Word of the Day · Archive
The Hawaiian word for August 6, 2026
Archive · August 6, 2026
ʻONO
say it: OH-no
Delicious, tasty, savory; to relish, to crave — the word Hawaiʻi reaches for whenever the food is good.
What it means
ʻOno means delicious, tasty, savory. But the dictionary gives it a second life as a verb: to relish, to crave. So ʻono is not just a review you give the food after you eat it — it is also the wanting before. You can be ʻono for something: the craving itself carries the same name as the deliciousness that caused it.
Pukui and Elbert’s attested example says it perfectly: ʻono ka puʻu — tasty to the palate; literally, “the throat craves.” In Hawaiian, hunger for a specific taste lives in the throat, already reaching for what it remembers.
One letter matters here. With the ʻokina, ʻono is delicious. Without it, ono is a different word entirely — the big steel-blue fish known elsewhere as the wahoo, and also the number six. The ʻokina is a real letter, and this word is one of the clearest lessons in why. (The happy accident: the fish named ono happens to be very ʻono.)
How to use it
These are attested in the dictionaries:
ʻOno ka puʻu — tasty to the palate; literally, “the throat craves.” The classic dictionary example — deliciousness described from the inside.
Hoʻomanawanui i ka ʻono — wait patiently and you’ll have what you crave. An attested saying from the Pukui-Elbert entry: patience, promised a delicious reward.
mea ʻono — pastry, dessert; literally, “delicious thing.” When Hawaiian needed a word for cake, it just told the truth.
hōʻono — to tempt the appetite; to make tasty, to season. The causative form: deliciousness as something you create for others.
Why this word matters
If you have spent any time in the islands, you have heard this word — probably before you knew it was Hawaiian. Somebody lifts the lid off the rice pot, somebody passes the poke across the table, and the verdict comes back one word long: ʻono. It survives in everyday local speech the way only the most necessary words do.
That is worth noticing. Food is how the islands say most of the important things — welcome, congratulations, sorry for your loss, glad you came. A plate is rarely just a plate; it is somebody’s time and somebody’s recipe and usually somebody’s grandmother. Calling it ʻono is how you honor all of that in one syllable-and-a-half.
Hoʻomanawanui i ka ʻono — wait patiently, and you’ll have what you crave.
And the craving side of the word matters too. ʻOno admits that wanting is part of tasting — that the best meals begin hours earlier, in the throat that remembers. The attested saying above even turns it into advice: good things come to those who wait for them.
So today, when something is good — really good, made-with-care good — say so. One word. The cook will understand everything you meant.
Sources
Definitions verified against the Pukui-Elbert Hawaiian Dictionary (1986) via Wehewehe Wikiwiki (wehe.hilo.hawaii.edu) and wehewehe.org — headword ʻono (“delicious, tasty, savory; to relish, crave; deliciousness, flavor, savor”), with attested examples ʻono ka puʻu and hoʻomanawanui i ka ʻono; related entries mea ʻono (pastry, dessert) and hōʻono (to tempt the appetite; make tasty, season). The unrelated ono (no ʻokina) — the wahoo fish (Acanthocybium solandri) and the numeral six — confirmed in the same dictionary, with corroboration in Parker (1922) and Andrews (1865).