BBC has alerted us all that the word “covfefe” as used by the president of the United States of America, Donald Trump, is a Samoan word. Do you know how excited our very small country is, that a leader of the free world has used a word in our language, and what better time than the celebration of Samoan language week in New Zealand. Spoken by a little over 200,000 people, we are indeed honored that one of our words, or at least that sounds like one, has been used by a non-native speaker.

As a graduate of the Center of Samoan Studies with a minor in the examination and analysis of the Samoan language and oratory, I can confirm to you today, that the word “covfefe” does have some similarities to several Samoan words, and has some basis on our beautiful language. Below, I will analyse this most intriguing, weird, tweeted word.

Cov (similar to the Samoan word ko and kou) meaning:

ko: Pregnant; to pick a fruit or; to reach for something

kou: is short for oukou (you people, plural) or kakou (us people, plural)

Cov is not a Samoan word because it has the letter ‘C’ and ends with a consonant. Our alphabet does not contain the letters c, d, w, b, y, j and z, and as you can imagine it is vowel-centric. Cov, however is phonetically similar to the word “ko” and “kou” so for the purposes of this particular phrasing, we will use both ko and kou.

Fefe: Fear; afraid ; or an expression of mockery

Depending on how the word fefe is used, it can be interpreted as fear, afraid or an expression of mockery similar to “whatever or whatevs” in modern day language and slang.

Similar sounding words include the following.

Kefe: Circumcise (original meaning); but recently evolved into an offence or noun that refers to; asshole; and/or putrid person

To be clear, “covfefe” is most certainly not a Samoan word by any measure, however the word “fefe” itself is very much a Samoan word, and one most often used to display the strength of Samoans by the indication that we have no “fefe.”