Word of the Day · Archive
The Hawaiian word for June 13, 2026
Archive · June 13, 2026
MAUNA
say it: MOW-nah
Mountain — the high inland reaches where the land climbs from the sea to the center of the island.
What it means
In the Pukui-Elbert Hawaiian Dictionary, mauna is both noun and verb: mountain, mountainous region; mountainous. It names the high country — the uplands that rise away from the shoreline.
The dictionary draws the picture plainly: on every island Hawaiians knew, the land rises on all sides from the sea toward the central heights. That rising interior is the mauna. It is less a single peak than the whole upward reach of the island.
How to use it
A few documented ways it shows up:
Why this word matters
Before street names, there was the mauna and the kai. You did not go north or east — you went mauka, up toward the mountain, or makai, down toward the water. The island itself was the compass, and the mauna was its fixed point.
That orientation is still alive. Ask for directions on any island and someone will point mauka or makai before they ever say left or right. The word carries a whole way of reading the land — from the reef, up through the valleys, to the high reaches where the rain is made.
The mauna is where the island touches the sky — the source the water comes down from.
The tallest of them, Mauna Kea, has long been held as a sacred place, a piko between earth and sky. To say mauna is to name not just elevation but reverence: the part of home you look up to.
Sources
Definition of mauna (“mountain, mountainous region; mountainous”; the inland regions of an island) from Mary Kawena Pukui & Samuel H. Elbert, Hawaiian Dictionary (1986), via wehewehe.org. Place-name meanings — Mauna Kea (“White Mountain,” also Mauna a Wākea) and Mauna Loa (“Long Mountain”) — and the directional pair mauka / makai are likewise documented in Pukui-Elbert and University of Hawaiʻi at Hilo Hawaiian-language resources. Diacritics (ʻokina, kahakō) shown as in the source.