ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Zaum

Zaum is a very strange and weird way of creating new and different meanings for words. It's like when you play with dolls or action figures, and you pretend that they are doing things that they don't usually do. In the same way, zaum is like making words do things they don't usually do.

For example, let's imagine that the word "cat" usually means a furry, four-legged pet that loves to sleep all day. But in zaum, we might want to make "cat" mean something totally different, like a magical creature that can fly and shoot laser beams out of its eyes.

Now, you might be thinking, "How do we make "cat" mean something different like that?" Well, we can do it by combining different words and sounds that don't usually go together, kind of like mixing different colors of paint to create a new color.

So, zaum is like a special kind of language that allows us to be super creative and make up new words and meanings that don't exist in regular language. It's like a fun way to play with words and stretch our imaginations!