Wiktionary:Information desk/2020/July

tillow? What did he say at this part of the video? edit

The line is at 4:05-4:09

This is The Adventures of Paddy the Pelican/Two Wet Bears. I can't quite hear what's being said at 4:05-4:09 because of the poor sound quality. What I heard was "Climb away out up on the farthest limb from the trillow. Go more towards the water." But there is no word called trillow listed on Wiktionary, and not any other hypothetical word that would make that sound, like trillough.

For context, in the episode the bear character Buster Bear is on top of a tree, and Beachcomber Bill, who's chasing him, is trying to cut the tree that he's on top of so it tumbles to the ground. Paddy the Pelican in the line is advising Buster Bear to move towards a limb that's closer to the water so he can hang off and jump in to safety.

I did find tillow, which is defined as "Branch; twig; shoot." But that definition is listed as "Britain dialectal," and this TV show was made in Chicago in the year 1950. Could it be possible that it's tillow, and that the word tillow isn't exclusive to the UK after all, and our labelling is wrong?

Or am I failing to think of some obvious word I should know? PseudoSkull (talk) 22:19, 11 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I can't tell, but might be "climb your way out", and trillow might possibly be "tree limb". Equinox ◑ 22:26, 11 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The voice actor is talking so fast, it's hard to say how many words there are: I suspect the first vowel, the middle "l" sound and the final vowel (or syllabic consonant?) could be all in separate words. Possibilities: 1) ? the tree low... 2) tree'll ? 3) ? pillow ?

At any rate, it's followed by "...[go/goes?] more towards the water. Lets get out on a limb, quick! Hurry up! Chuck Entz (talk) 01:15, 12 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe ‘willow’? — This unsigned comment was added by Overlordnat1 (talk • contribs) at 14:48, 7 August 2020.

gig edit

I learned of the word "gig" in the US Army in the 1960s. It was used to designate a demerit or a reprimand when one had done something wrong. A "gig list" was kept and, depending on the number of accumulated gigs a person had collected, he or she could be given extra, usually unpleasant, duties. This definition, along with seven others can be found on page 138 in Harold Wentworth's and Stuart Berg Flexner's "The Pocket Dictionary of American Slang" published by Pocket Books in New York, New York, and copyrighted in 1967 by Thomas Y. Cromwell Company. (JayMeHi (talk) 15:25, 12 July 2020 (UTC))[reply]

We do already have the military slang sense of gig. Equinox ◑ 23:20, 12 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

WordNet links edit

Is it allowed to give links to WordNet senses? Why is it not encouraged? --उज्ज्वलराजपूत (talk) 06:07, 22 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Hello @उज्ज्वलराजपूत, Why would you add a link to WordNet as opposed to adding the sense to Wiktionary? Amin (talk) 04:24, 13 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Pardon me, @Amin, for being unclear. I suggest we should (manually) add Wordnet senses (as IDs) to Wiktionary entries. From them, links can be generated that direct the user to the corresponding entries in one of the online Wordnet databases. --उज्ज्वलराजपूत (talk) 06:04, 13 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Hello @उज्ज्वलराजपूत, So if I understand you correctly, you want to copy-paste the WordNet defintion for certain entries, and then also link bad to WordNet? Please correct me if I'm wrong :) Amin (talk) 16:53, 14 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Hello @Amin. Not necessarily the definition, just the WordNet ID and the link. And, although I want to do this for entries of a language that I am interested in, I think doing it generally everywhere will make Witionary data more useful for machine analytics. The rich cross-lingual machine-readable etymological information that Wiktionary has, is nowhere else to be found. If the meanings are also made more comprehensive to the machine (by the WordNet IDs, as mentioned), this can be a great resource for computational linguistics, for finding even more etymological links automatically. --उज्ज्वलराजपूत (talk) 06:16, 15 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

What does SLO mean (abuse filter)? edit

Because I got the hint when I removed a lint error. -Killarnee (C•T•U) 23:17, 24 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Killarnee: It means you are a new or unrecognised user making large numbers of edits in a short time, which is sometimes a sign of vandalism or spamming. Patience... Equinox ◑ 23:31, 24 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

By the way I think at least three people have asked about SLO in the past few months, which is perhaps some kind of red flag. I assume we used this "code word" (it's like slow spelled funny) because if an abuse filter explains why it's being triggered, that tells vandals what they should do to get around it... Equinox ◑ 23:33, 24 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

"New" is relative... -Killarnee (C•T•U) 23:38, 24 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah tell me about it. It regularly pisses me off that I cannot interact with certain online communities because I haven't jumped through certain hoops even though I was using Usenet when their creators were being fed mashed apricots with a spoon. However you asked why you got SLO and I told you. Equinox ◑ 00:26, 25 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Good point. I tightened it up so it's less likely to bite intermittent editors with only a few edits but over a longer period. Chuck Entz (talk) 08:27, 25 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Don't expand all sections on mobile web? edit

Hi! Is there any way I can get the mobile view to not have all sections opened when the pages load? It takes forever to scroll down to the language I want to find. DemonDays64 (talk) 06:06, 27 July 2020 (UTC) (please ping on reply)[reply]

Slow time request for verification edit

The standard RfV process demands, formally at least, a rapid defence of an entry. Is there any way of doing it in slow time? I have a minor issue with the Pali word dhātu. In the grammatical sense of 'root', as in verb root, I suspect that the word only occurs in the masculine, whereas for most meanings, the word only occurs in the feminine. I have recently added the word in the masculine as a separate lemma to the word in the feminine.

Now, while one should be able fairly rapidly find quotations to show that some Pali word dhātu has the meaning 'root', finding convincing examples in the feminine might have been hard work. Aggavamsa says, "saddasatthe dhātusaddo ekantapulliṅgaṃ, pāvacane ekantaitthiliṅgaṃ, evamādayo aññamaññaṃ viruddhasaddagatiyo dissanti." i.e. "in the science of grammar the word 'dhātu' is something with exclusively male gender, [while] in the [canonical] teaching it is of exclusively feminine gender."

I looked for for a link to replace a reference to Smith's edition of the Saddiniti at "(699,2-701,15)" for that quote, though I only found other remarks of Aggavamsa about the word's gender. Fortunately, I found a reference of Aggavamsa's to Kaccayana using both genders, and then I was able to locate an example of it being used in the feminine in the meaning of root, so the problem is solved. (Successive rules can use different genders for the word - and editions are inconsistent in the choice of gender for a particular rule.) But I fear we came dangerously close to blowing that gloss away. --RichardW57 (talk) 18:56, 28 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

RFV lasts a month, standardly. Quite often, it can take longer, as few people close RFVs and many are challenging to close. Pali is a well-studied language, and an LDL to boot, so a quotation isn't actually required, as long as a reliable dictionary has it. That said, if it soothes your fears, you can always leave a message in an RFV discussion requesting that it be extended to give you time to find evidence. And remember, even if you were to find an old discussion that had removed a valid gloss, you can always re-add it so long as you also add a reference or quotation to back it up. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 19:04, 28 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

By slow time, I was thinking of years. I didn't I was going to find more evidence by looking for it; I had only expected myself to find it if I stumbled over it. However, if a request to keep the case open for a few years works, then that solves the problem.

'Having it' is an awkward question in this case. I don't think a dictionary that says that the word can be masculine or feminine and gives no details will actually cut it. Childers' dictionary does mention both genders being used, but just at the head of the article. The sense I mentioned here is, I suspect, later than the Buddha, and by the time of Aggavamsa, it looks as though the gender in this sense had shifted to the gender in Sanskrit, i.e. masculine, whatever its earlier history. The Pali Text Society (PTS) dictionary simply records the word as feminine and lacks the 'root' meaning. Therefore the genders of the sense of a word do appear to be sensitive to the meaning - but perhaps only statistically so. TBD. The two genders are declined quite differently outside the direct cases.

The big LDL issue with Pali looks like the requirement of durable archival. A lot of the text is available at www.tipitaka.org, but that just doesn't seem formally citable. Local peculiarities are a different matter, and most scripts have them. We're ignoring those of the Latin script, and I just hope Devanagari doesn't have any hidden rules about what sort of combination may be used in conjuncts. (Hindi does have restictions on combination, which is why one shouldn't use a 'Sanskrit' font for Hindi.) We really should be using quotes to refine the senses for Pali. We really shouldn't just copy the meanings from a good out of copyright dictionary. The PTS dictionary gives passages for senses, so we should really be grabbing those examples. I don't believe Rhys Davids was infallible. After all, isn't the Tipitaka out of copyright? I suppose there may be issues with recently composed replacements for corrupt text. --RichardW57 (talk) 21:03, 28 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

A lot of thoughts here. A RFV that lasts years in suboptimal; I would fail it and you could make note of it on your own personal subpage. The materials at tipitaka.org come from various sources; many of them are durably archived elsewhere. And yes, we should grab the examples to support our own definitions, but that is rather hard work, and if anyone is to do it, I suppose it is you. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 00:57, 29 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Metaknowledge: In this case, it seemed to me that it was better to leave an incorrect gloss with a query against it than to delete a correct gloss. That's why I asked about slow-time RfVs. --RichardW57 (talk) 13:01, 31 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I've found a durably archived version of a Sinhala script Tipitaka online and, for the Suttapitaka at least, a transliteration and a mapping to PTS page numbers. Its transliterator has warned the world that there are differences from the PTS edition, and his transliteration does contain typos, but it does make it easier. I've had to modify a font so I can actually proof read what I copy - I've released it for general use in rendering unprotected material. I'm assembling an ever-growing collection of Wiktionary-compatible translations that I can use if they're correct, but all too often they're not suitable for highlighting corresponding words in the translation and the English. --RichardW57 (talk) 13:01, 31 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]