Word of the Day · Archive
The Hawaiian word for August 14, 2026
Archive · August 14, 2026
HOʻOPONOPONO
say it: hoh-oh-poh-noh-POH-noh
To put to rights — to correct, adjust, set in order. Also the ʻohana practice of making a relationship right again through talk, prayer, and release.
What it means
The Pukui-Elbert dictionary defines hoʻoponopono as to put to rights; to put in order or shape, correct, revise, adjust, amend, regulate, arrange, rectify, tidy up, make orderly or neat, administer, superintend, supervise, manage, edit, work carefully or neatly. It also carries a second, fuller sense: mental cleansing — family conferences in which relationships were set right through prayer, discussion, confession, repentance, and mutual restitution and forgiveness.
The word is pono doubled and made causative. Pono is rightness, balance, the true condition of a thing. Hoʻo- means to cause or bring about. So hoʻoponopono is literally to make-right make-right — the reduplication doing what reduplication does in Hawaiian: repeated, thorough, carried all the way through.
That is why the same word covers tidying a room, editing a manuscript, and sitting a family down to repair a rift. In Hawaiian they are the same motion at different scales: taking something out of order and returning it to pono.
How to use it
These are attested in the dictionaries:
luna hoʻoponopono — editor; the person who supervises and sets things in order. Luna is an overseer or supervisor, and the dictionary sense of hoʻoponopono includes edit, administer, superintend. This is the everyday, unmystical use of the word — the masthead of a Hawaiian-language newspaper.
ʻōlelo hoʻoponopono — a correction. Still in active use: the Wehewehe Wikiwiki dictionary itself invites readers to hāpai i wehewehena hou a i ʻole i ʻōlelo hoʻoponopono — to submit a new definition or a correction.
mihi and kala — the two halves of the family practice. Mihi is repentance, remorse, to apologize or confess. Kala is to loosen, untie, free, release, unburden, forgive — kala ʻana is forgiveness. One person sets it down; the other lets it go.
“to make ready, as canoemen preparing to catch a wave” — one of Pukui-Elbert’s own glosses. Everyone in the canoe, in position, at the same moment. It is a good picture to keep of the word.
Why this word matters
Yesterday’s word was pumehana — the warmth between people. Hoʻoponopono is what you reach for when that warmth has gone out of a relationship and somebody has to do the work of getting it back.
Mary Kawena Pukui documented the family practice in Nānā i ke Kumu (1972): hoʻoponopono as the way an ʻohana restores and maintains good relationships — among each other, and with the powers beyond them. It opened with pule, prayer. The problem was stated plainly, without blame. Everyone spoke. Then mihi, and then kala — and the thing was set down and left there.
Pono is the state. Hoʻoponopono is the work of getting back to it.
This word has traveled further from home than almost any other Hawaiian word. It has been packaged, trademarked, taught in weekend seminars, and reduced to four English sentences repeated to oneself. Some of that is sincere. Not all of it resembles what Pukui wrote down. Worth knowing, if you are going to use the word.
What the dictionary keeps that the seminars lose is the ordinariness of it. The same word means tidy up, edit, arrange, manage. Repair is not a special ceremony reserved for a crisis. It is maintenance. You do it to a room, to a page, to a family — the same word, the same motion, over and over until it holds.
Sources
Definitions verified against the Pukui-Elbert Hawaiian Dictionary (1986) via wehewehe.org and the Wehe²wiki² Hawaiian Language Dictionaries (UH Hilo): hoʻoponopono, to put to rights, correct, revise, adjust, arrange, edit, manage, plus the “mental cleansing / family conferences” sense; pono, goodness, uprightness, correct or proper procedure, true condition or nature; mihi, repentance, remorse, to apologize, confess; kala, to loosen, untie, free, release, unburden, forgive, with kala ʻana, forgiveness. The ʻohana practice is documented by Mary Kawena Pukui in Nānā i ke Kumu (1972), Queen Liliʻuokalani Children’s Center.