A lexical gap or lacuna is a "missing word" in the vocabulary of a language – a lack of a single word to describe a concept that can be described in a single word in other languages. Some examples of lexical gaps in English are "the day after tomorrow" or a gender specific word for "cousin."
Thankfully, English speakers readily adopt words from other languages to fill these gaps. Schadenfreude is a well-understood loan word, even if Homer Simpson isn't familiar. The less common but equally perfect Danish word "hygge," meaning "a quality of cosiness and comfortable conviviality that engenders a feeling of contentment or well-being," was warmly embraced in American popular culture in 2016
If you have ever found something so unbelievably cute you wanted to squeeze the absolute crap out of it, but lacked a word to describe this feeling, the Oxford English Dictionary has you covered. What you are feeling is gigil. In its latest quarterly update, the OED added this loanword from Philippine English:
An intense feeling caused by anger, eagerness, or the pleasure of seeing someone or something cute or adorable, typically physically manifested by the tight clenching of hands, gritting of the teeth, trembling of the body, or the pinching or squeezing of the person or thing causing this emotion
The OED provides a variety of pronunciations for gigil, but the Philippine pronunciation is roughly "ghee-gill."
Gigil can be a noun or an adjective, so you can feel gigil or be gigil.
The fantastic German word Waldeinsamkeit literally means woodland loneliness and describes the feeling of solitude and connectedness to nature is not yet recognized by the OED, but hope springs eternal. Those Germans really do have a word for everything.
Previously:• Malarkey, schadenfreude, and Merriam-Webster's other Words of the Year
• Sriracha, yowza, and sheeple among 300 new words in Scrabble dictionary
• Dictionary of Eggcorns: words mispelled as other words
