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It is also used in Hawaiian Pidgin to mean "white" or "Caucasian"; it can be used descriptively or derisively. It can be a highly charged word.

A common popular etymology claims that the word is derived from "hāʻole", literally meaning "no breath". Foreigners did not know or use the honi , a Polynesian/ Hawaiian greeting by sniffing the cheeks of the face, and so they were described as "breathless". The implication is that haoles are aloof and ignorant of local ways - a common stereotype in Hawaiʻi. Linguists believe that this etymology is erroneous, however, for these reasons:

• There are innumerable citations from Hawaiian showing that haole simply means 'foreign'. For example, haole ʻeleʻele means a dark-skinned foreigner.

• The word 'breath' is hā (with a macron or kahako over the a), not plain ha. The word 'not' is ʻole, with a glottal stop or ʻokina, not ole, which means 'fang'. In spoken Hawaiian, these are major differences in prononciation. However, they would not appear in Hawaiian dictionaries using the older form of Hawaiian spelling, without kahakos or okinas. Only modern dictionaries show the kahakos and ʻokinas. It seems likely that the folk etymology was created by someone with only a dictionary knowledge of Hawaiian.

There are no alternate theories of the origin of the word haole. Other Polynesian languages, such as Tongan and Samoan, use the word pālangi or papālangi.

In Hawaiian pidgin, 'local' is usually considered the opposite of haole. Local is an omnibus term for any non-white raised in Hawaiʻi, encompassing Hawaiians, part-Hawaiians, Japanese, Japanese-Hawaiians, Chinese, Chinese-Hawaiians, etc. The antonymy reflects a long history of race and class conflict in the Hawaiian islands, in which the upper class (plantation and business owners, professionals) tended to be haole and the working class was local.

However, some people say that it makes sense to speak of 'local haoles' -- haoles who have grown up in Hawaiʻi and speak pidgin. Others would say that the term 'local haole' is nonsense.

Another term used is 'kamaʻāina haole', or 'child-of-the-land' haole. Anyone born and brought up in Hawai'i can be a kamaʻāina. However, as the term kamaʻāina haole is often used, it implies that the person is a Hawaiian born-and-raised descendant of the New England missionaries who came to the islands in 1820.

These various shades of meaning could be debated at length. Malihinis (newcomers) should be careful using such nuanced words.

See also

• List of ethnic slurs