2026-09-24 — Twelve verbs, from confuse to cough
What this run did
This was a scheduled, unattended run of the dictionary project. The mode selector (tools/next_mode.py, the script that picks each run's kind of work) chose build: writing new entries from the queue, the ordered list of words still waiting for an entry. There were no open pull requests or leftover branches from earlier runs, and the owner's inbox was empty.
The selector allowed up to twenty new entries. The run took twelve, the next twelve verbs in band 1 (the most common words): confuse, connect, consider, consist, contain, continue, control, cook, cool, copy, cost, and cough. Three of them (consider, continue, control) are large; fewer, fuller entries are the house rule.
Each entry was written from scratch and then went through the full checking pipeline:
- Format check: every entry matched the required shape with no errors.
- Word forms (controlled, copies, cost) came from the spelling rules and the table of irregular verbs, not from hand typing. All were confirmed. Cost is irregular (cost, cost), except in its business sense "work out the price", where the past form is costed; the entry says so in that sense's explanation.
- Pronunciation: the American and British transcriptions were each checked against a panel of other language models and, for American English, the open CMU pronouncing dictionary. All twenty-four agreed.
- Review panel: two reviewing models from other companies read every field of every entry and reported problems, marked as blocking (must be settled before publishing) or minor.
What the reviewers found, and what was decided
The reviewers raised 26 issues, 14 of them blocking. I read each one and decided: 21 were accepted and fixed, 5 were rejected with a logged reason, and none needed to go to the owner. Consist and cough had no issues at all.
The useful catches:
- Control, sense "feelings": the definition "stay calm and not show a strong feeling" did not fit its own examples (control your temper, control yourself). It now reads "stop a strong feeling from making you say or do something you should not".
- Cost: lose was listed as a synonym of the sense "cause a loss" (the mistake cost him his job). Both reviewers pointed out that the two verbs have their subject and object the other way round, so it was removed.
- Copy: the translator's note said copy it to me was wrong, when it is in fact fine English with a different structure. The note was rewritten. The claim that copy someone in is British was softened to "especially British".
- Connect, sense "network or supply": the definition only covered joining something else to the internet, not the common I can't connect to the internet. Widened.
- Three definitions began with a restriction such as "of food:" or "of a train:". House style puts that restriction in the explanation field, so all three were moved.
- Smaller fixes: remember dropped as a synonym of consider; the phrase consider yourself lucky given a plain definition instead of "used to..."; two weak collocations in continue replaced.
Rejected objections:
- Mix up "is not a phrasal verb". It is (mix them up), so the cross-reference stays.
- Copy someone on an email "need not involve another recipient". Copying someone means sending them a copy of a message that goes to someone else.
- The explanation "usually with a negative" on contain (a feeling) "is not needed". The style guide puts exactly this kind of restriction there.
After the fixes, the vocabulary check found three definition words outside the defining vocabulary (glad, further, behave). Each definition was reworded with plainer words. The cross-reference tool added back-links in bake, boil, and run, and queued 28 missing target words (such as imitate, container, cheat) for later entries.
Spend
About US$0.43 on the review panel and pronunciation checks; US$0.87 of the US$5 daily cap has been spent today.
What did not work
One reviewer returned no verdict for one field (the labels of copy sense 1): a small gap in coverage, not a block.
What is next
The dictionary now has 393 entries, all reviewed. The next build continues the band-1 verbs: count, cover, crash, create, cross, crush, cure, cut, damage, dance, date, decide. Cut is large and has many phrasal verbs, which are separate entries. About 282 entries have had only one round of review and are waiting for a review run.
What needs the owner
Nothing new. The three open questions are unchanged: whether to split be, have, do, and one by part of speech; the look of the inline marks; and whether infinitive to should get an entry. They are in wiki/open-questions.md.