Tagalog, my native language, has one that I’ve always wondered about: ‘umay.’ I would translate it as “too delicious, it’s almost sickening.”

Imagine a cake that’s too delicious, overwhelms your senses with sweetness, tartness, bitterness and all the good things that in moderation, would have made for a perfectly delicious cake. For example, “Masarap naman yung cake ni Maria, kaso nakaka-umay” (“Maria’s cake is delicious, really, but it’s a bit too much for me”). I guess one can put it as ‘too much,’ or ‘overwhelming,’ but there’s this additional element of “it’s actually kinda good, you know, but it went a bit too far.”

Now, I’ve been wondering if it’s related to the Japanese 美味い (うまい), and the wiktionary entry I linked earlier has it as a possible origin. I find it kinda (morbidly) funny wondering if it got its present meaning during the second world war, when the Japanese invaded the Philippines. I’d imagine Filipinos would just keep saying “it’s delicious, it’s delicious,” just to placate the Japanese, even if they’re already too sick and tired of it.