Manu is as wholesale in its signification as our word animal, it is generic. In the paucity of brute mammalia the first missionaries found this general term most frequently used of birds, and it was their and not a Polynesian mistake to translate manu into bird.

In the material here collected it will be seen that the significations animal and bird are widely extended. In the Paumotu insects are included; the same is true of Mota, where manu signifies beetle as well as bird.

Nor is its applicability restricted to earth and air; it reaches into the sea as well. Samoa uses i'amanu (fish-animal) for the whale ..." (William Churchill, The Polynesian Wanderings.)"

1. Bird; manu uru, bird figure (like the drawings or wooden figures once found in caves and houses); manu va'e e-há, four-legged bird (name given to the first sheep introduced to the island. 2. Insect. manupatia, wasp. 3. Bird's egg: mâmari manu. 4. Wild, untamed. 5. Song in which is expressed the desire to kill someone, or in which a crime is confessed: he-tapa i te manu (see tapa). Vanaga.

Bird; manu uru, kite; manu rikiriki, insect. P Pau.: manu, bird, insect, brute. Mgv.: manu, bird, beast. Mq., Ta.: manu, bird, insect. Manu nave, great abscess, bubo. Churchill.

Manu i te raá = comet. Barthel.

Manu vae eha,  'birds with four legs'. Barthel 2.

To jump; to run; to fly. Rere-taúra, to carry a child astride on one's shoulder: ku rere-taúra-á i te poki e te matu'a ki te gao, the mother carries her child astride her neck. Vanaga.

1. To fly, to run, to leap, to scale, to be carried away by the wind; ika rere, flying fish; rere aruga, to rebound; hetuu rere, meteor, flying star. Hakarere, to leap. P Pau.: rere, to soar, to fly; fakarere, to precede. Mgv., Ta.: rere, to fly, to leap. 2. To come, to reach to. Mq.: éé mai, to come. 3. To swerve, to deviate. (4. Hakarere, to cease, desist, postpone, quit, vacation; tae hakarere, perseverance. Mq.: rere, to disappear. 5. Hakarere, to save, preserve, put, place, reserve, burden, destine. 6. Hakarere, to abandon, forsake, give up, depose, expose, leave, omit, abjure, repudiate; hakarere ki te hau, uncover the head; hakarere ki te vie, to divorce, hakarere ki raro, to put down, tooa te kiko e ivi i hakarere, to strip off the flesh. Mq.: éé, to run away, to escape. 7. Hakarere? Ikapotu hakarere, to abut, to adjoin; e tahi hakarere, synonym.) Churchill.

Vi.: Lele, the end of a branch farthest from the body of a tree; leletha, to bend a branch in order to gather the fruit on it. Churchill 2.

In the present phase of Polynesian lele so much means to fly that the plainest way of particularizing birds is to describe them as the flying animals, manulele. But to manifest that flight, an exercise or balancing of wings, was by no means the primordial sense, for how could that give rise to a description of water in the water-courses? It will be no end to mass the several significations which lele exhibits ... Flight of birds ... Wind drive ... Meteors ... To leap ... To run ... Flow of water ... To swim ... To sail ... These several activities are exercised in earth, air, and water. The common factor is the swift motion. The means of motion cut no figure. It is an invisible means in the driving of the wind, the flash of the meteor silent athwart the sky on its lethal errand, the slip and slide of the stream in its deep course, the set of the sea, the gliding of the canoe upon its surface. Churchill

Kotikoti. To cut with scissors (since this is an old word and scissors do not seem to have existed, it must mean something of the kind). Vanaga.

Kotikoti. To tear; kokoti, to cut, to chop, to hew, to cleave, to assassinate, to amputate, to scar, to notch, to carve, to use a knife, to cut off, to lop, to gash, to mow, to saw; kokotiga kore, indivisible; kokotihaga, cutting, gash furrow. P Pau.: koti, to chop. Mgv.: kotikoti, to cut, to cut into bands or slices; kokoti, to cut, to saw; akakotikoti, a ray, a streak, a stripe, to make bars. Mq.: koti, oti, to cut, to divide. Ta.: oóti, to cut, to carve; otióti, to cut fine. Churchill.

Pau.: Koti, to gush, to spout. Ta.: oti, to rebound, to fall back. Kotika, cape, headland. Ta.: otiá, boundary, limit. Churchill.