pakala

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meaning

botched, broken, damaged, harmed, messed up | ALT (curse expletive, e.g. fuck!)

see also

pini, kipisi

semantic space · lipamanka

pakala describes destruction. pakala is often not intended, for example a mistake. The thing being destroyed were your expectations. Sometimes, when people's expectations are destroyed, they say "pakala" by itself to describe said destruction, similar to the way explatives work in other languages. This isn't something special that pakala does, but pakala is used this way because the situations we swear in are often situations where we've made mistakes, or when something has been destroyed. pakala can also be intentional, such as smash therapy or intentional use of explosions. pakala can also describe harm. If something cut my skin, I might use pakala to describe that. In fact, pakala merges the ideas of harm and destruction. In English, these concepts are given seperate words, but in toki pona, they aren't.

ku translations

broken100, destruction100, mistake82, damage81, damn79, burst75, goddamn75, ruin75, accident73, destroy71, error67, heck67, hurt67, crash65, injure65, fail64, harm64, break63, failure57, fault57, injury55, flaw53, crack52, collapse50, snap48, fuck47, fucking42, trouble40, rip38, crush33, explode33, wound33, violate30, offense29, strike29, boom27, crap27

pu verbatim

ADJECTIVE botched, broken, damaged, harmed, messed up

usage

core · 100% usage

found in pu

coined pre-pu

origin

Tok Pisin · bagarap ‘accident’

English · bugger up

by jan Sonja

sitelen pona

pakala

pictogram of a cracked object

sitelen sitelen

pakala sitelen sitelen

sitelen jelo

💥

sitelen Emosi

💥

ucsur

U+F1948

audio

kala Asi

jan Lakuse

luka pona

gif · mp4