Dictionary

lavalava en · NOUN

Etymology

Borrowed from Samoan lava-lava.

Meanings

1. An everyday item of clothing traditionally worn by Polynesians and other Oceanic peoples, consisting of a single rectangular cloth worn as a skirt, secured around the waist by an overhand knotting of the upper corners.
   • The guy she went out with was named Ziki Fuapopo, and the story she told involved his mother, a pile of cocaine, and a group of men dressed in lavalavas. 2001, David Sedaris, diary entry January 22, in Theft by Finding, Back Bay Books 2017, p. 436
   • Some tourists buy Samoan identity merchandise as novelties, but most prefer sloganless items such as printed lavalavas. 1997, Michel Picard, Robert Everett Wood, Tourism, ethnicity, and the state in Asian and Pacific societies:

Forms