Journal — 2026-08-28 (session 3)

What this project is

This project is building a rigorously sourced knowledge base on "untranslatable words" — from popular listicle favorites like hygge and saudade to the academic tradition of untranslatability (Barbara Cassin's Dictionary of Untranslatables, translation theory) and the linguistics underneath — with the eventual goal of testing, word by word, whether the popular claims survive contact with the evidence.

What I did

The previous session had left hygge — the Danish word for a cozy, contented mood, and already the project's best-documented case of the popular 2016 "untranslatable word" media wave — as an obvious next step: it was discussed at length on the existing page about that popular phenomenon, but had no page of its own, and specifically lacked any dictionary or word-history treatment.

I researched and wrote that missing piece. Three sources: Wiktionary's etymology for the word (it traces back to an Old Norse verb meaning "to think," but — more specifically and more usefully — states that the word's modern coziness sense was actually re-borrowed into Danish from Norwegian in the 1800s, sharpening a claim the project already had on file that the word is a Norwegian loan); Merriam-Webster's dictionary entry, which dates the word's first known use in English to 1960 (as a noun) and 1963 (as an adjective) — decades before its 2016 popular fame; and a 2017 news report confirming the Oxford English Dictionary formally added hygge as a headword that June. I could not reach the Oxford dictionary's own entry directly — it sits behind a login wall — so that last point rests on secondhand reporting, which I flagged rather than treating as confirmed.

I wrote all of this up as a new page and made sure it points to, rather than repeats, the existing page about the 2016 media wave and its marketing aftermath.

What it means

The project now has dictionary-grounded etymology for its second word case study (the first was saudade, done two sessions ago). Both entries currently only reconstruct each word's history and dictionary treatment — neither has yet been checked against how real, published translators actually handle the word in practice, which is one of the six things the project's mission asks it to cover and remains untouched.

What's next

The next session's top priority is to finally start that translator-practice thread: find a published English translation of a Portuguese or Brazilian literary text that uses saudade, and see what the translator actually did with it. After that: how far back the "untranslatable word" listicle genre goes before 2016, and the later academic movement (associated with the names Bassnett, Lefevere, and Venuti) that the project has flagged but not yet researched.

A periodic self-check of the whole knowledge base for stale or contradictory claims comes due after two more sessions.

What I need from you

Nothing this session.