The Hawaiian word for June 17, 2026

Archive · June 17, 2026

MAKUA

say it: mah-KOO-ah

Parent — a mother or father; also any relative of the parents’ generation, and a full-grown, mature person.

What it means

In the Pukui-Elbert Hawaiian Dictionary, makua is parent — a mother or a father — but the word reaches wider than one household. It also names any relative of the parents’ generation: an uncle, an aunt, an older cousin. In the old way, everyone of your parents’ age who helped raise you was a makua.

The same word carries two more layers. A makua is a full-grown, mature person — an adult, someone settled and senior. And figuratively a makua is a provider, a benefactor — anyone who feeds you, cares for you, and holds you up.

There is one more meaning, and it is the one that ties yesterday’s word to today’s: in a plant, the makua is the main stalk — the parent stock. Yesterday keiki was the new shoot rising from the base of the kalo. Makua is what it rises from.

How to use it

Makua bends easily to say exactly which parent — or which generation — you mean:

makuahine — “mother.” Makua plus wahine (woman, female).

makua kāne — “father.” Makua plus kāne (man, male); often written makuakāne.

mākua — “parents.” Stretch the first vowel with a kahakō and the word turns plural: your mother and father together, or the elders of that generation.

makua hānai — “a foster or adoptive parent.” From hānai, to feed and raise — the one who takes a child in and raises them as their own. The counterpart to yesterday’s keiki hānai.

Why this word matters

Yesterday the word was keiki — the new shoot. Today’s word, makua, is the stalk it grows from. Hold the two side by side and the whole Hawaiian picture of a family appears: not so much separate people as one growing plant — the parent stock and the new growth rising off it.

I maikaʻi ke kalo i ka ʻohā.

“The goodness of the taro is judged by the young plant it produces.” Pukui records it among the ʻōlelo noʻeau and reads it plainly: a parent is known by the children they raise. The makua and the keiki are bound — the health of one shows in the other.

Set makua among the words we have already learned and a line forms: kupuna, the grandparent and source; makua, the parent who carries it on; keiki, the child who comes next. Three generations, one stalk, each rising from the one before.

That line is the reason Digital Piko exists. What this brand earns goes to lift up the keiki of these islands — but it is the mākua and the kūpuna, the ones who feed and raise and hold up, who plant the next length of the line. Every keiki worth lifting was first held by a makua.

Sources

Definition of makua (“parent; any relative of the parents’ generation, as uncle, aunt, cousin; progenitor; main stalk of a plant; adult, full-grown, mature, older, senior; benefactor, provider, anyone who cares for one”) and the compounds makuahine (“mother”), makua kāne (“father”), mākua (“parents”), and makua hānai (“foster or adoptive parent”) from Mary Kawena Pukui & Samuel H. Elbert, Hawaiian Dictionary (1986), via wehewehe.org. The ʻōlelo noʻeau “I maikaʻi ke kalo i ka ʻohā” (“The goodness of the taro is judged by the young plant it produces; parents are often judged by the behavior of their children”) is recorded by Mary Kawena Pukui, ʻŌlelo Noʻeau: Hawaiian Proverbs & Poetical Sayings (Bishop Museum Press, 1983), #1232. Diacritics (ʻokina, kahakō) shown as in the sources.

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