Preface to the Hawaiian Dictionary
(1986 - Revised and enlarged edition)

Authors rarely have the privilege, after twenty-five years, of revising a work of considerable size. We are grateful to have had this privilege, because the need for a complete revision of the Hawaiian Dictionary has long been evident, judging from the response of scholars and of many other readers, not only in Hawaii, but from all parts of the world. Work of revision, begun in 1972, has taken so long that the compilers often wondered if they would live to see the final form of this labor of love. In this preface we review the additions and changes that have been incorporated in this latest edition.

About 3,000 new entries have been added to the Hawaiian-English section, bringing the total number of entries in that section to about 29,000. Almost certainly it is the largest and most complete of any Polynesian dictionary. Partly because of the increased interest in Hawaiiana, many books have appeared since the first edition was compiled in the early 1950s. Those sources most productive of new entries and additional meanings of old entries include the following (see the References for bibliographic details): Handy and Pukui 1958, Ii 1959, Gosline and Brock 1960, Kamakau 1961, 1964, 1976, Neal 1965, Johnson and Mahelona 1970, Pukui, Haertig, and Lee 1972, Elbert and Pukui 1979, St. John 1982.

In addition to entirely new entries and meanings, many changes have been effected that, we hope, will increase the usefulness of the book. These include a means of showing stress groups to facilitate pronunciation of words with more than three syllables; indication of Hawaiian parts of speech; scientific names of plants changed since the early 1950s; additional ancestral reconstructions; classical origins of Hawaiian borrowings; corrections of previous entries that were made as knowledge of the language progressed; and many more cross references that, when consulted, should enhance understanding of words and their many nuances.

Hawaiian-language newspapers—excellent sources for names of rains, stars, winds, lua fighting holds, and much else—were reexamined, as well as the important old books in Hawaiian by Kelekona and by Nakuina, and volumes 5 and 6 of the Fornander series. Many legal and land terms from about the middle of the last century were uncovered by William H. Wilson and Ray Kala Enos, as they translated Hawaiian-language documents at the Hawaii State Archives.

Effort has been extended, through careful cross-referencing, to make the English-Hawaiian section a more detailed "index" of the riches, many of them hidden, on the Hawaiian-English side. Here are some comparisons of the number of epithets and cross references to sayings in the Hawaiian-English section (the number of examples in the present edition precedes the number in the previous editions): insults (45, 20), laziness (48, 0), love (18, 8), rain names (138, 17), warriors (20, 5), wind names (160, 138). These topics are also entered: 94 lua fighting holds (most of them are poetic and have no obvious connection with combat), 67 hula terms, and 22 epithets for vagabonds.

Hula masters and students have called the dictionary their bible, perhaps because of the many citations from chants, songs, and ancient prayers, the poetic sayings and epithets, and the abundance of pithy proverbs that comment on many aspects of ancient Hawaiian life. Perhaps no other Polynesian dictionary contains as much poetry, folklore, and ethnology.

In the revised dictionary we have attempted to credit Greek, Hebrew, and Latin as sources of many loan words in Hawaiian, drawing on Elbert and Knowlton's unpublished paper (1985) that lists words probably from Greek (mostly in the New Testament), Hebrew (mostly in the Old Testament), and Latin (mostly of non-Hawaiian animals and terms for Christian services).

We found that the meanings of Hawaiian words in the King James Version (KJV) differed considerably from those in the Revised Standard Version (RSV) of 1946-1952 (Old Testament) and 1971 (New Testament). In such cases both definitions are given, the RSV meanings appearing first, as presumably based on later research. There is no assurance that all such differences in the two versions are noted.

In the table below are listed a few of the many words from Greek, Hebrew, and Latin with RSV glosses that differ from KJV glosses. Notice that in every case the alternate spelling (with non-Hawaiian letters) clearly reflects the source language. Notice also that the Hawaiian loan words of Greek origin in this short list end in o; this is probably because of the frequency of Greek words ending in os, the singular nominative suffix.

Loan words from classical languages.

For other words from Hebrew with contrasting RSV and KJV glosses, see keakula, kikala, kikima, kileka, kinola, kipoka, kome, leema, lekema, lokema, and others. A few names of non-Hawaiian animals were taken from the Latin names of the family (in roman) or, more commonly, the genus (in italics), for example:

Many words used in Christian services (but not necessarily found in the Bible) are of Latin origin. See ʻepikekole, ʻepikopo, ʻEpipania, ʻEukalikia, komunio, kopilimakio, likania, and probably lōkālio.

For a more extensive discussion of loan words, see Schütz 1976 and Elbert and Pukui's Hawaiian Grammar, pp. 27-34.

Names of plants and animals. The scientific names of plants and animals have been updated. References to Neal's In Gardens of Hawaii have been changed to conform with the 1965 edition of this classic work. Many Niihau plant names (St. John 1982) have been included for the first time.

The metric system. As of 1991 Americans were accepting meters if they were athletes, and kilometers whenever they traveled outside the borders of the United States. This dictionary, too, now uses the metric system. The most commonly used metric measurements occur in the descriptions of plants: centimeters for width and length of leaves and fronds and heights of shrubs, and meters for heights of trees and for elevations where certain plants grow. Here are some of the most common measurements:

Reconstructions. In the 1957 edition of the dictionary, the origins of numerous Hawaiian words were traced back three thousand years or so to ancestral Proto Malayo-Polynesian (now called Proto Austronesian). For this new volume, in view of the tremendous advancements during the last three decades in Indonesian studies, we have traced words back only to Proto Polynesian, a hypothetical language spoken at about the time of Christ, probably near Fiji or Tonga, and before the 50 or 60 Polynesian languages known today had developed from it. In the 1957 edition only words known in Proto Austronesian were reconstructed; in this volume we have tried to reconstruct Hawaiian words with cognates anywhere in Polynesia, without consideration of Proto Austronesian.

For the dictionaries consulted, see in the References: Churchward (Tongan), Carroll and Soulik (Nukuoro), Dordillon (Marquesan), Elbert (Rennell and Bellona), Englert (Easter Island), Fuentes (Easter Island), Lemaitre (Tahitian), Lieber and Dikepa (Kapingamarangi), McEwen (Niuean), Milner (Samoan), Pukui and Elbert (Hawaiian), Savage (Rarotongan), Stimson and Marshall (Tuamotuan), Williams (Maori). Also see Biggs 1972, 1978.

The spelling system. The orthography in this revision differs in one may from that used in the 1957 edition of the dictionary. The -w- following o or u is treated as a predictable glide; there is no difference in the pronunciation of the pairs listed below—the -w- is superfluous. In general, entries in the new dictionary show both forms, and the definition follows the form without the glide. Thus

Unfortunately, it was not possible to be entirely consistent in doing this, partly because of the writing habits of older Hawaiian speakers.

An exception: if the -w-, even after o or u, is the initial letter of a semantically related base, the -w- is retained, thus: kūwili `to move restlessly' and wili 'to twist', mōwaho 'afar' and waho 'outside', ʻuwīʻuwī 'to squeak' and wī 'to squeal'.

The following section on provisional spelling recommendations was prepared by Emily Hawkins, president of the ʻAhahui ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi (ʻAʻŌH), a committee of Hawaiian language teachers, formed to address the entire scope of spelling rules, including capitalization, use of non-native letters, use of hyphens, and compound words. In a few instances these rules result in different spellings than those preferred in the dictionary. Most of the differences can be attributed to the separate purposes of the dictionary and the ʻAʻŌH spelling recommendations. The dictionary serves as a reference within which meanings are sought for spellings that have been found in reading, while the primary goal of the ʻAʻŌH rules is to set a standard orthography to be used in teaching the language. To that end, the ʻAʻŌH advocates spelling using the following guidelines:

Following these guidelines, a few discrepancies with the dictionary arise. The greatest differences are found in compound words and vowel length in grammatical particles. More detail can be found in "Recommendations and Comments on the ʻAhahui ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi 1978 Hawaiian Spelling Project" by Hawkins and Wilson. The ʻAʻŌH committee believes that considerable work remains to be done in these and other areas before the spelling of Hawaiian can be thought to be as firmly established as the spelling of English.

The concept "rare." It is not surprising that half or perhaps more of the words in the revised dictionary are not known today to fluent speakers of Hawaiian. Because language reflects culture, when a culture goes, so too goes much of the language. In the 1957 dictionary many words were labeled "obsolete," but subsequent research found examples of some of them in old texts. The term "obsolete" has therefore been rejected, and "rare" substituted, but only for words not pertaining to the old culture; there is no need to label such words (concerning religion, sorcery, canoe and house making, tapa, tattooing, weapons, diseases and their remedies), as most of them are rare. The term "rare" is reserved for non-cultural words for which no examples have been found in texts, and that have been found only in the dictionaries by Andrews and by Andrews and Parker, and for which no recognizable base has been noted. Then why keep them? Hawaiian research is just beginning, and unequivocal examples of the words marked "rare" may be discovered some day. They are too precious to discard.

Have any Hawaiian words been "invented"? Over the years hundreds of words have been taken from English and have been rewritten with Hawaiian sounds (Elbert and Pukui, pp. 27-30). Some are not obvious, as penikila 'painkiller', kikane 'jitney', and kini, which in Hawaiian does for 'gin, guinea, Jane, Jean, Jennie, kin, king, tin, zinc'. In some instances, new ideas and inventions fit easily into Hawaiian:

It is not difficult, either, to invent names of sciences, as:

Some of the early missionary inventions for terms that the old culture did not need are picturesque, as ʻike hana noʻeau 'knowing wise work' for "art," kahuna pule 'prayer expert', for "preacher," luna ʻike hala 'officer knowing mistakes' for "conscience," or moekalohe 'mischievous sleep' for "fornication."

It is hoped that this edition, like its predecessors, will benefit Hawaiian studies for many years.

It may be appropriate to conclude these remarks, written while the book is in press, with a saying (number 1498) from Mary Kawena Pukui's classic collection, ʻOlelo Noʻeau:

Minor corrections have been made for the third printing of this dictionary. Typographical and alphabetical errors have been corrected, and glosses that have come to my attention since the original publication have been added.

S.H.E. January 1991