2026-09-25 (third run): build, ten verbs from exercise to feel
What this run was
This was the sixty-seventh scheduled run. The run-selector script (tools/next_mode.py) chose build: writing new dictionary entries from the queue, the ordered list of words still to be written. It allowed up to twenty entries and US$1.25 of paid calls. The rules prefer fewer, fuller entries, and several words in this batch have many meanings, so the run took ten.
There was no unfinished work from earlier runs: no open pull request (a proposed batch of changes waiting to be merged), no leftover branch, and nothing in inbox/.
The ten entries
All ten are verbs from band 1, the most basic words, which also belong to the defining vocabulary (the controlled word list that definitions are written in):
- exercise: the body, a muscle or an animal, and a right or power (exercise your right to vote).
- exist: be real, and stay alive on very little (exist on bread and water).
- expand: get bigger, and give more details (expand on an idea).
- expect: five meanings, from "think something will happen" to "be going to have a baby", plus the phrases as expected and to be expected. Its comparison box separates expect, hope, wait, and look forward to, which many languages express with fewer words.
- express: show a feeling, express yourself, and show an amount in a certain form.
- fall: nine meanings: drop down, stop standing, go lower (prices), become (fall asleep, fall ill), happen on a day, of night or silence, lose power, be taken by an enemy, and hang down. Two phrases: fall short and fall flat.
- farm, fear, feed, and feel (eight meanings, including feel like meaning "want", and the phrases feel free and feel sorry for someone).
Every entry has its grammar, examples, collocations (typical word partners), common learner mistakes where they exist (I fell the glass, I feel myself tired, I fear of dogs), and notes for future translators.
The checks
- Word forms. The inflection tool produced every form; the irregular ones (fell/fallen, fed, felt) came from the project's table of exceptions. All verified.
- Pronunciation. All twenty transcriptions (American and British for each word) were confirmed by the panel of other AI models and, for American, by the open CMU pronouncing dictionary.
- Two outside reviewers. Each entry was read field by field by two AI reviewers from other companies (called reviewer A and reviewer B). They raised 29 issues, 16 of them marked blocking. I accepted 18 and rejected 11, each with a logged reason.
What the reviewers got right (all from reviewer A):
- expect in We're expecting guests was defined as "be waiting for". That is wrong: you can expect a package while doing something else. It is now "believe that someone or something will arrive soon".
- One fall meaning mixed two things: a government losing power and a city being taken by an enemy. They are now two meanings.
- feed had an example about a lake fed by streams under a meaning about putting things into machines. The example was replaced.
- The comparison note for exercise said it was only "for the body", which contradicted its own meanings about animals and rights. Rewritten.
- A few labels were too narrow (expect as "pregnant" is not informal; express for amounts is not only mathematics).
What I rejected:
- Reviewer A again objected that American pronunciation lacks a "long vowel" mark (fid for feed). The house style drops that mark in American transcriptions on purpose.
- Reviewer A wanted a "formal" label on all of fear meaning "worry". Only I fear... at the start of a sentence is formal, and the explanation says so.
- Reviewer B's six issues included five identical complaints that an adaptation note starts with the headword in quotation marks ("feed": ...). That is the house pattern. I recorded this repeated noise in
wiki/notes/reviewer-noise.md.
One reviewer B reply for expand came back broken and could not be read; I ran that one review again and it worked.
Cross-references
When one entry lists another as a synonym or a word to compare, the second entry should point back. The tool added five such back-links (for example, eat now points to feed, believe to feel). I checked each one; all sit on the right meaning. Words that the new entries mention but that have no entry yet (such as feeling, touch, and the phrasal verbs fall apart and fall behind) were added to the queue, 21 in all.
Spend
US$0.43 this run (almost all the two reviewers), US$0.86 so far today, against the US$5 daily cap.
What did not work
Only the one broken reviewer reply, fixed by a re-run. Nothing else.
What is next
The next build continues the verbs: fight, fill, find, fire, fit, fix, flash, float, flow, fly. Lint (the housekeeping pass) is due in about four runs. About 322 entries have still had only one round of review.
What needs the owner
Nothing new. Three open questions remain as before (numbers 4, 5, and 6 in wiki/open-questions.md).