haole
Americannoun
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(among Polynesian Hawaiians) a term used to refer to a non-Polynesian, especially a white person.
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(among Hawaiians) a term formerly used to refer to any foreigner.
Sensitive Note
Haole is usually considered to be a neutral descriptive term. However, it is sometimes used with disparaging intent, arising from a distrust of foreigners or outsiders.
Etymology
Origin of haole
1835–45; < Hawaiian: white person, (earlier) foreigner, foreign
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
At one point Aki is heard saying, “You’s a haole, eh,” using a Hawaiian word that can mean white person.
From Seattle Times • Nov. 17, 2022
Aki didn’t use the word haole in a pejorative or hateful way, Jerome said.
From Seattle Times • Nov. 8, 2022
Jasmine gasped as she caught sight of three people on foot, stranded between billowing walls of flame devouring the haole koa and the towering stands of dry elephant grass.
From Slate • Nov. 27, 2021
Tiller is Lee’s modern American Everyman: 20 years old, one-eighth Asian, and referred to, depending on where he is in the world, as hapa, haole and farang — mixed, nonnative, white.
From New York Times • Feb. 5, 2021
Nearly all the people of the valley are outside, having come to see the wahine haole: only one white woman, and she a resident of Hawaii, having been seen in Waimanu before.
From The Hawaiian Archipelago by Bird, Isabella L. (Isabella Lucy)
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
