Kōkua ｜ Help

The following types of search are supported, however each is mutually exclusive. You cannot do a proximity search with wildcards or a wildcard search with boolean operators, for example.

Nā Mokuna ｜ Sections:

1. Huli ｜ Search
   • Huli Maʻamau ｜ Normal Search
   • Huli Hoʻolana ｜ Boolean Search
   • Huli Hua Kokoke ｜ Proximity Search
   • Huli Hōʻailona Hakahaka ｜ Wildcard Search
2. Kaila Hoʻohana ｜ User Interface
   • Kau Luna ｜ Header
   • Nā huli keu maʻamau ｜ Extended searching defaults
   • Nā koho hōʻikeʻike ｜ Display tools

Huli Maʻamau ｜ Normal Search

This is the standard search and the easiest to use. It is designed to be flexible and ignores most Hawaiian diacritics (kahakō) and the ʻokina letter.

• How it works: By default, this search only looks at the main headwords (the words being defined), not the definitions themselves.
• Example: A search for kou will find “kou,” “koʻu,” “kōū,” and “koʻū.”

Options

The normal search can be modified with these options.

Huli kepela like loa ｜ Exact spelling only

This makes the search strict. It will only find words that perfectly match the ʻokina and kahakō that were included.

Special note: Many of the older dictionaries do not use the modern orthography (with ʻokina and kahakō), so using this option also indirectly filters out those sources with traditional orthography.

Example: With this option on, searching for kou will only match “kou.” It will not match “koʻu” or “kōū.”

Huli hohonu (me nā wehewehena) ｜ Deep search (also within definitions)

By default, searches only look at the headwords and phrases. By enabling this option, searches will also look within definitions for the search term as well. This is a slower search, so please be patient.

Huli hua kāʻokoʻa ｜ Whole word search

This option is a subset of the Deep Search option which will further restrict the search to whole words only. For example, with this option, searching for kapa will find only the whole word “kapa” and not other words which contain kapa such as “kapauʻu” and “kapakahi”.

Huli Hoʻolana ｜ Boolean Search

This advanced search lets you combine or exclude keywords to get more precise results.

• How it works: You use special “operators” (like AND, OR, NOT) to create a specific search query.
• Hawaiian: Operators in ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi (like A ME, A I ʻOLE, A ME ʻAʻOHE) may be used as well.
• Symbol prefixes: The symbol + immediately before a word works like AND, and the symbol - immediately before a word works like AND NOT.

Operators

Include (AND, A ME, +):

Find entries that include all the search terms.

Example: hale AND kula (or +hale +kula or hale A ME kula) finds entries containing both “hale” and “kula.”

Either (OR, A I ʻOLE):

Find entries that include at least one of the search terms.

Example: hale OR kula (or hale A I ʻOLE kula) finds entries containing “hale” or “kula” (or both).

Exclude (AND NOT, A ME ʻAʻOHE, A ME ʻAʻOLE, -):

Find entries that do not contain a specified term.

Example: hale -kula finds entries that contain “hale” but not “kula.”

Priority Grouping:

Use parentheses ( and ) to group terms and control the search logic, just like in math.

Example: (moana A I ʻOLE kai) AND NOT uli will first find entries with either “moana” or “kai” and then remove any of those that also contain “uli.”

Compound Terms:

Use double quotes " to surround terms that should be treated as one term and used with other operators.

Example: +sea -"open sea" finds entries that contain “sea” but do not contain “open sea.”

Huli Hua Kokoke ｜ Proximity Search

This search finds entries where your search terms appear close to each other. Word order matters.

• How it works: You wrap your terms in quotes (") and add a tilde (~) followed by a number. The number is the maximum number of words allowed between your terms.

Syntax

"word1 word2"~#

Example: "moana kai"~5. This searches for entries where the word “moana” is followed by the word “kai” within 5 words of it.

Huli Hōʻailona Hakahaka ｜ Wildcard Search

This search is useful when you're not sure of the exact spelling. You can use special characters to stand in for unknown letters.

• How it works: You add a ? or * to your search term to represent missing letters.

Operators

? (Question mark)

The question mark stands for exactly one character.

Example: le?a will match “leka,” “lewa,” and “leʻa.”

* (Asterisk)

The asterisk stands for zero or more characters.

Example 1 (Starts with): pua* matches all words that start with “pua,” like “pua,” “puaʻa,” “pualena,” etc.

Example 2 (Ends with): *pua matches all words that end with “pua,” like “kāpua,” “manapua,” etc.

Example 3 (Contains): *hapa* matches all entries that contain “hapa” anywhere in the word, like “hapahā,” “hoʻohapa,” etc.

Multiple operators can be used at once. For example, le?a* matches all words that start with “le + [any character] + a”, and *hapa* matches entries that have “hapa” at the beginning, in the middle, or at the end.

Kau Luna ｜ Header

1. Link to the Wehewehe Wikiwiki homepage
2. Search box where you enter your English or Hawaiian search terms
3. Search button to start the search
4. Clear button to clear out the search box (this may be hidden via the Nā koho ponoʻī ｜ My Settings page)
5. Link to this help page
6. Options panel toggle (see Nā huli keu maʻamau ｜ Extended searching defaults)
7. User interface language to select which language(s) is displayed in the user interface
8. Link to the Nā koho ponoʻī ｜ My Settings page where you can change settings such as light/dark theme, interface sounds, and more
9. Nā koho hōʻikeʻike ｜ Display tools to affect how entries are displayed and interacted with

Nā huli keu maʻamau ｜ Extended searching defaults

Tap the “Keu ｜ Options” button in the header to toggle this menu, including options described in the Huli Maʻamau ｜ Normal Search section as well as restricting the search to one or more sources.

Nā koho hōʻikeʻike ｜ Display tools

Hōʻike i nā wehewehena piha ｜ Show full definition entries

Scanning through many definitions and all the related information can be overwhelming at times, particularly for complex entries such as ʻai in Pukui-Elbert. The “Hōʻike i nā wehewehena piha ｜ Show full definition entries” feature allows you to look at just the base definitions without the extras such as examples and related terms. This option does not necessarily affect every entry in every source material.

Here we see the full entry for kīkī in Pukui-Elbert with the “Hōʻike i nā wehewehena piha ｜ Show full definition entries” option checked/on.

Here we see the shortened entry for kīkī in Pukui-Elbert with the “Hōʻike i nā wehewehena piha ｜ Show full definition entries” option unchecked/off. The examples, related, references and other details are hidden.

The following video (no audio) shows the “Hōʻike i nā wehewehena piha ｜ Show full definition entries” option in use.

E huli i koho kikokikona ｜ Search selected text

This option may or may not be available depending on your type of device. If available, and this option is on, you may select a term and a popup will be displayed with the results of searching for that selected text.

The following video (no audio) shows the “E huli i koho kikokikona ｜ Search selected text” option in use.