kahuna









kahuna


noun

  1. (in Hawaii) a native medicine man or priest.
n.

1886, in a report in English by the Hawaiian government, which defines the word as “doctor and sorcerer,” from Hawaiian, where it was applied as well to priests and navigators. In surfer slang, for “a god of surfing,” it is attested from 1962 (but big kahuna in same sense is said to date from 1950s.

49 queries 0.581