YourDictionary — "50 Untranslatable Words on Love, Life, and Emotion" (2021), oodal entry
- Author: Kate Miller-Wilson, staff writer
- Publication: YourDictionary (yourdictionary.com), "50 Untranslatable Words on Love, Life, and Emotion"
- Date: last updated 2021-06-23; accessed 2026-09-08
- URL: https://www.yourdictionary.com/articles/untranslatable-words-love-life-emotion (the article's older URL,
reference.yourdictionary.com/other-languages/50-untranslatable-words-on-love-life-and-emotion.html, 301-redirects here) - Type: tertiary/popular (a general-audience listicle, one of many "untranslatable words" round-ups this project has on file) — credulous, uncritical; no linguistic sourcing given for any entry
- Accessed: 2026-09-08
Extract
- The full entry, verbatim: "oodal (Tamil) - an exaggerated and put-on anger that goes with a lover's spat."
- Listed among 50 words spanning many languages (immediately adjacent entries: Russian odnoliub, "someone who is capable of only loving one person or one thing at a time"; Tagalog paasa, "someone who leads another person on"). No language-family grouping or other appargenus given — words are presented alphabetically/individually with no comparative apparatus.
- No etymology, dictionary citation, or usage example given for oodal specifically, consistent with this list's format across all 50 entries.
Gaps
- Single-source popular attestation; no second mainstream listicle citing this specific word was found this session (see Gaps on the word page).
- Gives no indication that the word is a specific technical term from classical Tamil poetics (see the Zvelebil and Tamil Lexicon sources) — presents it as an ordinary contemporary usage word, like every other entry on the list.