Other forms: kiwis
A kiwi is the fruit with fuzzy brown skin and shocking green flesh inside, ringed with tiny black seeds. You cut it in half and scoop it out with a teaspoon.
It is also a bird: a small, round, flightless New Zealand bird with a long thin beak that pokes about in leaf litter at night. The fruit takes its name from the bird it resembles — brown, fuzzy, roughly egg-shaped — and on packaging you will still see the fuller name kiwifruit. Written with a capital K, a Kiwi is a New Zealander, and the word is friendly rather than rude, since New Zealanders use it about themselves. The plural of all three is kiwis.
1nounkiwiA fruit with brown hairy skin and green flesh full of small black seeds.
“She packed a kiwi and a banana for the walk up the hill.”
2nounbirdA small flightless bird with a long beak, found only in New Zealand.
“Kiwis feed at night and find worms by smell.”
3nounnewA New Zealander.
“Half the team were kiwis who had come over for the season.”
Kiwi is a Māori word, the name the first people of New Zealand gave the bird, and English took it whole, sound and all. It then travelled far further than the bird ever could: an Australian shoe polish borrowed the name for its brand and sold it around the world.
Maori
kiwi
English, today
kiwi
Borrowed from Maori kiwi.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in Food & Drink