My wife gave me a Hawaiian-Word-A-Day calendar for Christmas so that I could pick up some Hawaiian words (and not sound so haole when we visit family).
I've discovered over these past months that some Hawaiian words have multiple meanings. Obviously, the most common and well-known one is "Aloha", which can mean hello and goodbye among other things.
However, today's word has some very diverse meanings. Can you find the correlation between all the meanings, 'cuz I sure can't.
The word: PE'A.
It can mean: 1) cross, 2) sail of canoe, 3) boundary and (here's the kicker) 4) to menstruate.
Know-it-all status to anyone who can correlate all four meanings...
2 comments:
you got me there! It also means filthy and unclean. I know that a hale pe'a was a special structure where women stayed when they had their period as they were not allowed to touch or be around men during that 'time' of the month.
Wow! That's funny. I guess the correlation would be that *menstruating* is a horrible *cross* to bear and when you reach the *boundary* between normalcy and just plain bitchy, you should be sent out *sailing* by yourself in a *canoe*...until you can be nice again!
Okay, so I just entertained myself thinking that up...my mom always said I was easily entertained...not sure if that is a good thing or a bad thing...?
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