Source: Wiktionary, "iktsuarpok"

• Author: Wiktionary contributors (collective/anonymous)
• Publication: English Wiktionary
• Date: page last edited 24 August 2026 (per page footer); underlying citations dated 2014–2017
• URL: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/iktsuarpok
• Type: tertiary (crowd-sourced dictionary), neutral in stance — presents the word as an established English loanword-in-progress without hedging or skepticism
• Accessed: 2026-09-05

Extract

• Headword listed as a noun (uncountable), with etymology: "Borrowed from Inuktitut ᐃᒃᑦᓱᐊᕐᐳᒃ (iktsoarpok), meaning 'goes outside often to check if someone is coming.'"
• Definition given: "The feeling of anticipation while waiting for someone's arrival, often leading to intermittently going outside to check for them."
• References section cites exactly one work: Arthur Thibert, Eskimo (Inuktitut) Dictionary: Eskimo-English, English-Eskimo — a real, physically published missionary-linguist dictionary (first edition 1954, Research Centre for Amerindian Anthropology, University of Ottawa; revised 1958/1970/1976). This project did not independently obtain a copy of Thibert's dictionary this session (see Gaps on the word page) — the citation is reported as Wiktionary states it, not independently verified against the physical/archival dictionary itself.
• Dated quotations (Wiktionary's own attestation apparatus) are all from English-language pop-culture/pop-psychology sources, not from Inuktitut-language use:
  • 2014, Sheila Tipay, Neupella and the Walking Stick: "...Tizzy shouted out to Dizzy, 'Iktsuarpok! Iktsuarpok! Iktsuarpok!'"
  • 2015, Dixie Lyle, Marked Fur Murder: A Whiskey Tango Foxtrot Mystery: "...I was on the verge of Iktsuarpok."
  • 2016, Tiffany Watt Smith, The Book of Human Emotions: From Ambiguphobia to Umpty: "Might the restless checking of our phones, waiting for an expected response to a text or comment on a status update, be a type of iktsuarpok?"
  • 2017, Daniel Richardson, Man vs Mind: Everyday Psychology Explained: "In that moment, you are experiencing the sadness of iktsuarpok."
• All four dated citations post-date the word's rise in the English-language "untranslatable words" popular genre (which itself traces to circa 2013, see the untranslatable.substack.com and nunawhaa source records) — none of them are attestations of the word being used to communicate about waiting, only of authors using the borrowed English word as a label/curiosity.

Gaps

• Thibert's dictionary itself was not obtained or checked directly this session — it is an out-of-print physical/archival work (also listed at HathiTrust and WorldCat by catalog record only, no full-text access found). Whether Thibert's entry matches the popular gloss precisely, or gives a different sense (compare the mamihlapinatapai case, where the primary dictionary's gloss diverged sharply from the popular one), is unconfirmed.
• No Inuktitut-language usage example (i.e., the word actually used in an Inuktitut sentence, oral narrative, or Nunavut Hansard transcript) was found this session.

Used in

• Iktsuarpok