Short answer: in everyday Nepali, "ukhan tukka" is one phrase that means proverbs and sayings, and the two words are rarely separated. When they are, the distinction most often given is that an ukhan is a complete sentence and a tukka is a phrase or idiom. That split is common but not universal, and explanations of it do not all agree.
Usually it is one phrase
The standard definition covers the pair together: the meaningful sayings, or lokokti, that have come down through everyday life and carry a particular meaning or message. Dictionaries list ukhan-tukka as one compound entry rather than two words. That is also how this site uses it.
If you do separate them
Some explanations do draw a line. One describes an ukhan as a traditional saying that carries deep meaning, and a tukka as a group of words that has lost its literal meaning and taken on a separate, specific one. Another puts the difference in structure: an ukhan is a complete sentence on its own, while a tukka is only a phrase that gives its meaning once it is fitted into a sentence.
In that sense an ukhan is closer to what English calls a proverb, and a tukka is closer to an idiom (muhavara in Nepali). A proverb stands alone and its wording stays fixed. An idiom is slotted into a sentence and can change with tense. Here is an example of each.
आफू नमरी स्वर्ग देखिँदैन
Aafu namari swarga dekhidaina.
One cannot see heaven without dying first
A complete sentence that makes a whole statement by itself: you cannot see heaven without dying first, meaning you have to go through an experience yourself to understand it. This is the ukhan form.
For the phrase form, a common example is khutta tannu, literally "to pull the leg", meaning to obstruct someone's progress. It is not a full sentence. It works inside one ("he pulled his colleague's leg to stop the promotion"), and the verb changes with the sentence. That is the tukka form.
आजको कामलाई भोलि नभन्नु
Aaja ko kaam lai bholi nabhannu.
Don't procrastinate, complete today's tasks today
Another full-sentence ukhan, this one as an instruction: never tell today's work it can wait until tomorrow.
Where explanations disagree
Be careful with anyone who states the difference as settled. Even a reference that defines the two terms separately lists its examples under one heading as ukhan, including phrase-shaped ones such as ghanti heri had nilnu ("swallow the bone after looking at your throat"). Other references give one combined definition and never separate the terms. We found no dictionary entry that sets out the split, so treat it as a useful rule of thumb rather than a rule.
You may also come across the claim that ukhans are serious and moralistic while tukkas are funny or satirical. We found no support for that in Nepali references, so we do not use it here.
A third meaning: tukka as a poem
If you search for "tukka" on its own, you will often land on something else entirely. Tukka is also the name of a modern Nepali poetry form: two lines, both ending in a matching rhyme and with the same number of syllables. The form was proposed by the poet Tara Prasad Chapagain in 2077 BS (around 2020–21), and the name was suggested by the critic Arun Nadi Khatri. It is meant to sit alongside the older meanings of the word, not replace them, and tukka poems are not proverbs.
So a tukka poem is a literary form with rules, while a tukka in the ukhan-tukka sense is a traditional phrase with a figurative meaning. They share a word and little else.
What this means on this site
We call everything here ukhan tukka, because that is what people search for and what the dictionary treats as one term. Most entries in the collection are complete sentences, so in the stricter sense they are ukhans. If you know a standard reference that settles the distinction, such as an entry in the Nepali Brihat Shabdakosh, please send it through the About page and we will update this article.