Hello, and welcome to Wiktionary!

If you have edited Wikipedia, you probably already know some basics, but Wiktionary does have a few conventions of its own. Please take a moment to learn our basics before jumping in.

First, all articles should be in our standard format, even if they are not yet complete. Please take a moment to familiarize yourself with it. You can use one of our pre-defined article templates by typing the name of a non-existent article into the search box and hitting 'Go'. You can link Wikipedia pages, including your user page, using [[w:pagename]], {{pedia}}, or {{wikipedia}}.

Notice that article titles are case-sensitive and are not capitalized unless, like proper nouns, they are ordinarily capitalized (Poland or January). Also, take a moment to familiarize yourself with our criteria for inclusion, since Wiktionary is not an encyclopedia. Don't go looking for a Village pump – we have a Beer parlour. Note that while Wikipedia likes redirects, Wiktionary deletes most redirects (especially spelling variations), in favor of short entries. Please do not copy entries here from Wikipedia if they are in wikipedia:Category:Copy to Wiktionary; they are moved by bot, and will appear presently in the Transwiki: namespace.

A further major caveat is that a "Citation" on Wiktionary is synonymous with a "Quotation", we use these primary sources to construct dictionary definitions from evidence of the word being used. "References" (aka "Citations" on Wikipedia) are used predominantly for verifying Etymologies and usage notes, not the definitions themselves. This is partly to avoid copyright violation, and partly to ensure that we don't fall into the trap of adding "list words", or words that while often defined are never used in practice.

Note for experienced Wikipedians:
Wiktionary is run in a very different manner from Wikipedia and you will have a better experience if you do not assume the two are similar in culture. Please remember that despite your experience on Wikipedia, that experience may not always be applicable here. While you do not need to be an expert, or anything close to one, to contribute, please be as respectful of local policies and community practices as you can. Be aware that well-meaning Wikipedians have unfortunately found themselves blocked in the past for perceived disruption due to misunderstandings. To prevent a similar outcome, remember the maxim: be bold, but don't be reckless!
Having said that, we welcome Wikipedians, who have useful skills and experience to offer. The following are a couple of the most jarring differences between our projects that Wikipedians may want to learn up front, so things go smoothly for everyone. Changing policy pages on Wiktionary is very strongly discouraged. If you think something needs changing, please discuss it at the beer parlour, after which we may formally vote on the issue. You should also note that Wiktionary has very different user-space policies, we are here to build a dictionary and your user-page exists only to facilitate that. In particular we have voted to explicitly ban all userboxes with the exception of {{Babel}}; please do not create or use them.

We hope you enjoy editing Wiktionary and being a Wiktionarian. Conrad.Irwin 21:59, 30 May 2008 (UTC)Reply

possum edit

Thanks for cleaning up the infinitive, but the conjugation you added to the lemma entry was incorrect. The verb (deprecated template usage) possum does not conjugate like a compound of (deprecated template usage) sum, but instead has further irregularities. --EncycloPetey 15:50, 28 August 2008 (UTC)Reply

discedo edit

Does this verb have a passive conjugation? --EncycloPetey 21:38, 7 September 2008 (UTC)Reply

OK. I asked because some of my references indicate that cedo has an incomplete passive (only the third-person forms exist). --EncycloPetey 21:55, 7 September 2008 (UTC)Reply

Wiktionary:Requested entries:Latin edit

Did you know about this list? It is a place where people who don't know enough about Latin to create the entry can request help. Sometimes, it's because the word is an important source of words in other languages, or has cognates that have recently been created, or maybe someone just came across the word somewhere and couldn't figure out the meaning. Of course, not all the requests are worthy of entries, and sometimes it turns out the requests aren't actually Latin (just Latinoid phrases common in English law or medicine).

Would you like to have a go at creating entries for the "C" words on the list? I suggest "C" to start with because it's a long section, and because I'm working on another part of the list right now. It would be a real bummer if one of us spent all the effort to create an entry while someone else was doing the same for the same entry.

Oh, and thanks for catching the fact that I neglected to add the inflection line template on demonstrandum. It's good to have a addition pairs of eyes around watching Latin pages for format. --EncycloPetey 22:22, 13 September 2008 (UTC)Reply

Latin homographs edit

I've created the entry for infectus, which is both an adjective and the perfect passive participle of inficio. Since the homographs section at WT:ALA is under construction, I'm not quite sure what to do for the entry, so could you look it over? Thanks, Wikiacc () 15:43, 19 October 2008 (UTC)Reply

Looks good; it just needed an etymology for the adjective. Also, there is a noun sense for the participial derivation, and I've added that. --EncycloPetey 17:23, 21 October 2008 (UTC)Reply

Also, I can't tell if inficio is regular in the passive or if it follows facio. --Wikiacc () 15:52, 19 October 2008 (UTC)Reply

It's a regular mixed declension verb. The entry was missing a macron on the third principal part, and the definitions needed to be expressed in the first person, but otherwise the entry was just fine. --EncycloPetey 17:23, 21 October 2008 (UTC)Reply