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INDONESIAN · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

selak.

to open

5 characters2 syllables approx.Bahasa Indonesia language

Meaning & usage

verb/ˈse.lak/
  1. to open

Where this word comes from

Inherited from Malay selak, from Classical Malay sila, from Sanskrit शील (śīla, “conduct, beauty, form, virtue”). Doublet of sila.

verb/sə.ˈlak/
  1. to jump (the queue)

  2. to haste

  3. to be choked: having been unable to breathe due to airway obstruction (choking) or strangulation, but usually to the point of pain and discomfort without death

    dialectal
Where this word comes from

Borrowed from Betawi selek, from Javanese ꦱꦼꦭꦏ꧀, ꦱꦼꦊꦏ꧀ (selak, selek, “on the verge of, about to”, literally “to be choking”), from Old Javanese sĕlĕk, slĕk (literally “choke”), probably from Proto-Mon-Khmer *cʔə(ə)ʔ ~ *cʔə(ə)k ~ *cʔak (“to hiccough, belch”). Compare with Khmer ត្អើក (tʼaək, “hiccup”) and Vietnamese nấc (“to hiccup”).

noun/sə.ˈlak/
  1. bar, bolt

Where this word comes from

Inherited from Malay selak, from Hindi सलाख (salākh, “iron bar; rod”), from Sanskrit शलाका (śalākā).

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.