Contribute

The lexicon is a working notebook. It improves when readers find things the editor missed.

Three ways to contribute

Find an error. If a claim is wrong, a citation is bad, or a translation is off, open an issue on GitHub with the entry name, the line in question, and the correction. Include a source if you have one.

Source an unverified claim. Every entry has an unverified-claims register at the bottom. Each item lists a specific source we’d like to anchor it to (a Sangam poem, a DEDR entry, a Krishnamurti page). If you can supply the citation, with work, poem or page, and a URL where possible, open an issue or send a pull request against the entry’s frontmatter.

Suggest a word. Tamil has tens of thousands of words that deserve this treatment. The lexicon has a few. If there’s a concept whose etymology you’d like written, open an issue with the Tamil word, the English concept, and a sentence on why it matters. Words that are anchored to a thematic cluster (sky, water, body, emotion, time, land, kinship, sound) and that have a real semantic shift to trace will be prioritised.

What the lexicon does not want

Speculative etymologies without sources. Nationalist or revivalist claims about Tamil’s primordial status. Sanskrit-derivation maximalism in the other direction. Reconstructions presented as fact.

The lexicon takes a position, but the position is evidence over claim, always.

Editorial policy

Contributions are reviewed by the editor and accepted, edited, or declined with a brief reason. Accepted contributions are credited by name (or pseudonym, if preferred) in the entry’s frontmatter under a contributors field. The editorial voice and final form of every entry remain the editor’s.

Code

The site is open source. github.com/electricsheepco/tamil-lexicon. Code contributions follow the project’s conventional commits and CLAUDE.md conventions.

Or support it financially

The lexicon is free to read and will stay that way. If it has been useful to you and you’d like to help cover its costs — hosting, source materials, the books and journal access that make sourcing possible — you can contribute via Ko-fi.

Every contribution is acknowledged on the credits page unless you’d prefer to remain anonymous.