da-kine

Adjective

(not comparable)

good, best

Noun

(uncountable)

(Hawaii, slang) that; it; that thing.
(Hawaii, slang) the kind of thing we're discussing (a shibboleth)

Usage notes

In HCE (Hawaiian Creole Englosh), da kine is used generally to mean almost anything, particularly when referring to a thing whose name is not known or whose name does not come immediately to mind.

Origin

From the kind. It is a lexicalization of a voiced dental fricative having become a plosive and the plosive of the nasal + consonant termination having been dropped, both of which are common developments in many slang registers of English, such as AAVE.

English Wiktionary. Available under CC-BY-SA license.