kipuka
kipuka noun: a zone of unharmed land completely surrounded by lava flows.
Noun
kipuka (plural kipukas or kipuka)
- A zone of unharmed land completely surrounded by lava flows.
- There’s a word Trevor once told me about, one he learned from Buford, who served in the navy in Hawaii during the Korean War: kipuka. The piece of land that’s spared after a lava flow runs down the slope of a hill—an island formed from what survives the smallest apocalypse.2019, Ocean Vuong, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous, Jonathan Cape, page 171
Forms of kipuka
| plural | kipukas |
|---|---|
| plural | kipuka |
| alternative form | kapuka |
Origin of kipuka
From Hawaiian kīpuka.
Questions about kipuka
- What does kipuka mean?
- Kipuka means a zone of unharmed land completely surrounded by lava flows.
- What part of speech is kipuka?
- Kipuka is a noun.
- What is the plural of kipuka?
- The plural of kipuka is kipukas.
Words near kipuka in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: kipuka (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.
Last updated:
Cite this entry: “kipuka.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/kipuka. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.