Need a word to emphasize that intense feeling that comes from bearing witness to a beautiful, doll-like baby? Or a term to refer to the overwhelming urge to pinch or squeeze a golden retriever puppy?
Try gigil (pronounced ghee-gill), a Tagalog word that was among the 42 so-called untranslatable terms from various countries and regions — including Southeast Asia, South Africa and Ireland — that were added to the Oxford English Dictionary on Thursday, according to a post on the dictionary’s website.
These words, according to Oxford, were determined to have been “lexicalized” in one language but do not have a direct English equivalent. They will join more than 600,000 words in the robust dictionary.
“For people who speak English alongside other languages, there is an easy way to fill such a lexical gap — simply borrowing the untranslatable word from another language,” Danica Salazar, the executive editor of the Oxford English Dictionary, said in the post about the new words. “Sometimes, they do this with enough frequency that the borrowed word eventually becomes part of the vocabulary of their variety of English.”
A representative from Oxford did not respond to a request for additional comment.
Updates to the dictionary are made on a quarterly basis. The newest batch includes the interjection “yoh,” which is a cry or exclamation used in South African English to express various emotions or reactions, such as surprise, shock or wonder. If you want another word to convey feelings of surprise, shock or outrage, the Malay word “alamak,” another addition, is a good choice. The Irish phrase “to act the maggot” was added for those looking to describe someone who’s behaving foolishly and is at risk of feeling embarrassed.
Borrowed words from other languages have long found its way into English, especially as it spreads around the world and comes into contact with other cultures.
According to the linguist Salikoko Mufwene, it is likely that English speakers traveling to other countries will come across many of these words, so integrating them into the English vocabulary serves as a useful resource to translate the “things that go on in these cultures.”
“Suppose you travel to South Africa and you notice practices that are not American and the word used for those practices are local, you have no choice but to use those words too in English,” Mr. Mufwene, a professor of linguistics at the University of Chicago, said in a phone interview. “Because if you try to find another English word, it doesn’t match the local reality.”
“It’s useful to see these words in the Oxford English Dictionary,” he added. “You could find them also in Webster’s dictionary or American Heritage Dictionary. They all do that. Just Oxford likes to publicize what it does.”
The practice of adopting words from other languages has always been the norm, according to Mr. Mufwene. For example, the word “banana,” which originated in West Africa, is an example of a word that originated in other languages but is commonly used in English.
“Originally it was not an English word but after the Britains colonized most of the world and came across the banana, then they borrowed the local term and it has become a regular English word,” he said. “The word ‘maize’ is a Native American word, but it is now part of English. Or the word ‘gumbo,’ which is an African word.”
Now “gigil” can be added to that list. People just have to start using it.