Gigil, Videoke, Alamak: The Latest Additions To The OED

Have you ever held a puppy that was so unbelievably fluffy and adorable you didn’t know how to convey the strong urge to squeeze its head without sounding like a maniac? Well, now there’s a word for it: gigil.

Gigil (pronounced ghee-gill) is one of the new words that have made it into the Oxford English Dictionary (OED).

Gigil, extracted from the Philippines’ Tagalog language, refers to what psychologists describe as cute aggression: “[a] feeling so intense that it gives us the irresistible urge to tightly clench our hands, grit our teeth, and pinch or squeeze whomever or whatever it is we find so adorable”.

It can be deployed as a noun denoting the feeling or as an adjective for experiencing the feeling, such as: “That puppy is making me gigil.”

With 600,000 words, the OED is one of the most comprehensive dictionaries in the English-speaking world.

Its editors consider thousands of suggestions for new words every year that come from far and wide and from a variety of sources, including the OED’s own research and crowdsourcing appeals.

Alamak, a colloquial cry used to express surprise or outrage in Singapore and Malaysia, also made the list.

In its latest update, the OED said: “Wouldn’t it be useful for English speakers to have a specific word for sunlight dappling through leaves … Or a word for the action of sitting outside enjoying a beer?” The Norwegians have a word, utepils, for having a beer (pils) outside (ute). And the Japanese word “komorebi” (木漏れ日) describes sunlight dappling through leaves.

People who speak English alongside other languages fill lexical gaps by “borrowing the untranslatable word from another language”. When they do this often enough, the borrowed word “becomes part of their vocabulary”, OED said.

Most of the words added to the OED from Singapore and Malaysia are names of dishes, including kaya toast – jam made from coconut milk, eggs, sugar and pandan leaves spread on toasted bread; fish head curry – a Chinese and South Indian dish; and steamboat – a thinly sliced meat and vegetable broth.

“All this talk of food might inspire one to get a takeaway, or to tapau,” OED said. Tapau is another new word originating from Chinese languages, meaning “to package, or wrap up, food to take away”.

Other newly added Philippine words include videoke, the nation’s version of karaoke, which includes scoring, and salakot, a farmer’s hat.

Words and phrases from South Africa and Ireland were also part of the update.