Wiktionary:Information desk/2015/February

discussion rooms: Tea room • Etym. scr. • Info desk • Beer parlour • Grease pit ← January 2015 · February 2015 · March 2015 → · (current)

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Explanation

is "oop a day" related to "whoops a daisy" ?

beware of Greeks bearing gifts

Do people consider this proverb offensive? It just seems like this could easily be felt as xenophobic if interpreted literally. --Romanophile (talk) 01:04, 3 February 2015 (UTC)

judgmentalism vs. judgmentality

Greetings:

Apparently I have coined the term "judgmentality" which to me is superior to judgmentalism for the idea connoted. Rationale: The "ism" ending is generally used to indicate an "ism", i.e., a system of beliefs as in communism, capitalism, atheism, socialism, etc. Whereas, just as mentality is the outgrowth from mental(as opposed to "mentalism"), "judgmentality" should be the logical evolution from judgmental.

I facetiously noted that "apparently I have coined the term" only because I have spent a half hour searching and cannot find the word "judgmentality" recognized anywhere in my internet searches.

Your response would be greatly apprecialted.

William Mitchell,

We're interested in words that are already in use for more than a year by multiple authors. In this case, judgmentality gets over 300 hits on Google Books (including about 50 for non-judgmentality), so you weren't the only person to coin this term, and we could probably include it. Someone would have to look and see if the way it's used in those books corresponds to your proposed meaning, though. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 11:56, 6 February 2015 (UTC)

Dull pain

I hope this is the right place for this... in dull, I can't find a definition that can explain the sentence "dull pain" --190.163.173.36 16:20, 6 February 2015 (UTC)

• It is an extension of sense #1 - but I've added a separate sense to make this clear. SemperBlotto (talk) 09:27, 7 February 2015 (UTC)

Template:suffix

Template:suffix categorises words into Category:German words suffixed with -ismus, while there's Category:German nouns ending in "-ismus". That's irritating and kind of redundant. So please improve this. -10:55, 8 February 2015 (UTC)

Is it a contraction if only the space between two words is omitted?

In Dutch, the combination de zelfde (“the same”) is written as one word, dezelfde (literally “thesame”). Would this be considered a contraction in the sense of {{contraction of}} and Category:Dutch contractions? Or what else is it called? —CodeCat 15:04, 15 February 2015 (UTC)

The closest English parallel I can think of is cannot, which we simply call a verb, not a contraction (the contraction being can't). German does the same thing with derselbe, which we call a pronoun (though I'd say it's a determiner), not a contraction. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 16:29, 15 February 2015 (UTC)

It doesn't seem like a good idea to duplicate the definition of zelfde on each page, though. So I wanted to have a definition that simply says "(something) of de zelfde", because that's what it is. Of course that means knowing what form and part of speech it is, contraction is the only thing that came to mind. —CodeCat 16:52, 15 February 2015 (UTC)

How about "synonym of" in the sense line — and put the details of its compound construction in the etymology? Equinox ◑ 16:55, 15 February 2015 (UTC)

The problem there is that the word is never actually written separate, I think that's actually nonstandard. So it's not a synonym in the sense that de zelfde doesn't actually exist in that spelling. When people say "de zelfde" they just write "dezelfde" in all cases. —CodeCat 17:04, 15 February 2015 (UTC)

"On each page"? How many pages are we talking about? Why not just call dezelfde a determiner that means "[[the]] [[same]]"? —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 17:12, 15 February 2015 (UTC)

The forms that are written without space are listed at zelfde. The difficulty is that you essentially end up repeating the meaning of both words over and over. For diezelfde you'd end up with something like "that same (distal; masculine, feminine or plural)". These combined forms are not really idiomatic, they wouldn't be if they were written as two words. So I really just want a minimal definition that says which words. —CodeCat 17:16, 15 February 2015 (UTC)

Well, cannot wouldn't be idiomatic if it were written as two words either, but it isn't (at least not with the relevant meaning), so we list it and give it a full definition. The only difference is that cannot is just a single form, while dezelfde is (if the list you linked to is exhaustive) one of six forms. If you balk at listing very similar definitions six times (which doesn't seem excessive to me, but maybe it does to you), you could call the others pseudo-inflected forms of dezelfde, e.g. by defining diezelfde as "{{form of|masculine, feminine or plural distal|dezelfde|lang=nl}}". —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 17:30, 15 February 2015 (UTC)

You have to keep in mind that there are other forms with zelfde that are written separately, like ieder zelfde (“every like”), geen zelfde (“no like”), zo'n zelfde (“same such a”) etc. dezelfde just fits into that pattern, the lack of a space is merely a spelling exception. —CodeCat 18:01, 15 February 2015 (UTC)

So? We don't have entries for SOP phrases written with a space; we have an entry for cannot only because it's written together, but we don't have entries for parallel constructions written separately like could not, may not, would not, ought not, etc. (We have must not because its scope is unexpected.) For Dutch we only have to worry about the ones that are written together, not the ones that are written separately. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 18:33, 15 February 2015 (UTC)

Display definitions of English words only

I would like to have Wiktionary only display definitions of English words. I have searched and searched and find no way to make it do that.

It is possible and, if so, how do I get only English words displayed.

For example, when I search for "levantase" I would like to get NO RESULTS because it is not a valid ENGLISH word. (Of course, possible also is that no one has entered it's definition.)

There is a table of contents at the beginning of each page. Just click on English, and don't look at possible additional sections. And a suggestion: if you don't want to find results for a word, don't search for this word. Lmaltier (talk) 20:56, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

It's not possible, because we use a system that was designed for the needs of an encyclopedia, not a dictionary. The best you can do is to add "English" after your search string (i.e. levantase English). This won't directly find your entry, but the list of results further down on the page will contain terms that have both your search term and the word "English" somewhere on the page. Since the vast majority of occurrences of "English" are in English entries, and there should be no English entries without the word "English" in them, it will eliminate most (not all) of the non-English results, and give you all of the English ones. Chuck Entz (talk) 02:04, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

Wikisaurus:anthropology

Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t anthropology technically a branch of primatology? --Romanophile (talk) 15:39, 27 February 2015 (UTC)

How to structure fire philosopher, philosopher by fire, and similar

I created the entry and citations pages for fire philosopher and fire philosophers. I want to add the alternate forms: philosopher by fire, philosophers by fire, philosophers of fire, and philosophers of fire. Should the citations be located on the fire philosopher citations page under a combined subheading for each singular and plural combination? Should I use {{alternative form of}} or {{alternative name of}} to relate these? Should I create {{alternative case form of}} pages for each? —BoBoMisiu (talk) 20:56, 27 February 2015 (UTC)

I think you should {{synonym of|...}}, as an "alternative form" is usually something closer in form, like a variant spelling. Citations should go on the appropriate citations page, though, i.e. don't put "philosopher of fire" on the citation page for "fire philosopher". Thanks! Equinox ◑ 21:01, 27 February 2015 (UTC)