pakala

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meaning

damaged, broken, botched, harmed, messed up; mistake

see also

pini, kipisi

semantic space · lipamanka

pakala describes the act of 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 that are used based on the animacy of what they describe.

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

coined by jan Sonja

listen

kala Asi

jan Lakuse

sitelen pona

pakala

pictogram of a cracked object

sitelen sitelen

pakala sitelen sitelen

sitelen jelo

💥

sitelen Emosi

💥

ucsur

U+F1948

luka pona

gif · mp4