tarakihi
1. (noun) cicada of various species - there are about 40 species of cicada in Aotearoa/New Zealand. Some live in the forest, some on coastal sand dunes, others in the mountain tops. Cicadas have a blunt head and tapering body, cannot jump but can fly. They are noted for the male's loud summer mating call, the song of each species being distinctive. The wingless cicada nymph (matua kihikihi) lives underground for at least three years, sucking roots. When ready to hatch, it crawls out onto a tree trunk at dawn and the winged adult breaks out of its old nymph skin (ngengeti) and flies away.
He mano te patupaiarehe kei te tarakihi; ko te āhua he āhua tangata, pēnei me te āhua Pākehā, ko te kiri i mā, i kōrakorako te māhunga me te kiri katoa, i rerekē kīhai i rite ki te tangata Māori (KO 20/11/1886:7). / The patupaiarehe are numerous like cicadas; their appearance is the same as humans, like the Pākehā the skin is white and the hair and all the skin is fair, not like the Māori people.
2. (noun) tarakihi, Nemadactylus macropterus - a silver marine fish with a black band behind the head. Deep body and strongly compressed, with one long ray in the pectoral fin. Found throughout Aotearoa/New Zealand coastal waters at depths of 3-462 m. It spawns in schools in late summer and autumn.
Kei te mōhio katoa rātau ki ngā tauranga tāmure, tauranga tarakihi, tauranga hāpuku me ērā atu ika o te moana (TWK 54:3). / They know all the fishing grounds for snapper, tarakihi, groper and those other fish of the sea.
