Word of the Day · Archive
The Hawaiian word for May 19, 2026
Archive · May 19, 2026
MĀLAMA
say it: MAH-lah-mah
To care for · To tend · To preserve · To protect · To keep something so it lasts
What it means
The Pukui-Elbert Hawaiian Dictionary gives mālama a long, layered entry: to take care of, tend, attend, care for, preserve, protect, maintain, beware, save, keep, conduct, observe, and — as a noun — care, preservation, support, fidelity, loyalty, custodian, caretaker.
That range is the whole point. Mālama is not just “look after.” It can mean to physically tend a garden, to spiritually honor a person, to faithfully keep a promise, to dutifully observe a kapu, to literally save something from harm. The same word does all of that work because in the Hawaiian frame, those are the same work.
And mālama isn’t passive. The English word “preserve” can sound like putting something in a glass case. Mālama is the active, daily, sleeves-rolled-up version: showing up for the thing, every day, on purpose, because it matters.
How to use it
These usages are all attested in the Pukui-Elbert dictionary and the modern Hawaiian vocabulary Māmaka Kaiao:
Why this word matters
If piko is where you come from and lanakila is what you do with that, mālama is what you owe back. It’s the third side of the triangle. You can’t keep what you’ve earned — a championship, a relationship, a reef, a language, a place to call home — unless somebody, on purpose, is doing the work of caring for it.
In 2014, the Polynesian Voyaging Society took the double-hulled canoe Hōkūleʻa around the world without GPS, navigating by stars, swells, and birds the way the original voyagers did. They called the journey Mālama Honua — care for the earth. The crew didn’t sail for sport. They sailed because they had a message: the planet is one canoe, and somebody has to mālama it.
That word, mālama, is also what gets said quietly, every day, in ways nobody photographs. The auntie who keeps the family recipes alive. The kupuna who corrects your ʻōlelo so the next kid hears it right. The cousin who shows up to clean the loʻi. The neighbor who pulls the invasive vines off the wall. All mālama.
Mālama is love with a calendar.
It’s the version of caring that comes back tomorrow. And the day after. And the day after that. Which is also why we say it as a goodbye — mālama pono. Not “see you later.” Something closer to: take care of yourself, and take care of what’s around you, until I see you again.
Sources
Pukui, Mary Kawena, and Samuel H. Elbert. Hawaiian Dictionary, revised and enlarged edition (University of Hawaiʻi Press). Definitions for mālama and the compound phrases mālama pono, mālama ʻāina, and mālama i kou makua kāne are drawn from Pukui-Elbert, accessible via wehewehe.org. Mālama Honua as the worldwide-voyage name documented by the Polynesian Voyaging Society.