Wiktionary:Requests for verification/English

Latest comment: 13 hours ago by 85.48.184.181 in topic entermewer


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{{attention}} • {{rfap}} • {{rfdate}} • {{rfquote}} • {{rfdef}} • {{rfeq}} • {{rfe}} • {{rfex}} • {{rfi}} • {{rfp}}

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This page is for entries in English as well as Middle English, Scots, Yola and Fingallian. For entries in other languages, including Old English and English-based creoles, see Wiktionary:Requests for verification/Non-English.

Scope of this request page:

  • In-scope: terms to be attested by providing quotations of their use
  • Out-of-scope: terms suspected to be multi-word sums of their parts such as “green leaf”

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Overview: This page is for disputing the existence of terms or senses. It is for requests for attestation of a term or a sense, leading to deletion of the term or a sense unless an editor proves that the disputed term or sense meets the attestation criterion as specified in Criteria for inclusion, usually by providing citations from three durably archived sources. Requests for deletion based on the claim that the term or sense is nonidiomatic or “sum of parts” should be posted to Wiktionary:Requests for deletion. Requests to confirm that a certain etymology is correct should go in the Etymology scriptorium, and requests to confirm pronunciation is correct should go in the Tea Room.

Adding a request: To add a request for verification (attestation), add the template {{rfv}} or {{rfv-sense}} to the questioned entry, and then make a new section here. Those who would seek attestation after the term or sense is nominated will appreciate your doing at least a cursory check for such attestation before nominating it: Google Books is a good place to check, others are listed here (WT:SEA).

Answering a request by providing an attestation: To attest a disputed term, i.e. prove that the term is actually used and satisfies the requirement of attestation as specified in inclusion criteria, do one of the following:

  • Assert that the term is in clearly widespread use. (If this assertion is not obviously correct, or is challenged by multiple editors, it will likely be ignored, necessitating the following step.)
  • Cite, on the article page, usage of the word in permanently recorded media, conveying meaning, in at least three independent instances spanning at least a year. (Many languages are subject to other requirements; see WT:CFI.)

In any case, advise on this page that you have placed the citations on the entry page.

Recording negative findings: Editors who make a fair effort to find citations but fail to do so should state their negative result on this page (even if it only repeats another editor's negative result).

Closing a request: After a discussion has sat for more than a month without being “cited”, or after a discussion has been “cited” for more than a week without challenge, the discussion may be closed. Closing a discussion normally consists of the following actions:

  • Deleting or removing the entry or sense (if it failed), or de-tagging it (if it passed). In either case, the edit summary or deletion summary should indicate what is happening.
  • Adding a comment to the discussion here with either RFV-failed or RFV-passed (emboldened), indicating what action was taken. This makes automatic archiving possible. Some editors strike out the discussion header at this time.
    In some cases, the disposition is more complicated than simply “RFV-failed” or “RFV-passed”; for example, two senses may have been nominated, of which only one was cited (in which case indicate which one passed and which one failed), or the sense initially RFVed may have been replaced with something else (some editors use RFV-resolved for such situations).

Archiving a request: At least a week after a request has been closed, if no one has objected to its disposition, the request should be archived to the entry's talk page. This is usually done using the aWa gadget, which can be enabled at WT:PREFS.

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April 2023

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Discordian

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Sense: “A user of or someone who spends a lot on Discord.” Added under adjective by 149.20.252.132 on 11 April with the edit summary “Legit a thing”. J3133 (talk) 11:59, 14 April 2023 (UTC)Reply

I've split the entry into two etymology sections, moved the challenged sense under a Noun header and created Citations:Discordian. Discord uses the term both on Twitter and its Support website. I've found one use in an online magazine. Might be citable from Twitter or other online sources. Einstein2 (talk) 23:07, 14 April 2023 (UTC)Reply
FWIW I searched for "Discordian(s)" "on Discord" (trying to find only semantically relevant occurrences) on Google Scholar and Books and couldn't find anything, despite finding at least some journal articles and books discussing Discord. Searching Google News, I find only some site called Alphr saying "Discordians all around the world have been sending requests and opening dozens of topics on Discord’s official Support page". If it exists, it seems very marginal compared to, say, "Discord user(s)", which gets lots of (relevant) hits in journal articles and books. - -sche (discuss) 16:59, 14 December 2024 (UTC)Reply

May 2023

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Hawai`i

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These seem like weird mispellings of Hawaiʻi and Hawaiʻian that use a backtick instead of a Hawaiian okina, but they're extremely difficult to search for. Theknightwho (talk) 15:45, 18 May 2023 (UTC)Reply

As a part of my holy crusade to document Wade-Giles, I found cites for Hawai'i and Hawaiʻi, paralleling the vulgar and orthodox forms of Wade-Giles-derived words with spiritus aspers in them. But I've never looked for this backtick before. I think I've seen it, and maybe one of the examples at Hawai'i is a backtick- I remember seeing something like a backtick at least once or twice when I was looking for those cites. This is a matter of finesse and skill. I will look for this over the coming weeks. (Or someone will immediately find it below, putting my pompus ass to shame.) --Geographyinitiative (talk) 20:27, 18 May 2023 (UTC)Reply
@Theknightwho Trying to distinguish between all the apostrophe-like characters used to represent glottal stops is doomed to failure- it's not something that OCR does very well. The only reason we lemmatize Hawaiian with ʻokinas is because it's prescribed for the language and Unicode has a codepoint for it (well, technically it's a turned comma, but Unicode treats it as the same thing as the ʻokina). Written Hawaiian only dates to the last two centuries and was invented by missionaries, so it's not like there's a long and hallowed tradition for that specific glyph.
More to the point, this is an English entry, and the ʻokina is specifically Hawaiian. If there is usage for the backtick, it probably is just a rare misspelling or an OCR error- neither of which is worth having as an entry. I think we should have English altform entries for the apostrophe and ʻokina spellings, and redirect the backtick spellings to the apostrophe spellings. Chuck Entz (talk) 06:53, 19 May 2023 (UTC)Reply
@Chuck Entz Exactly my sentiment. Let’s give it a few days to let this discussion conclude, but my current inclination is to do what you suggest. Theknightwho (talk) 11:07, 19 May 2023 (UTC)Reply
@Theknightwho: "extremely difficult to search for"
Geographyinitiative: "I will look for it over the coming weeks."
@Chuck Entz: "doomed to failure- it's not something that OCR does"
The Three Cites found in a day: Am I a joke to you?
Descriptivism does not care about the roadblocks thrown up by Google or OCR. --Geographyinitiative (talk) 17:05, 19 May 2023 (UTC)Reply
@Geographyinitiative It's less about roadblocks and more that I'm not sure it's intended as a different character. We can find examples of Greek Α or Cyrillic А being used as Latin A (and vice-versa), but that doesn't warrant creating separate entries, because the user didn't intend them to be something different. Theknightwho (talk) 17:09, 19 May 2023 (UTC)Reply
@Theknightwho That's above my pay grade--- sounds like an RFD issue. I don't do the thinking part, I just look for stuff. I will look for a few more.
But I will say this: To me, any English speaker who goes out of their way to use anything other than ' (straight apostrophe) or (basic curl) in their running text has the requisite intent to create an alternative form. Diversity of apostrophes is absolutely LOATHED both on Wiktionary itself and by the typographical-industrial complex (lol). If you use anything but those two apostrophes, you're gonna get an internet comment section worth of sand kicked in your face. And there apparently seem to be such cases of authors going out of their way to use the backtick, at least for Hawai`i. So I would preliminarily support keeping this in an RFV or an RFD, pending some kind of cultural-linguistic investigation to figure out the mindset behind why this backtick form is out there. The investigation would look into whether this is purely some accomodation to keyboard issues or is perhaps in some situations a bona fide expression of authorial intent-- the intended form they wanted to write, maybe an "alternate ʻokina" or a "layman's ʻokina".
Or if I've misunderstood everything, nevermind! --Geographyinitiative (talk) 17:13, 19 May 2023 (UTC) (Modified)Reply
From my point of view, the backtick has an established (although deprecated) use as a representation of the opening quotation mark (cf. Wikipedia: "As surrogate of apostrophe or (opening) single quote"). I've seen some old-fashioned people who routinely write (or wrote) quotes `like this'; they aren't going out of their way to do it, that's just how they were used to representing quotation marks. (I have the impression it didn't look as bad in some old software.) Therefore, I would not see "Hawai`i" as a contrastive alternative to "Hawaiʻi", but just an alternative representation of the same sequence of graphemes, used by people who find it more convenient to type the character as ` or who aren't familiar with the correct codepoint to use.--Urszag (talk) 19:07, 19 May 2023 (UTC)Reply
And my follow up to this kind of "merely an convenient accomodation" theory might be: that this usage could have "started out" that way, but later bloomed into something with a real cultural connection and real cultural use (or perhaps nascent use?). Check those cites, because we're not talking stale stuff here. The Twitter account of the Governor of Hawai`i uses it: Office of the Governor, State of Hawai`i. So I would urge caution, open-mindedness, and an appreciation for diversity as wise. Get in, we're breaking the status quo. --Geographyinitiative (talk) 19:19, 19 May 2023 (UTC)Reply
You may not have noticed, but the header in the first tweet uses the left single quotation mark, not the backtick: "Office of the Governor of Hawai‘i". That's evidence for exactly the phenomenon that Urszag is talking about. The League of Women Voters of Hawaii also uses the straight apostrophe and the left single quotation mark. I'm guessing that's from different people working on different parts of the page, which could be interpreted either way. The YouTube video consistently uses the backtick. The NPS page uses the backtick in the body, but the apostrophe in the sentence at the end. The Surf Art page uses the backtick when referring to the island, but the right single quotation mark in the name of the University of Hawaii. The comment sections of the NYTimes Learning Network blog mostly use the backtick, but some commenters use the right single quotation mark or the turned comma/okina. Taken as a whole, there's usage that can't be explained as OCR errors, but it's also all over the map as far as which character is used. It looks more like no one really knows the right character, so they use whatever they have handy. Not particularly compelling one way or the other. Chuck Entz (talk) 22:00, 19 May 2023 (UTC)Reply
(~See the 15 something cites at Citations:Hawai`i.~)
Thanks for your comments.To me, what Chuck has just said immediately above this comment may mean that there's a possibility that Hawai`i is a legitimate alternative form. If you can say "Not particularly compelling one way or the other." are you going to delete the entry? I'm no expert on these discussions- RFV/RFD/RFurmom. I know nothing of Hawai`i. But it seems like (consistent with a bona fide, honest-to-God openness to Wiktionary reflecting the sources and/or a descriptivist ethic) you'd want to get to "compelling that this is mere convenience" if you wanted to delete this entry given the 15 cites at Citations:Hawai`i. I really don't have much more to say on these things; I will keep trying to watch out for more cites. If you delete the entry, I totally understand. (Final comment from me) --Geographyinitiative (talk) 11:18, 20 May 2023 (UTC)Reply
Not that we're on the best terms and, since it's you, sorry to get involved but since GI asked for my opinion and it's a general request for general comments:
My own opinion would be to keep it for exactly the reasons under discussion. Some people absolutely do use this form and they should be gently guided (sometimes proscribed... alternative form of...) to the entry with the correct okina. Same thing with a version that uses a standard English apostrophe. Right now it says Alternative spelling... but a version of the entry with an Etymology section would be something along the lines of using the English apostrophe mark to represent the Hawaiian okina and it should really redirect as an alternative form of the version with an actual okina rather than just directly to the unmarked Hawaii.
Sure, someone typing English A for Greek alpha shouldn't have that listed in Wikipedia and it's not on us to fix that issue. On the other hand, this is for English users within English trying to understand where this mark came from. If we only have the okina entry and remove the (much more common) apostrophe and backslash entries, computer searches won't necessarily make the connection and the users won't be able to figure out what's going on. — LlywelynII 22:38, 7 July 2023 (UTC)Reply
There should definitely be a way for people to reach the okina entry other than having to type (or copy-and-paste) that character. Many English users will not be aware of the okina and would misread it as an apostrophe or backtick. —DIV (1.145.8.61 12:58, 28 August 2023 (UTC))Reply
@Geographyinitiative Apostrophic ruminations aside Hawai`ian is still not cited. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 20:16, 22 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
Why not simply make these redirects to the corresponding forms without any apostrophe or similar (English) and with okina (Hawaiian?). We don't seem to treat redirects as needing attestation. DCDuring (talk) 23:13, 10 January 2025 (UTC)Reply

accordion

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"(figurative) A set of items (concepts, links, or otherwise) that can be packed and unpacked cognitively, or their representation as a set of virtual [computer science?] objects. See also telescoping." There is nothing in GBooks for e.g. "accordion of ideas" or "accordion of concepts". Equinox 13:39, 30 May 2023 (UTC)Reply

"accordion of memories" or "memory" has a sufficient number of independent hits on GBook ([1]; [2], in an extended metaphor; [3]; [4], in an extended metaphor; [5]). This probably can't be considered as a lexicalised metaphor, though, and I'm not sure if this is what the editor who added the sense had in mind. 蒼鳥 fawk. tell me if i did anything wrong. 16:23, 30 May 2023 (UTC)Reply
Century 1911 has an adjective sense: "Resembling in its folds the bellows of an accordion: as, an accordion camera (one that is extensible), accordion skirts, etc."
I take this to be attributive use of a figurative sense of the noun "Something having folds or being extendable as an accordion." DCDuring (talk) 23:28, 10 January 2025 (UTC)Reply

June 2023

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atheist

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Rfv-sense "(proscribed) A person who does not believe in any religion (not even a religion without gods)". This could be a really interesting sense for atheist if it exists (three cites). I'm trying to imagine how to look for it- something about communists in China throwing off Confucianism or something? Really interesting one. Don't dimiss it out of hand, because I think have seen this discussed before. I found something close to this in Taiwan: [6] "Taiwanese-American hip-hop singer Stanley Huang's (黃立行) new album has triggered protests from the religious community because the title song is about atheism, a Chinese-language daily reported yesterday. [] It's not clear who has been offended by the tune, but most Taiwanese are Buddhists or Daoists. A small number are Christians, Muslims and atheists." Here's an atheist discussion on the topic of Taoism [7] --Geographyinitiative (talk) 14:24, 10 June 2023 (UTC)Reply

It seems to me that this is the way a lot of people use the term. Whenever you see "atheist" listed alongside "Buddhist" and "Christian," is this not the adjectival analogue to this sense? I would reword the definition, though. Rather than "A person who does not believe in any religion" (because it's not a lack of belief that religions exist), I would say "A person who is not an adherent to any religion" or something along those lines. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 18:41, 10 June 2023 (UTC)Reply
@Andrew Sheedy I think you're saying that atheist can be a synonym for nonreligious, is that right? If so, where do we find cites for that? I think it is possible. --Geographyinitiative (talk) 22:09, 10 June 2023 (UTC)Reply
@Geographyinitiative: I added a couple cites. Do you think they fit the definition and are clear enough to be distinguishable from the other senses? If so, I'm fairly confident I can find more like them. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 22:54, 10 June 2023 (UTC)Reply
For my money, the 5 cites at the citation page more clearly prove that 'atheist' can mean 'non-religious', not just 'someone who doesn't believe in a God/deity', than the 2 you've actually added as they starkly contrast atheists with religious people who don't believe in God (such as Buddhists and Jains). In any case, I don't think any of the senses we have are at all uncommon or merit the label 'proscribed' - they're just hard to disambiguate. Based on those 5 cites alone let's call this cited. --Overlordnat1 (talk) 00:19, 11 June 2023 (UTC)Reply
Beliefs in deities do not exist, the definitions miss what actually happens. Gods cannot be conceptualized and accordingly have no seat in anyone’s mind. Were it otherwise, we would have to speak of medically relevant delusions (the psychological fact of persistingly adhering to an idea in spite of it being incompatible with empirical data), but the intuition here is correct that it is factually inappropriate to pathologize. They are indeed indirect references to what someone, a particular group, demands in a behaviour throughout man’s life. You would be yourself an autist if you assumed that people actually mean what they claim.
Nowadays in developed countries those who continue to practice religion have a general awareness that they are phoneys, but it works. So contrary to how discourse makes it appear, choice of religion is secondary to previously fostered social convictions. The occurrence patterns of religiosity, i.e. communication that indicates allegiance to a god of choice, have been studied in their environments with the observation of their being “determined by the need to moralize others and ultimately by the level of social trust (i.e., what people think of others’ level of cooperation)”. Consistent with this observation, that everyone is directed towards in practice, Wiktionary already defines the particular sense of “belief” in question as “religious faith” and the sense of “faith” as “a religious or spiritual belief system”, probably not even circularily referring to the same sense of “belief”: the system character is substantial, the religiosity or spirituality accidental. Hence, religion is the adherence to a cult, by definition structured around supernatural entities. You can thus define an atheist as someone not believing in a cult, i.e. the value systems espoused by it. Do you really think that people are that decided about particular meaning restrictions as provided in our dictionary entry atheist when they use the word? The proscribed sense, which comes to the mind of @Andrew Sheedy as that of the lot of people and thus attains the greatest support of usage as opposed to mention that deliberates about the term, is with this footing the only sense, the rest is theology, to be rejected as partisan instead of descriptive.
Consequentially, freedom of religion is incorrectly comprehended as someone’s freedom “to carry out any practices in accordance with those beliefs”, since people don’t even causally act on beliefs which don’t exist, and such specific provisions cannot be a mere general power of competence on religious grounds. So in spite of the more popular definition, containing a confused causality, the minority definition in legal literature is more accurate, according to which freedom of religion is only freedom to perform ritual acts, exercitium religionis and devotio domestica, which has been defined since the Peace of Westphalia. E.g. of this legal literature calling it thus restricted: Johannes Hellermann (1994) “Multikulturalität und Grundrechte – am Beispiel der Religionsfreiheit”, in C. Grabenwarter, editor, Allgemeinheit der Grundrechte und Vielfalt der Gesellschaft: 34. Tagung der Wissenschaftlichen Mitarbeiterinnen und Mitarbeiter der Fachrichtung „Öffentliches Recht“[8], Stuttgart: Boorberg, pages 129–144; Gerhard Czermak, Eric Hilgendorf (2018) Religions- und Weltanschauungsrecht[9], Berlin: Springer, →DOI, margin numbers 131–134. While it is in any legal opinion that religion as opposed to weltanschauung is distinguished by making reference to deities or at least transcendental reference, so I repeat that belief in a deity is accessory to religiousness and the distinction in our entry nonsensical. Fay Freak (talk) 09:33, 11 June 2023 (UTC)Reply
@Fay Freak You write: "The proscribed sense, which comes to the mind of @Andrew Sheedy as that of the lot of people and thus attains the greatest support of usage as opposed to mention that deliberates about the term, is with this footing the only sense, the rest is theology, to be rejected as partisan instead of descriptive." Would this mean that mean that the other senses are religious terminology within Abrahamic religion? I don't propose Wiktionary should label them that way, but I feel that's what the implication of your statement would be, perhaps. --Geographyinitiative (talk) 12:31, 11 June 2023 (UTC)Reply
Fay Freak, I don't mean to be harsh, but can you try making your point more succinctly? Beyond the philosophically and sociologically dubious claims and the off topic commentary, what lexical point are you trying to make? I don't know what your intentions are and it could well be that you mean very well, but be aware that you often come across as just trying to show off how smart you are and it's exhausting to wade through the cruft to decipher what's of actual value for the rest of us. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 18:52, 11 June 2023 (UTC)Reply
@Andrew Sheedy: I pointed out that so-called religious beliefs or beliefs in deities are embedded in religious systems and accessory to them, which are themselves accessory to habituations of humans to social conversation and thus what persons believe in is not actually gods but religions which bring their points, about what men should do, forward by the figure of gods. If people claim they ascribe truth to their god it is actually to manipulate people in the desired direction as they believe in the commandments and recommendations structured around the particular god figure and thus ascribe truth to them; value judgments and factual claims are treated the same in general language: Fact–value distinction. And perlocutionary speech acts also use to look exactly the same as any statement. The gods a religion has are just brand variations: Like if I like to wear A Bathing Ape because of the qualities and fits and designs and flex and attitude transmitted by items etc. I believe in that ape and the A Bathing Ape® and BAPE logos and their powers—what does that even mean? It is a breviloquence for what I exactly believe in, that this is the top brand to wear. Religion is also presented in the demeanours of people like clothing, rather than being believed by anyone only in its naked main character. Hence “A person who does not believe in any religion” is the only definition of atheist. Because people don’t believe in gods, as only symbolic for the complete religion. It wouldn’t make sense to say, e.g., I believe in the Christian God, without ascribing some traditional properties to him which then serve as a guideline to behaviour and then make an ingroup and outgroup; and even if you believe in only some kind of God then you have an ingroup of religious people and outgroup of nonreligious people, people see similarities between him who believes in a god and them who don’t: as this is still a distinction in how people operate, it was a requirement to be categorized as gottgläubig to be in the SS.
You could instead add a particular language rule, gloss or usage note, to “believe” as applied to the brands created by religions, but then the “true” linked in its first definition “to accept as true” has enough diverse meanings. If people believe in this or that god, they accept his system as “genuine; legitimate, valid” or “fair, unbiased”. So don’t people comprehend gods as “conforming to the actual state of reality or fact”? In spite of being meaningless due to facts and reality never being some otherworld, which itself would have to be interconnected with the real world, the idea pops in, only to reinforce the religion by motte and bailey; in no case the alleged beliefs in gods are exclusively in them without even their religions. The quotes given for the “belief in god” senses of atheist can easily be analyzed as “somebody who does not support, i.e. consciously furthers the practical effect of, the religion of a particular brand having the god X”. And agnostic is someone who is doubtful or uncertain what he does of religious teachings. Fay Freak (talk) 21:08, 11 June 2023 (UTC)Reply
As Andrew implied above, this is unhelpful gibberish that just makes a long page longer. Nobody is going to get any meaningful information out of that. Equinox 23:19, 11 June 2023 (UTC)Reply
@Equinox: I make the claims extra-easy for Equinox: Nobody is advancing deities without religion. When arguing something with reference to gods specifically vs. their religions, adherents of them play motte and bailey. Ultimately the goal is to further or reject a religion. If the context of quotes is broad enough we may witness this lack of the former meaning in each individual case. Why is a Christian according to Wiktionary one who “believes in Christianity”, a whole religion, or one “who seeks to live his or her life according” to the founder’s church while an atheist can be one merely rejects any deity of the religion? This distinction is contradictory and contrafactual—an atheist is conceptualized by the language community as someone who does not ascribe to a religion even if people aren’t that explicit about it as I can. People aren’t that exact and speak in figures. (Elaborated in detail.)
So we should change the definitions of “atheist” to e.g. after our current structure “A person who does not ascribe [or adheres] to a religion”; subsense strict: “one who rejects all religions”, broader sense: “one who doubts whether he should follow one”, loose sense: “one who is unaware of the reality of religions”, uncommon sense “a person who does not ascribe to a particular religion (but may ascribe to another one)”. Religions are supported like football clubs. They all believe very much in their teams. And because they have been so pervasive, we have this term for outsiders. Fay Freak (talk) 09:58, 12 June 2023 (UTC)Reply
You're still doing it. Equinox 05:54, 17 June 2023 (UTC)Reply
As an aside, what the heck is going on with the translation tables (the ones that have a bunch of translations, not the ones I just added). I added a qualifier to the first one (so that it corresponds to a definition), but the second doesn't have a corresponding sense. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 17:58, 14 June 2023 (UTC)Reply
I figured it out and (hopefully) fixed it. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 19:57, 14 June 2023 (UTC)Reply
The current citations, except for perhaps the Taipei Times one, do not seem to unambiguously support this sense to me. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 11:57, 17 July 2023 (UTC)Reply
@Al-Muqanna Which other sense(s) do you think they could fall under? Note that Buddhists are atheists in the sense of not believing in a god, yet they are listed alongside atheists in a couple of the current quotes. Or do you think there's a better way of wording the definition that captures this sense better? Andrew Sheedy (talk) 17:26, 17 July 2023 (UTC)Reply
@Andrew Sheedy: Buddhists in most parts of the world do in fact "believe in deities or gods", as sense 1 has it—see the whole wp article on Buddhist deities—so listing atheists alongside Buddhists is not proof of much. Sense 1 also fits fine for the Beaman and Seidman quotes. I don't think there's anything wrong with the wording of the sense if it can actually be verified, but as far as I can tell what the quotation selection actually seems to be getting at atm is atheist meaning "an opponent of religion" (rather than just not believing), but since opponents of religion in general will almost by definition be atheists according to sense 1 anyway that's quite hard to disentangle as a separate sense. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 17:43, 17 July 2023 (UTC)Reply
@Al-Muqanna: I see your point, though from my (admittedly limited) studies of Buddhism, my understanding is that those aren't deities or gods in the normal sense of the word, making the Wikipedia article a bit inaccurate. What the definition is trying to capture is the sense in which atheist is often used as a religious category, on par with "Christian" or "Buddhist". Many people would find the list, "Christians, Hindus, Muslims, and people who believe in gods" a bit incongruent (one would expect "and other people who believe in gods"), but not the list, "Confucians, Taoists, Buddhists, and atheists," which suggests that for many people, "atheist" means not so much "person who does not believe in a god", but rather, "person whose religious beliefs are that there is no god". Note that the capitalization of "Atheist" in the 2002 quote supports the understanding that "Atheism" is a category of religious belief on par with Buddhism, rather than simply describing one aspect of religious belief, which could equally be applied in the strict sense to Buddhists. You may however be right about the two most recent quotes. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 18:29, 17 July 2023 (UTC)Reply
Hmm. This is tough, because it's believable to me that some people think of the word in this way, basically as a synonym of none(?), but I have to agree with Al-Muqanna that few if any of the current citations support it: I see no reason to take the 1766 "a Heathen or Christian; an Atheist or religious Person, a Papist or a Protestant" cite to be using anything but the usual sense (1), and likewise nothing about the 2002 or 2014 or 2015 Seidman or 2019 cites suggests anything but the usual sense to me. It's not as if relatively aggressive atheists like Jillette think of deityless superstition as being great and only deity-having superstition as bad, so AFAICT "many atheists [are] antireligion" is an accurate statement [for at least some definitions/interpretations of 'many'] using the usual sense of the word and posing no lexical problems.
I wonder if this would be better handled as a usage note, that some people think of religion as meaning belief in one or more gods and therefore think of atheism and religion as mutually exclusive...? (Or perhaps that is a cop-out and we should either cite the sense or remove it.)
I note that a corresponding sense is present at atheism and either needs to be cited or RFVed. More generally, I wonder if we would be better off trying to centralize things, so either atheist defines itself in terms of atheism and points people to go find all the definitions there (hopefully someone can come up with something better wordsmithed than "one whose view is atheism"!) or vice versa. - -sche (discuss) 15:55, 30 November 2024 (UTC)Reply
I'm having trouble understanding it the way you and Al-Muqanna see it, to be honest. "Religious person" and "theist" are not synonyms. Some religions do not involve believe in gods (like many forms of Buddhism--just google "do Buddhists believe in a god"). So any citation that draws a direct contrast between atheism and religion, as opposed to atheism and theism is clear evidence (IMHO) of atheism being used to mean "a non-religious person" as opposed to "a non theist". Otherwise, Buddhism would not be contrasted with atheism, because that would be nonsensical. The citation that says "most Taiwanese are Buddhists or Daoists" but "A small number are Christians, Muslims and atheists" is nonsensical according to sense 1, since Buddhists are atheists in that sense.
The same thing applies when you have a census or a survey and it asks you your religion/religious beliefs. Often, "atheist/-ism" will be an option, alongside various religions (including Buddhism). Yet theism is just one facet of religious belief, which is not shared by all religions. So the fact that the word "atheism" is used in contrast to these means that it is used to refer to non-religiosity as a whole. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 01:15, 12 December 2024 (UTC)Reply
@-sche If you still don't see my point, maybe we could send this to RFD? We might have better luck achieving a consensus if we start a new discussion from a different angle. And then hopefully more people would weigh in. I'm convinced that I've cited the sense in question. Not to mention that I've encountered dozens of annoyed atheists online trying to convince religious people that sense 1 exists, not just sense 3! So I'm a bit bewildered that people are questioning sense 3. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 01:22, 12 December 2024 (UTC)Reply

Connected to the preceding:

  1. I doubt that "(obsolete) Absence of belief in the One True God, defined by Moore as personal, immaterial and trinitarian (thus Islam, Judaism and unitarian Christianity), as opposed to monotheism." is distinct from the sense right before it, viz. "absence of belief in a particular deity, notwithstanding belief in other deities",
  2. and the sense "(sometimes proscribed) A rejection of all religions, even non-theistic ones." is just the -ism version of the -ist sense RFVed above, so has the same issues and should (AFAICT) be handled similarly, i.e. either cited or removed or perhaps made a usage note.

- -sche (discuss) 16:01, 30 November 2024 (UTC)Reply

I don't like the wording of the "One True God" sense, and I have no reason to believe it's attested, but I think it is distinct from the "particular deity" sense because the "One True God" sense additionally requires belief in certain properties of that deity. The "particular deity" sense can't call unitarianism a form of atheism, whereas the "One True God" sense does. McYeee (talk) 21:12, 11 December 2024 (UTC)Reply

nonkilling

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Rfv-sense "A precept or worldview that affirms the possibility of a society where killing is absent."
@Equinox, Ioaxxere This sense went through a failed RFV process recently (it passed, the process failed), where there was disagreement about whether the citations provided actually supported the sense provided. Can we gather a few citations here which we can then evaluate and agree on to support the sense? - TheDaveRoss 14:12, 20 June 2023 (UTC)Reply

Well, it's got a surprisingly full translation table, and it makes me wonder if we're just all missing something. Might this be a philosophical translation for ahimsa, even though the meaning isnt quite the same? Ahimsa appears in the translation table under Sanskrit, after all. It seems that some philosophers might have wanted to use a native English term so it wouldnt feel so foreign, and that the other languages' translations serve the same purpose. However, this is just a hunch, because I think ahimsa is more precisely translated as nonviolence. Soap 11:04, 29 June 2023 (UTC)Reply

royd

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Could be Middle English according to the reference listed. — SURJECTION / T / C / L / 17:23, 22 June 2023 (UTC)Reply

In current local use, and occurs as a common toponym element, e.g. Mytholmroyd, Ackroyd, etc., see https://yorkshiredictionary.york.ac.uk/words/royd
Cognate with German gerund Rode(n), e.g. Wernigerode from verb roden, clear, also Rodung
I notice the local and current noun "ing" = "water meadow" or "flood plain" is not in Wiktionary Gardjy (talk) 08:27, 2 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

morning-after

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Is it used outside of morning-after pill? PUC12:03, 25 June 2023 (UTC)Reply

It is used in a number of related expressions (morning-after contraception, morning-after IUD, morning-after method etc.), although I'm wondering if this is an attributive form of a currently missing sense of morning after (as opposed to a true adjective). Einstein2 (talk) 19:06, 25 June 2023 (UTC)Reply
  • the morning after”, in Cambridge English Dictionary, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire: Cambridge University Press, 1999–present.: "the day or days after something has happened or someone has done something, especially something that they regret (= wish had not happened or they had not done)."
  • morning after”, in Dictionary.com Unabridged, Dictionary.com, LLC, 1995–present.: "a moment or period of realization in which the consequences of an earlier ill-advised action are recognized or brought home to one."
@Einstein2: I presume this is the sense you mention; we should add it. See also "morning-after feeling". It makes me think of the idiom in the cold light of day. PUC00:39, 27 June 2023 (UTC)Reply
The drinking-related definition at morning after is just one use of the generic sense that the above dictionaries have. Usage examples, rather than subsenses seem to me likely to better convey the usage than subsenses or sex- and drink-specific definitions. DCDuring (talk) 15:08, 27 June 2023 (UTC)Reply

cibai

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None of the cites provided are spelled this way. - TheDaveRoss 19:44, 26 June 2023 (UTC)Reply

Added some more examples with different spellings (including cibai), although it's hard to search effectively on Usenet due to heavy code-switching. We could consider moving the main form to cheebai, as suggested in the earlier RFV. Einstein2 (talk) 00:24, 8 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

BeReal

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Discussion moved from WT:RFDE.

WT:BRANDSURJECTION / T / C / L / 10:18, 12 February 2023 (UTC)Reply

I added a common noun sense ("a post published on BeReal"). – Einstein2 (talk) 10:37, 13 February 2023 (UTC)Reply

This, that and the other (talk) 07:05, 28 June 2023 (UTC)Reply

If I understand correctly, the company is called BeReal, and the product is called BeReal, so any mention of the app will necessarily identify "parties with economic interest in the brand". Verification therefore seems like a paradox. Cnilep (talk) 02:18, 23 April 2024 (UTC)Reply

July 2023

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Hospital Emergency Codes

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These codes are defined as US and Canada, however there is certainly not the degree of standardization that this implies across all of these codes. Some, code blue for example, are quite standard in the US (and Canada?), but most of the others vary in meaning from hospital to hospital or at least regionally. If these are actually universal in Canada we should probably remove the US label from many of them, and either add regional meanings or define them more generically. - TheDaveRoss 17:03, 3 July 2023 (UTC)Reply

I agree, but this isn't something that lexico-nerds at RFV are going to do. How can we determine the meanings from actual documentation, to be placed into References sections? (Perhaps we should call Luciferwildcat back from the ninth circle of emergency healthcare... hahah...) Equinox 17:07, 3 July 2023 (UTC)Reply
I'm unsure what it would be best to do here; as you say, some so commonly have a certain consistent meaning (Citations:code blue) that it makes sense to record it, while others seem to have no set meaning (code black has four definitions so far), and yet... is that a sign we should generalize code black's definition to e.g. "A hospital code, signalling any of various situations, varying from hospital to hospital"? Or that we should keep every attestable definition? Or that it's not idiomatic at all? Colour codes are also used by e.g. police, prison guards, and others, so is having four definitions at code black like having definitions for every institution's meaning of level four (e.g. "a security level indicating a heightened threat", "a security clearance level granting access to...", "a pay grade equivalent to...", etc), i.e. something we don't/shouldn't do? - -sche (discuss) 08:55, 4 July 2023 (UTC)Reply
This reminds me a bit of my idea a few years ago to create a page for category five, which can mean a very strong hurricane, but which must surely have quite an array of other meanings in other industries. And surely more so for the smaller numbers. Soap 21:05, 5 July 2023 (UTC)Reply

slaveboy

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Marked for out-of-process speedy deletion by User:Polarbear678 in diffSURJECTION / T / C / L / 11:08, 4 July 2023 (UTC)Reply

I find the current definition problematic, as it ties two very different things together. I changed the definition to what I felt it would be in a BDSM context, but was quickly reverted. I now think it would be better to have two definitions ... one for the original literal sense of a young involuntary slave, and one for the BDSM sense (voluntary roleplay among adults), and to apply this RFV to the second sense. (We could RFV the first sense too on spelling grounds, but it didnt take me long to find three cites for the bunched spelling on Google Books in which it's clear that the literal sense is meant, so maybe we can save ourselves a bit of time and just leave it be.) I also found three cites for what I believe to be the BDSM sense, and so despite the page creator now regretting creating the page,I misread the history, sorry I believe the second definition should also stay. The precise definition of the BDSM sense is open to debate, however, and I can't claim to be an expert. Soap 08:32, 5 July 2023 (UTC)Reply
My apologies to Polarbear for misreading the edit history. The page has been much the same since 2012. However it seems plain to me that both senses of the word do exist, and while for the literal sense I expect that the spaced spelling slave boy is much more common, for the BDSM sense it would not surprise me if the bunched spelling was the more common form, perhaps at least in part to distinguish it from the literal use, but also in keeping with other existing terms such as pussyboy. Soap 08:41, 5 July 2023 (UTC)Reply
Literal (non-BDSM sense) now has 3 cites. Equinox 13:42, 11 October 2023 (UTC)Reply
The other sense clearly exists too, instead of adding cites let's save time and call this RFV-passed. --Overlordnat1 (talk) 08:59, 10 February 2025 (UTC)Reply

slur

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Rfv-senses "an insinuation or innuendo", "in knitting machines, a device for depressing the sinkers successively by passing over them", and "a trick or deception". Ioaxxere (talk) 18:48, 7 July 2023 (UTC)Reply

RFV Failed Ioaxxere (talk) 17:13, 19 September 2023 (UTC)Reply

Reopening this RFV for the "knitting machine part" sense only. This does appear real and has various cites in OED, but some are as part of compound words. OED also gives some obsolete senses under the same etymology, but I'm not so sure this etymology is distinct from Etymology 1. Really this entry needs a thorough cleanup using all resources available to us, including Century. This, that and the other (talk) 22:26, 19 September 2023 (UTC)Reply

Also the "trick or deception" sense may correspond to OED's sense "A method of cheating at dice", attested in the 1600s. This, that and the other (talk) 22:29, 19 September 2023 (UTC)Reply

oversit

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Two more dubious senses from the very large set given here. One is "to grasp, comprehend; to understand"; the other is "(archaic) to overstay, outstay, overlinger". Entry probably also needs more glossing to indicate that this isn't a normal word used by many people. Equinox 11:02, 9 July 2023 (UTC)Reply

I've added a few quotes to Citations:oversit a while ago but I'm not confident enough to sort them by sense. Some of the citations (e.g. 1834, 1890, 1907) seem to support the "overstay" sense, although I am not completely sure. Einstein2 (talk) 20:05, 28 August 2023 (UTC)Reply

dominus vobiscum

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Couldn't find any convincing non-mention, non-code-switching examples: this is also just referring to the actual words "dominus vobiscum", not the name of some longer prayer, so I'm sceptical there are uses of this in English. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 19:18, 14 July 2023 (UTC)Reply

How do we treat other formulas from non-English languages, especially from ceremonies? Do we keep them only if they are transliterated? DCDuring (talk) 21:38, 14 July 2023 (UTC)Reply
I highly, highly doubt this is used as an interjection in English, as the entry claims. There are some borderline nominal uses:
1875, Sir Adolphus William Ward, A History of English Dramatic Literature to the Death of Queen Anne, page 19:
Again a Dominus vobiscum and a prayer, whereupon the offertorium (offering), and, accompanied by further ceremonies, the consecration; []
1953, Pius Parsch, The Church's Year of Grace:
Each Dominus vobiscum cries out to us: your nobility, O Christian, stems from Christ's dwelling within you, from the fact that you are a Christ-bearer and a Christ-bringer.
It might be worthwhile having an entry for this use, but certainly not for the interjection, which is quite simply Latin, regardless of what language the rest of the liturgy/prayer might be in. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 22:37, 14 July 2023 (UTC)Reply
Also, I might note that the entry should be at Dominus vobiscum. Dominus in this context always refers to God and hence would pretty well always be capitalized. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 22:42, 14 July 2023 (UTC)Reply
On English—both of the above are in italics in the originals that I've found, FWIW ([10], [11]). This is the same sort of thing as e.g. the court "who ... lived on a vive le roi" in Wollstonecraft ([12]) which I don't think can be taken as an example of "vive le roi" being an English phrase either. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 23:33, 14 July 2023 (UTC)Reply

nuces vomicae

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Please note that this is the alleged plural of a genuine English term. Some background:

There is a tree, Strychnos nux vomica, that bears extremely poisonous seeds which are the original source of strychnine. The name nux vomica is from Latin, and presumably refers to emetic properties. For hundreds of years, pharmacology mainly dealt with various plant, animal and mineral substances, all of which were named in Latin much as is still done in taxonomy. That would make nux vomica strictly a Translingual pharmacological term, except that it also has been used in English as a common name for the species.

The English term nux vomica doesn't, however, refer literally and specifically to the seeds, as illustrated by the phrase "nux vomica seeds", which seems to be moderately attested. There is also a smattering of cites for "nux vomicas" (both with and without hyphens), some of which may refer to some concept in homeopathy for nux vomica that we don't have a definition for, but none of which seem to refer specifically to more than one seed.

👉 I am thus challenging the term "nuces vomicae" as English. I think we should create a Translingual pharmacological-Latin entry for nux vomica and change this English plural entry to a Translingual plural entry to cover the existing usage. The English headword at nux vomica should be changed to have "nux vomica" and/or "nux vomicas" as the plural(s).

The reason for the long explanation is that there's a decent amount of attested usage in English sentences, but as citation of the pharmacological Latin, just as the synonym semen strychni is also used (and very similar to usage in German and other European languages). To be English, this needs to be used (not mentioned), and integrated into normal English sentence structure without italics.

Pinging @-sche, Al-Muqanna, This, that and the other, as those most likely to understand what needs to be done. Chuck Entz (talk) 23:15, 14 July 2023 (UTC)Reply

I can't find much of evidence of use in English—the only borderline passable example I dug up is a 16th-century recipe calling for "ʒ iii. [3 drams] of the shavings of Nuces Vomicae" (EEBO)—otherwise even in early modern texts it seems to be consistently italicised. The one reproduced here is also italicised in the original. Worth noting that it is found in Latin prose. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 23:55, 14 July 2023 (UTC)Reply
What about these:
  • 1915, The Poultry Item[13], page 25:
    POWDERED NUX VOMICA—
    Source—From the seed of the Nuces Vomicae.
  • c. 1910, Carl Curt Hosséus, Through King Chulalongkorn's Kingdom, 1904-1906: The First Botanical Exploration of Northern Thailand, published 2001, page 175:
    Strychnos nux-vomica, an almost formation building tree in many places of northern Siam, the very poisonous seeds of which, "nuces vomicae," provide our strychnine, the tree stranglers, creepers, epiphytic orchids, mosses []
Note that the last one is a translation from German, where this form seems to be much more common. This, that and the other (talk) 08:37, 16 July 2023 (UTC)Reply
The second one I saw but wouldn't personally consider admissible since it's a translation and foreign terms often aren't italicised when wholly enclosed by quotation marks. The first might work. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 10:51, 16 July 2023 (UTC)Reply
Two other uses that might count toward attestation of the plural in English: [14], [15]. Einstein2 (talk) 10:58, 16 July 2023 (UTC)Reply
Yeah, those ones are totally fine I think. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 11:16, 16 July 2023 (UTC)Reply
Cited with combination of the above, but might need a usage note saying the plural is rare. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 09:44, 17 July 2023 (UTC)Reply
On reading Chuck's RFV more closely, it seems that he was after attestation of the plural of the pharmacological sense specifically. Possibly all the citations we've collected relate to sense 2 of nux vomica, not the pharmacological sense 3. This, that and the other (talk) 10:16, 17 July 2023 (UTC)Reply
@Chuck Entz, This, that and the other: My understanding of it's that Chuck wanted attestation of natural use for any sense in English as opposed to code-switching to the Latin/translingual term in a pharmacological context, rather than a specific sense. Might need to clarify. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 10:45, 17 July 2023 (UTC)Reply
@Chuck Entz can you offer your input here so we can move towards closing this RFV? Thanks! This, that and the other (talk) 02:42, 18 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
In the absence of any further comment by @Chuck Entz let's call this RFV-passed. --Overlordnat1 (talk) 09:13, 10 February 2025 (UTC)Reply

oes

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Rfv-sense: plural of the letter 'O'.

The first citation, from Francis Bacon, doesn't seem to me to unambiguously support the definition. If it does not, then the definition (labelled rare)needs another quotation to remain. DCDuring (talk) 14:47, 15 July 2023 (UTC)Reply

See the wp article for oes, the item Bacon was referring to. That is the etymology but his meaning is obviously not the letter. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 17:38, 15 July 2023 (UTC)Reply
Thanks. I've moved the Bacon quotation to Citations:oes DCDuring (talk) 18:10, 15 July 2023 (UTC)Reply
OED lemmatises the "spangle" sense at O, but notes it is always found in the plural. I'm going to follow Wikipedia and add it as a plural-only sense of oes. If a singular can be found, we should move it there. This, that and the other (talk) 08:30, 16 July 2023 (UTC)Reply

It's listed in the OED. kwami (talk) 08:04, 19 January 2024 (UTC)Reply

ponderosa

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Rfv-sense "social, lime or get together where planning or issues are discussed". Jberkel 16:17, 15 July 2023 (UTC)Reply

This is the top sense on Urban Dictionary, where a much-upvoted entry from 2017 claims the word was coined by Jackie Christie from the US TV show Basketball Wives. Here is Jackie herself giving a definition. Looking on Google, a better definition would be "a conversation, in the context of Jackie Christie's participation (or lack thereof) in said conversation"... This, that and the other (talk) 02:40, 18 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
The synonyms are problematic too. "social event" and "mixer" have been added as synonyms, but those are more like parties held for fun. I don't see how "planning or issues are discussed" at a mixer. 2A00:23C5:FE1C:3701:49D0:1ABA:3934:4EBA 20:15, 5 November 2024 (UTC)Reply

aquan

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Rare/nonstandard if it exists. — SURJECTION / T / C / L / 10:38, 30 July 2023 (UTC)Reply

Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes (1605)
Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift (1726)
The Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan (1678)
You are right, it is extremely hard to find reliable sources that use this word, but in these books I remember distinctly reading it. I cannot find any modern examples, but I do not know whether this is grounds for rejection. I am unsure and new to Wikitionary, so feel free to remove it if necessary. 60.241.90.170 07:40, 31 July 2023 (UTC)Reply
In that case it may be an archaic term and we do document those, just with the appropriate labels. — SURJECTION / T / C / L / 10:20, 31 July 2023 (UTC)Reply
Although barring a funny Cervantes translation if it was actually in books as prominent as those it would have been in Webster 1913 and imported already. I can't find any evidence of its existence, and there's no potential Latin etymon *aquanus either (of course we instead have aquatic < aquaticus). —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 12:05, 31 July 2023 (UTC)Reply
It seems to see limited use in science fiction as the name of a water-based race or species, for instance:
2020, Thomas Parrott, “To Catch a Thief”, in Charlotte Llewelyn-Wells, editor, KeyForge: Tales from the Crucible, page 155:
One of the patrol enforcers, "hubbers" as they were known, that were bustling about stopped to give a sympathetic burble. They were an aquan, living in a pressure suit that kept them suspended in water.
(The English translation of) a Japanese sci-fi novel Daiyon kanpyōki (Inter Ice Age 4, 1959) by Abe Kōbō also apparently uses it, judging from the various literary critiques.
We would need a third cite independent of Abe's text and its critiques. This, that and the other (talk) 11:13, 8 December 2023 (UTC)Reply

pyment

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Newly added sense 2: "spiced wine". The editor claims it is the older/true usage, but it does not agree with Google Books results for the word. — On the other hand, I just noticed that the alt form piment has a different definition matching this challenged one... hmmm...? Equinox 16:33, 31 July 2023 (UTC)Reply

"Piment" and "pyment" are recognized variants of each other. Both the OED and the Middle English Dictionary have their entries under the "piment" spelling, but "pyment" is also common. See Chaucer, "Miller's Tale": "He sente hire pyment, meeth, and spiced ale". OED defines "piment" as "A drink composed of wine sweetened with honey and flavoured with spices", and lists the variant spellings "piement", "pimente", "pyement", "pyment", and "pymente". The definition of "mead with grape juice" does not appear in my copy under either "piment" or "pyment", but the OED cites the earliest example of the "spiced wine" usage as 1225, so it's reasonably old. I would bet that the mead-and-grape-juice definition (which was new to me, I had to google that) is a derivative of the original idea of a spiced wine sweetened with honey (still honey + grapes, just the other way around). NowhereMan583 (talk) 21:12, 2 December 2023 (UTC)Reply

August 2023

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win one's spurs

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Rfv-sense: "To be knighted". That is the etymology, but I'm having difficulty finding instances where it actually means being knighted. Even in the early modern examples on EEBO where it's not already figurative it's distinguished from the actual act of being knighted, e.g. someone "won his Spurs by divers generous Actions, and received the Honour of Knighthood". If this can't be verified in a strict sense it might make more sense to merge into sense 1, achieving recognition, and note that it specifically meant achieving recognition that led to being knighted. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 20:52, 2 August 2023 (UTC)Reply

Well, do we distinguish between the act done to earn knighthood and the ceremony itself? Think of graduation ... I would say that once I've had my last day of school, I've graduated, even if the ceremony is a week away. Perhaps we could merge it, but I think a separate definition something like "to earn the knighthood" would be good to show how the modern usage arose from the original. Soap 21:10, 2 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
There's an additional nuance though that some sources explicitly distinguish between people who were knighted for more or less trivial reasons and people who "won their spurs", or indeed talk about knights who "win their spurs" after being knighted (e.g.), which makes it a bit different from graduate. The winning of the spurs seems to specifically imply doing something to merit it rather than just the act of being knighted. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 21:48, 2 August 2023 (UTC)Reply

ignorantia juris non excusat

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I doubt it's English. I would keep this under a Latin header. PUC19:58, 12 August 2023 (UTC)Reply

Yes, the variation in the Latin wording and the definition suggest it SOP, so delete. (German Unwissenheit schützt vor Strafe nicht is idiomatic colloquially with marked syntax in contrast.) Why would it be a dictionary entry from jurist usage? The law determines what “excuses” in detail. There can only be an idiom with those that are remote from legal knowledge, but they will hardly say in English these Latin words, meaning that no quotes will suffice. Fay Freak (talk) 21:14, 12 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
It's a common legal maxim which will be found from time to time in English legal texts, but I don't know if that's enough to justify having a separate English header for the term. — Sgconlaw (talk) 21:53, 12 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
I think our current treatment of Latin expressions - to the extent that we have a coherent policy - is not optimal. That an expression is used in running text in English (even unitalicised) is not enough; it's still Latin, and felt as such. Imo we should only have a Latin header, and maybe create a new section where we'd mention in which modern languages the expression is frequently used. It'd be a bit comparable to the descendants section. PUC12:23, 13 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
Any "short" expression derived from Latin can readily become part of the English lexicon. One issue is how "short". Four syllables seems to be per say sufficiently short. Eleven seems ipso facto too long. Another question is whose lexicon: the man in the street or the men talking in a courtroom? That English has the adage ignorance of the law is no excuse, which we might include as a proverb or merely as a collocation, means that there is little reason for normal speakers to include this expression in their lexicon. But those in the legal profession may include Latinate expressions to signal to their clients, opponents, and judges their superior education. However, only occasionally and whimsically do we include expressions solely for their pragmatic function. DCDuring (talk) 17:14, 13 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
ignorance of the law is no excuse is arguably SOP, but ignorantia juris non excusat is not (in English). As ever, the question is whether terms are citable. Theknightwho (talk) 17:17, 13 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
Most people believe that ignorance of the law is a pretty good excuse, were it not for the existence of the oft-repeated adage. SoPitude is why we would only include it as a proverb or as a collocation (probably under ignorance). DCDuring (talk) 18:29, 13 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
"Ignorance of the law is no excuse" could definitely be considered a proverb but the meaning is so transparent I'm not sure what the benefit of an entry would be. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 19:12, 13 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
If it's indeed lexicalised I think it belongs here, no matter how transparent it is. And I'm looking for a place to gather translations: French nul n’est censé ignorer la loi, German Unwissenheit schützt vor Strafe nicht, and probably others. PUC19:53, 13 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
The law itself does not take the expression too literally: "The Lambert decision explicitly recognized this fair notice requirement as an exception to the general rule that ignorance of the law is no excuse". "The U.S. Supreme Court, however, by a 5-4 majority opinion written by Justice Douglas, held that Ms. Lambert's due process rights were violated because she was not notified about a registration requirement that she could not be reasonably presumed to know existed. In this case, ignorance of the law was a legitimate defense."
IOW, the US Supreme Court believes that the principle expressed does have significant exceptions, ie, that it is not literally true. DCDuring (talk) 22:27, 13 August 2023 (UTC)Reply

false venus comb

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Does not seem to get much use. Caps on "venus" might possibly be wrong too. Equinox 20:58, 12 August 2023 (UTC)Reply

abstringe

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This previously passed RFV, see Talk:abstringe. However, I am not sure that the three citations produced are actually satisfactory uses. They were also not entered at the time but I've put them at Citations:abstringe. Might need a few more pairs of eyes. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 13:53, 16 August 2023 (UTC)Reply

The citations are definitely less than ideal: the first is in a dictionary definition and the other two are contrived. But technically these are three uses. Ioaxxere (talk) 14:45, 16 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
IMO, I don't see how the dictionary definition is a use. It's mapping the Spanish word to a set of English words. If the gloss was written as a sentence then it could pass as a use, but it isn't. The others are borderline: the second one says "you will abstringe it" but is otherwise explicitly discussing the word, not using it. And as This, that and the other said at the time, it's not clear that the 3rd one evinces the definition. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 14:47, 16 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
(Should say I'm happy to let this lapse after 2 weeks if other people think the 3 citations are OK. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 19:43, 16 August 2023 (UTC))Reply
They're not great, but I think the last two are adequate. The first use in the dictionary's string of glosses is very debatable. I can't find any other uses (or even use-ish occurences) of this word, neither on the web nor in archives of old or new newspapers like Trove or Issuu, archive.org, etc. (I did find a slightly earlier copy of the "tongue will never be abstringed" text.) Very borderline... - -sche (discuss) 03:53, 24 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
There's another borderline occurrence here, in a text in which a character recites a contrived (but grammatical) series of sentences made up of words starting with A. - -sche (discuss) 03:07, 1 December 2024 (UTC)Reply

pick flowers

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To use the toilet. Equinox 21:27, 16 August 2023 (UTC)Reply

It’s hard to find uses that are clearly metaphorical online but I’ve heard my dad say this. It doesn’t actually means ‘use the toilet’ literally but to urinate by the side of the road. I did find this example[16] on Google Books. --Overlordnat1 (talk) 00:48, 17 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
You think that would be a calque from Japanese as claimed? Equinox 12:21, 17 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
In Overlordnat's book it's explicitly a translation from Isan as well. I think I may have heard it before in English, though if so seems pretty implausible it was from Japanese, never mind Isan. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 12:31, 17 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
I doubt the English expression chiefly came about from being a calque from any other language, it’s probably a coincidence that the same metaphor is used in other languages and English and I accept that my quote was a bit ‘mentiony’ and appears as a translation so is far from ideal. Overlordnat1 (talk) 13:53, 17 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
Here's a stackexchange discussion saying it's at least several decades old in Britain. It does seem to be real, but the literal meaning makes it hard to search for (another urination euphemism in this boat is Citations:pump ship, which has two but not yet three cites). Fodors says it's also the euphemism used in Botswana, which IMO does support the idea that it may just be an obvious excuse to leave an outdoor group for a moment which various cultures hit upon, rather than a calque. - -sche (discuss) 20:00, 18 August 2023 (UTC)Reply

rontosecond

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Could be one of those terms that get coined but haven't been actually used (Edit: apparently the prefix ronto- is a new one so this hasn't gained currency yet). lattermint (talk) 14:08, 18 August 2023 (UTC)Reply

heartburn

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Rfv-sense Synonym of annoyance. Really? Theknightwho (talk) 01:10, 20 August 2023 (UTC)Reply

Cited and added a gloss to clarify. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 17:02, 3 September 2023 (UTC)Reply
To be picky about it, I think heartburn is the discomfort or pain resulting from an annoyance. IOW, I don't think it is substitutable for any definition of annoyance, at least in most of the citations. DCDuring (talk) 18:42, 3 September 2023 (UTC)Reply
Seems perfectly substitutable to me except for "have heartburn" (since one would simply say "I'm annoyed" rather than "I have annoyance"). —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 19:02, 3 September 2023 (UTC)Reply
Surprisingly, no OneLook dictionary has a figurative sense for heartburn. Perhaps OED does. The base sense refers to discomfort and not cause. Do our definitions of annoyance cover both the feeling and the cause? They do so imperfectly at best. I don't think we usually are willing to rely of users being able to infer meaning from metonymy. If we would our polysemic entries could be much shorter. DCDuring (talk) 19:22, 3 September 2023 (UTC)Reply
I disagree with the plausibility of the distinction you're trying to draw, I think. The metaphor drawn by this use is between the psychological state of annoyance (which is a kind of discomfort) and the physical discomfort felt from heartburn (another kind). It's not at some remove from the state itself. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 19:28, 3 September 2023 (UTC)Reply

Meiteilogist

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PUC08:47, 20 August 2023 (UTC)Reply

Meiteiologist

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PUC08:48, 20 August 2023 (UTC)Reply

Classical Meitei

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Links to a Wikivoyage article and a Wikibooks article, both by the entry's creator. The Wikipedia page Meitei classical language movement, also written by the entry's creator, has a hatnote mentioning Classical Meiti linking to the Wiktionary entry (afaik improperly by WP guidelines). Any usage of "classical Meitei" in independent sources I can find is non-capitalised and SOP (e.g., "a classical Meitei ballad"). —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 08:41, 21 August 2023 (UTC)Reply

Same as above, but with somewhat more SOP attestation (apparently usually in reference to dancing). —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 08:43, 21 August 2023 (UTC)Reply

Ancient Meitei

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Pretty common as an SOP phrase but not seeing evidence of capitalised usage or the proper noun sense. The linked Wikibooks article was made by the entry's creator. Note the ISO code linked is denominated "Old Manipuri", a Google search does not show any independent usage of the label "Ancient Meitei" for that code. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 11:06, 21 August 2023 (UTC)Reply

Just noting that if this fails, we may want to do something about the many entries by the same user which use this term. - -sche (discuss) 21:34, 6 April 2024 (UTC)Reply

louk

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Three different words (etymology sections), of which only "alt form of lock" seems citeable. The OED only has pre-1500 uses, and two post-1500 mentions, for "pull up (weeds)", saying it's now only dialectal, but the EDD only has several completely different words spelled louk ("idle, loaf, louch", "strike, beat, thrash", "put in place", "window lattice"), but not any of the ones we or the OED have. I can find mentions of "pull up weeds / thin out plants more generally" in various other old dialect dictionaries, but haven't spotted uses. Louk as an obsolete spelling of look (gaze at) could probably be cited and added. Some senses (at least "close/lock", as well as "grapple") would meet CFI as Scots; most of the rest of the content would be saved by moving it to Middle English louken. - -sche (discuss) 17:56, 21 August 2023 (UTC)Reply

I've moved "weed" to louken and "accomplise" to lowke (RFV-failed as English, converted to Middle English). "Alt form of lock" has two cites and needs just one more in order to pass. - -sche (discuss) 17:16, 24 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

pilled

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Slang: "In a state of believing, especially from evidence but not necessarily." Evidently intended to capture the red pilled, blue pilled, etc. Internet concepts, but is it actually used alone? Equinox 21:56, 22 August 2023 (UTC)Reply

Probably the same thing as -pilled but without the hyphen. Ioaxxere (talk) 23:30, 22 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
That is not morphologically a suffix (I see it's your entry): I think that was created in error. But it's another story. In general, entire words attached to other words are not "suffixes": a greenfly is not "green" suffixed with "-fly", but rather a compound. Your "-pilled" is more likely something like "red pill" + "-ed". Equinox 05:41, 23 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
Ehh... I remember this discussion coming up before at some point in connection with blends (last year?). I'm not sure what you mean by morphologically not a suffix. The dividing line between a word that forms compounds and a lexicalised suffix is fuzzy in general. -gate for political scandals is definitely a suffix now and not just a novel recoinage from Watergate every time it's used, for example, but that was a process. The citations already at -pilled suggest a similar process going on, and I've personally seen stuff like "brunchpilled" without any intention of referring to a "brunch pill" or a generic verb "to brunchpill". Note that they're adjectives—they take "more", "very", predication "is ...". So -pilled is probably fine as is IMO. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 09:18, 23 August 2023 (UTC)Reply

centimate

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To take a certain size of sample. Etymologically sound, etc., but doesn't seem to be in real use. If I search in Google Books, I mostly find stuff about "decimating" (i.e. killing 1 person in 100) but at the smaller scale. Not about sample sizes. Equinox 05:39, 23 August 2023 (UTC)Reply

I added the first quotation that turned up from a credible-looking source (and which handily indicated a definition within the quotation); I have to admit I was a little surprised at the statistical usage — I'd been expecting a meaning closer to the decimate concept, in its most common usage. (By the way, if the statistical meaning is accepted, then definitions at decimate may also have to be tweaked?)
It sounds like you're happy to keep the term, but want to change the definition(s)?
Meanwhile, Einstein2 added a citation for yet another meaning (to divide into hundredths).
—DIV (1.145.8.61 12:37, 28 August 2023 (UTC))Reply

Hu

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RFV-sense:

"A name for God in the Eckankar religion."
"A chant consisting of many people singing 'Hu' together."

A Google Books search for Hu + Eckankar turns up nothing. - -sche (discuss) 05:27, 24 August 2023 (UTC)Reply

Just noting that the Eckankar website [17] says:
 

HU is an ancient name for God. It has been used for thousands of years as a prayer and sacred chant to attune oneself to the presence of God. Millions of people around the world have experienced the joy of HU.

 
From my brief study of Eckankar publications, this pair of definitions appears correct. Not a lot of independent literature on this aspect of Eckankar appears to exist, but more searching is needed. This, that and the other (talk) 06:47, 11 December 2023 (UTC)Reply
OK, prompted to make another search, I found and added two books which contain "HU"; one is mentiony and the other also doesn't manage to be a really good use in running text, but I suspect you're right that we could cite sense 1 with a bit more effort. However, all the instances I found, and yours above, capitalize it just like e.g. YHWH, so unless Hu also exists, it should apparently be moved to HU. I am more sceptical of sense 2, I haven't seen anything about e.g. "chanting a Hu" or "the sermon was followed by a Hu". People chant "HU", but I don't think that makes "Hu" mean "a chant..." (it also seems like an individual person can chant it and not just "many people"?). - -sche (discuss) 08:11, 11 December 2023 (UTC)Reply
I've removed the "chant" sense (RFV-failed); it's possible a dedicated search could cite the "God" sense, but possibly only as HU and not Hu (TBD). - -sche (discuss) 17:03, 24 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

infin.

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Rfv-sense: "infinite" (noun). Einstein2 (talk) 10:25, 29 August 2023 (UTC)Reply

September 2023

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taptastic

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SURJECTION / T / C / L / 06:16, 1 September 2023 (UTC)Reply

Found and added exactly three from Google Books. One is the name of a festival, but seems to have the right meaning (and there is some precedent for including marketing names, e.g. pak, yumberry.) Equinox 22:53, 1 September 2023 (UTC)Reply

shis

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SURJECTION / T / C / L / 08:31, 2 September 2023 (UTC)Reply

I went searching on Usenet for this. I found some definite uses among the many typos (Citations:shis):
  • In the early uses (1989 and 1993), it appears to be a gender-neutral pronoun (this usage doesn't fit our current definition).
  • In 2005, "Maak" used the pronoun in several derogatory stories that demean LGBT people. It's not entirely clear to me whether the stories refer specifically to gay men, or trans women, or some other less specific group.
  • I'm not sure what 2006 post from "America the Beautiful" is trying to get at.
I'd expect to find some evidence on Tumblr, but that's a lot of work... This, that and the other (talk) 01:50, 4 December 2023 (UTC)Reply

palpebrate

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Dictionary-only suspected. lattermint (talk) 19:01, 4 September 2023 (UTC)Reply

I could not find any uses meaning "having eyelids", but I found a lot meaning pertaining to eyelids, so I added that as an additional meaning, as well as the verb meaning (to wink or blink). Kiwima (talk) 06:33, 6 September 2023 (UTC)Reply

The Tony Grach text can hardly be described as Standard English and I would suggest it is as useless for RFV purposes as Finnegans Wake. Here's a typical passage:
"I won't simple agree either anything was just entrusted by their hands to hold that sweat possession, is hard to say even whether is what was name their owning or anything else" Molice wag once, and keep saying" Honest I never reach to know what was within the only order such precept which these wealthier used in efficacious of their belong, or we also doubt to guess are mammonish been just given to the individual in peculium about" Molice she was busying watching the fold of vivarium of multi beasties, some are quiet as unprecedented not for their Mesozoic kinds which can flabbergasted anyone as if to found diplodocus in such little size still living somewhere in this world today and those others seems are affinity with Saprozoics or Kimaris in the face for their uncephalous structure and vicious observant and the least are in oddment alike of primitive fauna, mouth of feline but berbivour teeth and greenish in skin rather beings in common nature of wool dressed,[sic]
Even the narrative voice uses this weird barely-grammatical language. Note the apparent solecism berbivour. Reading other parts of the text, it looks like the author is indeed trying to emulate Joyce (and falling far short, if I may say so).
If we discount this cite, we only have two for the verb. This, that and the other (talk) 10:05, 3 December 2023 (UTC)Reply
I have replaced the disputed cite with a different one. Kiwima (talk) 03:23, 1 March 2024 (UTC)Reply
@Kiwima: You replaced a different quotation instead of the one by Grach; I have restored that one and removed Grach’s. J3133 (talk) 07:17, 1 March 2024 (UTC)Reply
Sorry, and thanks Kiwima (talk) 08:04, 1 March 2024 (UTC)Reply

the house always wins

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Rfv-sense: 3. "An unavoidable, usually unpleasant scenario that is inevitable in the long run that hopelessly cannot be overcome in the end, regardless of various actions that can mitigate or delay it in the short term." Firstly, this isn't the definition of a proverb, it's an overwrought noun phrase. If there's a proverb sense here it's also not familiar to me: something like "we need to clean up the bathroom eventually—the house always wins" comes off as a bit weird.

I think there is a missing figurative sense or scope here though: afaik it's also used broadly to suggest that something is rigged to benefit some person or group, which isn't covered by the limited wording of sense 2. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 22:53, 7 September 2023 (UTC)Reply

It reminds me of what we're calling Ginsberg's theorem on Wikipedia ... a metaphorical restatement of the laws of thermodynamics in the form of a card game ... you can't win, you can't break even, and you can't quit the game. (The zeroth law was added in later.) And I saw something similar in a popular science book about entropy, though I can't find it now. There are a few websites using the phrase the house always wins as a metaphor about entropy. But a metaphor isn't a definition, I suppose ... I'm not really sure if we can use this or not, ... it just seems to me that the metaphor need not always be a complaint about human affairs, it can simply be a restatement of natural law. Soap 00:13, 8 September 2023 (UTC)Reply
@Soap: Yes, it occurred to me that people can use it in reference to things like death and entropy, with a vague idea of anthropomorphising the force they're talking about (you can't cheat Death). What I would do, I think, is change sense 2 to refer to things being systemically rigged or biased more generally than just one specific point about economics, and have a third sense with a second, even further extension to things like natural laws without any actual people involved. I think the RFV'd sense is probably just missing the point a bit. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 00:21, 8 September 2023 (UTC)Reply
If sense 3 is to be kept, it shouldn’t be defined as a noun. — Sgconlaw (talk) 04:45, 8 September 2023 (UTC)Reply

bête de scène

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Is this really used in English? The single quote is very mentiony. Btw, what's a good translation for this? Need a gloss for German Rampensau. Jberkel 21:07, 11 September 2023 (UTC)Reply

Perhaps English just lacks a good counterpart. I see animal metaphors with Fr bête de scène, G Rampensau, and Du podiumbeest. English usually uses "animal" for this, e.g. party animal instead of *party beast. But I've never heard of anything like "stage animal" or "show animal". I used showman just now to translate a quote on the podiumbeest page, but I think t's suboptimal and only used that because we had had no bolded word at all before that. Perhaps the lack of a good Eng translation is why we might be using the French words. Soap 14:09, 12 September 2023 (UTC)Reply
I should I didnt mean to imply that the three animal terms above are also synonyms of each other. And I also wonder if we're elaborating a bit too much with our English definition ... even if we do find the required three cites, will they really all have such a specific definition? I'm really fond of the "feral player" phrasing but it doesn't seem quite believable to me. Soap 14:26, 12 September 2023 (UTC)Reply
English is a little bit pickier, selecting particular animals for such expressions, like show horse/showhorse, which I've heard used metaphorically, a;beit with a different meaning. Feral player uses feral, not a good definiens in metaphorical use, just as metaphors are not usually good definitions. Our normal users would probably benefit more from a non-gloss definition if we don't have a good gloss expression and can't come up with a long-form definition. DCDuring (talk) 18:47, 12 September 2023 (UTC)Reply

underfriction

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The linked Wikipedia article suggests that this is a noun adjunct in the phrase "underfriction wheel" rather than a standalone noun. There are no Google Books hits for the would-be plural "underfrictions".

I propose updating and moving to underfriction wheel. — Paul G (talk) 06:24, 13 September 2023 (UTC)Reply

Although mostly used attributively, the term exists outside the mentioned phrase: [18], [19], [20] etc. There are also uses which predate the 1918/19 patent of Miller, so a second sense might be needed: [21], [22], [23]. Einstein2 (talk) 01:32, 3 November 2023 (UTC)Reply

wray

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We have three senses: (1) denounce, (2) reveal a secret, (3) betray. According to OED, (1) didn't survive past 1500, (2) did but it may not be attestable in this spelling (the cites have wry, wrie, ...), and (3) was used in the 1500s in the sense of "betray someone's true character" but OED only gives cites from Whetstone and Mir. for Mag. - a third would be needed. The word probably survived longer in dialect, but I haven't checked EDD. This, that and the other (talk) 05:51, 14 September 2023 (UTC)Reply

Should this entry simply be re-categorized as Middle English then? I would not like to see it deleted, as is threatened by the current warning, since it certainly was a legitimate word at one time & is important for historical reference. Language&Life (talk) 10:29, 15 March 2024 (UTC)Reply

Romaboo

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SURJECTION / T / C / L / 09:54, 15 September 2023 (UTC)Reply

This word is clearly attestable on Reddit going back a few years and probably on Instagram too. Those are where you tend to see history memes the most. A WaPo story that ran this week may have brought attention from the wider world, so maybe it will spread outside its origin. I dont have a WaPo account and so cant' check if the word Romaboo actually appears in the article. Its worth noting that we never actually rejected Reddit as a source of citations, it was only "no consensus", the same as Twitter. But we seem to have decided without a new vote that we're just not that interested in words used only on Reddit, and I havent seen too many words being added from Twitter lately either. Soap 17:08, 15 September 2023 (UTC)Reply
I meant to point out that the only other two edits from the IP who created this were both vandalism, though it may well be that it's a shared IP and therefore not the same person. Soap 20:39, 15 September 2023 (UTC)Reply

snowman hole

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"An elongated hole consisting of two round holes touching each other." I couldn't find any evidence anywhere. Equinox 01:02, 18 September 2023 (UTC)Reply

Just found this European Patent Office PDF on the Web: [24] "...(known as a "snowman" hole due to its distinctive shape). A snowman hole is typically a difficult repair due to the elongated axis joining two holes..." Equinox 09:36, 23 November 2023 (UTC)Reply

whorenalist

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SURJECTION / T / C / L / 06:07, 18 September 2023 (UTC)Reply

Cited. --Overlordnat1 (talk) 08:07, 19 September 2023 (UTC)Reply
Definition needs work: currently, "a reporter or journalist whose viewpoints change frequently". What's whorish about that? I don't think we mean someone who learns new things (e.g. science journo) and adapts their views. Surely it must mean one who doesn't properly study and respect their subject, or is amenable to bribes, etc. Equinox 13:29, 19 September 2023 (UTC)Reply
The definition's not the best, that's true. Perhaps we should copy the definition at presstitute instead, or list it as a synonym of that? --Overlordnat1 (talk) 13:32, 19 September 2023 (UTC)Reply
Science journos learn things? —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 22:55, 19 September 2023 (UTC)Reply
You have to really whack it into their heads. Drop an apple. Equinox 19:44, 25 September 2023 (UTC)Reply
The current definition line might refer to the analogy between changing viewpoints and sexual partners. However, I don't think the quotations at Citations:whorenalist support such a definition. I am not sure whether it can be considered synonymous to presstitute or just a general derogatory term for a journalist disliked by the speaker. Einstein2 (talk) 19:36, 25 September 2023 (UTC)Reply

thunder

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"(figuratively) The spotlight. Shortly after I announced my pregnancy, he stole my thunder with his news of landing his dream job." Needs examples that are not covered by the separate entry steal someone's thunder. Equinox 15:37, 24 September 2023 (UTC)Reply

The etymology in [[steal someone's thunder]] makes they use of thunder in this sentence seem particularly unlikely, but .... DCDuring (talk) 20:02, 24 September 2023 (UTC)Reply

to high heaven

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Is this used outside of stink to high heaven, which we already have an entry for? PUC19:26, 24 September 2023 (UTC)Reply

It is used with synonyms of "stink", like "smell" and "reek". Maybe not in any other way. Equinox 20:06, 24 September 2023 (UTC)Reply
But also shriek, cry, curse, yell, darn it, complain, wish, etc., apart from literal use (pray, etc.). The figurative/intensifier sense seems to derive some of its force from the literal use. DCDuring (talk) 20:26, 24 September 2023 (UTC)Reply
Cited (none of the citations are about stinking). —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 14:29, 25 September 2023 (UTC)Reply
Thanks, but aren't the 1921, 1955 and 2013 quotes examples of the more literal sense that DCDuring mentioned? PUC17:57, 25 September 2023 (UTC)Reply
@PUC: No, DCDuring mentioned the literal sense in reference to pray, i.e. literally praying to heaven. Shrieking, crying, etc to high heaven are not literal. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 18:03, 25 September 2023 (UTC)Reply
The vocalization usages seem more closely derived from the "pray" usage than the olfaction senses, but recent usage seems not to evoke pray to high heaven. DCDuring (talk) 18:12, 25 September 2023 (UTC)Reply

Nerdview

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Can't find significant usage in GBooks, but it is mentioned in one Wikipedia article. If real, the capital N is probably wrong. Equinox 11:09, 25 September 2023 (UTC)Reply

Not sure exactly what "if real" means in this context, but it appears in a series of blog posts by Geoffrey K. Pullum, the first of which (posted June 26, 2008) ends with "people with any kind of technical knowledge of a domain tend to get hopelessly (and unwittingly) stuck in a frame of reference that relates to their view of the issue, and their trade's technical parlance, not that of the ordinary humans with whom they so signally fail to engage. [...] The phenomenon — we could call it nerdview — is widespread." I assume the word is Pullum's creation.--Urszag (talk) 11:51, 25 September 2023 (UTC)Reply
By "if real" I mean "if the word exists at all"; apparently it's what we would call a protologism (and the capital N is indeed wrong). Equinox 18:01, 25 September 2023 (UTC)Reply
Not found on Google Scholar or News. Mentioned in G. Groups. I can't get a preview of any use on Google Books, but Google gives books that may have it. We would need other (post-2008) corpora or access the books themselves. It might be particularly useful in BP discussions (let alone those on GP) here. DCDuring (talk) 15:07, 25 September 2023 (UTC)Reply

marrot

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3 different birds, 3 fun quotey challenges P. Sovjunk (talk) 21:14, 30 September 2023 (UTC)Reply

Here's what I've found so far:

October 2023

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confusionism

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Sense 2: "A strategy of maintaining confusion in the minds and preventing objective analysis." (Needs to be distinct from sense 1: "Any doctrine or philosophy that serves to confuse people.") Equinox 13:21, 1 October 2023 (UTC)Reply

Unrelated to the RFV, but this is such an obvious pun on Confucianism that I want us to mention it in the etymology, but I dont want to just put it there based on instinct. If it helps I know there is a quote out there somewhere ... maybe Tao of Pooh? ... where a related pun between Confucius and confusion is made, and it may even be that the word confusionism appears there. I suspect Ive got the wrong book though. Nothing here] looks like what I saw, and despite its title the book seems to be fairly level-headed and not the type to contain many puns. (Though I admittedly only got a 2-page preview.) All the best, Soap 14:29, 1 October 2023 (UTC)Reply

forinsecal

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A few quotes had it in italics or "in quotemarks", nowt without P. Sovjunk (talk) 20:31, 1 October 2023 (UTC)Reply

OED has five cites, although only one is spelled this way. Ours would be a sixth. The word also appears to be an obsolete form of forensical (two cites in OED). This, that and the other (talk) 02:56, 4 October 2023 (UTC)Reply

no human being is illegal

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Rfv-sense: A more or less literal definition, not the immigration-specific sense: "It is wrong to refer to a person as being illegal." DCDuring (talk) 17:41, 2 October 2023 (UTC)Reply

You cannot shed this. People mean both at the same time in one instance. Claim the first with the desired outcome of sense two. An interpretation question also. Fay Freak (talk) 19:58, 3 October 2023 (UTC)Reply
We could just merge the two senses, and have it read something like "It is rude to say "illegal immigrant".". CitationsFreak (talk) 03:51, 4 October 2023 (UTC)Reply
I think sense 2 is wrong too: "There are no illegal immigrants, only undocumented ones". Clearly there provably are illegal immigrants, as shown in the laws of various countries. Should be reworded as "illegal immigrants should only be referred to by a euphemism", apparently. Equinox 13:24, 4 October 2023 (UTC)Reply
I don’t see the need for two senses that say basically the same thing but I suppose we could tweak it so that sense 1 is an &lit that says ‘there’s no such thing as an illegal human being’ and sense 2 says ‘nobody should be designated as illegal before being officially determined to be so by a Government or court’? Overlordnat1 (talk) 13:43, 4 October 2023 (UTC)Reply
In what legal systems are people, rather than acts of persons or their status, illegal? DCDuring (talk) 14:11, 4 October 2023 (UTC)Reply
This is normal grammar though. A "heavy drinker" is not a drinker who's heavy, but someone who drinks heavily. An "illegal immigrant" is one who immigrates illegally. The people who complain about the phrase "illegal immigrant" do so out of inguistic ignorance. Equinox 14:13, 4 October 2023 (UTC)Reply
What does "This" refer to, the putative proverb or illegal immigrant? The metonymy in illegal immigrant is normal, but the "proverb" would remind us that it is mere metonymy, not to be taken literally. DCDuring (talk) 14:40, 4 October 2023 (UTC)Reply
I think that the "officially determined to be so by a government or court" should not be part of the definition. The people who object to this term would object to it even if it was government-sanctioned (and in fact, might oppose the term harder.) CitationsFreak (talk) 14:27, 4 October 2023 (UTC)Reply
I have rarely encountered this phrase in contexts other than immigration, as an objection to laws that (are perceived to) criminalize the mere (public) existence of certain kinds of people, like so-called google:"breathing while brown", google:"driving while black", google:"walking while brown" or google:"walking while trans" laws; iff that could be cited, it would make sense to have a 'top-level sense' and subsenses like we do at present. But it doesn't seem citable. If only immigration-related use is attested, then like several other users above, I'd be fine with condensing our two sense into one definition-line. I think DCDuring is on the right lines with explaining that "acts or status" are illegal and not humans. Maybe: "It is wrong to refer to 'illegal immigrants', because people are not illegal (only acts are illegal)."? I don't know, it's hard to think of a good wording. As I said in the Tea Room, I'm not sure we should have slogans like this to begin with. (I mean, how would we define all the nuances and political implications of a phrase like "make America great again"? It would be similarly challenging.) - -sche (discuss) 16:13, 4 October 2023 (UTC)Reply
I don't think that the "because people aren't illegal..." thign should be in the def. People can have a variety of reasons for opposing this. (Plus, the Wiesel quote demonstrates this already.) CitationsFreak (talk) 16:29, 4 October 2023 (UTC)Reply
I agree. I don't think people engage in legal or philosophical reasoning about this. Rather they are thinking of it being morally wrong to use the term illegal immigrant because it is derogatory or not nice. DCDuring (talk) 16:51, 4 October 2023 (UTC)Reply
Equinox is right that sense 2 was also wrong, since Wiesel's objection applies even if a state really does make being even a documented immigrant illegal. How is this? I reiterate that I'm not sure we should have slogans in the first place. - -sche (discuss) 21:21, 22 December 2023 (UTC)Reply
I'm not married to the definition I wrote, don't care much about this entry and would not object either to it being deleted, but I'm a bit confused by your and Equinox's objection: "there are no illegal immigrants, only undocumented ones" might be factually untrue, but it's still what people who use this proverb/slogan mean when they use it (and what they wish were true), which is what interests us here. (This reminds me a bit of the debate at Talk:you can take the monkey out of the jungle, but you can't take the jungle out of the monkey.) PUC22:40, 22 December 2023 (UTC)Reply
I don't get the sense that many (most?) users of the slogan are concerned with documentation at all. (This is supported by marginal use in relation to other issues than immigration, e.g. the "walking while black" bans, or laws making gay or trans people illegal.) The meaning is ... basically literal, that human beings aren't (or shouldn't be) illegal and that a human being (generally an immigrant) existing in a particular country or public area should not be legislated against / arrested. - -sche (discuss) 00:09, 23 December 2023 (UTC)Reply
Do people say this term in reference to those? I was unable to find any uses that do not refer to immigration, so I'm leaning towards no, although maybe you found something I didn't. CitationsFreak (talk) 00:57, 23 December 2023 (UTC)Reply

thirteenth reason

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I'm not convinced this has caught on as anything but a reference to Thirteen Reasons Why (either the book or the TV series). It looks like this entry is a protologism extrapolated from the above. Chuck Entz (talk) 02:30, 9 October 2023 (UTC)Reply

Cited(?) Also, I can anecdotally confirm that it has "caught on" (at least a little) so I don't think this should be deleted. Ioaxxere (talk) 06:35, 9 October 2023 (UTC)Reply

grithbreach

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This entry needs some help; if we can cite it it might be better classed as historical; otherwise moved to Middle English. OED has one non-dictionary ModE quote from 1598 in Stow's A Survey of London:

The charter of King William the Conqueror, exemplified in the Tower, englished thus: "[...] Know ye that I do giue vnto God and the church of S. Paule of London, and to the rectors and seruitors of the same, in all their lands which the church hath, or shall have, within borough and without, sack and sock, thole and theam, infangthefe and grithbriche [...]"

Maybe I'm failing to correctly parse this quote but it looks to me like Stow has grithbriche as a privilege William gave the servitors, which doesn't match the sense we give. I've also foud it used in a close translation of an OE text. Any other ModE quotes? Winthrop23 (talk) 14:42, 10 October 2023 (UTC)Reply

I have put a selection of modern English quotes on the citations page. It looks to me like Stow is referring to the fines arising from enforcing this law (definition 2). Kiwima (talk) 23:06, 10 October 2023 (UTC)Reply

cornobble

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Mentioned in a couple of dictionaries as a dialectal word for beating someone on the head. Someone at Urban Dictionary decided to make it about hitting someone with a dead fish. Guess which definition just got added to Wiktionary... Chuck Entz (talk) 04:06, 12 October 2023 (UTC)Reply

Preferably with a trout, I presume. Although frowned upon, I suppose it could also be a live one.  --Lambiam 07:01, 12 October 2023 (UTC)Reply
Or while performing a dance... Chuck Entz (talk) 14:44, 12 October 2023 (UTC)Reply

I found three cites, but two were used to mean hit with a fish, and one to mean beat about the head:

  • 2016, Strange History:
    I've been Cornobbled!
  • 2017, Jonathan W. Stokes, Addison Cooke and the Tomb of the Khan, page 71:
    Addison's favorite word in the English language was "cornobble," meaning "to slap with a fish." He had long wondered if he would ever be lucky enough to cornobble someone. [] He deplored violence, but he condoned cornobbling.
  • 2018, Alice Jolly, Mary Ann Sate, Imbecile:
    She waits til I turnd away Cornobble me with a rolling pin

Kiwima (talk) 07:22, 9 November 2023 (UTC)Reply

ring-a-ding

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Adjective meaning "perfect". Equinox 19:19, 14 October 2023 (UTC)Reply

cited Kiwima (talk) 02:46, 15 October 2023 (UTC)Reply

The string of letters has been cited, but what specific meaning the cites intend is not obvious to me. - -sche (discuss) 21:23, 22 December 2023 (UTC)Reply

Agreed. Meaning is unclear. ringding seems to be an alternative form, now added. Equinox 13:32, 19 May 2024 (UTC)Reply

silent h

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Rfv sense “(linguistics, phonetics, literally) non-aspiration of a glottal consonant”. What does this even mean. Are there words whose IPA rendering uses ʔʰ or ? Is there any language in which some glottal consonant may be aspirated?  --Lambiam 13:38, 15 October 2023 (UTC)Reply

i think it means consonant in the sense of spelling, not pronunciation. e.g. Hebrew and Persian both have letters that spell /h/ in some positions but are silent word-finally, much like English. Possibly Arabic too. Soap 00:53, 17 October 2023 (UTC)Reply

it wasn't only only

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SURJECTION / T / C / L / 06:25, 16 October 2023 (UTC)Reply

The phrase may seem odd to most people outside Norway, but various variations of the phrase have been used in non-racing contexts by a fair few people:
It is most commonly used in informal codeswitching among Norwegians, but there have been sporadic cases of people using it while speaking English. Dandelion Sprout (talk) 07:27, 16 October 2023 (UTC)Reply
To the extent I rapidly learned the RFV system this morning, I have now also cited 3 quotes on-page instead of the previous 1, with the 2 new ones being from English-language pages as well. Dandelion Sprout (talk) 08:24, 16 October 2023 (UTC)Reply
I highly doubt it's used to convey any sort of meaning but that it's simply a catchphrase (or a meme if you prefer). — SURJECTION / T / C / L / 09:14, 16 October 2023 (UTC)Reply
I wouldn't go as far as to call it a simple meme, but even I admit it's hard to describe the exact meaning of it. The core meaning fits very well with "easier said than done", but with a kinda playful tone, sometimes (but not always) one that makes fun of/with broken English or an undertone of "If you use this phrase, you're from Norway". I suppose I can agree it's an in-joke, but it's an in-joke that around 3.5mill people are into (of a population of maybe 5.2mill). Dandelion Sprout (talk) 13:22, 19 October 2023 (UTC)Reply

frithy

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OED only has Skelton quote, and even I could find nothing more, and I'm a frithy genius. P. Sovjunk (talk) 07:45, 16 October 2023 (UTC)Reply

FWIW, the 1911 Century Dictionary also has that quote and nothing else (except that it has “Thus stode I in the frytthy forest of Galtres” while the 1933 OED leaves out the first bit and has the typo “the frytthy forest of Galteres”)  --Lambiam 14:41, 16 October 2023 (UTC)Reply
You are filthy, not frithy. HTH. Equinox 23:33, 16 October 2023 (UTC)Reply

cited Kiwima (talk) 01:53, 17 October 2023 (UTC)Reply

Several of these citations (inasmuch as I can jabberwock some sense out of them) are for a homonym with a different set of senses and a different etymology. Determining in general which citations belong under which etymology is beyond my ken.  --Lambiam 16:51, 17 October 2023 (UTC)Reply

I hope I'm not the only person who thinks that we have a duty to our readers to say "this word, if it's a word, is bloody obscure and bizarre" [30]. Horrifying truly. Do not see RFV as a little video-game challenge "can I find three usages of no particular meaning, by mad poets". Equinox 05:22, 19 October 2023 (UTC)Reply

The second definition is no longer cited. One of the quotes given was a misreading or scanno, and furthermore I’m not convinced the 2017 usage has the suggested meaning at all. — Vorziblix (talk · contribs) 15:14, 13 December 2023 (UTC)Reply

sh*t your mouth

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Can't find much in the way of use of this. Even a Google search only finds 13 hits total, most of which are song/video titles or aren't relevant. Smurrayinchester (talk) 08:19, 19 October 2023 (UTC)Reply

I explained on the talk page why I chose not to put cites on the main page. I can add the cites if pushed, but I think the page is better without them as people talking with friends on Twitter aren't expecting their words to be forever mirrored on a site like ours, and with words like these the content is emotionally heavy. Soap 09:46, 19 October 2023 (UTC)Reply
I'm indifferent as to whether the cites are left on the talk page or moved or added to the main entry page but I think we can already declare this to be cited on the basis of what you've put on the talk page already. --Overlordnat1 (talk) 21:40, 19 October 2023 (UTC)Reply
We also have a Citations namespace.  --Lambiam 17:13, 20 October 2023 (UTC)Reply
Yes thanks. I didnt put them there because all I did was paste the links instead of expanding them with the quote templates. I think though that the Citations namespace may be a good place to put quotes that we need for illustration of use but which we dont want to feature on the main page. There are some entries here where i would say even that is too much, and prefer to use paraphrases, but this isnt anything politically controversial ... in fact i think it's pretty clever. i will add the six twitter quotes to the citations namespace, or find ones that i think provide similar or superior context for the use of the phrase. i might also add the song and anything else i can find (even if not CFI, e.g. we never approved Instagram but Instagram is where i first saw this). Thanks, Soap 06:43, 25 October 2023 (UTC)Reply

geopbyte

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Definition:

  1. (computing, informal) 1030 bytes; a thousand brontobytes

This is more like an rfv-sense than an rfv of the whole term- but this is the only definition in the entry at the moment. There a no doubt similar issues with other prefix+"byte" entries

There are mentions that define this in terms of powers of 2/multiples of 1024 (as is the case with kilobytes, megabytes, gigabytes, etc.) and there are mentions that define this in terms of powers of 10/multiples of 1000, so a geopbyte would be either 2100 or 1030 (I think the base-2 version is the original, technically correct one).It may not seem like much, but the actual difference is more digits than I can get my calculator app to display. At that scale, I think that even if there are enough uses the only possible actual meaning would be "some arbitrary unimaginably big number of bytes". Chuck Entz (talk) 04:47, 21 October 2023 (UTC)Reply

One book cite I found gets around the divergence between binary and base-10 by saying A Geopbyte is about 1,000 Brontobytes. and i agree this is used metaphorically for a number far beyond our comprehension. So far i have not found any evidence of the etymology being from Korean (geop), ... for example, the expected Korean form 겁바이트 seems not to exist anywhere ... but even if it wasnt coined in Korean it could still be a borrowing from Korean, and that would suggest it wasnt meant to be precise. That said, if the lists of words that define this term with a specific value always list either 2^100 or 10^30, then i would say those more precise sub-definitions are worth noting. Soap 06:48, 25 October 2023 (UTC)Reply
An educational channel with this name was founded in 2018. They're based in India. More interesting perhaps is this tiny abandoned YouTube channel, founded in 2008, which never really took off. It's unlikely that the 2008 YouTuber coined the term, and it could just perhaps be a randomly chosen name, but it might hint at sporadic use before 2015. Soap 07:40, 28 October 2023 (UTC)Reply
Google Books returns three hits for geopbytes when restricting the search to before 2000, but I'm guessing all three are duds. The first might be a scan error for geophyte (and is so old (1956, the same year byte was coined) that it cant possibly be a real hit), and the other two, while promising, are unsearchable and i suspect that they may not actually contain the desired text (see this mini-essay I wrote for an illustration of how Google Books sometimes pads its results with books that cannot possibly contain the desired text). Yes, I really like this word, and I'd love to be able to save it, but it seems the origin still eludes me and the sense is difficult to pin down. Soap 09:10, 28 October 2023 (UTC)Reply

@Soap I did some archaeology just now and I think I have solved the mystery:

In any event, I believe this is cited, and assuming the Spanish Wikipedia IP user coined the term (which seems likely based on everything I've found) it seems we now have a kind of etymology too. The only last thing to do would be to ask a Spanish Wikipedia admin to share the content of the deleted w:es:Geop in case it sheds any light on the apparent coiner's intent behind choosing this Korean term... This, that and the other (talk) 06:33, 18 January 2025 (UTC)Reply

I posted at w:es:Wikipedia:Tablón_de_anuncios_de_los_bibliotecarios/Portal/Archivo/Solicitudes_de_restauración/Actual#Geop (yes, that very long title is real) to see if we can find out what was at the Geop page. This, that and the other (talk) 06:59, 18 January 2025 (UTC)Reply
For posterity: Discussion was moved to w:es:Wikipedia:Tablón_de_anuncios_de_los_bibliotecarios/Portal/Archivo/Miscelánea/2025/01#Geop. Hftf (talk) 04:45, 11 February 2025 (UTC)Reply
ooh thank you. i actually thought you meant literal archeology when i saw the size of this diff at first, as if it was in an old dusty book somewhere. so this is sort of like citogenesis? but clearly in use, in durable media too. and i'm thrilled that my Korean origin guess turned out to be (almost certainly) correct. Soap 10:33, 18 January 2025 (UTC)Reply

RFV-passed, and added some more cites to allay Chuck's original concerns. This, that and the other (talk) 04:38, 11 February 2025 (UTC)Reply

November 2023

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orange pill

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None of the four senses are fully attested. The two Bitcoin defs at least have partial attestation that supports them. The "urbanism" sense have citations that don't unambiguously support the definition given. In addition, the words urbanism and urbanist used in the definitions don't seem to be used in a way that corresponds to any of our definitions of those words. DCDuring (talk) 23:53, 3 November 2023 (UTC)Reply

oldcomer

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The word exists, but does not seem to mean this. I can't quite discern the sense: something to do with people with ancestry in the country of residence, as opposed to migrants? Or migrants who have been in a country for a long time? This, that and the other (talk) 12:15, 6 November 2023 (UTC)Reply

cited Kiwima (talk) 04:42, 8 November 2023 (UTC)Reply
@Kiwima awesome work as ever! Thanks for looking at this.
Was there a reason you chose to split senses 2 and 3? The meanings are very close, and the distinction may be artificial. The last cite for each sense could just easily be attributed to the other, in my mind. This, that and the other (talk) 06:42, 8 November 2023 (UTC)Reply
Yes, sense three is a very specific role in therapeutic communities. From what I could tell, not everyone who had been around long enough to "know the ropes" (sense 2) could be an oldcomer, only someone who had reached a certain trusted status. Kiwima (talk) 19:00, 8 November 2023 (UTC)Reply
I see. I'm not totally convinced. I'd appreciate a third opinion from another editor. This, that and the other (talk) 11:57, 10 November 2023 (UTC)Reply
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husstuss

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Google has all of 18 hits, none of them in Books. Is this a brand new Hot Word, or is it someone trying to make fetch happen? Chuck Entz (talk) 18:05, 9 November 2023 (UTC)Reply

I've added some additional quotes going back to July 2022. MugsyMoon (talk) 17:58, 14 November 2023 (UTC)Reply
Around 1.3K hits on 4chan archives, so it's well attested at least on 4chan itself. [Saviourofthe] ୨୧ 16:25, 24 June 2024 (UTC)Reply
And about 500 hits] for the plural. [Saviourofthe] ୨୧ 16:27, 24 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

day by day

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Rfv-sense "one day at a time". Going by the usage examples this is not an adverb but an adjective (if it's an adverb used attributively, are there non attributive uses? And should it be spelled day-by-day? Is it synonymous with day-to-day?). I'm also not sure the gloss is accurate. PUC18:05, 11 November 2023 (UTC)Reply

Added song lyrics, which I think are from a hymn. I'd say that counts as two cites but also think this should be easy to verify both by its sense and by its meaning, and we won't need to count both the song and what it was derived from. Agree that the current use examples are adjectival and I wouldnt use them that way. Soap 10:02, 12 November 2023 (UTC)Reply
Probably at least partly borrowed from Godspell. It's not quite a hymn, though it gets as close as a piece from a Broadway musical can get. Chuck Entz (talk) 03:54, 13 November 2023 (UTC)Reply
@PUC: Generally, hyphens are used in adjective position, not in adverb position. "She grew little by little; it was little-by-little growth." Equinox 13:58, 12 November 2023 (UTC)Reply
We have attempted to dispense with multi-word entries ("MWEs") for hyphenated forms where there is a full entry for the term without hyphens ("MWE-h"). This comes up most frequently where the MWE-h is a noun and the MWE+h is the noun in attributive use. Hard redirects seem to me to address the need to protect those who search for the MWE+h from the overwhelming confusion they suffer when confronted with the failed-search page, though they still need to deal with idea that a noun can be used attributively. DCDuring (talk) 14:37, 12 November 2023 (UTC)Reply
Send to RFD. You can have "hour-by-hour" or "hour by hour", "second-by-second" or "second by second", "epoch-by-epoch" or "epoch by epoch", ..., so this is a grammatical construction, not a set expression. This, that and the other (talk) 03:20, 13 November 2023 (UTC)Reply
One can also have step by step, brick by brick, customer by customer, voter by voter, etc. By does not work with as many nouns as after, but with many. We have a "reduplicative" sense for after. Other prepositions may also occur in multiple reduplicative expressions, though fewer, eg layer on layer, row on row, luff on luff (naut.), loser on loser (poker).
I doubt that this a good RfD candidate. See day by day”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.. DCDuring (talk) 18:15, 13 November 2023 (UTC)Reply
In which case, should the contested sense be retained and labelled "as an attributive adjective, usually hyphenated"? Voltaigne (talk) 22:31, 23 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

tableword

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Doubt this one meets CFI. Very few Google Web hits. Equinox 17:19, 12 November 2023 (UTC)Reply

I've added a few cites. table-word and table word seem to be more common. Einstein2 (talk) 23:30, 12 November 2023 (UTC)Reply

animalism

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Rfv-sense: animal liberation. Ƿidsiþ 14:38, 13 November 2023 (UTC)Reply

Added three citations, but some might overlap with other senses. Seems to be used in the context of Italian philosophy. Equinox 16:01, 13 November 2023 (UTC)Reply
I think the three cites are perfectly correlated with the sense we're seeking, but maybe we could reword the sense to something like animal rights activism even so? To me, animal liberation implies militancy, the sort of people who act on their beliefs, whereas many animal rights activists take a hands-off approach and focus on debate and, at most, peaceful protests. If this is so, I would say we also need to reword our definition of animal liberation. I may come back to this. Thanks, Soap 10:10, 14 November 2023 (UTC)Reply
Coming back to this, I dont think animal liberation implies militancy, any more than women's liberation ever did, so I think the entry as we have it is good, although there may still be a bit more to this ... see a new entry towards the bottom of the page created by an IP. To me, the Wikipedia link's sense fits perfectly under the context of animal liberation ... using the same analogy, our definition of feminism doesnt have a third sense or even a subsense specifically defining feminists as activists who do things ... it's considered part of the same definition that describes support for women's equality. Soap 08:46, 28 December 2023 (UTC)Reply

flatscreen

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Senses 2 and 3 seem like gibberish to me, honestly. "2. (dated) Being flat square, having the image display surface of a display screen being flat. 3. (dated) Being vertically flat, having an image display surface of a CRT display screen that is vertically flat, but horizontally round." Equinox 19:22, 18 November 2023 (UTC)Reply

@Equinox I think that one of them refers to CRT monitors with flat glass, intead of glass that's slightly curved, which was sometimes how this got used before LCD/LED screens became commonplace. The OED has some cites from the 70s and 80s that seem to refer to that sense. Theknightwho (talk) 19:25, 18 November 2023 (UTC)Reply
I deleted sense 2 as unsalvageable nonsense and updated sense 3 to what I think they were trying to say. Still needs cites though. This, that and the other (talk) 01:46, 19 January 2025 (UTC)Reply
A question: Is a modern thin-body monitor with a concave curved screen (eg, gaming monitor) called a flatscreen? DCDuring (talk)

December 2023

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virtually

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Rfv-sense: 2 mathematics definitions defining the supposed adverb more as an adjective (or perhaps just hand-waving instead of defining), without cites, without references, without any support from any OneLook source, with not very helpful usexes:

  1. (algebra) Of a substructure of finite index.
    virtually indicable
  2. (topology) Of a covering space of finite index.
    virtually Haken
We should be able to do better. DCDuring (talk) 23:50, 10 December 2023 (UTC)Reply
Perhaps @User:Msh210 can help. DCDuring (talk) 00:07, 11 December 2023 (UTC)Reply
Thanks for the ping, DCDuring. I've added two cite for each sense and don't have time at the moment to add a third. (Nor to check the CFI to see whether my cites are good ones. As you're no doubt aware, I've been fairly inactive of late; in particular, I haven't kept up with changes to the CFI.) But there are plenty more cites in math papers for each sense, and neither should be deleted.​—msh210 (talk) 20:10, 23 January 2024 (UTC)Reply
@User:Msh210 Thanks for responding. You'll be getting the occasional ping for undocumented or incomprehensible (to me) math definitions. Some definitions seem to rely too much on specialized definitions of highly polysemic terms. In the above index is an example. The others seem okay. I don't know whether this index def. covers it: "A raised suffix indicating a power". Even if it does, it does not nicely substitute into the definitions given. DCDuring (talk) 20:46, 23 January 2024 (UTC)Reply
DCDuring, I've added an {{lb|en|algebra}} sense to [[index]] and adjusted these definitions of [[virtually]] slightly. I think it's okay now. Please let me know if you disagree.​—msh210 (talk) 22:58, 23 January 2024 (UTC)Reply
My eyes now glaze over at coset, but that seems unavoidable. DCDuring (talk) 23:13, 23 January 2024 (UTC)Reply

vagitate

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This might be unconventional, but I want to request verification of a specific citation for this word. I saw that the OED cites Sir Walter Raleigh's History of the World, the same as we do, but the OED gives the quotation as "Before the vse of the Compas was knowne, it was impossible to nauigate athwart the Ocean." Perhaps an older version of the OED entry quoted this sentence with "vagitate", but it was since corrected? In any case, the scan of this book at archive.org clearly shows "navigate", which also seems to make a bit more sense in the context. But I want to make sure I'm not missing something that might save this quotation. If anyone wants to look into the other citations, that would also be welcome, since they're pretty obscure and I'm not entirely sure Ian Edge is using it in the same sense or even with the same etymology as the others. Some are also missing page numbers, which would be nice to have.--Urszag (talk) 02:55, 14 December 2023 (UTC)Reply

I saw something similar when I filed the RFV for endizen. During the preparation of the NED (OED 1st edition) someone must have misread, miswrote or mistyped endenizen as endizen, and the NED ended up with a hapax entry for this verb, which persists in OED Online to this day. However, OED Online has apparently undergone an automated (?) process of updating quotes to reflect the original texts, so that the only supporting quote for the endizen entry actually uses the word endenizen. The same thing has probably happened with vagitate. Unlike endizen, though, this term has a more plausible etymology, which means others have taken it up.
I removed the Raleigh and checked the other quotes:
  • The Beckett is a legitimate quote, but I've got no idea what he's talking about. The quote certainly doesn't unambiguously support the given definition, I'll say that much.
  • The 1982 text uses "vagitating" but this was changed to "vegetating" in a 2003 republication. The 1982 text uses quotation marks to imply this is a quote from Marx, but the 2003 edition removes the quotation marks.
  • The 1987 text seems legitimate. Given the similar subject matter and point of view expressed, I had a suspicion that the 1982 and 1987 texts may have been by the same author, but a list of texts by D.N. Dhanagare doesn't mention any work on Buddhism.
  • The law text is a little baffling. Here is the broader context:
    Paul Matthews complains that when the Cayman Islands legislature defines a form of ownership from which humans are absent, it is trying to "Call Sunday, Monday". Anthony Duckworth sums up his rebuttals in a final salvo:
    "We will not mind greatly if Mr Mathews says that a STAR trust is as anomalous as a charitable trust, as strange as a discretionary trust, as weird as an unadministered estate, as bizarre (or nearly so) as a trust for unborn persons."
    These are all instances when English chancery doctrine would allow that some or all of the equitable ownership has disappeared into thin air. Duckworth's point is that the STAR trust merely generalises these English instances. The crucial difference, however, is that in all but one of these English situations, the equitable ownership reappears within at most eighty years: the discretion is exercised, the estate is administered, the unborn vagitate. The exception is the English charitable trust which, like the STAR trust, can exist for ever.
  • Here, the word seems to be intended to mean "be born".
I would note that these citations were probably obtained from Quiet Quentin using the default Google Books metadata. PSA to RFVers: please check the metadata before adding a quote - if you don't, you are liable to (a) get the publication years totally wrong, (b) attribute the work of a contributing author to the editor of an edited book, or (c) miss out the author info entirely when it is findable with reasonably easy searching. I know all this takes a little more effort, but it makes the dictionary that much better. This, that and the other (talk) 06:16, 14 December 2023 (UTC)Reply
I agree that the "Marx had characterized" cite is most likely a misspelling/typo of a different word and not this word (like e.g. the few books that have reconditing as an error for other editions' reconditioning); "stagnant, unchanging, vegetating" makes more sense there than "[they are] stagnant, unchanging, not stagnant, and changing positions a lot". The "unborn" cite seems to intend a connection to vagina ("come out of the/a vagina"?) rather than to vagus, and E. Barry, Samuel Beckett and the Contingency of Old Age (2016), takes Beckett's use to be connected to connected to birth too ("just as Malone fears that he may have “vagitated [given the birth cry] and not be able to bloody rattle”"), so I think we are left with just one cite that is plausibly for the given etymology/meaning, but two cites that might support a "give the birth cry"-related meaning, as it happens. - -sche (discuss) 15:20, 14 December 2023 (UTC)Reply
@-sche @Urszag It occurred to me that, since Beckett's work was translated from French, the word's sense can be pinned down more firmly. According to [31] (you may need to log into Internet Archive and borrow the book for 1 hour), this passage is a translation of "Avoir vagi, puis ne pas être foutu de râler". The word vagir (to wail, as a baby) has been translated as vagitate to maintain the resemblance to vagina. We are to link vagitate to vagitus and vagient, and ultimately to Latin vāgiō.
So we need to go cite-hunting for the "wail" sense I guess... This, that and the other (talk) 00:45, 15 December 2023 (UTC)Reply
Oh interesting! I had no idea Samuel Beckett wrote that first in French and then translated it to English.--Urszag (talk) 01:06, 15 December 2023 (UTC)Reply
The "My head spins like the vagitated gears of a drunken kaleidoscope" cite is ... odd. I confirmed that the edition Google has digitized does have the italicized word vagitated spelled sic. On one hand, is this an error for another word like google:"agitated gears" or "variable gears"? On the other hand ... the text is odd — the next sentences are "Triptic may be an annex, albeit a distant one, of the Alamüte-Megalopolis, but I'm uncertain everywhere ... an empty vessel ... a king's ransom ... a three-legged bitch. The Telos-5200 cruises down the lining of my metal-trousers, conforming to the bent posture of my leg and fastening down its length. It sticks into my groin on recharge like I always imagined hot pokers might feel if carried on the wings of bluebottle flies that live in the folds of an octogenerian's crotch. As I droop in the setting sun, dreaming of the Big Dipper, the ovoid Pox Roman burns into my retina, a memory, recalled from glimpses of recalled posters. Aries is ascendant now, and like Moses, I feel horns mistranslated on my head. The dim, incommoded peacekeepers barter their way around the grafts and chasms that form the looped, meandering people-weave outside "The Tertiary Panel" maingates. In a sense they appear human, but then, in a sense, doesn't everyone ... " — so it's possible the author did pick the ghost word out of a list of obscure words, and while we might need to tweak the definition because "the wandered gears" doesn't sound right, "the randomly moved gears" works, I guess. If this is real, it's apparently a ghost word (originated as an error in the OED). - -sche (discuss) 20:36, 16 December 2023 (UTC)Reply

Sense 1 is firmly attested. Sense 2, however, has only 2 cites. This is somewhat problematic, as Samuel Beckett's work is quite prominent and the entry might not be properly comprehensible if sense 2 is not included. I want to leave this open to see if any further evidence can be found for sense 2, but also to decide how to present the entry if sense 2 is not attestable. This, that and the other (talk) 03:18, 15 November 2024 (UTC)Reply

-ster-

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The only listed derived term, in the entry or its corresponding category, is -steride. -sterone is listed as an alt form (of -ster-). Does -ster- actually exist as an interfix which is slid between various (other) pharmacology morphemes, or do only the suffixes -steride and -sterone exist? (A lot of pharmacology "interfixes" have derived terms consisting entirely of occurrences as part of one longer suffix, and I haven't had time to figure out if this is because those are the only derived terms the user happened to enter, or because the "interfix" only occurs as part of one suffix.) - -sche (discuss) 05:46, 14 December 2023 (UTC)Reply

cholesterol. LaundryPizza03 (talk) 11:10, 27 December 2023 (UTC)Reply

trust

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The etymology for it seems to be unsupported by the major dictionaries (and one newssite) and the link used to justify the change the etymology is now a dead one. A westman (talk) 19:40, 14 December 2023 (UTC)Reply

I assume you're talking about the links in the edit summary from 2 September 2022, which said "see https://www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/documents/1554/07_Dance_1803.pdf and https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1467-968X.12148_02". But I'm confused, because neither of these links is dead. They should be added as citations.--Urszag (talk) 21:32, 14 December 2023 (UTC)Reply

hailse

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Methynkes bee thys jvste Midle Englyshe Denazz (talk) 21:35, 14 December 2023 (UTC)Reply

OED has three uses from the 1500s, with some interesting spellings. EEBO needs to be searched. This, that and the other (talk) 03:15, 15 December 2023 (UTC)Reply

Fanum tax

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Internet slang joke of thieving food. See Know Your Meme. Possible hot word as it has apparently been mentioned in the media. Equinox 17:50, 15 December 2023 (UTC)Reply

I have heard this word, as in the context of things like "You're so Fanum Tax this Rizzmas, you skibidi mewer! GYATT!" CitationsFreak (talk) 20:25, 15 December 2023 (UTC)Reply

Rice Queen

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Capitalised form. Equinox 20:09, 16 December 2023 (UTC)Reply

@Equinox: Appears to be attested at [32] [33] and [34]. -saph 🍏 20:15, 16 December 2023 (UTC)Reply