern Malayan are composed of twenty-seven parts of primitive Malayan, fifty of Polynesian, sixteen of Sanskrit, five of Arabic, and two of adventitious words, the Arabic predominating in all literature relating to religion. Malay is the lingua franca of the Straits Settlements, and in the seaports a number of Portuguese and Dutch words ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)

... extremely low types which one has no hesitation in assigning to the lowest form of the Polynesian group, such as the Andamanese, the jungle tree-men of Chittagong, Tipperah, and the vast forests stretching ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale

... subjection of Herakles to Eurystheus, to the anger of Poseidon at Odysseus, or to the curse laid upon the Wandering Jew. The barbaric mind has worked at the same problem; but the explanations which it has given are more childlike and more grotesque. A Polynesian myth tells how the Sun used to race through the sky so fast that men could not get enough daylight to hunt game for their subsistence. By and by an inventive genius, named Maui, conceived the idea of catching ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske

... pretty nearly uniform distances from the main, sentinel, at long intervals from each other, the entire coast of South America. In a peculiar manner, also, they terminate the South American character of country. Of the unnumbered Polynesian chains to the westward, not one partakes of the qualities of the Encantadas or Gallipagos, the isles of St. Felix and St. Ambrose, the isles Juan-Fernandez and Massafuero. Of the first, it needs not here to speak. The second lie a little above the Southern Tropic; lofty, inhospitable, and uninhabitable ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville

... Alfur language (which I at once understood because it resembles the low Java language) also here in the Dayak language were observed by me. This circumstance affords convincing testimony in favour of the early existence of a Polynesian language stock and for a common origin of the oldest inhabitants ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz

... over carefully, but rapidly. "But you're not Oriental—or at least, not much. You look Polynesian ...
— Unwise Child • Gordon Randall Garrett

... in his 'Polynesian Researches,' states that 'these stones are finely polished, highly valued, and carefully preserved, being always oiled or wrapped up in native cloth after having been used. The people are, if possible, more fond of this game than of the pahe, and the inhabitants of a district not unfrequently ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey

... the), in 1790, headed by Fletcher Christian. The mutineers finally settled in Pitcairn Island (Polynesian Archipelago). In 1808 all the mutineers were dead except one (Alexander Smith), who had changed his name to John Adams, and became a model patriarch of the colony, which was taken under the protection of the British Government in 1839. Lord Byron, in The Island, has made the "mutiny ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.

... or tell her she was, spiritually, in a parlous case. So the Fairy Queen and all her court had long since fled from England, and long ago made a home in the undiscovered isles of the South. Now they all met and mingled in the throng of the Polynesian fairy folk, and, rushing down into the waters, they revelled all night on the silvery sand, in the windless dancing places of the deep. Tane and Tawhiti came, the Gods of the tides and the shores, and all the ...
— 'That Very Mab' • May Kendall and Andrew Lang

... in the undauntable determination which tried to fix without trickery the sincerest feelings. Amid many faulty and clumsy works Van Gogh has also left some really beautiful canvases." Before Gauguin went to Tahiti his Breton peasants were almost as monstrous as his later Polynesian types. His representations of trees also seem monstrous. His endeavour was to get beyond the other side of good and evil in art and create a new synthesis, and thus it came to pass that the ugly and the formless reign oft in his work—the ugly and formless according to the ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker

... Polynesian Society of New Zealand, whose personal acquaintance with the South Sea Islands and their dialects is unique, is translating ...
— Bees in Amber - A Little Book Of Thoughtful Verse • John Oxenham

... gentle breezes and favouring winds gradually wore off the panic occasioned by the supernatural appearance; and, if not forgotten, it was referred to either in jest or with indifference, he now had run through the straits of Malacca, and entered the Polynesian archipelago. Philip's orders were to refresh and call for instructions at the small island of Boton, then in possession of the Dutch. They arrived there in safety, and after remaining two days, again sailed on their voyage, intending to make ...
— The Phantom Ship • Frederick Marryat

... to and fro of the vast Mongolian hordes in late times, the population problem comes to the front in a very visible shape. Nor is it less plainly manifest in the everlasting agrarian questions of ancient Rome than in the Arreoi societies of the Polynesian Islands. ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley

... Ti plant (Diacaena terminalis) are cultivated in the Polynesian islands. There is, however, but one which is considered farinaceous and edible. In Java the root is considered ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds

... of a familiar character in New Zealand, chief Mete Kingi, who recently died at the age of one hundred years. He was a fine specimen of the Maori race, the native New Zealanders, a branch of the Malayo-Polynesian family. The New Zealanders surpassed all other people in the art of tattooing, to which their chiefs gave especial attention. Mete Kingi, as our picture shows, was no exception. Tattooing on the face they termed moko. The men tattoo their faces, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 433, April 19, 1884 • Various

... his feet—the Alaskan Peninsula, through Manchooria, across the future Gulf of Tartary, the Kurile and Aleutian Islands; while another traveler, furnished with a canoe and starting from the south, could have walked over from Siam, crossed the Polynesian Islands and trudged into any part of the continent of South America. On pp. 592-3 of "Isis," vol. I., the Thevetatas—the evil, mischievous gods that have survived in the Etruscan Pantheon—are mentioned, along with the "sons of God" or Brahman Pitris. The Involute, the hidden or shrouded gods, ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various

... appellation given to the aborigines by the modern Malays—to whom reference will be made later on—is Dyak, and they are divided into numerous tribes, speaking very different dialects of the Malayo-Polynesian stock, and known by distinctive names, the origin of which is generally obscure, at least in British North Borneo, where these names are not, as a rule, derived from those of the rivers on ...
— British Borneo - Sketches of Brunai, Sarawak, Labuan, and North Borneo • W. H. Treacher

... look of this specimen of Polynesian poultry you signify your acceptance in the customary manner; otherwise, in parliamentary phraseology, "The Oos ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, October 6, 1920 • Various

... Society Archipelago, Ellis (Consult, on this and other points, the "Polynesian Researches," by the Rev. W. Ellis, an admirable work, full of curious information.) states, that the reefs generally lie at the distance of from one to one and a half miles, and, occasionally, even at more than three miles, from the shore. The central ...
— Coral Reefs • Charles Darwin

... surprise, enough of the words were familiar to enable me clearly to catch the meaning of the whole. They were Polynesian, the Polynesian of the Samoans which is its most ancient form, but in some indefinable way—archaic. Later I was to know that the tongue bore the same relation to the Polynesian of today as does not that of Chaucer, but of the Venerable Bede, to modern English. Nor was this to be so astonishing, ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt

... numerous islands in the group, over all of which Raa Kook is king, although the cluster of islands to the south is restive and occasionally in revolt. These natives with whom I live are Polynesian, I know, because their hair is straight and black. Their skin is a sun-warm golden-brown. Their speech, which I speak uncommonly easy, is round and rich and musical, possessing a paucity of consonants, being composed principally of vowels. They love flowers, ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London

... the panic would have been illimitable. He was dressed in a brown cassock, and looked like the blue-eyed man who had been refused passage to my destination. Probably, that American in the toga and sandals, exiled from the island he loved so well, had a message for the Tahitians or others of the Polynesian tribes of the South Seas; Essenism, maybe, or something to do with virginal beards and long hair, or sandals and the simple life. I ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien

... was travelling in the Pacific she met a young Polynesian of high birth who gravely told her, when asked about his proposed career in life, that he had not yet decided whether to enter the Church or to join a Circus. He was still sufficiently near to the large and beautiful ...
— Impressions And Comments • Havelock Ellis

... races, to whom the art of writing is unknown, are dependent upon memory for such records as they have of their past; and sometimes a professional class arises to preserve and repeat the stories believed to embody these records. Among the Maories and their Polynesian kinsmen the priests are the great depositaries of tradition. It is principally from them that Mr. White and the Rev. W. W. Gill have obtained their collections. But the orators and chiefs are also fully conversant with the narratives; ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland

... that there may, both earlier and later, have existed another way of reaching western America from south-eastern Asia through Pacific archipelagoes and islets now sunk below the sea. In any case it seems quite probable that men of Mongolian or Polynesian type reached America on its western coasts long before the European came from the north-east and east, and that they were helped on this long journey by touching at islands since submerged by earthquake ...
— Pioneers in Canada • Sir Harry Johnston

... latter.[322] This equation has been contested and is doubtful, Lugus probably meaning "hero."[323] Still the sun-like traits ascribed to Lug before Mag-tured suggest that he was a sun-god, and solar gods elsewhere, e.g. the Polynesian Maui, are culture-gods as well. But it should be remembered that Lug is not associated with the true solar ...
— The Religion of the Ancient Celts • J. A. MacCulloch

... vigour. The aspect of the land is flat and monotonous, so that a journey of one or two miles will give as fair an impression of the country as a complete tour of the island. The number of the population who have the true Polynesian cast of countenance may be put down at about 7000. D'Urville says "they combine the most opposite qualities. They are generous, courteous, and hospitable, yet avaricious, insolent, and always thoroughly insincere. The most profuse demonstration of kindness and friendship ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne

... The Polynesian work, of which John Williams was the martyr and the representative man, has chiefly been carried on by the London Mission. It has always been a principle with the Missionaries of the Anglican Church, whose centre has been first New Zealand, then Norfolk Island, never to enter upon any islands ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... story is told of a modern puss which sailed across the seas. A Polynesian missionary took a cat with him to the island of Raratonga, but Puss, not liking her new abode, fled to the mountains. One of the new converts, a priest who had destroyed his idol, was one night, sleeping on ...
— Harper's Young People, April 6, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... without any fixed purpose in one of their large canoes: few ever return, some probably perish, others drift on islands either uninhabited, or if inhabited, they mingle with the natives, and tend to produce those varieties of the human race which are so observable in the Polynesian Archipelago. I frequently asked those of Rotuma what object they had in leaving their fertile island to risk the perils of the deep? the reply invariably was, "Rotuma man want to see new land:" ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 579 - Volume 20, No. 579, December 8, 1832 • Various

... of the Polynesian dialects sufficient to make himself in some degree understood by the natives of the new island. Under the guidance of the chief he had made a first journey of exploration, and had seen for himself that the place was a marvel of natural beauty and fertility. The one barren spot ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins

... ritual has been obscured by our modern use of it in a hygienic or ethical sense. In reality it is but an illustration of the principle of 'taboo,' and 'taboo' may extend to anything, good or bad, useful or useless, hygienically clean or unclean. The primary meaning of 'taboo,' a Polynesian word, is something that is set aside or forbidden. The field covered by this word among savage and semi-savage races is, as Robertson Smith points out, "very wide, for there is no part of life in which the savage does not ...
— Religion & Sex - Studies in the Pathology of Religious Development • Chapman Cohen

... This is a traditional Polynesian economy in which more than 90% of the land is communally owned. Economic activity is strongly linked to the US, with which American Samoa conducts the great bulk of its foreign trade. Tuna fishing and tuna ...
— The 2000 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... the first time it really came home to Frida's mind that Bertram Ingledew, standing there before her, regarded in very truth the Polynesian chief and Sir Lionel Longden as much about the same sort of unreasoning people—savages to be argued with and cajoled if possible; but if not, then to be treated with calm firmness and force, as an English ...
— The British Barbarians • Grant Allen

... royal maiden, NOUS ALLONS CHANTER A LA RONDE, SI VOUS VOULEZ! only she is not blonde by several chalks, though she is but a half-blood, and the wrong half Edinburgh Scots like mysel'. But, O Low, I love the Polynesian: this civilisation of ours is a dingy, ungentlemanly business; it drops out too much of man, and too much of that the very beauty of the poor beast: who has his beauties in spite of Zola and Co. As usual, here is a whole letter with no news: I am a bloodless, inhuman dog; and no ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson

... Mrs. Bishop, who after spending twenty years traveling in the East said, "I know now that one can be naked, yet behave like a lady." The above story of the crippled Aino girl gives credibility to Becke's story[1499] of a Polynesian woman, wife of a European, who died after child bearing rather than submit to treatment by a physician which would be attended ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner

... followed by loud lip-smackings of approval, though the liquor was raw enough and corrosive enough to burn their mucous membranes. All drank except Lee Goom, the abstemious cabin boy. This rite accomplished, they waited for the next, the present-giving. Generously molded on Polynesian lines, huge-bodied and heavy-muscled, they were nevertheless like so many children, laughing merrily at little things, their eager black eyes flashing in the lantern light as their big bodies swayed to the heave ...
— The Night-Born • Jack London

... in the South Seas when, for the first time, I went ashore at Batengo, which is the Polynesian village, and the only one on the big grass island of the same name. There is a cable station just up the beach from the village, and a good-natured young chap named Graves had charge of it. He was an upstanding, clean-cut fellow, as the fact that he ...
— IT and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris

... they remained unknown ever afterward to all save the settlers themselves, while those from Europe led to settlements that were either soon abandoned or otherwise came to nought. Wandering Tatar, Chinese, Japanese, Malay, or Polynesian sailors who drifted, intentionally or accidentally, to the Pacific coast in some unrecorded and prehistoric past, and from whom the men we call our aborigines probably are descended, sent back to Asia no tidings of what they had found. Their discovery, in so far as it concerned the ...
— Great Epochs in American History, Volume I. - Voyages Of Discovery And Early Explorations: 1000 A.D.-1682 • Various

... these, prevail down to now, on the Mariana, the Philippine and the Polynesian islands; according to Waitz, also among several African tribes. Another custom, prevalent till late on the Balearic islands, and indicative of the right of all men to a woman, was that, on the wedding night, the male kin had access ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel

... Carlotta has got a soul of her own now and means to make the most of it. It will lead me upward somewhere. But whether I am to be king of New Babylon or Prime Minister of New Zealand or lawgiver to a Polynesian tribe is a secret as yet hidden in the lap of the gods, whence Carlotta doubtless will snatch it in her own ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke

... is the "peculiar institution" of the East. Coffee has become colonized in France and America; the Pipe is a cosmopolite, and his blue, joyous breath congeals under the Arctic Circle, or melts languidly into the soft airs of the Polynesian Isles; but the Bath, that sensuous elysium which cradled the dreams of Plato, and the visions of Zoroaster, and the solemn meditations of Mahomet, is only to be found under an Oriental sky. The naked ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor

... ancient habit of tattooing should prevail so extensively among some of the primitive tribes as it does, for instance, in the Polynesian islands and some parts of Japan, and we may say as a survival of a superstitious practice of paganism among sailors and others, is a psychological problem difficult to solve. Whether it be owing to perversion of the sexual instinct, which is not unlikely, ...
— The First Landing on Wrangel Island - With Some Remarks on the Northern Inhabitants • Irving C. Rosse

... and Cingalese, Esquimaux and Javanese, Irishman and Polynesian, Bedouin and Laplander, Austrian and Soudanese, Syrian, Nubian, and Japanese—all had a temporary home within the limits of a tract of ...
— By Water to the Columbian Exposition • Johanna S. Wisthaler

... natives here are much darker than are those at Kerepunu; most of them suffer from a very offensive-looking skin disease, which causes the skin to peel off in scales. In their conversation with one another I recognized several Polynesian words. The water is obtained by digging in the sand, and is ...
— Adventures in New Guinea • James Chalmers

... on the purple plain Of Polynesian main, Where never yet adventurer's prore Lay rocking near its coral shore: A tropic mystery, which the enamored deep Folds, as a beauty in a charmed sleep. There lofty palms, of some imperial line, That never bled their nimble wine, ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various

... family. We have learnt that in some of the dialects of modern Sanskrit, in Bengali for instance,[4] the plural is formed, as it is in Chinese, Mongolian, Turkish, Finnish, Burmese, and Siamese, also in the Dravidian and Malayo-Polynesian dialects, by adding a word expressive of plurality, and then appending again the terminations of the singular. We have learnt from French how a future, je parlerai, can be formed by an auxiliary verb: "Ito speak have" coming to mean, Ishall speak. We have learnt from our own ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller

... Similar so called "head scares" have occurred in Singapore up to even the present time. It is not easy to define what has led to this superstition in the native mind, and it is made more complicated from the fact that it is shared alike by Chinese and natives of India. In many of the Polynesian Islands the practice of human sacrifices we know exists even in our own days, and that chiefs, when they build a house or a war-canoe, offer up a human being; and the Polynesians and Indonesians resemble one another ...
— Prisoners Their Own Warders - A Record of the Convict Prison at Singapore in the Straits - Settlements Established 1825 • J. F. A. McNair

... lieutenant who seemed to be of predominantly Malayan and Polynesian blood, slid back the duraglass canopy for him to climb in, then snapped it into place when he had ...
— Uller Uprising • Henry Beam Piper, John D. Clark and John F. Carr

... these islands became inhabited is not definitely known. Since the Polynesian languages in general are similar, it is conjectured that the inhabitants of the islands have a common origin and that many of the more northerly groups were peopled by ...
— Wealth of the World's Waste Places and Oceania • Jewett Castello Gilson

... have settled the matter by shooting the four natives in the canoe; but that would have been an act of the very blackest treachery, and I was strongly of opinion that it was just such treacherous conduct on the part of certain unscrupulous white men that had made the natives of some of the Polynesian islands the cruel, treacherous wretches that ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood

... slender and almost feminine of aspect; the other, squat and powerful. Chinese and Korean elements are known to exist in the populations of certain districts; and, there appears to have been a large infusion of Aino blood. Whether there be [19] any Malay or Polynesian element also has not been decided. Thus much only can be safely affirmed,—that the race, like all good races, is a mixed one; and that the peoples who originally united to form it have been so blended together as to develop, under long social discipline, ...
— Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation • Lafcadio Hearn

... yet to be! Rising with us are all God-fearing nations—the Teutonic, Slav, and Latin peoples. Sitting yet in darkness, and massed against us, crouch sullenly the immemorial hordes of Asia, the wild blacks of the African swamps and jungles, and the dwellers of Polynesian seas. Occident and Orient, the world's battalions are forming for new encounters and new dismays. Never since the strong-limbed Goths changed the face of Europe has there been a period of such tense anticipation, nor so great a possibility of volcanic change. We are entering an historic period ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown

... period. The Negritos are, no doubt, quite a distinct race from the Malay; but yet, as some of them inhabit a portion of the continent, and others the Andaman Islands in the Bay of Bengal, they must be considered to have had, in all probability, an Asiatic rather than a Polynesian origin. ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace

... Polynesian Rata-myth there is a very instructive series of manifestations of the dragon.[312] The first form assumed by the monster in this story was a gaping shell-fish of enormous size; then it appeared as a mighty octopus; ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith

... Mediterranean; for remember that from this point man spread, by way of the sea, from Easter Island in the Eastern Pacific right away to Madagascar, where we find Javanese immigrants, and negroes who are probably Papuan, whilst the language is of a Malayo-Polynesian type. ...
— Anthropology • Robert Marett

... volume of Judge Fornander's elaborate work on "The Polynesian Race" he has given some old Hawaiian legends which closely resemble the Old Testament history. How shall we account for ...
— Hawaiian Folk Tales - A Collection of Native Legends • Various

... interpretations, and instruction freely placed at his disposal by those connected with the museum, especially by Dr. Brigham, the former director, whose long and busy life has been devoted almost entirely to a study of the Polynesian groups; by Professor Gregory, the present director, who with tireless energy is the impelling force behind various lines of scientific research; by Mr. Stokes, curator of the ethnological department, who for more than a score of years has been surveying, ...
— Archeological Investigations - Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 76 • Gerard Fowke

... word of Fontenelle's to which I should not gladly subscribe; there is no advice of his which I have not tried to follow in all my attempts to explain the myths of India and Greece by an occasional reference to Polynesian or African folklore.' ...
— Modern Mythology • Andrew Lang

... to foreigners as to one's fellow-countrymen it is obvious that all national feeling must vanish. The British Freemason does not, of course, interpret the theory in this manner; he cannot seriously regard himself as the brother of the Bambute pygmy or the Polynesian cannibal, thus he uses the term merely in a vague ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster

... right that the world should be filled with such prejudice as to wish to repress manoeuvres so natural that primitive man, the Polynesian savage, ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans

... savages. Muriel shrank back terror-stricken at the sight, as they drew nearer and nearer. But Felix, holding his breath hard, grew somewhat less nervous as the men approached the reef. He had seen enough of Polynesian life before now to feel sure these people were not upon the war-path. Whatever their ultimate intentions toward the castaways might be, their immediate object seemed friendly and good-humored. The boats, though large, ...
— The Great Taboo • Grant Allen

... growing importance of British Colonies in and about New Zealand, the inevitable impulse that recent events must give to the China trade,[2] and the efforts of all maritime nations to make establishments in the Polynesian Islands will render the Canal a certain source of profit and honor to those who will aid in ...
— A Succinct View of the Importance and Practicability of Forming a Ship Canal across the Isthmus of Panama • H. R. Hill

... seas till he made his last home at Samoa. It was a three years' cruise among "summer isles of Eden." Perhaps no book of Stevenson's is less popular than his narrative of storm and calm, of beachcombers and brown Polynesian princes. The scenery is too exotic for the general taste. The joy and sorrow of Stevenson was to find a society "in much the same convulsionary and transitional state" as the Highlands and Islands after 1745. He was always haunted, and in popularity retarded, by History. He wanted to ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... likely to know them. The lagoons around the Polynesian islands—the still waters within the barrier-reefs, you understand—are lined with most gorgeous and wonderful displays of this kind. One seems to be sailing over a mine of gems—only not in the ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume II • Susan Warner

... from his own door in England, would besiege in Samoa the doors of the rich; and the essence of the dishonesty in either case is to pursue one's own advantage and to be indifferent to the losses of one's neighbour. But the particular drawback of the Polynesian system is to depress and stagger industry. To work more is there only to be more pillaged; to save is impossible. The family has then made a good day of it when all are filled and nothing remains over for the crew of free-booters; and the injustice of the system begins ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... civilization to have become extinct, and that some antiquary from the antipodes should visit this desolate hill to excavate, like Layard at Nineveh, for relics of the old Americans. Suppose, having collected a ship-load of broken tombstones, he should forward them to the Polynesian Museum, and set the savans of the age at work deciphering their inscriptions, what sense would be made out of these epitaphs? How would they interpret our notions of a future state? Taking our own monuments, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various

... centuries ago, in this stony wilderness, which influenced his opinions and regulated his conduct every day of his life, in that distant and seagirt home, which, at the time of their occurrence, was not as advanced in civilisation as the Polynesian groups or the islands of New Zealand. The life and property of England are protected by the laws of Sinai. The hard-working people of England are secured in every seven days a day of rest by the laws of Sinai. And yet they persecute the Jews, and hold up to ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli

... a large amount of ethnographic data derived from the Polynesian Islands, Micronesian Islands, Australia, etc., more than one-half of this important volume is devoted to philology, a large share relating to ...
— Seventh Annual Report • Various

... gods, different in power and rank, and all subordinate to a supreme God, a Zeus or Jupiter. The Vedic polytheism differs from the Greek and Roman polytheism, and, I may add, likewise from the polytheism of the Ural-Altaic, the Polynesian, the American, and most of the African races, in the same manner as a confederacy of village communities differs from a monarchy. There are traces of an earlier stage of village-community life to be discovered in the later republican and monarchical constitutions, and in the ...
— India: What can it teach us? - A Course of Lectures Delivered before the University Of Cambridge • F. Max Mueller

... these wonders, were separated by a thin and precarious interval from the savage. Scratch a civilized Russian, they say, and you find a wild Tartar. Scratch an ancient Greek, and you hit, no doubt, on a very primitive and formidable being, somewhere between a Viking and a Polynesian. ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various

... of disposal of the dead were various among the native races of America, and most of them may be matched by customs obtaining in the Eastern hemisphere or the Polynesian islands. The commonest method was some form of inhumation in pits, graves, or holes in the ground, in stone graves or cysts, in mounds, beneath or in houses, or in caves. Embalmment, to a limited extent, was also practised, the corpse being wrapped in garments and made up into a bundle before ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various

... are quite startling. Did you see that Polynesian? I really felt as if he were going to spring out ...
— The Vanishing Man • R. Austin Freeman

... and sunk do we find the several varieties of humanity. We must set wholly aside, in our survey, the disturbing element of modern emigration. Caucasian man has been pressing outwards. In the backwoods of America, in Southern Africa, in Australia, and in the Polynesian islands, the old Adamic type has been asserting its superiority, and annihilating before it the degraded races. But taking into account merely the aboriginal varieties, it seems to be a general rule, that the further we remove in any direction from the Adamic centre, the more animalized and sunk ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller

... others of our Polynesian Converts behindhand. The Native Churches in Mangaia have also given generous gifts, of which the Rev. W.W. ...
— Fruits of Toil in the London Missionary Society • Various

... has it that the Maories came in the first instance, some thirteen hundred years ago, from the Sandwich Islands. There is reason for believing this to be correct, when one reflects that the beautiful Polynesian race peopled all the archipelago ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne

... scrutiny and comments of a passing crowd. Venus is an armless figure from the Louvre; Dionysos does not mean to us divine possession, the gift of tongues, or immortality; Attis brings no salvation. But to antiquity the 'pagan' cults were no mockery. They were as real as Polynesian heathenism or Christianity to-day." (James T. Shotwell: "The Religious ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks

... have always been notorious for their immodesty, and the island, notwithstanding the labours of zealous missionaries, continues to be the Polynesian Paphos. The French protectorate from which it suffers has not raised the moral ...
— The Story of Ida Pfeiffer - and Her Travels in Many Lands • Anonymous

... of the year Rizal's residence was in Ghent, where he had gathered around him a number of Filipinos. Doctor Blumentritt suggested that he should devote himself to the study of Malay-Polynesian languages, and as it appeared that thus he could earn a living in Holland he thought to make his permanent home there. But his parents were old and reluctant to leave their native land to pass their last years in a strange ...
— Lineage, Life, and Labors of Jose Rizal, Philippine Patriot • Austin Craig

... accounted for by their negligence or indifference, for the turkey is valued by them, and the fowl has been adopted by the remotest tribes. In almost every part of the world—for instance, in the interior of Africa, and in several of the Polynesian islands—the natives are extremely fond of taming the indigenous quadrupeds and birds; but they rarely or never succeed in ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin

... living. But the correspondence between the old Israelitic and other archaic forms of theology extends to details. If, in order to avoid all chance of direct communication, we direct our attention to the theology of semi-civilised people, such as the Polynesian Islanders, separated by the greatest possible distance, and by every conceivable physical barrier, from the inhabitants of Palestine, we shall find not merely that all the features of old Israelitic theology, which are revealed in the records cited, are found among them; but that ...
— The Evolution of Theology: An Anthropological Study - Essay #8 from "Science and Hebrew Tradition" • Thomas Henry Huxley

... Madagascar, during the Years 1853, 1854, 1856. Including a Journey to the Capital; with Notices of the Natural History of the Country and of the Present Civilization of the People. By William Ellis, F.H.S., Author of "Polynesian Researches." Illustrated by Wood-Cuts from Photographs, etc. New York. Harper & Brothers. 8vo. pp. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various

... spoken with greatest purity in the states of Kedah and Perak, on the west coast of the Malay Peninsula. It is spoken in all the states of the Peninsula, in Sumatra, Sunda, Java, Borneo, Celebes, Flores, Timor, and Timor Laut, the Moluccas, and the Philippines. Traces of it are found among the numerous Polynesian dialects, and in the language of the islanders of Formosa. Siam proper has a large Malay population, descendants mainly of captives taken in war, and the language is therefore in use there in places; it is found also here and there on the coasts and rivers of Anam and Cochin-China. No other language ...
— A Manual of the Malay language - With an Introductory Sketch of the Sanskrit Element in Malay • William Edward Maxwell

... their settlement in Europe, and some of the battle-axes or shields which they manufactured from this metal were beautifully chased with exquisite decorative patterns, equalling in taste the ornamental designs still employed by the Polynesian islanders. Such weapons, however, were doubtless intended for the use of the chieftains only, and were probably employed as insignia of rank alone. They are still discovered in the barrows which cover the remains of the early chieftains; though it is possible that they may really ...
— Early Britain - Anglo-Saxon Britain • Grant Allen

... Equatorial Africa, where women dispense with clothing habitually and without shame. Indeed, I have seen girls far more scantily clad on the stage of the Ziegfeld Roof or the Winter Garden than I ever have in those distant lands which have not yet received the blessings of civilization. In most of the Polynesian islands the painter or photographer can usually bribe a native girl to disrobe for him, just as in Paris or New York he can find models who for a consideration will pose in the nude, but when the picture is completed ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell

... area of the Pacific now covered by the Polynesian Archipelago, as having been, at some former time, occupied by large islands, or, may be, by a great continent, with the ordinarily diversified surface of plain, and hill, and mountain chain. The shores of this great land were doubtless fringed by coral reefs; and, as it slowly underwent depression, ...
— Autobiography and Selected Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley

... controlling degree" to the abundance or the need of the comforts of life. This latter conclusion is directly opposed to that arrived at by Villerme, from the statistics of the height of the conscripts in different parts of France. When we compare the differences in stature between the Polynesian chiefs and the lower orders within the same islands, or between the inhabitants of the fertile volcanic and low barren coral islands of the same ocean (18. For the Polynesians, see Prichard's 'Physical History of Mankind,' vol. v. 1847, pp. 145, 283. Also ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin

... those islands most affected, the native population will soon become extinct. According to Lancereaux, in the Marquesas group the women do not live beyond the age of thirty to thirty-five years, three or four months being the duration of the disease. Ellis, in his "Polynesian Researches," published in 1836, remarks that at that date the disease, as above described, had but recently appeared. In the nineteenth volume of the "Archives de Medecine Navale," Rey mentions that at the Easter Island pulmonary phthisis is the dominant affection ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino

... "you see I was right, and you must admit the hand of Providence is here. Is it not evident that this fine boat, built, perhaps, several thousand leagues from this, has arrived express from the Polynesian islands to carry us away from ...
— Adventures in the Philippine Islands • Paul P. de La Gironiere

... SMITH wants to know more about Polynesian Labour Traffic. The NOBLE BARON who has charge of Colonial affairs in Commons, whilst controverting all his statements, says "everyone must admit that the Hon. Member has spoken from his heart." "Which," NOVAR says, "it reminds me of the couplet Joe Gargery meant to put on the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, June 4, 1892 • Various

... by Polynesian emigrants from surrounding island groups, the Tokelau Islands were made a British protectorate in 1889. They were transferred to New ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency

... nod, a form of words, or an incantation. We can form some idea of the practical results of such a system from what we know of the manners and social condition of those Turanian races in Asiatic Russia who profess what is called chamanism, and from the condition of most of the negro tribes and Polynesian islanders. Among all these people, who still remain in a mental condition from which the rest of the species has long escaped, we find the highest places occupied by priest-magicians. Now and then popular fury makes them pay cruelly for the ill-success of ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot

... her sisters with a description of what she called her "newly instituted Polynesian Academy;" returned, and set to work to guide the rough, coarse hand through the mysteries ...
— Mistress and Maid • Dinah Craik (aka: Miss Mulock)

... respectability. As will be seen, this precaution was, curiously enough, the human means of preserving my life. My hat, my black clothes, my white neck-tie, and the hymn-book I carry would, I was convinced, secure for me a favourable reception among the natives (if of the gentle brown Polynesian type), whom I expected to find on ...
— In the Wrong Paradise • Andrew Lang

... Belves, the officer in command at the station, who at once came in his cutter to take her and her party to the Meleagre, where they were well received by the officers, doctor, and all the crew. It seemed to them as if they had left the Polynesian savages and were once more in civilised society. When they shook hands with the French consul they could contain themselves no longer, but jumped for joy and ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks

... an extensive exploring trip in the South Seas, the auxiliary yacht Kawa, which reached this port today, reports the discovery of a new group of Polynesian Islands. The new archipelago has been named the Filbert Islands, because of the extraordinary quantity of nuts of that name found there, according to ...
— The Cruise of the Kawa • Walter E. Traprock

... cranium, in its present condition, holds 1033.24 cubic centimetres of water, or about 63 cubic inches, and as the entire skull could hardly have held less than an additional 12 cubic inches, its capacity may be estimated at about 75 cubic inches, which is the average capacity given by Morton for Polynesian and ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley

... a Polynesian island, religious and civil authority were lodged in separate hands, spiritual functions being discharged by a line of hereditary kings, while the temporal government was entrusted from time to time to ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer

... element in the shifting fate of races. Islands show certain fundamental points of agreement which can be distinguished in the economic, ethnic and historical development of England, Japan, Melanesian Fiji, Polynesian New Zealand, and pre-historic Crete. The great belt of deserts and steppes extending across the Old World gives us a vast territory of rare historical uniformity. From time immemorial they have borne and bred tribes of wandering herdsmen; they have sent out ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple

... journey began. The plan we laid out was to sail to Suva in Fiji, about 1,700 miles away, and after a stay there, on to Hawaii or the Sandwich Islands, stopping perhaps at the Phoenix Islands and the Central Polynesian Sporades, such as Christmas and Fanning Isles. Then we proposed to turn south again through the Marshall Archipelago and the Caroline Islands, and so on to New Guinea and the Coral Sea. Particularly did we wish to visit Easter Island on account of its marvelous sculptures ...
— When the World Shook - Being an Account of the Great Adventure of Bastin, Bickley and Arbuthnot • H. Rider Haggard

... be written about the harmony which prevails in the villages of the Polynesian inhabitants of the Pacific Islands. But they belong to a more advanced stage of civilization. So we shall now take our illustrations from the far north. I must mention, however, before leaving the Southern Hemisphere, ...
— Mutual Aid • P. Kropotkin

... publish certain curious experiences at Constantinople, in "Aziyade," a book which, like so many of Loti's, seems half a romance, half an autobiography. He proceeded to the South Seas, and, on leaving Tahiti, published the Polynesian idyl, originally called "Raharu," which was reprinted as "Le Mariage de Loti" (1880), and which first introduced to the wider public an author of remarkable originality and charm. Loti now became extremely prolific, and in a succession of volumes chronicled ...
— An Iceland Fisherman • Pierre Loti



Words linked to "Polynesian" :   Fijian, Polynesia, Eastern Malayo-Polynesian, Tongan, Samoan, Austronesian, oceanic, Austronesian language, Tahitian



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