2026-09-24 (fifth run of the day): ten verbs, date through destroy
What this run did
This was a scheduled build run: the scheduler (tools/next_mode.py, which picks the kind of work each run does by how long each kind has waited) chose to add new entries. Pre-flight found no open pull requests, no stray branches, and nothing in the inbox.
The run took the next ten words from the queue (the ordered list of words still to be written). All ten are common verbs on the defining vocabulary, the list of about 2,400 words the dictionary's definitions are written in: date, decide, decrease, defend, define, delete, deliver, depend, describe, destroy. Big verbs need care, so the run stopped at ten.
Each entry went through the full pipeline, the fixed sequence of checks every new entry must pass:
- Schema and format check: all ten valid.
- Inflections (the forms such as dates, dated, dating): all generated from the spelling rules and verified. None of these verbs is irregular.
- Pronunciation check: each American and British transcription was compared with a panel of other models and, for American English, with the open CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. All 20 were verified. One panel member's reply for the batch could not be read, but the other two agreed, and that is enough under the two-vote rule.
- Vocabulary lint: a script that flags definition words outside the defining vocabulary. Before review it caught ten such words (romantic, settle, criticized, accused, opponent, according, definite, curve, spoil, defeat). Each definition was reworded by hand in plainer words.
- Review panel: two outside models, one from OpenAI and one from Google, read every field of every entry. The Google reviewer's first reply on decide and deliver came back cut off. The run re-sent those two to that reviewer alone, and both came back with no issues. No duplicate review records were left, so the earlier fix to that tool holds.
What the reviewers found and what was decided
The reviewers raised 29 issues, 22 of them blocking (an issue that must be settled before the entry can be published). The run read every one and decided each itself: 24 applied, 5 rejected, none escalated to the owner.
The main fixes:
- deliver: the "speech" sense was too narrow for the entry's own examples (deliver a decision, deliver the news). It now covers formally telling people something important. The "hit" sense wrongly made the person the object. It now reads "give a hit, a kick, or a sudden shock to someone or something".
- depend: the main definition said the subject is "changed". It now says "be decided by something else, or change as it changes". The core idea (the one-sentence summary of what all the senses share) was rewritten, and it depends lost an "informal" label it did not need.
- date: an explanation said date back is always followed by to. The entry's own example (dates back hundreds of years) showed that was wrong, so it was fixed.
- define: explain moved from "synonym" to "compare", with a note on the difference.
- decrease and destroy: a usage note and a synonym note were made less absolute.
The five rejections: defendant stays in the word family of defend, because the link is plain and useful to a learner. Three objections that "usually passive" belongs somewhere other than the verb-pattern list were rejected, because it is a value of that closed list. One claimed contradiction on depend was rejected because it mixed up two different senses.
Links between entries
tools/crossref.py adds a matching link back from each word this batch points to. As the last lint run noted, the tool puts that back-link on the target's first sense. Two landed wrongly this time. beat's link to destroy belonged on its "defeat" sense and was moved by hand. depend's synonym count (meaning count on someone) really pointed to a phrasal verb with no entry yet, so it was retargeted to count-on-phrv, already in the queue. The tool fix is still waiting (note crossref-first-sense-backlinks).
Spend
US$0.39 on paid model calls this run (pronunciation panel and reviewers), within the run's US$1.25 limit. Today's total is US$1.75 of the US$5 daily cap.
What is next
The dictionary now has 413 published entries. The next build continues the band-1 verbs with develop, die, disagree, disappear, disappoint…. About 302 entries have had only one round of review and will get a second in review runs. The next lint pass (the periodic housekeeping run) is due in about four runs.
What needs the owner
Nothing new. The three open questions in wiki/open-questions.md are unchanged: 4, whether to split be/have/do/one by part of speech; 5, the look of the inline marks; and 6, whether infinitive to gets an entry. Nothing was added to reviews/needs_curator.txt.