Word of the Day · Archive
The Hawaiian word for July 15, 2026
Archive · July 15, 2026
ĀNUENUE
say it: AH-noo-eh-NOO-eh
Rainbow
What it means
Ānuenue is the Hawaiian word for rainbow. Pukui and Elbert give it plainly — rainbow — and the English entry describes it the way you would if you were standing under one: an arch of light showing the spectrum colors in their order.
Note the kahakō on that first vowel. It is ā-nu-e-nu-e, not a-nuenue. The mark is not decoration; it holds the vowel long, and it is the difference between saying the word and saying something else.
Hawaiian does not stop at one word for one thing. The dictionary carries a whole vocabulary for rainbows — for the low ones that cling to the ground, for the fragments that show up without the arch, for the ones that come in mostly red. Ānuenue is the word for the whole arch. The others are for everything the arch does not cover.
How to use it
Rather than build sentences around it, learn ānuenue the way the dictionary carries it — inside the names and terms it already lives in. Every one of these is documented:
Waiānuenue — literally rainbow water. It is the Hawaiian name for the falls on the Wailuku River in Hilo that English maps call Rainbow Falls.
Ao akua — another word for rainbow, literally cloud of the gods. Listed alongside ānuenue in Pukui and Elbert.
Uakoko — a low, earth-clinging rainbow. Not the high arch, but the one that sits down close to the land.
Haka ʻula a Kāne — a rainbow in which the red predominates.
Why this word matters
If you live on this side of the island, ānuenue is not a rare event. It is a Tuesday. Rain moves through, the sun stays out, and the arch shows up over the trees whether or not anyone stops to look at it. Hilo and Puna get rainbows the way other places get traffic.
That ordinariness is the point. The word does not exist because rainbows are exotic here. It exists — along with all the other rainbow words — because people were paying close enough attention to need more than one.
A language builds fine distinctions for the things its speakers actually look at.
The rainbow carries weight beyond weather. Pukui and Elbert list ao akua — cloud of the gods — right alongside ānuenue, and in Hawaiian tradition the rainbow was read as a sign tied to the presence of aliʻi and akua. When the arch appeared, it meant something was there.
And it is written into the land. Waiānuenue, in Hilo, is named for it — the falls where the mist throws the colors back on a sunny morning, and where tradition places Hina in the cave beneath the water. The name was not applied from the outside. The place is called what it does.
Sources
Wehewehe.org — Pukui & Elbert, Hawaiian Dictionary (1986)
Ānuenue: rainbow. Cross-referenced at the English entry for rainbow, which also carries ao akua (rainbow, cloud of the gods), haka ʻula a Kāne (rainbow with red predominating), uakoko (earth-clinging rainbow), and ʻōnohi (rainbow fragment).
Waiānuenue: lit. rainbow water — Rainbow Falls, Wailuku River, Hilo.