nasa

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meaning

strange, unusual, silly, abnormal, unexpected; drunk, intoxicated

semantic space · lipamanka

The semantic space of nasa contains deviations from what's considered normal. If most people have blue hair and one person has green hair, that one person is nasa. If someone grows ten types of herbs and a single carnivorous plant, then that carnivorous plant is nasa. If most people don't grow herbs, someone who does grow herbs is nasa. What's considered "normal" here is completely reliant on context. A clown isn't nasa if everyone around them is also a clown. Nothing is inherently nasa. The nasa-ness of all objects will change along with context.

I've also seen people use "ike" and "pona" sometimes to modify nasa, clarifying the connotation. Because nasa doesn't have any positive or negative connotations, people whose native languages DO have these connotations associated with weirdness may feel inspired to clarify when the strangeness of something is good or bad. More commonly I see people use "pona" to counteract any assumptions that nasa may be a bad thing in context, but especially in the queer circles surrounding toki pona, weirdness is embraced a lot to the point where this may not be needed. I wouldn't consider modifying nasa like this to be a bad thing! Clarifying connotations is never a bad thing if you feel it's necessary.

pu verbatim

  • ADJECTIVE unusual, strange; foolish, crazy; drunk, intoxicated

ku translations

weird100 strange88 unusual88 odd83 drunk64 silly58 wild50 ridiculous36 psychoactive31 confuse27 nonsense27 suspicious25

usage

core · 100% usage

found in pu

coined pre-pu

origin

Tok Pisin · nasau ‘dunderhead’

coined by jan Sonja

listen

kala Asi

jan Lakuse

sitelen pona

nasa

perhaps spiral representing “dizziness”, as can be commonly seen in Japanese manga and anime

sitelen sitelen

nasa sitelen sitelen

sitelen jelo

🌀

sitelen Emosi

🌀

ucsur

U+F193E

luka pona

gif · mp4