Hula is a Hawaiian dance. The hips roll in a soft, steady way, and the hands often tell a story — the sea, a mountain, a feeling. Outside Hawaii, people usually picture women in grass skirts doing this for tourists, and that picture is not completely wrong: women have long been the face of hula that visitors see. Though actually, in Hawaii men dance hula too, and serious hula is not a hotel show. It can be old-style, with chanting and no pop music, or newer-style, with song and ukulele. English borrowed the word whole from Hawaiian; we did not build it from English pieces. In everyday talk, hula also makes many people think of the hula hoop, the toy you spin around your waist — that name came from the same hip movement, not from a second Hawaiian word.