ʻalu

Hawaiian

Etymology

From Proto-Eastern Polynesian *kalu (“loose, slack, wrinkled”), from Proto-Polynesian *kalu (“loose or wrinkled membrane or flesh surrounding a harder interior substance”).

Pronunciation

  • IPA(key): /ˈʔa.lu/, [ˈʔɐ.lu]

Noun

ʻalu

  1. loose skin over the eyeball
  2. ravine, cavity, dent
  3. lines of the hand

Verb

ʻalu

  1. (intransitive) to slacken, to relax
  2. (intransitive) to hang, to sag
  3. (intransitive) to bend, to stoop
  4. (intransitive) to descend
  5. (linguistics, stative) lax (in articulation)

Derived terms

  • ʻāluna
  • ʻaluʻalu (reduplicated form)
  • hōʻalu (“causative”)
  • pūʻalu (“loose, slack”)

Further reading

This article is issued from Wiktionary. The text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Additional terms may apply for the media files.