Wiktionary:Tea room/2021/April

Number of syllables in deinde edit

The section Pronunciation for Latin deinde has a note: “almost always disyllabic“. What does this mean? Disyllabic except on the 1st of April? --Lambiam 15:52, 1 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I assume it means that when it occurs in poetry it usually scans as two syllables but occasionally as three. —Mahāgaja · talk 16:03, 1 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

That's what I meant; hopefully it's made more clear now. Brutal Russian (talk) 02:04, 4 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Pronunciation of farfar and morfar in Swedish edit

The audio files sound like the plurals "farfäder" and "morfäder", except that the "ä"'s are pronounced more like /eː/ than the expected /ɛː/ (at least that's what they sound to me? What should be done about them? Is the latter issue due to /eː/ and /ɛː/ not being distinguished in Gotland Swedish (or due to the difference being smaller than in some other Swedish accent)? Mölli-Möllerö (talk) 16:54, 1 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The audio file given for farfar is indeed the plural. You can enter farfar and farfäder into forvo.com and hear other Swedes pronouncing them. There is nothing exceptional about the audio file and the pronunciation given in Wiktionary, although this woman's vowel is slightly less open. This is within the range of native pronunciations. The audio file given for morfar is "morf" - the audio file is cut off, and so it is neither morfar nor morfäder.86.131.224.175 17:16, 8 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

hybrid learning edit

Is the term hybrid learning (“an educational structure that involves alternating between online/distanced learning and in-person instruction”) idiomatic enough to warrant an entry? —The Editor's Apprentice (talk) 23:41, 1 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I think so. I wonder how long it's been around in this sense. DCDuring (talk) 13:55, 2 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

It has been

Done. —The Editor's Apprentice (talk) 17:39, 4 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

ស្វគ្គ៌ (svarga or svargga) edit

@Kutchkutch: In his recent change comment for this semilemma, @SodhakSH wrote, "Sanskrit: User:RichardW57, User:Kutchkutch: is this स्वर्ग्ग or स्वर्ग? If svargga, alternative script forms should be shown for svar'g'a. If svarga, please fix the translit and use T:sa-sc instead of T:alt form."

The Devanagari form of the word is indeed स्वर्ग. It is the bottom left hand word, transliterated as the start of Face B's line 12 on p12, and transliterated as 'svargg(e)'. Note that the 'v' in the next word but one is similarly doubled. It is a feature of the Khmer Sanskrit orthography of the time. Unfortunately, my good example of modern Khmer script Sanskrit spelling uses Adobe flash, and is therefore no longer accessible to me. This gemination doesn't occur in loan words in modern Khmer. RichardW57 (talk) 23:41, 1 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

throw a punch edit

Where should we define it? Given that several similar expressions exist ("throw punches," "throw the first punch," etc.), should we make it a standalone entry or define this at throw? Imetsia (talk) 16:15, 22 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

moved from main TR page This, that and the other (talk) 23:44, 1 April 2021 (UTC) [reply]

throw is used with other nouns, e.g. "a new boy jumped into the dirt ring they'd drawn and began throwing blows"; "he threw a one-two combination that sent the Texan to the canvas". Equinox ◑ 05:36, 2 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I’ve added a definition to cover this sense of ‘throw’ and an accompanying quote (the earliest sensible quote I could find on Google Books)Overlordnat1 (talk) 19:34, 6 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

possessive/attributive な? edit

There are some instances where な functions similarly to の, as a holdover from older Japanese. This usage is often described in the articles for words which feature it (for example 港, 瞼, or 日向) but it appears to be missing from the な article itself. I'd make the entry myself, but I'm a newcomer to wiki and not very comfortable with the language itself. This usage is also briefly described in ja:な, but seems inadequate and I don't think I can make a reliable translation. Horse Battery (talk) 01:40, 2 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Eirikr, TAKASUGI Shinji. - -sche (discuss) 00:44, 14 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I think it’s a good idea, although it’s not ja but ojp. — TAKASUGI Shinji (talk) 02:43, 14 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed that, as a productive element, it's definitely Old Japanese.

I'm a little fuzzy on that, though -- since this element persists in modern terms and still clearly exists, should we include it as a modern Japanese entry? Or since this is effectively a fossil, and is no longer productive in any way, is it better to only have the etymologies of the modern terms refer to the Old Japanese entry? ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 20:45, 15 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

(Maybe it's just the ~~day~~ week I've been having, I feel a bit muddled on where to put that. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 20:47, 15 April 2021 (UTC))[reply]

Pinay as "local inhabitant" edit

Please review [1] and [2]. I still don't understand what a "local inhabitant" is, and I think this user has done some well-meaning damage. Equinox ◑ 05:56, 2 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Local inhabitant is pretty self-explanatory. It might have been better to say "resident". A resident of the Philippines, although you could argue that foreigners with official residency there would not be Pinoys or Pinays. I'm not a fan of the way the wording currently there has "who is female" a long way from the noun it qualifies. A female citizen or resident of the Philippines? 86.131.224.175 06:51, 2 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think it's self-explanatory at all. What is a NON-local inhabitant? Equinox ◑ 07:46, 2 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I suppose something like "native inhabitant" is meant. I agree this is not clear enough, "local inhabitant" could also suggest "native inhabitant of a specific locality" if you try to read between the lines. If "native inhabitant of the Philippines" is meant then the definition really is too vague. And you're not supposed to have to read between the lines in a dictionary in the first place. ~~←₰-→~~ Lingo ^Bingo _Dingo (talk) 09:42, 2 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

squailing as a thing edit

Apparently it means To throw weighted sticks at small animals.. For pure non-lexicographical curiosity, why would someone do such a thing? As a game? For hunting? Yeah, we could add quotes, etymology and pronunciation to this entry, but who really cares about those things, right? Yellow is the colour (talk) 20:10, 3 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

According to Wikipedia's short but fascinating article on Cock throwing, the answer may be "out of hatred for the French". That article also hints at a possible etymology (goose quailing). Though that phrase gets 0 hits on Google Books, so maybe someone just made it up. Colin M (talk) 00:14, 5 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

water edit

Is there actually anyone in Philadelphia or New York who pronounces water as [wʊɾɚ], or is it just a perception people have of the nonstandard pronunciation of the vowel as [wɔə̯ɾɚ] or something? Dngweh2s (talk) 03:03, 4 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I don’t want to appear ultracrepidarian as I’m English but I’ve normally heard ‘water’ pronounced with the first vowel pronounced in an essentially English way by Pennsylvanians, rather than shorter, like the word ‘wood’. I have, however, heard the word ‘ball’ pronounced exactly as ‘bull’ a couple of times in the film ‘Raging Bull’ (ironic, considering the film’s title) by New Yorkers. On that basis, maybe it’s true and not a stereotype that in particularly broad and old-fashioned accents of the North Eastern US including Pennsylvania, the ‘aw’ vowel was pronounced that way?Overlordnat1 (talk) 03:43, 4 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Dngweh2s: I don't know about NYC, but I've definitely heard Philadelphians acknowledge that water for them rhymes with footer and not with daughter, which they do not pronounce */ˈdʊtɚ/. So it's a real use of the foot vowel, and not just a local phonetic realization of the thought vowel. —Mahāgaja · talk 07:36, 6 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I've known people from Philly, and yes, the pronunciation of water as wooter is a thing. Leasnam (talk) 22:32, 6 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

prioritaire edit

I’ve added ‘prioritaire’ as a translation in our ‘first class’ article for the definition relating to stamps. I’m not a Swedish speaker but received a letter from Sweden today that had a sticker with that word on it, probably borrowed directly from French, clearly indicating to my satisfaction that this must be the meaning of the word in this context. Can anyone confirm that? Should we add a definition to the ‘prioritaire’ article itself? I would attach a screenshot of the letter to this comment if I knew how (indeed if it’s even possible)Overlordnat1 (talk) 03:53, 4 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I wouldn't assume that prioritaire is a Swedish word just because you got a letter with a sticker on it. There's a long tradition of French being the international language of the mail; when I was a kid in America I was taught always to write "PAR AVION" on a letter to be sent overseas, but that doesn't make par avion English. —Mahāgaja · talk 09:19, 4 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

For traditional reasons, the Universal Postal Union, now a UN agency but established all the way back in 1874, conducts all its official business in French. The Convention postale universelle, an international treaty, the latest version of which, as far as I could see, is from 26 October 1979,^[3] is drawn up solely in French. French terms like prioritaire and par avion are left untranslated in translations of the convention.^{[4], Article 17-108} It is unlikely that the Swedish postal service would understand the intention of an arriving package being marked “優先”, so it is a Good Thing that such indications are internationally standardized. --Lambiam 15:31, 4 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

that’s very interesting and thanks for the info. There surely is a case for adding it as a Swedish word AND an English word though, or maybe an Interlingua word (like ‘ciao’ is and ‘j’adoube’ probably should be, for example). I’ll add an RFV tag and see what the consensus isOverlordnat1 (talk) 16:21, 4 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I think you mean Translingual, not Interlingua (which is a specific constructed language). —Mahāgaja · talk 19:02, 4 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

bok choy edit

baby bok choy

bok choy

(Notifying Atitarev, Tooironic, Suzukaze-c, Justinrleung, Mar vin kaiser, Geographyinitiative, RcAlex36, The dog2, Frigoris, 沈澄心, 恨国党非蠢即坏, Michael Ly): I've been having a disagreement with a Mongolian IP and @Bathrobe (who seem to be the same person) about the correct Mandarin translation for this term. They added 小白菜, which certainly isn't wrong. My contention is, however, that 白菜 should be the more general term, and 小白菜 should be specifically for the younger stage of the same vegetable, known in English as baby bok choy. I realize that my experience as a non-native speaker with botanical training who's been shopping in Los Angeles-area Asian markets for 40 years can only go so far, so I'd like a reality check to avoid any chance of propagating misinformation. I apologize for not doing this at the time I made my original edit (I got sidetracked), but I was finally forced by having my edit undone- I know better than to edit war over something like this where I could be completely wrong. Thanks! Chuck Entz (talk) 00:54, 5 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Just for reference, I'll add images of the two types of bok choy I'm familiar with.Chuck Entz (talk) 01:00, 5 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I think that User Chuck Entz should have mentioned that I changed the Mandarin translation for "Chinese cabbage, Brassica rapa chinensis" to 小白菜.

There is no translation list at "bok choy" for "Chinese cabbage, Brassica rapa pekinensis", where 白菜 would be entirely appropriate.

To add to the confusion: the vegetables in the two photos shown would, I suspect, be called 上海青 and 小白菜 respectively. Should 上海青 be added? -- although I've personally heard this called 油菜. (Japanese Wikipedia says that 油菜 is a Dongbei term....)

139.5.219.76 01:12, 5 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Chuck Entz The IP seems to be right. 白菜 in Mandarin is by default 大白菜 (napa), and bok choy would not usually be called 白菜. The English usage of bok choy to refer to Brassica rapa subsp. chinensis comes from Cantonese, where 白菜 by default is Brassica rapa subsp. chinensis. — justin(r)leung _{{ (t...) | c=› }} 04:31, 5 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Baby bok choy, if it's referring to Shanghai bok choy, is usually called 上海青, 青江菜 or 上海白菜 (depending on where you're from). There is also smaller version of the bok choy with whiter stalks (rather than light green), which would be called 白菜仔 or 白菜苗 in Cantonese. — justin(r)leung _{{ (t...) | c=› }} 04:35, 5 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Potential difference in UK vs US retail. In the UK, this (courtesy of Sainsbury's) is the pak choi for large retail, equivalent to 上海青/青江菜/上海白菜; it is alternatively called Shanghai or green pak choi. The white-stemmed 小白菜 is rare enough to be called spoon pak choi instead. --- Michael Ly (talk) 11:45, 5 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Scanner reading edit

Hello,

How would you restore the following text, coming from a Google's book scanning :

10.01.09 DALLY HALT Researcher : Gulf of Mexico's nitrogen levels higher Illinois farming big contributorat problem , hoppays from Illinois , Iowa and other nitrogen flow into the Mississip er the panel discussion . trogen levels are three to four ...

My research

Thank you

Lekselle (talk) 09:13, 5 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

This is more a question for the Wikipedia reference desk. The snippet is apparently from a file of clippings of Illinois-related news items collected from a variety of sources. The text snippet is garbled beyond help because the app Google uses for OCR apparently does not understand the concept of multi-column text. I think “10.01.09” should be ”10-09-99”. The image fragment is from a cartoon, possibly published in the Daily Herald (garbled into “DALLY HALT”), referring to the “Operation Safe Road” scandal that led to the downfall of Illinois Governor George Ryan. It is not related to the remaining text fragment. The text is about an alarming increase of the nitrogen levels in the Gulf of Mexico, to which the agricultural runoff into the Illinois and Iowa rivers contributes. It is based on a report by a researcher named Goolsby, quite possibly this report. I could not make out the newspaper the clipping is from. --Lambiam 17:02, 5 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

In fact, I'm working on the French Wiktionary's word contributorat. It is a very rare word, and one among a few possible etymologies could have been an English word 'contributorat'. Here we read 'contributorat', but it could be 'contributor at'.

Never mind, thanks a lot, Lambiam

Lekselle (talk) 22:44, 22 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

live on the edge edit

Is this SOP (with sense 2 of on the edge) or is this the only real use of the sense 2 of "on the edge?" Imetsia (talk) 18:40, 5 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I think it passes WT:JIFFY. The development of the term over time is interesting. "Living on the edge" seems to appear suddenly on the scene around 1980. Before that, it seems people were limited to living on the edge of things (poverty, ruin, civilization, a volcano, etc.). This is sort of apparent by:

living on the edge at Google Ngram Viewer
But appears much more clearly if you add a period to exclude "edge of" constructions: live_INF on the edge . at Google Ngram Viewer

But I have a hard time finding on the edge (sense 1 or 2) outside of live on the edge before 1990 or so. Google books finds 3 instances of "live life on the edge" from the 1980s, and one of just "life on the edge". Also a 1987 Hansard quote: "The Government does not have a system in place to assist those farms that are now teetering on the edge." So it seems live on the edge arrived first, and later the "on the edge" portion was put to other uses (first in closely related phrases, but with a widening range over time).

Searching for "on the edge ." in the TV corpus seems to basically support this story. The first few results (excluding literal edges) are (edit: these aren't actually the earliest examples - TV corpus has weird sorting behaviour - but I think it's still pretty representative of the trend):

1992: He was the kind who'd take a gamble, live on the edge .
1995: I've been forging money. No more living on the edge .
1995: I'd heard he really liked to live out there on the edge .?
1997: But crocodiles still thrive on the edge .
2001: This is a story of living on the edge .
2001: I'm trembling all over with excitement. I'm a robot on the edge .

The further ahead you go in time, the more free the expressions get ("These guys eat on the edge").

(In this I didn't try to distinguish between the "fun peril" and "sad peril" senses, since they have a fuzzy border, and seem to have developed around the same time.) Colin M (talk) 20:21, 5 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Spanish verb irregularities edit

@DTLHS, Koszmonaut, Pablussky, AugPi, Ser be etre shi, Vivaelcelta I have a few questions about irregular verb forms in Spanish.

The current Module:es-conj and submodules claim the following irregular past participles: desposeer -> desposeso (along with desposeído); manumitir -> manumiso (along with manumitido); sustituir -> sustituto (along with sustituido). None of these irregular forms are listed in RAE. Are they real?
The current module claims the existence of a verb desnacer "to become unborn", with irregular past participle desnato (along with desnacido). RAE does not list this verb. Is it real, and is the irregular past participle real?
The current module claims that valer has two imperatives, regular vale and irregular val. RAE lists only vale; is val real?
The current module claims that raer has three forms in the first-person singular present indicative: raigo, rayo, rao. Per the module, only the first two can be used to form present subjunctives (yo raiga or raya; tú raigas or rayas; etc.). RAE does not list rao. Is it real?
The current module claims that imperative ven (from venir) + nos contracts irregularly to venos. Is this correct, or is the regular form vennos correct? I'm having a hard time verifying this.
The current module claims that imperative sal + le is irregularly spelled sal-le. Various pages on the Internet discuss this particular issue and claim that this combination can be pronounced but has no accepted spelling, and that the RAE specifically asserted in 2010 that sal-le is incorrect (see [5] for example). What is the correct answer here?

Thanks! Benwing2 (talk) 03:09, 6 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

1-4: I'm not familiar with any of those alternative forms you're asking about (the strange participles, desnacer, val, rao). Since they're not listed in the RAE I'd suggest excising them, unless quotations can be found for them. I'd bet desnacer exists as a fancy invention in some literary texts. In fact, I just checked the RAE's diachronic corpus (CORDE), and I found one example of desnace and another desnacer, both from the 20th century.

Objetos para dar y para olvidar, para perder y recobrar, para desnacer, para vivir, para estar. (José Ángel Valente, Punto cero, "1955 - 1971")
[Objects to give and to forget, to lose and to recover, to be unborn, to live, to be somewhere.]

5: There's a difference between venos (you, singular, see us) and vennos (you, singular, come to us). Someone may have confused the latter with the former, probably partly because the latter is often pronounced like the former (or at least I often pronounce vennos as "venos"...).

6: The RAE's official position, believe it or not, is to avoid joining sal to -le entirely. This can be found in this Twitter response of @RAEinforma, which links to a document that says:

Así pues, nuestro sistema ortográfico no cuenta con recursos para representar la secuencia fónica consistente en la articulación de dos eles seguidas dentro de una palabra, lo que en español resulta, por otra parte, absolutamente excepcional;

Instead, they recommend using sal al encuentro de..., sal a su encuentro. The document says this is also addressed in the official orthography of 2010, in part 1 section 6.5.2.1.1 (page 174), but I don't feel like checking that too right now.--Ser be être 是^talk/stalk 06:13, 6 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I'll try my best to answer.

Although those irregular past participles must have existed at some point, because we do have words like sustituto or manumiso, and the RAE lists their etymology in these irregular verb forms, in everyday speech (and I'd say even in cult speech) those forms are not used anymore, other than as nouns or adjectives. When using a compound verb tense, they feel wrong. For example, you cannot say he sustituto.
I'd say this word doesn't exist except for very sporadic use for literary reasons. Searching it up on Google, I found a book called El hombre que quería desnacer (The man who wanted to be unborn), but that looks like the only time this word has ever been used.
I'd say val doesn't exist.
I haven't come across this particular verb in my entire life, but in DRAE and DPHP it's specified that both raigo and rayo are correct, but it doesn't say anything about rao, which sounds unnatural when comparing to other similar verbs, such as traer or caer.
To be honest, I can't think of a single sentence where you could use this combination. Like, I can think of venos in terms of ve (imperative of ver) and nos, but not for what you're saying. I guess that's why you haven't been able to verify it. I'd write ven + nos as vennos, but I might be completely wrong.
To be honest, I can't think of a single sentence where you could use this combination. Like, I can think of venos in terms of ve (imperative of ver) and nos, but not for what you're saying. I guess that's why you haven't been able to verify it.
And I didn't know about this, but apparently is a whole thing between Spanish linguists. The thing is there is no correct answer. RAE says that both salle and sal-le are incorrect, but doesn't give a correct option. They just say that you should change the sentence to avoid this particular issue.

I hope this helped. But please remember that I am not a linguist, nor do I know how they speak Spanish in other countries, so all of this might not be true for other speakers. --Pablussky (talk) 06:41, 6 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Pablussky, Ser be etre shi Thank you both of you for your detailed answers! I am implementing a new version of {{es-conj}} and have incorporated these answers into the module. Benwing2 (talk) 01:38, 7 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Fit edit

I’ve added the meaning of ‘fought’ for ‘fit’, which obviously appears in ‘Joshua fit the battle of Jericho’. It might be difficult to get other attestations of this meaning but it would be a shame if it doesn’t end up passing our criteriaOverlordnat1 (talk) 20:48, 6 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

logarithmand? edit

I'm wondering what to call the $x$ contained in $log b x = y$ . Some seem to use the term argument, but isn't it vague? The base $b$ is an argument too, after all.

I'm personally tempted to call it the logarithmand, on the model of radicand. But is this in use? I can find this GB hit, but it looks like a mention more than a use.

(It was noted here that German Logarithmand exists.) 85.201.169.175 22:28, 6 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Further English uses here, here, and here, so it seems attestable, albeit rare and almost exclusively used in translations from German. — Vorziblix (talk · contribs) 15:29, 7 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

It's just the log of x in base b. The primary argument doesn't need a name. One would not expect the x in x² to be called a "squareand". Equinox ◑ 15:31, 7 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

One can say “the square root of negative radicand is not a real number”. How should one fill in the dots in “the logarithm of a negative ... is not a real number”? (Obviously, in this sentence one can use “number”, but in a treatise on logarithms one might want to have a section on “the case of negative ...s” or such. And, by that argument, radicand would be a superfluous word.) In

x^{n}

, the

x

is called the base. --Lambiam 22:46, 7 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia thinks it is called the anti-logarithm. 120.150.121.92 06:41, 8 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The antilogarithm is the inverse of the logarithm. So antilogarithm : logarithm = square : square root. “The antilogarithm of

x

for base

b

is

y

” means the same as “the logarithm of

y

for base

b

is

x

”. Expressed as a formula,

\operatorname {antilog} _{b}x=y\Leftrightarrow \log _{b}y=x.

But mathematicians generally prefer the notation

b^{x}

to

\operatorname {antilog} _{b}x.

--Lambiam 11:08, 9 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Pompadom edit

I’ve added this nonstandard form of ‘papadam’, far and away the most interesting in terms of how it sounds and durably attested with quotes. I’ve kept screenshots of the earliest mentions I could find on Trip Advisor, Mumsnet and Twitter of the word and could add these to the article too, especially if people don’t like the song title reference I’ve included (which lacks a clear definition or usage, or indeed proof that it actually dates back to the 60s or 70s, but is of historical interest as it’s the only song I can find with that title). Also interesting is the hit for ‘pompadom’ on Google Maps which suggests an Indian restaurant of that name: if you Google the address that appears, you get a Cricklewood-based Persian/Afghani restaurant instead that has been reviewed online since at least 2012, so presumably it used to be an Indian restaurant called ‘Pompadom’, though I can find no proof of that.Overlordnat1 (talk) 02:52, 7 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe some people have got it mixed up with pompadour! Equinox ◑ 17:38, 7 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Probably. A search on Google Books give many instances of ‘Madame de Pompadom’!Overlordnat1 (talk) 21:08, 7 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

"Closing" old Tea Room discussions edit

Old RFVs and RFDs eventually get closed and archived. This means that the discussion moves to the relevant entry's talk page, and action is taken based on consensus (e.g. deleting an entry, or removing or preserving a sense). We don't do this with Tea Room discussions, which means they can't easily be found from entries, and any decisions often go ignored (and so the same talking-points may come up again and again over time).

Can we/should we archive these to talk pages, and get the changes done? Anyone interested in hopping into the time machine and being a "task force"? Equinox ◑ 16:45, 7 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I think such archiving has been done in a few cases. But one could equally just link tea room discussions from entry talk pages; sometimes one links other entries’ discussions via {{also}}, but there should be a more conspicuous or dedicated template. We shouldn’t retroactively move Tea Room discussions anyway, if only due to incoming links from who knows where. Fay Freak (talk) 17:33, 7 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that this is an issue. I've started using entry talk pages more for this reason, even though they don't get much traffic. I think archiving threads from here to the relevant talk page, or adding a link from the talk page to the archived Tea Room thread are both fine ideas, though it does seem like a lot of manual effort. Maybe a bot could be programmed to do it automatically (if there's exactly one mainspace wikilink in the section heading, then use the corresponding talk page, otherwise don't do anything). Colin M (talk) 02:13, 8 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

come the raw prawn as "feign innocence" edit

I can't say this is a phrase we hear in England much, but I had always understood the raw prawn as being somebody innocent or naive (compare "raw recruit"), thus coming the raw prawn would be feigning innocence. However, our etymology gives this as only one possibility, and not the first one. It even says that "come" in this sense is "putative". Yet we have other such phrases like come the acid and come the old soldier. Is it really in so much doubt? Equinox ◑ 16:57, 7 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

According to Fairlex: "In Australian English, a stupid person can be referred to as a prawn."

For the full expression Cambridge has: "to try to deceive someone, especially by pretending that you have no knowledge of something". DCDuring (talk) 18:48, 7 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

This phrase, while being Ozzie, is well understood in England. The second explanation on Wiktionary seems made up. Prawn = some kind of fool. Raw = naive, innocent. But the word "raw" is also used here as a kind of jocular rhyme with prawn. They have the same vowel sound at least. The meaning is exactly as given: stop acting like you're too stupid to understand. You can add "with me" on the end: don't come the raw prawn with me, mate! 86.131.224.175 16:42, 8 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Cheese edit

It’s reasonably commonplace to distinguish between 2 different kinds of jam in U.K. speech, ‘jelly’ and ‘cheese’. ‘Jelly’ is a thinner type of jam, most famously ‘red currant jelly’ (a traditional accompaniment to lamb); ‘cheese’ is a thicker jam. I know someone who made some jam and sold it at church to raise money, he made ‘crabapple jelly’ alongside ‘crabapple cheese’! We could do with an extra definition or usage notes for ‘jelly’ and another definition for ‘cheese’ too but I’m not a jam expert. On a jelly related note, surely the primary meaning for ‘aspic’ should be the meat jelly itself, which is currently missing, rather than something made with meat jelly? I’ve always described the gelatinous substance inside a pork pie as ‘aspic’ rather than ‘jelly’. Also ‘jeely piece’ is Scots dialect for ‘jam sandwich’, so bearing this in mind they probably use the word ‘jelly’ itself more often than we do in England to refer to jam, even if they do pronounce it ‘jeely’! Overlordnat1 (talk) 21:42, 7 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I’ve made a few small changes to a few articles to reflect the above, including adding two new senses of ‘cheese’ (including the ‘lemon cheese’ reference, which appears in my Chambers and Collins dictionaries, even though I’ve only ever known it as ‘lemon curd’), a new sense of ‘aspic’, new entries for ‘Redcurrant jelly’ and ‘jeely’ and some quotesOverlordnat1 (talk) 11:12, 8 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

On a related note, we could probably do with entries for ‘preserved in amber’ and ‘preserved in aspic’ meaning ‘unchanged for a long period of time’ but then I suppose they might be argued to be SOP

I've never heard of "cheese" to mean some kind of meat jelly or jam, and so it can't be that "commonplace" in UK speech. I doubt 9 out of 10 people in England would understand it. But, then again, I don't make food for church fêtes. Maybe ladies over 70 would all be au fait with this. The OED has as its meaning 4b "cheese - a conserve of fruit having the consistency of cheese". This is probably what the OP is referring to, but it is hardly commonplace. Entering "crabapple cheese" into Google Images brings up some images of what this is. As for aspic, yes, the Ukrainian/Russian dish eaten at the New Year called холодец is "beef aspic" in English. That usage has the whole dish referred to as "aspic", but you can also call this "beef in aspic" in English, where "aspic" refers to the gelatine alone. The OED says the gelatine can be referred to as "aspic-jelly". "Preserved in aspic" is a phrase that should at least be given as a usage example, if not a head entry of its own. 86.131.224.175 17:03, 8 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I did qualify the word ‘commonplace’ with the word ‘reasonably’. ‘Damson cheese’ has 9,220 Google hits and I am in fact in my 30s but I’m glad we’ve agreed it deserves a definition and entry. I shall now add an entry for ‘preserved in aspic’Overlordnat1 (talk) 18:09, 8 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

When you make a new entry here, you can hyperlink it to the Wiktionary entry. In fact, you should do that. E.g. "cheese" here. This is done automatically by entering two square brackets before the word and two square brackets afterwards. I have edited the heading Cheese here to give it the required hyperlinks. 86.131.224.175 19:13, 8 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

We have an entry for lemon cheese, defined as "lemon curd". Apparently curd is a fruit preparation that includes eggs, butter, sugar. The consistency of lemon curd is something like some jams. I don't think of cheese as having a single consistency. DCDuring (talk) 22:13, 8 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Without much digging one can find online recipes that often contain some discussion, as:

A fruit cheese like this Spiced Cherry Cheese is a firmer version of jam often served with cheese and crackers etc. The most famous of these fruit cheeses has to be membrillo [ quince cheese ]. That Spanish quince paste that no self respecting cheeseboard should be without.

The recipe does not involve eggs, so the essential features of fruit curd/cheese seems to be its fairly thick, smooth consistency and the lack of free liquid. It is not much like any jelly or gelatin. DCDuring (talk) 22:54, 8 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

See Fruit preserves on Wikipedia.Wikipedia for nicer distinctions among the various kinds thereof, including "curd/cheese". DCDuring (talk) 22:58, 8 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Those are interesting links and looking at recipes and pictures of ‘damson cheese’ vs ‘’damson jam’ and ‘quince jam’ I agree with you that they are more or less indistinguishable. I also agree that ‘jelly’ and ‘cheese’ are distinct, at least in the limited and occasional U.K. sense of ‘jelly’, i.e. ‘thin jam’, so no arguments from me there. Jam is certainly the most common word to describe both thin and thick fruit conserves in the U.K. by a long chalk though.Overlordnat1 (talk) 23:36, 8 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

a#Albanian edit

In the course of trying to reduce template/module and hence memory usage on a, I've noticed a number of other issues, such as that the Votic section had some duplicate ety sections with mismatched part of speech headers vs headword-line templates (which I fixed) and wrong header levels in Norwegian Bokmal (also fixed), but also that ety 1 of the Albanian section is two different etymologies for "conjunction" defined as meaning either "or" or "there". Is "there" a conjunction? What is the relationship of the two etymologies, sqj-pro *a and sqj-pro *hau, presented under ety 1? - -sche (discuss) 00:55, 9 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

thrombocytopaenia edit

The alternative-forms header at thrombocytopenia right now contains a long-winded comment on why the form is incorrect. Despite the unprofessional level of prescription, the point about etymology is correct, the 'ae' spelling has fewer than 1% of the hits of the 'e' spelling and a high propotion of the people who use the 'ae' spelling do not seem to be native speakers. Should it be RFD'd? ~~←₰-→~~ Lingo ^Bingo _Dingo (talk) 16:45, 9 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Unless it's common enough to be a {{misspelling of}}. —Mahāgaja · talk 17:52, 9 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

That's highly subject to individual judgement, but as stated thrombocytopenia seems more than a hundred times more common on Google Books. I guess it should at least be labelled "rare" and "nonstandard". ~~←₰-→~~ Lingo ^Bingo _Dingo (talk) 12:55, 11 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

will someone to do something edit

e.g. "The hypnotist willed her to rise from her chair." Does our verb at will cover this adequately? Chambers 1908 has: "v.t. to command: to subject to another's will, as in hypnotism". Equinox ◑ 19:31, 9 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Etymology 3 seems to at least halfway cover it: "To try to make (something) happen by using one's will (intention)." Our definition of manifest as "to will something to exist" uses this sense too, and manifest can be replaced with will. The old OED has these relevant senses. - -sche (discuss) 20:08, 9 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I think this sense is often less tentative, more “to actually make something happen”. “God willed the world to come into being”;^[6] “a people ... willed the dream into reality”;^[7] “She had long gotten over attempting to will something to happen”^[8] (where the tentativeness is conspicuously present in the verb form attempting, thereby clearing the verb will of all suspicion). --Lambiam 19:36, 10 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Good point. How should we define it? "To compel, or attempt to compel, something to happen or someone to do something, by the force of one's will"? (Or use "induce" like the OED or "command" like Chambers, but "compel" just felt like a fitting verb to me.) Since one can, of course, also will something to happen and yet find that it does not happen, and that one has google books:"unsuccessfully willed" it. - -sche (discuss) 22:43, 10 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Sounds fine. Yeah, compel is better (at least for my hypnosis example; though whether God can "compel" the world into existence I am less sure). Equinox ◑ 22:52, 10 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps, with a slight change in emphasis, “to exert one's force of will in order to compel or cause to happen”?— Pingku^dimmi 02:55, 11 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Or, shorter, “to compel or cause to happen by one's force of will”? But do not forget that there are also uses where the act of willing refers to an attempt, as when it does not succeed in making something happen, but remains in vain – a closely related yet distinguishable sense. --Lambiam 21:02, 11 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

(Prior to your comment,) I reworded the sense to "To exert one's force of will (intention) in order to compel, or attempt to compel, something to happen or someone to do something." I wasn't sure that successfully willing something to happen successfully and unsuccessfully willing something to happen are different senses. Maybe they are... how many other words like this can refer to doing something either successfully or unsuccessfully and would thus have to be split if we decided that distinction had to be handled with separate senses? I can find instances of "unsuccessfully manifesting" things... - -sche (discuss) 01:18, 14 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

take a hint, take the hint edit

Are these the same thing? And if not, are the definitions right? I am familiar with usage like She finally took the hint and realised it was time for her to leave, but that doesn't involve conceding to mounting evidence as our entry would suggest. It is more a case of eventually waking up to the fact that people are trying to imply something to you, which is documented at take a hint. This, that and the other (talk) 09:55, 11 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

And the "eventually" is not inherent in the term itself but implied by finally in the example. The example could have been, She took the hint without batting an eye and left right away. Merriam–Webster treats get the hint and take the hint as one lemma. Perhaps something for RfV? Note also that there are plenty of {{&lit}} uses. --Lambiam 21:30, 11 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The &lit uses are hard to quickly distinguish from non-SoP uses. Indeed, the phrase is almost SoP - indeed, OED doesn't have a separate entry for it - but take adds just enough semantic content that an entry is needed. (I should add that cases like this are made rather difficult by Wiktionary's ongoing failure to deal systematically with collocations, in my opinion.)

I was thinking RFV, but I ultimately decided to bring it here for discussion. I'm still keen to hear from any other contributors. This, that and the other (talk) 05:06, 13 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

It would be interesting to run this through the British National Corpus. AFAIK, it is normally "take the hint". Let's see if he takes the hint. He took the hint, etc. But if the context were more indefinite, then it could possibly be, e.g "he needs to learn to take a hint once in a while". 86.131.224.175 02:43, 15 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

chuck edit

TL;DR: Which sense is the one used--originally, or today--in the nursery rhyme?

I never knew that woodchuck does not actually mean a lumberjack. Now I can't even find a definition close to to chuck wood. I expect it belongs in the Etymology 3 section where no etymology is given, where senses pertain to throwing as can be seen similarly at shock as well, which is notably uncertain of origin (but see etymonline: chuck¹, "possibly from French choquer "to shock, strike against," imitative (see shock (n.1))").

Webster's (1828) defined "To strike, or give a gentle blow; as, to chuck one under the chin." Other dictionaries (onelook, MW, Collins, AHD, lexico) only have the noun ca. "A playful touch under the chin" (lexico), ~~"jab"~~ (PS: there's no such quotable, my bad). I find it difficult to imagine the nursery rhyme meant to ask how much wood would a woodchuck throw?! In case it matters, I doubt that was imitative. It is phonologically difficult, sure. For completeness sake, google translate gives me chop wood (German Holz hacken).

Should to strike be added as {{lb|obsolete}}?

Can the nursery rhyme be added as quotation?

If so, where to in either case?

ApisAzuli (talk) 11:30, 11 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I’ve always understood it as meaning ‘throw’ and haven’t heard of ‘Chuck under the chin’, so that sense is probably obsolete, or at least dated. I don’t think we should be concerned that woodchucks/groundhogs can’t toss the caber, as the reference to wooodchucks chucking wood is clearly jocularOverlordnat1 (talk) 14:59, 11 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I agree. Compare "How much oil would a gumboil boil?" --ColinFine (talk)

te elfder ure edit

That the form without the definite article is the official form strikes me as very counterintuitive. Phrases containing an ordinal number and a noun for a unit of time usually require a definite article in Dutch (van het eerste uur, in de vierde minuut). Have the ~~pen pushers~~ ents of the official spelling ever elaborated on why this form was chosen? It would certainly improve the entry if that could be explained to the reader. ~~←₰-→~~ Lingo ^Bingo _Dingo (talk) 13:08, 11 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I removed "official form" from the usage note because I could not make sense of it, whether you mean the public domain translation which anyone can edit free of charge, or the public domain vernacular which anyone can edit free of charge.

I suspect the etymology pertains to the one-left origin (e-lev(en)) for at (the) last minute does not mean walk clock time. Hence I linked ter elfder uyre as if an idiom, which was a mistake I reckon, if it is (a) not the modern (office-ial) spelling, and (b) grammatically regular sum of parts.

The dative construction is usual in German, by the way. "in letzter Minute" / "in der letzten Minute" might alternate between forms. Both are dative. "zu früher Stund'" (at early hours) does not commonly alternate anyhow. Might be something about uncountability and definiteness? ApisAzuli (talk) 05:08, 12 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The Word list of the Dutch language has an official prescriptive status based on ministerial decrees issued by the Flemish, Dutch and Surinamese governments. The latest edition recognizes only the spelling te elfder ure. The designation “official spelling” refers to this. --Lambiam 11:15, 12 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The spelling uyre is an obsolete variant spelling from long before there was any notion of standardized orthography; the same author could spell any given word in multiple ways in the same text or sometimes even the same sentence. I think that the letter ⟨y⟩ in this case simply indicated that the preceding vowel was “long”. --Lambiam 11:57, 12 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

In the source from which the idiom is derived (Matthew 20) the combination is a sum of parts, like in the original Greek or in the KJV: “For the kingdom of heaven is like unto a man that is an householder, which went out early in the morning to hire labourers into his vineyard. ... And he went out about the third hour, ... Again he went out about the sixth and ninth hour, ... And about the eleventh hour he went out, ... And when they came that were hired about the eleventh hour, ...”. It is this last occurrence, “about the eleventh hour”, that corresponds to Dutch te(r) elfder ure. --Lambiam 12:11, 12 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Apis, I have reverted your change for the reasons that Lambiam has set out. You can also assume that both Lambiam and I are familiar with such basic use of the dative. ~~←₰-→~~ Lingo ^Bingo _Dingo (talk) 15:21, 12 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Searching for these forms in the dbnl corpus produces 432 hits for te elfder ure for the 50-year period 1945–1994 versus 162 hits for ter elfder ure for that period. The choice of the ents, who are known for taking their time deliberating, may have been based on the observation that this newfangled spelling was crowding out its rhotic root. --Lambiam 11:38, 12 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, thanks, now I am unsure how I got the impression that they used to be about as common; BGC indicates more or less the same shift. I'll edit the usage note. ~~←₰-→~~ Lingo ^Bingo _Dingo (talk) 15:21, 12 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

In the period 1947–1968 there was a magazine named Te Elfder Ure.^[9] I wonder if its name contributed to the demise of the ⟨r⟩. --Lambiam 15:38, 13 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Pronunciation of "during" edit

I thought that the standard American pronunciation was /ˈdɚɪŋ/ Dngweh2s (talk) 14:10, 12 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

It seems to be at least as commonplace as the given pronunciations and the same could be said for ‘your’, ‘sure’, ‘tour’, ‘secure’ and many other such words. Also the official IPA guide gives ‘tour’ pronounced as ‘tʊə(r)’ but this is often pronounced ‘tuːə(r)’ by many speakers in many countries.Overlordnat1 (talk) 15:52, 12 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

See “during”, in Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster, 1996–present., where it's rendered as IPA^(key): /ˈdʊɹ.ɪŋ/ and alternatively IPA^(key): /ˈdjʊɹ.ɪŋ/. Likewise is “during”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022..

The sound files on those links give the standard pronunciations I’d expect but they’re saying ɔː or uː for the vowel in the first syllable of ‘during’, they’re not using the ‘PUT vowel’, still less ‘PUT vowel’ + ‘Schwa’, so why render it as ‘ʊ’ or ‘ʊə’? Clearly that’s the convention but it’s a highly bizarre one!Overlordnat1 (talk) 00:34, 13 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I have always thought the same thing, Overlordnat1. Maybe the one who established the convention was basing it off of a particular dialect, but using /ʊə/ for /u/ in certain situations has always come off as strange to me. Tharthan (talk) 00:52, 13 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

How do you pronounce poor and pure? The first syllable of during traditionally rhimes with them. — TAKASUGI Shinji (talk) 02:53, 13 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I personally say all the examples above with the ɔː vowel (which I also use for ‘law’ and ‘caught’) Overlordnat1 (talk) 08:50, 13 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I say them all with ɔː too. jɔː, ʃɔː, tʰɔː, si'kʰjɔː, tʰɔːɹɪzm̩, pʰɔː, dʒɔːɹɪŋ 86.131.224.175 16:03, 13 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@TAKASUGI Shinji: poor for me is /pu(ə?)ɹ/, and I would transcribe pure as /ˈpjuɚ/.

However, especially among younger speakers, pure is most often /ˈpjɝ/ in the local dialect (and yet even for such speakers, lure almost always remains /lu(ə)ɹ/).

In any case, I would never have transcribed the pronunciation with /ʊɹ/. Is /ʊɹ/ being used loosely in such transcriptions (rather than for its actual value) à la /ɨ/ / /ᵻ/? Is /ʊɹ/ supposed to signify /u(ə)ɹ/ ~ /ɝ/ or something similar? Tharthan (talk) 03:51, 15 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

It didn't just originate as a notational fiction. Some accents really have (or had, but I think they still exist) the "put" vowel in words like during, pure, lure, and poor. There's a lot of variation in the area of pre-r vowels in American English. For comparison, some speakers hear /ɪ/ in words like clear, while others hear /i/. And Mary/marry/merry are well known to be variably merged depending on the accent. There's no way to perfectly represent all accents with a single transcription.--Urszag (talk) 07:46, 15 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ In their guide to pronunciation, Merriam-Webster renders their \u̇r\ as both /uɚ/ and /ʊɚ/. I originally rendered it according to my own idiolect, so Tharthan is right about me dropping the schwa, though it appears to be routinely dropped in some sociolects. However, both the horseshoe (put vowel) and the close back rounded vowel seem to be standard equivalents. Also of note is them saying that Many speakers do not have the dipththong \u̇r\ and have merged it with either \əɹ\ or \ɔɹ\ [according to the environment]. So apparently both Dngweh2s's and Overlordnat1's concerns are justified. Assem Khidhr (talk) 00:54, 16 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Historically, the schwa-less form is actually original (at least in most cases); words with CURE usually reflect Middle English /iu̯r/ or /oːr/). The form with schwa is took as basic since RP has (or historically had) a schwa offglide there; the greater part of English phonological description is built on a RP fundament. Hazarasp (parlement · werkis) 17:34, 29 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

half-time edit

I was confused whether the adjectival use of this word is a noun adjunct or just an adjective. Neither other dictionaries nor the predication test in Appendix:English nouns#Attributive seem to resolve it. I decided to mention both on the entry. Assem Khidhr (talk) 16:15, 12 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

In general / in most cases like this, I would say: does it meet tests of adjectivity? If not ... if we know it can be a noun, because it can be used in nounal ways not just in the singular but also in the plural, and most adjectives don't have plurals ... then if in some situations it's unclear whether it's a noun or is an adjective, Occam's razor would suggest we interpret it as being the one part of which which we know exists, and not add other parts of speech unless they clearly exist. But Merriam-Webter and Dictionary.com both have adjective sections, so this should be looked at closely. In particular, does the sense "Half or approximately half the number of hours usually worked in a specified period" exist outside of attributive phrases ("a half-time schedule"); can it be used like "I'm working half-time this month", can it be used in the plural? If not, then we might, in the other direction, decide there's no evidence to support the noun POS... - -sche (discuss) 03:31, 13 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

funge as a verb edit

I've seen this in a few places, generally as "to funge against", formed by analogy with "fungible"/"fungibility". All of the quotes I found are blogs and the like:

2013 March 28, Scott Alexander, “Thank you for doing something ambiguously between smoking and not smoking”, in Slate Star Codex‎^[10], retrieved 2021-04-12:
The minimum wage means no one has to work for below minimum wage. Its desirability depends a lot on whether below-minimum-wage funges against above-minimum wage jobs or against unemployment.
2013 April 23, Qiaochu__Yuan, “Privileging the Question”, in LessWrong‎^[11], retrieved 2021-04-12:
The problem with privileged questions is that you only have so much attention to spare. Attention paid to a question that has been privileged funges against attention you could be paying to better questions.
2017 December 24, Jeff Kaufman, December 2017 Time Tracking‎^[12], retrieved 2021-04-12:
Commute time mostly funges against family time.

Should this be under "funge" or "funge against"? Is it properly attested at this point? grendel|khan 16:57, 12 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

We need three durably archived uses, which blogs are typically not. I spotted two book uses with another sense, something like “to use for another than the original purpose”. --Lambiam 14:52, 13 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

A translation for piá de prédio edit

“a boy or man who had a sheltered upbringing, lacks outdoor skills and is not streetwise”

I wonder if anyone knows a good translation for this one. A stereotypical piá de prédio is middle class and leads a lifestyle dominated by gaming and consumption of media (particularly anime). Unlike soyboy, there is no implication of effeminacy; unlike hikikomori, there is no implication of complete social withdrawal. — Ungoliant ^(falai) 14:23, 13 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Sounds like a specific type or subset of nerd. —Mahāgaja · talk 14:27, 13 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Is it really that stereotypical? I have the impression the term is more an antonym of “street kid” – someone who is not streetwise, not adapted to a rough and tough urban environment, referring more to having been brought up in a protective environment than the person’s lifestyle. Of course, if a boy is not allowed to go out and engage with the other kids, he will find other ways to keep himself busy. --Lambiam 15:13, 13 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

It’s just a stereotype, so not all accused of being piá de prédio share these characteristics. You could call it an antonym of street kid, but a piá de prédio is also explicitly distinct from “country boys” who know how to live in rural areas, small towns and can survive a trip to the wilderness. Note that despite the etymology, having grown up in a flat is not a defining characteristic. — Ungoliant ^(falai) 15:48, 13 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

There is a phrase "arcade rat", for a teenager who spends all his time down the arcade, and presumably occupied in similar pursuits (computer games, etc).86.131.224.175 15:58, 13 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I'll be surprised if there's not a term for a sheltered person in English, but as for the rest of your gloss, "sheltered" already indicates that a person will lack street smarts and "country boy" survival skills, doesn't it? (Though I am all for nonetheless spelling those aspects out in the gloss, as you did above, if they are important elements of the term.) As an aside, this makes me realize that "city boy" often connotes someone who is not only not country-smart but also not street-smart or, as Lambiam put it, adapted to a rough urban environment. For example, Lexico defines "city boy" as "a boy or man who is a native or inhabitant of a city, or who has urban tastes or manners", The Free Dictionary as "a city dweller with sophisticated manners and clothing", and Vocabulary.com as "a person with good manners and stylish clothing", all of which suggests someone sheltered, rather than e.g. an inner-city gangsta, though "city boy"'s emphasis on fashion and manners may keep it from being a great translation. An acquaintance suggested "cake-eater", which probably also isn't quite it, but which does raise the question of whether our definition of that term, as well as "city boy", needs revising (cf Talk:cake-eater). - -sche (discuss) 01:08, 14 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

bad things come in threes edit

"If an unfortunate event has already occurred twice, it will most likely happen a third time." Does this mean it has to be the same event three times, e.g. three deaths, or three firings from jobs? Can it not just be any three unrelated bad events? (BTW, this entry seems probably sum of parts to me.) Equinox ◑ 16:09, 13 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

It is also quaint that the entry exists but its antonym good things come in threes, that seems to be more common, does not. Three tends to be associated with good luck rather than bad luck in western folklore. ~~←₰-→~~ Lingo ^Bingo _Dingo (talk) 18:32, 13 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

It doesn't mean the same exact thing has to happen three times. Only that you can find yourself on an unlucky streak. As we say in England, "it never rains but it pours". The same concept is given in the Chinese chengyu 祸不单行 (misfortunes never come singly). 86.131.224.175 02:36, 15 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Also, for bad as for good things, it can also be said only after the third event has come to pass.^[13][14][15] --Lambiam 13:09, 15 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Done Okay. Changed. Equinox ◑ 21:16, 15 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

atmo edit

There's probably another obvious meaning here like "the atmo in this bar is totally sparking" Yellow is the colour (talk) 20:44, 14 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Idiom in λέω entry edit

The entry at λέω has an idiom "call a spade a spade". In English. A supposedly Greek idiom involving λέω. Surely there's something wrong there? What's the idiom? MGorrone (talk) 11:33, 15 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

UPDATE Fixed, it was a template error. There was also a synonym hidden in a comment, I made it visible. MGorrone (talk) 11:41, 15 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

terze; Tarantino dialect edit

The page terze says it means "fourth" in the Tarantino dialect/language. I find this pretty hard to believe. How come? How do you say "third" in that language? --Frigoris (talk) 15:02, 15 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

According to the Tarantino Wikipedia, “Màrze ète 'u terze mese de l'anne”, while “Abbrìle ète 'u quarte mese de l'anne”. I suspect that these are feminine forms, with masculine terzo and quarto. --Lambiam 20:37, 15 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think they're feminine, since "mese" is masculine in regular Italian. Maybe the gendering is different in the Tarantino dialect, but I find that unlikely. Imetsia (talk) 20:49, 15 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps someone versed in Tarantino could change the definition to "third". --Frigoris (talk) 09:41, 16 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Based on how the Tarantino Wikipedia uses it, and because Domenico Ludovico de Vincentiis' "Vocabolario del dialetto tarantino: in corrispondenza della lingua italiana", although old, also mentions "la seconda [aratura del campo] che in dial. si dice ntravirsàre, prett. ingigliare, la terza e quarta terziàre e quartiàre" again with terz- denoting the third of something, I've revised it; the definition as "fourth" seems like a thinko. - -sche (discuss) 16:10, 16 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Lambiam: @Imetsia: I'm pretty sure those final -e are pronounced as schwas. In southern dialects like Tarantino, word-final vowels are usually reduced like that, and some people trying to spell those dialects don't write them at all, ending up with terz and quart. In Neapolitan orthography you'd spell them terzo and quarto if masculine, and terza and quarta if feminine, but the pronunciation would be the same. Apparently Tarantino orthography is similar to Abruzzese orthography in spelling schwas as e? Yep, w:Tarantino dialect gives it as "dialètte tarandine", with tarandine ending in a schwa. MGorrone (talk) 19:55, 19 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Danish tallerken ("plate") definite and plural forms edit

The entry in Den Danske Ordbog describes two spellings for the definite and the plural, one with the medial "e" in the final -ken and derived as basically the main noun tallerken plus a suffix (tallerkenen, tallerkener), and one without the medial "e" in the final -ken (tallerknen, tallerkner).

Confusingly, our entry uses the longer spelling for the definite tallerkenen and the shorter spelling for the plural tallerkner, and makes no mention of alternative forms tallerknen or tallerkener (the latter of which, we apparently treat as Norwegian instead of Danish).

Is the entry in Den Danske Ordbog correct for modern usage? Is it out of date, and the alternative forms are now regarded as archaic?
Are there any nuances in style, meaning, or register that attach to the alternative forms?

TIA, ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 03:26, 16 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Eirikr Variants with and without the -e- are both used in contemporary language. I'm not aware of any difference in register or connotation. I personally prefer the variants without, because they're closer to typical pronunciation, and I don't always bother to add both. DDO states that tallerkner is "unofficial". However, I'm not sure how much the average Dane cares about DSN's opinions.__Gamren (talk) 16:04, 25 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you @Gamren! I'll add these forms to the main entry, and have a go at creating the declined forms. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 17:31, 25 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

angel of death, Grim Reaper edit

Regarding the translation tables:

A few of these translations seem limited (and almost certainly not appropriate for every circumstance). Perhaps I am mistaken, and it is the case that these are genuinely the only terms available, but I have a hard time buying that.

Is a term like 「死の天使」 genuinely non-existent in Japanese? In Chinese, is there no such term as “死亡天使”?

Are we asserting that, no matter the context, "angel of death" (even in, for instance, an Abrahamic context) would be translated as 「死神」?

We are talking about translation tables for specific, Western(-ish) terms here: "angel of death", "Grim Reaper", after all. It is obviously quite sensible to give rough equivalents in the culture/common belief system of a target language in many cases, but if those translations are potentially incompatible translations in certain circumstances, we probably ought to make sure that those are actually the only terms available for translation (and if they aren't the only terms available, include the other available terms in the table as well along with any relevant qualifiers)

Putting aside angel of death...

Given that the Grim Reaper is more of a generic cultural thing in Western culture than it is anything else, I could accept that the translations given in the table (at Grim Reaper) are the only ones legitimately available. And yet, a translation of a Western portrayal of the Grim Reaper could conceivably use terminology like 「死の使者」 in Japanese or “死亡使者” in Chinese, no?

...In any case, at least for angel of death, I think that the translation table ought to be given a lookover to confirm that the terms listed are the only valid translations. Tharthan (talk) 03:38, 17 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

You can find millions of Google references to 死亡天使, but I think the term, if it even be accepted in Chinese, is just a reference to Western culture. Most of the references claim 死亡天使 means Azrael, and refer to the comic Batman: Sword of Azrael. It's not a genuine local cultural concept, but such a literal translation can be generated. In Chinese culture, there were no angels. Now what there was in traditional Chinese culture when you were at death's door, I don't know. It would be interesting to find out. I think in Irish culture, there was a Death Coach with a headless rider, known as an Cóiste Bodhar, [ə(n) kˠoːʃtʲi bʷouᵊrˠ/bʷauᵊrˠ], or an Cóiste Balbh, [ə(n) kˠoːʃtʲi bʷɑlˠəvˠ], which would visit prior to death. Peig Sayers, the Irish storyteller from Co. Kerry (who used the term an Cóiste Balbh), relates how on the night of her father's death, she realised he was dying, but he said 'Níor fhág sé Corcaigh fós chúm, a chailín' ("it hasn't left Cork yet for me, my girl"), implying that the death coach had to come from Cork, maybe because in ordinary life that's where many of the transport coaches came from? 86.131.224.175 15:18, 18 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps @Eirikr could give his take, given his perspective and knowledge. With regard to certain terms potentially being merely "translations of Western cultural elements", I fail to see why that in any way is an impediment to inclusion in translation tables. After all, we have for instance an English entry for kappa which has a translation table for the concept, which is inherently an 'Eastern cultural element' (in particular, a Japanese cultural element). We don't fill that translation table with words like Nix, watergeest, or “水鬼”.

And also, there are minorities faith-wise in Japan at least who I would imagine would have use for phrasing like 「死の使者」, so if that terminology does exist and they actually use it regularly for the concept in question, I think that that is enough to warrant inclusion in the translation table. I imagine that it is not unlikely that the same could be the case for “死亡天使”, but that would probably be harder to prove if so for a number of reasons (especially in mainland China). Tharthan (talk) 22:58, 21 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Tharthan: I've tweaked the formatting of the JA translations at angel of death and Grim Reaper, but otherwise they looked correct -- the basic Japanese-language term for a "personification of death" is 死神 (shinigami).

The idea of an "angel" is foreign to Japanese culture. While there are some converts to Christianity, the Western idea of an "angel" that is in charge of death is not something that has as much cultural currency in the broader speech community. The term 死の天使 (shi no tenshi) as a literal Western-style "angel of death" would be understood, but it's not a lexicalized term in the same way as 死神 (shinigami) -- in Japanese, you'd probably only encounter the latter used as an epithet for a murderer, for instance.

Pinging native speakers @TAKASUGI Shinji, エリック・キィ to make sure I'm not just talking through my hat. :)

HTH, ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 23:05, 30 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

German i.W. edit

"Von einem Offizier der Schutztruppe, Minden i.W. 1907" [16]

What does i.W. (redlink) mean here? Alexis Jazz (talk) 09:00, 17 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I think "Minden i.W." means "Minden in Westfalen". —Mahāgaja · talk 11:13, 17 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Mahagaja That would make sense. I've also found it here. Should we create an entry for it? Alexis Jazz (talk) 15:03, 17 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I tend towards no, we shouldn’t. They are ad hoc and you don’t even know whether it would be i. W. or W.. It works with any settlement name existing multiple times, and the usual way to find out the meaning is to look up the settlement name and where the settlements are located. One didn’t use W. or Pr. etc. in running text, it is more “codes” than natural language. Fay Freak (talk) 15:13, 17 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Well I had to ask here to find out. I had no idea if it was connected to the settlement or the year. (for all I know "i.W." could mean "roughly" to indicate that the exact year is uncertain) I think in the US it's common to use two-letter initialisms like SF and we have an entry for that. Alexis Jazz (talk) 15:20, 17 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

If we had an entry for anything, it should be Minden i.W., not just i.W. alone, in my opinion. I would certainly not object to entries for Freiburg i.Br., Frankfurt a.M., and Frankfurt a.d.O. —Mahāgaja · talk 15:46, 17 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah. Some communes even have their official name being an abbreviation, for instance Halle (Westf.). Strange things happening in Germany—people also have pet names like Willi and Uli as forenames in the German language area, while short forms of given names as given names like official Саша (Saša) and Вова (Vova) are illegal in Russia. Fay Freak (talk) 16:03, 17 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Anchormanaman, announcers, and all of that edit

I propose that certain translations, of news anchor, anchor, anchorman, anchorwoman, announcer, be merged. In view of the definitions and translations they are mutually substitutable and split tables are not justified but any distinctions—I know not which it could be, but in particular gendered forms as they are specific to individual languages—in foreign languages would need qualifiers, in one table. One actually looses the mood to add translations if one discovers there are all these terms and has to ponder about fastidious distinctions of them. Before anyone whinges why man has moved or put there and not here I announce this intention here. Fay Freak (talk) 15:07, 17 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Is Wiktionary becoming Woke-tionary? What the hell is a gendered term? This stuff rots the brain. A female news anchor (note: US word; we say TV presenter or news reader) has a biological difference from a male news anchor. She has ovaries and mammaries. There is no gender here. Odd how the extreme views of 10%-15% of the population are given a deference they don't deserve.86.131.224.175 23:06, 17 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@86.131.224.175: Fay Freak was not engaging in sanctimonious lecturing, self-righteous posturing, or pretentious grandstanding in the comment above.

Fay Freak's concern appears to be that the different translations spread throughout different tables in different entries are (as such) quite literally all over the place. It would be much more sensible to have the reader be directed to one particular entry's translation table.

Save your outrage at sanctimonious lecturing and grandstanding for when such things are actually going on, please. Tharthan (talk) 06:08, 18 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I did not object to a tidying up of references to a galaxy of terms that are in the same lexical area. I too have noticed that you can look up a translation of a word and not find one, and yet if you had looked up a slightly different term, you would have found one. As far as I'm concerned such a tidying up should proceed. What I did object to was Fay Freak's peddling of extreme views here. He has the right to any views he holds, but he may not argue that the extreme views of a tiny minority should be regarded as the standard views all must hold. The term "gendered" when referring, not to grammatical gender, but to biological sex, is poor English, but it is not just poor English, but also an attempt to push social discussion to the extremes. A real Maoist cultural revolution is underway in America - and I think such things cannot be avoided, but have to be lived through and then rejected, as in China - and Tharthan is also a cultural revolutionary. A look at his backhistory shows every post of his is used to push extreme politics in one way or another. Note that, as this is a dictionary and descriptivist to a large extent, the poor use of "gendered" to mean "with biological sex" is attested (particularly among extremists), and so has to be given reference to in the dictionary itself. I think, to be honest, that such entries should be labelled "deprecated", or something like that, to note the fact that when Fay Freaks or Tharthan push their political agenda, it is perceived by the majority as a deliberate attempt to give offence.86.131.224.175 14:56, 18 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

IP, for your benefit I'll tell you that you're making a total fool of yourself. ~~←₰-→~~ Lingo ^Bingo _Dingo (talk) 15:42, 18 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

LBD, for your benefit, I'll tell you that the wokesters are all making total fools of themselves!86.131.224.175 15:43, 18 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I am "a cultural revolutionary"? For your information, @86.131.224.175, (though the matter is hardly relevant to the building of a dictionary), I am a political moderate, as well as a practising Catholic (who assents to and believes in the social teaching of my faith). I do not in any way support attempts by a number in this latter-day age to claim that, on the subject of sex/gender, there is anything meaningful beyond a person's biological sex. Indeed, I have pointed out numerous times elsewhere that the casual usage of the word "gender" in English in reference to people was traditionally simply a colloquial usage of the word, and in that colloquial usage it simply meant "a person's sex". The more recent extension of that sense of that word ("gender") to convey a contemporarily popular notion that, in my belief, is rank hokum—is not something that I support in any way.

But none of that is relevant to the building of a dictionary. Wiktionary is a descriptivistic dictionary, and thus reflects the usage of words by speakers of the languages covered in the dictionary. Wiktionarians come from all sorts of perspectives and hold all different sets of beliefs, but we are united in that we are working to build this great dictionary. Tharthan (talk) 15:50, 18 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

To the OP's question/suggestion... an announcer is not the same thing as a new anchor (an announcer on the radio might only announce songs or upcoming opinion talk shows and not news, for example), so those shouldn't be merged. Whether to merge anchorman and anchorwoman with anchor, meh... I see the pragmatic appeal of centralizing translations in one entry and letting languages which have distinct terms for male vs female anchors list them in one translation table with {{q}}s. But looking for comparable entries, I see we have separate translations tables for fisherman and fisherwoman and fisher; sportswoman and sportsman and sportsperson; washerwoman, washerman and washer; firewoman and firefighter (but not fireman, which just points to firefighter)... Perhaps that should be a broader discussion: whether we want, not just in this case but in general, to centralize/merge the translations tables for sets of such-and-such-♂ vs such-and-such-♀ vs such-and-such-∅ terms. - -sche (discuss) 19:11, 18 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Well, I summed it up in my understanding that a news anchor is someone who announces news. And additionally translations distinguish even less. They use the same term for the moderator of a talk show, like the Russian веду́щий (vedúščij), Serbo-Croatian во̀дитељ in the tables (literally “leader”; we left out Serbo-Croatian најављѝва̄ч which is more literally “announcer”). In other languages it is just a speaker, a locutor—sometimes directly borrowed from English speaker, a sense not that specifically in the English Wiktionary entry—, in some a “presentator”, so basically it is anyone who presents or announces aught that others have written for him in a natural-language way (as distinguished from the dramaticized language or mode of presentation of an actor); and as this all overlaps, it is also the same occupation, one kind of journalist, isn’t it? Fay Freak (talk) 19:24, 18 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

You couldn't make it up! I hadn't realised the word fireman merely pointed to [a made-up term for fireman] EDIT: I have now checked, and, contrary to what someone says above, we do have a separate entry for fireman, and not just a brief stub of an entry that points to [the made-up term for a fireman].86.131.224.175 20:43, 18 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

To elaborate on my block message: reversion of your addition of "(Preferred by whom? What other PC views does Wiktionary think I should have?)" into the text of the entry itsef is not "political propaganda inserted by Surjection". You certainly have a right to disagree with the wording of the usage note, but it's been that way for a decade and neither you nor Surjection changed that part of it. What's more, making a dictionary argue with itself in the first person is kind of bizarre, regardless of politics. I'm hoping it was your just not thinking things through, because otherwise the choice would be between self-delusion or a bald-faced lie. Chuck Entz (talk) 03:59, 19 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The fact that the wording has been there for 10 years does NOT mean that it is not preaching at any user of Wiktionary. The made-up term for fireman is not the preferred term at all, unless you mean "preferred by the politically correct". There is far too much political propaganda on Wiktionary.86.144.21.77 16:41, 19 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

This is not a proper dictionary if it is engaged in telling users what political views to have. Maybe Chuck Enz can give us a list of what views we must have, but I think I can guess the list. 86.144.21.77 16:44, 19 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Aren't you tired Mr. Anon? Hating the world you're living in and the people in it? Constantly swimming against the stream, watching us "woke" people taking over what previously was your comfy little turf where everything just made sense? It fascinates me that you guys always seem to be drawn to the things you hate the most like moths to a flame. Let me do you a favour and grant you some peace of mind – go bug someone else if this dictionary is below your standards. Tah tah! — This unsigned comment was added by Robbie SWE (talk • contribs) at 16:57, 19 April 2021 (UTC).[reply]

To the anon: I grew up hearing the word firefighter, and I'm not that young. (I remember disco when it first came around, FWIW.) Your assertion that firefighter is "made up" and "not preferred" reveals your experiential bias. This is not shared by everyone. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 18:30, 20 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I too grew up with the word firefighter, though was certainly familiar with fireman. Perhaps it is different outside of North America (it wouldn't surprise me) and a push for a greater presence of sex-neutral terminology has only come into play more recently in some English countries, but my sense has always been that the average person does not usually object to sex-neutral terminology except if a particular term comes off to them as contrived, artificial-sounding, and/or low-effort. In my experience, few people object to terms like firefighter, fisher, salesclerk, or humanity. On the other hand, many will object to fireperson, fisherperson, [to a lesser extent] (in-store) salesperson, peoplekind [to a lesser extent] humankind. People may also object to some entity forcing people to utilise (a particular) sex-neutral term if they deem the originally usual term to not actually be exclusive to one sex. mankind is the most common example of such a term, for reasons that I am sure most of us here are well aware. Tharthan (talk) 01:17, 21 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Could we not split this into separate discussions:

How should we document the existence and usage of controversial terms such as (de-)gendered language? Fair enough to say they are not preferred by everyone, but let us be clear but not judgemental either way.
What is a practical approach to maintaining the translation tables of terms like these in that some distinctions are unavailable in some languages, optional in others and forced in others again? German is really struggling with gender neutrality, and there is an underlying issue that applies in many other cases such as words for colours. It sounds appealing to have a Wikidata-based approach, but I suspect it is quite hard to define a workable datamodel that people will use.
Should Wiktionary document this stuff at all? Well, obviously it should, but people want to discuss it, and I would rather their discussion did not clutter more important matters.

P.S. The grouchy IP missed the point: fireman is not just a redirect to firefighter, but refers one there for translations of the word in that sense.

PJTraill (talk) 17:17, 19 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Edit War at fireman edit

To elaborate on my block message: reversion of your addition of "(Preferred by whom? What other PC views does Wiktionary think I should have?)" into the text of the entry itsef is not "political propaganda inserted by Surjection". You certainly have a right to disagree with the wording of the usage note, but it's been that way for a decade and neither you nor Surjection changed that part of it. What's more, making a dictionary argue with itself in the first person is kind of bizarre, regardless of politics. I'm hoping it was your just not thinking things through, because otherwise the choice would be between self-delusion or a bald-faced lie. Chuck Entz (talk) 03:59, 19 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The fact that the wording has been there for 10 years does NOT mean that it is not preaching at any user of Wiktionary. The made-up term for fireman is not the preferred term at all, unless you mean "preferred by the politically correct". There is far too much political propaganda on Wiktionary.86.144.21.77 16:41, 19 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

This is not a proper dictionary if it is engaged in telling users what political views to have. Maybe Chuck Enz can give us a list of what views we must have, but I think I can guess the list. 86.144.21.77 16:44, 19 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Aren't you tired Mr. Anon? Hating the world you're living in and the people in it? Constantly swimming against the stream, watching us "woke" people taking over what previously was your comfy little turf where everything just made sense? It fascinates me that you guys always seem to be drawn to the things you hate the most like moths to a flame. Let me do you a favour and grant you some peace of mind – go bug someone else if this dictionary is below your standards. Tah tah! — This unsigned comment was added by Robbie SWE (talk • contribs) at 16:57, 19 April 2021 (UTC).[reply]

You still don't get it. You weren't blocked for your politics. You were blocked for inserting extraneous text into a usage note that turned it into nonsense, then lying about it in your edit summary. Let me spell it out for you:

This is the text of the usage note before your edit:

(firefighting): Historically only a man, but now used to refer to female firefighters as well. In modern usage, the gender-inclusive term firefighter is generally preferred.

This is the text after your edit:

(firefighting): Historically only a man, but now used to refer to female firefighters as well. In modern usage, the gender-inclusive term firefighter is generally preferred.(Preferred by whom? What other PC views does Wiktionary think I should have?)

This is the text after Surjection's edit:

(firefighting): Historically only a man, but now used to refer to female firefighters as well. In modern usage, the gender-inclusive term firefighter is generally preferred.

This is the text after the edit you labeled with "Reverted political propaganda inserted by Surjection". I'm highlighting the text that constitutes the only difference between your version and Surjections':

(firefighting): Historically only a man, but now used to refer to female firefighters as well. In modern usage, the gender-inclusive term firefighter is generally preferred.(Preferred by whom? What other PC views does Wiktionary think I should have?)

Okay, what sense of insert covers removal of text that was added by someone else? I challenge you to show anything that was added by Surjection. How does restoring the text to the state it had been for a decade constitute inserting anything?

In addition, the choice of pronoun in your text doesn't make sense. You wrote: "What other PC views does Wiktionary think I should have?", overlooking the fact that when you're editing the entry, you are Wiktionary. This is a dictionary. Usage notes in dictionaries are generally in a sort of detached, disembodied style that refers to everything in the third person. They don't say one thing, then demand to be told why they said it, especially not while referring to themselves in the first person.

You disagree with the usage note. I understand that. The problem is that in your rush to express your disagreement, you seem to have forgotten the distinction between a dictionary entry and a talk page. For someone who deems himself qualified to point out flaws in other people's reasoning, that is an appalling lack of judgment. You have every right to your opinion, but the way you expressed it wasn't all that different from spray-painting it on a shop window somewhere. Yelling in your edit summary about reverting political propaganda makes about as much sense as yelling the same thing when you put back the graffiti that shopkeepers just cleaned off their windows.

I'm sure you'll figure out some way to pretend your actions were justified. So far, you've made a point of completely ignoring the point so you can keep to your script. Anything to avoid admitting you were wrong. So much for "personal responsibility". Chuck Entz (talk) 05:06, 20 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Leven edit

The Dutch verb leven means "to live", but in Dutch it can also apply to a general sentiment. For example: The plan to make Feenstra again a successful business doesn’t live among employees. Often things live under, for example Cybercriminaliteit leeft niet onder mkb'ers which literally translated means "cybercrime doesn't live under medium-small companies".

Does this sense of live exist in English, beyond that odd translation I just linked? Alexis Jazz (talk) 15:16, 17 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

For the “kennisbank” sentence Google Translate produces: “The plan to make Feenstra a successful company again is barely shared by employees.”^[17] Another example, “In Argentinië leeft het bijgeloof dat Diego Maradona de nationale ploeg ongeluk brengt.”^[18] Google Translates produces: “In Argentina there is a superstition that Diego Maradona brings bad luck to the national team.”^[19] This suggests there is no general idiomatic English equivalent. --Lambiam 16:03, 19 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

epidiascope edit

It seems that this is/was used for projectors of a type can project both opaque objects and transparencies, something that our definition fails to capture in contrast to other dictionaries at OneLook. [20] [21] [22] [23] Can anybody familiar with the apparatus confirm?
The word may have originated as a trademark held by Zeiss, "Zeiss Epidiascope" is quite dominant in search results before the 1920s. ~~←₰-→~~ Lingo ^Bingo _Dingo (talk) 16:54, 17 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Usage examples with хвата́ет, not in conjugation table edit

The usage examples for хвати́ть (xvatítʹ) as an impersonal intransitive include some such as не хвата́ет вре́мени using the form хвата́ет, which does not appear in the conjugation table below (which only shows the forms хвати́ть (xvatítʹ), хва́тит (xvátit), хвати́ло (xvatílo)). Is this not an error? PJTraill (talk) 10:23, 18 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, хвати́ть (xvatítʹ) is the perfective of хвата́ть (xvatátʹ), and it is clear that someone entered хватать first as a head word, and then entered хватить, but didn't pay attention to the fact that not all the example sentences were of the perfective. This is not ideal, but any user who knows what he is looking at will realise that there are a pair of related verbs here, and will understand what is going on. That said, it would be better if хватать only gave imperfective examples and хватить only gave perfective ones. 86.131.224.175 15:01, 18 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Let me be clearer: the form хвата́ет does appear in the conjugation table of хвата́ть (xvatátʹ). 86.131.224.175 15:03, 18 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, I (still fairly new to Russian and not really accustomed to aspects) had not thought to check the corresponding perfective, thinking хвата́ет (xvatájet) must be either a spelling mistake or a strange form missing from the table. Now I understand, and see that хва́тит (xvátit) also occurs in two usage examples at хвата́ть (xvatátʹ). Should such cases perhaps be linked? I would be inclined to prefer linking them to the page for the form used rather than the root lemma, as somebody who follows the link is quite likely more interested in which form it is than what the meaning is.(A more fundamental approach would be to have only one lemma for perfective and imperfective!) PJTraill (talk) 16:42, 19 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@PJTraill: I think supplying a link to the exact form would be a good idea, short of having grammatical gloss pop-ups. It's important to note that Russians themselves have absolutely no concept of these aspectual pairs being different verbs, and so I would object to rigorously separating quotations using them on the basis of aspect. Brutal Russian (talk) 03:43, 19 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

if you're not Dutch, you're not much edit

Any views on the includibility of this rather low-effort entry for a slogan? It appears to be used on bumper stickers in Michigan, maybe also elsewhere in the Midwest. The definition is somewhat off, it is primarily about Dutch American ethnicity (viewed as decided by biological descent), not Dutch culture in general. ~~←₰-→~~ Lingo ^Bingo _Dingo (talk) 17:07, 18 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Here the phrase is characterized as a “local saying” in Holland, Michigan. A Dutch-American historian has researched its origin, presenting some evidence for a 1970s Northwest Iowa origin.^[24] --Lambiam 15:37, 19 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Lambiam What is your view on its includibility? ~~←₰-→~~ Lingo ^Bingo _Dingo (talk) 18:58, 22 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I don’t know. Do we have any guidelines on which sayings are worthy of inclusion? I note we have many sayings that have some currency (a promise made is a promise kept, great minds think alike, if you can't beat them, join them, ...) while others that are similarly current (cleanliness is next to godliness, hope for the best, but prepare for the worst, you can't always get what you want, ...) are not included. Should the meaning be non-transparent? I think that in unity, there is strength is pretty transparent. --Lambiam 19:59, 22 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

My impression is very much that proverbs should either be idiomatic or covered by lemmings, or perhaps really common and recognised as proverbs. This sloganistic phrase, however, is neither idiomatic nor particularly common. ~~←₰-→~~ Lingo ^Bingo _Dingo (talk) 18:46, 24 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

It may be attested but it's self-explanatory. Just because it rhymes doesn't mean it's an idiom. --RDBury (talk) 15:21, 22 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Many proverbs are self-explanatory, e.g. nobody's perfect. Equinox ◑ 15:43, 22 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

que edit

The first prepositional sense of the word as is listed as translating to que in French, which seems true from my limited GCSE French (‘autant que ça’ = ‘as much as that’ and ‘qu’est-ce que c’est que ça’ (‘What’s that?’) seems to only translate (imperfectly) word for word if you translate ‘que’ in 3 different ways into the rather clunky ‘What is it that it is as that” ). We don’t have as as one of the definitions listed in the French section of the que entry though, so perhaps we should add this?Overlordnat1 (talk) 11:08, 19 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The third occurrence in qu’est-ce que c’est que ça? is part of a linked construction, as used in the essay title Les constructions liées : C'est une saine occupation que l'horticulture (Linked constructions: It is a healthy profession, horticulture).^[25] An example found in the wild: C’est une bonne idée que ton voyage dans le Montana (It’s a good idea, your voyage through Montana).^[26] When a phrase begins with a preliminary subject, ce, the actual subject may be introduced by the particle (conjunction?) que. I can’t think of an English equivalent; there we introduce the dangling subject with a comma. Moving the last delayed subject (ça) to its usual first place in the phrase, we get: qu’est-ce que ça est?, not how a French speaker would say it, but the meaning is clear enough. So I actually doubt that que is a suitable translation of the preposition as; AFAIK French que cannot even function as a preposition. --Lambiam 15:09, 19 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

That’s most interesting indeed but how can we explain the phrase ‘autant que ça’, using our current definitions of French que? One translation for as on the Wiktionary page is given as ‘que’, so surely this should be included on the que page, for the purposes of completeness and symmetry? — This unsigned comment was added by Overlordnat1 (talk • contribs) at 16:08, 19 April 2021 (UTC).[reply]

I was overlooking that use. Next to the comparatives plus/moins grand que <quelque chose>, one can say, si grand que <quelque chose>, aussi grand que <quelque chose> and autant grand que <quelque chose>, where, only in the last case, the adjective may be omitted, giving the idiomatic collocation autant que, in this form not readily explained from its parts. --Lambiam 19:12, 19 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

reward and give edit

At reward#Verb we have an obsolete transitive sense "to give (something) as a reward" (citations: "the serklet of gold was rewarded hym"). But you can also say "something was given him" [27] and I don't think we include a corresponding separate sense for that at give. I am a bit confused about what needs changing, if anything. Equinox ◑ 01:23, 20 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

In the two senses that are not obsolete, give is not a synonym for reward; *Why are you giving the child for misbehaving? does not make sense. In the obsolete sense, it is a synonym, so this is clearly a separate sense. Current: “to reward someone deservant with something desirable”. Obsolete: “to reward something desirable to someone deservant”. --Lambiam 12:13, 20 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Japanese 痛車 edit

jawiki says it's from 見ていて痛々しい車. Though the spelling is different(kuruma vs. sha), the words made up of pure kanji tend to change to 音読み. EdwardAlexanderCrowley (talk) 00:51, 15 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@EdwardAlexanderCrowley: I think you might be misreading the JA WP article. Here's the text that I think you're referring to, from the first sentence at ja:w:痛車#概要 (bolding mine):

痛車とは「見ていて痛々しい車」という意味からきた俗語であり...

This is a description of the meaning behind the term. That's not the same as saying it's a shortening of 見(み)ていて痛々(いたいた)しい車(くるま) (mite ite itaitashii kuruma). A shortening might produce itaitaguruma, even itaguruma, but not itasha.

The very next clause in the sentence clarifies that this term is not directly from 痛々(いたいた)しい (itaitashii), and is instead composed using 痛(いた)い (itai):

...恥ずべき行いを「痛い」と表現する俗語に由来するものである。

I don't have access to the referenced book, 『オタクのことが面白いほどわかる本』, but based on the text of the Wikipedia article, this is clearly 痛(いた)い (itai) used in a slangy "cringeworthy" sense rather than literally "painful", plus 車(しゃ) (sha) in reference to vehicles.

I hope that better explains my edit? ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 01:05, 15 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I think 痛々しい is just a stronger version of 痛い, so means cringeworthy as well, because "painful car" makes no sense.

Another reference: [28]

For my sense of Japanese, this is exactly shortening. Anyway, I'd like to invite @Suzukaze-c. EdwardAlexanderCrowley (talk) 01:13, 15 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@EdwardAlexanderCrowley: I welcome input from others. @TAKASUGI Shinji, perhaps as a native speaker, you might have additional perspective?

Re: 痛(いた)い (itai), I did some further digging and found that the mentioned slang-y sense with semantic overlap with 痛々(いたいた)しい (itaitashii) is called out in the Daijisen entry here:

4 俗に、さも得意そうな言動がひどく場違いで、見るに堪えないさま。また、状況や立場・年齢にふさわしくない言動が周囲をあきれさせるさま。

Your additional source brings an additional angle, regarding Ferrari cars and イタリア車, which is quite interesting: using 痛(いた) (ita) in both its "cringeworthy" sense, and in a pun on the イタ (ita) in イタリア (Itaria). The last sentence there:

漫画やアニメのファンが、見ていて「痛々しく感じる」という意味に、「イタリア車」を略した「イタ車」の語感を重ねて「痛車」と呼ぶようになった。

That article has a copyright notice at the bottom of 2009, so I wonder if that might count as "durably archived" for purposes of WT:CFI. Worth looking into. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 04:39, 15 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I’m not sure about the etymology of 痛車, but I think otakus use only 痛い in that context. — TAKASUGI Shinji (talk) 11:38, 15 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

To be simple, can 痛車（sha） be a shortening form of 見ていて痛々しい車（kuruma）, even if the spelling mismatch? I know that 日本 was spelled as hinomoto before nihhon. EdwardAlexanderCrowley (talk) 14:04, 15 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@EdwardAlexanderCrowley: I was hoping someone else might chime in, but since no one else has :), here's my take.

A term can be a straightforward shortening of another term if the phonological elements of the shortened derivation are present in some form in the parent etymon. That's my generalized understanding for all languages. Since sha as a phonological element doesn't exist in the phrase mite ite itaitashii kuruma, itasha cannot be just a shortening of the phrase. A shortening of mite ite itaitashii kuruma through simple mora deletion might result in ~~mite ite~~ ita~~itashii~~ kuruma → ita-guruma (assuming here that any such product would include rendaku).

For Japanese more specifically, we can also consider the type of reading for any kanji included in the etymon. Shortening might give rise to sandhi phenomenon like gemination, rendaku, or renjō, but the resulting shorter form should still use the same reading types for all of the kanji as in the longer etymon. Since kuruma in mite ite itaitashii kuruma is kun'yomi while sha is on'yomi, this can't be just a shortening. If this is indeed directly from the phrase mite ite itaitashii kuruma, we could instead describe it as derived from shortening, plus a shift in reading (due perhaps to nuance, allusion, perceived coolness, other social register, etc.).

As a side note, the change from reading 日本 as Hi no Moto to Nihon is not a shortening, but rather a shift in reading, probably influenced by the consideration that Chinese was the prestige language of the region at the time, so Chinese-based readings were regarded more highly. Compare 決(き)まり (kimari) versus 規定(きてい) (kitei), or 追加(ついか)する (tsuika suru) versus 付(つ)け加(くわ)える (tsukekuwaeru). This is vaguely similar to the dynamic in English, were Latinate words are regarded as higher-register -- more formal, more academic, fancier -- while the Germanic synonyms are regarded as lower-register -- homier, more intimate, less formal, less academic. Consider "nose surgery" versus "rhinoplasty", or "scatological humor" versus "poop joke".

See more at the Wikipedia article for w:Clipping_(morphology), and for good examples of Japanese clipping, see also w:Clipped_compound. The Clipped compound place names section of this latter page describes some of the reading shifts that happen in kanji-based clippings. Since these often involve changes in kanji reading types, for our purposes at Wiktionary, we cannot class these as just shortenings. Simple shortenings would include things like モンスターハンター (Monsutā Hantā) → モンハン (Monhan), ポケットモンスター (Poketto Monsutā) → ポケモン (Pokemon), or 国際連合(こくさいれんごう) (Kokusai Rengō) → 国連(こくれん) (Kokuren).

HTH, ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 22:40, 16 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

It's ok to distinguish this from shortening, then how to include this in the article? EdwardAlexanderCrowley (talk) 05:37, 17 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@EdwardAlexanderCrowley: We still don't have evidence of anyone saying that this is a shortening of 見(み)ていて痛々(いたいた)しい車(くるま) (mite ite itaitashii kuruma). The JA WP article doesn't say this, nor does the additional source that you found at https://web.archive.org/web/20090523174414/http://sankei.jp.msn.com/economy/business/081117/biz0811170842000-n1.htm. That page also mentions a phrase similar to 見(み)ていて痛々(いたいた)しい車(くるま) (mite ite itaitashii kuruma) (as quoted above), but not as the origin of 痛車(いたしゃ) (itasha), sourcing that instead to 痛い (itai, in the sense of "cringeworthy", see also sense 4 from Daijisen) + 車 (sha, “vehicle”, most often encountered as a suffix).

HTH, ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 22:37, 19 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

one's way edit

We have lots of entries for expressions that include one's way. They seem idiomatic to me though there might be exceptions. But it also seems possible to find many other attestable expressions of the form [VERB] one's way. In fact, it seems to me that such expressions can be formed from a very large percentage of verbs. Is this worth memorializing in an entry for one's way?

There are also other such productive expressions that combine with large numbers of verbs, eg, one's life away. (I exclude cases of phrasal verbs formed with the "particle" away.) DCDuring (talk) 15:52, 20 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Could you give a couple examples for the use of one's way that you're thinking of? Do you mean the sense that's something like "in the manner which one prefers or is accustomed to"? e.g. "He made his sandwich his way, and I made mine my way - with tons of mayo"? I don't see that as being very different from e.g. "we cooked it the Italian way", or "don't hold it that way".

For one's life away, I'll note that while you can {gamble, waste, fret, dream, etc.} your life away, you can also gamble your inheritance away, dream the day away, fret your youth away, or waste your brain cells away. Colin M (talk) 18:31, 20 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I would agree that one’s way is not immediately convincing. Surely the requirement for notability is being able to find expressions in which “one’s” can not be replace with an arbitrary possessive form. (“But more, much more than this one did it one’s way”, anyone?) PJTraill (talk) 21:36, 20 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Your pediagenesis is showing: notability is not a consideration here. DCDuring (talk) 00:58, 21 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

"One's way" came up today for me in "wheezing his way up […] ". But "google my way" can be found.

As I was searching for attestable examples I tried sneeze and found that some linguistics works refer to the "way construction". I rest my case. DCDuring (talk) 00:56, 21 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, I get it now. [Verb] one's way [Prepositional Phrase]. Yeah, I would say that's definitely worthy of an entry. Colin M (talk) 15:13, 21 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I guess it's slightly more general. Sometimes an adverbial (probably mostly locative/temporal) instead of only PPs. DCDuring (talk) 15:21, 21 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I suspect this is a difference in terminology. I include "intransitive" prepositions in my use of the term. So e.g. I would class up as a preposition in both "He crawled his way up" and "He crawled his way up the staircase", rather than calling it an adverb in the first case. Colin M (talk) 19:33, 21 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Probably terminological. "He drunkenly crawled his way home." Are you going to say that home is part of the a PP headed by ∅? DCDuring (talk) 20:52, 21 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

It's headed by home! w:List of English prepositions#Intransitive prepositions Colin M (talk) 20:28, 22 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

So, do you want to delete home#Adverb? DCDuring (talk) 00:50, 23 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

If I had my way, I'd change the PoS heading to preposition. But this is a topic that's come up before, and I know lots of editors prefer the treatment given by traditional grammars on this, so I'm not going to invest too much effort in rocking the boat. I think I've said it before, but I don't think our choice of PoS header in a case like this has much effect on the reader, since the vast majority of them will only have the dimmest of ideas about what "preposition" and "adverb" mean based on some highly simplified heuristics they might remember being taught in grade school. It's the usage examples that do the real work of conveying to the average reader how such a word is used. Colin M (talk) 23:34, 23 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

by a long way edit

I’ve just created an entry for by a long way and given it the same definition as by far and put the earliest quote I could find on Google Books as an example of its useOverlordnat1 (talk) 12:52, 21 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. But it's not necessary to tell us in the Tea Room :) Yellow is the colour (talk) 13:08, 21 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

leucophyll edit

Dear chemistry nerds, we might need to mention something in the entry for leucophyll that it is hypothetical. I have no clue Yellow is the colour (talk) 13:08, 21 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I studied chemistry (but not biochemistry) back in the day, so I had a go. This, that and the other (talk) 03:42, 24 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

水 #Japanese (なのり) edit

In the wikitionary page for 水 at 水 japanese in the japanese section the nanori reading つ and ど are listed. nevertheless i'm unsure about the accuracy of these two.

For example at goo 水 in the nanori reading section are not listed, and I can't find any report of them in any other websites. Going through the entire edit history (starting from 2003) I found this 水 edit history #1 and in the discussion section this 水 discussion 2003 with an expired link for reference.

So I'm thinking that maybe, as shown in the edit history #1, whoever put the name みづき / みつき and みどり must have thought that the つ and ど part as an example for nanori of 水. But instead it has nothing to do with it because 水 in those two words act just the sound of み. So my question is: anybody can confirm this? Should we delete those two entries because innacurate?

--Rachial (talk) 18:38, 21 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, I just replied at Talk:水. Here's a copy-paste:

@Rachial, here's a corrected URL: http://nihongo.monash.edu/cgi-bin/wwwjdic?1MMC水

Name readings are particularly problematic for Japanese, since they can be so arbitrary on the one hand, and difficult to confirm on the other.

Your "edit history #1" link doesn't show a diff, but the みづき (Mizuki), みつき (Mitsuki), or みどり (Midori) names were not added either with that edit, nor right after it. Digging further, I found that an anonymous user added the nanori (name readings) in this edit from June 2003. That IP address was only active (on the EN WT) that year.

As a guess, it's possible that the do reading might originate from the term 主水 (mondo, from earlier moi tori, literally “bowl taker”, the professional title of a certain position responsible for food and beverage in the imperial palace during the Nara period). But again, name readings are quite difficult to confirm -- either positively (yes this reading is used) or negatively (no this reading is not used). ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 22:31, 21 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

That one guess of mine was far-fetched then, I made a bit of confusion.

About kanji compunds containing 水 there are a few examples of words with unusual readings : 水黽 (あめんぼ) ・水夫 (かこ) ・水鶏 (くいな),

So not necessarly it adapts / develops / equates to nanori so for that reason I was a little perplexed.

Thanks for replying and for your speculation @Eirikr. --Rachial (talk) 23:57, 21 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

black sheep edit

Is a photograph of a literal black-wooled sheep really useful here? An IP keeps re-adding. Equinox ◑ 23:10, 21 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I tend towards yes, because many urbaners haven’t seen one. And I am not sure we shouldn’t have the literal sense since we have black man. It is also probable there are unique translations qualifying it as a translation hub. Fay Freak (talk) 00:04, 22 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Well, I don't see the logic there really. Many people haven't seen bright red hands, but I wouldn't add a picture of those at red-handed because none of the definitions corresponds (unless we had an &lit, and those hardly merit photos). Equinox ◑ 00:07, 22 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

One would need a piece of acting demonstrating both the literal and a figurative sense of red-handed, but Commons lacks such things. Fay Freak (talk) 00:21, 22 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I don't mind, but a photo of a single black sheep surrounded by other sheep would illustrate both the literal and figurative senses. – Jberkel 00:31, 22 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with Jberkel. A photograph or illustration of single black sheep surrounded by other sheep would be useful. Tharthan (talk) 00:45, 25 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I'm inclined to exclude photos for &lit senses. Ultimateria (talk) 19:58, 22 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Some terms have only a non-SOP sense, and then an image can be informative, also for figurative senses; for example, an image of an antique hairpin may illustrate why it is called a hairpin, while an image of a modern hairpin may illustrate the figurative sense of “tight bend”. I expect that also for SOP senses an image can be informative. Not only may some people never have seen a black-fleeced sheep, they may even not realize that sheep can have a black fleece, just like Europeans thought for a long time that all swans were white by nature. My inclination is to leave the image, unless totally uninformative (e.g. for dream house) or obnoxious – please don’t include a photo of your candidate for “worst actor of all time” at bad actor. --Lambiam 15:48, 23 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Well said. I agree with this entirely. Colin M (talk) 23:39, 23 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Homophone for English hi/hie/high edit

English heigh (archaic exclamation expressing inquiry/encouragement (source: NOAD)) is pronounced both hī and hā (NOAD phonetic alphabet) — if a word has multiple pronunciations, is it included in the Homophones part of the Pronunciation subsection? (I'm seeing this section on the page for hi (English)).

It's also worth noting that heigh is present in the Alternative forms section.

ShortTimeNoSee (talk) 23:34, 21 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

It makes me wonder if heigh heigh can be pronounced /ˈheɪˌhaɪ/. --Lambiam 13:44, 23 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I seem to recall a folk/children's song in which it's pronounced /ˌhaɪˈheɪ/, but I could be thinking of heigh-ho. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 03:26, 19 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

We give three pronunciations for eyot: IPA^(key): /eɪt/, /ˈeɪət/, /aɪt/. Only the first of these is a homophone of ate and eight, but eyot is listed as a homophone at both. --Lambiam 13:44, 23 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

set up edit

I can't figure out the wording on a missing sense: to e.g. set up a stall at a market or a merch booth at a concert. Or is it just an intransitive extension of sense 1? You can also set up (intransitive) for an event at a venue by putting up tables and decorating. I'm not sure how much belongs under one sense. Ultimateria (talk) 20:07, 22 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Many transitive verbs can be used "intransitively" if the object is implied. So in your case "I'm setting up for an event," is really "I'm setting up the tables and decorations for an event," since the listener presumably knows what needs to be "set up" when preparing for an event. In your first example, "I'm setting up a stall at a market," the object is "a stall" so the verb is transitive in the usual way. So I'd say both examples fall under meaning 1. --RDBury (talk) 03:40, 23 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Strictly speaking sense, 1 was defined as an intransitive sense "To prepare something for use". A transitive definition would not contain the object, ie, "To prepare for use". I have reworded def. 1 and added the corresponding intransitive definition. DCDuring (talk) 15:36, 23 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Quotations from a source in a different language edit

I just just changed a usex in anschließen to a quotation because is was basically just a quote from Plato. But AFAIK Plato wrote in Ancient Greek, not modern German, so the quote is really from some translation of Plato; whoever added the usex didn't include the translator's name or the edition the quote was taken from. My inclination is to just delete it, does anyone see a reason to keep it? In general, a quote, especially one used to demonstrate usage, should be in its original language, or if not, then the translator and publisher of the translation should be given. --RDBury (talk) 03:29, 23 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

There's nothing wrong in principle with having quotations from translations. Of course translations may sometimes contain unusual phrasing, but whether that should be a reason for exclusion must be decided on a case-by-case basis. ~~←₰-→~~ Lingo ^Bingo _Dingo (talk) 12:50, 23 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

But indeed the translator is the actual producer of the use, so ought to be identified. --Lambiam 13:26, 23 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

And moreover, many translations have strongly influenced their language – so I would not want to delete lightly. PJTraill (talk) 18:09, 24 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Probably 95% of our Gothic quotations are from Wulifila's translation of the Bible. —Mahāgaja · talk 08:01, 25 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Mahagaja Yes, I can see that, with a dead language with limited attestations one would need translations as quotes, also you're talking about a well known work (the translation), not something somebody ran through Google translate. @PJTraill Again, you're talking about well-known works where the translator, or at least the edition, has been identified. I don't have a problem with quotations from the KJB. An any case, the sample markup given in Wiktionary:Quotations specifically says "Author (indicate as translator or editor if not original author)". So really this is already in the guidelines, I just hadn't seen it when I first posted the comment. Seeing as no one has found a translator or edition, I'm going to go ahead and delete the quote. Imo it's not much use as a usage example anyway; it's too long, it doesn't include the whole sentence, and (possibly a native German speaker will correct me on this) I'm not convinced it's an idiomatic use of the word. --RDBury (talk) 22:06, 25 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

lap edit

Etymologies 1 and 2 seem to... well, overlap. Compare e.g. nouns 1.7 "(construction) A component that overlaps or covers any portion of itself or of an adjacent component" and 2.2 "That part of any substance or fixture which extends over, or lies upon, or by the side of, a part of another". Equinox ◑ 04:35, 23 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I agree. Also the main use of noun 2.3 is surely to refer to roof tiles, saying a tile has a 5mm lap means that it overhangs the tile below by 5mm and is in turn overhung by the tile above by 5mm. Rowers may talk about a ‘half a length lap’ but I’m sure most people would use phrases like ‘lead by half a length’ and ‘half a length ahead/in front’Overlordnat1 (talk) 03:16, 24 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Hirundo marina, flying fish edit

This name was used in the 18th and 19th centuries for a species of flying fish (also for the common tern and a species of noddy), but I don't know what the modern name for it is. Does anybody know what species this is? ~~←₰-→~~ Lingo ^Bingo _Dingo (talk) 18:36, 23 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

No, but it might not be a single species nowadays. Maybe it's been split into two or more species since then, or maybe it turned out to be the same species as something that scientists 200 years ago thought was a different species. —Mahāgaja · talk 19:51, 23 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I could not find any reference to any species of genus Hirundo in FishBase, WoRMS, the Catalog of Fishes, or NCBI. I did find reference in Index of Organism Name (ION) to a genus Hirundo in Pisces, but did not go through the more than four hundred species in the multiple genera Hirundo to find a fish. I did look unsuccessfully in ION for species that bore the author names of the fish genus (Edwards or Catesby). The genus is dated 1771. There is also another genus Hirundo dated 1826, at ION, but is just said there to be one of Animalia and has author unknown. DCDuring (talk) 22:35, 23 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for looking. I checked the entries for species of Hirundo at ION, but didn't find anything classed under Pisces (I didn't look into doublets or subspecies of entries that were elsewere given as birds). I suppose that mentioning the obsolete name Hirundo marina in a definition is next to useless, so the definition will have to do without a scientific name. ~~←₰-→~~ Lingo ^Bingo _Dingo (talk) 11:19, 24 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The term was used for the sea swallow, a common name for the common tern that is a literal translation of hirundo marina.^[29] But our entry for Latin hirundo gives a second sense, “flying fish (sea-swallow)”. This is borrowed from L&S, while Gaffiot gives “aronde, poisson”. Le Trésor lists the meaning ,,Espèce de poisson volant’’, explaining it more precisely as ,,l'ancien nom du poisson volant’’. Interestingly, sea swallow is also used as a common name for Glaucus atlanticus. --Lambiam 11:54, 24 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Definition of -ватый does not cover виноватый edit

The definition of -ва́тый indicates that it weaken adjectives, but винова́тый (“"guilty"”) is said to have etymology вина́ (“"guilt"”) + -ва́тый, i.e. вина́ (“"guilt"”) is said to have been added to a noun to yield an adjective. Could someone sufficiently knowledgable please add a description of this function (or, conceivably, correct that etymology)? PJTraill (talk) 18:05, 24 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I have the impression that the term for guilty in the criminal sense, as in a verdict, is always виновный (vinovnyj), and that виноватый (vinovatyj) has a somewhat weaker sense of blamable or culpable. Any native speakers? --Lambiam 13:16, 25 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Lambiam, PJTraill: Off the cuff, I'd say it's the same suffix/semantics, but that in the past it might have been more productive with nouns than it currently is. I think the difference is as Lambiam describes; more accurately, in contrast to the verdict-passing виновный, виноватый is about acknowledging guilt, feeling guilty, and thus it's often to be translated as "it's someone's fault". It's quite close in sense to the English -y, only that (unlike -ish) can't be used with adjectives at all. Brutal Russian (talk) 00:12, 26 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I analyze it вино́вный (vinóvnyj) +‎ -а́тый (-átyj). Fay Freak (talk) 02:04, 26 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Fay Freak, PJTraill, Lambiam: This would make good sense with dissimilation of -n-; however, my mum also came up with some denominal uses of the suffix (that I added to the entry), showing that this use is marginally productive as well. Tellingly, none of these seem to be on Wiktionary. Brutal Russian (talk) 16:33, 7 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

non-inflected edit

See my comment at Talk:noninflected#What about the hyphenated form non-inflected?

--Fyrisdal (talk) 12:13, 25 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

New de-verb template considered harmful edit

I work mainly on German entries, and occasionally I need to fix the de-verb templates in verb headers. (Yes, it's hard to believe, but there are occasional errors in these headers.) The case I'm working on now is the verb abbrechen where is says "auxiliary haben" but it should say "auxiliary haben or sein". In the old days, when we still used de-verb-weak and de-verb-strong, this would have been the work of a less than a minute to fix, simply add the parameter aux=both to the template and you're all set. Now I have to try to understand the idiosyncratic markup language used in the de-verb template, no actual parameters but complex and cryptic delimiters with .'s, #'s, angle brackets, and other punctuation used in unusual ways. Furthermore, there is no proper documentation for the template, just a list of examples with nothing to say what to do if your particular change is not similar to one of them. (There is a section on manual parameters, but trying to use them only generates lua errors in my experience.) What I find especially irksome is that the old templates, de-verb-weak and de-verb-strong are not even available as a fall-back; apparently they've been wiped from history like Soviet dissidents. So what used to be a relatively simple operation can now require literally hours of frustrating trial and error; I'm really not seeing the benefit in terms of productivity with the new template. So my question is, was there a discussion and consensus to make this change? If so I was not aware of it and certainly would have voted against it.

I did manage to fix the abbrechen entry, after a relatively quick 20 min. of frustrating trial and error, but that's still ten times as long as it would have taken with the old system. But I run into errors in these headers fairly regularly, and I feel wrestling with this new template is a waste of my time; I find the German language quite challenging enough. Worse, I'm been active on this site for a while now and am used to the template-heavy style used here. But I think a newcomer would give up and let the error stand rather than try to fix it. To me, the point of having an open source reference like this is that small errors can be fixed easily by people without having to go through a steep learning curve. But this new template seems intent on limiting the people who can make changes to the few individuals who have been initiated into the mysteries of this unnecessarily complex new markup. --RDBury (talk) 23:48, 25 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I think these templates are optimized for the most common (80%?) cases, where they work well and save time by providing good defaults. I agree that making changes sometimes unnecessarily involves "reverse engineering" the template's meta-programming language. I had some similar issues with {{place}} recently. – Jberkel 19:55, 26 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

It looks like {{de-verb}} relies on Module:de-headword. I've been similarly concerned at the lack of documentation for many of our modules, and dearth of code comments in all of them that I've looked at, which ultimately makes our infrastructure even more unfriendly than the older {{bracket|heavy|template|syntax}}. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 23:24, 26 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

This feels to me as though it belongs at Wiktionary:Grease pit and I have not worked on Wiktionary’s templates and modules, but anyway, two things:

It is an age-old problem that writing documentation takes a back seat to building working code, usually because it feels less urgent (and is less fun), so somehow we need to reach a culture in which writing code is acknowledged to bring that responsibility with it. Perhaps it also has to be easier for writers and users of templates and modules to communicate effectively.
Problems such as Jberkel describes above could probably have been avoided if there had been a test-suite for {{de-verb}}, probably in the form of a sub-page containing many invocations which are displayed (and, ideally, automatically compared) with their expected output. We need such test-suites for all important templates and modules. The documentation pages of a template usually supplies a number of suitable test cases for it, though more are needed for edge cases and odd combinations. I found such an approach very helpful when building and maintaining a template-heavy MediaWiki site a few years back.

PJTraill (talk) 12:36, 27 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

tablet computer edit

Really clunky definition. Can anyone improve it? Equinox ◑ 19:21, 26 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Equinox, I did a revision. Hopefully less clunky now. (Also replaced a flat top-view with a photo showing a user's hands.) --Frigoris (talk) 17:01, 28 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Yep, thanks. Equinox ◑ 18:36, 28 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

chick with a dick edit

Is "trans woman" a sufficient definition? My understanding is that trans women may or may not have a penis (i.e. may be pre- or post-operative). Would a person with no penis still be called "chick with a dick"? Equinox ◑ 22:12, 26 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I'm sending it to RFD. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 22:15, 26 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

science lab edit

I added this and someone deleted it saying was SOP. Is "science lab" really used for anything other than school classrooms where science classes are held? I would say that outside of schools "science lab" is seen as redundant because a laboratory or lab is a place where scientific stuff is done. 172.58.171.86 02:16, 27 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Apparently it is. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 02:19, 27 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Urdu term for Jakarta: جکارتا, جاکارتا, or جکارتہ? edit

I've come across three different terms in Urdu for the name of the Indonesian capital Jakarta, but I have no idea which might be correct. See the translation given at the English-languagae entry, ur:جکارتا, and جکارتہ (which probably shouldn't be a redirect but either a normal entry or deleted). (Unfortunately, I don't speak any Urdu whatsoever.) Adam78 (talk) 08:23, 27 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Urdu Wikipedia likes جکارتا, for whatever that's worth. If you've come across all 3 spellings in CFI-compliant sources, we can have all 3 and call 2 of them {{alt sp}}. —Mahāgaja · talk 08:55, 27 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

New kanjis (probably just for fun) edit

Please look at the video [30] He presented some new kanjis representing new words, like dogecoin or cloud storage, for eye dialect only. Do not make entries for them until they are actually used. --Octahedron80 (talk) 23:44, 27 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

so, meme neologisms that have a negative chance of being adopted ever, even less than an english-language neologism (which would at least be typable) and that we do not need to concern ourselves with. —Suzukaze-c (talk) 12:38, 28 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

bitcoin edit

Has anyone else noticed that people often say "bitcoin" when they mean "cryptocurrency" more generally? ---> Tooironic (talk) 08:44, 28 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

No, but it looks like "crypto" is on the way to become a catch-all term for anything vaguely related to cryptocurrencies (cryptoart etc.) – Jberkel 14:51, 1 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Pronunciation of Han characters from U+9FD8 to U+9FE9 (phonetic transcriptions used by the Russian Orthodox church) edit

Currently the pronunciation sections are empty for the characters 鿘 to 鿩. These were special characters used by the Russian Orthodox church to transcribe certain syllables in Chinese or Japanese text. As transcriptions for sounds, it is particularly anomalous that the Pronunciation sections are empty.

I think this can be easily fixed by providing the IPA in slashes, for example, like /xʲi/ for 鿘 (= 合 + 伊) as in the name Rachel / Рахиль / 鿜鿘利. Phonemic keys will do, I think, since that was what these characters were invented for. Phonetic (as opposed to phonemic) IPA readings for this obsolete system would have been impractical though, as it would have suggested a sort of phonetic precision that wouldn't have been warranted by the system.

Of note, the characters 鿠 and 鿟 represented /rʲi/ (as in the name Maria / Мария / 瑪鿠亞), but also the final /l/ (ell) as in the name Mikhail / Михаил / 密哈伊鿠.

All examples are taken from Proposal to Encode Chinese Characters Used for Transcribing Slavonic

How do you think about this idea? --Frigoris (talk) 10:29, 28 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Not bad, but there may be an alternative.
There's a link in each character which leads to a Zhihu post (here) that provides the (suggested) Mandarin pronunciations of those characters. Using your example characters, 鿘 would be hī, while 鿟 and 鿠 would be rì [ʐi˥˩] (i as in ji and not si). Keep in mind that they are not the prescriptive readings of those characters. --ItMarki (talk) 13:44, 5 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@ItMarki, hence the slash IPA in contrast to the bracket IPA. --Frigoris (talk) 08:31, 16 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

arithmology edit

The definiton of arithmology seems off to me – it seems to mean something closer to numerology, i.e. the ascription of religious or mystical significance to numbers or mathematical phenomena. Arms & Hearts (talk) 19:44, 28 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The OED has "A treatise on numbers, or statement bearing upon them." SemperBlotto (talk) 06:34, 29 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

oh long Johnson edit

What does this term actually mean? And how is it used? The definition as it currently stands is not very helpful. The entry may not even be dictionary material. ---> Tooironic (talk) 09:56, 29 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

It means nothing. It was used as a humorous subtitle for a sound that a yowling cat made in a famous video. Should not be on Wiktionary. Equinox ◑ 09:59, 29 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Why is banish in Category:English words suffixed with -ish? edit

The suffix "-ish" seems to be productive of adjectives (bookish, fiendish, longish), but banish is strictly presented as a verb, and there does not seem to be anything "-ish" about it. bd2412 T 20:22, 29 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Roger.M.Williams It doesn't seem right to me either. Compare famish, brandish. DCDuring (talk) 21:20, 29 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The category membership is generated by the "Equivalent to ban + -ish" segment of the etymology. I am sceptical of this supposed equivalence. Equinox ◑ 09:33, 30 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The category seems to merge the Germanic and the French segments. The etymologies of brandish, blandish, banish, and the like that I and others put are from the MED. You can remove the diachronic equivalence part if you feel that it is superfluous. I don't mind really... Roger.M.Williams (talk) 10:24, 30 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

In these cases the synchronic etymologies just seem wrong. Normally we accept them when it seems someone could form the headword that way, though a diachronic etymology almost always seems more satisfying. DCDuring (talk) 14:52, 30 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Was the -ish (Etymology 2) ever productive in English (Middle or Modern) ? I've added a 'non-productive' label to it, but I have doubts this is a real English suffix. Leasnam (talk) 08:02, 1 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I can't answer your question, but the reference given is Century 1914. “ish”, in The Century Dictionary […], New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911, →OCLC. says that -ish is not a suffix, but rather a stem termination. They give a list of examples of verbs with the ending. DCDuring (talk) 17:45, 1 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Well, do we want to keep it as a point of interest ? If so, we can re-categorise it under 'Category:English verbs suffixed with -ish' by employing the ID2 argument... Leasnam (talk) 19:00, 1 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I don't see why a "point of interest" should lead to a corruption of the "suffix" category. DCDuring (talk) 22:56, 1 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

A potential grounds for keeping it is that people might constantly try to reinstate it if we try to root it out. Hazarasp (parlement · werkis) 03:39, 2 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I don't really see justification in that reason either :\ . We mustn't bow ! Leasnam (talk) 06:31, 2 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think that is even a concern worth having. We have not seen people trying to add vanish or varnish or tarnish to the category. bd2412 T 15:53, 2 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I never said it was a good justification. Hazarasp (parlement · werkis) 16:26, 2 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Leasnam On the MED page I linked, it says, "The same suffix appears occasionally in ME formations: famishen, publishen, amenishen (var. of amenusen), amonishen (var. of amonesten), etc" In the entry for amonesten, the alternation is explained as being "on the analogy of the numerous verbs in -ishen". So, for what it's worth, the MED seems to consider it something in Middle English, but again, all of this is largely not synchronic and/or non-productive, especially in Modern English. Roger.M.Williams (talk) 15:46, 4 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

That's right, I think. It's not a true suffix because it carries no meaning, even in Middle English. It was just a particle found on several words coming from Old French that may have been copied to new formations to give a French-ified connotation, kind of like the -eon of luncheon. It's not a true suffix the way we think of it. Leasnam (talk) 21:49, 4 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Do you really believe that luncheon is ultimately (some derivative of) lonja + a vaguely French-looking suffix, Leasnam?

I personally buy the explanation that it is a blend (with dialectal English lunch ["hunk of bread or cheese"], probably from Spanish lonja) with or alteration of nuncheon ("drink or light snack in the afternoon"). I have a really hard time believing that those terms coexisted and did not get confused (and then sort of fused) with one another, even if only in a way akin to what happened with Middle English aleyen/aleggen. Tharthan (talk) 20:26, 16 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

No. I do not. Luncheon was originally an alteration of lunching (“hunk of bread or cheese”). The alteration might be due to nuncheon (a pretty obscure word), but I was referring to the "Frenchified" look and feel of luncheon to account for its widespread popularity and use today. Leasnam (talk) 23:50, 16 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Based on the foregoing, I am removing the portion of the etymology that generates this categorization. bd2412 T 22:19, 29 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Llandovery edit

I feel that this entry could be consolidated under one etymology section, as the epoch is named after the Welsh town. And can we remove/consolidate the adjective too, my feeling is that use is attributive. DonnanZ (talk) 12:44, 30 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I have removed the adjective. Llandovery is the epoch (proper noun) so "Llandovery rock formations" etc. doesn't need a separate adjective as far as I can see; it's not comparable, etc. Equinox ◑ 12:45, 30 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]