Word of the Day · Archive
The Hawaiian word for June 14, 2026
Archive · June 14, 2026
NAʻAU
say it: NAH-ow
The gut — and, in Hawaiian thinking, the seat of mind, heart, and feeling all at once.
What it means
In the Pukui-Elbert Hawaiian Dictionary, naʻau is listed first as the body itself: intestines, bowels, guts. From there the very same word opens outward into the inner life — mind, heart, affections; mood, temper, feelings.
That one word holding both gut and mind is the whole point. Where English splits thinking (the head) from feeling (the heart), Hawaiian keeps them together, low and deep in the body. Knowing, sensing, and feeling all happen in the naʻau.
How to use it
The root shows up inside some of the most important words in the language:
Why this word matters
Ask someone here where a gut feeling comes from and they may point not to the head but lower — to the naʻau. In the Hawaiian way of seeing a person, the center of thought and feeling is not behind the eyes. It is in the core of the body, near the piko.
So to trust your naʻau is to trust something deeper than a passing opinion. It is to listen to the part of you that holds what you know and what you feel at once — the part that has been gathering since you were small.
E lawe i ke aʻo a mālama, a e ʻoi mau ka naʻauao.
That ʻōlelo noʻeau — Pukui translates it “He who takes his teaching and applies it increases his knowledge” — says the wisdom of the naʻau is not something you are born with finished. It deepens every time you take a lesson and actually live it.
It is a gentle correction to the idea that the mind sits up top, separate and cool. Here, to think well is to feel well, down in the core of you — the naʻau, the steady center you come home to.
Sources
Definition of naʻau (“intestines, bowels, guts; mind, heart, affections; mood, temper, feelings”) and the compounds naʻauao (“enlightened, wise; knowledge”), naʻaupō (“ignorant, unenlightened”), and helu naʻau (“mental arithmetic”) from Mary Kawena Pukui & Samuel H. Elbert, Hawaiian Dictionary (1986), via wehewehe.org, alongside the University of Hawaiʻi “Hawaiian Word of the Week” entries for naʻau and naʻauao. The ʻōlelo noʻeau “E lawe i ke aʻo a mālama, a e ʻoi mau ka naʻauao” is no. 328 in Mary Kawena Pukui, ʻŌlelo Noʻeau: Hawaiian Proverbs & Poetical Sayings (Bishop Museum Press, 1983). Diacritics (ʻokina, kahakō) shown as in the sources.