Wiktionary:Tea room/2023/June

discussion rooms: Tea room • Etym. scr. • Info desk • Beer parlour • Grease pit ← May 2023 · June 2023 · July 2023 → · (current)

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(humorous) ways of indicating deleted words

There's a couple of ways in online (mostly geeky?) writing of showing "deleted" words or phrases for comedic effect. I think it would be nice/fun to make a list of those. Maybe even more general, a list of geeky slang, including things like "O(fun)" (perl community?).

Off the top of my mind I can only think of the following, but there's more, I think. Hard to google for these...

• Thanks for your s/money/time.
• Thanks for your ^money^time
• something with Emacs style control characters? ^D? can't put my finger on the exact format

doesn't look exactly right still: Thanks for your money^W^W all the fish?

• ...

Maybe we could brainstorm a little right here, collect some examples (and citations) and determine if there's enough for, say, an appendix?

--Azertus (talk) 10:19, 1 June 2023 (UTC)

Thanks, you've brightened my mood. I really wish I could add more, but I dont know any other ways to indicate deletion. It doesnt seem to have caught on with emojis, for example. All I can think of are:

People typing out a partial word and stopping, and then finishing with something else.

1. Ive had a rough day. Im going to the corner store to get myself a few bottles of w-- ...ater. I think this more of an imitation of speech, though, than a convention of online chat. And it only works when two words overlap at least somewhat closely. (e.g. in the above, i could have made it clearer that i was starting to say wine if it were out loud, but it doesnt always work well in print.)
2. Censoring a word, particularly a word that wouldnt normally be considered offensive. But, that's not really what you're talking about either.

Thanks, —Soap— 18:15, 2 June 2023 (UTC)

@Azertus: You're thinking of ^H. Equinox ◑ 18:24, 2 June 2023 (UTC)

Audible /l/ in balm, qualm, etc.??

User:Paintspot has been adding lots of these. Are they correct? Major dictionaries do not seem to have this /l/ pronunciation. Equinox ◑ 21:59, 2 June 2023 (UTC)

They're without-a-doubt real — for example, they exist in my dialect of U.S. English. Also, while maybe not the MOST common pronunciation of these words, the version with the audible /l/ was already present/listed on the balm and calm and palm pages, for example. Paintspot (talk) 22:03, 2 June 2023 (UTC)

Like, if you listen to the audio file for balm#English — the audio file is already of someone saying the "-aLm" version. It seems to be a regional difference. Paintspot (talk) 22:04, 2 June 2023 (UTC)

Oh also, User:Equinox btw, the page Rhymes:English/ɑːlm already exists, and already lists ALL of these one-syllable words as rhyming with /ɑːlm/ in "one US pronunciation". (And to clarify, these one-syllable words were already on this list before I added the fact that "embalm" rhymes with whichever-pronunciation-of-"balm"-you-use, and that "becalm" rhymes with whichever-pronunciation-of-"calm"-you-use.) Paintspot (talk) 22:06, 2 June 2023 (UTC)

They definitely exist. I think I recall reading that they were reintroduced into English as spelling pronunciations (primarily in North America, I think). I hear them all the time. My own pronunciation is inconsistent, as it happens. I pronounce psalm, balm, and alm with /ɑːlm/ and the rest with /ɑːm/. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 22:18, 2 June 2023 (UTC)

Mine is inconsistent as well. I pronounce psalm, alm, and qualm with /ɑːlm/, but I think that balm and palm go back and forth between /ɑːm/ and /ɑːlm/ for me. On the other hand, I consistently pronounce calm with /ɑːm/. Tharthan (talk) 22:54, 2 June 2023 (UTC)

baulk (which I’ve now improved by mentioning the cot-caught merger directly above the American audio pronunciation to indicate that the speaker clearly has this merger, as it was misleading before)/balk, falcon and almond are the words that immediately come to mind as having optional l's, at least in the U.K and I believe in the U.S too. Everyone says words ending with -alm and -alk (except baulk) with a silent l here but I not only recall hearing -alm words said with an audible l from some Americans but even very occasionally hearing words like 'walk' and 'talk' said with an audible l - the words talk and even half are said like that within the first 3 minutes of this YT video of broad Appalachian dialect speakers[1] --Overlordnat1 (talk) 23:14, 2 June 2023 (UTC)

If you find regularities, they should have their place at w:English-language vowel changes before historic /l/#Historical L-vocalization. But there probably are none but various hypercorrections due to irregular reflection on particular words. As fault and vault got /l/ added when the l-drop was new and not equally distributed in England, so others are present or not present because of exposure to a term in front of speakers of particular dialects, and others due to engagement with written language, then others are arbitrarily manipulated analogically by internal comparison in a speaker because he had to consider a particular term. And hundred years later Wiktionary information about one such word may be outdated already, like pronunciation information on ant hundred years ago, or off. Some meme on TikTok can be responsible within a decade and nobody will be certain. Fay Freak (talk) 03:31, 3 June 2023 (UTC)

FWIW, Merriam-Webster and Longman do give pronunciation with /l/ as a possibility in the US in both balm and qualm, and both have audio of qualm with /l/ (although in the MW audio the vowel is fronter than I'd expect). In my experience, /l/s are reasonably common in the US, more common in some words (e.g. qualm) than others (balm, calm), which fits with how both dictionaries' American pronouncers produced /l/ in qualm but not balm, and with Tharthan's observation above. - -sche (discuss) 04:01, 3 June 2023 (UTC)

Okay. Thanks for feedback. BTW, not quite related, but I remember hearing that pronouncing the /l/ in "salmon" is a well-known way to spot an ELF speaker. Equinox ◑ 02:17, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

Rats. Caught again. Nicodene (talk) 02:37, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

Should attributive forms be under "alternative forms" or "derived terms"?

I added pedal-pusher (“attributive form of pedal pushers”) under “alternative forms” as “pedal-pusher (attributive)”. Sgconlaw moved it to under “derived terms” (“pedal-pusher (attributive form)”). This is the discussion from Talk:pedal pushers:

Pedal-pusher: form or derived term?

@Sgconlaw: I thought that attributive forms (e.g., britch, Falkland Island, pajama, Quad-City) are “forms”, not “derived terms” (because they are not per se their own/separate terms). J3133 (talk) 09:51, 3 June 2023 (UTC)

@J3133: I'm afraid I don't know. I thought the "Alternative forms" section was only to be used for alternative spellings or forms which differ only because of hyphens or spaces. You should probably raise this at the Tea Room. — Sgconlaw (talk) 13:45, 3 June 2023 (UTC)

J3133 (talk) 14:42, 3 June 2023 (UTC)

To me, the examples mentioned seem not lexical but grammatical. Should the singular of every noun have a non-gloss definition "used attributively with both singular and plural meaning"? DCDuring (talk) 20:43, 3 June 2023 (UTC)

This does not apply to every noun, only pluralia tantum, which, also, do not always have attributive forms. Do you think we should not have trouser (“(used attributively as a modifier) […] trouser leg”)? J3133 (talk) 22:03, 3 June 2023 (UTC)

Meh. DCDuring (talk) 13:30, 4 June 2023 (UTC)

I personally would lean towards alternative, but it's hairy. Vininn126 (talk) 13:31, 4 June 2023 (UTC)

I wouldn't mention them at all, this being a trivial matter of a punctuation convention, but if the consensus is these hyphenated attributive uses of two-word nouns (shaggy-dog story,^[2] old-money family,^[3] Gen-Z youngster,^[4] ...) are to be mentioned at the entry for the non-attributively used noun, my preference is under Alternative forms.  --Lambiam 21:46, 4 June 2023 (UTC)

First the easy part: these aren't derived terms- goose isn't derived from geese, it's just a different form of the same word. One could make a case for the singular forms of pluralia tanta being alternative forms, but it would be better not to have them under any separate header. It would be better to have a usage note that says that the singular, [X], only exists in attributive use, but such usage isn't universal (for pretty much every phrase like "trouser pocket"/"scissor blade" you can also find "trousers pocket"/"scissors blade"). Pluralia tanta are rare enough that it's better just to explain that than to decide on a standard header under which to put these oddities.

I will say that using plural forms attributively is one of the most common errors I've seen second-language English speakers make, but I don't know if it's worth it for us to list the attributive form for literally every single English noun that has a plural in the same way we list diminutives for nouns in Dutch. There are all kinds of unwritten rules that we can't possibly cover in every applicable entry: "the lion is a social animal", but "lions hunt in groups" (though I wouldn't be surprised to see "the lion hunts in groups"), not to mention the limitations we have on the use of the present indicative- for instance, you can't say "I'm tired. I sit down now". Chuck Entz (talk) 00:05, 5 June 2023 (UTC)

@Chuck Entz: Perhaps they could be included in the headword, because we already add (uncommon) singular forms in {{en-plural noun}} using the |sg= parameter. J3133 (talk) 07:46, 11 June 2023 (UTC)

Are attributive forms even allowed? I was under the impression that they were considered redundant and unnecessary, per Talk:periodic-table. Binarystep (talk) 23:40, 10 June 2023 (UTC)

@Binarystep: This refers to forms such as trouser leg or scissor blade. Specifically, they are singular forms used attributively. J3133 (talk) 23:41, 10 June 2023 (UTC)

More to the point: these are those singular forms of "plural only" nouns that wouldn't exist except for attributive use. We can't leave them out because they're not SOP, and they definitely aren't adjectives- so we have to have something about them in a Noun section somewhere. Chuck Entz (talk) 00:08, 11 June 2023 (UTC)

teniente

Spanish noun sense 3: "having, holding". Is this actually meant to be a noun? If so, a better definition might be "(state of) possession". Equinox ◑ 20:26, 3 June 2023 (UTC)

There's no corresponding noun sense in the RAE's dictionary. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 00:07, 4 June 2023 (UTC)

Charlemagne

The pronunciation shown for Charlemagne is /ˌʃɑːrləˈmeɪn/, but Daniel Jones' English Pronouncing Dictionary (a source for pre-war RP) has /'ʃɑːləˈmain/. I agree the version shown in Wiktionary is far more common, but it's odd that the Wiktionary editors are unaware of the traditional pronunciation of this name in British English. 2A00:23C8:A7A3:4801:7DF4:5784:30EC:E069 15:32, 4 June 2023 (UTC)

Swiss bank account

A couple of possible issues here: (i) "any place considered safe or secure to put things in" seems too broad: that could refer to a chest of drawers, a hotel safe, etc. I think we need a more specific definition. (ii) Swiss bank is given as a synonym; I've never heard of that used metaphorically. Anyone? Equinox ◑ 18:06, 4 June 2023 (UTC)

In the US, IMHO, the Caymans has a similar sort of meaning, along with connotations of ill-gotten gains, tax-avoidance, and money-laundering. DCDuring (talk) 18:21, 4 June 2023 (UTC)

I always thought a Swiss bank account was a bank account in Switzerland. I have never heard the term used any other way. 72trombones (talk) 04:36, 1 July 2023 (UTC)

I would say that words and phrases such as ‘the Caymans’, ‘Switzerland’ and the related terms ‘Caymans bank’/‘Swiss bank’/‘Caymans bank account’/‘Swiss bank account’ are used absolutely everywhere to describe places where the greedy and corrupt hide their pelf. That seems to be the true figurative meaning rather than the far too neutral one (referring to a ‘safe and secure place’) that we have in the definition. —-Overlordnat1 (talk) 08:20, 1 July 2023 (UTC)

It does depend on one's attitude toward taxation and laws in general. It is not so easy to come up with wording that satisfies people of all attitudes. DCDuring (talk) 15:32, 1 July 2023 (UTC)

Perhaps with careful use of the words privacy and anonymity we can manage. DCDuring (talk) 15:34, 1 July 2023 (UTC)

per pale, per bend, per bend sinister, per chief ...

in bend, in pale, in bend sinister, in chief ...

We have entries for one term from each set, but not others (in chief is an &lit) : are they idiomatic and we should add the rest, or SOP and we should delete the two entries we have? AFAICT you can construct per and in phrases for each honorable ordinary, but that's a small finite number. And the meanings seem straightforward (once you know what in bend is, and what a bend sinister is, you know what in bend sinister must be, etc), but OTOH some have interesting usage restrictions (e.g. per chief [X and Y] is attested since at least 1611 but now nonstandard, it'd be blazoned Y, a chief X), or unexpected translations (what in English is per chevron argent and gules is in French de gueules, mantelé d’argent). - -sche (discuss) 08:02, 5 June 2023 (UTC)

It occurs to me that the per... terms all having party per... as a subsense probably makes them idiomatic, since it seems unintuitive to try to cover that at per. - -sche (discuss) 06:47, 9 June 2023 (UTC)

dexter chief, sinister chief, dexter base, ...

Similar to the section above: we have dexter chief but not sinister base, etc. There is a small finite number of such terms but they seem pretty transparent. Are they idiomatic or should we RFD? - -sche (discuss) 08:02, 5 June 2023 (UTC)

d'or#English

See old discussion on talk: is this an adjective or a prepositional phrase? On one hand, it's basically an alternative form of the adjective or, used to avoid homography with the conjunction, and it functions as part of a set with other adjectives (vert, gules, etc). OTOH, in French it'd be a prepositional phrase, and there are other things in English heraldry which go in the "adjective slot" but are prepositional phrases, e.g. an eagle displayed (adj.) but a pelican in her piety (prep. phr.). (But the part of speech in French where it's two words doesn't necessarily carry over to English, where it functions like one word.) - -sche (discuss) 01:29, 6 June 2023 (UTC)

exostosis and ectostosis

They're the same thing, right? Elevenpluscolors (talk) 08:11, 7 June 2023 (UTC)

No, those words don't refer to the same things, despite that they potentially could have developed that way [but didn't] etymonically (regarding the synonymy that sometimes occurs with exo- versus ecto-, for example, exocanthion SYN ectocanthion). The word exostosis is a commonly used word in health care and refers to a certain kind of bony bumps, often/especially the digital periarticular ones. The word osteophyte is sometimes differentiated (in precisest usage) but often not (in broader usage), so it is therefore "often synonymous with" [albeit not "always synonymous with"] exostosis. The word ectostosis is a coordinate term of the word endostosis (under hypernym ostosis), and they both refer to types of bone remodeling processes. They're not rare words, but they're common only within contexts that discuss bone formation physiology. Thus an exostosis [count noun] is a bump and ectostosis [mass noun] is an ossification process. I will go do a few cot and hypo edits to those entries, accordingly. Quercus solaris (talk) 15:59, 9 June 2023 (UTC)

otocrane

Is this the same thing as the tympanic cavity? Elevenpluscolors (talk) 08:26, 7 June 2023 (UTC)

cuned

What's it mean? In Legh's Armorie, he shows a shield "party per Bend Beuile, Argent, and purpure. Never charge this, for there can be no better cuned cote caryed." - -sche (discuss) 17:38, 7 June 2023 (UTC)

Ancient Greek - θεῶμαι is contracted

θεάομαι Can somebody who knows how the table works change Present: θεῶμαι (Uncontracted) to Present: θεῶμαι (Contracted)? Thanks Mzkysn0417 (talk) 18:46, 7 June 2023 (UTC)

nonstandard English verb forms

What are nonstandard English verb forms (tenses, aspects, modes, combinations thereof)? I know of the various AAVE verbs, like the remote past, habitual be, and I know of the Appalachian like to, plus the Irish after and the Dorset repeated past.

I'm asking if there are any verb forms I've missed, either dialectical or historical. Is there a good place to find an overview of this? I’ve looked through Category:English auxiliary verbs. 73.87.242.65 20:46, 7 June 2023 (UTC)

Forgive and ignore this reply if it is not relevant enough to what you're seeking, but it did come to mind when I read the question. Within multiple dialects and sociolects of English, in the conjugations of certain strong verbs, there are truly normative principal parts as run, run, run (inf., pret., pp.); come, come, come; and see, seen, seen — which is to say, that is truly the usual and normative way in which that variety conjugates those verbs — but there is an epistemological misapprehension whereby most people believe, and schools have long taught, that those are [inherently, inevitably] erroneous because they differ from standard English's conjugation. People misapprehend what it means to call them nonstandard: it only means that they are not normative in the standard variety; it does not mean that they are inherently wrong in the same way that *run, runned, runned is wrong (that is, never normative in any variety). This idea that they are inherently wrong is a prescriptive misapprehension that people mistake for a descriptive effort. I am not doing masterful justice to the argument, but the point is that when one is listening to a raconteur who speaks one of those dialects or sociolects of English telling a story and they say something like, "then I run down to the store and I seen him comin back from church," there is zero epistemologically valid ground for saying, "Oh, that poor ignorant man, he doesn't even know how to speak English correctly." No, F you, he speaks his variety exactly correctly, and you don't properly understand the epistemology of how natural language truly works, although that's not your fault because you were miseducated by others who also failed to understand it properly. End of rant. Quercus solaris (talk) 02:29, 8 June 2023 (UTC)

I'm sure you didn't mean ill, but I don't think anyone asked for the rant. It doesn't give the impression you read OP's request very carefully... Andrew Sheedy (talk) 04:12, 8 June 2023 (UTC)

@Andrew Sheedy — I take your point; I just reread OP's request and this time appreciated that auxiliary verbs were really the main focus of it. However, I still think that nonstandard-but-not-incorrect principal parts are not irrelevant to the request. One can delete a single sentence from my post (miseducation etc) and de-rant-ify it.Quercus solaris (talk) 04:43, 8 June 2023 (UTC)

I'm not sure if this is the sort of verb form you have in mind, but how about AAVE/Southern American done to replace "have" and "had" to form verbs in the perfect/pluperfect? Andrew Sheedy (talk) 04:12, 8 June 2023 (UTC)

I'm more looking for new tenses, not new ways to express the same tenses. But also helpful, thanks. 73.87.242.65

There is the literary, historical, or narrative present (standard verb form) used for events in the past, present, and (sometimes) future. DCDuring (talk) 14:33, 8 June 2023 (UTC)

Derartu

It's pushing it a bit to call this English, isn't it, when it's apparently only the name of one person, who is Ethiopian? Equinox ◑ 16:15, 8 June 2023 (UTC)

If she's really the only bearer, then yeah, I say we RFV it. IMO, for modern names, barring exceptional circumstances, a name should be borne three people just like a word should be used by three people; if all the references are to one person, IMO it's like if all the uses of a word are quoting one quotation. It is interesting that Derartu Tulu's Wikipedia article says her name is "Daraartuu" in Oromo; does she really change the spelling of her name depending on whether she's signing a Latin-script Oromo document or a Latin-script English document?? (I am aware of things like someone going by Henry in English and Heinrich in German or vice versa, but that's because they're switching to the native cognate, which doesn't seem to be the source of Derartu here.) - -sche (discuss) 01:02, 9 June 2023 (UTC)

File:It-Cremona.ogg

Could we get a better recording? This has a stress on the first syllable that's at least as strong as the one on the second syllable. -- Espoo (talk) 00:24, 9 June 2023 (UTC)

Sounds fine, that's how we normally speak. Catonif (talk) 12:54, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

There's clearly a stronger stress on the first syllable than on the second. This seems to me to be something that some Italians do when saying a word alone, especially when making a self-conscious effort to overarticulate in presenting a word's formal, non-colloquial pronunciation. (Professionally trained speakers or actors wouldn't do this.) It seems to me that Italians almost never do this when using a word in a sentence when they're not emphasizing that word. Here's a much better pronunciation file: https://it.forvo.com/word/cremona/

Our pronunciation file should not be presenting a strange word stress to non-Italians that confuses them by violating the normal word stress in this word. I haven't yet found videos of this word used in normal speech or Italian dictionary entries showing the normal stress, but it seems unnecessary to need to prove that the normal way of pronouncing "Cremona" is with the word stress only on the o (and with no stress and definitely not more stress on the e). --Espoo (talk) 21:22, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

0:35 here: https://cremona1.it/video/giallo-a-cremona-del-21-luglio-2022/ --Espoo (talk) 21:38, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

Our audio file has stress quite audibly on the second syllable, the initial syllable is not stressed. I'm not sure why you perceive that differently. Catonif (talk) 01:55, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

To my ear, there are some phonetically weird things about the pronunciation in the file:

# The initial "k" sound has a very distinct release before the "r", which no doubt makes the first syllable sound louder.

# The first syllable is higher in pitch than the rest of the word, but the remaining two syllables seem to have exactly the same (lower) pitch. There doesn't seem to be any change of pitch within syllables

# The second syllable is very long.

I don't know a great deal about Italian phonology, but if pitch contours play a part in recognizing stress, the intonation pattern might be interfering with that. Of course, the last phonetics class I took was 35 years ago and I'm definitely not a trained phonetician, so I could be completely off base here. Pinging @Mahagaja for a reality check. Chuck Entz (talk) 03:31, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

I'm no expert in Italian, but I hear stress only on the second syllable. Yes, the first syllable has a higher pitch, but there are plenty of languages where unstressed syllables receive a higher pitch than stressed ones. What gives Welsh English its distinctive sing-songy lilt is the intonational carryover from Welsh, in which the last syllable of a word has a high pitch even when the stress falls on the penult. If Italian speakers feel that this audio sounds too much like the word is pronounced in isolation, then I'd recommend recording a phrase like "I went to Cremona yesterday" (in Italian) and then editing out the parts before and after the word. —Mahāgaja · talk 06:01, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

Conversational Journaling deleted

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/conversational_journaling

First this was marked for deletion as TLDNR and then an admin deletes it for copyright violation. Any ideas why? Newdefinitions108 (talk) 18:42, 9 June 2023 (UTC)

elaborate = flashy, fancy, (intricate, showy) = Dutch intrigerend?

In the Dutch translations for elaborate in the sense described there as flashy, fancy it gives intrigerend (nl), which is much closer to intriguing, and lacks the pejorative overtones. The corresponding “definition” also includes intricate and showy, but the difficulty with translations suggests to me that there is than one sense here and that we need proper definitions rather than lists of ambiguous rough synonyms. intricate seems to me closer to ingewikkeld (nl), DeepL suggests ingewikkeld (nl) for showy, which also seems reasonable for flashy (not quite flitsend (nl)), while I cannot currently think how best to express fancy in Dutch. But anyway, I think that showy, flashy and fancy are not really essential to elaborate, even if they are often associated with elaboration. PJTraill (talk) 16:05, 10 June 2023 (UTC)

I only know the first meaning of elaborate and the quote with the second could just as well fit with the first. OED doesn't have a pejorative meaning either. Is anyone able to find better quotes for the second meaning? I agree intrigerend is not a good Dutch translation anyway. —Caoimhin ceallach (talk) 11:26, 11 June 2023 (UTC)

These seem like dreadful definitions, exemplifying problems with the synonym-cloud approach to definitions, which, at best helps translators find some possible glosses, but forces others to click on multiple links, hold the definitions (possibly of polysemic terms) in memory, and compare and contrast to educe the common core. Particularly bad synonyms are "flashy" and "showy". I think "ornate" is a missing gloss/synonym.

There is a sense something like "planned (or implemented?) in great detail." (but not necessarily "complex" or "complicated"). DCDuring (talk) 15:22, 11 June 2023 (UTC)

I am glad to hear you say this about the synonym-cloud. It is a problem I have also often seen with definitions of non-English words (especially Russian), where I often want to ask ‘in which sense’ and perhaps ‘with what nuance’. (My usual recourse is to the native Wiktionary, often + DeepL.) In these cases I have also thought it, as you say, far more helpful to translators than to English-speakers trying to understand a foreign text. I realise that the synonym approach is rather more reasonable with foreign words, and that one cannot necessarily expect to find all nuances here, but I have often been on the verge of asking what our policy is or trying to kick off a discussion. I am afraid that there is an awful lot of work to do to bring such entries up to an acceptable standard. PJTraill (talk) 15:07, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

I posed exactly this issue af few weeks ago: Wiktionary:Beer_parlour/2023/May#Tons_of_synonyms_in_translation-style_definitions, because I had the same intuition. What I took away from it was that liberal use of {{gloss}} and {{non-gloss}} to explain use and nuance is desirable. —Caoimhin ceallach (talk) 15:28, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

aa

An IP has asked on the talk page about whether we should follow "the first edition of the Oxford English Dictionary" in having an English sense meaning "stream" or "watercourse", based on a 1430 quote. 1430 is, of course, Middle English by our standards, so I checked the MED, and it indeed has a noun entry at "ā" based on the same quote. I don't edit in Middle English, so I wasn't sure whether it should go at ā, a or aa. After looking for the ancestor in Old English I found Old English ǣ, which led me to Middle English ǣ, which also has an entry in the MED. Even though the two MED entries don't refer to each other, it certainly looks to me like "aa" is just an alternative form of "ǣ". Like I said, I don't edit in Middle English, so I would appreciate it if someone would add any necessary entr[y/ies] and other changes to make sense of all this. Thanks! Chuck Entz (talk) 23:08, 10 June 2023 (UTC)

The MED seems to think the two forms are etymological doublets rather than alternative forms; it gives ā as a borrowing from Old Norse (we have the entry at á), while ǣ is listed as a descendant of the Old English form. — Vorziblix (talk · contribs) 09:20, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

vandalism notice

hello.I'm doramiso from Japanese Wikivoyage. Now,A notice of vandalism against the English version of Wiktionary has been posted here. I'll let you know. Pages with vandalism notices doramiso-enwt (talk) 01:55, 11 June 2023 (UTC)

Can someone give details? Is this about the feeble joke reverted in https://en.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?title=Wiktionary:Tea_room/2023/June&diff=prev&oldid=73399581 ? (I can barely read any Japanese, and the linked page had nothing I could make sense of, and I found no links to anything I could understand.) PJTraill (talk) 13:16, 11 June 2023 (UTC)

No, it was a specific user adding unhinged, disturbing walls of text to random entries. It's been dealt with. Chuck Entz (talk) 14:50, 11 June 2023 (UTC)

Apostrophes in Hanyu Pinyin

chū’ěrfǎn’ěr: old: to reap the consequences of one’s words (idiom, from Mencius); modern: to go back on one’s word/to blow hot and cold/to contradict oneself/inconsistent/ 出爾反爾 出尔反尔

húnhún’è’è: muddleheaded/ 渾渾噩噩 浑浑噩噩

pāi’àn’érqǐ: lit. to slap the table and stand up (idiom); fig. at the end of one’s tether/unable to take it any more/ 拍案而起 拍案而起

qì’áng’áng: full of vigor/spirited/valiant/ 氣昂昂 气昂昂

qīng’ěr’értīng: to listen attentively/ 傾耳而聽 倾耳而听

qīqī’ài’ài: stammering (idiom)/ 期期艾艾 期期艾艾

suíyù’ér’ān: at home wherever one is (idiom); ready to adapt/flexible/to accept circumstances with good will/ 隨遇而安 随遇而安

xiù’ēn’ài: to make a public display of affection/ 秀恩愛 秀恩爱

yǐ’échuán’é: to spread falsehoods/to increasingly distort the truth/to pile errors on top of errors (idiom)/ 以訛傳訛 以讹传讹

https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=59105#comments JMGN (talk) 22:29, 11 June 2023 (UTC)

Please explain why this needs to be discussed here. Hanyu Pinyin is just a romanization system, and as far as I know we only have entries for single syllables and only for the the purpose of linking to the Han characters they represent. This kind of thing is fine for a blog- but this isn't a blog. Chuck Entz (talk) 23:34, 11 June 2023 (UTC)

Mandarin has many words of more than one syllable, and we appropriately have entries for them. Taking one of the above examples, 秀恩愛 and xiù ēn'ài are existing entries. So it's not accurate to say that we only have entries for single syllables. I am also not sure what the goal of starting this discussion was.--Urszag (talk) 19:43, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

Mandarin words with more than one apostrophe The apostrophe is also called a syllable-dividing mark (隔音符號／隔音符号 (géyīn fúhào)). I would suspect that some of those phrases are hyphenated in Xiandai Hanyu Cidian instead of using the apostrophe/syllable-dividing mark. @Backinstadiums --Geographyinitiative (talk) 22:28, 16 June 2023 (UTC) (Modified)

tail between one's legs

This must, grammatically, be a noun: it can even pluralise ("their tails between their legs"), but User:TheDaveRoss has been rather territorial about it, and won't let me fix it. Please can we get more input from other editors? See the talk page too. Equinox ◑ 02:37, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

@Equinox The definition is very wrong if this is a noun. How would you phrase the definition if this was a noun? - TheDaveRoss 13:20, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

C.f cap in hand, hat in hand which are currently called adverbs, though ‘Adverbial phrase’ might be closer; there must be many similar constructions, for which speakers have varying (if any) perceptions of their grammatical function. Does one actually need to distinguish describing the state in which the poor cur runs (adjectival) from describing the way in which it runs (adverbial)? It seems fair to analyse it either way, so perhaps ‘Phrase’ is reasonable. It seems more important to explain the metaphor than to assign a part of speech. Incidentally, the modern quotations for tail between one's legs both include ‘with his’, suggesting that the full phrase is ‘with one's tail between one's legs’, though ‘with his’ could easily be elided. PJTraill (talk) 13:49, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

Indeed. Other dictionaries that cover this have it at with one's tail between one's legs, which PP is used adverbially. In this PP tail between one's legs clearly behaves like a noun. But, to me, tail between one's legs is adverbial. It seems like an absolute. It is analyzable also as an elision of one's tail being between one's legs and having one's tail between one's legs, FWIW.

This expression is probably so old that we could not readily determine whether tail between one's legs or with one's tail between one's legs came first, unless one or both turned out to be calques. I'd be inclined to have two full entries, with one's tail between one's legs defined as "with one's tail between one's legs". I don't think one would need many (any?) redirects from the variant forms because the search engine would put one or the other of those two entries at the top of the failed-search entry list if a user typed in one of the variants. DCDuring (talk) 14:44, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

It being a calque is not impossible: compare French la queue entre les jambes. PUC – 10:52, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

@TheDaveRoss: How dare you revert me every 30 seconds and then say "if it was a noun" -- fucking lol. Of course, I would define it as "a state of abject humiliation" or whatever. That's no kind of argument. Equinox ◑ 20:10, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

I can see "in a state of abject humiliation" as a definition, but not the state itself. There is just no way I can see this being a noun, the whole grammatical agreement thing doesn't hold water for me, and I am not sure what other justifications there are available. - TheDaveRoss 18:38, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

In "He'll come back with his tail between his legs", "his tail between his legs" is a noun phrase. In "He came back home, tail between his legs.", "tail between his legs" is an adverb. PUC – 09:42, 2 July 2023 (UTC)

I must (probably) bow to the "adverb" comments above but I find this absolutely incredible. Equinox ◑ 10:23, 30 August 2023 (UTC)

Plural of skill issue

(Continued from Talk:skill issue) Does skill issue (“a lack of skill”) have an attested plural? I believe that we should be looking for plurals specifically referring to multiple instances of people lacking skill, rather than any skill + issue. Ioaxxere (talk) 03:01, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

This seems SOP anyway, no clear difference between this and money issue, health issue, credibility issue, image issue, etc., "noun + issue" means a problem related to a deficiency with that noun. - TheDaveRoss 14:14, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

this is sending me

Is modern slang use of google:"this is sending me", "this sent me", etc the same sense as send def. 2? Or is it distinct? Modern use seems to require the sender to be funny, whereas the old uses (cites) seem to refer to non-humour-related thrilling. - -sche (discuss) 19:29, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

It certainly looks like it is from def. 2. Does the shift from 'serious' to 'funny' warrant a separate definition? Or just citations illustrating both kinds of uses? (I thought of Sam Cooke as soon as I saw this on my watchlist.) DCDuring (talk) 23:57, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

kill subsense

The word 'deliberately' does not appear on the 'kill' entry, yet on the 'murder' entry we see: "Synonyms: (deliberately kill): assassinate, kill, massacre, slaughter". What gives? Is there a missing subsense on the 'kill' entry?? I made the subsense here: diff. (See also Thou shalt not kill.) --Geographyinitiative (talk) 20:17, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

I don't think that's part of the meaning of "kill" and it's already implied by "put to death." Remember that the commandment, which follows a traditional translation from the 17th century, was originally written in Hebrew, so the nuances of the commandment have more to do with Hebrew than English. I am not aware of the word "kill" ever having the specific nuance of "killing deliberately". It may well be true that someone might use the word "kill" to refer to a deliberate killing, but that's just because "kill" encompasses deliberate killings; it doesn't signify them. So I disagree with your addition. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 05:26, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

I agree. Murder is a specific form of killing; killing does not have to be deliberate but can be reckless or accidental. — Sgconlaw (talk) 05:34, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

A firefighter with breathing apparatus

What is the English equivalent to these Nordic words; røgdykker, røykdukkar, rökdykare, savusukeltaja?

The definition is: "A firefighter with breathing apparatus who enters smoke-filled rooms and buildings (to search, rescue, and extinguish)."

The literal translation is "smoke diver", a person who dives into the smoke (compare "scuba diver").

Worth noting is that ALL firefighters are trained in "smoke diving", this is not a separate occupation, the term only refer to one of the many roles an individual firefighter can have on a scene.

An offshoot of this word is kemdykare (literally “chemical diver”), someone who enter accident areas filled with toxic gas.

In this instance I'm looking for the noun. But I'm also interested in the verb, to peform "smoke diving". --Christoffre (talk) 20:47, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

Now that I've looked into it, it does in fact appear that smoke diver is the correct English term. There are plenty of Google hits, including on Google books, so it should be fairly easily citable. So as long as this passes RFD (I don't know why it wouldn't), then you can leave it as is (and remove the notice about it being a translation hub). Andrew Sheedy (talk) 02:30, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

The term seems to originate in Scandinavia. Hits in Google books fall in two categories: works translated from Scandinavian languages and uses related to something called a "Smoke Diver program". They're both problematic: the former could be ad hoc translations; for the latter it's not clear whether the above dictionary definition applies or whether it means "pertaining to the Smoke Diver program". —Caoimhin ceallach (talk) 09:26, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

I don't see any use of smoke dive as a verb, but more than enough of smoke diving. DCDuring (talk) 14:29, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

While this is a good use of the team room, I just also think people should be aware of {{rfeq}}. Vininn126 (talk) 14:31, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

{{rfeq}} not really relevant for this, as it is an English term, arguably in early use in mid 19th century. DCDuring (talk) 15:16, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

If one is looking for the English translations of the given Nordic words, I personally think that is rather relevant! Vininn126 (talk) 15:24, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

Misspelled Today but Correct 100 Years Ago

Hey: if there's a spelling of a word that was correct 100 years ago but now appears as a misspelling, do the misspelling cites go on the entry proper or into the Citations? See Vladivostock for an example. The 2008 and 2021 articles are almost certainly misspellings, not attempts to use the older spelling. How should this be handled? Ping me if you have any thoughts on this. --Geographyinitiative (talk) 23:26, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

The 1977 cite might be a deliberate archaism, to be understood as "what was then called Vladivostock". Just a guess. As for the two newer ones, which really are misspellings, I would actually think they'd make sense on the correctly spelled page, since after all, Vladivostock isnt the name they wanted to type. Vladivostok is. But that is just my opinion as well. I'd like to hear other people's ideas. Best wishes, —Soap— 11:03, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

@Geographyinitiative how can you be so confident that the newer cites are misspellings? Maybe the -ck spelling hasn't totally disappeared. Ioaxxere (talk) 21:34, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

(1) Soap: I have quoted the author of the 1977 materials, Rewi Alley, apparently about 50 times. He shifted from Wade-Giles to Pinyin in 1979-1980, with the 19790101 big pinyin switch, so he was conforming to the standards of the times (note that communist radicals were already using Pinyin in English in the 1970s when he was still sticking to unhyphenated Wade-Giles conventions). I think a 1977 usage of 'Vladivostock' by him could be a misspelling, but I really think it could also be a genuine use of the older spelling since he was probably subjected to a unique cultural environment as part of the 'foreign friends' group of foreigners who lived in China during the Cultural Revoluton- in that really specialized environment, that spelling may have been still okay. If they published that in that magazine, it wasn't just him who wrote it, but his CCP handlers who approved it. But I don't think he was trying to draw a distinction between Vladivostok and Vladivostock by saying "what was then called Vladivostock". That would be too erudite a point for him to be making, IMO. (2) Ioaxxere: From my limited perspective as someone not closely acquainted with Russian language-derived terminology, I cannot technically say that Reuters and AP's 21st century articles are misspellings. But they are authoritative, reliable sources and they are supposed to use the official spellings. Vladivostock is not the official spelling. So the only way they could use it is blatant error. But in my personal experience, I know that Vladivostok can be "sound spelled" as "Vladivostock" (even though that's not really the pronunciation) because stok and stock are so close, and stock is so natural for an English speaker, while stok is utterly alien. It would take someone who was really attuned to the pecuilarities of this area to know whether the ck spelling is still current but not mainstream due to some cultural rationale I know nothing of. I had just assumed that this would be a misspelling if it appeared in modern media- some dolt like me hearing "stock" and writing it. I use Occam's Razor to say: the journalist is likely an uncultured rube idiot. (3) Now that same logic could be used against Rewi Alley, but I think his chronological proximity to the older spelling and his unique environment may mean that this was still normative on some level, surviving in a bubble. And Rewi Alley is a joke, not a real source like Reuters or AP. To call him a joke is an insult to jokes. --Geographyinitiative (talk) 22:50, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

I would say keep, as it shows that this spelling is technically used in English, but as a misspelling. CitationsFreak: Accessed 2023/01/01 (talk) 05:18, 16 June 2023 (UTC)

late

The usage note says it is used "only in nonrestrictive fashion, i.e., never to distinguish the deceased Mary Smith from other Mary Smiths who are still living. Compare hungry: A phrase like the hungry Mary Smith could be used if another Mary Smith is under discussion who is not hungry." I think this is wrong; if there were two Mary Smiths and one was dead and someone referred to "Mary Smith" and I thought they meant the alive one, and they clarified "no, I mean the late Mary Smith", nothing about that would seem incorrect to me. Is there anything incorrect about it? - -sche (discuss) 07:06, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

Yes that makes sense to me. Although I'd say such a situation might not come up very often, so perhaps we can work on the wording of the usage note so that the substance of the claim is still there but without the absolute prohibition. —Soap— 10:34, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

I agree: it is usually (¿almost always?) used in non-restrictive fashion. PJTraill (talk) 10:41, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

Yeah, I think it's just a matter of the restrictive sense not coming up very often. I wouldn't blink an eye at "No, I mean the late Mary Smith." kwami (talk) 04:09, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

OK, I was about to drop the bit about it "only" being non-restrictive, and wasn't going to change it to "almost always" because I don't get the impression that's specific to this word — I don't think people clarify "no, I mean the hungry Mary" often either, do they? There doesn't seem to be anything specific to late whereby it's less able to function restrictively than other adjectives if circumstances under which it would distinguish two people arise...
But I notice this wording was only introduced in January, and although the previous wording also has enough issues that I wouldn't simply restore it, I think I see the rather different point the former wording was making, which the IP (IMO) misunderstood: late is often used the way honorifics are used — not that it can never be used to distinguish, but just that most of the time when you use it, you're not concerned with whether it's distinguishing, like you introduce a speaker as The Esteemed Jane Doe without any regard to whether there's any non-esteemed Jane Doe someone might otherwise think you meant. Is that accurate? How could we express that? (Is it worth expressing, or are there enough words like this that it's just a general feature of how words work?) - -sche (discuss) 21:18, 19 June 2023 (UTC)

I think many adjectives are used this way. To start which the most similar types of words, those that indicate rank, class, and status, whether high or low, are used without regard to distinguishing from someone/-thing of different status that is present in the context of the utterance. Late does serve to distinguish the so-labelled person from those still living or to inform any in the audience not aware of the death. I really don't see that there is anything unusual here, but then I'm no linguist. DCDuring (talk) 22:09, 19 June 2023 (UTC)

Yes, when we are told that John Anthon married a daughter of the wealthy John Hone,^[5] this is not meant to be restrictive but informative. Likewise with words that indicate character or propensity: the miserly Harpagon.^[6]  --Lambiam 09:37, 2 July 2023 (UTC)

within/inside

In the sentence, "The phones plugged in inside both homes stopped charging" (due to a blackout), can "inside" be replaced by "within" without a change in meaning? My understanding is that the answer should be yes, but to me, "within" wouldn't make sense because it implies the phones would be plugged in in both homes at the same time, whereas "inside" suggests either home. Do you interpret it the same way? Numbix (talk)

Inside and within look about equally odd to me, and I wonder if this construction comes from writers wanting to avoid writing in twice in a row. I would say that inside and within could be swapped around with no real change in meaning, since I dont see anything about the word within that makes it more likely to carry the semantic sense of "in both at once" than inside or even in. —Soap— 16:45, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

I had to stare at your sentence for quite a while before I got your at the same time reading. You mean it's as if phones were plugged in in multiple places at the same time right? I get that equally for inside and within though. I don't think it has to do with the choice of word, rather with the w:scope of both. Because when I rearrange the sentence the effect disappears: "Inside both homes the phones plugged in stopped charging."

I don't necessarily sense a difference of meaning between the two words, more one of style. I don't think I use within to mean "in the physical interior of something", but rather figuratively, eg within earshot, within reason, within my heart, within the halls of power. I can use it in the literal sense, but then it has a formal ring to me, as in within the walls of the Forbidden City. In this case inside sounds better to me. —Caoimhin ceallach (talk) 21:35, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

"Inside" sounds better to me too, and in fact "within" sounds actually wrong to me. But "inside" still sounds bad, and I'd just say "in", which is no more jarring than two "that"s in a row. kwami (talk) 04:05, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

I agree with all the specific observations about the sentence and the equivalence of within and inside. Context allows us to speak/write ambiguous sentences such as the one above and yet be understood unambiguously. "(due to a blackout)" provides the context. The sentence seems awkward to me without context. It works well as an answer to the question "How did you and your wife figure that we were having a regional blackout?" DCDuring (talk) 16:13, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

Doner kebab without bread (and similar)

Kebab, french fries, lettuce and kebab sauce.

What is the term for a fast-food doner kebab served on a plate (or in a styrofoam box), instead of in a bread? I'm referring to the Swedish word kebabtallrik (“kebab on plate”) – versus kebab med bröd (“kebab in bread”).

I'm also interested in the term for:

• kebabsallad (“as above ☝️, but with additional lettuce instead of french fries”)
• fransk kebab (“kebab in baguette”)
• kebabrulle (“doner kebab in a rolled flatbread”)

Christoffre (talk) 22:13, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

I’d just call it ‘doner meat’ if it wasn’t served with bread (typically pitta bread). Overlordnat1 (talk) 10:10, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

Is that what pizzerias, and other places, call it on their menu? Or is the dish simply rare in the English speaking countries, so it doesn't have a generally accepted name? Christoffre (talk) 14:09, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

In Australia, a Halal Snack Pack, sometimes abbreviated to HSP. For other names in other places, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halal_snack_pack. BenAveling (talk) 16:43, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

Closed Thanks! That Wikipedia link gave me everything I needed. Christoffre (talk) 21:25, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

"French Kebab", that's amazing. In France it's called sandwich grec. – Jberkel 21:21, 16 June 2023 (UTC)

In German this is commonly called a Dönerteller. wikt:de:Dönerteller lists "doner plate" as a translation, but that sounds too literal. Jberkel 11:03, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

I used almost the same literal translation, kebab plate, in my quotations until I updated the entry. Christoffre (talk) 15:50, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

@Christoffre: In the UK we don't commonly have that exact meal, but there is the munchy box (also spelled munchie box) which is a load of fast food in a box, and very often includes doner meat. Equinox ◑ 21:48, 16 June 2023 (UTC)

I read that "Donner meat", an entirely different recipe. kwami (talk) 04:02, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

Is a shemozzle really a quarrel or rumpus?

Apart from the very specific case of the GAA, is there really a strong case to be made that shemozzle means a quarrel or rumpus?

In all the non-GAA citations given, the word appears to be being used in sense-1, "a state of chaos or confusion". (I might also ask, is this usage actually slang?)

I checked a couple of other online dictionaries [7][8][9], and none of them give sense-2 "quarrel or rumpus".

The Oxford Dictionary of Modern Slang does give sense-2[10], but I don't have ready access to the full article.

There's a discussion here [11] that explains exactly what a shemozzle means in the GAA, as well as noting that this is GAA specific, and explaining why and how it came into use. Another example here[12] that again says "The word “shemozzle” has a very precise meaning for GAA fans throughout Ireland." BenAveling (talk) 16:25, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

Do you feel that the quotes there don't illustrate that usage? I personally do. Vininn126 (talk) 21:30, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

The first two quotes appear as likely to be usage 1 as usage 2. The 3rd quote is clearly GAA specific. BenAveling (talk) 17:03, 6 April 2024 (UTC)

souvenir (French)

The pronunciation lists it with /y/. Is that a typo? Dngweh2s (talk) 04:42, 16 June 2023 (UTC)

Yes, it's fixed now. Nicodene (talk) 04:43, 16 June 2023 (UTC)

Bovril

The first quotation is misdated and misattributed. Google Books shows a snippet view for the quotation mentioning Bovril in The Cornhill Magazine, but I can't identify the volume, year, or author from that. The name Vril comes from the 1871 book The Coming Race. so it must postdate that. The current date 1860 and author Thackeray (died 1863) are those for the founding of the Cornhill, not the volume that contains the quote. --188.30.168.180 09:00, 16 June 2023 (UTC)

Well spotted, fixed. It's from 1930. Jberkel 12:33, 16 June 2023 (UTC)

fool

• Sense: (informal) Someone who derives pleasure from something specified.
• Citation: 1671, John Milton: "Can they think me […] their fool or jester?"

Can this be right? There is no "something specified" from which pleasure would be derived. It rather seems to belong under the other sense of an amusing clown or jester. Equinox ◑ 12:15, 16 June 2023 (UTC)

Isn't fool in fool for love also this sense (?) Leasnam (talk) 16:24, 16 June 2023 (UTC)

Yes, I suppose so (Merriam-Webster has "fool for"), but my question here is about the Milton citation specifically. Equinox ◑ 21:46, 16 June 2023 (UTC)

That quote, with the ellipsis in the same location, appears in Webster's 1891 dictionary, where it's used for sense 4: "one who counterfeits folly; a professional jester or buffoon; a retainer formerly kept to make sport, dressed fantastically in motley, with ridiculous accounterments." In other words, exactly as you're reading it. kwami (talk) 03:57, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

do exactly what it says on the tin

Someone's created the inflections (I hate seeing inflections for these multi-verb phrases), as: ...did exactly what it said on the tin, done exactly what it said on the tin. To guide future creation and policy: why do these forms show "said" and not "says" ("it did exactly what it says on the tin" seems grammatically fine). Equinox ◑ 21:45, 16 June 2023 (UTC)

The rule I learned was that, in English, we do not have relative tense (did what it says, where the time focus has shifted to the time of 'did', making that present tense for the next verb), but rather absolute tense (both are past relative to the time of writing), so that past in one verb governs past in the next, and non-past governs non-past. If you follow that guideline (which is perhaps rather formal), it would have to be "did what it said". And that's probably good advice for the default tenses to use in our writing. But actual usage is going to be all over the place, and I doubt we've even worked out what the motivations and implications are for breaking the pattern. Certainly for auxiliaries -- we certainly don't follow a rule of "might" in past-tense constructions and "may" in non-past -- but also with lexical verbs. But trying to work out the difference is a bit like trying to work out the difference between "turn the light out" and "turn out the light", which are distinct in some situations but often interchangeable. If we have to come up with a rule to guide inflections, I'd vote for the tense of the first verb governing the tense of the second, but don't expect our quotations to match. And yeah, given all the potential complications, I rather doubt that adding inflections like this is going to help more than it hinders. kwami (talk) 03:47, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

I appreciate the time you evidently put into this :D However I knew, when I began, that "did what it said on the tin" and "did what it says on the tin" are both perfectly grammatically acceptable. The problem is that they have slightly different meanings (suppose that the text on the tin was changed, by the marketing department, during the time that I was painting). So? Equinox ◑ 11:11, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

The unmarked form (at least in formal English) is "did what it said", so if we had to choose one, IMO that would be it. But (1) do we really need to inflect phrases? and (2) if we do, do we want to show both possibilities, or just the default? To be complete, I suppose it should be both, but I'm not sure what the point of any of those options would be.

Also, "doing exactly what it said on the tin" is past tense, not present as labeled. kwami (talk) 17:07, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

I find it interesting that matching tenses works for present and past, but not future: "does what it says on the tin" and "did what it said on the tin" sound fine, but "will do what it will say on the tin" strikes me as weird and wrong, and "will do what it will have said on the tin" isn't much better. "will do what it said on the tin" has semantic problems, but doesn't seem ungrammatical.

It must have something to do with the nature of "it says" as an impersonal verb with a null subject used as a stative. I would note that you can't say "the sun will come out after it will rain" or "the sun will come out after it rained", but you can say "the sun will come out after it rains" or "the sun will come out after it has rained" (the latter suggests that aspect may be involved somehow as well). Chuck Entz (talk) 17:52, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

That's because the English future isn't a tense, it's a modal. In languages that do have a future tense, you do say *the sun will come out after it will rain.

English has two tenses, past and non-past (or 'present', if you prefer), and that's what we match. Adding 'will' to a non-past construction doesn't change the grammatical tense any more than adding 'would' (the past-tense form of 'will') to a past-tense construction.

I wonder if traditional grammars claim that English has a future tense because Latin does, and they're modeling themselves after Latin grammar. kwami (talk) 18:10, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

In "taking long", is "long" a noun?

See [13]. I would like to hear thoughts, especially because this sense was obviously not added until somebody heard it in "MLE" (rap music) and thought it was new. But "taking long" is by no means new ("how long did it take?"). Equinox ◑ 03:30, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

I would think an adj, ellipsis for 'a long time'. An adj doesn't become a noun just because you drop the noun in a noun phrase. Suppose you might argue for an adv. But what would the tests for nouns be that this would pass? Can it be plural, or take an article? You could mod it to "taking longish", which strikes me as adj-ish. kwami (talk) 03:35, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

See also "it's taking too long". PUC – 10:43, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

Yes, "too long" makes it impossible for "long" to be a noun, I think. @Overlordnat1Equinox ◑ 11:09, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

The fact that ‘long’, when it’s used to mean ‘a long time’, is substitutable with ‘ages’ or ‘an age’ in some circumstances means that it can function as a noun but then the fact that it can follow ‘too’ when it has the similar, related meaning of ‘long a time’ does suggest it’s an adjective which would make ‘adverb’ a possible compromise.

I do think that in contexts where ‘long’ doesn’t appear in a question or a negative statement it’s being used in a colloquial sense and this should be reflected somewhere, even if it’s just in a usage note. ‘Will you be long?’ and the response ‘I won’t be long’ are standard English but the response ‘I’ll be long’ is unusual and colloquial at best. As a stand-alone sentence, rather than as a response to a question, ‘I’ll be long’ or ‘This is taking long’ is very much non-standard and restricted to certain demographics (MLE/AAVE/Jamaican English or creole). I have more examples I could add to such a slang sense. If you delete this sense then could you at least move the quote I added to the noun sense I created to the existing adverb sense (which covers more standard uses of ‘long’ as a replacement for ‘a long time’ and ‘long a time’) please? @EquinoxOverlordnat1 (talk) 11:45, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

Yeeess. "This is taking long" is certainly not "Inner Circle", but "this is taking ages" is. Then I'd be the only person who insists that "ages" is a plural noun and not some kind of TEMPORAL PARTICLE. (It's not an adverb, anyway, because "this is taking slowly"* would describe the nature of the taking -- whatever that means.) Equinox ◑ 11:54, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

Anyway @Overlordnat1: I would just like to ask you to make this less challengeable by adding some really sweet citations (ones that aren't covered by any other sense). Give it a go. If you must, invent a Caribbean sentence, but at least make it one you can find somewhere on a message board. Equinox ◑ 11:56, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

I've added some clearly slang uses that should be covered somewhere just now. Create a particle sense and delete both the adverb sense and my noun sense if you like, as long as you transfer the quotations there. The Spice (musician) quote is patwa and so really belongs in a Jamaican Creole entry but lets sort out ehat part of speech it is in English first before creating such an entry and moving the quote there. I'm not exactly sure what you want me to find though, I won't be able to find examples od people saying/writing 'longs' to mean 'a long times' (whatever that would mean) or 'long periods of time'. --Overlordnat1 (talk) 13:11, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

Who says {{clipping of}} is valid as a definition template? "Clipping of" begs the question of what the clipped term means. I have yet to find a dictionary that has the noun sense in question that does not define it as "A long time". Also, it doesn't seem like slang or MLE. DCDuring (talk) 15:46, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

Same reasons that kwami mentioned, but it's an adverb. Compare Polish zajmować długo. Vininn126 (talk) 10:21, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

I dropped the noun sense and moved the cites to the citations page; as others have said, it is not a noun; the part of speech is not different between "I've been waiting long" and "I haven't been waiting long", even if the acceptability in different dialects is. I would've just moved the cites of taking long (etc) to the same place where the usex about will this take long? is, but I'm not sure the definition "For a lengthy duration." actually works for either taking long or will this take long?: I'm not sure it can intelligibly be substituted into either sentence ("will this interview take for a length duration"?); perhaps the definition needs to be tweaked (and also, is it an adverb, or an adjective?). If we're happy with the definition and POS we can move the cites under it and add a usage note about which types of use are acceptable where... - -sche (discuss) 21:36, 19 June 2023 (UTC)

Fair enough, I've put the offending sense on the citations page now, I'm sure we can work something out and I do concede that the part of speech and circular definition wasn't ideal. --Overlordnat1 (talk) 21:53, 19 June 2023 (UTC)

Thanks, and sorry if "move cites..." came across as a command to you to do it; I meant I was going to do it myself, but I got distracted and saw you'd already done it by the time I came back. I think it should be possible to move the cites back to the main page once we work out exactly which sense to put them under. (The "For a lengthy duration" sense, but after rewording it? Or without rewording it? ... Or put them under a different sense? ...) - -sche (discuss) 22:53, 19 June 2023 (UTC)

No problem and no offence taken. I’m not sure what the best approach would be though, as to define ‘long’ in terms of ‘lengthy’ is itself a rather circular definition Overlordnat1 (talk) 01:00, 20 June 2023 (UTC)

Compare <<will this take long>> to <<will this last long>> - it's already listed under Adverb, sense 3. Leasnam (talk) 13:28, 21 June 2023 (UTC)

Ok, I had wondered if we might need to tweak the definition since "for a length duration" doesn't really substitute into "will this take long?", but I suppose it's just take which is the stumbling block in *"will this take for a lengthy duration?". Alright, shall we put a representative cite or two from the citations page under that sense, and is anyone up for writing a usage note about which different kinds of use are acceptable in which varieties of English? - -sche (discuss) 14:27, 21 June 2023 (UTC)

I’ve made a few tweaks. Overlordnat1 (talk) 15:25, 22 June 2023 (UTC)

I want to coin a term on Wiktionary. How?

I want to coin the term ‘’Denver twist’’ on Wiktionary. Do you think how? —-79.67.31.51 12:10, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

Is not allowed. You have to use it somewhere else and when people pick it up then it can be added, at best not by you. Fay Freak (talk) 12:15, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

If you think the word already exists, say a little about what it means and give a few examples where it is used. I couldn't find anything when I did a brief look. --Geographyinitiative (talk) 13:51, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

How to create a word on Wiktionary? 79.67.31.51 14:43, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

Does the word already exist? --Geographyinitiative (talk) 17:10, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

No. Is that not allowed ? 79.67.31.51 07:13, 19 June 2023 (UTC)

No. We're a descriptive dictionary, so we stick to things that are or have been in actual use. See our criteria for inclusion and What Wiktionary is not. We delete made-up stuff all the time. Chuck Entz (talk) 08:10, 19 June 2023 (UTC)

Then how to coin a term ? Did some ip get blocked in coining their own terms ? 79.67.31.51 15:52, 20 June 2023 (UTC)

We just simply don't allow protologisms - as does any self-respecting dictionary. Vininn126 (talk) 15:55, 20 June 2023 (UTC)

As the other replies make clear, Wiktionary aims to be a serious descriptive dictionary, describing language as used by significant numbers of people. That is why it is not appropriate for you to add your own made-up expressions here, but perhaps if you say why you want to coin this term someone can suggest a more appropriate place (though that is not really our purpose) — but even Urban Dictionary says ‘Share definitions that other people will find meaningful’ PJTraill (talk) 23:33, 20 June 2023 (UTC)

brokhvarg

This should be quick. I recently removed a gloss on בראָכװאַרג (brokhvarg) because it looks like a copypaste error from יונגװאַרג (yungvarg). Might the brokh part be cognate to German gebrochen? It's not an exact match, so I didnt want to assume. I dont know much German, and I certainly dont know much Yiddish, so I bring this up for others to consider. Thanks, —Soap— 17:15, 19 June 2023 (UTC)

Actually, now that I think of it, why would yung mean "last"? Im not sure about either of these words now. The two diffs [14] and [15] were four minutes apart, and I assumed the earlier one was the source and the later one the copy-paste error, but I suppose if the editor had two windows open it could have been the other way around. Or maybe neither of them is correct. Or maybe they somehow both mean "last", but I doubt that. I hope working together we can figure this out. Thanks, —Soap— 17:19, 19 June 2023 (UTC)

I removed "last"; in context I don't see how it could mean anything but what we define it as, "young". I wonder if the user's other contributions need to be checked. - -sche (discuss) 22:55, 19 June 2023 (UTC)

New medieval runic inscription

I saw this article today about the discovery of a medieval runic inscription on a game piece. It looks to me like ᛌᛁᚵ (sig, “victory”) +‎ ᚵᛁᛁᚠᚱ (gífr, “beastly”), but they translate it as ᛌᛁᚵᚵ (Sigg, “Sig(-urd, -bjørn, etc.)”) +‎ ᛌᛁᚠᚱ (sifr, “brother”). (I now wanna make a Mühle piece like this.) -- Sokkjō 00:19, 20 June 2023 (UTC)

Are you suggesting we should do something here because of that? PJTraill (talk) 23:38, 20 June 2023 (UTC)

Welcome to Wiktionary, User:PJTraill! Thank you for your dozens of edits. =) -- Sokkjō 23:58, 20 June 2023 (UTC)

Welcome! Thank-you for your thousands of edits, in a much shorter period! P.S. The article looked interesting. PJTraill (talk) 00:09, 21 June 2023 (UTC)

citizen of the world

Do we need two senses? I don't really see a difference. PUC – 16:08, 21 June 2023 (UTC)

Hmmm. Sense 2 is more neutral, whereas sense 1 is about a person not seeing themselves as a national of any particular country. Maybe they can be combined like this: "A person regarded as part of the global citizenry; specifically, one who takes the view that they belong to no particular country or state." I think the "person who travels widely to different countries" sense may need verification. — Sgconlaw (talk) 16:50, 21 June 2023 (UTC)

Thanks; I've used your rewording, and removed the "person who travels widely to different countries" part, which looked spurious. PUC – 22:34, 21 June 2023 (UTC)

I've certainly heard this term applied to people in connection with the fact that they [are rich and] travel widely [and vlog about it], but I'm not sure how distinct that is from "a person regarded as part of the global citizenry" (although that phrase is pretty nebulous, so it a lot of cites connect it with travelling and not just being aware of global affairs, that might be relevant to mention). - -sche (discuss) 04:14, 22 June 2023 (UTC)

Had a look at the OED, which has a subentry for this term. It notes that the term is sometimes used to refer to a “responsible” member of the global citizenry. It also defines the term as one who is at home, or who claims rights, everywhere, and gives cosmopolitan as a synonym. A person who is at home everywhere probably implies they are well-travelled. Finally, there is an obsolete “worldly person” (i.e., not spiritual) sense. — Sgconlaw (talk) 05:00, 22 June 2023 (UTC)

right

@Andrew Sheedy Further to the comment you made when recently editing the pronunciation section of right, I’d like to draw your attention to what I noticed on the YouTube channel of the famous YouTuber Simon Roper (English, from Guildford in Surrey) recently. Simon and the other famous American YouTubers Jackson Crawford (from Houston, Texas) and Luke Ranieri (from Bucks County, Pennsylvania) have a video where they try to analyse one another’s accents and do impression of each other. At 07:23 into the following video[16] Crawford says ‘right’ as ‘re-eet’ and at at 22:45 Ranieri does the same thing and they’re both using their natural speaking voices at those points of the video. I don’t know how typical Jackson is of Houston or Luke of Philadelphia (more or less) but perhaps these cities or states could be listed as examples of where right is so pronounced on the pronunciation guide? Overlordnat1 (talk) 00:46, 22 June 2023 (UTC)

I'm not super great at analyzing pronunciation at a phonetic level, so I don't have much to say on this. When you say "so pronounced", which pronunciation are you referring to? Andrew Sheedy (talk) 05:03, 22 June 2023 (UTC)

I was referring to the IPA^(key): /ˈɹeɪt/ pronunciation that you just edited the label of. You added 'some places in the United States' to the description of this pronunciation on the basis of comments on the talk page and in the comment you made when editing it you asked in which places in the US it could be found. To my ears that's how these two speakers pronounce the 'I' vowel in the word right, though not how they pronounce this sound when it appears in other words. In other words the pronounce right in the same way that most people would say rate. --Overlordnat1 (talk) 07:54, 22 June 2023 (UTC)

Oh, I see. Two things: (1) I'd have to listen to more of their speech to tell. Is there somewhere else in the video where they pronounce a word ending in "-ate"? Also, to me, that doesn't sound like /ˈɹeɪt/ at all--it sounds more like /ˈɹʌɪt/ said quickly (maybe with somewhat reduced vowels). The distinction is fairly subtle (I was looking for an example to show you and I listed to it three times before realizing it was /ˈɹʌɪt/), which is no doubt how the /ˈɹeɪt/ pronunciation developed in the first place. (2) The pronunciation I added was specifically referring to the pronunciation of the adverbial sense, as in "right there" or "He hit it right in the middle of the target" or "Right on!" Those are the only circumstances in which the Canadian pronunciation is /ˈɹeɪt/. Otherwise, it's more like /ˈɹʌɪt/. So if the pronunciation mentioned in the video is to be added, it should be listed separately, since it's a different sense of the word. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 19:54, 22 June 2023 (UTC)

Hebrew word הכל common yet missing?

I'm new here and mostly trying to fill in the little (but still worth filling) gaps in the Hebrew entries, but last night I found a huge one: הכל According to Wiktionary itself, הכל is one of the 200 most common words in Hebrew and several fluent Israeli speakers have told me that it in practice is its own word that often isn't even considered definite (i.e. אֵת is often omitted when הכל is the direct object) yet I cannot for the life of me find any mention on the whole site of any implication that anyone ever considered it worthy of its own entry. I know most definite forms don't warrant their own entries but I firmly believe that הכל is more than the sum of its parts. I can't be the first person to raise this concern, but I also can't find any evidence to the contrary so... Why doesn't it exist? David Ben Avraham (talk) 19:38, 22 June 2023 (UTC)

No one's added it yet. CitationsFreak: Accessed 2023/01/01 (talk) 05:27, 26 June 2023 (UTC)

In case you're not familiar with Hebrew grammar (I'm not exactly fluent, so take this with a grain of salt), Hebrew ה- is a definite-article prefix that can be added to any countable noun (and I believe other POS, especially if agreement is involved), so הכל could be construed as ה־ (“the”) +‎ כל (“all, whole”), which might be SOP. There's also an inflected form of Hebrew הכיל (“to contain”) that's spelled the same. Chuck Entz (talk) 06:14, 26 June 2023 (UTC)

Yes, I'm familiar with the etymology (and Hebrew grammar), but as I said, a descriptivist analysis based on what fluent Israeli speakers have told me would indicate that it is often not definite in casual speech, and is considered by the speakers to be effectively its own independent word, and I would therefore argue that it is not SOP. David Ben Avraham (talk) 14:37, 26 June 2023 (UTC)

If there are no objections from someone more qualified than I on modern Hebrew, I will create the entry myself, although I'm still fascinated by its seemingly unchallenged exclusion until now. David Ben Avraham (talk) 11:58, 30 June 2023 (UTC)

Note that the Hebrew Wiktionary also does not have such an entry.  --Lambiam 09:43, 2 July 2023 (UTC)

figging

"originally applied to slaves and prisoners as a punishment" Is this correct and not just a rehashed factoid? It seems to have been taken from a rather poor section on Wikipedia. Furthermore the fact that the irrelevant citation given is a political scientist writing about ancient history does not inspire confidence, not to dwell on the general level of historical ignorance among people who practice BDSM. ←₰-→ Lingo ^Bingo _Dingo (talk) 21:08, 22 June 2023 (UTC)

I changed "originally applied to slaves and prisoners as a punishment [...] and later used in BDSM" to "applied to people as a punishment (typically in BDSM)", and also tried to clarify "applied [...] to horses as a form of deception as to the horse's condition" to explain how it deceives. Please revise further if needed. - -sche (discuss) 08:26, 1 July 2023 (UTC)

Surinam

This is regarding the map in the English entry. First of all, this is an alternative form entry. Apparently the map was moved up from the Turkish entry, which is the main entry for that language. A week ago, the image was replaced with a version showing Suriname's version of the borders (apparently the borders with two of its neighbors are disputed- see w:Borders of Suriname). That change was reverted on the grounds that it was "In violation of Wikipedia policy". I reverted that, but only because this needs to be discussed before starting into a revert war. Do we:

1. Remove the map altogether
2. Keep where it is
3. Move it to the Suriname page

If we don't remove it altogether, do we:

1. Leave it with the Suriname-prefered map
2. Revert to the older version
3. Replace it with a map that has the disputed areas marked as disputed

Chuck Entz (talk) 02:10, 24 June 2023 (UTC)

How to get more in the instances of words

Hello, I am new to wiktionary and was hoping someone could explain if anyone really went far as to even decide to do more like? Basically, how does that add up as far as with the pages? Langtag (talk) 04:56, 25 June 2023 (UTC)

@Langtag, I'm afraid that it is not clear to me what you are asking. Could you try restating your question? ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 17:39, 26 June 2023 (UTC)

It's a troll. Vininn126 (talk) 17:49, 26 June 2023 (UTC)

conceive, "to understand someone"

Is that sense still current? PUC – 11:41, 25 June 2023 (UTC)

you guys

As pointed out by Nixinova, after IP edits a couple years ago, the label now says this is "chiefly" used in almost every core English-speaking country. Are we trying to suggest as subtly as possible that it's not used in Ireland? (But I find uses on Irish websites, and e.g. Indian ones.) If this really is used in all places, I'm inclined to drop the label on the grounds that the term simply isn't geographically restricted. (If it's uniquely unused in, say, Nigeria, I think it'd be clearer to spell that out in a usage note rather than hoping people pick up on Nigeria's absence from a list of every other country.) Or if the label is wrong and it's only marginally used in e.g. Britain, then we should fix the label and add usage notes. - -sche (discuss) 13:21, 25 June 2023 (UTC)

I'm with you on the principle that you're after. I suspect that the list of places given there is merely an accretion without much curation effort. I wonder if (1) an "originally" label {{lb|en|originally|Place X}} might be useful or (2) a single line in the usage note about origins. I've assumed that the usage started in North America but I've never looked into it and could be wrong. Quercus solaris (talk) 04:59, 26 June 2023 (UTC)

The origins label feels more etymological. CitationsFreak: Accessed 2023/01/01 (talk) 05:26, 26 June 2023 (UTC)

our draw

In Justified s4e2, characters repeatedly (e.g. several times in this clip) refer to the disability assistance money they receive as their "draw", seeming to mean "income" or "payment" (from the government). We seem to be missing this sense. (We have "an advance on future (potential) commissions", which is at least about money, but isn't this; Dictionary.com has "an amount regularly drawn, as from a drawing account" and "a fund, as an expense account or credit line, from which money may be withdrawn when needed", neither of which seems quite right either.) - -sche (discuss) 01:11, 26 June 2023 (UTC)

Isn't the problem worse than that? Why don't we have a catch-all sense (or senses)? Like "That which is drawn or withdrawn". Some of our specialized senses are probably easily instances of this, probably better addressed with usage examples than with subsenses. DCDuring (talk) 18:33, 26 June 2023 (UTC)

Using the word "nigger" in the wikitionary

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/nigger_lottery#English

This is offensive on a number of levels. 2601:1C0:CF01:B430:A1C0:4B8:33:CD6E 04:56, 27 June 2023 (UTC)

Like other dictionaries, we include even words that are offensive. Equinox ◑ 10:02, 27 June 2023 (UTC)

The sources are all Usenet posts. There are no examples on Google Books. 72trombones (talk) 08:42, 28 June 2023 (UTC)

We accept usenet for quotations. Vininn126 (talk) 08:47, 28 June 2023 (UTC)

Besides which, we have quotes from Hemingway and Twain at nigger from Google Books, and the Conrad book ‘Nigger of the Narcissus’ is also listed on Google Books. The claim that there are no examples from Google Books is arrant nonsense. Overlordnat1 (talk) 09:30, 28 June 2023 (UTC)

I meant that there are no examples of "nigger lottery" on Google Books. 72trombones (talk) 11:48, 28 June 2023 (UTC)

Wiktionary accepts citations from many different types of sources, not just print media. From WT:CFI:

Where possible, it is better to cite sources that are likely to remain easily accessible over time, so that someone referring to Wiktionary years from now is likely to be able to find the original source.

• As Wiktionary is an online dictionary, this naturally favors media such as Usenet groups, which are durably archived by Google.
• Other online-only sources may also contribute towards attestation requirements if editors come to a consensus through a discussion lasting at least two weeks.

Binarystep (talk) 19:01, 28 June 2023 (UTC)

I really think Usenet should be demoted to at best the status of Twitter, so that words cited only to Usenet (or to Usenet and Twitter) would need to be approved by discussion, and people might be more cautious about making such pages in the first place. But it's a vote that nobody seems to want, and when we had this discussion last year, even such a small step as requiring six citations instead of three was seen as too much. —Soap— 22:00, 28 June 2023 (UTC)

So under the current rules, you can use a word in three posts on Usenet and create an entry based on that? I don't see any way this system could be abused. 72trombones (talk) 08:02, 29 June 2023 (UTC)

These posts have to span a year and be independent of each other. Thadh (talk) 08:07, 29 June 2023 (UTC)

Request for deletion of page פִֿילְייוֹלוֹ

Hello, everyone.
I have created the entry in question, on the basis of an attested plural form פִילְייוֹלִי (figlioli, used to mean both “sons” and “daughters”), which led me to what I thought was a reasonable assumption (yeah, I know) about the shape of a singular masculine form.
As of right now, I can't really provide attestations for the term, which is apparently — as far as I've seen — only used as a plural form for both פִֿילְייוֹ (figlio, “son”) and פִֿילְײַה (figlia, “daughter”).
Could someone please delete the page? I would do it myself without bothering others, but I don't think I have permission to do it.
Thanks in advance. GianWiki (talk) 09:08, 27 June 2023 (UTC)

@GianWiki: Deleted, but for future reference, you can just use {{d}} in such cases. Thadh (talk) 10:20, 27 June 2023 (UTC)

Thank you very much. For both the deletion, and the heads-up: I didn't know about {{d}}. GianWiki (talk) 11:04, 27 June 2023 (UTC)

winestra

Based on the attestations, winestra is the masculine weak form of what would be Old English winester (“left”). I think the page should be moved. Leasnam (talk) 18:06, 27 June 2023 (UTC)

Unicode cruft character: 𬖾

What is a character that does not appear in any relevant reference work? What if there is no indication that the character was ever used in the relevant time or place? The entry 𬖾 (U+2C5BE, ) is said to represent phở, or Vietnamese noodle soup.

The Han-Nôm Institute in Hanoi recommends several Nôm dictionaries, including Giúp đọc Nôm và Hán Việt (Nôm and Sino-Vietnamese Pronunciation Guide, 2004) by Trần Văn Kiệm, Tự điển Chữ Nôm trích dẫn (Dictionary of Nôm characters with quotations, 2009) by the Institute for Vietnamese Studies in Westminster, California, and Tự điển Chữ Nôm trích dẫn (Nôm Characters with Quotations and Annotations, 2014). As none of these dictionaries include the character on this page, I would question the claim that it is Nôm.

The real source of this character is most likely Đại Từ Điển Chữ Nôm (1998) by Vũ Văn Kính. Vietnam stopped publishing in Nôm around 1920, so this is quite some time after the Nôm era ended. This is a notorious dictionary full of made-up characters. While the Han-Nôm Institute gives 9,500 Nôm characters, Vũ gives 37,000, including this one.

This is a notable character with various citations that I have put in the reference section. But it is not a Nôm character. Perhaps there should be a category for cruft characters of this kind. 72trombones (talk) 06:38, 28 June 2023 (UTC)

Was 𬖾 used as a variant form of 頗? 𬖾 makes total sense from the perspective of of a phono-semantic compound. It is my impression that some persons are by default opposed to the creation of new characters, which is a valid cultural perspective but is irrelevant to whether this character is attestable or not for the purposes of Wiktionary. I personally suspect that OCR hasn't caught up to recognizing genuine examples of 𬖾 in Vietnamese texts, since Unicode only recognized the character in 2015. Is there enough evidence to call this a 'fake character'? --Geographyinitiative (talk) 09:26, 28 June 2023 (UTC)

As you say, if you start with the phonetic 頗, adding the radical for rice (米) is the logical next step in the character construction process. But I doubt that this 20-stroke monstrosity was used by many pho vendors. Ho Le gives characters for pho as 㗞, 頗, and 𡂄. He gives "the memory of older people" as his source. That's not a terribly impressive citation. Nonetheless, these characters may represent a memory of signage used in the Nôm era. 72trombones (talk) 07:18, 29 June 2023 (UTC)

mauvais quart d'heure

English or French? Certainly sounds like French to me, even if used in British English publications on occasion. Where do we draw the line? This, that and the other (talk) 07:01, 28 June 2023 (UTC)

If you can find English-language citations, its English. The word's status in English is independent of whether it is French or not. 72trombones (talk) 02:01, 30 June 2023 (UTC)

Unless it's always italicised. Equinox ◑ 02:08, 30 June 2023 (UTC)

Question

Is exist this thing?: in page of Chinese character is a only-chinese word (in "Japanese" is not), but in page of only-chinese word has information of only Japanese word. Frozen Bok (talk) 11:43, 28 June 2023 (UTC)

example not in the right language

In middelnaam, the example granted for sense 2 is in English instead of in Dutch. I think that should be deleted or moved somehow Purple purpur (talk) 23:45, 28 June 2023 (UTC)

I removed it. Apparently the Dutch entry was created in 2009 by copying the English entry in its entirety- does the second sense even exist in Dutch? (Notifying Rua, Mnemosientje, Lingo Bingo Dingo, Azertus, Alexis Jazz, DrJos): Chuck Entz (talk) 02:26, 29 June 2023 (UTC)

I did not know this word, but a very quick check shows one result in a work by Herman Brusselmans. There might well be more, but it feels extremely calquey to me. ←₰-→ Lingo ^Bingo _Dingo (talk) 21:17, 29 June 2023 (UTC)

Persian تومان (toman): pronunciation

Persian تومان has a colloquial pronunciation with a short a, but using this in the template fa-ipa gives short vowels in Classical, which I doubt is right, and in Dari and Tajik, which I don't know about. Should these be separated out? Also the etymology of English toman also uses the short-vowel variant as the Classical etymon. --188.28.204.9 09:28, 29 June 2023 (UTC)

Middle English leten sliden

I think I was out of my depth when creating leten sliden as the base form for this Middle English idiom. Can someone check it? ASppp676 (talk) 11:44, 29 June 2023 (UTC)

It looks okay to me. Might benefit from having its own conjugation info, but otherwise that's obtainable at it's component linked parts. Leasnam (talk) 12:48, 11 July 2023 (UTC)

knockdown, adjective for "cheap"

It says: "reduced in price, originally to a price below which an article would not be sold by the auctioneer". This cannot work for "knockdown price", since you don't reduce the price of a price; you reduce the price itself. So is this definition wrong, or could we actually say "it was a knockdown teapot" (one reduced in price)? Equinox ◑ 13:00, 29 June 2023 (UTC)

@Equinox: I agree that that sense requires verification. The OED merely states that the knockdown price is the reserve price for an auction lot, below which the auctioneer will not sell the lot. — Sgconlaw (talk) 14:24, 29 June 2023 (UTC)

origin of word, 'teensy'.

Discussion moved to Wiktionary:Etymology scriptorium#Origin of word, 'teensy'.

Perioikoi

Perioikoi is "plural only" but has Perioikos as a "derived term", whose plural is... Perioikoi. Is the sense meant to be the same? They read quite similarly. If so, we should just do the normal singular and plural pages. Equinox ◑ 18:02, 29 June 2023 (UTC)

“combindation”?

Is this, in a quotation at indication a typo? PJTraill (talk) 00:02, 30 June 2023 (UTC)

I couldn't find the passage in question anywhere in the US Patent Office publication here[17] with or without a spelling error. --Overlordnat1 (talk) 00:37, 30 June 2023 (UTC)

I thought the style was a bit odd, but I put it down to the patent office experiencing a confluence of eccentrics! PJTraill (talk) 12:12, 30 June 2023 (UTC)

It was a typo, corrected. Einstein2 (talk) 12:10, 30 June 2023 (UTC)

But could you verify the reference? @Overlordnat1 could not! PJTraill (talk) 12:13, 30 June 2023 (UTC)

The link does take me to a page where I can see the cited passage, the year was wrong (it was 1896 and should've been 1895) so I've corrected that now. --Overlordnat1 (talk) 12:22, 30 June 2023 (UTC)

kommen is which Swedish forms?

The verb table at komma lists kommen as past participle as well as archaic imperative plural. However, the entry for kommen lists, besides the past participle, the plural imperative, labeled as obsolete and also as "2nd person only", plus the plural present, again labeled as obsolete and also as "2nd person only". The komma verb table doesn't mention anything about 2nd person only and says the archaic present indicative plural is komma not kommen. Which one is correct? I am trying to clean up these verb forms. BTW @Eiliv, Gamren, Patrik Stridvall, Vildricianus, Mike, LA2 who are the current Swedish editors? Benwing2 (talk) 06:10, 30 June 2023 (UTC)

@Gabbe Benwing2 (talk) 06:14, 30 June 2023 (UTC)

@Benwing2 I must admit, I'm not very good at obsolete conjugation forms. The grammatical sources at my disposal are silent on this issue. Gabbe (talk) 07:28, 30 June 2023 (UTC)

I don't know anything about Swedish.__Gamren (talk) 16:58, 30 June 2023 (UTC)

User:Mårtensås, maybe, who knows both Old Norse and Swedish, so possibly also the stages in between? Possibly User:Robbie SWE? - -sche (discuss) 17:09, 30 June 2023 (UTC)

Sorry, I'm not good at obsolete conjugations either. The only thing I can say about kommen, is that it's not common today. Robbie SWE (talk) 17:13, 30 June 2023 (UTC)

kommen is only used in the 2nd person plural, both imperative and indicative. I think it's wrong to call it an "obsolete form of kommer/kom" though, that's not how it works. Much better to have something like:

• (archaic) second person plural of komma ᛙᛆᚱᛐᛁᚿᛌᛆᛌ ᛭ Proto-Norsing ᛭ Ask me anything 22:26, 30 June 2023 (UTC)

@Mårtensås Thank you. Yes, what you proposed is what I'm planning to do. I am currently adding support to {{infl of}} for auto-generated labels like "archaic". I have a question, though; even the sources that mention the archaic plural Swedish verb forms (e.g. Wikipedia) don't mention the 2nd-person plural as having a different form than the 1/3-person plural. Is this archaic second-person plural somehow more archaic than the 1/3-person plural? Was there a difference between 2nd and 3rd person plural in the 20th-century normative Swedish grammar up until 1940, or was the form komma used for all plural persons? If the latter, then maybe we should list the 2nd-person plural present indicative form kommen as obsolete rather than archaic. Benwing2 (talk) 23:49, 30 June 2023 (UTC)

The conjugation template/table used for verb komma#Swedish ({{sv-conj-st}}) only says "Ind. plural1, present - komma", where "1" is a footnote for archaic. This plural form became "archaic" in 1944 (or perhaps 1970). Is that really "archaic" or should that label be used for things that happened several centuries ago? A separate present tense (and imperative) plural forms for 2nd person (-en) went out of use much earlier, perhaps 1840, with the exception that they reappeared in the 1917 Bible translation. That conjugation template has no slot for this -en form in present tense, but mentions it for imperative. I would prefer that some other terms than "archaic" and "dated" were used. However, I have not been involved in template creation for many years. --LA2 (talk) 21:28, 1 July 2023 (UTC)

@LA2 Thanks for the specifics. My plan is for the terms, whatever they are, to link to Appendix:Swedish verbs (which might need updating). This should be easy as the labels will be auto-generated. Maybe for the terms that disappeared c. 1944, we should use "superseded", and reserve "archaic" for the 2nd person forms in -en that disappeared earlier? Benwing2 (talk) 21:36, 1 July 2023 (UTC)

BTW in my view, "archaic" isn't necessarily reserved for something that happened centuries ago; in fact usually such things will be "obsolete" because they won't even be recognized by modern speakers. I think "thou" and "thee" are maybe exceptional in this regard. Benwing2 (talk) 21:42, 1 July 2023 (UTC)

-en in the indicative was always used along with the pronoun I, older form of ni (stylistically equivalent to English "ye"). The plural imperative -en remained in use in higher literature long after 1840, and in many genuine dialects is still used to this day. ᛙᛆᚱᛐᛁᚿᛌᛆᛌ ᛭ Proto-Norsing ᛭ Ask me anything 11:15, 4 July 2023 (UTC)

@Mårtensås, LA2 I implemented the labels. Module:form of/cats adds labels to various inflected forms (look near the bottom for the "sv" entry), and the actual display of these labels is controlled by Module:labels/data/lang/sv. You can see an example in kommen, which specifies two forms (2|p|pres|ind and 2|p|imp). The former gets an automatic label 2nd plural present indicative, which is currently displayed as obsolete, while the latter gets an automatic label plural imperative, which is currently displayed as archaic or dialectal. In both cases, clicking on the label links you to Appendix:Swedish verbs. Other forms are given appropriate labels, which variously display as dated, archaic, obsolete or pre-1940. Feel free to edit Module:labels/data/lang/sv to change the display of the labels as appropriate, and maybe add more complete info to Appendix:Swedish verbs (in which case you might want to divide the information into sections and change the label links to go directly to the appropriate section). Benwing2 (talk) 06:42, 5 July 2023 (UTC)

So we also have a few entries for first-plural forms in -om: låtom, sjungom, görom. I created labels for these, which all display as "obsolete"; hope that is correct. Benwing2 (talk) 07:06, 5 July 2023 (UTC)

"can/can't able to"

A construction that seems to be common in Indian English, or more generally South Asian English, is "can able to" and "can't able to", meaning simply "can" and "can't" respectively. Searching online, one mostly finds prescriptive sites telling people not to do that, but I have found a few actual uses in published works: "But neutrosophic environment can able to solve SPP effectively as it handles indeterminacy …", "If we 'can able to identify leaf, we can easily able to identify plants", "Land itself cannot able to produce any goods or services. Hence, it is passive factor of production. Land cannot be able to deliver production of its own." (The last one interestingly uses both "cannot able to" and "cannot be able to".) How should we enter this? Should we have entries for can able to, can't able to, and cannot able to? Or can able, can't able, and cannot able? Or a new sense at able? Though what part of speech would able be in this construction? It's behaving like a verb but it has no meaning. —Mahāgaja · talk 10:55, 30 June 2023 (UTC)

Does this construction occur in Indian English with can followed by any adjective(?) other than able? If one is writing for English readers in general (as in a scientific journal), this construction would be proscribed I would think. DCDuring (talk) 16:52, 30 June 2023 (UTC)

Oh, good question. My cursory search finds a can possible to and a can allowed to, although it's difficult to know whether these are unintentional one-off typos where someone accidentally a word, or phrases that consistently exist:

• 2020 May 22, Pardeep Kumar, Vasaki Ponnusamy, Vishal Jain, Industrial Internet of Things and Cyber-Physical Systems: Transforming the Conventional to Digital: Transforming the Conventional to Digital, IGI Global, →ISBN, page 226:

  It can possible to design the ruleset refreshes that allow them to subsequently run at precise interludes and these keep informed.

• 2018 February 15, Asha Bajpai, Child Rights in India: Law, Policy, and Practice, Oxford University Press, →ISBN:

  Children in need of care and protection can allowed to be placed in foster care based on the orders of the CWC. The selection of the foster family is based on the family's ability, intent, capacity, and prior experience of taking care […]

Before I saw your comment, I was going to say that my gut reaction would've been to put it at can able to (and either define can't able to as a negative form of that, or as a synonym of can't), and link it as a derived(?) term at able, precisely because the able part seems to have no independent meaning so it put me in mind of phrases where some word only has a particular sense in that phrase (de reojo, etc)... but if other adjectives can follow, that changes things.

BTW, when I looked for how we handle other can... phrases which can also exist in the negative, I noticed we are not very consistent. Can whistle for redirects to whistle for, while can do this all day keeps its can even though, as Equinox pointed out in the edit history, could... also exists (as does can't...). Can do with keeps its can, and could do with keeps its could, but can do without and could do without redirect to do without, whereas do with redirects to to do with, which all seems rather confusing! (Perhaps it's time for another discussion of how best to handle those last few pages... the discussion pages for every entry in the set is full of discussion of whether, where, and how to have the entries.) - -sche (discuss) 17:06, 30 June 2023 (UTC)

@DCDuring, -sche: I have found a few instances of "can capable of" from Indian authors as well, but that seems to be rarer. (That could just be a function of the fact that even in standard English, "is capable of" is less common than "is able to". I didn't find any clear examples of "cannot/can't capable of".) It does also occur in the past/conditional ("could able to", "could not/couldn't able to"), but not for example with the future: one book I found that used the construction "cannot able to" in one sentence and then "will not be able to" just one or two sentences later, so I deduce that "*will not be able to able to" is ungrammatical. It's definitely proscribed, to judge by the number of websites and English style guides written in India I found that explicitly tell their readers not to use it. But it can be found in published writing, nevertheless. I don't know how to search Usenet, but I bet there are plenty of examples of South Asians using the construction there too, since people there write in colloquial English. (I first encountered it on Microsoft Teams, when colleagues from India have told us things like "I can't able to extract this file".) Maybe we should add a sense at can, labeled {{lb|en|South Asia|proscribed}} or the like, defined as "is" when predicated of an adjective like able, capable or possible. Alternatively, there's already a usage note about dialectal constructions at able; maybe this could be added there. —Mahāgaja · talk 17:26, 30 June 2023 (UTC)

Apparently we need to cover the phenomenon. Covering all the combinations of verb + adjective seems excessive. I agree additional coverage at can would be useful. Label as Indian English informal? It is interesting that this doesn't seem at all common except in Indian English. I wonder whether it is a calque from some South Asian language. Does able occur with modal verbs other than can and could? Could being a past of can means we shouldn't need separate coverage for could forms. DCDuring (talk) 17:44, 30 June 2023 (UTC)

So is this how to handle it? - -sche (discuss) 00:15, 18 July 2023 (UTC)

Looks good.

An observation: If I insert be after can, then ,to me, every instance of this construction reads grammatically, albeit pleonastically. DCDuring (talk) 02:50, 18 July 2023 (UTC)

dar

There are several error messages at the Spanish section of the dar entry. There is a song by Manu Chau called ‘Si Me Das a Elegir’ meaning ‘If you let me choose’ or ‘If you allow me to choose’, so shouldn’t we also have ‘let/allow’ as another possible English translation? Overlordnat1 (talk) 11:34, 30 June 2023 (UTC)