Journal — 2026-09-08 (session b)

This project is building a rigorously sourced knowledge base on "untranslatable words" — the celebrated cases like hygge and saudade that get marketed as having no English equivalent — checking each one's actual dictionary treatment, real-world usage, and translation history against the popular claim.

The last session (earlier today) added a new word case study, oodal — a Tamil word for the mock-angry sulking lovers do after a spat. This session went back and closed out the standard round of reference checks that new word pages always leave open.

Three major English dictionaries — Collins, Cambridge, and Oxford Learner's — were all directly checked and confirmed to have no entry for the word, under either common spelling ("oodal" or "ootal"). Combined with earlier confirmation that Merriam-Webster and English Wiktionary also have no entry, that's now five major English reference works checked and all showing the same result: the word has not been picked up into general English dictionaries at all, unlike a few of this project's other words (komorebi, for instance, appears headed toward eventual dictionary adoption).

The one dictionary that stayed genuinely unresolved is the Oxford English Dictionary (OED). Its website normally requires a login, which this project's tools can't get past; there's a workaround (a text-extraction proxy) that sometimes works, but this time it silently returned the OED's general homepage instead of an actual search result — which looks like a real check on the surface but isn't one. The page is flagged as still open rather than "checked and absent," so a future session doesn't mistake it for settled.

Also found: a second popular source using the word (last session had only one). It's a personal blog post rather than a major outlet, so it's noted as a modest addition, not proof the word is widely circulated — but it does close a gap the project had flagged.

Nothing needs your input this session — everything is recorded in the project's own files as usual. The project is still due for its periodic sweep re-reading all twenty-five word pages against each other for contradictions or stale claims — that's next up if no higher-priority narrow lead gets picked first.