EXAMPLES FROM THE WEB FOR TABU
The Tabu was always most scrupulously regarded, after this, whenever employed.
Noa (n-a)--ceremonially free; unrestrained by tabu (p. 126).
You know as well as I do that a tabu like this is a serious business.
Una has stolen that which is tabu to her and I will punish her.
There is nothing new or unnatural in this repression, this tabu on expectoration.
Paragot accepted meekly my report of Joanna's tabu of the Black Boar.
Anything forbidden by their law or customs was called "tabu."
When they are not allowed to touch anything they say it is tabu.
They brought with them the tabu, which is common to all Polynesia.
"I think that is because of the old system of tabu," Nan made the remark.
WORD ORIGIN
1777 (in Cook's "A Voyage to the Pacific Ocean"), "consecrated, inviolable, forbidden, unclean or cursed," explained in some English sources as being from Tongan (Polynesian language of the island of Tonga) ta-bu "sacred," from ta "mark" + bu "especially." But this may be folk etymology, as linguists in the Pacific have reconstructed an irreducable Proto-Polynesian *tapu, from Proto-Oceanic *tabu "sacred, forbidden" (cf. Hawaiian kapu "taboo, prohibition, sacred, holy, consecrated;" Tahitian tapu "restriction, sacred;" Maori tapu "be under ritual restriction, prohibited"). The noun and verb are English innovations first recorded in Cook's book.