Word of the Day · Archive
The Hawaiian word for September 13, 2026
Archive · September 13, 2026
HOʻOMAHA
say it: hoh-oh-MAH-hah
To rest, to pause, to take a break; vacation, relief from a burden — and, in music, a rest.
What it means
Hoʻomaha is given by Pukui and Elbert as: vacation; to take a rest or vacation; to retire, stop work; to obtain relief; to pause. Andrews, writing more than a century earlier, put it plainer still — to cause to rest from fatigue or pain; to cease from exertion.
The root underneath it is maha: rest, repose, vacation; freedom from pain; at ease, comfort. Then comes hoʻo-, the causative prefix that turns a state into something somebody does. Maha is the condition of being at ease. Hoʻomaha is causing that condition — bringing the rest about.
That is the quiet grammar lesson in the word. English lets you rest by default, simply by stopping. ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi builds the word so that rest is an action with an agent. Somebody has to make it happen, and on most Sundays that somebody is you.
How to use it
Hoʻomaha works as a verb and sits just as comfortably as a noun — the resting, and the rest itself. It also takes modifiers happily, which is how the modern vocabulary got so much mileage out of it.
Ua hoʻomaha nā kula.
“The schools are having a vacation.” Pukui-Elbert’s own example sentence. Note that the schools are the subject — the institution rests, not just the people in it. Anyone who has driven H-1 in late December knows the whole island can hoʻomaha at once.
Hoʻomaha ʻia mai au i kuʻu hāʻawe.
“I am relieved of my burden.” Also Pukui-Elbert, and the sentence that widens the word past naps and long weekends. A hāʻawe is a pack carried on the back. Hoʻomaha here is not leisure; it is somebody taking the weight off you.
hoʻomaha hapalua
Halftime, as in sports or games — from Māmaka Kaiao, the modern Hawaiian vocabulary. Literally the half rest. The same source gives plain hoʻomaha for intermission.
manawa hoʻomaha
A time out, in team sports such as volleyball — also Māmaka Kaiao. Literally a resting time. Worth knowing this season: it is the word you would call from the bench at an OIA or ILH match.
Why this word matters
Today is Lāpule — Sunday, and literally, prayer day. It is the one day the calendar itself was named for stopping. So it is worth noticing that Hawaiian does not treat the stopping as nothing happening.
Hoʻomaha is not the absence of work. It is a thing you do.
Look at where Pukui and Elbert take the word in music. They list a full set of names for rests built on hoʻomaha — the whole rest, the half, the quarter, and on down through the thirty-second. A rest in music is silence. The language went to the trouble of naming each length of it anyway, because a rest is not the song pausing. It is part of the song, measured as carefully as any note.
The modern vocabulary carries the same instinct forward. Māmaka Kaiao did not need a fresh root for intermission, or halftime, or a time out called from the sideline. It reached for hoʻomaha every time. The break between the sets is still the match.
And then there is a street in Mānoa. Place Names of Hawaiʻi lists Hoʻomaha Way, Honolulu, and glosses it exactly: literally, to rest. Somebody laid out a road up a valley on Oʻahu and decided that was what to call it. Not a chief, not a flower, not a view. A verb about putting the pack down.
Between the season, the errands and whatever the week is asking of you, it is easy to treat rest as the thing you get to once everything else is finished. The word says otherwise. Somebody has to cause it. Today is the day named for it.
Sources
The definitions of hoʻomaha — vacation; to take a rest or vacation; to retire, stop work; to obtain relief; to pause; rest in music, together with the named rest values — and of the root maha (rest, repose, vacation; freedom from pain; at ease, comfort) are from the Hawaiian Dictionary (Pukui & Elbert, 1986), along with the example sentences Ua hoʻomaha nā kula and Hoʻomaha ʻia mai au i kuʻu hāʻawe. Hoʻomaha hapalua (halftime), manawa hoʻomaha (time out), and hoʻomaha as intermission and as a musical rest are from Māmaka Kaiao: A Modern Hawaiian Vocabulary (Kōmike Huaʻōlelo, 2003). “To cause to rest from fatigue or pain; to cease from exertion” is Andrews, A Dictionary of the Hawaiian Language (1865). Hoʻomaha Way, Mānoa, Honolulu, Oʻahu — literally, to rest — is from Place Names of Hawaiʻi (Pukui, Elbert & Moʻokini, 1974). Lāpule, Sunday, literally prayer day, is Pukui-Elbert (1986). All entries consulted via Wehewehe Wikiwiki (wehe.hilo.hawaii.edu).