Wiktionary:Tea room

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A place to ask for help on finding quotations, etymologies, or other information about particular words. The Tea room is named to accompany the Beer parlour.

For questions about the general Wiktionary policies, use the Beer parlour; for technical questions, use the Grease pit. For questions about specific content, you're in the right place.

Please do not edit section titles as this breaks links on talk pages and in other discussion fora.

Oldest tagged RFTs

• Sukhumi
  regnbuefamilie
  Euthemia
  hagdon
  lipsati
  Wesson
  monolid
  watercressing
  notch
  address
  carhouse
  RGSS
  series
  multivarious
  amen
  -stan
  червь
  چھہ
  half
  based
  α΄
  orignal
  dies Mercurii
  manso
  ၐြဳ
  ကာလယဲ
  pasar por las horcas caudinas
  monosemic
  hazelly
  Dağ Türkleri
  Aster
  smeť
  over skyerne er himlen altid blå
  rumped
  Indon
  belly dance
  on purpose
  nasal cavity
  how much
  take its toll
  bok choy
  search up
  don't try to teach grandma how to suck eggs
  speech recognition
  turn the tide
  ne bis in idem
  cornus
  code point
  one over the eight
  green privilege
  Chinese landing
  one's house in order
  native bread
  rhina
  one's heart bleeds
  gender-neutral
  chicken-or-egg question
  otocrane
  Surinam
  no thank you
  mukt
  uninvited
  away
  catalogue
  imaginary
  tweener
  radiendocrinology
  classique
  be
  smuggling raisins
  shadowing
  mandate
  war hero
  war-hero
  eat like a horse
  tacet
  lightning bruiser
  phrogging
  tjälknöl
  efilism
  Jacboson
  Andersdr
  berm
  pirmas
  arena rock
  rayon
  on someone's ass
  caviar to the general
  churtle
  Lipović
  -to
  sum of its parts
  joke
  dunnarf
  Єфінгар
  Ефингар
  

October 2024

Slavic -nik/-nica calques?

How would we refer to the phenomenon where Slavic languages derive words from a German compound word, by translating only the first half of the compound and then adding -nik or -nica at the end in place of translating the second part of the compound?

I'm talking about stuff like Serbo-Croatian железница／železnica from German Eisenbahn, or Czech and Slovak číselník (from číslo) and Macedonian бројчаник (brojčanik) from German Zifferblatt. Is there a specialist linguistic term for that?

It's not a partial calque, since that's specifically defined to have part of the word be a direct borrowing, such as Silesian waszkuchnia from German Waschküche. Any ideas? Insaneguy1083 (talk) 10:21, 1 October 2024 (UTC)

Would saying it's a clipping of a calque (or a semicalque) + -nik/-nica be adequate ? Leasnam (talk) 19:17, 1 October 2024 (UTC)

Likely calque is just more accurate. Vininn126 (talk) 09:10, 2 October 2024 (UTC)

I even dare say that semicalque isn’t accurate, this is just prompted by OP’s suggestion that it would have to be something peculiar, which I see not, rereading it the second day. Fay Freak (talk) 11:30, 2 October 2024 (UTC)

Calques don't have to account for each lexeme or etymon, in my opinion. Vininn126 (talk) 11:31, 2 October 2024 (UTC)

Aye, or morpheme on the other side, therefore it is just a calque. Fay Freak (talk) 11:40, 2 October 2024 (UTC)

Tamil ட்டாணா

I came across this term for a police station in an old grammar book (spelled ட்டாணா) and couldn't find it anywhere here, so I created this page ட்டாணா. However in the DDSA dictionaries it shows up in three forms: "ட்டாணா", "டாணா", and "தாணா"^†. I'm not sure which of these is the most canonical nowadays (or if this is even a term that is still used much), so if there is someone who knows better it would be great to hear a more informed opinion.

† This one reflects the original hindi spelling of the word "थाना" Felix.gif (talk) 12:53, 1 October 2024 (UTC)

Portuguese muçurana (“snake species”)

This word comes from Old Tupi musurana, where it referred to a kind of rope used in anthropophagic rituals. However, in the Portuguese entry, it is said that "origin of the new sense is unknown". Isn't it kind of obvious that a snake and a rope look a bit alike and the association was pretty likely, thus the semantic shift? OweOwnAwe (talk) 15:12, 1 October 2024 (UTC)

Yes, for some snakes and the snakes in question.

It can be doubted also that “term didn't refer to any snake species in that language” – Old Tupí, it can be an unattested sense, for such a language. I have procured an appendix of senses in another formerly widespread language, Aramaic, inferred only outside of it, to substantiate further such constellations, which some people seem to find hard to understand from their basic or casual linguistic reading: Appendix:Aramaic terms only attested in borrowings. Fay Freak (talk) 11:38, 2 October 2024 (UTC)

Is Twitterese a proper noun?

I created it last year as a common noun, but Mlgc1998 changed it to a proper noun yesterday. Should it not match golfese, parentese, etc.? It is capitalized because Twitter is. J3133 (talk) 07:49, 2 October 2024 (UTC)

I would say that as it means ‘the type of language used on Twitter/X’ but not necessarily actually used on the platform then it has a somewhat generic meaning and shouldn’t be treated as a proper noun (a similar phenomenon to the way hoover has been genericised). Overlordnat1 (talk) 08:02, 2 October 2024 (UTC)

Logically, I would say it is no less a proper nouns than any other language name (capitalization not being a fundamental linguistic criterion). Taking French as an example, in the sense "the French language" it can be viewed as a proper noun, due to normally being conceptualized as one unique entity. This does not prevent it from being used countably to refer to multiple French languages in special contexts: e.g. "vernacular Frenches indeed make rampant use of adverbial là". Some uses of Twitterese, golfese, parentese are clearly being used with the same kind of unique sense (the language of Twitter, the language of golf, the language of parents) and I think would be equally entitled to be called proper nouns--as a matter of logic. However, I think that in practice the proper noun/common noun distinction is not treated especially logically. It would help to have a Wikipedia style guide that outlines general conventions to use, so that we can accomplish consistency: e.g. how to categorize language names, month names, day names, ethnonyms (countable and uncountable), organizations, ethnicities, etc.--Urszag (talk) 08:31, 2 October 2024 (UTC)

No, it is no proper noun.

Previous discussion, with my arguments and further links to previous threads: Wiktionary:Beer parlour/2021/December § Language and proper noun. Fay Freak (talk) 11:32, 2 October 2024 (UTC)

Regardless of whether the names of natural languages like French are more properly common nouns – in French, the language name français is a nom commun – than the traditional properness ascribed to them, Twitterese, like journalese and the names of other lingos neologistically formed with the productive suffix -ese, are IMO definitely common nouns.  --Lambiam 12:29, 2 October 2024 (UTC)

Is look like transitive?

The verb look like is said to have a transitive sense: “To be similar in appearance to; resemble.” It has a usex:

Ostriches look like emus to some people, but they are only distantly related.

If it was truly transitive, shouldn’t one be able to say, “*Emus are looked like by ostriches to some people”? I think, in fact, that the bracketing is as in Ostriches look (like emus); after all, one can also say, Ostriches look emu-like.  --Lambiam 12:06, 2 October 2024 (UTC)

Seems intransitive to me. — Sgconlaw (talk) 12:58, 2 October 2024 (UTC)

Intransitive, it does not have an object but a predicative. Predicative expression. Fay Freak (talk) 14:07, 2 October 2024 (UTC)

Separate question, about sense 2: in which dialects is the usex "He always looks like scoring a goal" a natural-sounding sentence? (Offhand, I can only recall hearing examples like the other, rain-related usex.) - -sche (discuss) 02:26, 3 October 2024 (UTC)

It ‘looks like’ perfectly natural English to me and I doubt anyone else in the UK would raise their eyebrows at it either. I suppose ‘he looks like he’s about to score’ could be thought of as the more grammatical and formal equivalent but ‘he (always) looks like scoring (a goal)’ seems perfectly fine and commonplace to me. Overlordnat1 (talk) 05:46, 3 October 2024 (UTC)

IMO, usage in sense 2 with a gerund phrase should be marked UK or Commonwealth. In any event, not US. This would probably require some reshuffling of definitions or a usage note. Even the wording of sense 2 seems UK-ish to me. DCDuring (talk) 14:22, 3 October 2024 (UTC)

I was about to just add some more usexes and label them all by which dialects they're valid in, but I realized... all of them, all of senses 2 and 3 of look like, just... look like sense 2 of look, don't they? The difference is that only some usexes can interchange like and as if (it looks like it's going to rain, it looks like I'm stuck with you: it looks as if...), while others can't(?) (at least to me, it looks like rain is valid but *it looks as if rain isn't). It looks like / as if sense 4 of look like is wrong (or at least, not transitive) as discussed above, and senses 2 and 3 should just be defined in terms of look, pointing people to look... - -sche (discuss) 15:10, 3 October 2024 (UTC)

The viewpoint expressed about about senses 2 and 3 (now removed), which amounts to stating that in these senses look like is an SOP or a non-structural juxtaposition, is supported by the fact that look like in these senses can be replaced by seem like. This also holds for the late sense 4.  --Lambiam 16:30, 3 October 2024 (UTC)

It looks like I'm not taking my usual anti-phrasal verb position, but only because some dictionaries and idiom or phrasal-verb references (imperialistically inclusive in their domains) include look like and we often follow such lemmings. In any event, such works never have more than two definitions. As for the revised entry, if we accept the premise that it is not a phrasal verb, it looks, like, good. DCDuring (talk) 16:45, 3 October 2024 (UTC)

Anatidaeaplomb

is the confidence that everywhere, every how, a duck is watching you! Deal with it folk! Some are even watching out for you! 2001:8003:9814:C800:A58A:4A85:265B:B666 09:14, 3 October 2024 (UTC)

The original "anatidaephobia" term was awkward enough, since it used the taxonomic name for the duck family rather than for "duck" (that would be something like *anatiphobia. This is just dumb. Also, please read WT:CFI: this is what's called a protologism- something someone just made up. We don't allow entries for those. Sorry. Chuck Entz (talk) 14:07, 3 October 2024 (UTC)

Nettaphobia?  --Lambiam 16:37, 3 October 2024 (UTC)

Anatidphobia, possibly? Cremastra (talk) 16:46, 3 October 2024 (UTC)

where

There are common, informal/incorrect uses of where (and when) "where" relative conjunctions are preferred. The proscription seems based on the notion that where should be limited to location (and when to time). Such usages occur in Wiktionary definitions, often "where"/"when" the contributor doesn't bother with or buries a hypernym for the term being defined. (See [[infinite suicide]] for the definition that reminded me of this usage of "when".) I have taken a run at definitions marked as informal at [[where#Conjunction]].

Is informal the right label? Can the wording etc. be improved? The definitions offered are not substitutable in all cases that I have heard. Do we need to add them? Can (and should) the various cases be combined somehow, so as not to overemphasize such usage? DCDuring (talk) 17:48, 3 October 2024 (UTC)

'downwell' - expand to include meaning of 'downwards in gravity well'

Hi, I've come across the use of the word 'downwell' in science fiction to mean 'towards the nearest planet' i.e. towards the centre of the nearest gravity well.

References: Ancillary Sword, the second book of the Imperial Radch trilogy by Ann Leckie, and this allusion to an earlier usage: https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/223914/what-s-the-first-use-of-the-term-downwell.

I notice it's not in Wiktionary. I've never edited a Wiktionary page and thought I might (for now) make a note in case someone with more experience wants to pick up the ball here... Thankyou! Orthabok (talk) 06:10, 5 October 2024 (UTC)

@Orthabok Yes, I've noted that as well, in the Imperial Radch trilogy and also, I think, in a few books by CJ Cherryh. I will add that definition to downwell. Cremastra (talk) 15:16, 5 October 2024 (UTC)

aquatone - copyright infringement?

The first definition of aquatone appears to have been copied verbatim from https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/aquatone. Vroo (talk) 17:54, 5 October 2024 (UTC)

I cut back the detail in the def to reduce the degree. Beyond that, though, probably nothing else can be done, because a handful of words to say 'what something is' is at the level of a noncreative statement of fact alone. Quercus solaris (talk) 03:41, 7 October 2024 (UTC)

kick over the traces - kick against the pricks

Is there a difference in meaning? PUC – 09:15, 6 October 2024 (UTC)

They are perhaps near-synonyms. "Traces" clearly refers to control. "Pricks" doesn't, not matter which definition of prick is meant. I don't think that using {{syn of}} is warranted. DCDuring (talk) 16:58, 6 October 2024 (UTC)

Mutual reference in See also sections seems fine, though.  --Lambiam 20:35, 13 October 2024 (UTC)

on wiki / off wiki

do these terms, either hyphenated on not, pass criteria for inclusion? these are used very similarly to online / offline, possibly even comparable to in hospital. below are some example sentences:

On wiki, there are many discussions regarding the recent news.

These are the on-wiki protocol for arbitration.

I keep different on and off wiki identities.

Juwan (talk) 17:33, 7 October 2024 (UTC)

We have an entry for off-wiki. J3133 (talk) 17:38, 7 October 2024 (UTC)

oh, that's nice to know. is there a technical term and template for the distinction between the phrase on wiki and the adjective on-wiki that one could you to reduce redundancy here? Juwan (talk) 18:30, 7 October 2024 (UTC)

Diaeresis or umlaut?

The logo of Matthäi, a large construction company in northern Germany.

In the entry diaeresis, I added this image to illustrate the use of the diacritical mark. But now I'm wondering if it is actually an umlaut rather than a diaeresis, especially since the mark is on the a rather than the i (see the usage note at diaeresis). Some help, please? — Sgconlaw (talk) 22:22, 7 October 2024 (UTC)

Seems to me that it is an umlaut, because ä = ae is a standard transliteration and we see it in Matthaei (e.g., w:de:Matthaei and w:en:Matthaei). At https://www.youtube.com/@matthaeibauunternehmen we hear what I would transcribe as /eɪ/ for the syllable, not /e.i/; to my knowledge German does not emically use the /eɪ/ diphthong much (whereas it uses monophthong /e/ plenty), but when it needs to use it, it needs to spell it äi or aei, because ai and ei both spell the diphthong /aɪ/ in German orthography. Now I'm asking myself, when German orthography wants to spell /e.i/, how does it do it? My mind is blanking on it right now, but I must go to bed. Quercus solaris (talk) 05:26, 8 October 2024 (UTC)

@Quercus solaris: I suspect you're right. Anyway, I moved the image over to umlaut, and used a different one at diaeresis. I wish someone would take a photograph of the newly updated Brontë plaque at Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey with the diaereses added (see the 2024 quotation in the entry), so we can use it! — Sgconlaw (talk) 16:47, 8 October 2024 (UTC)

shout as he would

1. How would you place this in entry would?
   • 1922, Agatha Christie, “Chapter 16”, in The Secret Adversary:

     Shout as he would, no one could ever hear him. The place was a living tomb

Wars at my door (talk) 11:04, 8 October 2024 (UTC)

@Wars at my door: I think it's verb sense 5 ("wanted to"). — Sgconlaw (talk) 16:48, 8 October 2024 (UTC)

I would say sense 6. I think you could also use as he might and still have the same meaning. Leasnam (talk) 07:00, 13 October 2024 (UTC)

You're probably right but we could consider having entries for the phrases as one might and as one would to cover things like this. There's a discussion of 'try as I might' on StackExchange here[1].--Overlordnat1 (talk) 07:36, 13 October 2024 (UTC)

This was discussed on Wordreference at https://forum.wordreference.com/threads/try-as-he-would.3379387/ It is not any of the meanings mentioned by people in this thread. If it had to be any of the Wiktionary meanings, it would be number 3. Shout as he insisted on doing. See post 8 in the Wordreference thread. Yes, shout as he would and shout as he might mean roughly the same thing. 2A00:23C7:1D84:FE01:F65:D78F:9DE3:1B82 19:43, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

Let me revise that from meaning 1.3 to meaning 2.7 or 2.8. Shout as he might wish to. 2A00:23C7:1D84:FE01:F65:D78F:9DE3:1B82 19:45, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

I would say sense 2.2, honestly. The implication seems to be that he doesn’t scream, but would if he thought it would help. Agreed that it seems like a variation on “…as he might”. Asticky (talk) 22:11, 13 October 2024 (UTC)

Scottas: palatalization?

Old English Scottas (“Scots”) is consistently marked with the palatalization dot <sċ> /ʃ/. But it comes from Latin Scoti with /sk/, and it gives Modern English Scots with /sk/. Why do we think it was palatalized in OE? Other words with <sc> before non-front vowels do give Modern English <sh>, like scamu (“shame”). The entry mentions an alternative form Sċeottas. How common was this? Sweet's Anglo-Saxon Primer says it was /sk/ in some foreign words such as scōl (“school”) and Scottas. Hiztegilari (talk) 18:52, 9 October 2024 (UTC)

Sceottas, Sceotta [leoda], Sceotta [land] - Forms using Sceott are rare, yet occur frequently enough to not be considered aberrations. Middle English usually shows Sc-, Sk-, and Sch- [=/sk/ ?] but rarely Sh- and S- [=/ʃ/]. I would show /sk/ for Old English Scottas, but /ʃ/ for Sceottas. I would assume the stabilising effect of the Latin and Old Norse (i.e. Skotar) would keep Sc- from permanently becoming /ʃ/. Leasnam (talk) 20:55, 12 October 2024 (UTC)

DNI

I wish some help with how this term ought to be defined. it is used more flexibly beyond the phrase "do not interact", as in the usages below (taken from Twitter but I don't think I should post the original links):

no DNI

you are DNI

I am not sure when a term can be separated into a new etymology, but I believe that this warrants a separation from the other definitions for being a special case. Juwan (talk) 21:23, 9 October 2024 (UTC)

Based on a Twitter search, I assume your first example simply means "I don't have a do not interact list"; I think this is covered by noun sense 4. The second usage looks adjectival, I would define it as e.g. "Belonging to a group of people that a social media user requests not to interact with them." I agree a separate ety section is justified for these senses. Einstein2 (talk) 13:51, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

Polish powinien unused forms

Two thing:

1. The table includes forms powinnom (było) and powinnoś (było). I am no native, but surely these are not actually used? You wouldn't address yourself or your interlocutor as neuter, right? I would like to add this info, but I'm not sure how. Should I put it in the usage notes? Or should they be marked somehow in the table, or just outright removed from it? (I wouldn't know how, the table seems auto-generated.)

2. It is marked as a defective verb, which, in terms of meaning, it is. But for me, when using this to learn, that made the forms seem arbitrary, while they are not, at all. The forms come from powinien behaving as a short form adjective, which gets the same clitic endings as the past tense does to agree with the subject. (Of course these clitics originally come from forms of być, they were not necessarily past-tense endings before.) I would also like to note that somewhere, but again, I don't know where. It isn't exactly a usage note, so is it then trivia? Doesn't really sound like trivia either. Maybe mention it in the etymology? Donostia Gipuzkoa (talk) 12:33, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

I should perhaps add that I looked up powinnom and powinnoś on Reverso Context and indeed found no uses of either.

Donostia Gipuzkoa (talk) 12:38, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

@Donostia Gipuzkoa Neuter forms are often generated by both WSJP, NGJP, and many, many other sources as well, and the language council officially supports them. Forms like these are often used in science fiction and other things, as well as a minority of speakers who use neuter forms (such as aktywiszcze). While they are not common, they are often cited, and when it comes to declensions we often have rare forms, such as the vocative for nouns that rarely have them. Would you be in support of removing the vocative here, as well? Vininn126 (talk) 13:02, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

As to point two, the separate forms could be added to the table, if you mean the fact that those clitics can dettach from powinien itself. Compare other verb conjugation tables for a similar approach. Vininn126 (talk) 13:05, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

Final note, I'll add that these neuter-personal forms are attested online in various ways. Not the most common, but there. Vininn126 (talk) 13:20, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

collier #Translations

I think that the current 'unified' definition ("A person in the business or occupation of producing (digging or mining) coal or making charcoal or in its transporting or commerce") at collier makes a mess of the translation table under "person" because this definition blends a number of concepts which will be rendered with different words in most languages. (The English shift from "charcoal burner" to "coal miner" and then to "mineral coal transporter/trader" does not seem very common, perhaps a minor phenomenon in other languages at best (although the ambiguity of some glosses is not very helpful here), which is itself curious if you consider how liable to polysemy words for "coal" are.) Unsurprisingly this table is therefore a smorgasbord of terms for miners and charcoal burners with insufficient indication in the table of which is which.
Does anybody object if I split the translation table at the very least? Is it desirable to split the actual definition as well? ←₰-→ Lingo ^Bingo _Dingo (talk) 11:10, 11 October 2024 (UTC)

My two cents: go for it (splitting the transl table). As for splitting the def: I went for it; done (sense with two subsenses). Quercus solaris (talk) 21:59, 11 October 2024 (UTC)

Thanks. I went a little further and replaced the "person" table with two soft redirects to the synonyms and relocated any useful terms. ←₰-→ Lingo ^Bingo _Dingo (talk) 14:46, 12 October 2024 (UTC)

conatus

is there any consensus in how pronunciation for multiple senses, or in this case grammatical numbers, should be handled? the method used at conatus is very and also likely unaccessible. Juwan (talk) 14:17, 11 October 2024 (UTC)

I think it’s fine. I don’t see why it is “unaccessible”. — Sgconlaw (talk) 06:45, 13 October 2024 (UTC)

the combination of ; and bullets may cause some confusion to screen readers. I have seen other ways such as main bullets and subbullets or sense labels, which would be way better here, so that's why I made this question. Juwan (talk) 10:13, 13 October 2024 (UTC)

If that's what you meant, you could have explained yourself more clearly. Sure, no objection to the use of bullets and sub-bullets instead of the semicolon. That's what I would use, anyway. — Sgconlaw (talk) 22:16, 13 October 2024 (UTC)

aardbei

The sound clip for Dutch aardbei sounds like /ˈhaːrt.bɛi̯/ rather than /ˈaːrt.bɛi̯/. Does anyone else hear an initial h ? Leasnam (talk) 06:03, 13 October 2024 (UTC)

Yes it does. What I also find strange is that, despite apparently not having an ‘h’ sound, many French people seem to add one to the beginning of oui (though not in our audio). It does typically sound closer to the German ‘ch’ sound than the English ‘h’ sound when they do this though, Overlordnat1 (talk) 06:21, 13 October 2024 (UTC)

Would the current sound byte be considered incorrect or misleading ? Leasnam (talk) 17:42, 13 October 2024 (UTC)

I think both. The pronunciation of aardbaan by the same speaker (

Audio:

(file)

) does not suffer from a similar issue.  --Lambiam 20:23, 13 October 2024 (UTC)

葡萄

This word meaning "grape" is given the Pinyin transcription pútáo, but this is incorrect. It is actually pútao, with the neutral tone in the second syllable. Listen to it on Forvo. 2A00:23C7:1D84:FE01:F65:D78F:9DE3:1B82 10:46, 13 October 2024 (UTC)

I'm certainly not fluent in Chinese so I may be missing something, but it looks to me like a simple case of tone sandhi, in which case it would be a matter of phonemic vs. phonetic representation. In English, the normal pronunciation of speak, peak and beak are shown as /spiːk/, /piːk/ and /biːk/, respectively, but if you play a recording of "speak" starting after the "s", it will sound more like "beak" than like "peak". That's because English uses aspiration to represent "voicing" of initial consonants, and aspiration is suppressed after an "s".

Thus a native speaker of standard Mandarin Chinese will always pronounce a word with a second tone on both syllables the same as if it had a second tone on the first and a neutral tone on the second. Chuck Entz (talk) 15:32, 13 October 2024 (UTC)

There’s also regional variation. It seems to be pronounced with two second tones in Singapore. — Sgconlaw (talk) 04:09, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

No, it's not sandhi. In particular, "a native speaker of standard Mandarin Chinese will always pronounce a word with a second tone on both syllables the same as if it had a second tone on the first and a neutral tone on the second" is flat-out wrong. For example, 学习 is xuéxí; it is not xuéxi. If you listen to 学习 on Forvo, you will realise that. Amazingly wrong to claim that tone sandhi means the second of two second tones is in fact a neutral tone. Could it rise less high? Yes, it might, but that is not what the neutral tone is.

Having looked further into this, the Contemporary Chinese Dictionary (Xiandai Hanyu Cidian - the most authoritative mainland Chinese dictionary) has pú·táo, where the interpunct (the raised dot) signifies that the second syllable can be optionally neutral-tone, so that both pútáo and pútao are correct. Neither of you were intellectually qualified to answer my question here. I had to look into it myself. QED. 2A00:23C7:1D84:FE01:F65:D78F:9DE3:1B82 18:45, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

Category for abbreviations used in personal ads

below is a non-compressive list of many of the labels used previously in personal ads and now on other parts of the Internet, such as tagging (images, stories, etc), roleplay ads, among other usecases. I wish to request some help in how they should be added, categorised and presented on Wiktionary. I want to create a category, a list template and possibly a label for displaying these, because it is too much of a hassle to change all the pages one by one. how should these be even called is up to the question too.

I have compiled this list as to 1. exemplify what entries I want categorised and 2. for a basis for what to add in the future. I am not completely sure that all pass CFI, but that is not the point right now.

gender

• M (“male”)
• F (“female”)
• TF (“trans female”)
• TM (“trans male/man”)
• TW (“trans woman”)
• MTF (“male-to-female, trans woman”)
• FTM (“female-to-male, trans man”)
• NB (“non-binary”)
• FB (“femboy”)
• (chiefly pornography) FT (“futanari”)

 

marriage status

• SF (“single female”)
• MF (“married female”)
• DF (“divorced female”)
• SM (“single male”)
• MM (“married male”)
• DM (“divorced male”)

 

number of partners

• MF (“one man, one woman”)
• FM (“one woman, one man”)
• MM (“two men”)
• FF (“two women”)
• MMM (“three men”)
• FFF (“three women”)
• MMF (“two-men, one-woman”)
• MFF (“one-man, two-women”)
• FMM (“one-woman, two-men”)
• FFM (“two-women, one-man”)
• FMF (“two-women, one-man”)
• MFM (“two-men, one-woman”)

 

note that for FMF and MFM, the separation may mean that the two women or two men, respectively, don't interact with each other. instead only interacting with the middle partner. a user on Reddit explained well that FMF may have two straight women and FFM may have two bisexual women.

orientation

• MFM (“male for male”)
• M4M (“male for male”)
• MFF (“male for female”)
• M4F (“male for female”)
• M4A (“male for all/any”)
• MFA (“male for all/any”)
• FFM (“female for male”)
• F4M (“female for male”)
• FFF (“female for female”)
• F4F (“female for female”)
• F4A (“female for all/any”)
• FFA (“female for all/any”)
• NBFM (“non-binary for male”)
• NB4M (“non-binary for male”)
• NBFF (“non-binary for female”)
• NB4F (“non-binary for female”)
• NB4A (“non-binary for all/any”)
• NBFA (“non-binary for all/any”)
• TFT (“trans for trans”)
• T4T (“trans for trans”)
• (slang) ST4T (“straight trans for trans”)

 

in the abbreviations above, sometimes the middle F is uncapitalised to indicate the word for. the list is not even complete! because you could absolutely add multiple variations for the abbreviations listed in "gender", but I digress, that is for someone else to acheive.

there are also similar abbreviations used in fanfiction (seen below), used e.g. Alice/Bob, Alice&Bob, etc.

relationship type

• / (“romantic relationship”)
• & (“platonic relationship”)

 

any help would be appreciated! Juwan (talk) 15:09, 13 October 2024 (UTC)

Not only used in personal ads. They may also appear where (pornographic) material is produced by one person for others (like Reddit's /r/gonewildaudio), or in the descriptions of fan fiction etc. that involves certain combinations of people having sex. 2A00:23C5:FE1C:3701:580C:F1AF:B902:5AA6 16:32, 13 October 2024 (UTC)

that's completely true! exactly why it needs to include more than just personal ads. Juwan (talk) 16:36, 13 October 2024 (UTC)

I support creating a category and label for these terms, although I'm not sure how they should be called. Another more general classified ads category may also be useful (for terms like pcm (“per calendar month”), w2w (“wall-to-wall”), etc.). Einstein2 (talk) 16:16, 31 October 2024 (UTC)

@Einstein2 I support that too! Juwan (talk) 18:42, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

protactic

There's a modern term for this... what is it? P. Sovjunk (talk) 20:03, 13 October 2024 (UTC)

Well, prologetic is synonymous but not modern or common. The word that my brain most reaches for is prefatory. Quercus solaris (talk) 05:01, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

scrolloping

Seems to be word invented by Virginia Woolf and used in several of her books. But also it seems to have been included in an OED supplement according to the journal Notes & Queries. I don't have access to any OED content so I can't confirm this or find out what the word actually means. Any idea if this word is attestable enough to include? Any idea what it means? Nosferattus (talk) 21:16, 13 October 2024 (UTC)

@Nosferattus: Alternative form of lolloping as already in a 1998 online newspaper culture piece with an additional quote (to multiple of Woolf, to it is not just a one-off) from an apparently then popular poet seems right to me. Fay Freak (talk) 21:29, 13 October 2024 (UTC)

Hmm, are you sure about the meaning? I came across the word in the sentence "He tore, in one rending, the scrolloping, emblazoned scroll which he had made out in his own favour in the solitude of his room appointing himself, as the King appoints Ambassadors, the first poet of his race, the first writer of his age, conferring eternal immortality upon his soul and granting his body a grave among laurels and the intangible banners of a people's reverence perpetually." I don't think lolloping would make sense there. The word seems to have something to do with being ornate and pretentious. Does anyone have access to the OED definition? Nosferattus (talk) 21:50, 13 October 2024 (UTC)

@Nosferattus: If you pick a piece of paper or even metal it can bend, wave, a bit. It may also be just a perceptional aspect, like surely the cucumbers look wavy, but not so much as to justify the word “wavy” or similar, so they use this understatement which also means “to lie around lazily”. It’s so dainty that only this few upper-class people know the word. Fay Freak (talk) 22:04, 13 October 2024 (UTC)

@Nosferattus: It befits to note that she has the matching neurodivergence; the authoress’s mood toward an object goes otherwhither as juxtaposed with mine or thine. “From the age of 13, Woolf had symptoms that today would be diagnosed as bipolar disorder.” Fay Freak (talk) 22:14, 13 October 2024 (UTC)

I suppose that would explain her unfortunate tendency toward autodefenestration. Nosferattus (talk) 22:25, 13 October 2024 (UTC)

@Fay Freak: I found an interesting comment on the OED's inclusion of scrolloping in The Oxford History of English Lexicography: "[Robert] Burchfield emphasized many times (e.g. Vol. 1: xiv) his fondness for inclusion of the hapax legomena and eccentric usages of major literary writers (Beckett’s athambia, Joyce’s peccaminous, Woolf’s scrolloping, Edith Sitwell’s Martha-coloured, etc.)." Nosferattus (talk) 21:23, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

I finally found the OED's definition of scrolloping: "Characterized by or possessing heavy, florid, ornament. Also transferred and as present participle, proceeding in involutions, rambling." Nosferattus (talk) 21:27, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

@Nosferattus: Which expresses the same as what I said, without the etymological and psychographic backing. rambling: ‘winding irregularly in various directions’, involute: winding regularly in various directions. What ornaments and flowers (florid) often are heavily. Fay Freak (talk) 22:07, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

Brush with death?

Just want to make sure brush with death meets the criteria, since I was kinda surprised it didn’t have an entry before. It’s clearly a specific use case of sense 6 of brush, but it makes up such a vast majority of uses that I would be inclined to say that “brush with {something else}” is an extension of “brush with death” for modern speakers Asticky (talk) 22:28, 13 October 2024 (UTC)

It doesn't look inclusion-worthy under WT:CFI. The appropriate definition of brush is "A short and sometimes occasional encounter or experience." That definition could be improved by mentioning that it is frequently complemented by a preposition phrase headed by with and having usage examples with a few of the common nouns in such phrases. DCDuring (talk) 01:14, 14 October 2024 (UTC) DCDuring (talk) 01:14, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

𑍐(om)

weird things on the 𑍐 page. if you go to alternative scripts, it shows "sa" as being all of the transliterations. i'd assume that this is because sa is sanskrit language code, and someone mistakenly put it in, but then i looked at the ꦎꦴꦀ page. now everything is औम̐ (that's औ + म + ँ) and gujarati is suspiciously missing. same happens for ওঁ and 𑖌𑖼, while ᬒᬁ and 𑓇 have the "sa" problem again. brahmi 𑀑𑀁 and kannada ಓಂ have ओं (makes sense, that's literally what it is) but it seems like "sa-alt|Deva=ॐ" is not working on any of these pages. Does anyone have an explanation, and hopefully a fix? NS1729 (talk) 00:25, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

killed in action

What does everyone think about the photos and text "Many Confederate generals were killed in battle" added to this entry? Would it be considered as encyclopedic content and thus inappropriate for Wiktionary? ---> Tooironic (talk) 10:11, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

I think it is no illustration of the term. I mean those individuals have not been told “let us have a photo shoot just in case we need illustration for your having died in action specifically.” Fay Freak (talk) 16:18, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

I've removed it. The Confederacy is an extremely politically-loaded issue in the US, so what looks like a shrine to people who fought to preserve slavery (it's more complicated than that- someone from the South might frame it quite differently) added just before a presidential election is definitely a violation of NPOV. If an IP had added it, I would have reverted it and blocked the perpetrator. Instead, it's just another demonstration of poor judgment by a marginal contributor best known for adding bad categories. Chuck Entz (talk) 17:27, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

Thank you both for dealing with this. I thought it looked out of place. ---> Tooironic (talk) 22:21, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

While we're at it, I'm not entirely comfortable with this entry. First of all, is this really an adjective? The verb is definitely restricted in how it can be used, but "killing in action", although rare, might very well pass CFI. Part of it is the nature of "kill" and "in action" which have very strict semantic restraints built in. "Kill" in the context of an individual patient seems to be restricted to a single action- it may take a while, but it's a single action. "In action" seems to be restricted to the kinds of things characteristic of combat: "fed in combat" sounds silly, though it's definitely something that has happened a lot over the history of war (see mess kit, K-rations, an army marches on its stomach, etc.).

The distinction between killed in action and missing in action is instructive: you can say "went missing in action", but "went killed in action" sounds odd. The equivalent of "missing", where killing is concerned, is "dead", not "killed". Part of it is no doubt the contrast between transitive/active and intransitive/stative, but it seems more than that.

Which brings up the second part: given the semantic (and syntactic?) restrictions on the parts, it seems like this might also be SOP. You could say "killed while fighting a war", "killed in combat", "shot in action", etc. Chuck Entz (talk) 00:09, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

You are right that it is no adjective, since in a sentence structure killed is part of the inflection of the verb in the passive (for which we need forms of to be as auxiliaries, but the page misleadingly assumes them full verbs accompanied by a predicatively used adjective) and in action an adverb, verb phrase and adverbial phrase. This means it is a non-constituent, for which we apparently use the header Phrase as in cooking with gas. Fay Freak (talk) 22:30, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

Is a folded leaflet a "folder" in English?

The Swedish word folder (“folded leaflet”) originates from the English word folder. However, should it be categorized as an "unadapted borrowing" or a "pseudo-anglicism"? The English definition does not explicitly include meanings like brochure or leaflet, although dictionary entries are rarely comprehensive. – Christoffre (talk) 10:23, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

I am not familiar with a "leaflet, brochure" definition for folder in US English, but it is certainly possible that it has the meaning in some contexts, such as advertising or printing. DCDuring (talk) 13:02, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

Agreed on both points. The sense is absent from general usage, but if an initiate were to tell me that it exists as a jargon sense in certain subspecialties of the printing business (e.g., direct mail), it would not surprise me. Quercus solaris (talk) 14:15, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

I guess that I'll keep it as "unadapted borrowing" then, unless we can prove the negative. – Christoffre (talk) 19:05, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

airlift, v.

What does this verb from today’s news mean? “The vice president appears to have airlifted sections of her book […]”. I could add an empty ({{rfdef}}) definition with this quote, but I am not going to do this before the election—in consideration of the professional ethics of the lexicographer as well as avoidance of a resurrection of Orange Jesus—, and when searching for other quotes in relation to plagiarism in particular, I get too noisy spam advertising plagiarism checks. Seems like some recent academia slang, though the plagiarism has been found by a notorious German-native researcher. Fay Freak (talk) 14:04, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

Looks to be an expressive synonym of lift, as you said, meaning to take. Vininn126 (talk) 15:26, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

Thanks. A peculiar way of morphologically adding expressiveness, if so. Perhaps @Einstein2 can prove it with further occurrences. Fay Freak (talk) 15:45, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

I will try and look for attestations once I regain access to Internet Archive and Newspapers.com. Einstein2 (talk) 16:00, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

Simon Armitage, A Vertical Art: On Poetry (2022), page 243, takes the metaphor a step further: " […] an entire system-built section has been airlifted from one text and parachuted into another." - -sche (discuss) 08:07, 18 October 2024 (UTC)

I'd interpret such attestation as being of an expressive metaphor, not that airlift (steal) had entered the lexicon. DCDuring (talk) 13:16, 18 October 2024 (UTC)

You can see it this way, but it is not mutually exlusive. I like the idea of expressive inventions decidedly fusing two etymological origins at the same time, the literal senses of airlift and the older senses of the verb lift ‘to steal, also intellectual property’, and thus entering the lexicon. Fay Freak (talk) 15:16, 18 October 2024 (UTC)

I know, but -sche's cite shows that the metaphor is both alive and kicking, not that it has entered the lexicon. DCDuring (talk) 18:15, 18 October 2024 (UTC)

This seems like an arbitrary distinction - plenty of freshly coined words (like random adverbs derived from adjectives or un- words or -ness words) are nonce words, yet given enough quotes we document them. Are you against such nonce words too, or just neologisms that go against your sensibilities? Vininn126 (talk) 18:20, 18 October 2024 (UTC)

It is just an untrue insinuation that a metaphor must be a dead metaphor to enter the lexicon. Fay Freak (talk) 21:00, 18 October 2024 (UTC)

If it has entered the lexicon, it shouldn't be hard to find cites without depending on those that merely show the the term nosing into the tent of lexicality. (The appropriate sense of nose#Verb does not seem well covered by our definitions.) DCDuring (talk) 04:30, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

Would you feel the same way about rare words suffixed with -ness? Vininn126 (talk) 08:21, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

Yes. PUC – 20:01, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

"Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch" is not English-language but is listed as such in definition

the definition of Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch is said to be the "longest English-language settlement name in the world" in the English definition, but the town name is Welsh-language. saying it's English language is technically wrong and a wee bit anglocentric, but I'm a new editor and I'm not sure if I'm making a big fuss out of nothing. thoughts? Thefollyof (talk) 02:16, 16 October 2024 (UTC)

We list it as an English term, so saying that it's anglocentric feels a bit weird. The reason we do that is because it's used in English running text as a native word. I edited it to say "English name" because there are other, longer place names in the world in other languages, like กรุงเทพมหานคร อมรรัตนโกสินทร์ มหินทรายุธยา มหาดิลกภพ นพรัตนราชธานีบูรีรมย์ อุดมราชนิเวศน์มหาสถาน อมรพิมานอวตารสถิต สักกะทัตติยวิษณุกรรมประสิทธิ์, the full Thai name of Bangkok. CitationsFreak (talk) 02:33, 16 October 2024 (UTC)

fw heavy

Usage note... As with 𝓯𝓻𝓮𝓪𝓴𝔂 (freaky), this is often written in a cursive font: 𝓘 𝓯𝔀 𝔂𝓸𝓾 𝓱𝓮𝓪𝓿𝔂 𝓫𝓻𝓸❤️. 𝔀t𝓯??? P. Sovjunk (talk) 21:47, 16 October 2024 (UTC)

On a different note, this is SoP Leasnam (talk) 03:23, 18 October 2024 (UTC)

“invoker or invokee”

Old Norse goði has this definition: “godi, invoker or invokee, chief of a þing or keeper of a sanctuary”. Its Icelandic descendant goði has: “(historical) godi, an alternate title for a jarl, invoker or invokee, chief of a þing”. Finally, Old Norse goð has, under Related terms, “goði (“alternate title for a jarl, invoker or invokee”)”. What information is this meant to convey?  --Lambiam 07:17, 18 October 2024 (UTC)

Added in diff, FWIW. - -sche (discuss) 07:59, 18 October 2024 (UTC)

rationalize

I note that someone has added a quotation into the second definition to this entry. Is that appropriate? ---> Tooironic (talk) 08:04, 18 October 2024 (UTC)

Of course it is, why wouldn’t it be? Overlordnat1 (talk) 09:40, 18 October 2024 (UTC)

I've never seen a quotation added directly onto the definition line. It doesn't look right. ---> Tooironic (talk) 11:22, 18 October 2024 (UTC)

It’s actually officially against policy to display the quotations in any other way, as per Wiktionary:Votes/2024-07/Remove "Quotations" sections Overlordnat1 (talk) 12:06, 18 October 2024 (UTC)

I can't tell whether you're joking, or misunderstanding what the vote did and what the entry was doing. 😅 I've removed the quote from inside the definition, which didn't use the word (or else I would've reformatted it as a #* quote). - -sche (discuss) 17:16, 18 October 2024 (UTC)

I thought the REM quote was being referred to, not the dodgy reference. Clearly I got my wires crossed. --Overlordnat1 (talk) 01:47, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

It was a fine definition for the noun rationalization. I've used an element of it to tweak our definition.  --Lambiam 08:21, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

virus – collective or plural?

We list a sense of virus as: “(uncountable) A quantity of such infectious agents”, supported by a quotation: “... unseen pests and diseases (particularly small insects and microbes such as virus or bacteria) whose populations might explode catastrophically ...”. When I read this, it seems to me that the authors of this sentence use virus as a plural noun, not as a (singular) collective. Other uses of virus that appear plural to me:

• “Chronic diseases: what about infections of virus and prions via the gut? ... methodological improvements have made it possible to study virus and other microorganisms” (→DOI);
• “Citrus is also subjected to various biotic stresses, especially caused by virus and viroids which limit the vigor, yield, and quality of the plant.” (→DOI).

Possibly, this was done in (misplaced) analogy with other Latin loanwords in -us that are unchanged in the plural, such as consensus, detritus, domus and lapsus.

The definition of the first sense seems to be that of a single particle, a virion, whereas the uses usually have the sense of an infectious agent formed by such particles, or even, specifically, that of a species, as seen in the second quotation of the first sense, “Bats host many high-profile viruses that can infect humans, including severe acute respiratory syndrome and Ebola.” The meaning here is obviously not “many virions”, but “many virus species”.  --Lambiam 09:22, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

I think that you are correct in parsing those citations as most likely reflecting the writer's intent for a zero-inflection plural count-noun sense (i.e., a null morpheme form) rather than truly using the mass-noun sense (uncountable-noun sense). But what must be added in the same breath, in my view, are the following points: (1) that this is nonstandard: many speakers would view this as catachrestic, which does not mean that it does not exist (descriptively) nor that a dictionary can't enter it but merely that a dictionary should (not fail to) apply the nonstandard label to adequately describe it; and (2) that the mass-noun sense also certainly exists, which can be shown with other citations (an example ux: they found much virus in the sample [ = they found a high viral load in it]), and is certainly standard. I agree that the citations you shared here are not the ones to use for supporting the mass-noun sense. Quercus solaris (talk) 15:51, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

Plenty of attestation of much virus in textbooks, medical journals and reports, etc. I don't think it is an error of any kind. It reflects the notion that microbes are, in usual practice, never counted and would be very difficult to count. The use of the plural would also raise the need to be committed to a view of whether different species of virus (or other microbe) were involved. DCDuring (talk) 16:15, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

There are two things going on, not to be conflated: (1) a mass sense which is pluralized to mean "types of that mass noun" (directly comparable with "much butter" (mass noun) and "a variety of herb butters" [which denotes types of herb butter as a mass noun) (another example: "much paint" [mass] and "a selection of alkyd paints" [types of mass]), and (2) a count sense, in which the declension is (a) virus, viruses (sg, pl) (standard) (example: "this virus, norovirus, sometimes causes outbreaks of gastroenteritis" and "those viruses, the enteroviruses, include X and Y") or (b) virus, virus (sg, pl) (nonstandard, involving a null morpheme, comparable with sheep and moose as null-morpheme plural inflections, which for those words is standard). Quercus solaris (talk) 17:13, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

I think we generally have a simpler typology for nouns: countable nouns, singular countable nouns, and plural countable nouns. I don't recall anyone suggesting that mass nouns have plural forms. We often have a countable sense for a usually uncountable noun X "(countable) a kind of X." DCDuring (talk) 21:33, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

Many mass nouns in English have plural inflections, denoting types of that mass noun or portions/servings of it. Which metalanguage or typology people choose to describe that phenomenon may vary. Some beers are made with hops; some steels have more manganese than others do. Those utterances are about kinds/types. Explanations of mass nouns that say that they "don't have plural forms" are just lazily written. Others do a better job by saying things such as "usually aren't used in the plural form" or similar. Quercus solaris (talk) 23:07, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

The typology English Wiktionary has chosen does not require distinguishing between the plural of the uncountable and countable nouns. We treat that sort of usage ("kinds of [uncountable noun]") as a countable definition of the (un)countable noun. In any event, I don't think the typology changes how we present such words, nor whether virus is sometimes used uncountably. DCDuring (talk) 15:18, 20 October 2024 (UTC)

Agreed on both points. As my comments said, it often is used uncountably. Quercus solaris (talk) 15:46, 20 October 2024 (UTC)

PS: there is also a count sense of the word virus that means virion (viral particle, virus particle), although plenty of people there are some people who prescribe that it be avoided because they consider it loose. The label for that sense would could be sometimes proscribed. Quercus solaris (talk) 18:10, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

It's news to me that anyone would proscribe using "virus" as a count noun to refer to the specific infectious particle. The OED includes a 1960 citation with this use in its entry: "There are some particles smaller than any known cell, the viruses, which are regarded by some biologists as being alive" (D. C. Braungart & R. Buddeke, Introduction to Animal Biology (ed. 5) ii).--Urszag (talk) 19:24, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

Re news, it depends on whose preferences (and pedantry) one is exposed to. There are some people who subscribe to the idea of "don't say 'virus' when you mean 'virion'", which allows them to reserve 'virus' to the sense meaning "viral species". I should have said "some" rather than "plenty". Quercus solaris (talk) 20:35, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

As virus is abundantly used both uncountably and countably and even sometimes indistinguishably from virion, we don't have to prescribe and generally shouldn't anyway. DCDuring (talk) 15:18, 20 October 2024 (UTC)

Agreed; moreover, I think it can accurately be said that Wiktionary should never prescribe usage (that is, in its "own voice", as it were, which would be POV), but it should succinctly inform its users about prescriptions that exist, which is just recording an NPOV fact. It does this well and unobtrusively whenever it uses a short label such as nonstandard or sometimes proscribed. Importantly, those labels are descriptive: they don't claim to declare what is "correct" or "wrong", they only record that some people think that X or Y is correct or wrong. Quercus solaris (talk) 15:46, 20 October 2024 (UTC)

Sylki

@WordyAndNerdy added the “en:Heterosexual ships (fandom)” category to this entry; I restored it after seeing that someone reverted it without providing any reason. It was removed again, with the summary,

Both Loki and Sylvie are canonically bisexual, therefore they shouldn't be included in the "en:Heterosexual ships (fandom)" category.

In my second revert, I wrote,

“Heterosexual” in this category (“Heterosexual ships (fandom)‎”) refers to the ship, not the characters.

as the category is “for specific ships between characters of different genders”, but purportedly,

Since both the characters Loki and Sylvie are canonically bisexual, the ship is a bisexual ship. Therefore, they shouldn't be included in the "en:Heterosexual ships (fandom)" category, otherwise it could be considered an act of bisexual erasure (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bisexual_erasure). The lack of a category for bisexual ships, or a broader LGBTQ category shouldn't be reason enough to conflate a ship of bisexual characters in a heterosexual category.

J3133 (talk) 12:00, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

I see where the IP is coming from, but I also agree with you about what the scope of the category should be... I think the issue is the category name, and we could solve this by renaming the categories to more clearly reflect their stated scopes (viz. "specific ships between characters of different genders", "specific ships between characters of the same sex"). I suggest renaming the categories to something like "Same-gender ships (fandom)" (and m.m. "Different-..."). (Perhaps WAN or anyone else can foresee if that would cause any different issues.) - -sche (discuss) 17:34, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

Category:Heterosexual ships (fandom) is based on the gender/sex composition of the couple. "Bisexual ship" has too many interpretations to be functional as a category. The most straightforward would be any ship composed of two bisexual characters. But it could potentially also include any couple featuring a single bisexual character. I've seen the F/F ship Lumity referred to as a "bi ship" since one of its members is canonically bisexual. And what about canonically pansexual characters? Lumping them into a "bisexual" category might be viewed as its own form of erasure. Plus in fannish contexts "bisexual ship" may also refer to ships that have varying canonical gender composition due to fantasy/sci-fi reasons (Doctor/Master) or customizable player characters (Shenko, Fenhawke, etc.). It doesn't seem feasible to account for all these nuances within the framework of the categorisation system.

I would support a rename from "Category:Heterosexual ships (fandom)" to "Category:F/M ships (fandom)." This would bring it into line with "Category:M/M ships (fandom)" and "Category:F/F ships (fandom)." I think that "same-gender ships" (or "same-sex ships") could potentially perpetuate the existing issue with the het category being the odd one out.

Can we also remove the clunky "fandom" disambiguators from these categories? They don't seem necessary except for Category:Ships (fandom) and Category:Shipping (fandom). I don't think there's ever going to be a real need to disambiguate the lesbian character relationship category from a category for lesbian boats. WordyAndNerdy (talk) 00:40, 20 October 2024 (UTC)

As an aside Sylki would fit under Category:Selfcest ships if there's any interest in such a category. WordyAndNerdy (talk) WordyAndNerdy (talk) 01:08, 20 October 2024 (UTC)

Good point, naming them F/M ships (etc) would also work (and no objection to dropping "fandom" from the name here). - -sche (discuss) 02:37, 20 October 2024 (UTC)

@WordyAndNerdy: I also support “F/M”, to match the “M/M” and “F/F” categories. J3133 (talk) 05:46, 21 October 2024 (UTC)

I think we can also delete Category:en:Homosexual ships (fandom) and its parent category. From what I remember this category was originally created by another user to house both M/M and F/F ships. I created the M/M and F/F categories to create separation (and also to avoid the dated connotations of homosexual). WordyAndNerdy (talk) 01:59, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

An additional possible interpretation of "bisexual ship" is OT3s with characters of multiple genders. There's currently only one entry that fits that bill (Clexana), though not for lack of trying on my part. WordyAndNerdy (talk) 04:17, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

@WordyAndNerdy: Should I make an RfM? Also, I suppose the current “Heterosexual” category, as “for specific ships between characters of different genders”, would include ships between non-binary and male/female characters, whereas “M/F” would not. J3133 (talk) 05:28, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

If there are no objections to renaming the category "Category:F/M ships", I will try to just make that change with AWB soon. I will also delete "Category:en:Homosexual ships (fandom)", it seems to serve no purpose anymore: its two subcategories can just go into the next-higher categories (shipping and LGBT) directly. - -sche (discuss) 03:51, 27 October 2024 (UTC)

I've moved/renamed the "heterosexual ships" cat, and removed the "homosexual ships" category. (The F/F and M/M cats have yet to be moved/renamed.) - -sche (discuss) 01:05, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

@-sche, WordyAndNerdy: I have added another sense to heterosexual (“(of a romantic or sexual act or relationship) Between two people of different sex.”) to match the second sense at homosexual (“(of a romantic or sexual act or relationship, formal, distancing or dated) Between two people of the same sex; gay.”). J3133 (talk) 08:32, 20 October 2024 (UTC)

formality

Senses 2, 3 and 4 sound very similar, can't we condense them into two or even one? PUC – 17:20, 20 October 2024 (UTC)

Older dictionaries (Century 1911, MW 1913, Webster 1828) have as many as 8 definitions, newer ones only 3. We sometimes claim to be a historical dictionary. Are we missing something needed to understand how older works used formality? — This unsigned comment was added by DCDuring (talk • contribs) at 17:39, 20 October 2024 (UTC).

Possibly two, but definitely not one. The formalities of a taxonomy are usually not (mere) formalities, if you see what I mean. All of the word's more specific/particular senses are, logically (and formally 😉), subsenses under the broadest one meaning "the state or an instance of being formal", but if a Wiktionarian consensus refuses to indent them (##), the flaw is venial. Quercus solaris (talk) 17:51, 20 October 2024 (UTC)

demon

Discussion moved from Wiktionary talk:Tea room/2024/October#demon.

I would like to dispute one of the definitions of the word "demon" on this website. It's definition 1 sense 1; I have no idea of the proper jargon, so I may have butchered this (I'm new to Wiktionary). If I butchered it, let me just quote it: "An evil spirit resident in or working for Hell; a devil." The Bible seems to indicate that demons do not come from hell but are instead going to hell after the second coming of Christ (Mt. 25:41, Rev. 20:10). The place they are currently locked up, most often referred to as "the abyss" or "the bottomless pit" depending on the translation (Luke 8:31, Rev. 20:1-3), is a temporary prison where they are held until it is time for God's judgment (2 Pet. 2:4, HCSB; Jude 1:6). So, maybe the definition should be altered in order to account for the disparity between popular belief and the Scriptures, because the current definition seems biased towards one belief system.

Note: All BIble verses are from the New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition except for 2 Peter 2:4, for which I decided to cite from the Holman Christian Standard Bible. I chose that translation because where most translations chose to translate "Tartarus" as "hell", which I feel is erroneous, this one chose to use the Greek term, which I feel shines a better light on the verse's meaning. NAIO23 (talk) 23:15, 20 October 2024 (UTC)

@NAIO23: this is the correct place to post this. The talk page is just for talking about the Tea Room, not posting to it. Chuck Entz (talk) 00:14, 21 October 2024 (UTC)

As to substance: "hell" is a Germanic word that originally referred to a place in Germanic mythology. The scriptures use a lot of different terms that require a great deal of interpretation to arrange into a coherent picture. The interpretations that have led to the cosmology in general English usage are different from yours, but that doesn't mean one or the other is the "correct" one. Complicating things is the usage of pagan Greek names by Jesus and others to refer to things: for instance, the "gates of Hell" is "πύλαι ᾅδου", literally "gates of Hades", and 2 Peter 2:4 uses the verb ταρταρόω, "to cast into Tartarus"- a verb also used by Homer in the Iliad. What you distinguish as the true Hell is described in various ways: Matthew 25:41 says "πῦρ τὸ αἰώνιον", "the eternal fire" and Revelations 20:10 refers to casting εἰς τὴν λίμνην τοῦ πυρὸς καὶ θείου, "into the lake of fire and sulfur". Revelations 20:14 refers to ὁ θάνατος καὶ ὁ ᾅδης, "Death and Hades" being thrown into the same lake of fire and sulfur. As for Luke 8:31, it does use ἄβυσσον, "abyss", but who's to say that's mutually exclusive with "hell"? Jude 1:6 says the fallen angels "εἰς κρίσιν μεγάλης ἡμέρας δεσμοῖς ἀϊδίοις ὑπὸ ζόφον τετήρηκεν", "unto the day of great judgment are being kept in eternal chains under deepest darkness" (or something like that).

As you can see, the actual wording doesn't support your clear-cut distinction between the current places of imprisonment and punishment and the "hell" of the time after the Last Judgment. That doesn't necessarily mean you're wrong, but a descriptive dictionary based on usage can't override popular conceptions based on your interpretation alone. Chuck Entz (talk) 01:45, 21 October 2024 (UTC)

We record the senses of terms as they are actually used by speakers of the language in question. For example, just in books from the 17th and 18th centuries we see uses such as

• “a demon from hell”;^[2][3][4][5]
• “demons from hell”;^[6]
• “his demons in hell”.^[7]

 --Lambiam 19:33, 21 October 2024 (UTC)

baozi Pronunciation

Hey, a pronunciation audio was added to baozi page. I feel it reflects an "incorrect" but likely common pronunciation. Regardless of my opinion, what would the appropriate label for this pronunciation be? I don't want readers thinking this is the standard pronunciation (unless it is somehow??). Thanks! Geographyinitiative (talk) 19:21, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

It doesn't even follow any of the IPA transcriptions. I'd say it's wrong, but I don't know if some Americans pronounce it that way. — Sgconlaw (talk) 20:43, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

German Bruch: definitionally usually fit for pastoral use?

Back in 2018, an IP changed the definition to say that a Bruch is "usually [...] fit for pastoral use, rather than [an] actual bog[] or swamp[]". I have not spotted this detail in other dictionaries (nor when searching Google Books for any books confirming or denying it), all of which just define it as a forested swampy area. (In contrast, I have managed to find information about whether various other wetland words typically refer to inhabited or cultivated or pastoral or uncultivatable places.) Can anyone confirm or deny this detail? - -sche (discuss) 22:09, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

I think I may have been that IP. I have at any rate worked on the entry. Now, the DWB(1) says "es ist also, wie aue, ein feuchter wiesengrund, der beweidet und betreten werden kann". This may be the origin of the passage. Other dictionaries do say that "Bruch" has trees and brushes, which in my understanding suggests that it's not the same as "Moor" (bog), but might be the same as "Sumpf" (swamp). 92.218.236.85 17:00, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

Sleboggan

Sle from sled Boggan from toboggan

Sleboggan Register Trademark acquired by william c herrick First used in October 2011 Patent definition: Device for steering a toboggan 67.172.45.36 11:21, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

Teuton

In the Etymology section of Teuton we display quite a bit of etymological information typically reserved for Descendant sections of word entries. Is there a reason why we show this detail on the page ? Leasnam (talk) 19:42, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

• It seems excessive. I would just mention that it's cognate with deutsch, and point people to the proto-Germanic entry for more information about cognates in other languages. That's at least useful information (the organisation that in English is called the Teutonic Order is just called the Deutscher Orden in German). Smurrayinchester (talk) 12:56, 31 October 2024 (UTC)

am

Per Wiktionary's "include all definitions people use, not just the ones that are considered proper", the use of "am" as a third person singular present tense form (with an appropriate label) should be included; an example is the phrase "the battle am in my hand" from "Joshua Fought the Battle of Jericho". Georgia guy (talk) 14:55, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

As long as you can cite attestations that meet the criteria set forth in [Criteria_for_inclusion], then yes. Leasnam (talk) 21:01, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

For the few very irregular verbs like this, I suppose having separate sense lines may be the way to go, but it's worth noting that a lot of (sub)varieties of English do this kind of thing with every arbitrary verb, as a grammatical rather than a lexical thing (just like every English word, including classes of words like adverbs that don't normally pluralize, can be pluralized when referring to how many slowlys a document contains, which we decided not to include). See Wiktionary:Tea_room/2017/August#hates. So hopefully more people can weigh in on what they think should be done here, because I think we'd benefit from a discussion of whether this kind of thing is best handled word by word by word as a lexical thing, or just by Appendix:English grammar. - -sche (discuss) 01:51, 27 October 2024 (UTC)

Given that the English of the slaves came from one or more English-based pidgin languages, paradigmatic leveling of a suppletive verb like this is thoroughly plausible. On the other hand, there's a lot of early attestation that made fun of the slaves by turning their speech into caricatured "plantationese" so everyone could laugh at how illiterate they were. I'm not sure where this fits on the continuum from "plantationese" to AAVE. Chuck Entz (talk) 02:37, 27 October 2024 (UTC)

Some versions of the lyrics of "Polly Wolly Doodle" also use "am" this way. Georgia guy (talk) 23:27, 31 October 2024 (UTC)

tidy w.r.t. data science

I take CompSci at university, and I recently learned that "tidy" in data science (usually in R Programming, sometimes in Python as well) refers to a specific way of formatting datasets, although obviously this is hardly new knowledge to anyone. Should that definition be included here? Since other science-y definitions to regular English terms are also included on Wiktionary. Insaneguy1083 (talk) 07:07, 27 October 2024 (UTC)

Seems appropriate. I added the sense at tidy#Adjective. Quercus solaris (talk) 20:08, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

Russian colloquialisms

Seems like that Russian colloquialisms have a different criteria from English. Like, вперемежку and вперемешку are indeed rare to find in official documents, but it is definitely not pure colloquialisms, and they are pretty normal in serious conversations or books etc. Such words are just not used in bureaucratical setting. So are they colloquial at all? Tollef Salemann (talk) 12:31, 27 October 2024 (UTC)

No. “colloquial” does not mean “cannot be used in formal settings”, and it certainly does not mean “nonstandard”. That’s why we have labellings “colloquial, law” and “slang, law”. There is elbow room to use the terms for clarity and/or artistic licence, but since there are many different ways to express the same only the latter consideration applies, which does not apply to official documents so much. Fay Freak (talk) 14:42, 27 October 2024 (UTC)

Wiktionary has a phrase "low colloquial" for просторечие. "Colloquial" is разговорный язык. There is therefore a difference between colloquial uses of the sort all speakers of a language resort to in conversation, and low colloquial uses seen as sub-standing in some way. I'm reading a book about conversational Russian, Outline of Colloquial/Conversational Russian: Linguistic Overview of the System by James Holbrook, in which he emphasises the difference. He argues that pronouncing действительно as диситна is not low colloquial, but something everyone does, for example. 2A00:23C7:1D84:FE01:F65:D78F:9DE3:1B82 09:50, 31 October 2024 (UTC)

Whoops. I meant to write "sub-standard". I don't know why I wrote "sub-standing", but I can't edit it. 2A00:23C7:1D84:FE01:F65:D78F:9DE3:1B82 11:11, 31 October 2024 (UTC)

Wal-Mart

Wal-Mart should be created as a redirect to Walmart. It was the store's old spelling before they changed it to Walmart. I tried to redirect it, but it said that "you do not have permission to create this page." 2600:1700:4410:47A0:155:A798:7C9B:255E 14:17, 27 October 2024 (UTC)

I think I can create that entry, reliably sourced & with example quotations. Nevermind, back on 12 Jan 2008, it was deleted because it "failed RFD or RFV: does not meet current requirements for brand-name entries". Erminwin (talk) 15:53, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

Nevermind. It looks like the issue is solved. Wal-Mart has been removed as an alternative form in the Walmart entry. 2600:1700:4410:47A0:B350:39A8:E42:F010 19

49, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

rheumides

Old medical term: is it just herpes? Linkyspoot (talk) 11:08, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

Can you find usage of the term, preferrably in conformity with WT:ATTEST (not just in dictionaries)? DCDuring (talk) 14:27, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

Someone else can do that if they want. I'm too busty Linkyspoot (talk) 14:29, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

Quit your boasting.

In any event, consider this, from an 1877 medical journal: Thus Piffard, in speaking of the rheumides (in this class he puts eczema, psoriasis, pityriasis, etc.) says, "it may be formally stated that the affections pertaining to this diathesis are all probably due to an accumulation in the blood of an excess of certain excrementitious substances, and presumably those that are efficient in the causation of gout and rheumatism. DCDuring (talk) 14:33, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

This is an obsolete term in the classification of dermatological conditions coined in 1874 by American dermatologist Henry Piffard.^[8] A report on a mildly enlightening discussion that took place on March 16, 1875, can be read here. The singular rheumatide also occurs, presumably as an obvious back-formation.  --Lambiam 18:48, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

nous ayions

In a paper published by a French entomologist in a German journal in 1959 I find "Ce matériel est, de loin, la meilleure collection africaine que nous ayions jamais vue, à tous égards." Wiktionary does not recognize ayions. Modern authors say to use ayons instead. Is the use of ayions archaic or simply a common error? The author was working in Delémont at the time, if this is a regional variation. Vox Sciurorum (talk) 18:00, 30 October 2024 (UTC)

To me, it just looks like a mistaken attempt to render the subjunctive ayons imperfect by analogy with avons → avions, perhaps due to a lack of familiarity with the moribund imperfect subjunctive form. But it's more than possible that it has/had more widespread use. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 21:47, 30 October 2024 (UTC)

Quoting from a webpage:^[9]

Exercices (cherchez les erreurs)

...

9. Il est contrarié que nous ne lui en ayions pas parlé.

...

 

Réponses

...

9. Faux. Il faut écrire : Il est contrarié que nous ne lui en ayons pas parlé. On n’écrit pas « que nous ayions », mais « que nous ayons », sans « i ».

...

 --Lambiam 18:36, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

bus driver

Searching "always the bus driver" on (for example) twitter (X) shows a high amount of people using the phrase to mean something like "a person or group of people randomly mentioned", usually negative. It seems it originates from this tweet. Is this a valid reason to add this meaning, or is it not widespread enough? Is it purely internet slang? Fandom slang? Do other places other than twitter use this phrase a lot? Ideoticideot (talk) 06:42, 31 October 2024 (UTC)

It looks like this weird phrase is quite widespread on Twitter already, I’d suggest creating it and labelling it a ‘hot word’, in which case it might get challenged in a year or so if no more durable cites appear. Overlordnat1 (talk) 07:05, 31 October 2024 (UTC)

to get someone at it

This idiom isn't in Wiktionary, or I can't find it as a separate head entry. This is the entry in the OED:

get, v.

d. to get (someone) at it: to have (a person) `on', to make fun of. slang.

1958: F. Norman Bang to Rights iii. 136 “You see I did this on perpose just to get her at it.” Ibid. 151 “He had half sused that the boggie was getting him at it.”

[Some of those quotations given in the OED must give the original incorrect spellings.] I'm not sure it has to mean "make fun of", In my personal idiolect, it can mean "to get someone doing constant pointless stuff". E.g. if someone writes an article, and you ask for many copyediting changes, and they do them, and then you go back to them with 10 more queries, and they resolve them too, and then you go back with a few more queries, you can say "I don't mean to get you at it, but can you look at these queries too?"

I think maybe the original meaning is that constant pettifogging requests can be a form of "having someone on", but then by extension it also means "putting someone in a constant hamster wheel of pointless requests". Is my personal use wrong? And should this idiom be included in Wiktionary? I have never made any head entries, so someone else would be better at implementing it than me. 2A00:23C7:1D84:FE01:F65:D78F:9DE3:1B82 09:23, 31 October 2024 (UTC)

November 2024

ummah

Is this usex OK? What are you doing akhi? Are you shoplifting? Astaghfirullah, look at the ummah today. - I find it difficult to understand and/or offensive. P. Sovjunk (talk) 17:39, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

I believe it means something like "What are you doing, brother? Are you shoplifting? I'm shocked at the behavior of the ummah today." It is a little unclear, yeah. CitationsFreak (talk) 18:11, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

(However, it isn't offensive, and implying it is feels offensive to me.) CitationsFreak (talk) 18:15, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

I don’t think it’s offensive, but we should just replace it with a more straightforward usage example that doesn’t require a reader to look up the words akhi and astaghfirullah just to figure out what it means. Something like “Sunnis are the largest denomination of Muslims, making up about 85–90% of the ummah.” — Sgconlaw (talk) 11:55, 2 November 2024 (UTC)

slave to sin, servant of sin

Should we have entries for these? Compare German Sündenknecht. PUC – 18:07, 2 November 2024 (UTC)

@Andrew Sheedy PUC – 18:07, 2 November 2024 (UTC)

In English, I don't think so. We have figurative senses of slave and servant that suit these expressions and all the similar ones. DCDuring (talk) 18:29, 2 November 2024 (UTC)

Hmm, I think I'm with DCDuring. They don't strike me as being sufficiently lexicalized to merit their own entries. You could also say "enslaved to sin" or "enslaved by sin" or "a slave of sin." The variety of different forms suggests to me that the concept is best expressed with figurative senses at "slave", "enslave(d)", and "servant". Andrew Sheedy (talk) 04:21, 3 November 2024 (UTC)

Researchship and research ship: heteronyms or homophones?

Are researchship and research ship (alternative form researchship) heteronyms or homophones? I had put them down as heteronyms (/ɹɪˈsɜːt͡ʃˌʃɪp/ or /ˈɹiːsɜːt͡ʃˌʃɪp/ (stress on the second or first syllable) v. /ɹɪˌsɜːt͡ʃˈʃɪp/ (stress on the third)), but @P. Sovjunk thinks they are homophones. I could be wrong, or can research ship be pronounced both ways? Thoughts? — Sgconlaw (talk) 22:14, 2 November 2024 (UTC)

Of course, in English, people can make up and use any words they want, and once used, they are captured in dictionaries. Researchship, which in my view is accented on the second syllable, would be much more idiomatically "a research position". Research ship - well, the word "research" in itself was once accented on the 2nd syllable, and purists still insist on that, but not many people in England still insist on that. Research ship would normally have the primary accent on re- and the second accent on ship. The third accentual pattern you offered doesn't exist. 2A00:23C7:1D84:FE01:3F7E:AC4A:8A85:B364 07:19, 3 November 2024 (UTC)