Gigil: The Word Capturing 'Cute Aggression' Added to OED

Gigil (ghee-gill) is one of the most recent words to be added to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED). It describes what psychologists would classify as cute aggression, an almost overwhelming urge to clench one's hands and teeth or squeeze an adorable person or item. Drawing from Tagalog, the national language of the Philippines, gigil is a universal feeling that many people are familiar with.

The Oxford English Dictionary is now larger than any other dictionary in the English-speaking world, boasting a vast collection of 600,000. So if "gigil" is in the OED, does it still imply that Filipino culture and language have gone global?

The World Health Organization has also posted about Gigil on X (formerly called Twitter). Check it HERE!

Gigil can both refer to the feeling itself and to the person experiencing it. An example would be, "I'm so gigil."

Apart from gigil, the other 10 loanwords from the Philippines include videoke, the Filipino version of karaoke, and terror, which refers to a strict, harsh, or demanding teacher. Twelve of the new words are derived from the neighboring nations of Malaysia and Singapore in Southeast Asia. Almost half of them are related to food, such as otak-otak, which comprises seafood combined with spices and coconut milk, as well as ketupat or rice cakes boiled in a pouch of woven palm leaves.

From 11 South African borrowings, two are expressions of frustration and anger: gatvol-meaning a person who feels extremely annoyed, slang; and hell-in-slang for a person who is really angry in an associated way.

There are 8 loanwords from the Irish language. They include debs, a fancy celebration for school leavers, and class, a general term of approval used in the popular sitcom in Northern Ireland, "Derry Girls."

Every year, thousands of word suggestions are reviewed by OED editors for possible inclusion into its updates. The dictionary has a watch list database compiled from various sources, such as the dictionary's own reading programs, crowdsourcing appeals, and automated monitoring and analysis of language in use.

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