Talk:إثمد

ميسديميت

I don't find mention of this representation of Egyptian msdmt in any of the three sources cited. What am I missing? Pathawi (talk) 10:21, 27 November 2018 (UTC)

You are missing that the sources “cited” are boilerplate added frequently for other reasons than the etymology. In the English Wikipedia article Antimony#cite_note-39 there is the same Arabic and Egyptian word with two sources. Also there is an English entry here mesdemet. As it is called “an Arabic tradition” perhaps this is not attested in use but some transcription of an ancient Arab historian, albeit dubious chronologically. You can report us where it is supposed to be found. @Pathawi, Vorziblix Fay Freak (talk) 11:37, 27 November 2018 (UTC)

@Pathawi, Fay Freak: I think this is a ghost word. The two Wikipedia sources both mention Arabic إثمد but not ميسديميت. In fact, mesdemet seems to be just the Egyptological pronunciation of the Egyptian msdmt and not an Arabic word at all; in 2007, User:Pmanderson over at Wikipedia apparently misinterpreted the sources to be saying the added vowels were an Arabic tradition (when in fact they’re a modern scholarly tradition). Later on someone saw this and transcribed it from Latin script into Arabic script, apparently without checking the sources, spawning the ghost word as such. It was then copied over from Wikipedia to Wiktionary’s entry mesdemet in 2016, and from that entry to this one in 2018. — Vorziblix (talk · contribs) 12:05, 27 November 2018 (UTC)

That was fast, thanks. I removed it from the Arabic page recto, and perhaps English mesdemet should be deleted at all. I find that it is a transcription merely and cannot really be used as a word, i. e. it generally appears in brackets or italics and as an occurrence in a certain text and the like. It must be removed from Wikipedia too – I assume you are right –, but I do not deal with Wikipedia. @Vorziblix, Profes.I. Fay Freak (talk) 12:19, 27 November 2018 (UTC)

I removed it from Wikipedia. As far as the English entry goes, I don’t know; I can find a good many unitalicized/unbracketed uses by searching Google Books, but I don’t have particularly strong feelings either way. — Vorziblix (talk · contribs) 20:50, 27 November 2018 (UTC)

You all are very fast! I adjusted the etymology to match that in Fraenkel's book, as it was the only etymology actually given. This means citing an immediate Greek source for Arabic إثمد rather than Coptic. I retained the Coptic (tho I made the Bohairic match what's in Crum's Coptic dictionary—I don't know the source of the form that was previously used, here) so that there wouldn't be loss of plausibly relevant information, but I didn't think it appropriate to include it directly in the etymology. Pathawi (talk) 09:34, 28 November 2018 (UTC)

@Pathawi Better not. Fraenkel’s book is often obsolete and this is one of those cases. He did not know Coptic and barely did he even know that Akkadian even exists, he did not know about Geʿez borrowings in Arabic and hence uses Ethiopic cognates as kind of proof that words are Arabic, etc., etc. I have used his book often but never without own considerations and additional looks in what has been added to the mass of material since. Plus you said “from Greek” when it could only be from Ancient Greek, and you misused the template by using the code for English so that the Arabic is now added. If we haven’t got a source we do a surface analysis and now I see that the Coptic is most close and only a common metathesis away while the Greek derivation supposes an unattested, elsewhere given-with-asterisk accusative form (which is in reality a stopgap solution for he who knows Ancient Greek but has not heard about the Coptic), luckily it is common practice on Wiktionary not to follow reference works slavishly but apply linguistic methods as one would write some book. Many errors have been corrected this way. To give you a taste of how far Wiktionary goes, see Old Armenian կաղամախի (kałamaxi). It’s great if we can state what can be known, and supporting it with references is just a desirable plus that, as I now know, largely positively does not exist for Arabic, see Wiktionary:About Arabic § How to add references to sources. That is sadly and disenchanting the most reference works that exists, mostly hundred years old and more (Orientalistics has not passed well through two world wars). FYI: Many plant names and the like I could state as Aramaic borrowings for formal reasons, and that's okay. I see how the things are handled on Wikipedia, but that’s Wiktionary. You write biographies of living persons, we try to fathom the history words, the risks are thoroughly dissimilar and so is the foundation of statements. Wiktionary is a secondary source! Sic! See also Wiktionary:Wiktionary for Wikipedians. Fay Freak (talk) 12:44, 28 November 2018 (UTC)

@Pathawi: The Bohairic form ⲉⲥⲑⲏⲙ (esthēm) comes from Erman and Grapow’s Wörterbuch der ägyptischen Sprache, in their entry for msdmt. Presumably both variants, with and without ⲉ-, are attested. — Vorziblix (talk · contribs) 17:01, 28 November 2018 (UTC)