Talk:ad

RFV discussion

Note: the here-archived discussion pertains to the ==English== ===Preposition=== found in ad absurdum, ad hominem, and so on. —Ruakh_TALK 02:16, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

The following discussion has been moved from Wiktionary:Requests for verification.

This discussion is no longer live and is left here as an archive. Please do not modify this conversation, but feel free to discuss its conclusions.

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This one seems weird to me. You can't actually use it with the meaning of the given sense. Unless I am mistaken, it really only seems to exist in English as a component of borrowed (or invented) set phrases from Latin. Dominic·t 09:04, 10 October 2010 (UTC)

You seem to be supposing that citations of such Latin and Latin-like coinages, even in English contexts, don't count as English citations of their constituent words? FWIW, I agree, but I think that should be discussed explicitly. (Unless it already has been, of course. If that's the case, would you happen to have a link?) —Ruakh_TALK 20:35, 10 October 2010 (UTC)

I'm not even going that far; perhaps they could count as citations towards some kind of English entry, but the fact that the word does not mean anything in isolation, outside fellow borrowed Latin words, means that it doesn't mean what we say it does in English. It would be like calling "raison" and "être" English words with their French definitions, just because we use that idiom in English. I'm not quite sure what we should do with the English entry in the end, but I was more concerned that we were giving a definition that is untrue. That is why I brought it to RfV. I am hoping that while we should remove this sense, there is a good way to deal with issue Lmaltier raises. Dominic·t 20:49, 13 October 2010 (UTC)

I see. That makes sense; maybe we should have one or more "non-gloss definitions"? (Or maybe mostly-non-gloss definitions that have a short gloss tacked onto the end?) —Ruakh_TALK 21:00, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

keep, but change the definition. The definition should explain the use of this word in English (e.g. Latin word used in...). It is important to keep it because of the software products allowing to double-click on any word in an Internet page written in English to get the Wiktionary page defining the word. Lmaltier 17:35, 12 October 2010 (UTC)

This is RfV. If you want to change the definition, then you probably don't mean "keep." :-) Dominic·t 20:49, 13 October 2010 (UTC)

No, I mean that this sense should be kept, but that its definition should be improved, it should be different from the definition of the Latin word, because the use of the word is limited in English. Lmaltier 20:07, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

It makes little sense to say you want to keep the sense but change the definition. What you mean is that you want to keep the word, but replace the current sense. And I don't necessarily disagree with you there. Dominic·t 07:09, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

I suppose, but am really not sure, this is a new sense rather than the current "to; on", but there are definitely sufficiently many cites at google books:"ad 1" "ad 2" proof subject:mathematics for ad in a sense used in mathematics which I can't quite word properly (or not at this late hour, anyway), which ad is not part of any Latin phrase (larger than itself).​—msh210℠ (talk) 06:42, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

• Kept, but definition changed to {{rfdef|lang=en}} per Lmaltier. (Sorry, Dominic!) —Ruakh_TALK 14:47, 14 January 2011 (UTC)