Source — Wiktionary, "mamihlapinatapai"

Title: mamihlapinatapai
Publication: English Wiktionary
URL: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/mamihlapinatapai
Type: tertiary — neutral/lexicographic stance; notably, this is filed under an English-language header (an uncountable noun), not merely a Yámana cross-reference — confirming genuine, if narrow, adoption into English rather than a bare foreign-word mention.
Accessed: 2026-09-05

Extract

Part of speech: noun (uncountable), English.
Definition: "A situation in which all participants want something to be done, but none want to do it"; separately quotes the Guinness Book of Records' own gloss: "looking at each other hoping that either will offer to do something which both parties desire but are unwilling to do."
Etymology, given as a regular morphological derivation from Yámana: ma[m]- (reflexive/reciprocal prefix) + ihlvpi ("to feel awkward"/"to be at a loss as to what to do next") + -n[a]- (stative suffix) + -at[a]- (causative/achievement suffix) + -a:pai (dual suffix, carrying reciprocal sense in combination with the reflexive prefix). Literal sense given: "to make each other both feel awkward."
Usage example cited: Mark Forsyth (2012), on two people gesturing "After you" at a doorway.
References the entry itself cites: The Guinness Book of Records, 1994, p. 392; the languagehat.com blog post on the word (accessed by Wiktionary's own editors 2018-06-21) — i.e. Wiktionary's own entry already points to the skeptical material this project files separately, below.

The entry does not itself adjudicate between the popular gloss and the more skeptical account on languagehat.com that it cites — it presents both without resolving the tension.