Now everybody has a word for when they encounter something exceedingly adorable they’d want to squeeze the life out of it.
The Oxford English Dictionary welcomes 11 new Filipino words into its roster of over 500,000 entries! And among which are popular words we use in every day conversations.
Leading the pack is gigil, which I think is a long overdue entry, with similar word kilig making its way to the OED in 2016. This year, gigil has finally earned a well deserved spot in the trusted dictionary. With the addition of the word gigil, defined by the OED as 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,” everybody now has a word for when they encounter something exceedingly cute—or annoying—that they’d want to squeeze the life out of it. I think the latter is a nuance the dictionary failed to capture. You can also feel gigil toward lying politicians, for instance. Nakakagigil si <insert lying politician’s name>.
The OED, however, has opted to go with the more positive evocation of the word, adding in the statement that if a Filipino says they’re gigil, they’re dealing with overwhelming feelings which are “usually positive.” This word will prove to be especially useful these days given the meteoric rise of “cute culture,” which The POST has extensively covered (see related stories below).
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Joining gigil is what the OED describes as our national pastime: videoke. The dictionary gives its definition as, “a form of entertainment popular in bars, at parties, etc., in which a person sings the vocal line of a popular song to the accompaniment of a pre-recorded backing tape while following the lyrics which appear on a screen in time with the music.” Videoke has so deeply embedded itself in Filipino culture that it even birthed the My Way urban legend (or is it really just an urban legend?).
Another Filipino word which I think should have been added a long while back is lumpia, another national favorite, which is also a party staple like videoke. The OED describes this dish popular in East and Southeast Asian cookery as “any of various types of spring roll, typically consisting of a very thin pancake filled with minced meat, seafood, or vegetables, rolled into a cylinder (and sometimes deep-fried), and served with a dipping sauce.” Yum. That made me crave an order of lumpiang shanghai from Jollibee or Amber (that’s without the ‘s!).
Then there’s sando, which is the perfect piece of clothing for the current weather as I’m writing this story in a non-airconditioned room at home. The OED describes sando as “a sleeveless garment worn under or instead of a shirt.”
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Interestingly, three of the 11 Philippine English entries are not loan words, but idiosyncratic uses of existing English words. In the Philippines, load is credit purchased for a pay-as-you-go mobile phone; CR, short for comfort room, is the very Filipino term for toilet (this one’s also long overdue!); and terror, specifically pertaining to “a teacher who is strict, harsh, or demanding.”
The other Filipino words included in the OED’s most recent update are kababayan, Pinoy, and salakot which is a type of lightweight Filipino hat traditionally worn by farmers. Finally, there’s Thomasite, which, if you were attentive in your Philippine history class in elementary, you would know as “an American teacher in the Philippines during the period of American occupation.”
But it’s not only the Philippines which has Southeast Asia represented in the latest OED update–Malaysian and Singaporean English has 12 combined new entries in the OED as well. There’s the popular expression alamak, for instance, which the OED defines as a word that “conveys surprise, shock, dismay, or outrage.” I think the closest Filipino equivalent of alamak is Diyos ko (with the requisite exclamation point!, of course). With both Malaysia and Singapore known as culinary powerhouses, eight of the 12 words are food related, such as kaya, kaya toast, nasi lemak, otak-otak, steamboat, half-boiled egg, tapau, and fish head curry. Our neighbors down south also have a similar use for the word terror.
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In a statement released on its website, the OED said that adding untranslatable words from different parts of the world is its way to “fill a lexical gap” for people who speak English alongside other languages. “Sometimes, they do this with enough frequency that the borrowed word eventually becomes part of the vocabulary of their variety of English,” it continued.
These loan words are so frequently used that a quarter of the OED’s updates are new additions from the Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore, South Africa (11 words), and Ireland (8 words).
The Oxford English Dictionary is updated on a quarterly basis, a reflection of the dynamism and global reach and influence of the English language. In December last year, for example, The POST reported on the Korean words which made it to the respected dictionary. I wonder which Filipino words, if any, would make it to the next update. That would make for a nice guessing game, I suppose.
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