Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. (N.Z., also packeah) a white person; also as adj.

1820		Grammar and Vocab. of Lang. of N.Z. (Church Missionary Society) 187: Pakeha, s. an European; a white man.
1832		A. Earle Narrative of Nine Months’ Residence in N.Z. 146: The white taboo’d day, when the packeahs (or white men) put on clean clothes and leave off work.
1845		E.J. Wakefield Adventure in N.Z. I 73: We do not want the missionaries from the Bay of Islands: they are pakeha maori, or ‘whites who have become natives’.
1852		G.C. Mundy Our Antipodes II 52: The brutal drunkenness and reckless debauchery of the Pakehas actually ‘astonished the natives.’.
1863		T. Moser Mahoe Leaves 7: Is the pakeha (white man) asleep?
1871		C. Money Knocking About in N.Z. 139: The Maories never for a moment thinking of helping to carry their ‘Pakeha’ comrades, dead or wounded.
1880		Bulletin (Sydney) 16 Oct. 4/4: An army was summoned to oppose his crusade against the Pakeha.
1881		N.Z. Observer (Auckland) 22 Jan. 183/2: The dusky senator has not a very high opinion of Christians generally, for when asked why he selected the great Atheist as the champion of the Maori cause, he said, The pakeha Bradlaugh is not a Christian, and may therefore possibly be trusted’.
1884		T. Bracken Lays of the Maori 15: Long ere the pale pakeha came to the shrine.
1891		H.B. Marriott-Watson Web of the Spider 365: If a Maori takes the word of a Pakeha rather than of a Maori, it is absurd.
1904		‘G.B. Lancaster’ Sons O’ Men 57: Wi stood up [...] and hurled all the bad words of his knowledge at the pakeha.
1907		W.H. Koebel ‘Bush Town Funeral’ in Return of Joe 224: The man had been a good ‘Pakeha’.
1917		N.Z. Observer 4 Aug. 15/2: New Zealand pakeha soldiers perform a haka in England.
1927		T.E. Donne Maori Past and Present 59: Open eyes, open mouth and drooping tongue, suggesting that, in pre-pakeha days, it was not the custom to close the eyes and the mouth of a corpse.
1938		R. Finlayson Brown Man’s Burden 16: She would rather have a Maori who was a real man than a half-pie Pakeha who talked too much. [Ibid.] 18: I’ve found out just how rotten the Pakeha civilization is.
1942		‘A.P. Gaskell’ ‘The Picture in the Paper’ in All Part of the Game (1978) 5: Even the pakeha say ‘Hello Sammy’.
1952		G. Meek ‘Let’s Sing A Centennial Song’ in Station Days in Maoriland 107: And we will sing of pakeha and smiling Maori belles.
1953		I. Hamilton Till Human Voices Wake Us 2: When a Maori says Pakeha, there isn’t any mistake [...] He spits it out in his hakas [...] and you get an inkling of his feelings when [the whites] first arrived.
1968		G. Slatter Pagan Game (1969) 223: Sometimes a Maori boy can bewitch a Pakeha.
1969		(con. 1920s) B. Moore From Forest to Farm 66: He urged on me the merits of acquiring a Maori, as against a Pakeha wife.
1978		N. Hilliard Glory and The Dream 138: That’s a stupid pakeha idea. [Ibid.] 145: ‘Them’s all pakehas,’ she said. ‘I can’t help it. There’s no Maoris standing.’.
1982		G. Newbold Big Huey 87: Not many Pakehas play touch [rugby], and when Baine and I decided to play we were the only white faces in the A Block team.
1988		McGill Dict. of Kiwi Sl. 82/1: Pakeha Williams defines as a person of predominantly European descent. Other meanings include an imported variety of kumara, a silver eel, a flea, while ‘pakepakeha, pakepakeha’ are imaginary beings resembling men, with fair skins. Baker ponders possible links with Hebrew ‘kehah’ meaning ‘pale’ or ‘dim’, added to the causative ‘pa’; the flea the European introduced to New Zealand; the imported pig or ‘poaka’. Dr Johnson is said to have said it was ‘a term of endearment amongst sailors’, which Morris supports. Partridge opines a Maori word meaning ‘fairy’ or ‘bugger’. Pakeha people adopted the word colloquially about 1850, the singular used but the plural more general, both upper and lower case. Baker identifies the ‘pakehas’ or wealthy white and the ‘pake-hasn’t’ or poor white. Word currently becoming capitalised and controversial.
1992		A. Duff One Night Out Stealing 51: Tama tole the main fulla, the Pakeha cunt, the smart-arse one.
2000		W. Ihimaera Woman Far Walking 64: Let the Pakeha fight the Pakeha.
2002		A. Duff Jake’s Long Shadow 66: With my Pakeha flatmate snoozing beside me. [Ibid.] 114: For so long we’ve put up with our culture, our mana, trampled on by the Pakeha.
2003		McGill Reed Dict. of N.Z. Sl. [as cit. 1988].
2016		Guardian Rev. 2 Apr. 3/1: In 1954 a pakeha (a European New Zealander) made a recording of a Maori man.
2023		Bluesky 5 Nov. 🌐 I’m not Pakeha and I’m not M?ori. So I guess Tauiwi would be me.

2. the English language.

1969

B. Mason Awatea (1978) 60: You think my pakeha good? My English?