Word of the Day · Archive
The Hawaiian word for June 2, 2026
Archive · June 2, 2026
OLA
say it: OH-lah
Life · Health · Well-being — to live, to heal, to thrive
What it means
In ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi, ola is one of those small words that carries almost everything. Pukui & Elbert give it as “life, health, well-being, living, livelihood, means of support, salvation” — and then again as a state: “alive, living; curable, spared, recovered, healed.” It is both the thing itself and the proof of it.
It is also a verb. To ola is “to live, to spare, save, heal, grant life, survive, thrive.” So the same word names life, the health that lets you keep it, and the act of saving or being saved. You do not have one word for “to be alive” and another for “to recover” and another for “to thrive.” In this language they are one continuous idea, and the word for it is ola.
That breadth is why you meet ola everywhere — in blessings, in place names, in the names of foundations and clinics, in the old sayings about water. It is not a fancy or formal word. It is the most ordinary thing there is, said plainly: to be alive, and well.
How to use it
On its own ola already means life and health; pair it with another word and it sharpens into a blessing, a measure, or a name. A few you will hear:
Why this word matters
Our brand tagline is our roots connect us, and yesterday’s word was kupuna — the source we grow from. Ola is what flows through that root. It is the life in the line: the reason the connection means anything at all.
Ola is not a thing you have. It is a thing that moves — from the source, through the living, onward.
A few days back the word was wai, fresh water. The two words belong together. Mary Kawena Pukui recorded the saying “Ola i ka wai a ka ʻōpua” — there is life in the water from the clouds. The rain that fills the streams is not just weather; it is ola arriving. From the same idea comes ka wai ola, “the living water,” water that gives life. Where the water goes, the life goes.
That is the heart of why this word is everywhere in Hawaiʻi. To bless someone, you wish them ola. To honor the elders, you speak of their mauli ola, the breath of life they pass down. To name what a healer does, you say they ola — they bring life back. The word refuses to sit still in any one of those meanings, because the people who shaped it never separated being alive from being well from being saved.
So when you say ola, you are naming the simplest and largest thing at once: that you are here, that you are well, and that the life in you came down a long line and is meant to keep going. E ola.
Sources
Definition of ola (“life, health, well-being, living, livelihood, means of support, salvation; alive, living; curable, spared, recovered, healed; to live, spare, save, heal, grant life, survive, thrive”), and the compounds ola loa (long life, longevity) and ola ʻana (life, existence), verified against Mary Kawena Pukui & Samuel H. Elbert, Hawaiian Dictionary (Revised & Enlarged Edition, University of Hawaiʻi Press) via wehewehe.org. Mauli ola (“breath of life; health”) is documented in the same dictionary and in ongoing Native Hawaiian health work. The ʻōlelo noʻeau “Ola i ka wai a ka ʻōpua” (“there is life in the water from the clouds”) is recorded in Mary Kawena Pukui, ʻŌlelo Noʻeau: Hawaiian Proverbs & Poetical Sayings (Bishop Museum Press).