Word of the Day · Archive
The Hawaiian word for July 1, 2026
Archive · July 1, 2026
HOʻOMAKA
say it: hoh-oh-MAH-kah
To begin, to start — to set a new thing in motion. Built on the same root as a bud breaking open.
What it means
Hoʻomaka is the Hawaiian verb to begin, to start, to commence. The Pukui-Elbert dictionary gives it as “to begin, start, initiate; commence” — and, tellingly, “to put forth buds” and “to appear, of a child’s first tooth.” It is the everyday word you reach for at the opening of anything: a task, a journey, a school year, a new month.
Look inside it and you find maka — eye, face, and also the bud or first shoot of a plant. Add the causative hoʻo- and you get “to cause a budding.” So hoʻomaka isn’t a cold, mechanical “start.” It carries the image of the first green tip pushing into the light — a beginning that is already alive, already carrying what it will become.
How to use it
A few documented forms show how the word works:
hoʻomaka hou
To begin again; to start over. Hou means “new” or “again” — so this is the fresh restart, the second try, the clean page.
Why this word matters
Today is the first day of a new month — a small, natural place to hoʻomaka. The word is worth sitting with because of the picture hidden inside it. Hawaiians did not imagine a beginning as a switch being flipped. They saw it as maka: a bud, the first shoot, the pale new leaf on the mango branch, the green tip of the kalo pushing up out of the mud.
That changes what starting feels like. A bud is not separate from the plant — it is the plant, reaching. It already holds the whole shape of what it will grow into. To hoʻomaka is to make that first reach: not to manufacture something out of nothing, but to let the next thing begin to open.
Nearly everything large in these islands — a voyaging canoe, a chant, a language carried back from the edge of silence — began as one small maka: one bud, one first move.
It is a gentle word, and an encouraging one. You do not have to finish today. You only have to hoʻomaka — to open the bud. Learning one Hawaiian word this morning is itself a small beginning, a thread pulled into the weave. Tomorrow there will be another.
Sources
The definition of hoʻomaka (to begin, start, initiate; commence; to put forth buds; to appear, of a child’s first tooth) and the beginner form mea hoʻomaka are confirmed in the Pukui-Elbert Hawaiian Dictionary via wehewehe.org (Nā Puke Wehewehe ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi), which also documents hoʻomaka hou (to begin again) and the root maka (eye, face; bud, first shoot). The word is further glossed as “to begin; to commence a work; to set forth a new thing” by the University of Hawaiʻi Hawaiian Word of the Week: Hoʻomaka.