Word of the Day · Archive
The Hawaiian word for September 10, 2026
Archive · September 10, 2026
WAIWAI
say it: WYE-wye
Goods, property, assets, value, worth, wealth, importance, benefit — and, as a describing word, useful, valuable, rich.
What it means
Waiwai is given by Pukui and Elbert as: goods, property, assets, valuables, value, worth, wealth, importance, benefit, estate, use — and, as a describing word, useful, valuable, rich, costly, financial. One entry holds the things you own and the reason they are worth owning.
It is a reduplication: wai doubled. And here is where almost everyone goes wrong. Because wai is the word for fresh water, waiwai gets explained around the islands as “water water” — wealth is water doubled. It is a lovely idea. The dictionary does not support it. Pukui and Elbert put the note right in the entry: waiwai is probably related to wai, to retain, rather than to wai, water.
Which is arguably better. Wealth in this word is not the stuff. It is what you managed to keep — what stayed, what was held onto, what did not run off. A word about retention, not accumulation.
How to use it
Waiwai is a working word, not a poetic one. It shows up in estate law, in economics, in the language of committees and balance sheets. It also takes the causative hoʻo-, which turns having into giving.
hoʻowaiwai
To enrich, to bring prosperity. Listed in Pukui-Elbert as the causative of waiwai. Not to become rich — to make something or someone else rich.
hoʻokele waiwai
Economy. From Māmaka Kaiao. Hoʻokele is to steer or navigate — so an economy is, literally, the steering of the wealth. The extended form kālaihoʻokele waiwai is economics as a field of study.
hoʻoponopono waiwai
Administrator of property or of an estate. Given directly in Pukui-Elbert. The same hoʻoponopono you know from making things right between people — here, setting an estate in order.
waiwai kūʻai
Market value. From Māmaka Kaiao, alongside waiwai koho (assessed value) and waiwai ʻiʻo (absolute value). The modern vocabulary built straight onto the old word.
Why this word matters
Hold the two readings side by side for a second. Water-water is the version everybody repeats. Retain is the version the dictionary actually gives. And in Hawaiʻi the difference between those two is not academic — it is the whole argument about water, running continuously for a century and a half.
Because wai really was the measure. An ahupuaʻa was drawn to give its people a share of a stream. Kalo needs moving water, not standing water. Diverting a stream out of its valley was how plantations were built and how the valleys were emptied. Whether or not waiwai descends from wai, everyone arguing over it knows exactly what the two words sound like together.
Wealth, in this word, is not what you gathered. It is what you managed to keep.
The legal record shows how far the word stretches. Hawaiʻi’s courts treated waiwai as a term of, in their phrase, wide application — broad enough that in one 1913 case reading a Hawaiian-language will, the court held it stood for the whole English phrase “rents, issues and profits.” Not the land. What the land yields.
Which lands close to where the word may have started. Not the pile. The keeping.
Sources
The definitions of waiwai — goods, property, assets, valuables, value, worth, wealth, importance, benefit, estate, use; useful, valuable, rich, costly, financial — together with hoʻowaiwai and hoʻoponopono waiwai, and the note that the word is probably related to wai (to retain) rather than wai (water), are from the Hawaiian Dictionary (Pukui & Elbert, 1986). Hoʻokele waiwai, kālaihoʻokele waiwai, waiwai kūʻai, waiwai koho and waiwai ʻiʻo are from Māmaka Kaiao (2003–). The court reading of waiwai as “rents, issues and profits” is recorded in the Department of Hawaiian Home Lands Land Terms glossary (1995), citing Hapai v. Brown, 21 Haw. 499 (1913). All consulted via wehewehe.org and the UH Hilo Wehe²wiki² Hawaiian language dictionaries. Nothing on this page is invented; where a phrase could not be verified in a dictionary or an official source, it was left out.