meaning
indoor space or shelter e.g. room, building, home, tent, shack
see also
semantic space · lipamanka
A tomo contains objects meant to contain things being framed as living. Sometimes living is literal. A family of five is considered living, so their domicile can be considered a tomo. Sometimes living is a metaphor. A dollhouse can be considered a tomo if the hypothetical dolls it can contain are being framed as living, even if they aren't empirically alive. By calling a container intended for nonliving things a "tomo," a speaker is ascribing life to those objects. There's no animacy hierarchy in toki pona, so what is and isn't considered life is up to personal preference and doesn't impact mutual intelligibility.
ku translations
building100 house94 housing86 chamber85 home82 room81 shelter80 residence68 suite59 domestic58 structural54 structure53 facility50 residential50 establishment45 household43 apartment42 cabin42 station39 hall38 construction33 institute33 venue33
pu verbatim
- NOUN indoor space; building, home, house, room
usage
core · 100% usage
found in pu
coined pre-pu
origin
Esperanto · domo ‘house’
Polish · dom ‘house’
Latin · domus ‘house’
Ancient Greek · δόμος ‘house’
coined by jan Sonja
listen
kala Asi
jan Lakuse
sitelen pona
tomopictogram of a house. compare blissymbol “house”
sitelen sitelen
sitelen jelo
🏠
sitelen Emosi
🏠
ucsur
U+F196D