Word of the Day · Archive
The Hawaiian word for July 2, 2026
Archive · July 2, 2026
KALO
say it: KAH-loh
Taro — the staple plant of Hawaiian life and, in the old genealogies, the elder sibling of the Hawaiian people.
What it means
Kalo is the Hawaiian name for taro (Colocasia esculenta), the plant that has been the staple food of these islands from the earliest times to the present. The Pukui-Elbert dictionary describes it as a perennial herb — a cluster of long-stemmed, heart-shaped leaves rising from an underground corm — and notes that Hawaiians developed its cultivation greatly, into more than three hundred named forms. Nearly every part is eaten: the starchy corm pounded into poi, the young leaves cooked as lūʻau.
But kalo is far more than a crop. In the old genealogy of Hāloa, the first kalo plant is the elder sibling of the Hawaiian people — the one who feeds, and who is cared for in return. To say kalo is to name both a food and a family relationship in a single word.
How to use it
A few documented forms show how deeply the word is woven into daily life:
loʻi kalo
A wetland taro patch — the irrigated pondfield where kalo is grown, kept alive by the ʻauwai, the small channels that carry stream water in and back out again.
huli
The taro top — the leafy cutting broken from a harvested plant and pressed back into the mud to grow the next crop. The harvest replants itself; nothing is wasted.
ʻohā
The young shoot that grows from the side of the parent (mākua) plant. From this word for a taro offshoot comes ʻohana — family.
I maikaʻi ke kalo i ka ʻohā.
“The taro is judged good by the young plant it produces.” A documented ʻōlelo noʻeau — parents are known by their children, as a plant is known by its shoots.
Why this word matters
No plant sits closer to the center of Hawaiian life than kalo. It was the staple that fed the islands — but in the old genealogy it is also family. The chant of Hāloa tells of a first child who did not live, laid into the earth, from whom the first kalo grew; the second child, ancestor of the Hawaiian people, was named for that elder brother. Kalo is the elder sibling. The people are the younger.
That kinship sets a direction of care that runs both ways. The elder feeds the younger; the younger tends the elder. To grow kalo — to bend into the loʻi, clear the ʻauwai, press the huli back into the mud — is to keep faith with an older brother. The food and the duty are the same act.
One word holds a whole worldview: that the land is not a resource but a relative, and that being fed carries the obligation to tend.
You can even hear the family inside the plant. The offshoot at the base of a kalo is the ʻohā; from it comes ʻohana, the word for family — people who grow, like taro, from one shared root. When we call a family close, we are, without knowing it, describing a taro patch.
Learn this word and the next loʻi you pass stops being scenery. It becomes what it has always been to these islands: a table, a genealogy, and a promise kept in the mud.
Sources
The definition of kalo (taro, Colocasia esculenta; the staple of Hawaiian life, cultivated in more than 300 forms, the corm eaten as poi and the leaves as lūʻau) is confirmed in the Pukui-Elbert Hawaiian Dictionary via wehewehe.org (Nā Puke Wehewehe ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi), which also documents loʻi kalo, huli, and ʻohā. The practice of replanting with huli is described in Kamehameha Schools cultural-education materials, and the ʻōlelo noʻeau “I maikaʻi ke kalo i ka ʻohā” is recorded by Mary Kawena Pukui in ʻŌlelo Noʻeau: Hawaiian Proverbs & Poetical Sayings.