This word was created by the Toki Pona community after the publication of Sonja Lang's book Toki Pona: The Language of Good (2014). It has since been recognized as essential vocabulary (nimi ku suli) by Lang in her 2021 publication The Toki Pona Dictionary.
According to Linku, this word is classified as "uncommon", being used by 31% of respondents in a poll from August 2023.