AnthroMimus

Thackeray

I appreciate the quotations you've been adding from Vanity Fair, but will you please go back and fix the spelling of the author's surname? —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 00:45, 14 January 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for catch, Μετάknowledge. I think I caught them all. But more important I increased the font size so I don't make stupid mistakes like that again. (It was only made once and then repeatedly pasted.) AnthroMimus (talk) 22:57, 22 January 2018 (UTC)

I just fixed a couple, but you're still adding "Chapte". Maybe increase the font size again? —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 04:06, 15 February 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for the advice but I think I will just retire from Wiktionary. That way you won't have so much work to do. AnthroMimus (talk) 04:37, 15 February 2018 (UTC)

No need to retire! I appreciate the work you've been doing in adding quotations, as we most definitely could use more of the kind that you are adept at adding. Your only mistakes have been copy-pasted typos, which are hardly a crime (and something that I have been guilty of as well). I hope you can find a way to continue contributing. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 04:40, 15 February 2018 (UTC)

Uncircumcised

"Closed in, so as to work imperfectly" Nice catch -- 500 yrs old but not yet in OED, though amply supported by comparison with modern translations, eg NIV. But 2nd quote (Eze 44.7) seems to be for def 3 (Spiritually impure; irreligious) rather than this. Can you find any others? --Enginear 22:33, 22 January 2018 (UTC)

Thanks, --Enginear. I had several other citations in the KJV, but I am considering whether I should actually cite Wycliffe, whom the KJV translators seemed to have ripped on in each case (as in many other cases). (Wycliffe gets burned at the stake for his translation; the KJV translators plagiarize large parts of it and get kudos for their work.) I'll get back to you as soon as I carefully go over all the cites. I'm thinking that Wycliffe must have simply created this use of the term following a Hebrew idiom. I speculate thus because I can't find any other similar use in Elizabethan-Jacobin times. Neither Shakepeare, Donne, Marlow, Bacon used it this way, as far as I can tell. AnthroMimus (talk) 22:54, 22 January 2018 (UTC)

Okay, here are my thoughts on the Ezekiel use. "Uncircumcised lips" means ones that can work properly to speak (Moses was supposedly dull of speech, he complaikns about it regularly); "uncircumcised ears" means they can't hear. So by extension "uncircumcised heart" is one closed to the voices directed directed at the heart. But I can see your point and don't have a strong feeling one way or the other cites to "uncircumsised heart": Leviticus 26:41, Jeremiah 9:26, Ezekiel 44:9. The Jeremiah cite is probably the strongest for my argument. The one thing that might separate the use of uncircumcised lips and uncircumcised ear is that occasionally the use is uncircumcised in heart. AnthroMimus (talk) 23:33, 22 January 2018 (UTC)

Wycliffe would be great -- not only does he deserve it, but it expands the date range, which is a major purpose of having more than one quote (preferably we include the first and last uses) -- or perhaps it may be in Tyndale/Coverdale, which KJ instructed his team to consult. It's definitely a literal translation of a Hebrew usage (I'm not sure I'd even say "idiom" as it's quite a logical extension of the meaning) but being used multiple times in a highly-influential English language work makes it English for our purposes, even if, unlike many other literally-translated Hebrew phrases from the KJV, the usage never caught on more widely. Still, if it's in another translation too, so much the better, as it shows use by more than one "author", as preferred for CFI.

The useful thing about the Jer 6.10 quote is that NIV translates it as "their ears are closed, so they cannot hear" and annotates it "Hebrew: 'uncircumcised'", which gives great academic backing to your definition.

I'm sure the original Hebrew-speaking audience would have detected a nuance of "not working" in the quotes about uncircumcised hearts, but they also saw the heart, rather than the brain, as the source of ethics etc, and indeed, a millennium or so later, in Rom 2.15, Gentiles who obey the Jewish Law, even though it does not apply to them, are said to have its requirements "written on their hearts", so I think that, to the original audience, the main meaning of an "uncircumcised heart" would be "spiritually impure". Of course, that is only a guide to what the English translators meant millennia later (or indeed what their English-speaking audience, often unaware of the Hebrew usage, thought they meant), which is what we are trying to show, but it does make it at least ambiguous. --Enginear 17:18, 23 January 2018 (UTC)

Just spotted your latest edit. Bravo! --Enginear 23:33, 23 January 2018 (UTC)

This sense should get its own etymology section if it's calqued from Hebrew. DTLHS (talk) 23:47, 23 January 2018 (UTC)

I'm not an expert on how we decide etymologies, but if there are senses to be treated differently, I think they are senses 2 & 3 rather than 4. My take on the origin, having now looked at the Hebrew words, is that

• In Genesis 17, circumcise, literally to 'cut around' was & is used to translate a Hebrew word which I know little about, used in the Bible to denote male circumcising, and uncircumcised is used to translate a different Hebrew word (at least it looks different to me, but I know very little of Hebrew word forms) used to denote people who have not been circumcised.

• Uncircumcised literally means 'not cut around' or by slight extension 'not cut'. When this same Hebrew word is used to refer to ears and mouth which aren't working well, it seems reasonable to translate that as uncut or closed, as in some modern Bible translations, but arguably OK to use uncircumcised as earlier translations did, because the literal meaning is not much different and it keeps the nuance of sense 2 & 3 which is present in the original. I suggest it is close enough to uncut not to be called a calque.

• The Gen 17 event was and is taken by the Jews (and Samaritans) as a command that all male Jews (and Samaritans) should be circumcised. Although not mentioned in the Koran, the same event is taken as a holy tradition by Muslims that their males should be circumcised. This soon led to uncircumcised being used as a proxy for not Jewish or not Muslim respectively, and by extension, impure/irreligious. That proxy is equally valid whichever language is used, so I suggest that is not a calque either, but rather a cultural tradition which is independent of language. (And the 1939 quote for sense 2 is useful as the only Muslim quote so far.)

I think we do note cultural influence in etymologies -- see eg maudlin, but how best to do it here? Do you know, DTLHS? Perhaps a note in the existing etymology that the subsidiary meanings are much influenced by the traditions of the Abrahamic religions? I shall be bold and add that, and see if anyone wants to improve on it. --Enginear 17:19, 25 January 2018 (UTC)

Thackeray again

Hi. Thanks for the Thackeray quotes :) To make them even bet, and quicker and easier for you, you could use {{RQ:Thackeray Pendennis}}, like I did in condign. Hope to see you around more. VealSociedad (talk) 19:01, 18 March 2022 (UTC)

• VealSociedad: Nice meeting you and thank you for the suggestion (all suggestions are welcome). I had thought about this earlier and have decided to do it the long way for the following anal-compulsive reasons:

1. 1. As a matter of scholarly integrity (which I've practices for more than a half century), I never quote a book or even a particular edition, unless I've actually seen it. While I do have a very old complete edition of Thackeray (11" x 7" in leather no less), it's not the edition cited but rather Smith, Elder (1878), and while I believe they are careful enough (they published the original Harry Esmond by Thackeray, and many others like Darwin's Beagle and Jane Eyre) I'm too anal compulsive to quote them and attribute it to the Bradbury and Evans edition.
   2. I cite to the chapter so that readers who want to see a wider context can look it up in whatever edition they have. Your template converted the chapter cite to a volume cite. Someone tried to solve this problem in converting my John Arbuthnot quote in the same 'condign' entry by simply adding the chapter quotation after the RQ template, and you see that it messes up the formatting. (In short, I think the template is flawed.)
   3. It's very difficult for me (and I assume others) to actually locate the place of my addition to an item among the many Template:RQ ..s. It's much easier for later editors to simply see the years and accordingly situate their additions.
   4. I personally think the obsession with citing to the first edition is a bit "fussy." People look for the quote that uses the word, not the edition that the quote comes from. This is particularly ludicrous, it seems to me, when a folio edition of Shakespeare is quoted. When you follow the Worldcat pointed that the template has, you find that the folio is not anywhere near you, no matter where you are. Plus, I've noticed that people who want their quote identified to a particular folio edition, everdently to help others, are not so careful about the quote itself. Often they simply mistype words or insert wrong words. It's a bit much to be fussy about the bibliography of the quote when one is not fussy about the quote itself (which is what readers are presumably looking for). Anyway, Samuel Johnson (and of course Noah Webster) were not as fussy about attribution of quotes.

I'm not suggesting that anyone follow my own formatting choices. As far as I am concerned, let a thousand flowers bloom (which was pretty much the rule when Wikipedia first I hope we run into each other again. Cheers. AnthroMimus (talk)

I'm converting them all to {{RQ:Thackeray Pendennis}} Zumbacool (talk) 17:31, 24 June 2022 (UTC)

And yet, I notice you don't specify volume 1 or 2 as the bot instructs you. I assumed you never actually read the source. AnthroMimus (talk) 17:42, 24 June 2022 (UTC)

I don't specify the volume, or check the source. Any errors that were previously made would have been propagated. This probably makes me a bad person... Zumbacool (talk) 23:36, 24 June 2022 (UTC)

Certainly a bad scholar. But I guess you are just in it for the edits. AnthroMimus (talk) 07:14, 30 August 2022 (UTC)