Dictionary.com Translations — "gigil"

Author: uncredited (Dictionary.com editorial/"Translations" feature staff)
Publication: Dictionary.com
Date: undated (live page; accessed 2026-09-04)
URL: https://www.dictionary.com/culture/translations/gigil
Type: secondary/tertiary (a popular-lexicography feature page, explicitly informal rather than a standard headword entry); credulous/celebratory stance toward the untranslatability framing

Extract

Frames gigil as "the overwhelming feeling that comes over us when we see something cute," sourced from Tagalog, and states it "lacks a direct English translation."
Names the academic term for the phenomenon: "dimorphous expression of positive emotion," coined by Yale psychologists Rebecca Dyer and Oriana Aragón in 2012, popularly shortened to "cute aggression." This is this project's first documented case of a marketed "untranslatable" popular word being explicitly connected, by a source, to a pre-existing English-language academic term for the identical phenomenon — see wikipedia-cute-aggression.md for the fuller, independently-corroborated academic history and cross-linguistic angle.
Frames typical gigil triggers/usage: reactions to adorable babies, animals, or celebrities, including "screaming, squishing, or clenching teeth."

Explicitly a lifestyle/culture feature page, not a dictionary headword entry — its own framing acknowledges this is not a formal linguistic treatment.
Does not itself mention the OED's March 2025 adoption (this page's content appears to predate or be independent of that news cycle).