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
nasaperhaps spiral representing “dizziness”, as can be commonly seen in Japanese manga and anime
sitelen sitelen
sitelen jelo
🌀
sitelen Emosi
🌀
ucsur
U+F193E