| 60 | Aia ke ola i ka waha; aia ka make i ka waha. | Life is in the mouth; death is in ihe mouth. |
| | [Spoken words can enliven; spoken words can destroy.] |
| 182 | ʻAʻohe māna ʻai loaʻa i ka mea make. | Not even a mouthful of food can be obtained from the dead. |
| | [Consider the living, who may be kindly host or friend.] |
| 188 | ʻAʻohe mea make i ka hewa; make nō i ka mihi ʻole. | No one has ever died for the mistakes he has made; only because he didn’t repent. |
| | [Urges repentance to one’s aumākua. Later came to include the idea of repentance before the Christian God.] |
| 224 | ʻAʻole e make ko ke kahuna kanaka, ʻo ko ke aliʻi kanaka ke make. | The servant of the kahuna will not be put to death, but the chief’s servant will. |
| | [A warning not to antagonize the friend of an influential man. A kahuna will do his best to protect his own servant.] |
| 229 | ʻAʻole make ka waʻa i ka ʻale o waho, aia no i ka ʻale o loko. | A canoe is not swamped by the billows of the ocean, but by the billows near the land. |
| | [Trouble often comes from one’s own people rather than from outsiders.] |
| 249 | E aho ka make i ke kaua, he nui nā moepuʻu. | Better to die in battle where one will have companions in death. |
| | [Uttered by Kaʻeokulani, a chief of Maui.] |
| 366 | E, ʻolohaka! I ke ʻehu nō o ka lāʻau pālau, kulana; hākālia nō a pāpā lāʻau aku o ka make nō ia. | Say! The person is hollow. With just the passing breeze of a brandished club, he falls. As soon as a spear touches him, he dies. |
| | [Said by Pupukea, a chief of Kaʻū, of Makakuikalani, chief of Maui, in an exchange of insults. Later commonly used to refer to weaklings.] |
| 374 | E pule wale nō i ka lā o ka make, ʻaʻole e ola. | Prayers uttered on the day of death will not save one. |
| | [Said by Lohiʻau to Hiʻiaka.] |
| 383 | ʻEu nō ka ilo, make! | The maggot creeps, it dies! |
| 519 | He ʻai make ka uhi. | The yam is the food of death. |
| | [The yam grows downward in the ground, instead of upward like the taro. When a person digs for yams, he has to be on the watch lest while digging with head down low an enemy strike him on the back of the neck and kill him.] |
| 568 | He hāpuʻu ka ʻai he ʻai make. | If the hāpuʻu is the food, it is the food of death. |
| | [When famine came many depended on hāpuʻu to sustain life, but it required much work to prepare. There was the cutting, the preparation of the imu, and three whole days during which the hāpuʻu cooked. If the food was done then, hunger was stayed; if not, there was another long delay, and by that time someone may have starved to death.] |
| 588 | He hoʻīlina ka make no ke kino. | Death is an inheritance for the hody. |
| 610 | He iʻa make ka ʻopihi. | The ʻopihi is a fish of death. |
| | [The ʻopihi is usually found on rocks where the sea is rough. There is always danger of being washed away by the waves when gathering ʻopihi.] |
| 766 | He lohe ke ola, he kuli ka make. | To hear is life, to turn a deaf ear is death. |
| | [It pays to heed sound advice.] |
| 881 | He pali nui ka make e hoʻokaʻawale ana. | Death is a sheer cliff that separates. |
| | [Death divides the living from the dead.] |
| 1131 | Hū i kula ka make o ka ʻaiā. | The wicked dead is washed up by the sea. |
| | [In ancient times, certain priests would take charge of a chief’s corpse. The flesh and viscera, called pela, were sometimes taken out to sea where they were deposited. It was said that the viscera of a good chief was accepted by the sea and hidden in its depth, but that of a wicked chief was washed ashore and left there.] |
| 1148 | Iā ia a hiki, make ka puaʻa. | As soon as he arrived, the pig died. |
| | [It was the custom to kill and roast a pig when a very welcome guest arrived.] |
| 1196 | I ka pule nō o Lohiʻau a make. | Lohiʻau was still praying when he died. |
| | [Said of one who waits until he is face to face with death before beginning to pray.] |
| 1219 | I kū i ke ola, ola; i kū i ka make, make. | If it is on the side of life, there is life; if on the side of death, death. |
| | [Said of one who lies between life and death.] |
| 1233 | I make nō he hāwāwā; ʻauhea nō hoʻi nā lima a ʻau mai? | It is inexperience that causes death; where are your arms with which to swim? |
| | [When you have something to do, learn to do it and gain experience. Experience often saves life.] |
| 1191 | I ka ʻōlelo nō ka ola, i ka ʻōlelo nō ka make. | Life is in speech; death is in speech. |
| | [Words can heal; words can destroy.] |
| 1960 | Lawe liʻiliʻi ka make a ka Hawaiʻi, lawe nui ka make a ka haole. | Death by Hawaiians takes a few at a time; death by foreigners takes many. |
| | [The diseases that were known in the islands before the advent of foreigners caused fewer deaths than those that were introduced.] |
| 2103 | Make auaneʻi i ka moana a pae kupapaʻu i Lānaʻi. | May probahly die at sea and his corpse wash ashore on Lānaʻi. |
| | [Refers to a person on a very hazardous venture.] |
| 2104 | Make iā Pipili. | Killed by Pipili. |
| | [Killed by Stick-around. So boasted Kamehameha I when he slew Kapakahili, a Maui chief, in the battle of Kawaʻanui. He stuck around and succeeded in eliminating a foe.] |
| 2106 | Make nō ke kalo a ola i ka naio. | The taro dies but lives again in the pinworm. |
| | [The matter may be thought dead, but it is likely to come alive again. Naio (pinworms) were sometimes found in poi and caused itching in the anal passage.] |
| 2107 | Make nō ke kalo a ola i ka palili. | The taro may die but lives on in the young plants that it produces. |
| | [One lives on in his children.] |
| 2108 | Make nō ʻo Pāmano i ka ʻiʻo ponoʻī. | It was a near relative who destroyed Pāmano. |
| | [Troubles often come from one’s nearest relatives. From the legend of Pāmano, a hero who met his death through his uncle, Waipū.] |
| 2109 | Make o Keawe a kū i ke kāʻai. | Keawe died and stood in the kāʻai. |
| | [The kāʻai is a plaited container for the bones of a deceased chief. The head was placed in an upper compartment and the bones of the body in the lower one, which was shaped like an armless, legless torso.] |
| 2110 | Make ʻo Keawe me kona kālele. | Keawe and the person he leaned upon are both dead. |
| | [Said to one who has a habit of depending on others. Keawe-i-kekahi-aliʻi-o-ka-moku was a noted chief of Hawaiʻi.] |
| 2111 | Make ʻo Mikololou a ola i ke alelo. | Mikololou died and lived again through his tongue. |
| | [Said of one who talks himself out of a predicament. Mikololou was a shark god of Maui destroyed by the shark goddess Kaʻahupāhau of Pearl Harbor for expressing a desire to eat a human being. He was drawn up to land where his flesh fell off and dried in the heat of the sun. One day some children found his tongue in the sand and played with it, tossing it back and forth. When it fell into the sea, the spirit of Mikololou possessed it and it became a living shark again.] |
| 2183 | Mō ke kī lā — make! | Cut is the kī — it is death! |
| | [Used in riddling contests of old, when persons who failed to guess correctly were often tortured or put to death. A wicked Puna chief once invented a riddle that no one could solve: He kī e, he kī e, mō ke kī — make! (It is the kī, it is the kī, [when it is] cut [there is] death!) The answer? The parts of the body whose names include the word kī, such as kīkala (hip) and kihi poʻohiwi (shoulder). Many people tried and failed to guess the answer and so were put to death. Finally, an old woman took pity on a youthful contestant and secretly told him the solution. In addition she told the youth about an additional kī that the chief himself had forgotten. On the day of his contest, the youth answered the chief’s riddle. Then he challenged the chief with the same riddle. A dispute arose when the chief denied that there were any other body parts with kī. The youth pointed to the chief’s fingernails (mikiʻao) and was declared the winner. The wicked chief was put to death as he had put others to death.] |
| 2492 | ʻOla nō ka mea akua, make nō ka mea akua ʻole. | He who has a god lives; he who has none, dies. |
| | [A god was regarded as a helper and protector of his devotee.] |