A la intempèrie, which means exposed and without anything, is the first entry, the initiatory concept, of a singular and prized dictionary that was released last week. Last Monday evening, at the Sala Sagarra of the Ateneu Barcelonès, the first Dictionary of homelessness in the Catalan language was pioneered. Driven by those who know most about precise words and accurate definitions —this common institution of Catalan which is the Termcat— and by those who know most about the reality of surviving on the street in bulk and in detail —the Arrels Foundation—. Double rigor to recover the exact name of things and to be able to Having outlined the what and how, we need to specify the when. The Catalan political cycle has meant that we have seen the dictionary printed first —which has an online version— rather than the bill on transitional and urgent measures to tackle homelessness being approved in Parliament, which we have been waiting for for so many years. The reverse order was planned, so that the dictionary would also be inspired by the spirit and letter of the law. But successive election calls have caused the parliamentary process to lapse time and again and, as we know, it’s back to square one after each election. I suppose the dictionary, prematurely and in advance, hits the nail on the head. The concept "institutional factor, well, what do you know, refers in the dictionary to the "risk factor related to policies and the functioning of public administration and its bodies in relation to tackling homelessness". And the volume, which is full of essential explanatory notes, specifies it with street clarity: "The inadequacy of public budgets, the lack of coordination of social services, the procedures and bureaucracy of public administration, or the lack of planning in deinstitutionalisation are examples of institutional factors".The socio-public linguistic cooperation in the dictionary's drafting also tells of a great team that, rejecting the fashion for Anglicisms, enriches our lexicon, sharpens Catalan, and invites uninterrupted solidarity. The team starts with Jordi Garcia—a volunteer from Arrels who had the original idea, embracing "the transformative power of inhabiting words"—and includes Guillem Fernández—one of the most lucid Catalan and European voices in the fight to eradicate homelessness—to arrive at the scalpel-like precision of Termcat's terminologists. And more: another volunteer—Marisol Alafont—always insisted on key words, asking if they had already "filed" them. For years, she has collected them on the street: frustration, despair, suffering, loneliness, fragility, hopelessness. Ultimately, the director of the Arrels Foundation, the good Bea Fernández, clarified from the outset that she was talking about a dictionary that, without needing any narrative, dissects an entire panorama "of broken lives, of failing systems, of violated rights".A dictionary, in current times, can be a lucid peaceful weapon of massive reconstruction. This one is, and perhaps there is no struggle more urgent and contemporary than the daily battle for language. A terminology against ambiguity, with conscious and consistent words, in times of reductionisms, binarisms, and polarizations. Because language has always been double-edged: it humanizes or brutalizes, transforms or reproduces, generates empathy or provokes rejection. Because words —every word we use— can lead us to simplisticness or complexity, to stigmatization or dignification, to bringing us closer or moving us apart. Not long ago, the philosopher Santiago Alba Rico recalled a recent scene on the metro, when a man entered and announced: "I will not ask you for money. I will only ask you to lift your heads from your mobile phones and say good morning to me." The philosopher remembered that it is easy to deal with abstractions, when the difficult thing is to do so when the needs of those around us become painfully concrete. Like that very concrete thing of avoiding eye contact and looking elsewhere.

OzurieFeeling torn between the life you have and the life you want. MoriiThe desire to capture a fleeting experience. These are the emotions that John Koenig began to translate into words, first as a YouTube game, and then, finally, as a book. Dictionary of countless sorrows (Captain Swing), a journey through emotions that Koenig defines for the first time with a single word, but also an invitation to play with language and desacralize it.

Some medical terms are more difficult to understand than others, especially when discussing complex pathologies or rare tests. Children, however, may initially encounter this difficulty with even the most basic vocabulary, encompassing everyday health terms and related concepts. For this reason, medical vocabulary specialists from Pompeu Fabra University (UPF) in Barcelona have collaborated with over 3,000 children and young people from schools and institutes throughout Catalonia to develop a platform to explain medical terms to children in their own words, using new digital and multimedia formats. This platform, called Diximed, is aimed at children and families, as well as pediatricians and educators. "You have to approach the child's needs, but keeping in mind a psycholinguistic theory that says nothing is learned in leaps and bounds, but always from what is already known. And if what a child knows is incorrect and no one explains it to them, they will always end up carrying that misconception," says Rosa Estopà, principal investigator of the Lex project, a research group at Iulaterm. To carry out this initiative, the participating children were asked to explain what they knew about certain words, such as flu, louse, vaccine, coronavirus, cancer either chickenpoxAmong many others, they were asked to draw them. "We told them they had to do it as if they were explaining it to a child their age who came from another planet," Estopà recalls.

The focus on emotional well-being and the rise of international cuisine are two global phenomena that have permeated our lives and have also reached the dictionary. The lexicographical commission has added 375 new entries to the normative dictionary of the Institut d'Estudis Catalans (DIEC) in 2025, including 117 new entries and 258 modifications or additions. Among the new entries are words such as self-help, dana, rumors, sleeve, jacuzzi, aquagym, sushi and mozzarellaAmong the expansions of meaning in words that already existed, words like cloud, frontal, migrate and padMany words from different dialectal varieties are also being incorporated into the dictionary "so that all speakers feel a connection to it," says philologist Sandra Montserrat. Expanding the standard helps to strengthen the unity of the language.