Aw, damn — the polite version of a swear.
Disappointment or sympathy: *pucha, qué lata*, aw, what a drag. Safe to say in front of family, which is exactly why it exists. Common across Chile, Peru and Argentina.
A softened stand-in for a much cruder word, like English "shoot" for the other one.
Mild and safe. The word it replaces is not — do not go looking for the original.
Reading a definition isn't the same as saying it to someone. Lingo Kaiava is a voice tutor set to Chilean Spanish — it uses pucha the way locals do, corrects you in the moment, and never "fixes" the way real people actually talk into textbook Chilean Spanish.
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