Wiktionary:Tea room/2022/October

Is it acceptable in Turkish to say diş acısı instead of diş ağrısı for 'toothache'? Andres (talk) 12:56, 1 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Yes and No. Yes in case it is a phantom tooth, for in this strict form of acısı goes for things like kalb acısı "heart ache" , birini kaybetmenin acısı"the pain of losing someone" always for ache in a figurative sense. On the other hand, using it with personal pronouns, such as dişim acıyor/ağrıyor dişin acıyormu/ağrıyormu etc. are both acceptable. Flāvidus (talk) 23:36, 5 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Use of Estonian pool edit

Is it acceptable to use pool together with hull pollhull  ? "half crazy" Or the use pool in reduplicative phrases, such as "half machine half human" In the nominative or in genitive or in both forms , since pool in Estonian seems to be declinable too. Any other terms for "half" to express like above mentioned examples? Flāvidus (talk) 00:02, 6 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, poolhull 'half crazy' is acceptable and is actually used. poolmasin-poolinimene is 'half machine half human'. pool- can theoretically be used with all adjectives, nouns and adverbs. pooleldi is an adverb of the same meaning: pooleldi hull; pooleldi masin, pooleldi inimene. --Andres (talk) 10:42, 7 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
"pool-" in this meaning isn't declined, it's always in the nominative. --Andres (talk) 11:01, 7 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Two identical entries (except the UK [Commonwealth??] vs. US thing) that could use deduplication. But the fact that there are four separate senses is also a red flag. The first three seem to mean the same thing, as far as I can tell, and the fourth is a subsense. Equinox 14:39, 1 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Piggybacking, it'd be nice to come up with a system for US/UK variants that doesn't duplicate that we could potentially standardize with a bot on the whole site. Vininn126 (talk) 18:01, 1 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The many redundant definitions date to 2005-2006 (the old problem that people used to add multiple ways of saying the same thing as different definitions, which helps clarity, I suppose, but not accuracy). I've centralized content on the older entry. In theory it would be possible to put the content in one central "placeholder" location, encase any US- vs UK-specific terms in the definitions in little "if 1 then 3, if 2 then 4" template-magic statements, and then transclude the content onto both pages, displaying the right national spellings in the definitions on each page... - -sche (discuss) 21:27, 21 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I have to admit I was amazed when I looked it up that tranquillity is indeed the ‘Commonwealth’ spelling but OneLook and a GoogleBooks search (where British, Irish and Indian books using this spelling can easily be found) confirms it. How odd, we don’t write fragillity or civillity (though this is an archaic spelling I’ve just added). --Overlordnat1 (talk) 08:49, 22 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

(look) sorry for itself/oneself edit

Is this worth an entry? Under what headword? Example: 2017, J. L. Merrow, To Love a Traitor: "But my scarf has been looking rather sorry for itself since our encounter with the tree." Equinox 16:18, 1 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

There's also feel sorry for oneself, but I don't know whether the meaning's the same.
PUC16:22, 1 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I gave the example of the scarf, above, because you can "be/feel sorry for yourself" SoP, if you feel self-pity; but the scarf is an inanimate object and just looks wretched or tatty. Equinox 16:25, 1 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The question is whether it's a lexicalized figure of speech or a live metaphor. Chuck Entz (talk) 17:07, 1 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I think it's borderline, but probably worth including. The key is that when using it, I don't consciously think of it as an act of feeling sorry (i.e. sympathy) in any real sense, even though it probably does amount to that; it's lexicalised in its own right. Theknightwho (talk) 17:10, 1 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Three professional dictionaries have something; we should too. I'd prefer an entry at sorry for oneself with hard redirects from "feel/be sorry for oneself". DCDuring (talk) 18:18, 1 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think we have to include "itself/themselves/themself(?)" or "look" into redirects. Look could be replaced by sound, appear, seem, etc., probably attestably. I think one is probably understood as replaceable by any pronoun, even the newer ones. If it is not universally understood in that way, we could add something in WT:Glossary (and Appendix:Glossary?) to make explicit our usage. DCDuring (talk) 18:24, 1 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  Done Created sorry for oneself. Equinox 22:18, 1 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Appendix:Glossary edit

The definition for "dysphemism" is misplaced and found under "direct object". Please correct, I can't edit. Thank you :) 178.1.250.125 21:45, 1 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  Fixed. Thank you. Chuck Entz (talk) 22:01, 1 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

How to approach "commercial codes"(also known as telegram or brevity codes)? edit

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commercial_code_(communications)

here is an whole genre/use case of words(some of which are only used in this context and otherwise don't exist) that:

- can be safely assume to have been used more than the three attested times.

but

- have little, if any, surviving uses outside side of what coined that use, due to preservation of telegrams all but nonexistent

people on the discord suggested i bring up the matter here. Akaibu1 (talk) 00:35, 2 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

There are several whole books of these from the telegraph era. but I think the use-mention distinction is going to keep almost all of them out of mainspace. Given that just about any string of text that was often repeated could be assigned a code, there's no doubt a lot of it we wouldn't want anyway. For a descriptive dictionary such as Wikitionary, the philosophical question "If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?" can be paraphrased as "If a term was in use, but isn't attested, do we have an entry for it? According to WT:CFI, the answer is "no".
It reminds me of textspeak, which may someday suffer a similar fate, and for which we have Appendix:Glossary of textspeak. Given that all of the original reference works are now in the public domain and easily available on Google Books, you would probably want to provide extra organization and editing to make it worth repeating content that everyone already has access to. Chuck Entz (talk) 03:11, 2 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I think putting them in an appendix COULD be a solution. Vininn126 (talk) 10:16, 2 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I often find these telegraph code books when searching for citations of rare, peculiar words. As far as the actual "business uses" from random real words go (e.g. AMBULANCE = "our deal was completed as arranged"): I see no point in documenting them. Dictionaries are for words that have meanings, not words used as a random stand-in element of a cipher. The codes/words unique to this system like ABCXYZ might be more interesting. Equinox 10:24, 2 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Ah it's you! Your user page was what actually reminded me of this, yes there's alot of those, and if not that, i know for a fact there's a number of words that appear in their that have normal uses that aren't listed. Akaibu1 (talk) 16:22, 2 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
As Chuck said, I guess it comes down to whether we can find cites that are uses. There are books where people say "roger that" or "10-4" or report a "Broken Arrow", we even have "404" (although probably mainly because of the extended senses); if there are books where conversations happen via telegram and someone asks how a deal went and the other person replies "ambulance" the same way people in other books reply "roger" or "10-4", I think that'd be includable. But spot-checking a few of these, I can't find uses (except unrelatedly as common words in Italian, German, etc). Maybe an appendix is the solution or maybe the books which already document this are enough and we don't need to copy over their contents at all... - -sche (discuss) 18:33, 2 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Добро пожаловать: explanation? edit

Neither of the pages добро пожаловать (dobro požalovatʹ) and добро (dobro) explains how this expression comes to mean “welcome”, and why the emphasis is добро́, presumably making this word mean something like “goodness” and why пожаловать is in the infinitive. I searched for an explanation, but found nothing. I suspect that the original meaning is something like “to bestow goodness”. An explanation could be given in an etymology at добро пожаловать (dobro požalovatʹ) (or is etymology not wanted in phrasebook entries?) and/or a usage note at добро (dobro).

P.S. I added the meaning “name of д” (which I came across while checking out ru:добро) to добро, but am not sure if it should have been called Etymology 3.

PJTraill (talk) 12:37, 3 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Do we know for sure that it was a noun? At least with the Glagolitic letters, the names seem to come from all parts of speech.Soap 01:05, 4 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Surely a word used as a name is in that sense a noun? PJTraill (talk) 10:37, 4 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
It's from the adverb meaning of добро (the last one listed) and the meaning of "to visit" in пожаловать. Vininn126 (talk) 06:32, 4 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I originally expected it to be from the adverb, and I imagine it is perceived that way by many native speakers, but then why does the stress in добро́ пожаловать disagree with that in the adverb (до́бро)? Does the adverb admit multiple stress patterns? PJTraill (talk) 10:35, 4 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
ru.wikt in section three provides both accent paradigms. Vininn126 (talk) 11:18, 4 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I have ensured both pronunciations are in the Pronunciation section, but I wonder what should be done with https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/File:Ru-добро.ogg and https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ru-добро.ogg , which seems undesirable but is still in use on 8 wikis. PJTraill (talk) 11:52, 4 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

An IP changed it. I reverted by accident. But don't know if edit was good or not. Anyone know Venetian? Equinox 13:10, 3 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I do not, but I see that https://vec.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Doxe&redirect=no is (since its creation on 2021-04-06) a redirect to Doze de ła Repùblega de Venèsia, suggesting that the IP is correct to call Doxe an obsolete spelling of Doze. PJTraill (talk) 11:36, 4 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

prior[s] a connectome of biases which interpretationally filters input information edit

Translations edit

  • Greek: προϊδεασμός (it also has a different meaning)

死#Affix (baseball and other senses) edit

the Japanese word means an out in baseball, just like the transparenl loanword アウト. But we have the kanji word listed as an affix. Could we clarify better what that means, and how the two words differ? For that matter, Im not sure what it means to be an affix in the case of the other four definitions at 死#Affix either. Thanks, Soap 00:56, 4 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Plural of leaf ‘Canadian’ edit

I believe the plural is leafs for the slang sense. 95.37.226.93 00:24, 5 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Im pretty sure youre right. It might be metonymy from the sports team named the Toronto Maple Leafs (never *Maple Leaves). Soap 00:50, 5 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

When someone is good at talking over the phone to a date or a business client, you can say they "give good phone"; similarly, they can "give good e-mail". In Total Recall, a character who convincingly played a wife says "I give good wife". If someone's face is photogenic, they "give good face". What sense of give is this?
Separate question: is sense 19 ("exceed expectations") used in other tenses ("Your outfit yesterday gave!") or only giving? - -sche (discuss) 10:27, 5 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Never heard of this. Is it slang from "give head" (oral sex) or something? Equinox 10:40, 5 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The first and second example had me ponder how I would translate abgeben where sense of the third example perfectly matched. So these might be contractions with fricative prepositions, if that's ab, but the different examples don't feel related, in as much as it would feel unintuitive to derive the former from the latter. 2A00:20:6043:CC17:958F:FAB0:DB93:55C5 15:37, 5 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I have certainly come across this. It sounds like “provide” (sense 1.4 and 4) to me, with the proviso that the object, perhaps actually a service, is expressed by a figure of speech. PJTraill (talk) 13:15, 5 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not sure which sexual sense, but that's the idea: the humor comes from the subtle implication that some prosaicly non-sexual service is some kind of sex act. It comes from the way heterosexual guys used to gossip about girls: "I hear she gives good ____" Chuck Entz (talk) 14:20, 5 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
"Provide" seems to me to be the right sense of give.
But to give good X might be worth an entry. I think "X" has to be an uncountable, metonymous sense of a usually countable noun. Uncountable use of "X" in give good X may actually be a pioneering usage of the uncountable noun. I think head, e-mail, phone, and face fit this model, but there are others, some attestable: gift, book, kitchen, host, party, breakfast; some not, eg, various forms of work product (which usage is somewhat demeaning to the producer), Christmas, piano, press conference. "X" seems to typically be some kind of performance. I don't think that the expression normally works well with other adjectives besides good, even bad. I think one would usually say doesn't give good X rather than gives bad X. DCDuring (talk) 15:06, 5 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I've always understood it to be an allusion to expressions such as "give a good performance" meaning one puts on a good show, so to give good face is to "act well" (as an actor or actress does) or to "look well, look attractive, be expressive, pose nicely, etc.". To me it's an acting/stage/film sense, so in this view, give would align with "perform"...maybe even 'play'/'enact'/'portray' (e.g. he's giving good devil's advocate = he's giving us good devil's advocate = playing (the role/part) of devil's advocate well) Leasnam (talk) 02:27, 7 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
It also reminds me of the photographer saying to his/her model: "Give me happy,...no, not that happy... now give me sad...sadder...that's it...now give me surprised...good, good give me more" Leasnam (talk) 02:56, 7 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Whitney Houston also had a song "You give good love". Leasnam (talk) 13:44, 7 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks, all. Re whether it's connected to give head or sex: I considered that myself, but some of the examples of "give good phone" are in business settings and don't seem sex-related and the photographer's jargon of "give good face" also doesn't seem overtly sex-related, although that doesn't rule out such an origin, I know. I've moved the second "provide" sense (which had been sense 4, and already had a cite about giving good phone, I now see) up to be sense 2, next to the other "provide" sense from which it seems to differ mainly in transitivity. - -sche (discuss) 21:51, 7 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Does anyone else feel that the register of this word has gone down in recent years? It seems to me to be much more informal than "young person". In Australia at least you wouldn't see it that much in government documents or even brochures. ---> Tooironic (talk) 23:28, 5 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

To me it has a rather dated feel. Vininn126 (talk) 09:44, 6 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I agree it's more informal, but here in the US at least, a youngster is someone of pre-adolescent age, whereas a young person can also refer to this group it also reaches into early adulthood (early to mid twenties), so the latter is much broader and more general. Leasnam (talk) 02:23, 7 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I am from Colorado ;) Vininn126 (talk) 08:50, 7 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Ok. Well, I can see that, it's often used more by older folks, right ? Leasnam (talk) 13:40, 7 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I suppose the people who would use it is why I would associate the term as being dated. Vininn126 (talk) 14:38, 7 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think that it is actually dated, though. It may end up that way in a decade or two, but labelling it as dated right now is a bit of a stretch unless we have really solid evidence. Tharthan (talk) 21:01, 7 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I partially agree with Leasnam, in that I perceive a distinction in what this term and "young person" most often denote, even though overall I suppose they probably can cover the same territory (e.g., an old person can call someone in their mid twenties a youngster). Should we change the definition from just "A young person" to something like "A young person, especially a child"? I notice other dictionaries either have something equivalent to "especially a child" or else list both "young person" and "child" as senses. They don't, AFAICT, mark the term as dated (yet). - -sche (discuss) 21:41, 7 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The point you bring up regarding the difference in the one using the term and the referent is where it is, I think. A person in their 80's might refer to someone in their 40's as a youngster, so it's relative to the one using the term. Possibly, because when the 80 yo was 50, the 40 yo was 10 (?). Funny, now that I think about it, they might also refer to them as a young person. hrmm. Leasnam (talk) 03:38, 8 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I've started making changes but I noticed there are a few discrepancies here and in the German Wiktionary.

My opinion:

  1. West-Berlin (also Berlin (West) is the political territory (the American, British and French sectors of Berlin between 1949 and 1990.)
  2. Westberlin is just western part of Berlin at any period but may be used for West-Berlin colloquially?
  3. I am less sure about eastern Berlin

(Notifying Matthias Buchmeier, -sche, Jberkel, Mahagaja, Fay Freak, Fytcha): Could please make the necessary changes? Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 06:33, 7 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I think it will take some work to tease apart official FRG usage, official GDR usage, colloquial FRG usage, colloquial GDR usage, colloquial West Berlin usage, and colloquial East Berlin usage. Apparently Westberlin was the preferred name in official eastern usage, while Berlin (West) was the preferred in name in official western usage. East Berlin was called simply Berlin or Berlin, Hauptstadt der DDR in the east and Berlin (Ost) officially in the West. Definitely read w:de:West-Berlin (particularly the section w:de:West-Berlin § Begrifflichkeiten) and w:de:Ost-Berlin (particularly w:de:Ost-Berlin § Begriffsproblematik). —Mahāgaja · talk 07:12, 7 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I started the entry and was going to add some notes, but it looked like a can of worms. Maybe we should start collecting some quotes first. – Jberkel 09:41, 7 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
My two cents: --- The official stance in West Germany was: Germany is one, Berlin is one, all current borders are temporal. Accordingly the officialese terms were "Berlin (West)" and "Berlin (Ost)", in order to stress the unity. Neither was ever common in normal speech in the West (nor obviously in the East). --- The official stance in East Germany was at first that Berlin was entirely part of the East, but after 1970 they accepted the existence of West-Berlin and tried to normalise it. Accordingly "Berlin" was East-Berlin and the western part was written "Westberlin", in order to make it look like a totally different entity. --- The forms "Ost-Berlin" and "West-Berlin" with hyphens were compromise forms and were used by most people and publications that tried to be neutral. These were also the commonest in general parlance. --- Of course, in Berlin itself, "Berlin" normally referred to the West in the West, and to the East in the East. 90.186.72.91 02:17, 9 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
PS: @Jeuwre is from Berlin as far as I know. Maybe he can contribute with some more "in-depth" info :) 90.186.72.91 02:29, 9 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Just my two cents: Only people my age still distinguish between West- und Ostberlin (that's how I would write it in everyday situations). I don't think anyone would verbally say Berlin (Ost) or Berlin (West). And even in writing it would only be a distant memory of street signs in GDR, for example, and today not used very often. Sorry for my poor contribution. Have a nice day --Jeuwre (talk) 18:48, 9 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks. Yes, what I wrote above of course referred to the time before 1990. Today the spellings "Westberlin"/"West-Berlin" and "Ostberlin"/"Ost-Berlin" are probably interchangeable because the ideological background is gone. Having briefly lived in Berlin myself, I agree that both terms are fairly rare in Berlin itself. They usually say "im Osten" and "im Westen" instead. To be sure, the distinction as such is still very much alive -- to a surprising degree even among many people who are now in their 30s, particularly those from the East it seems to me. 90.186.72.91 20:32, 9 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The definitions as currently stated are:

  1. (transitive) To bring to a conclusion.
  2. (intransitive) To come to a final place, condition, or situation, sometimes unplanned or unexpected; to turn out.
  3. (transitive) To lift or tilt, so as to set on end.

In American English I cannot imagine sense #1 being used (transitive end up, the usex provided reads very awkwardly to me). Is this used in this way elsewhere? - TheDaveRoss 14:58, 7 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

OED has both transitive and intransitive examples of sense 1:
  • 1874, [1]: Psalm 102 "ends up right gloriously with calm confidence for the future".
  • 1926 August, Ladies' Home Journal: "Those things you use to divide off words and end up sentences with."
Certainly needs a "dated" or "obsolete" label.
OED also has some limited evidence for sense 3, such as "We ended-up an old plank [] against the [] wall".
If it helps, I've never heard either sense myself as an Australian. This, that and the other (talk) 04:23, 8 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Sense 3 sounds like a synonym for up-end, which I have heard used this way as well (i.e. resting a thing that's usually horizontal in a vertical position). Theknightwho (talk) 21:25, 8 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The result of ending up (in its most literal sense) a hogshead is a hogshead standing on one of its ends. In my idiolect the result of upending (in its most literal sense) a hogshead would be a hogshead on its side or damaged or destroyed.
The result of end up (sense 3) is the essential part of the definition. I think the means (lifting, tilting) is not essential. DCDuring (talk) 21:49, 10 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
As to dating, Sense 1 might be very 21st century, though I think it goes further back than that. I get paltry collections of Google hits for "ended up the meeting", "ended the meeting up" and "end up the discussion", and they have the same sense as the example for sense 1. I do slightly better with "end up the day", but that has a different nuance. I'm wondering of Google is artificially terminating the results. I get millions of raw Google hits, and then only a few actual hits. None of them were in books, alas. The idiom does seem surprisingly "rare". FWIW, I'm English. --RichardW57m (talk) 15:23, 10 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Have we decided whether this kind of term (like French disease, English disease, etc) is derogatory, triggering the rapid-attestation requirement? DCDuring (talk) 18:52, 8 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

It's not derogatory. GreyishWorm (talk) 18:54, 8 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I assume it's not intended as a compliment, but I don't know. Theknightwho (talk) 21:23, 8 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Nor is it intended as an insult. It's a joke, a kind of joke that doesn't go down well today, but nothing like the n-word for example. I thought the "derogatory" thing was intended for extreme abusive insults and not stuff like Chinese fire drill! Equinox 21:31, 8 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Is it intended to derogate the landing, to say it's a bad landing? If so, it'd be derogatory for that reason, separate from racial aspects, no? Or do we not label terms that derogate inanimate objects? I'm surprised we don't label other insulting terms like piece of shit and maybe even hunk of junk as {{lb|en|derogatory}}. I suspect it's {{lb|en|offensive}} as a separate matter.
(Overall, this bleeds into the earlier discussion of whether any or all of n*gger killer, negrophilia or get someone's Irish up are "ethnic slurs" or not... It's adjacent, but it's not directly racially slurring the referent, it's indirectly insulting a third party / playing on an offensive stereotype...) - -sche (discuss) 22:36, 8 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I certainly wasn't worried about the landing's feelings, or even the pilot's feelings. I know that this is not usually directly intended to insult the Chinese. I don't think intent is really the issue, anyway. My question whether this kind of incidental offensiveness is to be included in our definition of derogatory. Is it to carry a label of offensive?
There is no shortage of similar terms. Almost any use of a demonym as part of a term applied to something inherently negative (eg, a disease (French disease, French pox, French measles), a noxious organism (French weed (Thlaspi arvense)), dishonourable or peculiar behavior (French leave/French exit) is potentially offensive. The same may be true of any expression that relies on an ethnic stereotype (French kiss, French letter, French tickler). Are we only to be concerned about those ethnic groups or nations that have complained, rioted, or threatened violence? DCDuring (talk) 01:54, 9 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Interesting question. Despite the French predilection for complaining and rioting (far more often than many marginalized groups), I hadn't thought to consider whether they'd find French kiss offensive... do they? - -sche (discuss) 06:13, 9 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
It's literally tongue in cheek.
The topic of the figurative Spanish Inquisition (last month) had me wonder if it was really that bad while there had been other inquisitions, indeed. The Wikipedia article doesn't explicitly say how it gained its reputation, rather takes it for granted, and I'm not sure how much this is because of the idiom. 2A00:20:6096:2C1E:46AC:3E66:41E3:BADF 08:20, 9 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I'm delighted to see that Chinese landing is a pun or other kind of folk etymology, because my worry with the Spanish was phono-semantic matching (spyin'ish) since I have similar doubts about spanische Wand (tl;dr, clearly not derogatory) though it does not explain the Spanish flu, however. 2A00:20:6096:2C1E:46AC:3E66:41E3:BADF 08:26, 9 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Nor Spanish practices, though the use of this term should be considered complementary rather than derogatory to the Spanish, in my book. --Overlordnat1 (talk) 11:30, 9 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The question might be whether French women, for example, object to the sex-related terms.
I understand that Spanish flu originated from the desire of the US government to have an alternate origin for the US WWI flu epidemic, as the apparently true source was returning soldiers. They did not wish to discourage enlistment, resistance to the draft, and public support for the deployment of US soldiers in Europe. The alternative origin needed to be European and not from one of the Allies. A southern European country was probably considered more plausible than a northern one, possibly because of some vague ethnic stereotype. DCDuring (talk) 15:08, 9 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Spanish flu is brought up these days because of Wuhan coronavirus and the naming switcheroo. Wuhan coronavirus is a literal translation from Mandarin Chinese into English, a calque. I say this so that we keep in mind that historical antecedents for the pattern of naming a disease for a place are not allowed under a modern political campaign outside the scope of descriptivism. As a citizen of Oceania, I say: root out the old vocabulary and prepare the way for the 11th edition of the Newspeak Dictionary. --Geographyinitiative (talk) 22:37, 9 October 1984 (UTC)

Russian плеть needs more senses edit

We are missing some senses of плеть (pletʹ). A Russian blogger writing about the explosion on the Kerch bridge uses it possibly in the sense of span or carriageway. "То есть, в случае подрыва одной плети вторая остаётся в целости и сохранности по силовым элементам". Vox Sciurorum (talk) 19:43, 8 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

e.g. "My daughter keeps asking where her daddy is. I don't have the heart to tell her that he just died in a car accident". (trigger warning!) Is this covered by heart, or should we have an entry? It certainly isn't the same thing as have a heart. Equinox 21:15, 9 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The definition fitting best would be sense 4 at heart? It also seems rather different. I'd also argue the phrase has lemmatized for most speakers. Vininn126 (talk) 21:37, 9 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Collins and Fairlex idioms have have the heart. They must think it has lexicalized. DCDuring (talk) 02:53, 10 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
As we already have take heart then creating have the heart would appear to be a valid approach to including this phrase on Wiktionary (though someone could always add a cite using the phrase to sense 4 of heart instead of, or as well as, doing that). --Overlordnat1 (talk) 09:15, 10 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Any of definitions 2, 3, and 4 of heart might be sufficient to understand the expression have the heart. But the expression has some special features, such as being a negative polarity item, having a limited number of types of complements (PPs headed by for, to infinitives) , as well as being restricted in the type of emotion or, rather, lack of emotion involved in the subject. "I don't have the heart for torture"/"I don't have the heart for torturing"/"I don't have the heart to torture" all imply that one lacks the motivation, or callousness or cold will to perform torture. DCDuring (talk) 22:08, 10 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I went ahead and made the entry.__Gamren (talk) 23:53, 29 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

We should probably actually mention what the problem is here. The only problem I see, as a non-mathematician, is how tedious it would be to add the rice. GreyishWorm (talk) 22:09, 9 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

"Problem" doesn't mean "annoying difficulty" to mathematicians. It just means "something to be solved". If you do the rice nonsense, you get into such ridiculously large numbers that it becomes hard to keep count. Equinox 22:10, 9 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, but the actual problem -- determining how many rice the board has in total -- wasn't actually stated in our def. Fixed now.__Gamren (talk) 23:58, 29 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Uncommon and Rare labels edit

Why is it that rare links to our glossary but uncommon doesn't? I'm assuming we could set up a little group like what we have for obsolete/archaic/dated. Vininn126 (talk) 09:33, 10 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Sounds good, go for it. Ultimateria (talk) 21:29, 12 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Free Corpus Application edit

I did not discover this, but I feel people should be made aware of antconc. If you have the time or energy to create a corpus for better linguistic analysis (i.e. get collocations and such), then I recommend checking this out. Vininn126 (talk) 10:28, 10 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

There was a lot wrong with the description as ၐြဳ (grī /⁠/ɡ͡rəː/⁠/). Interestingly, this word has a very Sanskrit spelling - its initial letter is not normally listed as occurring in the Mon alphabet! On that point, I suppose the principle of "Verify! Verify!" applies. Now, I would expect the letter to be pronounced /s/, which would lead to a clear class vowel, whereas the vowel reported for this word appears to be a breathy class vowel. The same would apply to a pronunciation as /c/. I have accordingly amended the transliteration of the first vowel to /ś/.

Now, a misreading of the first letter as (g) might conceivably lead to a Middle Mon onset /gr/, but that would either lead to an anaptyctic presyllable initial /har-/ or more likely/kr/. I therefore think the pronunciation is more likely to be /krəː/, possibly with late-acquired breathiness. This word needs expert attention - @Crowley666, 咽頭べさ. I can detect an anomaly, but not confidently correct all of it. --RichardW57m (talk) 14:58, 10 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

hi @RichardW57m, I am advanced in Mon language, but I am lacking in IPA phonetic writing, so do as you see fit, I have no objection, see the link below for proof of ၐြဳ terminology. thanks.--𝓓𝓻.𝓘𝓷𝓽𝓸𝓫𝓮𝓼𝓪|𝒯𝒶𝓁𝓀 15:24, 10 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Replies only need to be indented one extra level (':'). I believe using '::' at the first reply level will cause layout problems if one clicks on 'reply' for a post that someone has already replied to. --RichardW57m (talk) 08:53, 11 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Occupied edit

Worthy as an interjection for the phrase book? Of course used to tell the knocker that the bathroom is occupied. Might seem obvious but seems like good material for the phrasebook. Vininn126 (talk) 16:11, 10 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Seems kinda lame... so perfect for the phrasebook, then! GreyishWorm (talk) 23:42, 11 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The phrasetome -- call it the glossonomicon.__Gamren (talk) 00:05, 30 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Template:coin: the or no the? edit

There are many uses of {{coin}} where the |nat= parameter begins with a "the". I think this is counter-productive, and the template should add the article if it's desired. But should it? Is it better to write "coined by American scientist Josiah Willard Gibbs" or "coined by the American scientist Josiah Willard Gibbs"? This seems to be somewhat of a controversial issue. — SURJECTION / T / C / L / 18:46, 10 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I think we should avoid it - news articles avoid articles and I also think we should avoid them in definitions and glosses if possible. Vininn126 (talk) 18:51, 10 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Splitting this off an above discussion: is piece of shit derogatory? I think sense 1 is (sense 2 obviously is), but want more input, because all the terms I could think of offhand to look at that refer derogatorily to inanimate objects are not labelled "derogatory"... - -sche (discuss) 22:27, 10 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I think derogatory is more or less synonymous with pejorative. I never thought a pejorative could not refer to a thing. I am less certain about derogatory, but I would think that derogatory term would include terms denigrating things. We might say we don't need to label as derogatory terms that belittle or denigrate things because things can't be offended, but people are often offended by pejoratives directed against things they care about, eg, books, cars, clothes, houses. DCDuring (talk) 03:19, 11 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Are we going to be saying that any term (eg, bad) that assigns a negative value to something is derogatory? DCDuring (talk) 03:32, 11 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Well, we should add most ethnic designations, because they imply that the person is not English. :-) --RichardW57m (talk) 12:39, 11 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Currently, there exist a weird hard redirect (Citations:se donner le mot) but I think it merits a separate entry in the sense "come to an agreement" with someone, the Russian сгова́риваться (sgovárivatʹsja) seems to match the sense I have in mind, not sure about the exact English definition. I only found it in a couple of dictionaries but it seems idiomatic. @PUC: What do you think?

A usage example from G. Simenon's "Maigret et le tueur": Maigret avait chaud et la sueur lui collait au dos. Les quatre hommes s’étaient donné le mot. Chacun jouait son rôle sans se laisser surprendre par des questions plus ou moins inattendues. Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 05:14, 11 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

FWIW, this idiom also has an entry on the French Wiktionary: fr:se donner le mot, defined as Être de concert et d’intelligence ensemble. This means, somewhat pleonastically, something like "To be together in concert and agreement".  --Lambiam 13:27, 11 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Lambiam, PUC: Thank you, @Lambiam. I saw the French entry but it doesn't have any references. I had a go and made the entry, please double-check.
The citation in [[Citations:donner le mot]] is just for the reflexive form of donner le mot / passer le mot, isn't it? --Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 22:42, 11 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
To me, it seems more like these web traders conspired on the reddit platform to attack the hedge funds simultaneously, in a concerted action. So, IMO, this fits better as a citation for the new se donner le mot. In fact, I see no immediate evidence that donner le mot is used as a synonym of the more neutral passer le mot, so perhaps this needs verification. On the French Wiktionary, fr:donner le mot is a hard redirect to fr:se donner le mot.  --Lambiam 09:14, 12 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

This Mon word was originally entered, by @Octahedron80 as ယဲကာလ, whose components were then swapped by @咽頭べさ. Now, I've found a seeming on-line usage: "ဘယ်ကပ် က္တဵုဒှ်ယဲဇဳချာံမတုပ်တဴ ညံၚ်ရဴဂျိဇြုံသ္ကာတ်မြဟ်လောန်ဂှ်မွဲ(ယဲကာလ လေဝ်ဂး)" (Google display) at https://kzhead.info/sun/p7FmeZmAgYiJioE/ratanasuttam-pali.html, so is the original also right? It's going to take me quite a while to make sense of the Mon, while Octahedron80 presumably has his source for the y-k form. --RichardW57m (talk) 12:30, 11 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Hi @RichardW57m, if this issue is important to you, vote in the ကၠာဲစၠောံဘာသာ မန် (Translate To MNW) group with Mon scholars and confirm with the majority of votes, so I will pretend not to know about this matter.--𝓓𝓻.𝓘𝓷𝓽𝓸𝓫𝓮𝓼𝓪|𝒯𝒶𝓁𝓀 10:10, 13 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
He just didn't accept how Thai Mon uses and spells comparing to Myanmar Mon, even I already shown sources. The fact is that it is dialectual difference. I tried to split into two titles (on other words) but he still told me 'wrong' and blamed me destroying his language. So, I gave up Mon already. There are other hundreds of languages to help.--Octahedron80 (talk) 12:48, 11 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Hi @Octahedron80, now that I read your reply, I realize that you are angry with me, so the way you're angry with me right now is completely unfair, so let me ask you one last question, if you can answer the question I ask, I will take whatever punishment you give me.
  1. do you have your own brain that can distinguish right from wrong Mon vocabulary?
  2. writing Mon texts at a professional level, can you make it readable?
remember when you told me you were ผมซื้อหนังสือพจนานุกรม on Facebook?, so looking at your statement, it is clear that you have no level of proficiency in the Mon language. if you're competing with native speakers without a brain of your own to distinguish Mon vocabularies right and wrong, if that's not destroying other people's native languages, what is?. unless you are destroying other people's mother tongue, you should respect what native language experts say, so as a proof, I made a few Thai typos while writing an article on Thai Wikipedia, so who excused me?, who allowed me to explain later?, so Thai people are fully protecting their mother tongue, do I not have the right to protect my Mon language?, you wouldn't like someone destroying your mother tongue, and I wouldn't like my mother tongue being destroyed in any way, so it is necessary to have mutual respect. your insistence on not accepting the native language expert's statement deserves to be called destroying other people's native language. you know very well that I have an intermediate level of Thai, you also know that I can speak and write Thai, has you ever seen me doing Thai vocabulary mistakes on Wiktionary without following the advice of a native speaker and being forced to do so?, also, when I write about Thai vocabulary on Wiktionary, it's natural to follow your statement because Thai is your mother tongue, so you should also follow my instructions when writing Mon vocabularies on Wiktionary, because Mon language is my mother tongue, you can always check out my Mon language knowledge on Mon Wiktionary, it's a shame to blame others for your own sins.--𝓓𝓻.𝓘𝓷𝓽𝓸𝓫𝓮𝓼𝓪|𝒯𝒶𝓁𝓀 10:10, 13 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@咽頭べさ: There are better ways than angry deletion for 'protecting the Mon language' that are consistent with the Wiktionary goal of documenting words in Mon. Words, spellings and encodings (TBC) that are used but would better not be used can be marked as such by using the templates {{lb}} and {{q}}, with labels such as 'rare', 'misspelling', 'substandard' and 'obsolete'. The latter may be appropriate for words taken from old dictionaries. I am rather surprised that we are not using labels like 'literary' and 'colloquial'. --RichardW57m (talk) 11:17, 13 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
For the word ယဲကာလ, it may be that this is a 'sum of parts' rather than a true compound. If that were so, then it would not belong in Wiktionary. --RichardW57m (talk) 11:17, 13 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@RichardW57m:, many Mon people write easily without noticing when they write Mon, you must remember that Clerk Mon is two people, those are scholars and non-scientists, so scholars are very careful when they write and non-professionals write easily without noticing anything when they write, so you need to check whether a vocabulary written by a person is a scholar or not, so as an example, consider the example below.
  1. Burmese writing=ဘုရားသာသနာ
  2. Mon writing=သာသနာကျာ်
if we use the term ယဲကာလ, then it is not correct Mon writing, so take a closer look at the two examples shown above, thanks.--𝓓𝓻.𝓘𝓷𝓽𝓸𝓫𝓮𝓼𝓪|𝒯𝒶𝓁𝓀 11:51, 13 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
You have to repeat the indentation controls for each new paragraph. However, f you click '[reply]', the simple controls seem to work, and the gadget does the compounding for you. --RichardW57m (talk) 12:30, 13 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
If I understand you, the problem is:
The Burmese (and Indic!) order of compounding is the opposite to the native order. While a scholar will be careful to use the native order with a compound of an Indic and a native word, non-scholars may use the other order, which is bad Mon.
However, Wiktionary should help people understand the writings of non-scholars, even though they can get the order of elements of compounds the wrong way round. I therefore conclude that we should document the compound ယဲကာလ with a definition
{{lb|mnw|deprecated}} {{alternative form of|mnw|ကာလယဲ}}
yielding
(deprecated) Alternative form of ကာလယဲ
--RichardW57m (talk) 12:30, 13 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I always rely on Thai's Mon dictionaries because they was collected and approved by Thai-Mon local communities. (They were led by gurus of those villages and government.) If you don't accept Thai sources that means you also don't accept those people's effort. (I could think that you destroyed Thai Mon vocabulary either.) And I also tried to indicate usage only in Thailand, in case if it was different from Myanmar. I have no comment on Myanmar Mon as I don't have better source than Sealang (which was collected by Harry Leonard Shorto, a linguist living and studying in Myanmar-Mon villages 60 years ago). You might have better sources of Myanmar Mon than mine that I will leave this part to you. I am not angry; I am just disappointed that we cannot work together. --Octahedron80 (talk) 13:09, 13 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Ok, I will tell you once, please remember, if you want to write a Mon-Thai dictionary, please use Mon Thai alphabet, I cannot allow you to use Mon-Myanmar alphabet, the reason is that there may be confusion in the next appointment, so I can't allow it at all, also, if you want to write a Mon-Korean dictionary, use Mon-Korean alphabet. I cannot allow you to use Mon-Myanmar alphabet for that language. also, if you want to write a separate Mon-Thai dictionary, separate the language code for the Mon-Thai language, I can't allow Mon-Thai and Mon-Korean to mix with Mon-Myanmar. I love and respect the Mon-Korean and Mon-Thai people, but I don't want to complicate matters at all, I hope you understand what I am talking about now, thanks. 𝓓𝓻.𝓘𝓷𝓽𝓸𝓫𝓮𝓼𝓪|𝒯𝒶𝓁𝓀 13:44, 13 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
That may be good idea. I just added Thai script to Mon database. By the way, the language code "mnw" is able to share both; the system can deal with scripts by default. I will move to "mnw-tha" instead. I will apply on Thai Wiktionary too. --Octahedron80 (talk) 14:20, 13 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Is the writing system officially defined? My wife's currently in Thailand, and may be able to get me a copy of the definition if there's one of those government booklets defining the orthography of a minor language. --RichardW57m (talk) 14:25, 13 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
It was defined in พวน รามัญวงศ์ [Phuan Ramanyawong] (2005) พจนานุกรมมอญ-ไทย ฉบับมอญสยาม [Mon-Thai (Siamese) Dictionary], กรุงเทพฯ [Bangkok]: มติชน [Matichon], →ISBN from top to toe. I have a very last copy of it, or you can check this app [2] (In practice, Thai Mon might not kin to write. They just speak.) But I must adjust a little bit to be more readable, such as, กอ. > เกาะ, แพฺ-าซา > แพฺ-อาซา, แปฺ.แญฺ-า > แปฺะแญฺ-อา --Octahedron80 (talk) 14:32, 13 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
You need to add the Thai sort_key field on to the Mon sort_key field in the languages data module. [Done]
Should we add the Roman script? A lot of Mon stuff is only easily available in transliteration or transcription. Is this an issue for the Bear Pit (WT:BP)? RichardW57m (talk) 15:00, 13 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
There's still the Burmese-script printed material from Thailand to cover, though. That will be slow and tedious work. --RichardW57m (talk) 15:58, 13 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Is the k-y form used in Thailand? If so, is the y-k form deprecated? If we can't tell, please report that the Thai Mon dictionaries don't tell us. I'm going to have to look for attestation of usage in Burma. I'm not sure how we would record acceptance in Thailand but deprecation in Burma - there ought to be an example amongst the English lemmas. --13:47, 13 October 2022 (UTC) RichardW57m (talk) 13:47, 13 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Did the communities approve the Mon script spellings or the rendering of the pronunciations into Thai script? --RichardW57 (talk) 19:58, 13 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Spelling, of course. It is the reason why they make dictionaries. And it is unavoidable to write in Burmese script because the "real script" is not yet supported. (We may fix this with pictures but nobody will do it every time.) BUT spelling inconsistency still exists among books (how they are taught), as well as Myanmar Mon. See some headache-ness at စှ်. Thai script is the way they pronounce clearly; some Mon people communicate with it. "Thai Mon" should contain both scripts.--Octahedron80 (talk) 20:13, 13 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

When I have many dictionaries, I usually must check all those books (or digital books) for a word if they spell the same. However, it is worth to be saved on Wiktionary even it is misspelled or no-usage todays. --Octahedron80 (talk) 13:29, 13 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@RichardW57m: and @Octahedron80: for the spelling of ကာလယဲ, check out the Mon news article, thanks.--𝓓𝓻.𝓘𝓷𝓽𝓸𝓫𝓮𝓼𝓪|𝒯𝒶𝓁𝓀 14:13, 13 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
But is that Thai Mon or Burmese Mon? I already knew that the k-y form had a vastly greater presence on the Internet. --RichardW57m (talk) 14:22, 13 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
See my Thai Mon ယဲကာလ too -> [3] Thai Mon is influenced by Thai, so they arrange words like Thai. --Octahedron80 (talk) 20:36, 13 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Does that dictionary also have ကာလယဲ? RichardW57 (talk) 21:07, 13 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
No. As I said, it is Thai Mon only. --Octahedron80 (talk) 02:01, 14 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Please add this mention to ယဲကာလ. --RichardW57m (talk) 13:10, 14 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I think the definition that we have for "fee" as a noun is incorrect. In common parlance, it is usually referring to an ADDITIONAL cost to an item or service (I added this to the definition just now); where the cost is RELATIVELY MINOR. A cleaning fee for a rental car is a good example, where the fee is in addition to the rental cost. A late fee for returning a rented item late (unlike a late fine for returning a library book late, which had no underlying cost). A school fee, which is typically in addition to the taxes paid for public education. The underlying cost may not be monetary. Legal or banking fees may be in relation to a commercial transaction, where the costs are substantially higher than the fees, or a criminal proceeding where the costs are restrictions to the defendant's freedom. Or tuition fees, where the cost of attending a university could be considered minor compared to the time and effort required to obtain a degree. I'm not overly familiar with editing wikipedia, so thought I'd add this note here. Thanks! 45.2.201.136 00:09, 12 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Just to be clear, the previous definition was "A monetary payment charged for a service" and the current one you've supplied is "An additional monetary payment charged for a service or good that is minor compared to the underlying cost". The previous, simpler definition is better, I think. Your analyses of late fees, school fees, and legal fees seem to be stretching things quite a bit and there's no etymological reason to expect fee to mean only a minor or supplementary payment. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 20:40, 12 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • I think you are mistaken. A fee is just money charged for a service. For example, a translation fee. That it be minor or secondary or additional is not an essential characteristic of a fee. As such, the definition as it stands right now is inaccurate. ---> Tooironic (talk) 07:08, 13 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
And as to the example, some school's fees are unaffordable for most people. I can remember one MP complaining that his children's school fees were crippling because of his drop in income due to becoming an MP. Moreover, the legal fees in defamation suits can lead to bankruptcy. However, the OP might be able to find an example where 'fee' means 'extra fee', e.g. with low cost air travel. --RichardW57m (talk) 13:02, 13 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • ATM usage fee: minor and in addition to the withdrawn money. Airbnb cleaning fee: minor and in addition to the rental costs - and actually this is an interesting example, because there is a lot of discussion in North America about how the cleaning fees are excessive at airbnb, and probably shouldn't be considered fees any more. Luggage fees: in addition to the cost of an airplane ticket and relatively minor. A finder's fee: in addition to the cost of a transaction and relatively or comparatively minor. Inspection fee: typically minor and in addition to the cost of a repair. However, I agree that fee sometimes means just the cost of a service, like a teeth cleaning fee at the dentist. But, it's funny how not all payments for services are referred to as fees. I'm the OP, I just created an account. --TheLaziestAndy (talk) 14:34, 13 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    But none these rely on the sense of 'additional fee'. Something close to what I am looking for would be 'And what fees are there?' when asking about the total price of air travel - and for economy airlines, baggage costs can be a significant addition. --RichardW57m (talk) 16:13, 13 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    Really I don't think there's anything minor or additional about e.g. legal or school fees, the idea in the OP that they're called fees because they're supplementary to the potential cost of a suit or taxes seems like a just-so story and has no etymological basis. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 16:49, 13 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    Being new to wikitionary editing, I'm unaware of the importance of an etymological root for a definition, thinking definitions are shaped by usage. Regardless, fee seems to have its etymological roots in feu, which was a payment to a vassal lord supplementary to a pledge of armed support. And as for school fees, when they were introduced in GB, and named, they were capped at 1000 GBP (small relative to total costs). In Canada at least, school fees, refer only to incidental costs associated with attending a primary or secondary school. And tuition fees, were the private and relatively small contribution to a post-secondary government funded education, and have unfortunately grown since then. (I am revising my tuition fee argument from before) As for the comment of baggage fees they typically account for less than 5% of the revenue of an airline, and Airbnb cleaning fees less than 10% of the booking charge of a stay. Just imagine paying $500 for checking a bag for $50 for an airplane ticket; in that case you would be paying to send your bag, with an additional fee to accompany it. --TheLaziestAndy (talk) 18:41, 13 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    Usage does indeed trump etymology; my point was just that I don't consider it part of the current usage and there's also no historical reason to expect it to be. I suspect the reason you might view it as additional is because fees are often charged for extra services when buying a particular item, which are indeed additional but the charges are not called fees for that reason (I would certainly still call the $500 luggage fee a fee). In other cases your explanations seem quite contrived and ad hoc. Small/additional doesn't come up at all in the definitions in the OED, Collins, Merriam-Webster, Chambers, or the Cambridge Learner's. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 20:41, 13 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    But why don't you call the primary cost to travel by airplane a ticket fee? It is always an airplane ticket price or fare. And if I heard "ticket fee," I would assume it was a minor and additional to the primary cost. I just googled dog walking fee - and every search returned with the terminology "dog walking rates", with particular fees to compliment the underlying service (ie a grooming fee). But, if I look up a dog groomer, they have prices and rates, with fees for supplementary services like special shampoos. I understand there are some circumstances, related to government services where there are fees - but that too, I would think is named so, because they are supplementary to a primary funding mechanism ie taxes. --TheLaziestAndy (talk) 23:05, 13 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    Perhaps this notion should be expressed in the usage notes. RichardW57m (talk) 12:29, 14 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    It is common to call the price to be paid for admission to an event a fee.[4][5][6] In this use there is no sense of it being in addition to something else. A difference between price and fee is that the latter term is not used for the price of goods bought, but only for intangible rights or services.  --Lambiam 13:17, 14 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    The first site you reference states: "2-day General Admission (includes express entry): $50 + $5 fee" So, the fee is supplementary and relatively small to the admission price. And reviewing the ticketmaster site they have fees separate from the admission prices [7]. Admittedly this is not always the case, and I think you've mentioned it in your response, that fee is used when purchasing intangible rights (like being in a space when an event is occurring). I think that might be a separate use case like licensing fee. But, even as a I write this, I think the implication is that a licensing fee is small relatively and supplementary; the licensing fee for publishing a book is usually assumed to be less than the printing, promotion...etc costs. I think part of the problem is a lot of professional services are by their very nature supplementary, and comparatively small (ie engineering services for the construction of a bridge or architectural services for a building). But, the services I can think of that are stand alone, often don't use the word fee. There isn't a haircut fee, but a haircut price. A photographer usually charges rates. A house painter also charges rates. A landscaper is rates or price. --TheLaziestAndy (talk) 14:36, 14 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Should sense 1 (synonym of turning point) be considered separate from sense 2 (an unstable situation)? The OED is the only dictionary I see distinguishing them while also illustrating sense 1, but the quotations stop at 1886 and all read as obsolete to me. In any case, the entry would benefit from quotes. Ultimateria (talk) 21:25, 12 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I'd say they're (still) separate. A reasonably common example of 1 is the phrase "come to a crisis", in something like Our relationship came to a crisis that summer. The current definition of 2 does muddle things a bit with "especially one involving an impending abrupt change" but I think the basic distnction still holds. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 21:35, 12 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I have the impression several of the definitions put too much emphasis on an aspect of “change”. As the term is used in the sense of an unstable situation – really a deviation from what is considered normalcy – a “crisis” can last for a decade or more.[8][9][10][11][12] Also in the pop-psychological sense the term refers IMO more to the abnormal situation itself than to a change of situation.  --Lambiam 13:01, 14 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Change is bound up with the way the term itself has developed—Koselleck's article (JSTOR) on the concept is a history of ideas classic and traces its generalisation from the ancient medical/dramatic use, meaning a critical turning point, through its application to momentary emergencies, and finally in reference to vague and long-drawn-out situations of uncertainty—see the philosophical use in "crisis of Western civilisation", "crisis of parliamentary democracy", etc., Koselleck cites Huizinga's idea of a "crisis of European science" going all the way back to Descartes. It's worth quoting some of Koselleck's interpretation (pp. 369, 371):
 

[By the 19th century] "crisis" marked external or military situations that were reaching a decisive point; it pointed to fundamental changes in constitutions in which the alternatives were the survival or demise of a political entity and its constitutional order; but it could also describe a simple change of government. [] As it pertains to historical time [] the semantics of the crisis concept contains four interpretative possibilities: 1) Following the medical-political-military use, "crisis" can mean that chain of events leading to a culminating, decisive point at which action is required. 2) [] A unique and final point, after which the quality of history is changed forever. 3) [] A permanent or conditional category pointing to a critical situation which may constantly recur or else to situations in which decisions have momentous consequences. 4) [] A historically immanent transitional phase.

 
I agree in that context it can sometimes be used very loosely to just mean an abnormal situation, though I think generally, as those examples suggest, there is a specific expectation of something needing to be resolved, an emergency that demands a new course of action. So a crisis can be a turning point or a situation, but in practice the two senses are often deeply intertwined. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 12:57, 15 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Warship/Worship edit

To me as a native speaker of GA these are homophones, yet @Tharthan seems to disagree. Are they for any other American speakers? warship and worship on youglish seems to have most other GA speakers pronouncing them the same. Vininn126 (talk) 07:51, 13 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Without meaning to come across as rude, you should take a hearing test. Those YouGlish clips don’t demonstrate what you claim, rather they prove that the pronunciations are different. I’m not American, I’m English, but Thartan is clearly right here. It’s correct that the pronunciation of ‘worship’ that you claim to use, so that it sounds like ‘warship’, is rare and should be tagged as such. It would, in fact, make much more sense to tag such a pronunciation as Irish instead of American. --Overlordnat1 (talk) 08:17, 13 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Most do use /ɝ/ for worship, but some do also pronounce it /ˈwɔɹʃɪp/. We list this as "rare". Even by listing this as a rare pronunciation, it would still make the two terms homophones. (Also for what it's worth I do have mild hearing loss due to a "prank", but typically I can still distinguish between phonemes, perhaps the /ɔ/ pronunciation is either idiosyncratic or specific to particular regions). Vininn126 (talk) 08:22, 13 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I'm a GA datapoint that has distinct pronunciations for these. I'll have to remember to refer to the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum as a place of warship. DCDuring (talk) 15:08, 13 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
(You're asking about AmE: definitely not the same in most forms of BrE though. But good enough for a pun!) Equinox 21:06, 13 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
GA speaker here, and no they are distinct and even the stress on warship is slightly different, evincing that it is still a compound of 2 individual words, whereas worship is treated as a single word with 2 syllables, one stressed and the other unstressed. Leasnam (talk) 02:21, 14 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
(re stress) Makes one wonder about blackman et al eh? Equinox 02:44, 14 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Interesting - I do not stress warship that way, but there is a tendency in AmE to stress compounds that way. Vininn126 (talk) 09:45, 14 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Another strange phenomenon I’ve noticed, although I think I’ve only ever heard it from other English people, is the tendency to stress the word armchair on both syllables as if it’s two separate words arm chair. It’s definitely a minority and seemingly dated pronunciation in England though (although there are a surprisingly large number of American people saying it that way on YouGlish). --Overlordnat1 (talk) 09:58, 14 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with Leasnam, the stressed vowel is clearly different exactly as ward and word differ, and in addition there may be a slight difference in the secondary stress or lack thereof in the second syllable.
On a separate note, I'm convinced that I pronounce Carter and carder slightly differently as well, analogously to writer vs. rider (i.e. the vowel in Carter is slightly shorter and more centralized, with somewhat the same quality as cup). Any other GA speakers have such a distinction? Benwing2 (talk) 00:43, 17 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Canadian here: I do make that distinction. (And more relevant to the primary discussion, I also distinguish between worship and warship.) Andrew Sheedy (talk) 21:27, 19 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Benwing: I make that distinction. It is subtle, but I don't pronounce water exactly the same as wadder. In the first (water), the t sound is produced further back and higher in the mouth, as though I am forming the mouth to make a clear t but switching to enunciating it lazily so that it comes out like a half-t/half-d while keeping my mouth in the t position. Yet in wadder, there is a clear, heavy d sound, pronounced more forward in the mouth. Same is true for city and siddy. Not 100% the same sound between the two. Leasnam (talk) 07:00, 21 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Do we need three different senses? PUC16:54, 13 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

No, but the wording of a single definition may be a bit cumbersome. DCDuring (talk) 18:17, 13 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Why is the antonym of safe sex not unsafe sex?  --Lambiam 12:40, 14 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The definition as it stands is problematic. I can't speak for other regions, but in Australia tuck shops have gone beyond just selling confectionery or snacks. Nowadays they sell hot food, among other meals. Can anyone share their thoughts? ---> Tooironic (talk) 01:18, 14 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Tooironic: As an old Brit (I'm 40-something): this may be a slightly dated term. Certainly in all the old "school stories" for kids (Enid Blyton etc.) there is talk of "tuck" and "tuck boxes", which were phrases I never heard. We did have a "tuck shop" (1990s): this was just a place to buy sweets/candy/crisps/etc. at break-times. It was distinct from actually getting a hot meal at lunchtime. Also, because of modern ideas about diet (probably wise!) I'm not sure that UK schools would be likely to sell sugary snacks at breaks any more either. Need some input from the modern youth :) in particular, whether the term even still exists. (We could hack it by searching the Web for the use of the term, too.) Equinox 02:48, 14 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
In Australia at least it is commonly used in schools across the country. ---> Tooironic (talk) 09:33, 14 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
It's still used in the UK as well. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 15:17, 15 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I have the same feeling as Equinox, as a Brit my late 20s. That being said, I know some schools have them. Theknightwho (talk) 12:34, 16 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I’m between the two of you in my 30s and I wouldn’t say it’s that dated, though maybe I’m showing signs of my age and it has dated somewhat post Jamie Oliver. IIRC it was always snacks rather than hot food served in the tuck shop, so I agree with Equinox on that.--Overlordnat1 (talk) 12:43, 16 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I've never heard of this term before, so I expect it's at the very least dated here in Canada. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 00:24, 16 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Thank you everyone for your input. I have added a usage note to this effect: In some English-speaking regions, like Australia, tuck shops also sell hot meals, being similar to a canteen or cafeteria. I think that clarifies it somewhat. ---> Tooironic (talk) 00:07, 17 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Is it worth having explicit senses at these entries relating to Semitic orthography? To be fair, unpointed does have "(typography) Not marked with a point.", which is more general but I suppose covers it. There's a verb sense at point, "(transitive) To mark with diacritics." which again is pretty general (but noun sense 1.19 does cover the specific case). 98.170.164.88 07:42, 14 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I think so. It is also worth noting that there are two relevant sets of Arabic points - those that distinguish letters and those for marking vowels. --RichardW57m (talk) 12:53, 14 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Follow up to label updating edit

I'd also like to have the label "regional" link to the index, but I'd like some input as to the wording. I'm thinking something like "A term not present in the general language, only occurring in particular areas". I believe there is a better way to express this. Vininn126 (talk) 10:01, 14 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The recent creation of ŭulong-teo has me scratching my head, because it violates the almost-inviolable rule that words cannot begin with an initial Ŭ. On top of that, I can't find this word anywhere in the resources which I typically use for attestation. NordaVento (talk) 15:59, 14 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The English etymology links to a Latin source, but the link target is missing. Gary Glass (talk) 05:03, 15 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I changed it to link to each of the Latin words separately. If the combined term were actually idiomatic in Latin, then it would make sense to revert this and create a Latin entry for "dramatis personae", but it seems like a literal sum-of-parts analysis ("characters of (the) play") works here. 70.172.194.25 14:52, 15 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Spanish pants edit

The entry for the Spanish word pants defines it as meaning pants. But that’s ambiguous, as it means something different in British English than it does in American English. The entry needs to clarify whether the meaning is trousers, or underpants. Or if it is used in both senses, then this should be stated explicitly. --Zundark (talk) 18:59, 15 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Fixed --Hvergi (talk) 09:08, 16 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I'm far from an expert on architectural terms, but the definitions/images given in various other sources [13], [14], [15] seem a bit different. Essentially, it is a hip roof which has been truncated with a flat surface at the top. Maybe this amounts to the same thing; I don't honestly grok "not surmounted by parapet walls". Unfortunately, I couldn't find a matching image in c:Category:Illustrations of roof forms, but I'm sure there photos of buildings with similar roofs on Commons. ("Frustums of 4-gon pyramids" would be about right, if they were even more truncated and were on top of a rectangular prism representing the building underneath the roof.) 98.170.164.88 05:29, 16 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Usage notes by наверное (navernoje) and наверно (naverno) edit

Currently, наверное (navernoje) is specified as ‘dated’ and наверно (naverno) bears no remark. My impression is the opposite: the former is the normal word, while the latter is colloquial. Of course both forms are rather informal in general. 95.37.145.30 12:07, 16 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

My impression is that both are dated: You'd use "точно". Pinging also @Atitarev, Tetromino, SUM1 Thadh (talk) 12:17, 16 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
наверняка́ (navernjaká) is also current (not dated). наве́рное (navérnoje) in the sense of "for sure" is dated, наве́рно (navérno) has the same meanings, the sense "for sure" is also dated. It's a colloquial form of наве́рное (navérnoje). Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 22:02, 16 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
My impression is that one always reads or writes наве́рное (navérnoje) but always says наве́рно (navérno), and slangy наверняка́ (navernjaká). If hadn’t dived in systematically into the current language rules of Russia I would not even know that the former exists, knowing the language only from speech in Germany. But IP did not read the entry correctly, as Thadh wares. It is only the sense “certainly” that is marked dated and the forms have no remarks by Wiktionary though they probably should. Fay Freak (talk) 22:35, 16 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
наверняка́ (navernjaká) is not slangy. Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 23:06, 16 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
It’s not slang. Like чутка́ (čutká), that’s why I have only labelled this informal. There is a spectrum. Fay Freak (talk) 23:39, 16 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
It's not even colloquial or informal, it's very standard, almost literary. Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 03:49, 17 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Also, I use наверное interchangeably with наверно in speech. Thadh (talk) 23:43, 16 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
They are interchangeable, only наве́рное is a bit more formal than its shorter form. Both are current (not dated) for the sense "probably, perhaps" but dated for "for sure". Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 03:51, 17 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

You're CIA edit

For organizations like the CIA, Mafia etc. it's quite common to say "you're CIA" meaning "you're with the CIA" or "you're a member of the CIA". Does this merit a separate noun sense? Drapetomanic (talk) 00:20, 17 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I think you answered your own question by pointing out that it applies to all such organizations (likewise to fraternities and sororities, civic organizations, etc.). This means it's a feature of the language not of the term, and doesn't merit a separate sense added to every such organization. Benwing2 (talk) 00:35, 17 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
This is an example of a kind of synecdoche that is probably very common for names of organizations. I don't think anyone decoding "you're CIA" would have any trouble, so it doesn't seem essential to me. YMMV. DCDuring (talk) 00:40, 17 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I am CIA : Can I add [this]?  :) --Octahedron80 (talk) 02:06, 17 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Surely this went You are baker, police, CIA, because police is confusing and we afford a pluraliatantum definition. In contrast, to single out a baker, you'd prolly go for an agent, an officer, which is a marked difference. 2A00:20:6095:E9A4:C6EE:65B4:7727:3BD4 15:01, 21 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Etymologies 1 and 3 are both "you". Should they be separate? Ety 3 seems to mention East Anglian dialect. Equinox 11:56, 19 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Well, I read etymology 1 as saying that it comes from the word yeah, but that it is now used to mean you. I find that hard to believe. Looking back at the history, I wonder if we added the non-"yeah" senses to the first etymology just because that's what we see on the screen, when they really should be under the third etymology. So, I would say the first etymology is valid, but should be only for when yer means yeah, not when it means any of you ~ your ~ you're. Soap 14:38, 19 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, on the face of it it looks like someone inattentively added it to the wrong ety section, although actually we seem to have been missing the right ety section (it's not from "yeah"!) until this malformed edit. - -sche (discuss) 18:38, 19 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia says St. Martin's Day, 11 November, is also called Old Halloween. Is this true, in which case we're missing an entry? I'm not spotting it (for an 11 November holiday) in books from before ~2015 (and only a couple from after that), searching for "Old Halloween" + "Martin" or "November". Added in diff citing Carlyle and a book on Irish American labour history which speaks of "St. Martin's Day, also known as Old Halloween", a late mention as far as we're concerned and hardly much of an RS for the topic of St Martin's Day from a Wikipedia standpoint. - -sche (discuss) 18:34, 19 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I hadn't heard of this before, but a Google search (and a Google Book's search) of "Old Halloween" and "Martin" (both in quotation marks) returns a number of results. this article claims that it comes from Halloween landing before St. Martin's day when the Gregorian calendar was introduced, but that seems unlikely to me, since that would only have happened once. Whatever the origin, it does seem to have existed (though I didn't come across any actual uses, just mentions). Andrew Sheedy (talk) 21:23, 19 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
One crystal-clear example of use from the early 19th century here: [16]Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 21:41, 19 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Someone thought we were OED, and decided to add loads of abbreviated forms for the quotations. It looks rather horrid to me. Perhaps someone wants to help putting the quotes in full form? GreyishWorm (talk) 09:04, 20 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I wonder what source these were copyvioed copied from. DCDuring (talk) 11:44, 20 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
FWIW the person who added them linked the source in their edit summary (diff); it's the first edition OED so not a copyvio. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 17:16, 20 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

remove/withdraw/lose the "whip" edit

(reposted from Talk:whip, UK politics) Does this refer to the document (sense 5)? That is, if you're an MP and have "the whip removed", you don't receive this document and are therefore unable to vote? Or is this another missing sense? (example use) Jberkel 12:09, 20 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Jberkel: The OED treats this as a distinct sense, the whip. Etymologically it probably does derive from the document—I can find an 1890s use ([17]) strongly suggesting this—but in current usage I think the senses ought to be distinguished since it would be very strange to talk about withdrawing and removing if the document were meant. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 13:53, 20 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks. I've added a new sense to it. – Jberkel 18:22, 20 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I corrected it slightly since "the whip" only refers to membership of a parliamentary party; withdrawing the whip has no effect on whether the MP can vote or their standing as an MP as such, it just means they sit in Parliament as an independent. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 18:37, 20 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I believe this is a synonym of whipper-in (when talking about the person). And there's another sense regarding some abstract status that an MP "has". Indeed, the document sense is not adequate, because if you remove the whip, you are not removing a document. Jberkel seems to have done some work on it now. Equinox 20:51, 21 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Where there ever cabriolet taxis, wut?

I have a hunch that it derived from caballo "horse", thus a "ride", and that scholars can afford to sit on a first class "horse" not some rusty caple, and that people who rode caple couldn't write. That aside, in more recent times it's more likely to be from cabinet, compartment, anything that's not open to the elements.

Jinx, the etymon cabriolet is indeed from Italian for "horse caper". 141.20.6.66 16:18, 20 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

 
Cabriolet
The classical horse-drawn cabriolet, functionally a forerunner of the taxi cab, had a folding hood (also seen on some pram models), and the re-use of the term for an automobile model derives from this characteristic. Weather permitting, the hood could be folded back, as seen in this picture. (The closed carriage on the right is a coupé, likewise lending its name to a contemporary automobile model.)  --Lambiam 17:29, 21 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I was thinking about adding this as some kind of adjective phrase to describe someonr famous (usually a politician) who holds the record as shortest holder of some important post. Possibly very UK usage. Does anyone feel that they could do this justice as an entry? always assuming that it could be included. -- ALGRIF talk 13:52, 21 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Do you think we can find at least three independent instances of the term being used with this sense in permanently recorded media, spanning at least a year? Is there even one such use?  --Lambiam 17:00, 21 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Algrif's definition is much too narrow but it's certainly not a recent invention, the BBC News website records someone saying John Major will "become a pub quiz question" in 1999 [18]—I've heard it in reference to football too. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 20:37, 21 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I have no idea what you're describing. Can you give an example sentence? I only understand it as "a question in a pub quiz", like, say, "Which transgressive 1980s industrial group shares its name with a shock-absorbing mechanical component?" Equinox 20:48, 21 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
It means someone who will only be remembered as an item of obscure trivia. See this recent usage in The Guardian: "His political career is finished. His credibility trashed. Destined to become a pub quiz question as the shortest-serving chancellor who didn’t die in office"; or the John Major one I linked above, "He will become a pub quiz question, because most people will think the long years of the Thatcher Government became the long years of the Blair Government without any leader in between." —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 21:00, 21 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks. I'd never seen it before. Equinox 21:03, 21 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I’ve definitely heard this before, just can’t specifically remember where and when. --Overlordnat1 (talk) 23:59, 21 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Here someone is said to have become a “pub quiz question answer” – in response to the question, “who was the first player to score a hattrick for the same club in the Premier League, Champions League and FA Cup?”. In this use the term ”answer” is not used but implied, since the question is explicitly stated: “who was the proposed Supreme Court justice who never got a hearing?” Also, this source says, “his name will become a pub quiz question”, so the answer here is not the person but their name. So it appears that two forms of metonymy are simultaneously involved: (1) “pub quiz question” as short for “pub quiz question answer”; (2) referencing the entity whose name is the correct answer, rather than the name. The latter metonymy is possibly already present in the formulation of the question, which could have been phrased as, “Name the proposed Supreme Court justice who never got a hearing.” There are several uses of pub quiz question answer in reference to the hapless Truss, some not referring directly to the person but for instance to “[h]er shambolic premiership”.[19] Here is a 2017 use of pub quiz question answer, so my provisional conclusion is that inclusion of a figurative sense of pub quiz question answer is warranted, whereupon we can define a figurative sense of pub quiz question as Short for pub quiz question answer..  --Lambiam 12:05, 22 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
How is "pub quiz question answer" figurative and not literal? Doesn't seem to warrant an entry to me. Nosferattus (talk) 01:36, 23 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Something can only be a literal pub quiz question answer if it is an answer to a literal pub quiz question, that is, a question posed in a pub quiz. Examples of such answers are “spiders” (for the question, “Arachnophobia is the fear of what type of creatures?”[20]) and “Edvard Munch” (for the question, “Who painted The Scream in 1894?”[21] — although the year is usually given as 1893). The putative questions to which the “pub quiz question answers” in the figurative sense are meant to be answers are not questions that have been or are meant to be asked in an actual trivia quiz held in a public house, or for that matter in an off-premise quiz conducted in the same style, but are formulations of some rather unique property, labelled thus by an author for no other purpose than to stress its uniqueness.  --Lambiam 20:44, 23 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Coordinate Terms & Similar edit

Are Hubei and Hunan (and Huguang- Huguang) coordinate terms because their 'hu' components refer to Lake Dongting? In a more complex question, are Kinmen (Jinmen) and Jinsha, Jinning, Jincheng, and Jinhu coordinate terms or something like that via their 'jin' component? That the four townships of the island are all named with 'jin' as is the island itself is certainly 'coordinated'. Thanks for any speculation or guidance on what these relationships are, please ping me. --Geographyinitiative (talk) 18:44, 21 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

In our entry for thô it claims that this an abbreviation used in telegraphs for though but the supporting citation we use to justify this claim is from 1720, long before the first optical telegraph of 1793 or any electrical telegraphs (see Telegraphy). Perhaps this particular cite is referring to an abbreviation used in a letter rather than a telegraph? —Overlordnat1 (talk) 23:57, 21 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Even if the telegraph had been invented in 1793 BCE, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu would not very likely have communicated her letters of thousands of words by telegraph. I cannot access the quoted edition, but in an edition of 1790 we find this passage with occasionally rather different spellings: The whole ſhew lasted for near eight hours, to my great ſorrow, who was heartily tired, though I was in the houſe of the widow of the captain baſſa (admiral) who refreſhed me with coffee, ſweetmeats, ſherbet, &c. with all poſſible civility.[22] We’d need to see a photostat of the original to know what the Lady actually wrote.  --Lambiam 18:39, 22 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Well spotted. There are quite a few GoogleBooks hits for thô but nearly all for 17th century publications (or later reprints of C17th works). I’ve relabelled it as obsolete now. --Overlordnat1 (talk) 23:15, 22 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Did English telegraphy use diacritics? 98.170.164.88 23:33, 22 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Hyperforeign Pronunciation of Xi edit

Hey all, I believe that 'Xi' (as the surname of a Chinese person) is sometimes pronounced with a hyperforeign(?) sound- see: CBS News 0:06. It kind of sounds like "dzhji". If you know IPA, could you add this pronunciation, if appropriate? Thanks. --Geographyinitiative (talk) 22:10, 23 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I'm surprised /ʃiː/ is the only one listed there given that I hear /siː/ about as often. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 22:24, 23 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
We should IMO only add mispronunciations of foreign names if they are really common. I wonder how the reporter would pronounce the name Ji.  --Lambiam 22:00, 24 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
If we actually want to help normal people and journalists with pronunciation we need a lot more audio files in addition to our IPA. What percent of our potential user population is good with IPA? (I say 'potential' because I'm pretty sure that we have already discouraged many normal people with voluminous, cognate-laden etymologies, elaborate antiquarian cites, poorly worded definitions, etc.) DCDuring (talk) 23:09, 24 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
For what it's worth, I do think a lot of etymology sections could be improved. And naming fewer cognates, especially from minor languages, is one way to do that. But I hardly think etymology sections as such discourage people from using Wiktionary. You can always skip them... What discourages people is the part-of-speech sections. It starts with the mania to add archaic and nonstandard forms to the verb templates: stuff like that can really do harm because people can't find what they're looking for. 88.64.247.18 08:57, 25 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I think the overall impression one gets from an entry has a major effect on visitors during their first visits. Large blocks of type in foreign languages and scripts appearing at the top of an entry are a usability problem. For that matter, an inch of vertical screen space taken up by IPA is almost as bad. DCDuring (talk) 12:22, 25 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Data and layout are orthogonal (form follows function).
The broad transcription is sufficient to distinguish it from /tʃiː/ (Qi, qi, chi, ...), likely to be confused in my own experience because the transcription underspecifies and semantics necessarily so. 2A00:20:608D:BFDD:11DD:1E02:6A74:B58D 21:06, 25 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Please explain for the folks at home. DCDuring (talk) 16:32, 26 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Geographyinitiative Please see pinyin-chart ( xī xí xǐ xì ) [[23]] and click on to hear the audio of each pinyin. If you like you can think of it as half Fish half Vogel, since it is in between / ʃ /& / s / An “s “ produced with tips of tongue touching the roof of palate. Venture further and prefix it some “ h “ . Enter any of these pinyin in English wiktn. and get an endless list .Head to Forvo.com and sometimes hear “si ”others idiosyncratically (sic )? / ʃ /.These things my mind has pondered on. In any case /xī xí xǐ xì / isn't / sī sıı - sí sı - sǐ sı'ı - sì sı / or shī şıı - shí şı - shǐ şı'ıı - shì ş / nota bene: (2nd part of these lookalike IPA's are figment of my imagination and are unofficial.Flāvidus (talk) 00:48, 30 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Al-Muqanna Thanks for your recent (2023) help & comments. I wanted to "surprise" you again: /ʃiː/ is still (March 2023) the only pronunciation listed at Xi. I bring it up because at 3:39 in this video and several times after, former US Senator Claire McCaskill uses the hyperforeign pronunciation I was talking about. I can't tell if the issue was resolved above. Also: @DCDuring. --Geographyinitiative (talk) 16:54, 15 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I don't see any resolution of this discussion. Take whatever action you deem appropriate. I don't understand why we have so much screen space expended on separate etymologies for each transcription. DCDuring (talk) 17:16, 15 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@DCDuring I added this: diff. I don't know what action should be taken- I think an additional hyperforeign pronunciation should be added, so I added something like chi.(This next part is totally separate from the "Xi pronunication discussion.) But I'd like to respond to your comment about the screen space issue. Imagine we applied the logic of putting etymolgies from Mandarin that create a "Xi" in pinyin into one etymology header. Well, then etymologies 1, 3, 4 and 5 in Jin (as well as etymologies 2 and 6) would be combined into one etymology. Etymology 1 and 2 on Hancheng, Nangang, Nankang, Suzhou, Xinjiang would be one etymology. The differentiation makes clear what senses are from what origins. --Geographyinitiative (talk) 17:54, 15 March 2023 (UTC) (Modified)[reply]
I wonder how many of the definitions at Jin could be attested in English.
In the case of Xi an etymology discussion as verbose as that at Jin#Etymology 1 could probably provide what is needed. DCDuring (talk) 18:37, 15 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Gerunds in Spanish are non-personal verbal forms so the info currently contained in calando#Spanish, hablando#Spanish and possibly many more is wrong. Check: Talk:calando. - 37.11.122.76 23:09, 23 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I've just checked comiendo#Spanish and estando#Spanish and the same "conjugation" shows up while their equivalents in Asturian or Portuguese only provide the definition "Gerund of...", which in Spanish should be the same. It seems to be all over en Wiktionary... a template issue.--37.11.122.76 11:31, 24 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Pinging @Benwing2. Chuck Entz (talk) 11:38, 24 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Chuck Entz Oops, I forgot about this. Been meaning to fix it but it slipped off my radar. Will fix today. Benwing2 (talk) 00:43, 25 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Benwing2, @Chuck Entz. Thanks to both. The problem doesn't seem to have been addressed yet, though. It seems to be a template issue so it hopefully should be easy to solve even though it affects a lot of entries (many or all Spanish gerunds). --85.48.188.141 17:40, 2 November 2022 (UTC) (aka 37.11.122.76)[reply]
I guess part of the problem may be due to the discrepancy between the meanings of English gerund and Spanish gerundio. Spanish gerundios basically have an adverbial, not substantival, meaning... adverbs are not declined or conjugated in Spanish. --37.11.122.76 20:06, 12 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Japanese 入る Senses 4 and 6 may be "backwards" edit

The examples I have seen other dictionaries use to explain this sense all seem to point to a passive form definition, where the subject is the item being "contained", "included", or "held". Thus maybe the definition should be "to be contained". However, all of the other Japanese English dictionaries I've seen have the same "backwards" definition, leading me to believe that the error might be in interpreting a Japanese dictionary or in the dictionary itself. And my Japanese is not good enough to check those. Also I could be wrong about this being an error. Does anyone more knowledgeable have insight on this?

Ex: Maggie Sensei

この料理には何が入っていますか?

What is in this food?

料金にはサービス料が入っていません。

The service charge is not included in the fee Rampagingcarrot (talk) 02:10, 24 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Some editors at JM dict agreed with me, so I will go ahead and change these meanings to the passive form. Rampagingcarrot (talk) 03:19, 28 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Eirikr if you have any input on this or the unrelated discussion of #Pages_with_duplicate_Japanese_L2s below. - -sche (discuss) 16:05, 28 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Belatedly, thank you @-sche!
@Rampagingcarrot had suggested on the Talk:入る page that the senses are passive, but that's not quite it. This is not so much passive usage like "A has been entered by B" or "B has been put into A", but rather a difference of viewpoint. In English, we say things like "A has B in it", while in Japanese, we say things like A には B が入った (A ni wa B ga haitta, literally in A, B has entered) -- the topic is reversed between the languages.
I expect that a lot of confusion about how this verb works is due to overly idiomatic English translations that obscure how the Japanese verb and phrasing actually work. I've had a go at expanding somewhat and reworking the usexes to try to emphasize this difference. HTH! ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │Tala við mig 01:41, 16 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Worth an entry? It essentially means "to fact check a source while reading it" as far as I can tell. Is there a meaning of lateral that covers this? Vininn126 (talk) 13:56, 24 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

This specific sense derives from the title of: Sam Wineburg and Sarah McGrew (2017), “Lateral Reading: Reading Less and Learning More When Evaluating Digital Information”, Stanford History Education Group Working Paper No. 2017-A1.[24] However, the term is older and generally has the broader meaning of not just consuming a text by reading it straight through as it is presented, but expanding one’s view so to speak sideways, considering the material presented in relation to other relevant material, not specifically for checking veracity but mainly to get a fuller experience.[25][26][27][28]  --Lambiam 21:44, 24 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

A sharp edit

I'm discussing whether we should include these definitions of A sharp, C sharp, D sharp, and G sharp.

You know that in standard music theory, the definition of A sharp is the note a chromatic semitone above A. However, in non-standard music theory (this definition is used by Internet sites with lyrics and guitar chords) A sharp is often used to mean the pitch a semitone above A regardless of its function. (That is, A sharp is used to mean the pitch between A and B regardless of whether it is a chromatic alteration of A or of B.)

Any thoughts on whether this definition should be included?? If possible, please improve it. (Note this holds for C sharp, D sharp, and G sharp.) Georgia guy (talk) 16:49, 24 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

We could define A-sharp as, “(music) A tone a semitone above A, intermediate between A and B, denoted A♯.” This is agnostic as to whether that semitone is chromatic or diatonic. (An issue with the present definition, “ten fifths above C in the cycle of fifths”, apart from the fact that readers not familiar with music theory may interpret “ten fifths” as 10/5, is that it is anachronistic: musicians had been using A-sharps for centuries before the cycle of fifths was conceived, and in many tuning systems this characterization does not really apply.)  --Lambiam 21:10, 24 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I agree, that seems like a better definition, and is also how e.g. Merriam-Webster defines A-sharp; indeed, we already define B-sharp in terms of semitones, not fifths. - -sche (discuss) 18:30, 27 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
We really need to make our entries consistent; B♯ points to B-sharp, but C-sharp functionally offloads its content to C♯ where the definition has a third wording... - -sche (discuss) 18:32, 27 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
It turns out most of our pages already used the simple "one semitone above/below..." wording. I changed the few outliers. A couple entries had significant excess content: A♯ and C♯. - -sche (discuss) 20:29, 27 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

It sounds like TTS to me. — Fytcha T | L | C 12:52, 25 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I'm 99% sure it is. Removed. Vininn126 (talk) 21:50, 27 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Saying that this phrase is "often offensive" without specifying who consider it offensive is intentionally misleading, but AG202 wants this term labeled offensive simply because he finds it offensive. He thinks he owns that entry.

In [29], he claims that "as seen by the sources cited, it's not solely supporters of BLM who find it offensive". This is a barefaced lie. All seven references are either written in support of the movement or to quote those who are:

  • Victor, Daniel (July 15, 2016), “Why 'All Lives Matter' Is Such a Perilous Phrase”, in The New York Times[1], retrieved November 20, 2016

To those who find it offensive or misguided, especially those sympathetic to the Black Lives Matter movement, the statement — particularly in a social media hashtag — is not seen as a Kumbaya sentiment but as a way to remove focus from the specific grievances of black Americans.

Those in the Black Lives Matter movement say black people are in immediate danger and need immediate attention, like the broken bone or house on fire. Saying “All Lives Matter” in response would suggest to them that all people are in equal danger, invalidating the specific concerns of black people."

  • May, Ashley (July 13, 2016), “AllLivesMatter hashtag is racist, critics say”, in USA Today[2], retrieved July 14, 2016 (every person quoted is a public supporter of the movement)

Some people are tired of the hashtag #alllivesmatter. The #alllivesmatter hashtag, which recently has been used alongside #blacklivesmatter is “erasing the vulnerability of and dehumanization of black people," said Carla Shedd, assistant professor of Sociology at Columbia University and author of Unequal City.

  • Mick Tsikas (January 13, 2021), “Why is it so offensive to say ‘all lives matter’?”, in The Conversation[3] (written in support, see quote)

Black Lives Matter is intended to promote the peaceful protest of racism against Black people, not only in the US, but worldwide. It also calls for immediate action against systemic and social racism.

  • German Lopez (July 11, 2016), “Why you should stop saying “all lives matter,” explained in 9 different ways”, in Vox[4] (written in support, see quote)

But the point of Black Lives Matter isn't to suggest that black lives should be or are more important than all other lives. Instead, it’s simply pointing out that black people's lives are relatively undervalued in the US — and more likely to be ended by police — and the country needs to recognize that inequity to bring an end to it.

  • Christina Capatides (July 8, 2020), “Why saying "all lives matter" communicates to Black people that their lives don't”, in CBS News[5], just quotes people who clearly support the movement.
  • Lizz Schumer (June 4, 2020), “What Black Lives Matter Means (and Why It's Problematic to Say "All Lives Matter")”, in Good Housekeeping[6] is a clearly opinionated article. Tell me anyone is writing neutrally when they write

Instead, it's important to understand what drives the BLM movement and how to support it

  • Sukriti Wahi (January 13, 2021), “How To Explain Why Saying 'All Lives Matter' Is Wrong To Someone You Care About”, in ELLE Australia[7], same case as above. It's talking about how "all lives matter" is an "argument" that one should reject:

So, what do you say to some you care about who espouses this argument?

— This unsigned comment was added by 37.120.170.54 (talk).

An aside: IMHO we should generally not include political slogans anyway, even ones with a significant impact. They aren't proverbs and often have a simple literal meaning. Equinox 15:43, 25 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Going by your argument for source 7, the only evidence you’d accept would be someone who simultaneously supports the slogan “all lives matter” while also finding it offensive. Not sure how that one adds up. Sources don’t need to be neutral, either - our evaluation of them does. Theknightwho (talk) 15:58, 25 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
If an opinion piece proclaims that "all lives matter" should be considered offensive because X and Y, it is evident that the public does not see it as offensive. Why else would the author write it?
"People expressing an opinion means that most people don't hold that opinion" is one of the worst logical leaps I've seen in a while. Theknightwho (talk) 21:31, 25 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I agree. Vininn126 (talk) 22:43, 25 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I tried to add a neutral evaluation to the entry, but I was reverted. It is a matter of fact that labeling the phrase offensive is taking a stance and not being neutral. It is politically charged, but so is "black lives matter". — This unsigned comment was added by 37.120.170.54 (talk).

When a term is considered offensive by some groups, but not by others, especially when it follows political lines, I think a usage note, rather than a label, is the best approach. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 19:50, 27 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, someone in an edit summary suggested changing that part of the label to "see usage notes", and I think that'd work fine. - -sche (discuss) 21:32, 29 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
We'd still want the page to categorize correctly. Vininn126 (talk) 21:41, 29 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Worthy of an entry? I'd say so, it can't be SOP because the diplomatic tactics described as such aren't criminal i.e. illegal but rather immoral from the POV of the speaker. I've encountered it here: w:Schellenberg smuggling incidentFytcha T | L | C 14:03, 26 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I would class this as SOP from the extended meaning (sense 4) of criminal personally. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 14:22, 26 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, Shouldn't it be "in the palm of one's hand" since it can be both used with objects and people? Tashi (talk) 19:35, 26 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Dutch de nodige / het nodige edit

The literal meaning of Dutch de nodige / het nodige, when modifying a noun phrase, is “the necessary”:

  • Als je de nodige voorzorgsmaatregelen neemt, kun je jezelf preventief beschermen tegen inbrekers.[30]
    If you take the necessary precautions, you can preventively protect yourself against burglars.

Nothing special; this is totally SOP. But there is also a common use that is rather opaque:

  • Zoals gebruikelijk weer de nodige ongelukken dit weekend op de Curaçaose wegen.[31]
    Again, as usual, the necessary(?) accidents this weekend on the Curaçao roads.
  • Het was een vriendelijke man die in zijn leven de nodige tegenslagen te verwerken had gehad.[32]
    He was a kind man who had endured the necessary(?) setbacks in his life.
  • Al deze huizen werden in de jaren 1980 – onder het nodige protest – opgeofferd voor de bouw van appartementsgebouwen.[33]
    All these houses were sacrificed in the 1980s – under the necessary(?) protest – for the construction of apartment buildings.

Accidents, setbacks and protests may be expected, but it is strange to call them “necessary”. It appears that this use is basically a determiner, meaning “many” or “much”. Does this idiom merit a separate entry? I have the impression that this sense, which can hardly be called “figurative”, is reserved for items with a connotation of being unfortunate – another common collocation in which we see this sense is de nodige mislukkingen.  --Lambiam 21:59, 27 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Lingo Bingo Dingo, Mnemosientje, Rua, Thadh.  --Lambiam 19:04, 28 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I would rather translate them as "his/her/its fair share". I think "expected" is also pretty close. In any case, this would probably indeed deserve some kind of figurative sense, but definitely not a separate entry. Thadh (talk) 21:27, 28 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I'd go for 'inevitable'. --RichardW57 (talk) 23:20, 28 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Pages with duplicate Japanese L2s edit

Can an editor comfortable editing Japanese please consolidate the duplicate Japanese entries on these pages?

幸平
砂地
艶やか

Thank you! JeffDoozan (talk) 03:02, 28 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@JeffDoozan, I've cleaned up the above entries. Thank you! ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │Tala við mig 01:42, 16 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

In the French quotation, the adjective is used in the masculine form when the speaker was a woman talking about herself.

The term may also use etymology and alt forms. Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 09:26, 28 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I answered my own question. It can also be invariable. Still needs the etymology. --Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 09:34, 28 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
According to the dictionary of the Académie française, it was borrowed from regional German schlass, meaning “lacking energy, tired”.[34] Presumably, that would be Low Alemannic German as spoken in the Alsace.  --Lambiam 09:46, 28 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Lambiam: Thanks. I am having trouble understanding abbreviations. The first line in that source says
1. 1873 Slaze subst. « homme ivre » (d'apr. Esn.); ...
I only understand "a drunk man" (homme ivre). Did it have the noun meaning "drunk man" or that was some original language? I don't know what #2 says either. Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 10:06, 28 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Slaze subst. = substantif (noun) d'apr. Esn. = d’après (according to) Esn. perhaps "Esnault (Gaston), 1965. Dictionnaire historique des argots français" or some other work by Esnault, I couldn't find a list of abbreviations used. – Jberkel 11:07, 28 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I think so. For example, the entry frichti also has the abbreviation “Esn.”,[[35] but because it once was their “word of the day” it has more extensive unabbreviated info, where we find Esnault, Argots, linking to a page with a full bibliographic description.  --Lambiam 13:29, 28 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Schweizerisches Idiotikon has two fitting senses for Alemannic German schlass: "schlaff, matt" and "faul, träge". It's pretty certain that this is the donor. Further, it's obvious that it is related to German schlaff but I don't think the -ss can be satisfactorily explained if it really descended from Middle High German slaf too (Lexer doesn't have another candidate though). Interestingly, they also compare it to Danish slat (slatten, slattet). — Fytcha T | L | C 11:41, 28 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

preke - pronunciation edit

This word is obsolete. The OED (whose most recent citation is from 1758) does not give a pronunciation for it and neither does Merriam-Webster. Onelook.com has an entry from the Century Dictionary at https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/The_Century_Dictionary/HW6gHMs_pxsC?hl=en&gbpv=1. The entry is on page 4690 and a pronunciation is given, but it's not very legible. There is an accent above the "e" that looks more like an acute accent than a macron, and if that is the case, the pronunciation would not be /priːk/, as we have given it. (The accents on the page for the pronunciation guide cannot be distinguished.) Can we confirm what the pronunciation was? If not, we should remove it. — Paul G (talk) 04:18, 29 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

You can zoom in here, it's clearly prēk. There are other scans/editions on the Internet Archive, and all of the ones that I checked had the macron. I agree that the scan you linked on Google Books looks like it has an acute accent if you zoom in. Hmm, the editions may be different, or the Google Books scan could just have too little resolution to discern it accurately. 98.170.164.88 04:44, 29 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
As another line of evidence, the spelling Preek appears in the Journal of Conchology; normally ee represents the vowel /i/ (as would the vowel in preke, following the rule of CVCe discussed at Vowel length#In English). 98.170.164.88 05:16, 29 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I think it must be a macron (even in that edition) : it's longer than a dot, and it's more connected (horizontally, albeit not vertically) than an umlaut, which are the only other diacritics Century uses over e AFAICT. The scan here, like the internet archive scans linked above, has a clearer macron, and this pronunciation is consistent with the alternative spellings preak and preek. I wonder if the etymology is connected to the immediately preceding entry, preke as an old pronunciation/form of prick. - -sche (discuss) 06:42, 29 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Could be, though I'm not sure whether cephalopods really exhibit behavior that one would characterize as "pricking". Their most distinctive features are their tentacles, and I would've guessed that a more fitting verb would be "grab" or "suck". As an alternative theory, this source claims that the word preke is "doubtless" a reference to the shrill sound produced by the critter (onomatopoeia?). I wasn't able to find a recording to judge for myself how plausible that is. If I'm understanding the article, it's possible that the sound is only produced when they're out of the water, so maybe it's for the best that there aren't many recordings of that. 98.170.164.88 07:55, 29 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

-KKK- & -kkk- Are these infixes? edit

We don’t have entries (yet) for -KKK- or -kkk-, and I just wanted to check these definitely are infixes before I create them. They both get inserted into words to imply that something or someone supports white supremacy (e.g. Amerikkka, DemoKKKrat, RepubliKKKan etc.). They also seem to have seen a lot of use with the names of (particularly right-wing) US politicians/pundits: the first four I thought of were “John McKKKain”, “KKKandace Owens”, “Mitch McKKKonnell” & “Rickkk Scott”, and they all get a few hits each. Even if they don’t deserve their own entries (none meet CFI attestation requirements), it still suggests these are fully productive.

To me, that fits the definition of an infix (the insertion of a morpheme into a word to modify its meaning), but I just wanted to run it past people first, as I know there has been resistance to neologistic affixes in the past. Theknightwho (talk) 14:49, 29 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

MW requires an infix to be an affix. Thus, "-bloody-" would not be a true infix. If -kkk- is just an inserted form of KKK, then it does not look like an affix and would not be infix in a narrow sense. Otherwise, -kkk- does look like an infix in the examples above, even though it does not get merely inserted but it actually replaces "K", "k" or "C", and it is unclear to me what its phonetic realization is, if any. Without phonetic realization, is it a true morpheme or just an orthographic artifact? --Dan Polansky (talk) 15:12, 29 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
A morpheme is a lexical unit that has some kind of semantic value of its own. In this case they clearly do, as they modify the meaning of the original term in a consistent manner. Phonetic realisation isn’t relevant to that (which is why null morphemes can exist). It also doesn’t matter if they modify the stem (as these do), as it is extremely common for affixes to do that in inflections, for example.
I don’t understand your point when you say if -kkk- is just an inserted form of KKK, then it does not look like an affix and would not be infix in a narrow sense. In what way does it not look like an affix? The fact it derives from an independent term doesn’t mean this can’t be an affix as well. Most proper nouns cannot be used like this, which means this use must be because it’s a different part of speech. Theknightwho (talk) 15:26, 29 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
My point was that -kkk- looks like the free morpheme KKK, not a bound one, if it is a morpheme at all. It is disputable.
-kkk- is not really like a null morpheme: a null morpheme is empty both phonologically and orthographically. By contrast, -kkk- looks like an orthographic pseudo-infix. It is not merely inserted but rather replaces something, so it is not true infix either. To the extent that word morphology exists even without spelling, -kkk- is not a morpheme at all, empty or otherwise. It is then not true blending either in so far as blending is a morphological phenomenon, not a spelling phenomenon.
In WP, the -kkk- phenomenon is covered at W:Satiric misspelling. Following that article, one could ask whether $ in Micro$oft is an interfix -$-. I somehow doubt that spelling manipulations with no phonetic realization are true infixes. Spelling manipulation does not really have anything to do with morphology. ---Dan Polansky (talk) 17:16, 29 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
It is a bound morpheme, though. One which derives from a proper noun. You cannot use KKK like this independently. It also very much is a morpheme, as it conveys meaning. As already explained, the fact that it modifies the stem is irrelevant, as that is very common with affixes; I did already explain that. Theknightwho (talk) 19:20, 29 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I'd personally analyze them as blends, more precisely as overlapping blends. The reason being that infixes go into "slots" that the to-be-infixed-into word prescribes on the basis of higher-level morphological and/or phonological concepts whereas -kkk- is a morphologically oblivious substitution for /k/. — Fytcha T | L | C 17:00, 29 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
They are visual puns. Was (-)purr- a prefix and an infix in Arm & Hammer's “Purrfectly Impurrfect” cat competition? Meh. Equinox 17:13, 29 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
This seems like x (* -x, -x-, x-) and @ (* -@, -@-, @-) that were discussed recently, including in that in KKKandace it's more like a prefix than an infix and in Rickkk it's more like a suffix, and in that it's not always just KKK that's added: in Candace, C is deleted like a disfix and replaced, and in Rickkk, if we consider it an affix, it looks like only -kk is added, and when replacing someone's middle initial of K with KKK, it's hard to see it as any affix. (It also reminds me a little of Talk:-k-.) I think that like x and @, it should be considered one substitution in all cases, not split across a prefix, suffix, infix, etc: so do we want to consider it an infix in all cases, even KKKandace or Rickkk, as you seem to suggest? Do we want to consider all xs and @s infixes, even in standalone @, in Latin@, etc? IMO no: while that would seem better to me than splitting it across a prefix, suffix, etc, it'd make etymology sections odd ("-KKK- +‎ Candace Owens"), and like Fytcha and Equinox said, it's ultimately not an affix, it's just replacing (or blending) KKK into something to invoke KKK. IMO the solution is leaving it at KKK and not using {{af}} but instead typing a few extra letters to use a different template to put in verbiage like "with the {{{2}}} of {{{3}}} replaced with KKK", e.g. "with the C of Candace replaced with KKK" (maybe, if we want to explain why, "...to suggest an affinity for the KKK or white supremacy"), and putting a usage note in KKK to mention that it's blended into words like this, similar to what I did for @ before one user felt we should split it across multiple affixes to get the {{af}} categories (a split I am inclined to undo soon). - -sche (discuss) 17:39, 29 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think the variations you mention (where it looks like two Ks are added or the C is replaced) are particularly relevant, as that kind of variation is very common with affixes in order to make them fit a stem.
I also don't see how this is just a blend and not an affix. What, fundamentally, is the difference in this situation? It is a morpheme (as it adds meaning, unlike @Equinox's suggestion of "purr"), and it therefore seems to fit the definition of affix. I'm also unsure how you can simply put this use under the part of speech of "proper noun". Theknightwho (talk) 19:17, 29 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
"Purr" does add meaning. "Perfect" on its own has no semantic element of cat. Equinox 19:24, 29 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Well, if there's a semantic modification, that fits the definition of affix. Theknightwho (talk) 19:27, 29 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
...no? Winterpeg semantically modifies Winnipeg to highlight its wintriness, and Shitcago and shitcoin add derogatoriness to Chicago and Bitcoin, but don't use an affix *winter- or *shit-, right? (Or do you think they do?) They're blends. I think it's easier, Occam's razor style, to take KKKandace, Rickkk, and AmeriKKKa to be using one phenomenon of blending or frankly just substitution (like $ and like various eye-dialect changes to words to indicate someone is rural, German, etc), rather than positing three new affixes (prefix, suffix, and infix, which I think you'd have to posit if you assume what's happening in affixation). I also think this is better from a usability standpoint, as anyone interested in looking up words into which KKK has been blended probably doesn't perceive cases where the initial /k/ was at the start of the word as different from cases where it's in the middle or end. - -sche (discuss) 21:21, 29 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with Fytcha and -sche that it's most sensibly analysed as an (orthographic) blend, but I am a bit more sympathetic to the "infix" argument because in the literature (to the extent there's any agreement about this stuff) a distinguishing characteristic that makes e.g. Partygate party + -gate as opposed to a blend of party and Watergate is the fact that -gate is now productively and more or less arbitrarily applied to any base word; it "has acquired morpheme status" [36]. I think in terms of word-formation KKK is clearly in that sort of box at this point, since people aren't specifically and novelly blending each individual word with (the) KKK, but if it is a morpheme it also isn't an affix as generally understood, it's something purely orthographic and overlaid on the base word. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 09:42, 30 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
From stave (in reference to the stem of a word, its onset) + rhyme, possibly a calque of Germanic.

We don't currently have such a definition at stave, is it real? The Danish word, stavrim/bogstavrim is most obviously interpreted as "letter-rhyme" (cf. Old Norse stafr, bókstafr). Same goes for German Stabreim.__Gamren (talk) 20:47, 29 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

It's probably just a case of a calque using a similar-sounding cognate that otherwise means something else. This source derives it from the poetry meaning of "stave" but doesn't look convincing. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 01:43, 30 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Well, we don't exactly have a definition like "letter"/"sound" at stave, either; the closest we come is "sign, symbol or sigil [...] rune".
Stave-rhyme probably is a calque of one of the Germanic terms (it's interesting to realize staff in reference to a business's staff is apparently also a calque of German military jargon), but I think what I was referring to when I added this a decade ago is that when discussing rhyme, one sometimes speaks of the rhyming staves and AFAICT one always means the onset sounds as in folches ~ fehta; if "stave" just meant any letter, one would think the ending letters of e.g. cat ~ bat could also be called rhyming staves, but I haven't seen that. (See Citations:stave.) - -sche (discuss) 02:55, 30 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I reduced the etymology to just saying it's probably a calque. But I added a sense to stave with a century of citations of staves as the things that rhyme in stave-rhyme. Please revise the entries further if needed. - -sche (discuss) 21:22, 28 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I am no expert on this subject, but the definition is clearly redundant:

"A philosophy where a website's functionality is enhanced by JavaScript, rather than wholly reliant on JavaScript."

Should the second "JavaScript" be changed to something else? I'm guessing "HTML". Tardigras (talk) 05:22, 30 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

No, the definition is correct as it stands, and changing it to "HTML" would be wrong.
Some websites rely so much on JavaScript that they are unusable without it (e.g., they are useless if JavaScript is disabled, if the browser version is old, if the JS just doesn't load for whatever reason, etc.). For example, the content of a page might not load at all without JavaScript. The point of progressive enhancement is to avoid this. A site with progressive enhancement is still usable at a basic level even without JavaScript, but the JavaScript does add some extra bells and whistles when it's available. 98.170.164.88 05:28, 30 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

goodge out? edit

In this very pleasant video about the amoeba, the narrator says "it's like a ball that can goodge out in any direction...that's right, goodge". Is that what non-linguistics refer to as real word? GreyishWorm (talk) 11:02, 30 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The relevant part of the video is 1:04–1:11. There could be some kind of onomatopoeia or sound symbolism going on here. 98.170.164.88 15:00, 30 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Im somewhat familiar with this channel and I would say that he aims to amuse his listeners and not everything he says should be taken seriously. He said IPA(key): /wɔmb/ for womb in one video. Soap 22:14, 31 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

"a second" = a second helping, seconds? edit

second has "(usually in the plural) An additional helping of food. That was good barbecue. I hope I can get seconds." This suggests you can actually get "a second", which I've never heard. Is it true? Equinox 17:18, 31 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

FWIW, AHD allows for the possibility of singular usage in this sense, whereas MWOnline does not. It doesn't seem wrong to me. Awful to search for at Google Books. Maybe better at COCA. DCDuring (talk) 18:05, 31 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
This doesn’t feel lexicalised in the singular. “A second” can refer to anything, but “seconds” cannot. Theknightwho (talk) 18:10, 31 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I would find "a second" quite strange, maybe referring to "a second helping" or something. So I agree with Theknightwho. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 22:58, 31 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I agree that it's not typical. That said attested is attested, but considering how most natives react to it we might want to add a "nonstandard" label if the quotes are out there. Vininn126 (talk) 23:22, 31 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I think saying "Can I have a second?" would be fine, but it would only be obvious from context what it was referring to as it's a form of ellipsis. "Seconds", on the other hand, doesn't require that context to be understood. Theknightwho (talk) 23:50, 31 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I have access to COCA - what sort of keywords might go with this to see if it's attestable? Vininn126 (talk) 23:20, 31 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Good question. Searching Google, I find that have seconds of the (or inflected forms: having, had, etc), want seconds of the, and back for seconds of the bring up mostly food hits, whereas get seconds of the brings up unrelated javascript questions (but COCA might not include the very recent technical works that chaff is in, so get... might also work on COCA). However, when I try to compare the singulars of those phrases, I find that have a second of the brings up a lot of chaff, e.g. asking if a store has a second of a particular non-food item. Back for a second of the brings up what looks like a single hit about food by a non-native speaker. Perhaps singular use is too uncommon for there to be phrases that get enough relevant hits (without also getting a lot of irrelevant hits) to allow an easy frequency comparison. :/ It does feel like, as TKW says, the occasional use of second for food may be just one aspect of a general sense, whereas seconds has a food-specific sense. - -sche (discuss) 00:07, 1 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
And a sense used in retailing, especially of apparel, meaning something like "goods with quality defects, but still merchantable".
I tried to use COCA, but they don't seem to have reliable PoS tagging. DCDuring (talk) 01:31, 1 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]