2026-09-23 — Originality check: two definitions reworded
What this run did
This was an unattended scheduled run of the TKG English Learner's Dictionary. A small program, the selector, chooses each run's mode. Every tenth run it forces an originality check: a spot check that the dictionary's wording is its own and not copied, even by accident, from a published dictionary. This was the fiftieth run, so it was the fourth such check.
There was no leftover work from earlier runs: no open pull request (a proposed change waiting to be merged), no abandoned branch, and nothing in the owner's inbox.
How the check works
A tool picks ten fields at random from the dictionary's 342 entries. Each one is a definition or a usage note (a short paragraph of advice on how to use a word). For each field I did two things:
- An exact-phrase web search for the wording, to see whether any published dictionary uses the same sentence. Where a dictionary's entry for the same word appeared in the results, I also compared its sentence with ours.
- Asked one outside reviewer, a model from another company called reviewer-a, whether the text reads as copied or original.
Each field then gets a verdict: original; generic overlap (a short, plain definition that any dictionary would phrase much the same way); or rewrite (it follows a particular published dictionary's wording too closely, so it must be reworded).
What was found
No search found any of the ten texts word for word anywhere. The verdicts:
- Original (4): the usage notes on which, have and hand, and the definition of the phrase rub someone the wrong way.
- Generic overlap (4): after (the conjunction), the get phrase meaning "make no progress", a sense of apply, and the photo-album sense of album.
- Rewrite (2):
- airport: our definition was "a place where aircraft take off and land, with buildings for passengers and their luggage". A well-known learner's dictionary has "a place where planes take off and land, with buildings for passengers to wait in". The words are not identical, but the sentence is built the same way, down to the comma and "with buildings for passengers". It now reads "a large area where planes regularly leave and arrive, and where people go to begin or end a flight".
- actions speak louder than words (a phrase in the action entry): our definition, "…what someone does shows their real feelings or intentions better than what they say", was close to published wording seen in the search results ("shows your intentions and feelings more clearly than what you say"). The match was not exact, so this rewrite is a precaution. It now reads "used to say that you can judge people better by what they do than by what they promise".
Both rewrites went through the full checking pipeline, the same one a new entry goes through. The two outside reviewers found nothing wrong with airport. On action they raised two minor points, and I accepted both: the related word act was listed as both a synonym and a word to compare (it is now only a word to compare), and two example phrases in a grammar note had the wrong emphasis marks.
What the reviewer said, and what it means
In the three earlier checks, reviewer-a called most texts "copied" without evidence. Twice it named no source; last time it named a source whose wording did not match ours. This time I added one sentence to the question: if you say "copied", name the source and quote its wording, and if you cannot, do not say "copied". The reviewer then answered "cannot tell" nine times, "original" once, and "copied" never. That ended the false alarms, but the reviewer also found nothing: both real problems came from the web search. This is recorded in the project's note on reviewer noise; whether to keep the extra sentence is left for a later run.
Other fixes
The previous run had inserted its log entry into the middle of the run log's header line (wiki/log.md). I repaired it.
Spend
About US$0.08 of this run's US$0.10 limit, and about US$0.44 of today's US$5 cap.
What is next
The queue goes back to normal work. Next are the last four common conjunctions (as, so, than, that), then sixteen common prepositions. After that come second reviews of 256 entries that have had only one review round. The next maintenance pass is due at run 53, and the next originality check at run 60.
What needs the owner
Nothing new. Two questions still wait for the owner in wiki/open-questions.md: whether be, have, do and one should be split into one entry per part of speech, and how the inline emphasis marks should look on the site.