meaning
fire; cooking element, chemical reaction, heat source
see also
semantic space · lipamanka
seli's that heat. If something's hot or giving off heat, it's seli. the heat itself is also seli. this word can also be used to talk about spicy food through metaphor because spicy food literally makes your mouth feel warmer, but be careful not to calque english by explaining that if you use seli like that. Household appliences used to heat food can be seli, like a stovetop. seli can be used as a verb to mean "cook," if in english you see cooking as always some sort of application of heat. Chopping up vegetables to put in a raw salad isn't a good example of seli.
ku translations
fire100, heat100, hot92, burning85, flame83, burn70, warm65, warming58, bake36, temperature36, cook31, boil30, cooking27, tropical17
pu verbatim
ADJECTIVE fire; cooking element, chemical reaction, heat source
usage
core · 99% usage
found in pu
coined pre-pu
origin
Georgian · ცხელი cxeli ‘hot’
by jan Sonja
commentary
In pu, definitions of seli are described as adjectives. ku's pu corrections clarify that these refer to nouns instead.
sitelen pona
seliperhaps a pictogram of a lit campfire or a simplified pictogram of a fire
sitelen sitelen
sitelen jelo
🔥
sitelen Emosi
🔥
ucsur
U+F1957