Ma-hál, n.

A Tagalog word meaning beloved.

A little fact I learned long ago from my Philippine girlfriend. Obviously not something that comes up a lot in conversation in an English-speaking culture, but it provoked many inquiries over the years when I named my car after her and had Mener Mahal painted on the driver's door.

After I became an editor, I deleted this writeup as something of a ritual. Months later, I realized the reason I had noded it in the first place was because I had a link to it in another writeup, so today I put it back.