222 THE POLYNESIAN WANDERINGS. 



huai, to pour out; tigahu, damp, moist. Niue: huhua, liquid. 

 Uvea: huai, to pour; huhua, sap. Nuguria: hua, coconut 

 water. Hawaii: hu, to overflow. Tahiti: u, to be damp, wet. 



Viti: suasua, wet, moist. 



Arabic : nazza, to exude ; nizu, flow, water. 



While there is a close association in all the material here collected we 

 are to observe that in the Polynesian three forms exist, that Samoa and 

 Tonga possess all three, that Futuna alone has two. These three forms 

 are su, sua, ngasu. 



su: In the sense of wet this is found in Samoa, Tonga, Futuna, Tahiti. 

 The Hawaiian hu is in form a variant of su, but while the sense has to do 

 with liquids it does not conform to the meaning of this stem as elsewhere 

 found. Nukuoro suisui I regard as a derivative of su by means of the 

 verb-formative i. 



sua: Is found in Samoa, Futuna, Tonga as juice ; in Uvea specialized as sap ; 

 in Niue as liquid or as juice; in Nuguria still more highly specialized as 

 the water of the coconut. The Tonga and Uvea huai, a verb-derivative 

 of the sua stem, means to pour; this is comparable with the Hawaiian hu 

 as showing probably the coming up to the surface of a primordial general 

 signification which elsewhere does not break through the highly particular 

 sense, and this will be taken to include the Niue in the sense of liquid. 



ngasu: This is confined to Samoa and Tonga and has the particular 

 meaning of su, wet, damp, moist. 



The Viti is of the sua form but of the su sense. 



The Efate is of the ngasu form but of the sua sense. 



The manner of the interrelation of these three forms is by no means simple. 

 If su meant wetness then sua would follow in the adjectival sense of being 

 wet, in the common Samoan system of formation. We see here the oppo- 

 site movement, which is anomalous; yet it will serve to fix the position 

 of Viti as regular. Su is clearly the basic element of all these words which 

 carry the common sense. I am not familiar with any use of a prefixed 

 nga which has but the object of forming merely ornamental compounds, 

 for ngasu equals su, and in Tonga ngahu equals huhu. In Efate nasu we 

 note that it is impossible that it is na-su, for na is expressly not the article. 

 We have but one other instance (125) of the Efate n representing a Poly- 

 nesian ng. 



The Samoan suati is the equivalent of this Tonga-Uvea huai. The form 

 of the Viti vakasuasuataka, to wet, gives ground for the impression that the 

 t is radical, vanishing somewhat unusuallv from huai. We should then 

 have the stem suat and by progressive degradation reach sua and su. 



Provisionally we may hold nasu to be the remnant of a parent nasuat 

 which has undergone in general an abrasion at each end. In this view it 

 seems particularly difficult to understand how the Semitic, instinct with 

 the zeal for triliteralism, should have come to sacrifice the already existing 

 third consonant and then have reached exactly the same stage of demoli- 

 tion as in Efate and the heart of Nuclear Polynesia, and all this without 

 having left a trace in crowded Melanesia and Indonesia which intervene. 

 A resemblance rather than an identification. 



