Word.ws English Dictionary

hanai

/ˈhɑːnaɪ/

hanai noun: the practice of traditional Hawaiian adoption of one child into another family.

Noun

hanai (uncountable)

  1. (Hawaii) The practice of traditional Hawaiian adoption of one child into another family.
    • The practice of hānai was abhorrent to the New England missionaries, who discouraged it.2012, Julia Flynn Siler, Lost Kingdom, Grove Press 2012, page 8

Adjective

hānai (not comparable)

  1. (Hawaii) Adopted in the traditional Hawaiian way, made a complete part of the family.
    • This is Kimo, my hanai brother.

Origin of hanai

Borrowed from Hawaiian hānai.

Questions about hanai

What does hanai mean?
Hanai means the practice of traditional Hawaiian adoption of one child into another family.
What part of speech is hanai?
Hanai can be a noun or an adjective.
How do you pronounce hanai?
Hanai is pronounced /ˈhɑːnaɪ/.

Words near hanai in the dictionary

  1. hanafizes
  2. hanafizing
  3. hanafuda
  4. hanahaki
  5. Hanahoe
  6. hanai
  7. Hanak
  8. Hanakian
  9. Hanakians
  10. Hanako
  11. Hanaks

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: hanai (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “hanai.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/hanai. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.