kili

kili are fruits and vegetables, i.e. any part of a plant that is edible. These could be fresh. An apple is kili. These could be fermented. Kimchi and pickled onions are kili. These could be preserved through canning. Strawberry jam and dried mango are kili. This could even be a sauce with a primary vegetable component: basil pesto is kili, gazpacho is kili, five minced onions are kili. kili can refer to wheat seeds or other grains that haven't been ground up yet, but flour and bread don't fit well into kili's semantic space.

What if a kili is poisonous? Poisonous berries are not edible, but they can still be kili. This is because kili's semantic space pivots towards things that resemble edible parts of plants, even if you can't actually eat them. By using kili, you evoke the image of eating it. This won't encourage toki pona speakers to eat it right away if they don't recognize it. If I used kili for poison ivy a toki pona speaker would think less of it as a shrub what grows on the ground and more as a type of lettuce for making salad. Of course, they wouldn't assume that it would be a good idea to do so, but the way the poison ivy feels in a conceptual semantic space is different.

A minority usage of kili proposed first around 2021 online is a child or product. This borrows a cognitive metaphor from a lot of European languages that sees familial relations as trees. While this could work, it is likely to be misunderstood by many speakers unless you build up this before using kili like this. It's also worth considering how this frames children, and wether that isn't as culturally neutral as you may think. In many cultures, children are raised communally and aren't percived as any individual's child. Would kili work in these cases? Maybe not!