Word of the Day · Archive
The Hawaiian word for June 4, 2026
Archive · June 4, 2026
ULU
say it: OO-loo
To grow · To increase · To flourish — to rise, spread, and come into fullness
What it means
Ulu is the word for growing. Pukui & Elbert give it as “to grow, increase, spread; growth, increase.” It is the seed pushing up, the plant filling out, the child getting taller, the feeling that swells until it can no longer be ignored. Anything that gets bigger, fuller, or stronger over time ulu.
But ulu reaches past the garden. The same word carries a second, deeper sense: to be inspired, stirred, possessed by a god or an ideal — “entered into and inspired,” as the dictionary puts it, the way an artist, a chanter, or a dancer is moved to create. Growth, in Hawaiian, is not only what happens to a plant. It is also what happens inside a person when something takes hold and rises in them.
One note to keep clear: ulu (to grow) and ʻulu — with the ʻokina, the breadfruit — are two different words. Today’s word is the verb: to grow, to flourish, to rise.
How to use it
A few documented ways it shows up:
Why this word matters
Yesterday’s word was hoʻomau — to keep something going, to refuse to let it end. Ulu is the next step. A thing that is carried forward does not have to stay the same size; given roots and time, it grows. Hoʻomau keeps the line unbroken. Ulu is the line getting taller.
Roots first, then the rising.
That is why ulu fits this brand so well. Our roots connect us — but roots are not the end of the story. They are what makes the growing possible. A plant with no roots cannot ulu; a plant with deep ones can rise higher than you would think to expect. The same is true of a language, a family, a place.
And remember the second meaning: to be inspired, stirred, moved to create. To ulu is not only to get bigger. It is to be lifted by something larger than yourself — a calling, an idea, a love of the place you come from — and to let it rise in you until it becomes the thing you make and do.
Learning one Hawaiian word a morning is a small ulu of its own: a little growth, repeated, until one day there is more there than you planted. E ulu. Grow.
Sources
Definition of ulu (“to grow, increase, spread; growth, increase”) and its second sense (“inspired, stirred, possessed by a god or ideal; to enter in and inspire”), along with the example phrases “ka ulu o ka lā” (“the rising of the sun”) and “kai ulu” (“the sea at full tide”), verified against Mary Kawena Pukui & Samuel H. Elbert, Hawaiian Dictionary (Revised & Enlarged Edition, University of Hawaiʻi Press) via wehewehe.org. Note that ʻulu (breadfruit), written with the ʻokina, is a separate headword and is not today’s word.