2026-09-26 — Build run: ten everyday verbs, hear to hurt
What this run did
The mode selector (tools/next_mode.py, the script that picks each run's kind of work) chose a build run: writing new entries from the queue. There was no unfinished work from earlier runs and nothing in the owner's inbox.
The run wrote ten verbs from band 1, the most basic words that learners meet first: hear, heat, help, hide, hire, hit, hold, hope, hug, and hurt. Several of these are large words. Hold has eight senses (in your hands, keeping something in position, containing an amount, holding a meeting, having a job or a license, continuing without breaking, waiting on the phone, and keeping someone as a prisoner) and two idioms (hold it! and hold your own). Hit and hear have five senses each, and help and hurt four each. Each entry has examples, collocations (the words a verb typically goes with), cross-references, and learner errors where learners really make them (I hurted my leg, I don't hope it rains).
Each entry then went through the full checking pipeline:
- The past forms came from the project's rules and its table of irregular verbs (heard, hid/hidden, held). All were verified.
- A panel of other AI models checked all twenty pronunciations; all were verified. American hire has two syllables, like fire; two of four panel models and the CMU pronouncing dictionary agreed, which is enough under the project's rules.
- Two independent reviewer models, from two different companies, read every field of every entry.
What the reviewers found and what I decided
The reviewers raised 46 issues, 24 of them marked blocking. I read every issue and made 42 logged decisions: 34 fixes applied and 8 objections rejected. None needed to go to the owner.
The most useful catches:
hold, sense 6, put three different uses under one definition: the weather holds (continues), a rope holds (does not break), and a rule holds for children (applies). I split the third use into its own subsense, "be true, or apply to someone or something", with hold true as its collocation.help, sense 4 (I can't help laughing) was defined too narrowly. It also said that she can't help it means "it is not her fault", which is not quite right: it means she cannot control it. The definition and explanation were rewritten, and "only with can't" softened.hear: the explanations said hear from is "always" followed by from and hear of is used "usually" with never. Both were too absolute and were softened.- Collocations of the wrong type. Hit back is a phrasal verb, not a collocation of hit. Newly hired and well hidden are participle phrases, not "adverb + verb". The natural order is hug warmly, not warmly hug. Hurt someone deeply was filed under "verb + noun". All were fixed.
- Labels. Both reviewers agreed that hit meaning "reach a level" (prices hit a new high) is ordinary English, not informal. The label was removed there and from it suddenly hit me.
- Adaptation notes (notes for future translators) were rewritten with the site's bold and italic marks.
Rejected, with reasons logged:
- Reviewer-a again said the American transcription of heat should carry a length mark. This project's American transcriptions leave it out by a standing rule.
- Reviewer-a said the British label on hire meaning "pay to use a car or room" is too narrow. A region label here means "mainly used there", which is true.
- The informal label on hit it off was kept.
A script then added back-links to the new words in four other entries (beat now compares with hit). All four landed on the right sense (about one in four has landed wrongly in recent runs). The script also queued 30 words the new entries mention but the dictionary does not have yet, such as hope (noun), injure, and hold on.
Spend
US$0.41 on reviewer and pronunciation calls. That is all of today's spending so far, against a daily cap of US$5.
What did not work
Two decision-logging calls failed at first because a reviewer had raised two issues on the same field and the tool needs to be told which; I re-ran them and removed one duplicate line. The vocabulary check found three definition words outside the defining vocabulary in hold (document, failing, opponent); they were reworded.
What is next
The next build continues the band-1 verbs from imagine. Five misplaced back-links from the last lint still wait for a hand fix. The next lint is due in about four runs.
What needs the owner
Nothing new. Open questions 4, 5, and 6 (in wiki/open-questions.md) still need a decision.