from Samoan
This word originated in Samoa
How will you make yourself at home when you visit Samoa? Try etiquette tip No. 7 from the Western Samoa Visitors Bureau: "As a sign of respect to our village chiefs, please be seated (cross-legged) and be clad in our traditional lavalava (wrap-around waist cloth)."
The lavalava is just that: a piece of cloth, decorated in your favorite pattern, that becomes a skirtlike garment for the lower half of the body. You put it on by holding the square of cloth behind you, pulling the two ends together in front of you, folding the doubled material in zigzag fashion till it reaches your waist, rolling the top edge into a waistband, taking a deep breath, and tucking the waistband in. Both men and women can wear it.
The Samoan word lavalava has been noted in English since 1891. Elsewhere in the South Pacific a similar garment is called a sulu (Fiji), pareu (Tahiti), sarong (Malaysia), or kikepa (Hawaii). According to a 1997 article in the Honolulu Star-Bulletin, the lavalava is increasingly popular with both residents and tourists in Hawaii. Haunani Kay Trask explained why to reporter Burl Burlingame: "The perfect clothing to wear in a hot climate. And not just because it makes a political statement--I'm pretty political, you know--because the muumuu is an imposed clothing style. The kikepa ties us in with the South Pacific.
"And it's just cloth! No zippers, no buttons, incredibly inexpensive, and you don't have to accessorize. There's something about the way they fit--their fluidity of line that goes with the body. It's why Polynesian women look so good in them."
Samoa is another of the Eastern Malayo-Polynesian languages of the Austronesian language family. It is spoken by more than 300,000 people in Western Samoa, American Samoa, Hawaii, the west coast of the United States, and New Zealand. One recent English word from Samoan is faamafu (1934), the name for a home brew made of potato peels, malt, and sugar. Samoan culture was made world famous by anthropologist Margaret Mead in her Coming of Age in Samoa (1928), though Rule No. 3 from the Western Samoa Visitors Bureau is "Margaret Mead was wrong (just ask Derek Freeman)."
