Have you ever found yourself silent in the presence of uncontrollable beauty, such as the feline video you saw on Instagram or your baby brother? There is now a term for it: gigil.
Gigil (pronounced ghee-gill) is part of a list of “untranslatable” words, or those that do not have English equivalents, that have been added to the Oxford English Dictionary..
In the Tagalog language of the Philippines, gigil is a “feeling so powerful that it gives us the irresistible need to strongly grip our hands, grit our teeth, and squeeze or push whomever or whatever it is we find so gorgeous”
Alamak, a slang shout used to express shock or anger in Singapore and Malaysia, likewise made the list.
Wouldn’t it be beneficial for English speakers to have a term for the actions of sipping a ale inside or a term for the moonlight dappling through leaves? In its most recent release, OED stated.
People who speak English alongside other languages “borrow the undecipherable expression from another language” to replace linguistic gaps to replace linguistic gaps. The borrowed term “becomes portion of their vocabulary” when they do it frequently enough, according to OED.
The majority of the newly added comments from Singapore and Malaysia are brands of food, which is a sign of how obsessed with food they are.
These include kaya toast, a popular breakfast option of toasted bread slathered with a jam made from coconut milk, eggs, sugar and pandan leaves; fish head curry, a dish combining Chinese and South Indian influences, where a large fish head is cooked in a tamarind-based curry; and steamboat, a dish of thinly-sliced meat and vegetables cooked in a broth kept simmering in a heated pot.
The phrase” to package, or wrap up, food to take away” was coined by OED, referring to another new word that comes from Mandarin and the Cantonese dialect and means” to inspire one to get a takeaway, or to tapau.”
Apart from gigil, the newly-added Philippine words include the national pastime of videoke, the local version of karaoke which includes a scoring system, and salakot, a wide-brimmed, lightweight hat often used by farmers.
Other Philippine additions include what the OED calls “idiosyncratic uses of existing English words”, such as terror, sometimes used to describe a teacher who is strict, harsh, or demanding.
One of the most comprehensive dictionaries in the English-speaking world, the OED contains more than 600, 000 words.
Each year, its editors take into account thousands of fresh word suggestions. These are compiled from a variety of sources, including the editors ‘ own reading, crowdsourcing appeals, and language database analysis.
Words and phrases from South Africa and Ireland were also part of OED’s latest update.