Wehewehe Wikiwiki Hawaiian language dictionaries

1. nvi., Pacific golden plover (Pluvialis dominica 🌐), a migratory bird which comes to Hawaiʻi about the end of August and leaves early in May for Siberia and Alaska. Figuratively, to repeat, boast; a scornful reference to foreigners (Kel. 70) who come to Hawaiʻi and become prosperous, and then leave with their wealth, just as the plover arrives thin in the fall each year, fattens up, and leaves; a less common figurative reference is to one who claims friendship or kinship that does not exist; in some localities the kōlea is an ʻaumakua; to call kōlea.

• Examples:
  • Haole kī kōlea, plover-shooting white man [said in astonishment and horror at the white man's shooting of plovers, contrasting with the laborious Hawaiian methods of catching plovers, a way of saying that white people are strange and different].
  • Kōlea ke kōlea i kona inoa iho, the kōlea just says his own name [of a boaster].
• References:
  • Cf. hula kōlea and saying, kauhua #2.
  • PCP toolea.

2. n., Stepparent, as makuahine kōlea, makua kāne kōlea.

3. n., The mottled periwinkle, probably Littorina pintado.

• Related:
  • Also: ʻākōlea, kōlealea, kūkae kōlea, pūpū kolea.

4. n., Native species of trees and shrubs (Myrsine 🌐 [Rapanea, Suttonia]) with oval to narrow leaves more or less crowded at branch tips, small flowers, and small round fruits among or below the leaves.

• Related:
  • Uses: red sap and charcoal from the wood to dye tapa, wood for houses, logs for beating tapa.
• References:
  • Neal 664.

5. (Cap.) nvs., Korea; Korean.

• Eng.