meaning
hot, warm; heat, fire, flame; burn
see also
semantic space · lipamanka
seli is 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 appliances 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.
pu verbatim
- ADJECTIVE fire; cooking element, chemical reaction, heat source
ku translations
fire100 heat100 hot92 burning85 flame83 burn70 warm65 warming58 bake36 temperature36 cook31 boil30 cooking27 tropical17
usage
core · 100% usage
found in pu
coined pre-pu
origin
Georgian · ცხელი cxeli ‘hot’
coined by jan Sonja
listen
kala Asi
jan Lakuse
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