Soap

i am also user:Lollipop ... i edit from the Lollipop account on my phone, tablet, and laptop, all of which have touchscreens. However I do the vast majority of my editing on this desktop PC and all edits from the Soap account are from the PC.

try#Verb

Please don't remove definitions out of process (RfD or RfV). The wheels of our process grind slowly, but they do grind out bad definitions from the entries eventually. DCDuring TALK 13:43, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

Sorry. I didnt even realize that template linked to something. Soap 00:44, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

note to self

pą doesnt work??? Soap (talk) 12:28, 14 November 2012 (UTC)

• Germanic etymology for fun contradicts itself. (The Appendix:Proto-Germanic/faimnijōn path says it's native, the fæmne path says it's borrowed from Latin.)

  It doesn't actually contradict itself. Read it more carefully and you'll see. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 17:54, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

  I dont see what you mean. In any case if you have to read carefully to find out what it means could it made simpler? Soap (talk) 04:51, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

  Probably could be. I'm not very good at that, though. Basically, it's about the difference between "derived from" and "cognate to" (or "akin to"). —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 04:56, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

sopapa

Please be more careful. If you don't know anything about a language, don't add entries in it without double-checking. For example, the vast majority of Spanish nouns ending in -a are feminine, bot you marked this as masculine. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 00:20, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

Sorry, I copied it from another page and didnt realize that the m was a gender. Soap (talk) 00:48, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

Most such templates have documentation — see {{es-noun}} in this case. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 00:52, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

Babel

Could you add {{Babel}} to your user page? I'd appreciate it. --Dan Polansky (talk) 17:27, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

 Done But what is wrong with transcluding my userpage onto my talk page? Soap (talk) 02:00, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

mensiversary

Hello. I don't know about the etymology of that particular word, but mensual (for "monthly") does exist in English. It's old-fashioned and fairly rare, though. Equinox ◑ 19:30, 12 April 2014 (UTC)

kąpieluszka

Tbh, the first time I'd ever seen this word was thanks to you, and I'm native in Polish XD I would rather go for a simple portmanteau of kąpiel and pieluszka (tbh, it's pretty clever how it's been done, coz both of these words share the sequence "piel" and they together make sense semantically as a portmanteau, so thank you for bringing me into contact with this word!).

OK thanks for the reply. I'll let the etymology stay as it is for now, since as I said Slavic is out of my territory. Soap (talk) 18:17, 3 July 2019 (UTC)

parentification

Hi. How is your sense different from the existing sense? If a child must perform parental duties to the parent, then it is taking on the parent role. I don't see why we need two senses. Equinox ◑ 16:04, 19 February 2021 (UTC)

purposely, hopely

There's also apurpose but no "ahope". Equinox ◑ 11:08, 27 June 2022 (UTC)

visual editor

obviously the visual editor wouldnt exist if it was as bad as it seems to me, so i probably just missed something, but it seems to fail horribly with templates .... allowing ONLY pre-defined parameters, which means essentially no actual content ..... and to "require assistance" with citations for almost the opposite reason, so I think I might just switch back for now —Soap— 15:55, 6 July 2022 (UTC)

I promise I'll fix the problem with citations:ickle as soon as i figure it out. Im still getting used to this, and still having instances like right now where i get stuck in the source-mode editor and cant get the visual editor to load at all.—Soap— 14:10, 7 July 2022 (UTC)

Assigning definitions to adjectives/participles: reclining example

Our RfV discussion was getting a bit far removed from the specific words under RfV.

At Talk:reclining I have collected the most common collocations of reclining and grouped them. I think you would find that our existing adjective definitions are not adequate to cover all these attributive uses. Furthermore, I think it is difficult to cover all of these collocations with just one or two more definitions. Also reclining chair, for which some dictionaries have a separate entry (“reclining chair”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.), is not the best of examples for that very reason.

I think that we do well not to try to have separate adjective definitions unless the word actually meets some other adjectivity tests.

Similarly for noun PoSes for -ing-forms of verbs. One can almost always find over the last centuries someone who pluralized an -ing-form. That is an indication that it could be a true noun, but is not terribly strong evidence. DCDuring (talk) 16:02, 8 September 2022 (UTC)

Okay thank you. Im not used to discussions that move at this speed, and I want to take at least a short break ... maybe two days ... and when I come back maybe I'll focus on the reclining question or see if anything new has come up on the RFV page. I will say that to me the examples you posted on the talkpage are almost all adjectives, .... "reclining pulse rate" is clearly meant to be parsed as "pulse rate while [subject is] reclining", for example, and in other words "reclining" isnt modifying "pulse rate". The simpler examples are definitely adjectives. The way you word what you wrote Im not sure if you agree with me, disagree, or are not taking a side, but I appreciate you separating the discussion from the fast-moving RFV threads. Best regards, —Soap— 21:20, 8 September 2022 (UTC)

Consonants in a row

Is this helpful at all? [1]. Currently times out, but a more thorough query of a database dump would be possible. 98.170.164.88 02:09, 6 November 2022 (UTC)

Ah yes, thank you. I might make two lists, or at least list more than one word for each consonant, since it looks like there's going to be more than I thought. Or I might try to find examples with no reduplication at all (not even baby talk etc). Finnish papupata for example seems more impressive than apupappi which definitely incorporates baby talk. —Soap— 02:13, 6 November 2022 (UTC)

"remove template"

Why are you removing things you obviously don't understand?

There are two issues:

1. In all the entries in question, some of the etymology templates had the wrong first parameter. The first parameter in these templates is the language code of the entry. People who doen't know this tend to copy the templates from other language sections without changing the first parameters to match the language sections they move them to. If they moved them from an Ancent Greek entry, the "grc" in the first parameter will add a category that starts with "Ancient Greek terms...". The way to fix this is to change the language code in the first parameter of any etymology template with a wrong first parameter: in Latin entries, change it to "la". In English entries, change it to "en". Replacing a template with text removes a potentially useful category, when you could have just replaced the language code. What's more, you left the wrong language codes in all of the other templates, so none of your removals accomplished anything.
2. The {{root}} template is deliberately designed not to display anything. Its sole purpose is to add a category of the form "[language name from the first language code] terms derived from the [language name from the second language code] root [root name from the third parameter]". In the Albanian entry pishë, this template had "grc" in the first parameter, so it added the category Ancient Greek terms derived from the Proto-Indo-European root *peyh₂-, which I fixed by replacing the "grc" with "sq". There were also other templates with "grc" in the first parameter, so the main problem was still there. In the other ones you removed, they had the correct codes and had nothing to do with with the "Ancient Greek terms..." categories, which were still there after you "fixed" the entries.

All of the edits I undid removed information without correcting the problem that lead you to make the edits in the first place. If you had bothered to look at the documentation for the templates you would have known that. If you had even bothered to look at the categories after your edits, you would at least have seen that there was something that still needed to be fixed. You've been here for almost a decade and a half- you should know better by now. Chuck Entz (talk) 09:12, 3 December 2022 (UTC)

Okay, sorry for the trouble. I think my edits make perfect sense given what I had to work with, though.

In this edit, I brought the PIE part of the etymology in line with the proto-Germanic .... both just used the {{m}} template. I figured that that must be the proper way to list an etymology. Indeed, I'm still wondering if it is, since if it was wrong for me to remove the PIE template, should it not be also wrong to not have a proto-Germanic template? But I'll let it rest.

Thank you for telling me about the {{root}} template being invisible on purpose, but again, how was I to know? The documentation told me nothing of what you're saying, so again I think my edits removing the root templates made perfect sense based on the knowledge I had available.

In general, I'd say problems like this come up so often, even for experienced users, because our templates are very poorly documented and quite often what's going on under the hood is difficult or impossible to pin down because templates call on other templates, which often call on modules, which are impenetrable. Can we do better? I can accept that it would require so much extra work to type out documentation on the rapidly changing templates that it would slow us down everywhere else, but the trade-off for that is problems like this, where new users who want to help out, and sometimes even well-seasoned users, are constantly making mistakes and creating more work for other people.

Again thank you for your message but I dont have much else to say. —Soap— 12:46, 3 December 2022 (UTC)

"The child that the couple had had had had had no breakfast."

I don't think this is right. It only works with four "had"s. Equinox ◑ 17:54, 31 December 2022 (UTC)

It would if you can describe the use of a surrogate mother to bear a child as "having the child had". I'm not sure that real people say that, though. Chuck Entz (talk) 19:54, 31 December 2022 (UTC)

I see. Giving the words in various orders may make it fractionally clearer then: "the X that Y had had had" implies that "Y'd had X had", or "having X had is what Y had done". Equinox ◑ 14:06, 4 January 2023 (UTC)

virilha

Re: Special:diff/71319415. AFAICT it is not for men only, despite the etymology, as the Portuguese Wikipedia article states "No Brasil a maioria das mulheres depila esta região por motivos estéticos e culturais.", and there are a bunch of search results on Google (including Books) for "virilha da mulher" and similar variations. 70.172.194.25 03:14, 18 February 2023 (UTC)

Admin

Hi Soap! You've been here for ages now, so I'd like to nominate you for adminship Van Man Fan (talk) 06:04, 25 March 2023 (UTC)

Im glad to see the adminship request process here is much more low-key and low-stress than it is on the English Wikipedia. It may be that the duties of adminship itself are less stressful than Wikipedia's as well. However, while I'm glad you appreciate what I do here, I'm happy with things as they are now and don't feel the need to pursue additional responsibilities. In general, I don't like change .... as a project, we've already outlasted many other online communities founded around the same time, and that is one big reason why I've stayed here so long. I plan to stay here for many more years, as well, and hope to see you do the same. Best wishes, —Soap— 07:19, 25 March 2023 (UTC)

‘Ploiță’

This dictionary does confirm your hypothesis: ‘small confections (like fine raindrops)’. I just hope this isn’t a case of folk etymology—the idea of naming candy after rain still isn’t very convincing to me.

As for the children’s songs, they have nothing to do with it—they use the word in its literal meaning (diminutive of ‘rain’). And them being Moldovan means nothing—it’s actually an Oltenian (southern) regionalism. --Biolongvistul (talk) 15:51, 15 April 2023 (UTC)

Thank you. I played all four songs, and they didnt sound alike, which is interesting, but it was clear, as you said, that they weren't singing about candies. —Soap— 13:06, 16 April 2023 (UTC)

Oof… really no need to subject yourself to that. —⁠Biolongvistul (talk) 16:35, 16 April 2023 (UTC)

Metaknowledge

On User talk:Metaknowledge, i posted some questions / comments; you, Soap, replied that Metaknowledge had been inactiv for quite some time, and therefor likely wouldn't see my posts. Do you, Soap, hav anything to say about said comments to Metaknowledge? Solomonfromfinland (talk) 06:21, 7 May 2023 (UTC)

Sorry. I meant to get to this earlier, but I really cant think of anything else to add besides the one comment that I wrote there already. —Soap— 23:43, 21 May 2023 (UTC)

"an etymology is not [...] who coined it"

I disagree. Etymology dictionaries usually include who coins a term. We have {{coinage}} for that; see Category:English coinages. J3133 (talk) 07:42, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

That sounds like scope creep to me .... we already have Wikipedia for that.

This may seem a rather clumsy reply since I just created gnomus last night and mentioned that it was coined in the Late Middle Ages by Paracelsus, but gnomus is a single word, with a traditional etymology behind it, and I think it's worth mentioning details precisely because the etymology is unknown. (Wikipedia suggests it may even be a copyist's error.)

I wrote an extension to my edit summary's comment here. I would have deleted the so-called etymology from that page as well if the entry as a whole were not up for deletion. Likewise, with BeReal, i think the first part of the etymology belongs here:

From be real, intended as a play on words: its primary reference relates to its focus on users uploading unpolished photos, while also being a pun on the term B-reel.

But the second part does not:

The app was developed by Alexis Barreyat, a former employee of GoPro, and Kevin Perreau.

People who want to learn about the development history of the phone application already have Wikipedia just a click away. I'd rather keep our etymology sections simple, as some people claim they're too cluttered already.

Thanks, —Soap— 08:08, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

See Wiktionary:Etymology § Coined expressions. I am not referring to the history of an application, but the history/origin of a word. J3133 (talk) 08:21, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

Yes, Im going through the category right now. Most of them seem fine to me, because they're words with traditional etymologies where it is relevant to know the precise origin of the word. There are some non-proper-noun entries there where I'd be in favor of removing the coinage template, though, such as micronova, where even Wikipedia treats it like a normal article and does not mention the YouTube channel that originated the term. —Soap— 08:25, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

Regarding WordPress, I stand by what I wrote. The etymology section is often the first thing people see when they load the page since it's at the top and a lot of users are on mobile where the screen is taller than wide. I dont have links handy, but I've seen people complain that the etymology section takes up too much space already, and while I think our etymology sections are mostly about the right size, they should be kept as concise as possible while giving only the most relevant information. For proper nouns like WordPress, there is really no need for an etymology section at all unless the founders of the company specifically indicate that the name has a hidden meaning, as in the case of BeReal. The etymology for WordPress that I deleted was

Released on May 27, 2003, by its founders, American developer Matt Mullenweg and English developer Mike Little.

To me this is encyclopedic information, not word history. If it belongs anywhere, it would be in the definition, but again, because Wikipedia is much more convenient for people looking to learn about a company, I don't think we need the information in our definition either. —Soap— 08:34, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

I agree that the information you deleted is encyclopedic; however, I stand by the view, which has consensus, is included in our policy, and is followed by other dictionaries, that coinages are etymological information. J3133 (talk) 08:50, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

OK thanks, I understand now. I should have chosen a different edit summary or used a neutral summary and then a talkpage post. But this editor's pages have been seen by many other eyes, now, and the situation seems to be rather calm. If I feel that it's important to remove any more encyclopedic information from etymology sections (whether from this user's pages or other ones like micronova), I'll make sure to clearly explain what I'm doing and why. —Soap— 11:42, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

The context from which a term emerged into shared usage is arguably more important than the individual who coined it, but the audience for which the coiner wrote can tell us something about that. DCDuring (talk) 12:57, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

@Soap: I have created a Tea room discussion regarding micronova: Wiktionary:Tea room/2023/May § micronova. I and others seem to think that it should not be removed. J3133 (talk) 10:07, 24 May 2023 (UTC)

on the rag

Your edit summary said: "no i dont think its a euphemism. and it could hardly be vulgar and euphemistic at the same time, right?"

Probably not to the same person and not simultaneously to all speakers, but people differ and not just denotations, but also connotations change. I don't know whether we can accommodate this well using our labels, but we do pretend try to be a historical dictionary addressing the needs of all those who try to use our services. DCDuring (talk) 11:21, 13 July 2023 (UTC)

I'd forgotten the term, but euphemism treadmill is relevant. DCDuring (talk) 11:24, 13 July 2023 (UTC)

I noticed as I was reading that Wikipedia also considers it a euphemism. It surprises me, but perhaps menstruation is so off-putting to some people that even a vulgar-sounding expression is better than the plain-spoken word menstruation and its cognates. —Soap— 11:25, 13 July 2023 (UTC)

I wouldn't count menstruation (or any 4-syllable Latinate word) as plain-spoken. "That time of the month" is more plain-spoken, though it evokes more consequence than cause. DCDuring (talk) 11:32, 13 July 2023 (UTC)

How about writing something such as vulgar, slang, sometimes euphemistic? —Soap— 11:27, 13 July 2023 (UTC)

Sure. Not perfect, but better and mercifully brief. DCDuring (talk) 11:32, 13 July 2023 (UTC)

computer problems

i will be mostly using the user:Lollipop acct until i can buy a new mouse. —Soap— 23:43, 26 September 2023 (UTC)

the problem seems to be a jumping cursor, and im worried it will turn out that the problem isnt the mouse. all i have to do is test the mouse on the laptop, but its physically difficult to reach. —Soap— 12:59, 27 September 2023 (UTC)

Ive somewhat adapted to this problem so far by being more careful with the mouse cursor but have not actually fixed it yet. —Soap— 14:42, 28 September 2023 (UTC)

What happened since then? Rodrigo5260 (talk) 19:27, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

To be honest I dont remember if I bought a new mouse, if there was a spare one sitting around, or if I managed to adapt to the jumping cursor. The last one is the least likely, because it was unpredictable. In any case, Im doing okay now. Thanks, —Soap— 19:48, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

gay marriage is listed as something other than a collocation.

We list it as a usex linking to the page in gay (adj). I could change it easy-peasy to a collocation if you want. CitationsFreak (talk) 02:34, 2 October 2023 (UTC)

This was not a great edit

You defined an adjective as a noun. It was fine before! [2]. Equinox ◑ 23:07, 19 April 2024 (UTC)

I apologize. I dont really remember what I was thinking. —Soap— 21:48, 20 April 2024 (UTC)