The story
Hawaiian noticed the gesture everyone makes when a name refuses to surface, and gave it a verb of its own. The scratching rarely produces the name, but it buys time and looks like work. English keeps it literal: head-scratching.
pana po'o
PAH-nah POH-oh[ˈpana ˈpoʔo]
scratching your head to shake a memory loose
Closest in English: head-scratching, headscratching, remembering. None of them covers it.
How it went in the game
Contains the answers. If you want to play the word yourself first, leave this closed.
- Which language is it from?Hawaiian
- Where do you see it?In the hallway, keys nowhere to be found
- What does it literally say?Tap the head
- What does it mean?Scratching your head to jog your memory