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

• human being
  belly dance
  how much
  mico
  Sukhumi
  regnbuefamilie
  for it
  ne bis in idem
  Euthemia
  hagdon
  lipsati
  Romanophobia
  Wesson
  monolid
  watercressing
  correspondent
  green privilege
  take its toll
  notch
  address
  carhouse
  RGSS
  don't try to teach grandma how to suck eggs
  series
  multivarious
  amen
  search up
  sadboi
  turn the tide
  yaourt
  -stan
  bok choy
  s.l.a.n.
  speech recognition
  silver
  червь
  one's heart bleeds
  speedometer
  maᵗⁱᵉ
  mandate
  چھہ
  half
  one over the eight
  based
  α΄
  orignal
  dies Mercurii
  manso
  Schnellbomber
  native bread
  basisdemocraat
  Chinese landing
  ၐြဳ
  ကာလယဲ
  pasar por las horcas caudinas
  monosemous
  monosemic
  nasal cavity
  hazelly
  Dağ Türkleri
  Aster
  chicken-or-egg question
  one's house in order
  smeť
  pajeet
  cut one's teeth
  sis
  over skyerne er himlen altid blå
  ⲗⲁⲃⲟⲧⲉ
  hnnggg
  on purpose
  rumped
  

February 2023

hnnggg

Numerous forms exist; what should be the main one? J3133 (talk) 12:28, 1 February 2023 (UTC)

The trite answer is: whichever is most common (for a particular meaning), but of course that can be hard to judge :/ and may vary by sense. I know hnnng often means something different (comparable to the weird polysemy of yeesh). Spellings with more than three repetitions of a letter would be avoided in favour of shorter spellings as long as those are attested (which they are, AFAICT). - -sche (discuss) 01:42, 10 February 2023 (UTC)

Italian plurals of terms in -ologo

@Catonif, Sartma, Imetsia as native Italian speakers ... I'm cleaning up manually added second plurals and I came across a bunch for terms in -ologo. Our default plural generates -ologi but there were several terms indicated with a second plural -ologhi. Usually Treccani lists these plurals but says they're "uncommon" or "rare". My question is this: Can *all* terms in -ologo take a plural in -ologhi? If so is it universally uncommon/rare? Example terms indicated with a second plural in -ghi: anatomopatologo, bibliologo (-ghi is "rare"), biologo, cancerologo, cinologo, citologo (-ghi is "rare"), dietologo, esobiologo, etologo, fisiologo (-ghi is "uncommon"), litologo (-ghi is "rare"), malacologo (-ghi is "uncommon"), mitologo, paleoclimatologo (-ghi is "rare"), sovietologo, tuttologo (-ghi is "uncommon"), xilologo (-ghi is "rare"). For some of those without "uncommon" or "rare" given, that may be an oversight, and if you look the term up in Treccani it may also say "rare" or "uncommon"; don't know. Benwing2 (talk) 07:20, 2 February 2023 (UTC)

I've never heard nor read forms with -ghi, they sound funnily dialectal. Ngrams shows some hits for biologhi fisiologhi etc. especially in older texts. It can't even plot some, like *dietologhi *cancerologhi, possibly because the words themselves are of later coinage. I don't see a particular pattern of why some were set to rare and why some to uncommon, it is in the end a universal thing for all the words in -ologo (bearing in mind the coinage period, that is). Surprisingly tuttologhi shows a rather high percentage of uses, likely because the word can be used in informal and/or uneducated speech (where -i/-hi can easily be mixed up), while the other terms are usually technical jargon. Catonif (talk) 13:39, 2 February 2023 (UTC)

@Benwing2: Same as @Catonif. You do hear tuttologhi sometimes, especially in spoken Italian, but all other words are generally -gi. I'd definitely correct someone if they said -ghi (hoping they won't bother going to check Treccani, lol). — Sartma ^{【𒁾𒁉 ● 𒊭 𒌑𒊑𒀉𒁲】} 14:46, 2 February 2023 (UTC)

@Benwing2: Adding to that: I've just checked all those words on Zingarelli, and it only gives -gi as their plural forms. For tuttologo it also gives -ghi, but marks it as "rare". — Sartma ^{【𒁾𒁉 ● 𒊭 𒌑𒊑𒀉𒁲】} 14:57, 2 February 2023 (UTC)

Treccani gives filologhi as “less common”, but Google Ngram Viewer suggests that – at least since 1800 – this plural form is actually rare. An Italian speaker who speaks this plural with a hard /ɡ/ is, I think, also likely to form the plural of dietologo with a hard /ɡ/, even if they have not encountered this term before. So the preference may be more speaker-dependent than having anything to do with the first component. Given that the preference for this plural ending is rare, combined with the fact that most -ologo terms are not exactly household words, it may be a matter of chance for any specific member of this class whether lessicolog(h)i encountered a plural -ologhi form.  --Lambiam 16:30, 2 February 2023 (UTC)

Thanks everyone! I will remove the -ghi forms except for tuttologhi. Benwing2 (talk) 19:59, 2 February 2023 (UTC)

Plurals with a special meaning

The plural form terms has a special meaning of ”interpersonal relations“, usually qualified (on speaking terms, on good terms, ...). This sense is indicated as (currently) sense 7 at the entry for the singular term, without indication that the sense is specific to the plural. The entry for terms only states that it is the plural of term. The treatment of damages is different; the special plural only meaning is given at the plural form, while the entry for singular damage provides no hint of the plural having a special meaning; there is a curious and misleading usage note that the term is “only used as an uncountable noun, except in the plural”. The plural goods is treated similarly. For pains we list a singular sense of the plural only meaning as sense 5 of pain, labelling it as (chiefly in the plural). (We do have a special entry for at pains with a redirect for at great pains and also one for go to pains with the analogous redirect.) Nothing at the entries length and lengths refers to a special sense for the plural, except for the “derived term” go to great lengths, which, however is normally hidden from view in a collapsed list. (We also have an entry for go to extraordinary lengths, but not for the also common go to extreme lengths; neither will account for carry to great lengths^[1] or push to great lengths.^[2]}

Question. Should singular entries alert users to special meanings only assigned to their plural forms? If so, is there already a preferred way for doing so? If not, what would be a good way?  --Lambiam 09:23, 3 February 2023 (UTC)

IMO, yes; I strongly think that in such cases and similar cases, like where a sense is listed at "the foobar" rather than just "foobar", the singular or "expected" lemma ("foobar") should have a sense-line pointer to the plural (or the "the foobar" form). A lot of people understand that if you read "the patients suffered from outbreaks of rising of the lights", the dictionary is going to define what "patients" are at patient, and what "outbreaks" are at outbreak, and they're going to assume "lights" will also be explained at light, so if we're unexpectedly actually putting content on an inflected form (which we otherwise never do), then As CodeCat said in 2012, we should "either include additional information about the plural on the singular page, or provide an obvious link." For linking from verbs to their phrasal derivatives I made Template:used in phrasal verbs, but for message, megrim, light, peanut etc I just wrote "See foobar"... but I think it'd be great to have a template... - -sche (discuss) 10:42, 3 February 2023 (UTC)

There is a problem, though, when the plural has a separate etymology from the singular: I can't think of cases in English off the top of my head, but this was the case with Latin minae vs mina where I ended up adding a "See also" line after an IP mistakenly mixed them up. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 10:50, 3 February 2023 (UTC)

True. In English, that subjectively feels like less of a problem to me: someone seeing "patients suffered from outbreaks of rising of the lights" and looking up patient, outbreak and light seems more likely or at least more important (to me) than someone seeing "the bus arrived" and looking up bu. But whenever it is a problem, like at mina~minae where the edit history made clear that people expected to find the one entry in the other place, definitely add a "See also", yes (and if it continues being a problem, maybe even give it more prominence as a usage note). I wouldn't even object to adding "See also"s to bu~bus or even bot-deploying such crosslinks to all such cases (at least for languages where it's uncommon, like English), since it offers some slight benefit and no apparent harm, although that seems like a low-priority task. - -sche (discuss) 21:20, 3 February 2023 (UTC)

While I was thinking about the name for such a template, e.g. {{see plural}}, it occurred to me that a similar issue exists with special senses for other classes of words formed by modifying a root word, such as by affixation. An example is Turkish Mehmetçik, which looks like a completely regular diminutive of Mehmet, but has a non-transparent specific meaning. Similarly, the Dutch diminutive mannetje has, next to the expected sense of “little man”, two other, special senses. I think it is better to have a template to cover all such cases. Would {{see instead}} be a good name? The parameters would be the same as for {{mention}}.  --Lambiam 14:00, 6 February 2023 (UTC)

abstration

Seems to pull up various hits in art and mathematics? There's also Polish abstracja. I can't quite pin down definitions. Vininn126 (talk) 13:04, 4 February 2023 (UTC)

The term abstrate is used in a few contexts, so abstration is plausible, but I can't find any cases where it's not just a typo for abstraction. The art ones I've looked into are all errors for abstraction in context (and this title is just an error by Google per the original title page). —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 15:11, 4 February 2023 (UTC)

I was actually wondering if that was the case, it seemed like the Polish hits were also a typo. Vininn126 (talk) 17:36, 4 February 2023 (UTC)

Hieroglyphs no longer appearing?

As of a few days ago, I cannot see hieroglyphs on Egyptian word entries. If the word has an alternative hieroglyphic spelling (including in a dropdown box), hieroglyphs appear there. However, it used to be that the main hieroglyphic spelling was provided immediately before the definition. Is anyone else having this issue? I've checked on multiple PCs, so I don't think the issue is on my end. 98.162.248.95 07:50, 6 February 2023 (UTC)

Egyptian has also recently been causing bugs in translation sections, which I suspect is related. It's probably down to some change in the underlying MediaWiki software or a recent change in one of the core modules. See WT:Grease pit#Egyptian hieroglyphs. Theknightwho (talk) 08:33, 6 February 2023 (UTC)

illac

Is the pronunciation /ilˈlaːk/ correct in Latin? Normally the primary stress in Latin is in the second-last syllable if that syllable is long, which is clearly the case with the word illac, thus /ˈillaːk/ is the expected pronunciation. What's going on with this word, or is this just a mistake on the page? Mölli-Möllerö (talk) 13:06, 6 February 2023 (UTC)

Yes, it is correct. It is stressed that way because it derives etymologically from illāce, from illā + -ce; penultimate stress would be expected in illāce (either from the regular Latin stress rule, or from the special rule that stress goes on the syllable immediately before an enclitic). The stress of the word's descendants provides further confirmation that the stress remained on the second syllable even after the apocope of the final -e.--Urszag (talk) 13:23, 6 February 2023 (UTC)

on purpose

and its purported synonyms: deliberately, intentionally, purposefully, willfully/wilfully

I was reading "Three Ways of Spilling Ink", an essay by J. L. Austin, and came upon his discussion of intentionally, deliberately, and on purpose. The short of it is that he believes that in the question of the form "Did you do that [intentionally/deliberately/on purpose]?" these words are not necessarily synonyms. This is most easily seen for deliberately, which is often equivalent to with deliberation. Purposefully is not substitutable into most sentences that include on purpose and vice versa.

"He went about his business purposefully." is not the same as "He went about his business on purpose."

"He spoke about it on purpose." is not the same as "He spoke about it purposefully."

I don't think wilfully/willfully is a very good synonym either. Its definition includes "maliciously" and a purpose or act done on purpose is not necessarily malicious.

It is evident to me that we are doing little to accurately describe these distinctions in the entries for these words and still less in the Thesaurus.

How could we amend the entries for these terms to as to both show or even highlight the distinctions often made and the sometime synonymy of these terms? DCDuring (talk) 17:03, 6 February 2023 (UTC)

I think it's more that these adverbs have other subsenses that are not synonymous with on purpose, but they do all share a sense. Vininn126 (talk) 17:18, 6 February 2023 (UTC)

That doesn't address the question. We don't seem to honor the distinctions, let alone highlight them, even in the entries. Look at the definitions for willfully, for example. DCDuring (talk) 17:51, 6 February 2023 (UTC)

You are right. I think the other adverbs might need a second definition with something like "determinedly", i.e. focused on completing a task or with careful consideration. Vininn126 (talk) 18:55, 6 February 2023 (UTC)

Is maliciously a synonym of wilfully (which we have defined as "Deliberately, on purpose; maliciously", as if all of those were synonyms? To me they seem like three different definitions. DCDuring (talk) 21:16, 6 February 2023 (UTC)

I'm sure it can be. A "wilful child" is not merely one who exhibits free will, but one who is basically bad (cf. wanton). Equinox ◑ 21:18, 6 February 2023 (UTC)

One problem is that multiple one-word glosses (a "synonym" cloud) do not a definition make, though that is what MW 1913 often had. DCDuring (talk) 21:52, 6 February 2023 (UTC)

Yeah, it seems like "maliciously" would be a separate sense or subsense, since certainly something can (also) be done wil(l)fully in a way that's only wil(l)ful and not malicious. I agree with what I think DCDuring and Vininn are saying, that we need multiple senses for these words, since they're only synonymous in some senses. - -sche (discuss) 22:47, 7 February 2023 (UTC)

ſh

Should this be moved to ſh? I'm not sure. On one hand, as far as I know any word using this letter would be entered with (or moved to) sh (certainly, that's how we enter any other language that had positional long s vs regular s). On the other hand, individual letters get entries even when spellings with them don't. Should the entry mention that modern works would typeset texts with sh / that such words would be entered in Wiktionary as sh? - -sche (discuss) 18:24, 6 February 2023 (UTC)

Circular etymologies at anhēlō and anhēlus

Wasn't sure whether to list this at RFC, so I thought I'd bring it here first in case a Latin speaker can resolve it quickly. The etymology of anhēlō says "anhēlus + -ō", while the etymology of anhēlus says "From anhēlō". (If it helps, the OED (at anhelous) says anhēlus is from "a suffixed form of the Indo-European base of Sanskrit an- to breathe: see animus n.". — Sgconlaw (talk) 19:42, 6 February 2023 (UTC)

{{R:itc:EDL|page=43}} [3] has the nominal as the primary form with the verb as a derivative:

The form and semantics of anhēlāre show that it is a more recent denominative derived from anhēlus.

70.172.194.25 19:46, 6 February 2023 (UTC)

Regarding your edit comment, it seems that the noun anhēlātiō (“shortness of breath, gasping, panting, puffing”) exists: see anhelation (I was editing this entry for WOTD which led me to the issue with anhēlō and anhēlus). — Sgconlaw (talk) 20:04, 6 February 2023 (UTC)

Miranda rule is synonym of Miranda right ??

Rules may prescribe rights but rules are not, in fact, rights. Does this entry need some sorting out? Equinox ◑ 21:29, 6 February 2023 (UTC)

Dictionary synonyms are never exact—especially not with technical or legal terminology like this. (See bug/insect etc.) I think it would be fair to call the two “synonyms” in a lay sense. It might be worth adding a {{q|colloquial}}.

But the bigger problem I see here is actually in the existence of a third page, Miranda warning. “Miranda rule” is much more a synonym of “Miranda warning” than “Miranda right”. I’d vote for that (or, alternatively, for both to be listed as synonyms, with “Miranda warning” first). TreyHarris (talk) 18:18, 8 February 2023 (UTC)

They are not mutually substitutable, so they are not synonyms. I think someone may have been too lazy to do both real definitions. They obviously belong under related terms or see also headers if not incorporated into each other's definitions. DCDuring (talk) 22:34, 8 February 2023 (UTC)

 Done Equinox ◑ 07:29, 28 February 2023 (UTC)

where the sun don't shine

This was labelled "chiefly US", then changed by VEHICLEFAN5500 to "US, UK". Is it in fact common in the US and UK yet not Canada or Ireland, or is it actually just not regionally restricted, like some other words I've seen changed in this way? (A look at the user's talkpage will tell you many of his edits are hard to distinguish from trolling, he desists from specific problems when specifically instructed, but then seems to switch to borking things in another way, e.g. previously not adding outright wrong labels per se but breaking formatting, but now formatting correctly but instead removing necessary qualifiers, changing every "sometimes xyz" to always "xyz", etc.) - -sche (discuss) 22:36, 7 February 2023 (UTC)

@-sche: "Where the sun doesn't shine" gets used in the UK. DonnanZ (talk) 19:46, 10 February 2023 (UTC)

And don't for doesn't is common enough in the UK. --RichardW57m (talk) 13:35, 23 February 2023 (UTC)

Agreed. I say we give it a week for any Irish/Canadian/Australian/South African editors to object and if no one does then let’s remove the regional tags altogether. Overlordnat1 (talk) 13:47, 23 February 2023 (UTC)

Is 建設現場 correctly transliterated?

Currently, in IPA, romaji, and furigana, 建設現場 (construction site) is transliterated as “gensetsugenba” / 「げんせつげんば」. Other dictionaries I consulted render it as “kensetsugenba”/「けんせつげんば」, and the IME’s I’ve tried (Apple’s, Google’s, and Microsoft’s) only accept the reading beginning with け, not げ.

The entry’s {{ja-kanjitab}} uses the けん reading of 建; but that would be correct, even if it were pronounced げん via rendaku or phonological shift, because (at least according to Kodansha) げん is not a common reading for 建, and {{ja-kanjitab}}’s documentation says to use the corresponding common reading before voicing changes.

Here — being a word-initial kanji — 建 is obviously not being rendaku’d.

But I have no clue about whether the Tokyo dialect Wiktionary has standardized on has an irregular pronunciation that voices the 建 here (though I note that the entry for the first constituent part, 建設, is written with ke / け readings).

I suspect this was a simple typo carried over ever since the first draft of the entry; but I don’t want to just change it, not without checking with someone who knows for sure the Tokyo pronunciation here.

(Btw: I found this in adding the translation to construction site; there I gave the けん/ken reading, and was confused after I saved and clicked through. I didn’t change it to match the other page, though, since it seems wrong, but in any case, the two need to be harmonized.) TreyHarris (talk) 18:10, 8 February 2023 (UTC)

@TreyHarris: Looks like the creator typoed the kana string in {{ja-pron}}, but entered it correctly in {{ja-kanjitab}}. I'll have a go at cleaning up the entry. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 20:07, 8 February 2023 (UTC)

שממית

Someone with Hebrew/Aramaic expertise should take a look at this entry. I just made a major edit to it, and I'm still not fully satisfied. There's more on the talk page (the sources I couldn't track down) and citations page (from the Talmud, using שׁ, if the points on Sefaria are to be believed) and information from Klein should be incorporated (e.g., the Arabic comparison — سَامّ‎ (sāmm) — though I can't find this exact meaning in Wehr/Lane; the form with samekh). The Aramaic descendant(s) should be listed. 70.172.194.25 08:13, 9 February 2023 (UTC)

railroadian

Is this word in general use, or is it confined to an organisation called Railroadians of America? DonnanZ (talk) 12:39, 9 February 2023 (UTC)

@Donnanz Never heard this word and it doesn't sound common. I would say railroad worker. Benwing2 (talk) 18:48, 10 February 2023 (UTC)

@Benwing2: I came across it in a calendar review (of all things) in a 1946 issue of Railway Magazine: "The Virginia & Truckee Commemorative Calendar.—The San Francisco branch of the Railroadians of America (1500, Chanslor Avenue, Richmond, California) ... There is another entry for railroadiana, backed up by Wiktionary Railroadiana, but I was doubtful about railroadian anyway, it seems to be used only when referring to that organisation, and what you say confirms my suspicions and no entry is proposed. Cheers. DonnanZ (talk) 19:18, 10 February 2023 (UTC)

@Benwing2: I would say they are railroad enthusiasts, not railroad workers; there used to be the term railwayist used in the UK. DonnanZ (talk) 19:39, 10 February 2023 (UTC)

@Donnanz Makes sense, I guess I'd say railroad enthusiasts or informally railroad fans. Benwing2 (talk) 20:46, 10 February 2023 (UTC)

Medicine and pathology labels

Any thoughts on when the labels "medicine" and "pathology" should be used? I am sometimes unsure. Should anything disease-related (diseases and symptoms, for example) be labelled "pathology", for example? — Sgconlaw (talk) 13:53, 9 February 2023 (UTC)

Given that Category:en:Pathology is a subcategory of Category:en:Medicine I would guess that the medicine label should only be used when there isn't a more specific subtopic. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 10:07, 10 February 2023 (UTC)

@Al-Muqanna: looking at "w:Pathology" it says "Pathology is the study of the causes and effects of disease or injury. […] [W]hen used in the context of modern medical treatment, the term is often used in a narrower fashion to refer to processes and tests that fall within the contemporary medical field of "general pathology", an area which includes a number of distinct but inter-related medical specialties that diagnose disease, mostly through analysis of tissue and human cell samples." Do you think it it would be reasonable, then, to label terms relating to diseases, injuries, and symptoms with "pathology", and terms relating to treatments with "medicine"? — Sgconlaw (talk) 21:12, 10 February 2023 (UTC)

@Sgconlaw: I agree on applying the pathology label to disease, injury, and symptom terms. For treatments, it's possible that things like the healthcare, pharmacology, emergency medicine, or alternative medicine labels are better suited, but if there's nothing obvious then the plain medicine label should be fine. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 21:18, 10 February 2023 (UTC)

Ugh, I have just discovered we also have "Category:en:Diseases", and that if {{lb|en|diseases}} is applied the template displays "(medicine)". What a mess. Perhaps it should display "(pathology)" instead? A usage note at "Category:en:Pathology" says "English terms used in pathology, the study of disease". (Also, I also noticed there has been a cleanup notice at that category since 2017 …)

OK, I propose we write usage notes for "Medicine" and "Pathology" to help editors with categorization. What should we say? — Sgconlaw (talk) 21:23, 10 February 2023 (UTC)

Diseases is a set category (terms for particular diseases), Pathology is a topic (terms relating to pathology), they aren't redundant. AFAIK context labels generally aren't meant for categorising into sets, so it makes sense that {{lb|en|diseases}} doesn't point to the diseases category, though I do agree pathology makes more sense as a target. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 22:00, 10 February 2023 (UTC)

weird Dutch rhymes

I'm seeing categories being created for rhymes like -ɔrɣərkɔmpɑnji (for Borgercompagnie) and -ɔstvərloːrən (for Kostverloren). User:030NogBeterHe is creating these rhymes. Are these really correct? I don't know Dutch but I'd expect maybe the rhymes only go as far as the secondary stress. (Notifying Rua, Mnemosientje, Lingo Bingo Dingo, Azertus, Alexis Jazz, DrJos): Benwing2 (talk) 06:25, 10 February 2023 (UTC)

To my knowledge the stress follows the primary sillable (for example, why there's no rhyme on the -uiger for stofzuiger). You can also see the rhymes on -aardigheid, which also follow primary stress and not stress on -heid. Usually that means in the case of toponyms that you end up with odd rhymes, but I added them the first time around anyway so I decided to go for broke and add them following primary stress. If that turns out to be incorrect, I can change them back, although that will take some time. 030NogBeterHe (talk) 10:00, 10 February 2023 (UTC)

Dutch plumbers may connect two pipes using a mof. Home layouts often require bends in the plumbing, and mofs that come with a bend are available on the market.^[4] The machine for bending the mofs is a mofbuiger.  --Lambiam 20:39, 15 February 2023 (UTC)}

What's the use of a rhyme category with one entry? — Alexis Jazz (talk) 10:06, 10 February 2023 (UTC)

I was primarily going for consistency. I had already added some rhymes on the secondary syllable, but as that didn't turn out to be correct, I decided to rework the entries (also to deal with some clunky formatting) and added the rhymes going from primary syllables. Again, if that is undesirable as well, I can go back and change that. 030NogBeterHe (talk) 10:12, 10 February 2023 (UTC)

I think that rhyme pages for only one linked entry are not useful and I cannot for the life of me imagine what should rhyme on Borgercompagnie (worgercompagnie?). I think that the length and the repetitiveness of a compound word (e.g. 'rhymes' including the same final element(s)) also play into it. You could argue about whether rhymes for entries like neukseks and beukseks are appropriate, but I think genegenheidsrelatie and gelegenheidsrelatie would take it a little too far. Nobody would think that the latter two are good rhymes. ←₰-→ Lingo ^Bingo _Dingo (talk) 20:02, 10 February 2023 (UTC)

So I assume you would recommend removal in that case right? I'll get on it as soon as possible, my apologies for the inconvenience. I'll do all the legwork to remove the rhymes, will take a while but it's what has to be done 030NogBeterHe (talk) 20:37, 10 February 2023 (UTC)

@030NogBeterHe That is my opinion on the matter, but I would recommend to wait until the discussion has concluded down before taking any action. I believe that @Thadh had a view that was closer to yours, if I got it right. ←₰-→ Lingo ^Bingo _Dingo (talk) 20:45, 10 February 2023 (UTC)

Roger that, went through some of the Belgian exonyms to see how quickly the removal option could be implemented (quite quickly thankfully, means it can also be reversed quickly) but I'll wait for further discussion. 030NogBeterHe (talk) 20:47, 10 February 2023 (UTC)

(comment got eaten) Wondering if any other native speakers can comment on such rhymes. In English, you can rhyme on secondary stress in many cases, e.g. for me Rademacher /ˈrɑdəˌmɑkr̥/ and Knickerbocker /ˈnɪkr̥ˌbɑkr̥/ are rhymes. I've noticed that Finnish is the same, and User:Surjection's Finnish templates explicitly chop off the rhyme at the secondary stress level even though Finnish has word-initial primary stress. Benwing2 (talk) 20:49, 10 February 2023 (UTC)

This would work for Dutch as well, although I wasn't sure if this was allowed or not. Initially I assumed it was and added rhymes on that basis, but I then found evidence that suggested this was not the case, so I went for primary stress instead. I'll go with whatever option is judged to be correct for the community. 030NogBeterHe (talk) 20:57, 10 February 2023 (UTC)

My view is that we should use the final (secondary) stress of a word for rhymes. Makes more sense than to use large strings of phonemes that wouldn't ever be matched. Thadh (talk) 00:19, 11 February 2023 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ We generally do not create English rhymes pages solely for secondarily stressed syllables, as far I can see. — Sgconlaw (talk) 21:08, 10 February 2023 (UTC)

I got that impression for Dutch as well eventually, hence why I switched to primary rhymes. 030NogBeterHe (talk) 21:10, 10 February 2023 (UTC)

To ask the obvious question, what do songs and poems (and rhyme dictionaries) do? Do they rhyme such long words only on other long strings that are identical from the primary stress onward, or on shorter strings that match from the secondary stress onward, or what? - -sche (discuss) 02:20, 11 February 2023 (UTC)

@-sche For creative works I'd say that it is very similar (if not practically identical) to usage in German. Songs and poems use secondary-stress rhymes. Whether they are picky about metre depends on the writer's ambition. I would have to check a few rhyme dictionaries before I can answer that question. I think that it is a bad idea to conflate rhymes on primary and secondary stress in this way, because the secondary-stress rhymes also include metrical patterns. ←₰-→ Lingo ^Bingo _Dingo (talk) 15:23, 16 February 2023 (UTC)

@Lingo Bingo Dingo, Thadh, Benwing2 It appears the discussion has died down somewhat, so I think I'll make the decision to remove the primary stress rhymes as well as the other "anomalous" rhymes for now. I'll keep the ones that do work of course. This solution will only make it so that I wasted some time in the past; if a project-wide decision is ever reached on secondary rhymes, viable rhymes can easily be botted in. I'll also bring the Dutch toponyms project as a whole in a workable (albeit incomplete) state in the coming weeks; personal circumstances will mean that I soon won't be able to dedicate the time and enegery I could spend on it while quarantined back in 2021 and early 2022, but I do want to at least leave a solid base to build further on. Once again, my apologies for the inconvenience and I'll make sure this is sorted out. 030NogBeterHe (talk) 06:15, 13 February 2023 (UTC)

@030NogBeterHe Thanks! Benwing2 (talk) 06:27, 13 February 2023 (UTC)

Knowingly hurting yourself

I found a great word basically meaning knowingly doing something that is bad for you ( or not in your best interest) but doing it anyway. Has overtones of “ and you can’t stop me, so there”. It sounded Greek but when I looked it up on Wikipedia, it cited first use as 19th century. So I know it exists, I looked it up!

Along the lines of aphasia, or aspatria or a Greek goodness name starting with A

Any help appreciated Tazsprout (talk) 16:36, 10 February 2023 (UTC)

akrasia? 70.172.194.25 16:41, 10 February 2023 (UTC)

childish taunts

nanny nanny boo boo redirects to na-na na-na boo-boo, defined as US or Canada. At least where I'm from, no one ever says na-na, it's always nanny. Should we move? On the same note, what about the childish taunt "burn on you!"? We don't have this defined at all anywhere that I can see; one of the definitions of burn (#17) is "to insult or defeat" but this seems different, more like a gamer type of term than a childish taunt. (Hmm ... no Internet refs I can find for "burn on you", maybe it was strictly local.) Benwing2 (talk) 04:34, 11 February 2023 (UTC)

The na-na ... one is solidly attested on Google Books. Nanny looks much more common, though, so it might make sense to move the main lemma. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 10:03, 11 February 2023 (UTC)

to die in video games

"(video games, slang) To lose a game. Whenever my brother dies, he ragequits."
Is this a distinct sense? If you fail at a survival game and the elements kill you, or you run into yourself and are destroyed in Snake, or someone shoots you in Fortnite, that seems like the first/generic sense of die, not separate, just like we don't have separate definitions at jump for "to cause your character in a video game to leap: after you climb to the top of the statue in Assassin's Creed, jump off to reach the secret area", or at pipe for "a representation of a pipe, in Mario". Do you die if you fail at Solitaire? If so, is that specific to video games, or is it more general (e.g. connectable to how a comedian may die if they bomb). - -sche (discuss) 21:27, 12 February 2023 (UTC)

It's not capable of inclusion per WT:FICTION and also a hokum definition since it depends on the game whether one loses when dying. Fay Freak (talk) 21:35, 12 February 2023 (UTC)

Obviously something happens in the game when you "die", whether it is losing or respawning, which is not the same as literally dying. bd2412 T 21:49, 12 February 2023 (UTC)

It might be more plausible if it's used for losing any game regardless of whether that involves in-game death, but that sounds a bit odd to me. Having said that, you do find terms like "deathmatch" and "sudden death" in e.g. strategy games where it just refers to losing so the possibility of a transferred meaning is there. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 22:48, 12 February 2023 (UTC)

Im sure lots of people have said I died! after losing a nonviolent video game, or a fighting game where one is merely knocked out rather than killed. But I can think of a few explanations for that .... 1) theyre used to a different genre of game and just use it reflexively; 2) hyperbole; 3) in some games, it's not really clear what happens when the player loses (e.g. Donkey Kong Country, Yoshi's Island, and any game that allows infinite respawning in place); and 4) a simple mistake, as some people are just not familiar with video games in general and might think that all games are blood-and-guts. So this is one of those cases where we could probably scrape up three cites, but it isn't really the same meaning each time, and therefore the definition would need to be so vague that it would just be subsumed under the plain old definition 1.

This also reminds me a bit of the discussion on talk:bleeder, where a game-related sense we were skeptical of seems to actually exist, but where the author of that entry seems to have been an RPG-focused gamer who over-extended the sense to video games as a whole. I wonder if the creator of this entry was really just thinking of violent games when they added this, and didn't mean to imply that people are saying I died when losing a game of Tetris or the like. —Soap— 11:02, 13 February 2023 (UTC)

I've got a curious feeling that I added (or cleaned up) this sense, long ago. If we are talking about the in-game character dying (like being shot, or falling off the screen) then it's not a separate sense, any more than "I got a power-up mushroom!" -- yeah, your character did, and you are, temporarily, playing their role. It's not a separate sense. There might be an interesting sense about whether a video-game character (not the player) can "die" by failing, without actually losing their life. Pretty marginal IMHO. (And see also "life/lives" as the traditional counter of how many more chances you have got to play, regardless of whether death occurs. But then there are continues... As someone asked, can you "die" in Tetris? Perhaps we need something better than the made-up example of the brother.) Equinox ◑ 08:00, 14 February 2023 (UTC)

Incidentally I happen to know that if you are developing a game based on Disney intellectual properties (Mickey Mouse etc.) you are not allowed to talk about dying, or losing lives. Therefore, well, you can lose a game and not die. Ha. Equinox ◑ 08:02, 14 February 2023 (UTC)

"Die" is what I say when I lose in Dance Dance Revolution. Drapetomanic (talk) 21:25, 21 February 2023 (UTC)

Since this will be scrolling off the page in a few days, I wanted to make one more comment. I stand by what I wrote above, in that this can all be folded into sense 1, because it is mostly used literally (where a character actually loses a life), and extended use can be covered by metaphor. Since there's already a subsense of defn 1 that relates to video games, maybe we could reword that.

However, if we do that, I want to make sure that the specific construction died to is still mentioned there. That construction is what's specifically associated with video games, I think, although we do have a quote for it in a different context. As to why these expressions exist, .... it may be for some reason that gamers find "I died" and even the grammatically awkward "I died to" softer and more casual than "I got killed" or " ___ killed me". —Soap— 09:17, 26 March 2023 (UTC)

master (and derived terms)

I just deleted this usage note from master bedroom, and I quote:

• Some speakers now choose to avoid this term preferring instead to use primary bedroom. Initially this was due to a fear that the term may have arisen from the institution of slavery (as though it derives from master's bedroom; see also proscription of master and slave).

I think the note is certainly true, but probably (other than the bedroom part) belongs under any term with master in it, right? In recent years, computer programmers have dealt with opposition to the old master and slave (referring to one system that defers to another; see [5]). Shall we put this note under master, and link there as necessary from others? Equinox ◑ 07:54, 14 February 2023 (UTC)

I’m not aware of objections to or proposed replacements for the terms master copy and master’s degree, and also not for derived terms like masterly and masterstroke. Objections against headmaster appear to be based on its gender-specificity.  --Lambiam 19:21, 15 February 2023 (UTC)

flutter wheel

There's another term for this thing, I remember. Can anyone help job my memory??? JJ72 Bassist (talk) 14:03, 15 February 2023 (UTC)

I've added a picture and some coordinate terms. HTH. DCDuring (talk) 17:32, 15 February 2023 (UTC)

It is basically a turbine.  --Lambiam 13:07, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

Picard

The first two definitions currently listed under Picard#Noun are

1. Someone from Picardy. (historical)

2. A member of an Adamite sect of the sixteenth century and earlier, in the Flemish Netherlands and in Bohemia.

Do these actually belong under Picard#Proper noun? --173.67.42.107 06:27, 19 February 2023 (UTC)

No, they don't. It's correct as is. Equinox ◑ 06:30, 19 February 2023 (UTC)

Is Ottoman kaşkaval (قاشقوال) borrowed directly from Italian caciocavallo, or via an intermediary?

It feels strange that /t͡ʃ/ to be adapted as /ʃ/, since Turkish does have that sound (ç), which is used in other borrowings from Italian (like bilancio to bilanço). Wouldn't it be better explained by an intermediary language which does not have that sound, like Greek? Bogdan (talk) 19:54, 19 February 2023 (UTC)

May I propose Sicilian cascavaddu? This is now pronounced [kaʃkaˈvaɖɖu] and what is now [ɖɖ] was once pronounced [ll] (which still survives in some central dialects and is evident in all old Maltese borrowings). Catonif (talk) 20:07, 19 February 2023 (UTC)

Adding to this, I'd like to clearify that caciocavallo is characteristic of southern Italy, and especially of Sicily and Campania. The standard Italian form is actually calqued from the southern dialects, so having the etymon be the standard form would actually be the theory with intermediaries. Catonif (talk) 21:54, 19 February 2023 (UTC)

I see on Google Books that "cascavallu" was a form that was previously used in Sicilian. Bogdan (talk) 22:03, 19 February 2023 (UTC)

Yes. Catonif (talk) 12:44, 20 February 2023 (UTC)

But it would be a cluster? Is ⟨çc⟩ not avoided? How often does one see it? There is also an arbitrary variation between /t͡ʃ/ and /ʃ/ to some degree, as in the end of كشنش‎ (kişniş) and in the other direction چلتیك‎ (çeltik), چمشیر‎ (çimşir) (maybe @Vox Sciurorum will come to know better examples).

Yet it seems not unlikely that “Italian” in reality stands for an Italian dialect, as it often is in older sources in particular. Fay Freak (talk) 20:46, 19 February 2023 (UTC)

I expect ç to be used to represent /t͡s/. You will see several examples in my collection of transliterations at User:Vox Sciurorum/Ottoman Names. These represent how late Ottoman newspaper writers heard foreign names. When ç is used the original sound was Italian or German z (as /t͡s/) or Russian ч. When ş is used, the original sound was French ch, Russian ш, German sch. Vox Sciurorum (talk) 14:13, 20 February 2023 (UTC)

...but I see the word was around long before the 19th century reference on its page. Nişanyan records it from Seyahatnâme in the 17th century. As an old and likely lower register word it is likely to have mutated. Vox Sciurorum (talk) 18:11, 20 February 2023 (UTC)

Position and quality of stressed vowel in obscure Italian verbs

@Catonif, Sartma, Imetsia The following are the verbs where I can't verify the correct pronunciation of the root-stressed forms. Can you help with any of them?

• abbrostolare obsolete variant of abbrustolare
• accapegliare obsolete variant of accapigliare
• compostare "to compost": ò or ó or both?
• friendzonare "to put in the 'friend zone'"
• gionglare "to juggle"
• morphare "to morph": probably ò?
• nerfare "to nerf (video game slang)": probably è?
• performare "to perform"
• scarrupare (Neapolitan) "to crumble; to ruin"
• torniare variant of torneare "to tourney, to joust"
• ubiquitinare "to ubiquitinate"
• baioccare "to snap one's fingers" already sent to RFV

Maybe Zingarelli or Devoto-Oli will be of help? Thanks for any help you can give. Benwing2 (talk) 07:46, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

@Benwing2

1. Zingarelli
   • compostare: io compòsto, etc. (this is how I pronounce it, but compare Devoto Oli below)
   • performare: io perfórmo, etc.
   • no declension given for torniare, but considering that it's etymologically related to tornèo, and analogically to tórno, I would go with "io tórnio, etc.
   • no entry for abbrostolare, accapegliare, friendzonare, gionglare, morphare, nerfare, scarrupare, ubiquitinare, baioccare
2. Devoto Oli
   • compostare: io compósto, etc. (compare Zingarelli above)
   • friendzonare: io friendzòno, etc. (pronounced frèndẓòno)
   • performare: io perfórmo, etc.
   • no entry for abbrostolare, accapegliare, gionglare, morphare, nerfare, scarrupare, torniare, ubiquitinare, baioccare

I personally wouldn't consider scarrupare as Standard Italian. It's clearly dialectal, so I would mark it as Regional Italian, just like freschino.

I wouldn't worry too much about the pronunciation of obsolete variants and neologisms, since no-one uses them natively, so your guess on where to put the accent and how to pronounce the tonic vowel is as good as anyone else's. Verbs coming from English words, like morphare or nerfare tend to mimic the English pronunciation, but then again, it depends on how well that individual speaker knows English (Italians normally order "a Cock" instead of "a Coke" in restaurants and bars... One would think that such a famous brand would be spared the mispronunciation, but no, lol).

This does remind me of that discussion we had about indicating acute/grave quality in Italian tonic syllables, and if anything strengthen my opinion that it should indeed be enough to just indicate the stressed syllable, without giving indication of the quality of its vowel. I did find an Italian dictionary that does just that. It would be the easier and most neutral approach. — Sartma ^{【𒁾𒁉 ● 𒊭 𒌑𒊑𒀉𒁲】} 10:24, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

@Sartma Thanks! BTW I finally was able to delete the old Module:it-conj and corresponding junky templates like {{it-conj-ciare}}. Also I'm planning on doing a run to remove redundant pronunciation respellings from {{it-pr}}, e.g. convert {{it-pr|pretentsióne}} to {{it-pr}} for pretenzione since there's a default rule for terms ending in -zione. I feel this will reduce the possibility of human error and make it clear that it's fine to use the defaults when they're there. What I'm not doing is removing explicit respellings from short words like 'lìbro' (here there is only one possible pronunciation so defaulting is OK) and 'lènte' (this happens to match the -ènte ending; this "works" but it's not a valid morphological analysis and would be confusing). Benwing2 (talk) 10:40, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

The Greek word, Love.

I remember that the Greek language has 8 different words for the English verb Love. Eros, Philia, Storge, Ludus, Mania, Pragma, Philautia and Agape. It seems to me that there are many other forms of love. Will someone who is more familiar with the Greek language please explain how these 8 words encompass all the different kinds of love? Horstman8 (talk) 19:37, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

I think this Wikipedia article will provide the information you seek: Greek words for love. 70.172.194.25 19:39, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

Ludus is Latin. It’s basic sense is “game, play, fun”. While love can be a game for some and a source of fun, the term does not have a specific connotation related to love. The latter also holds for Ancient Greek μανία (manía, “madness, mad desire”) and πρᾶγμα (prâgma, “deed, act”); they cannot be translated with the word love.  --Lambiam 16:31, 23 February 2023 (UTC)

These three terms stem from the colour wheel theory of love of psychologist John Alan Lee.  --Lambiam 16:44, 23 February 2023 (UTC)

We cannot poll the Ancient Greeks for their opinion whether some list of terms encompasses all the different kinds of love, for two reasons. The first is pragmatic: they are all dead. The second is more fundamental: the word “love” in this question cannot be translated.  --Lambiam 16:55, 23 February 2023 (UTC)

resource

Wiktionary often claims things are RP that aren't. RP is not identical to "all British English". In RP, this word (resource) has the accent on the second syllable. The REE-zors pronunciation, with the accent on the first syllable and a long vowel (and a z) is commonly found - and in fact this is what I say - but it is not RP, even if Wiktionary says it is. See Daniel Jones' pronouncing dictionary of RP. 2A00:23C8:A7A3:4801:733E:646C:63DA:CF9D 13:53, 24 February 2023 (UTC)

I agree, and in general we should probably move away from RP to contemporary British pronunciations like Standard Southern British. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 13:58, 24 February 2023 (UTC)

net

It seems we are missing the common figurative sense, as in, "to cast a wide net" (to find something or someone). What does everyone think? ---> Tooironic (talk) 01:16, 25 February 2023 (UTC)

The definitions of net in current dictionaries seem to have regressed from MW 1913, which had:

2. Anything designed or fitted to entrap or catch; a snare; any device for catching and holding.

A man that flattereth his neighbor spreadeth a net for his feet -- Prov. xxix. 5.

In the church's net there are fishes good or bad. -- Jer. Taylor.

It seems to me that we need to make it clear that we are not limiting the definition to physical devices, nor is the only function of a net to "trap" or "ensnare".

Or we could rely on people's ability to understand and use metaphor. DCDuring (talk) 02:11, 25 February 2023 (UTC)

Some other common collocations with net are fall/slip through the net, without a [safety] net, tighten the net. There does seem to be a common figurative sense. DCDuring (talk) 02:11, 25 February 2023 (UTC)

In line with the existence of most contributors here in a world devoid of many of the physical things that inhabit more blue-collar worlds, we lack many terms derived from net that are distinct designs of nets, of diverse types of reticulation (eg, square, triangular, hexagonal), integration with other hardware (eg, frame, handle), and purpose (eg, protection, entrapment, lifting). See {{R:OneLook|* net) for examples of terms included in other references. I expect that Commons contains pictures of some of these items. DCDuring (talk) 17:17, 25 February 2023 (UTC)

English names of languages: common or proper nouns?

There appears to be great inconsistency in the POS applied to English names of languages. For instance, French is described as a proper noun and Russian as a common noun, even though there is no grammatical difference between the two.

My personal preference would be to call such terms proper nouns, but my greater priority is consistency, regardless of the prevailing option. 70.172.194.25 05:45, 25 February 2023 (UTC)

I've added hundreds and I always do proper noun. Equinox ◑ 05:52, 25 February 2023 (UTC)

If we're going to make the distinction at all then language names are fairly unambiguously proper nouns, as the names of specific entities. A language is even currently used in an example at Wiktionary:English proper nouns (albeit the section was added quite recently, in 2021). We have a fairly expansive concept of proper noun, too, since something like Pooles as a plural is listed as a proper noun when certain grammars treat things like this as common noun derivatives of proper nouns, so to me at least there'd be no real logic for excluding language names. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 05:59, 25 February 2023 (UTC)

I'd be surprised to find that one can't find Russians referring to dialects or registers of the Russian language, but I don't think that means that Russian ("language of Russia") is a common noun. I don't know what we should do about Russian ("breed of cat"), for which we also have a common noun ("an individual of the breed"). DCDuring (talk) 17:27, 25 February 2023 (UTC)

They're proper nouns in English. Ultimateria (talk) 19:24, 28 February 2023 (UTC)

mizu shobai

@Simplificationalizer Our definition does not seem to agree with that on Wikipedia. Equinox ◑ 06:35, 26 February 2023 (UTC)

If you ignore Wikipedia's first sentence (which was only added in September: compare the version before then) it does. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 12:12, 26 February 2023 (UTC)

Erewhon

We don't have an entry for this yet. It seems obvious to me as a layperson that the Wikipedia IPA /ɛrɛhwɒn/ is an incorrect representation of the author's naive wish to have an Italian style clear vowel sound in each syllable, which violates the basis of English phonology. --Espoo (talk) 10:57, 26 February 2023 (UTC)

I don't think you can really do better than a quote from the author for the pronunciation of a proper name in a work of fiction. (Such names are not generally included in Wiktionary, are they?) Even if it is a violation of English phonology, why does that mean it is necessarily incorrect? We find /ɛ/ at the end of a syllable in meh /mɛ/ regardless. Urszag (talk) 11:29, 26 February 2023 (UTC)

It would go in Category:en:Fictional locations if it passed WT:FICTION Drapetomanic (talk) 11:37, 26 February 2023 (UTC)

If it's correct that the author's wish violates English phonology, then almost all native speakers are essentially incapable of fulfilling this naive wish. So it's quite clearly incorrect and misleading to claim this to be the English pronunciation of this word, as Wikipedia does. The entry there, and a possible entry here, should indicate the possible English rendition of the author's wish (f.ex. with schwa) and the probably more common two-syllable pronunciation. It could in addition explain that the author wanted a non-English pronunciation or that the author was perhaps unaware of schwa notation. --Espoo (talk) 14:29, 28 February 2023 (UTC)

(But we have Erewhonian.) Equinox ◑ 13:45, 26 February 2023 (UTC)

FWIW this is also a nonfictional location: a chain of stores in California known for selling high-dollar niche foods; in that context, the first e (+ r) is the vowel of air and the second e is a schwa or sometimes omitted (you can hear multiple people pronounce it all throughout e.g. this video). BTW, should we have an entry for that word I just used, high-dollar? I see hits for "sell very high-dollar [products]" but not "sell very high-pound...", "...high-euro...". - -sche (discuss) 22:05, 26 February 2023 (UTC)

Wow. I bought macrobiotic-diet items I couldn't afford at Erewhon in Boston around 1970. I only heard it pronounced "air-wan". DCDuring (talk) 23:36, 26 February 2023 (UTC)

High dollar is just a variant of top dollar, and "high-dollar" is just the hyphenated attributive form. So yes, we should have an entry, but it would probably be best as an "alt-form-of". Chuck Entz (talk) 00:27, 27 February 2023 (UTC)

I thought that alt forms was only for orthographic and spelling differences, not significantly different component words. Not that Wiktionary consistently follows that.

Also, is high dollar used as a noun? I'm not familiar, though it is certainly plausible. DCDuring (talk) 01:26, 27 February 2023 (UTC)

I'm not certain what you would call it. Both "top dollar" and "high dollar" are used with "pay" as in "pay high dollar" or "pay top dollar" for something. It seems almost like some sort of pidgin. Expressions having to do with quantity/price seem to be all over the map as far as POS, anyway: a lot, a great deal, an arm and a leg, etc. Chuck Entz (talk) 01:59, 27 February 2023 (UTC)

Greek nouns in -ώ

There's a declension of Greek feminine nouns in -ώ, such as Κλωθώ and Σαπφώ, which have no plural listed. Many of these are proper nouns, but some are common nouns, like τυτώ. It doesn't make much sense to talk about three Clothos or three Sapphos, but it does make sense to talk about three barn owls.

Some weeks ago I asked about this in the Greek chat. Luke Ranieri (I think it was he) answered with this suggestion: αἱ τυτόες, τῶν τυτόων, ταῖς τυτόοσιν, τὰ̄ς τυτόας for the uncontracted plural, and αἱ τυτοῦς, τῶν τυτῶν, ταῖς τυτῶσι(ν), τὰ̄ς τυτῶς for the contracted plural. I didn't ask about the dual; my Greek is mostly New Testament Koine, by which time the dual was desuet, and even Euclid used the plural for two things.

The Greek Wiktionary doesn't list a plural for τυτώ either, though it lists the word in both Ancient and Modern Greek, and someone left a note asking about sources for the plural forms. Are these nouns all defective, with no possible plural, or is it possible to form a plural? How would I talk about many barn owls in Ancient Greek? PierreAbbat (talk) 20:51, 26 February 2023 (UTC)

This recent article comments: "This declension is almost exclusively attested in the singular, while the plural forms are quite rare and have been historically replaced by other declensions such as the thematic (nom. pl. λεχοί, acc. pl. Γοργούς etc.) and the nasal inflexion (nom. pl. Γοργόνες, acc. pl. Γοργόνας etc.)." The old Greek Grammar by Smyth simply says "When dual and plural occur, they are of the second declension: nom. λεχοί from λεχώ […] acc. γοργούς from γοργώ". —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 00:09, 27 February 2023 (UTC)

The Greek Wikipedia has a longish article on the species Τυτώ (68,762 bytes) and has 40 occurrences of a singular form (nominative or genitive), but never uses a plural, resorting instead to such locutions as τα πουλιά αυτά (“these birds”). For comparison, the English Wikipedia article has 96 occurrences of the singular barn owl and 41 of the plural barn owls.  --Lambiam 18:44, 27 February 2023 (UTC)

Salar yir

Is missing any gloss or lemma. Presumably from Proto-Turkic *yẹr.
Apropo on Reconstruction:Proto-Turkic the entry Salar: reads yer Flāvidus (talk) 09:07, 27 February 2023 (UTC)

cybernetics and cybernetic

The main sense is "The theory/science of communication and control in the animal and the machine." Uh, what? Ultimateria (talk) 19:14, 28 February 2023 (UTC)

What are you confused by? —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 19:16, 28 February 2023 (UTC)

The whole thing is poorly written, but "in the animal and the machine" sounds terrible to me as a native English speaker. What is the relationship between communication / control / animal / machine? Ultimateria (talk) 19:23, 28 February 2023 (UTC)

It sounds a bit dated to me but not incomprehensible. "in animals and machines" (or even "in animals and in machines") might be clearer. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 19:26, 28 February 2023 (UTC)

March 2023

Is Erse offensive?

I’d like to check if Erse is “sometimes offensive” as the entry claims. The word has been nominated for Saint Patrick’s Day this month (@Donnanz), but I don’t think it would be appropriate for this date if it is indeed offensive. — Sgconlaw (talk) 19:26, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

@Sgconlaw: Not that I'm aware of, the quote I added gave no hint of that, and Collins and Oxford don't mention that it's offensive. @Mahagaja added the "offensive" labels in 2021, hopefully he can explain why. DonnanZ (talk) 19:49, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

Yup, I looked at the OED (and this entry was updated in June 2018) and it didn't mark the word in this way. — Sgconlaw (talk) 20:22, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

There are definitely people who find it offensive, especially in Scotland, where some people find it offensive to refer to Gaelic as "Erse" because it literally means "Irish". The fact that it's homophonous with the Scots word for "arse" definitely doesn't help. And, as with Negro, its sheer old-fashionedness itself can make it offensive. A few examples of people calling Erse derogatory can be found here, here and here. —Mahāgaja · talk 20:49, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

In Scotland, not Ireland? The term seems to be out of date anyway, replaced by Gaelic. DonnanZ (talk) 21:20, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

@Mahagaja: OK, thanks. In that case, @Donnanz, I don't think we should feature it on Saint Patrick's Day. It might not be a good idea to feature it at all. — Sgconlaw (talk) 21:27, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

The only time I've come across it is several times in cryptic crosswords. From memory, noone on the 'Fifteen squared' or 'Times for the Times' blogs ever complained and if it was highly offensive then the Times and Guardian editors probably wouldn't allow it. I suppose if we take an extremely cautious approach then we might not want to feature it though. --Overlordnat1 (talk) 21:29, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

@Overlordnat1: ha ha, that's where I've encountered the word too—on the NYT Crossword. — Sgconlaw (talk) 21:39, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

@Sgconlaw: I just remembered it also appears in the humorous song Plastic Paddy by the folk singer Eric Bogle, so I've added that to Erse. --Overlordnat1 (talk) 01:36, 2 March 2023 (UTC)

@Sgconlaw: OK, not on St Paddy's Day. The nomination was made in all innocence, maybe a less controversial date can be found (not St Andrew's Day!). DonnanZ (talk) 21:44, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

@Sgconlaw: I have moved it back to the nomination date: 7 July 2021. DonnanZ (talk) 22:01, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

@Donnanz: OK, thanks. Feel free to pick another term (especially one already nominated) for Saint Patrick’s Day. — Sgconlaw (talk) 22:04, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

rubric

I fail to see why, when a poorly-educated politician with less command of the English language than a street rapper employs a word incorrectly, it should be "enshrined" as a definition in one of the better dictionaries available on the web. GaryD144 (talk) 20:20, 2 March 2023 (UTC)

Yes, these common gutter scum should be exterminated and their inferior speech replaced by words approved by GaryD144. Equinox ◑ 20:23, 2 March 2023 (UTC)

What is this in reference to...? —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 20:33, 2 March 2023 (UTC)

draft and draught

Something that has been semi-discussed before at Talk:draught. Should we have a full set of definitions for draught? The reason I ask is when adding adding a quotation to draught I felt compelled to add a note Sense 7 of draft. DonnanZ (talk) 12:27, 3 March 2023 (UTC)

@Donnanz I don't speak British English, but if "draught" is equivalent to "draft" only in some of its senses, we should definitely list those senses somehow or other (either by enumerating them or by specifying the ones that don't match, if most of them match). If all senses of "draft" can be spelled "draught" then {{alt form}} is good enough IMO. Benwing2 (talk) 22:38, 11 March 2023 (UTC)

@Benwing2: It's a bit complex, I'm afraid. First of all, draught#Adjective was missing, so I added it.

Senses 1-7 of draft#Noun are also used in draught#Noun, senses 8-10 apply in both American and British English, senses 11-13 may all be American only, I'm unsure about 12, sense 11 is conscription in British English. Senses 14, 16-18 apply to both spellings, and I'm unsure about senses 15 and 19. What do you think? DonnanZ (talk) 11:18, 12 March 2023 (UTC)

@Donnanz Hmm, I see. My instinct is to tag all the senses of draft that are American-only or British-only as such, and also add something like (also (UK) draught) at the end of all senses that can be spelled draught in Britain. And also maybe add a note to the first sense of draught to see draft for additional details. That way, we avoid duplicating the definitions and associated quotations. Maybe we also need a Usage Note at the end of draft clarifying that it can also be spelled draught in Britain in some senses, as indicated. (This is already mentioned at the top under Alternative Forms but might be missed, not sure.) BTW I am guessing sense #12 is supposed to be American by analogy with the military draft, but I've never encountered this; maybe it should be challenged at RFVE. I'm not familiar with senses #15 or #19 either, but that could be because #15 is a technical term specific to sand casting, and guessing from the quotations, #19 is (a) British, (b) a technical usage, and (c) maybe archaic (the quotes from 1982 on all seem to be referencing occurrences in the 19th century). Benwing2 (talk) 23:01, 12 March 2023 (UTC)

@Benwing2: Yes, I'm looking at the possibility of usage notes for the nouns. I have already added one to draught#Verb, in that case draught is uncommon as a verb in British English. If we're not going to add more definitions to draught#Noun, I need to identify which sense of draft#Noun the quotations belong to. Anyway, it's bedtime, and it can wait till tomorrow. DonnanZ (talk) 23:57, 12 March 2023 (UTC)

@Donnanz For sense #12 see Draft (politics). Benwing2 (talk) 00:08, 13 March 2023 (UTC)

@Benwing2: Thanks for finding that. I resorted to adding both labels and a usage note for draft#Noun; the labels may look rather excessive, but I thought it was the clearest way of doing it. As for the quotes in draught#Noun, I added senses to them; it was difficult to do this precisely, so some are approximate with more than one sense added. DonnanZ (talk) 12:33, 13 March 2023 (UTC)

@Donnanz Sense #3 of draught#Noun ('an ale') seems a bit odd as it doesn't seem very different to sense #6 of draft#Noun ('beer drawn from a cast or keg') and so is covered by the generic sense #1 of draught#Noun, where a citation taken from The Moon and Sixpence is given as an example of such usage. Perhaps Australians use draught to refer even to bottles and cans of ale though? --Overlordnat1 (talk) 09:11, 13 March 2023 (UTC)

@Overlordnat1: What I remember about Aussie beer is that it's certainly on draught and chilled, and I couldn't drink it quickly. I think it was delivered in kegs from the brewery, so they must chill the kegs in the cellar. As to the technicalities, "a type of beer brewed using top-fermenting yeast", does that make it different from British draught? I don't know. DonnanZ (talk) 09:53, 13 March 2023 (UTC)

@Donnanz: Apparently all beers brewed using top-fermenting yeast are ales but most ales are bottom-fermented now since the shape of the brewing vats has changed. Ales still use 'top-fermenting yeast' though, as it's a different species that likes warmer temperatures and takes less time to ferment the mash, thus producing a different final product than bottom-fermenting yeast do (ie. lager) (at least according to Wikipedia's Brewing article). I also doubt that Somerset Maugham was writing about lager when he used the word 'draught' as that basically didn't exist in Britain before the 1960s. I suppose the fact that both lager and ale can be served either on draught/tap or in a can/bottle might complicate things but Somerset Maugham seems to be using a distinctly archaic expression that probably didn't survive into 60s Britain and get applied to lager in any case. I suspect the two terms have the same meaning and could be merged but if the usage is still current in Australia we could cover that with a label or usage note. --Overlordnat1 (talk) 13:02, 13 March 2023 (UTC)

@Overlordnat1: I rarely drink from one year end to the next nowadays, my Australian experiences were in 1970-71 when I lived in Sydney. I was introduced to Guinness (in bottles) at a Guinness and oyster evening after work once, but I have no idea about draught ale there. Experience in England - in a bar or pub if asking for ale (I was partial to IPA), I was presented with a bottle of the stuff. I think you can buy lager (and Guinness) out of a tap though. They could serve draught ale (unchilled?) in Australia, or just call it draught, but I just don't know, and I can't recommend a suitable label. DonnanZ (talk) 14:28, 13 March 2023 (UTC)

Re alcohol, which sense/definition covers someone saying they have a particular drink on draft/draught, or they have draft/draught [liquid]? I'm guessing it's intended to be "(US spelling) Beer drawn from a cask or keg rather than a bottle or can."? It may be most common to talk about having beers on draft/draught, and hence to talk about draft/draught beers, but it needs to be worded broadly enough to cover the fact that you can serve anything that way: even though it apparently tastes bad(?), nothing about the word itself stops people from having google books:"wine on draft", google books:"wine on draught", and hence draught rather than bottled wine; you can have google books:"cider on draught", google books:"cider on draft", and hence draught cider / draft cider; you can talk about having google books:"milk on draught", google books:"milk on draft"; I see a few hits for google books:"soda on draught", one for google books:"soda on draft", likewise a few for "cola on draft/draught". - -sche (discuss) 20:17, 13 March 2023 (UTC)

Should the phrases on draft, on draught have their own entries, like on tap? Like on tap, on draft seems to have acquired an idiomatic sense of being readily available. - -sche (discuss) 20:36, 13 March 2023 (UTC)

@-sche: Oh yes, I am in favour of creating them. My Oxford Dictionary of English lists on draught: "(of beer or cider) ready to be drawn from a barrel or tank; not bottled or canned". A barrel can also be a keg or cask, of course. DonnanZ (talk) 22:22, 13 March 2023 (UTC)

Northern Kurdish -istan and the Proto-Indo-European root *steh₂-

Hi, everybody
Should Northern Kurdish entries suffixed with -istan include (via the {{root}} template) a reference to the PIE root *steh₂- from which the suffix is derived, or is this a case akin to Italian -mente, wherein there's no need to reference the PIE root *men- of Latin mēns because of grammaticalization?
Does anyone have any input on this? — GianWiki (talk) 17:14, 3 March 2023 (UTC)

@GianWiki My instinct is not to mention the *steh₂- root, but I only slightly lean this way; I think either way is reasonable. Benwing2 (talk) 23:03, 12 March 2023 (UTC)

鄲 Handuo Xuebu

Was this one edit IP's diff right? It changed the definition, removed derived terms, and limited the pronunciation. Cihai 6th ed doesn't have a second pronunciation for 鄲 and only lists Dancheng. ctext.org does mention duo: [6]. Dancheng is in close proximity to Guoyang. --Geographyinitiative (talk) 18:06, 4 March 2023 (UTC)

ছাপান্ন and ছাপ্পান্ন

Are both of them correct? The one listed in Module:number list/data/bn does not link to any other wiktionaries. --TongcyDai (talk) 19:06, 4 March 2023 (UTC)

Also, ঊনআশি and উনআশি, আটাশি and অষ্টাশি. --TongcyDai (talk) 20:30, 4 March 2023 (UTC)

Well, this Bengali dictionary says ছাপান্ন (chapanno) is a variant of ছাপ্পান্ন (chappanno). The latter one seems to be more common, but I can find plenty of usage of both online, including when restricting search results to the .BD top-level domain. (I cannot personally vouch for the online usage being standard Bengali as I couldn’t tell it apart from Assamese, etc., but it seems likely.) 70.172.194.25 22:18, 4 March 2023 (UTC)

Notable

why doesn't"Notable" have an "e" after the "a"? Asking for my son who has a spelling bee coming up. Miss Maisie123 (talk) 20:22, 5 March 2023 (UTC)

@Miss Maisie123: Do you mean before the "a"? The actual reason is the history of the word, which you can read about at the entry for notable, but if it helps it's also because otherwise people might assume it's pronounced with a long "ee" sound, like in tea. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 20:55, 5 March 2023 (UTC)

Historically this is the same "a" as the "a" in notation. In the Latin words they derive from (notabilis and notatio), as well as in nota bene, they were pronounced the same way.  --Lambiam 23:27, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

the sky fell in

This phrase is included in wiktionary, but it isn't always in the past tense like this. It is pretty easy to find occurrences of "The sky falls in", "the sky is falling in" and "the sky had fallen in" as well, e.g.:

• 2020, Stewert James, The Penny:

  Oh June, I really want at least one more good year before the sky falls in.

• 1990, United States. Congress. Senate. Committee on the Judiciary, Review of the National Drug Control Strategy, page 87:

  Unless we, as a nation, States, cities—not pointing the finger at any one government structure—all of us—unless we are ready to finally look for meaningful, long-term salient, complex answers to a very complex problem, people are going to appear in front of your committee in 1992, and all of you are going to look back on the good old days of 1989, and we do think the sky is falling in today in New York.

• 2008, Annie Murray, The Bells of Bournville Green, page 87:

  Cup of tea? As usual! How could anything be usual when the sky had fallen in?

So how do we handle cases like this? Do we just put in separate lemmas for each form, or is there a way to treat these as all inflections of one main lemma? Kiwima (talk) 23:46, 5 March 2023 (UTC)

I wouldn't create entirely separate lemmas for all these, it'd be duplicative. Maybe just, as you say, define each as an {{inflection of}} the main form, unless someone has a better idea. A lot more phrases are inflectable than we currently show as such, and we'd benefit from going through the phrases category and applying whatever the solution is to other entries, e.g. a little goes a long way can also be google books:"a little had gone a long way", google books:"a little would go a long way", etc; and every king needs a queen → google books:"every king needed a queen". - -sche (discuss) 00:39, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

I encountered this situation with balloon goes up. I considered whether I should change it to a verb, but balloon go up, which would be the infinitive form, seems unnatural. In the end I left it as a phrase but added a usage note stating that the term is also used with other forms of the word go, like going and went. I didn’t create entries for the inflected forms, and would be interested to see what people think about this. — Sgconlaw (talk) 14:29, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

Yeah, I agree trying to lemmatize them as ===Verb===s doesn't seem right since "a little [to] go a long way" et al are not right or natural forms. Maybe leave them as Phrases rather than Verbs, don't necessarily try to add the inflected forms into the headword, but add a usage note as you did, and combine that with making entries for the inflected forms defining them as {{inflection of}}s? Since someone who doesn't already know the idiom has no way of knowing what form to look up, e.g. that every king needed a queen should be looked up in the present tense but the sky falls in needs to be converted in the exact opposite direction to past tense. - -sche (discuss) 16:25, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

Which inflected forms should be created, though? In the balloon goes up example, I guess balloon went up is fine but what about balloon go up? Instead of balloon going up, should the inflected form be balloon is/was going up? — Sgconlaw (talk) 04:56, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

Instinctively, I would say any attested forms, although I suppose forms that don't sound fluent on their own like balloon go up could just be (hard-)redirects. Actually, I don't know why this didn't occur to me earlier, but we could just hard-redirect all the inflected forms, couldn't we, and have a usage note mentioning that the verb inflects? Would that be better than {{inflection of}}s? - -sche (discuss) 17:35, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

Yes, maybe redirects would avoid the problem of deciding what forms the inflections should take. — Sgconlaw (talk) 18:12, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

OK. @Kiwima what do you think of these ideas? Hard-redirect the inflected forms? Or do you think it'd be better to have 'soft-redirect' entries defining them as variant or inflected forms? I recall from past RFMs that we already redirect a lot of other kinds of variation, e.g. when the object of an idiom can be either singular or plural, but there too we are inconsistent in whether we hard-redirect or soft-redirect using something like {{altform}}. - -sche (discuss) 18:20, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

I agree with hard-redirecting internal inflections of an idiom FWIW. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 18:50, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

I like the hard redirects to the most natural/common form of the phrase, with a usage note on the lemma. That seems the most succinct approach. Kiwima (talk) 19:26, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

Hebrew: אך and אבל

אך and אבל can both mean but. Should we note them as synonyms? Or should we have usage notes clarifying the difference, e.g., if the but connects clauses as opposed to individual words. I am learning Hebrew and would find this information useful. Thanks. Peter Chastain (talk) 01:25, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

I would note that אך has quotations but אבל does not. I think that might clarify usage differences. Peter Chastain (talk) 01:45, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

The 1 Samuel 20:39 doesn't belong to that sense, which seems to be only in later Biblical Hebrew, like Proverbs. I don't know enough Biblical Hebrew, let alone Modern Hebrew, to answer your question, though. Given that the sense in question for אך evolved from something else, it's entirely possibly that there isn't a tidy division between the two. Basic function words like these can have all kinds of subtle (and not so subtle) variations in the semantics and syntax. Chuck Entz (talk) 03:36, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

Hebrew: פאראך

I found this word in the Yes/Netflix series Shtisel (season 2, episode 1). The English subtitle shows it as frenk. From context, I am guessing it might be an ethnic slur for a Sephardic person, maybe. Or maybe Frenchman (cf. our frenk entry)? Peter Chastain (talk) 03:09, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

Just guessing, but compare Persian فرنگ‎. In several languages this means a foreigner- often with a connotation of someone overbearing and uncouth. Chuck Entz (talk) 03:46, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

cut the ribbon

This is definitely idiomatic insofar as it's a collocation, I also feel like it's often used non-literally to mean to formally begin? It's not so easy finding quotes. Vininn126 (talk) 11:22, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

In my idiolect a ribbon-cutting is a ceremony marking to formal opening for use of something like a road segment, bridge, building (usually a public one), etc. The commencement of construction may be marked by a ground-breaking ceremony, usually involving a shovel. DCDuring (talk) 15:56, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

Yes, there is that literal usage, ribbon-cutting would be a derived noun frmo the verb, I suppose. That is my usage as well. I suppose people often do that without ribbons? Vininn126 (talk) 15:58, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

Not every cutting of ribbon is a ribbon-cutting. I wonder whether every ceremony marking an achievement/completion and called a ribbon-cutting has to have a ribbon. Also cutting the ribbon, not ribbon-cutting is the inflected form of your proposed entry.

My main point is that, in my experience, a ribbon-cutting marks the achievement of completion of something at least as much as the commencement of its use. Still less do I see it as a commencement tout court. I do see that some dictionaries and some usages have or use such a definition. DCDuring (talk) 16:43, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

That would be the gerund, I meant the deverbal frmo it. Vininn126 (talk) 16:44, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

As I see the verb used in news items, often but not only in headlines, it tends to refer to a ribbon-cutting ceremony to inaugurate some functional space (an airport, a baggage claim area, a condo complex, ..., a zoo) in which an actual physical ribbon is cut with actual physical scissors. I am inclined to think that people may be unaware of the phenomenon of ribbon-cutting ceremonies and thus do not get the full meaning from considering just cut +‎ the +‎ ribbon. That the collocation can also be used in a pure SOP sense is irrelevant for applying the CFI. I don't know if the term is occasionally used fully figuratively for an inauguration without the ceremonial cutting, but that is of secondary importance.  --Lambiam 15:09, 8 March 2023 (UTC)

add amogthem as the plural for amogus

The plural for Among Us according to innersloth is Among Them, so Amogthem should be the plural for Amogus, not Amogi or Amoguses WohaoGaster (talk) 11:55, 8 March 2023 (UTC)

The phrase Among Us is already plural. In fact, us is actually the English oblique first-person plural pronoun, while them is the English oblique third-person plural pronoun. Definitely different, but not from plurality. Plus, this is ridiculous that you typed these words with such confidence. OsbertDanielson (talk) 14:40, 8 March 2023 (UTC)

The phrase "among us" cannot be plural. That is meaningless, since "among us" is not even a noun phrase. Equinox ◑ 14:42, 8 March 2023 (UTC)

More English Language Variant Pronounciation.

More Language Variant Pronounciation. Yes, there is a lot of English dialectal pronounciation showed in pages, but there is a problem where more isolated and/or distinct language variants of English aren't being represented. I wanna hear what a Latino man living in Queens who speaks language variants sounds like, I wanna hear what a Cajun woman living in Lafayette, L Louisiawho speaks language variants sounds like, I wanna hear what a white Chicagoan grandma who speaks language variants sounds like. Put all of your knowledge of dialects and/or accents of English to Wiktionary, please. Because I can't do it myself, I'm not a linguistic expert on English, I'm literally still learning some Chamic languages. How do anyone expect me to know the pronounciation of language variants of English. na OsbertDanielson (talk) 14:55, 8 March 2023 (UTC)

Ain't the Latino men living in Queens talking with an accent, not with a dialect? Or is Latino Queens English a kind of dialect of English? Or do you mean the New York Latino English? Tollef Salemann (talk) 12:42, 11 March 2023 (UTC)

There is also a "Category:Regional English", with some examples of pronunciation templates. Stuff like this takes time yanno. But people are working with it :) Tollef Salemann (talk) 12:56, 11 March 2023 (UTC)

patenter and patentor

There seems to be confusion between the definitions for patenter and patentor and that for patentee. Two conflicting definitions are given for patentor, sense 2 should be the correct one, and I added a reference from Collins. A patenter/patentor gives/grants a patent, a patentee is granted/receives a patent from the patenter/patentor, surely? DonnanZ (talk) 21:42, 8 March 2023 (UTC)

According to the OED the existing setup is correct (patenter = patentee, patentor can be either the patentee or the one who grants it). —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 22:03, 8 March 2023 (UTC)

(e/c) Interesting. I've cited patenter to mean "one who patents" as in the person who invents and patents a new technology, receiving a patent on it, based on the usual pattern of -er words; if both senses exist for patentor (they probably do), then it's a contranym (like looker, etc). - -sche (discuss) 22:10, 8 March 2023 (UTC)

Merriam-Webster says for patentor: "one that grants a patent". DonnanZ (talk) 22:24, 8 March 2023 (UTC)

They do, the OED has plenty of citations for both (apparently the 1890 Century Dictionary already gave patentor both senses). —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 22:25, 8 March 2023 (UTC)

I don't have access to the OED. Do they give dates for their cites? DonnanZ (talk) 22:34, 8 March 2023 (UTC)

"one who grants a patent" 1890, 1984, 2000; "which takes out a patent" 1890, 1946, 1992, 2001 (the 1890 is the Century Dictionary I mentioned above, so my "plenty" is probably an exaggeration). From my own review of the material on Google Books, in practice the sense "grantor of a patent" seems to be rare. The OED notes in its etymology that Medieval Latin patentor is attested in Britain in 1432 referring to one who has been granted letters patent, i.e. a "patentee". In the earliest English sources for the word I can find, which are 19th-century, it usually also refers to a patentee, but occasionally the grantor of a land patent in court records. McCarthy's Desk Encyclopedia of Intellectual Property (1991) notes (p. 240) that in the US the federal government can be considered "patentor" as the opposite end of the transaction from the "patentee", but that the term is "never commonly used" in practice. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 22:49, 8 March 2023 (UTC)

Very confusing. I wonder if there is another word for "one that grants a patent". DonnanZ (talk) 23:10, 8 March 2023 (UTC)

There are some scannos of patentor, where "patent or" is meant, but googling "patentor of" turns up people who have applied for and obtained patents. DonnanZ (talk) 10:52, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

coorie

What does the label "disputed" mean, and what would be a clearer thing to replace it with? That the etymology is disputed (as the wording of the definition might be taken to imply)? That the definition is disputed? That the existence of the referent is disputed? - -sche (discuss) 23:30, 8 March 2023 (UTC)

The Wikipedia page sheds some light on it. It probably needs a full usage note though, "disputed" by itself is opaque. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 00:08, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

Frequency information

Discussion moved to Wiktionary:Beer_parlour/2023/March.

Survey of British English

The results of a newish survey of British English are out that you might find interesting. See this link[7] Overlordnat1 (talk) 01:27, 10 March 2023 (UTC)

• Interesting stuff, thanks. Ƿidsiþ 05:47, 13 March 2023 (UTC)

My pleasure. --Overlordnat1 (talk) 08:29, 13 March 2023 (UTC)

Esperanto translation of "cool"

The word "cool" is translated into Esperanto here in Wiktionary as "malvarmeta", "mojosa". The meaning is that of temperature. The first word, "malvarmeta" is correct, while the second one isn't. "Mojosa" means 'cool' in the sense of 'popular', 'fashionable', also indicating approval. The page is locked, so I can't change it myself. 177.248.156.62 09:46, 10 March 2023 (UTC)

 Done – Jberkel 10:16, 10 March 2023 (UTC)

Apostrophe

I want to faithfully reproduce a quotation from a book in this diff, following Wiktionary guidelines. Should I then use this ‘ apostrophe or this ʻ apostrophe or some other? I might use a generic apostrophe, but I earnestly wish to be faithful to the author's/publisher's intent (if that is possible). Thanks, please ping me. --Geographyinitiative (talk) 15:05, 10 March 2023 (UTC)

@Geographyinitiative: It is semantically ʻ (modifier letter turned comma, your second link), as also used in Wikipedia's Wade–Giles article. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 15:29, 10 March 2023 (UTC)

@Al-Muqanna Thanks so much. If that's true, should Wiktionary have an 'English' header section for the modifier letter turned comma? UPDATE: This may be translingual, so: diff. --Geographyinitiative (talk) 15:33, 10 March 2023 (UTC) (Modified)

@Al-Muqanna: I doubt that it was differentiated from the left single quotation mark in 1898. What about the symbol used for Mac-/Mc-—I placed it at the quotation mark: should it be moved? J3133 (talk) 13:45, 11 March 2023 (UTC)

@J3133: That's why I said semantically, but 19th-century typographers did in fact also semantically (if not formally) distinguish the turned comma as used in Mc- from the single quotation mark (e.g.). I think it's less plausible to list the Mc- one under the Unicode modifier letter turned comma, though, given that it's not actually functioning as a modifier letter like the Wade–Giles one is; it's probably fine where it is. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 14:08, 11 March 2023 (UTC)

It would appear that the odd turned comma in M‘- is a typographic substitution for a superscript c as in M^c-. kwami (talk) 09:58, 13 March 2023 (UTC)

Nail header

Can't find this word in any dictionary. Is it even a word or is it a compound term with a slightly new semantics? Is it more right to write it as "nailheader"? It it necessary to create a new page for this word? In Norwegian it calls spikarlo (see "lo"), and in Russian it calls гвоздильня (gvozdilʹnja), but im not familiar with the blacksmith-vocabulary situation in other countries. My South African blacksmith friend calls it "the nail thing", but he's not an English native speaker. If i should create a new page about this English word, does she need to have name "nail header" or "nailheader"? And which references should this page get obtaining? --Tollef Salemann (talk) 11:25, 11 March 2023 (UTC)

There are several hits for 'nail header' at Google Books you could use if you wanted to create this entry, including one which claims that the obscure blacksmiths tool known as an Oliver/oliver can be used as a nail header. I've just created Oliver as an alternative form of oliver but my understanding of blacksmithery is far too limited for me to create it myself. --Overlordnat1 (talk) 12:53, 11 March 2023 (UTC)

Wow thanks! Yeah, i guess, an oliver can be used in many weird ways :) Tollef Salemann (talk) 13:01, 11 March 2023 (UTC)

There are also machines with production rates of ~500 pieces per minute, called nail headers (or nailheaders) that put heads on wire (or rod?) to make nails. DCDuring (talk) 17:55, 11 March 2023 (UTC)

i know this kind of machines existed before 1900 (at least, in Germany and Russia), but i don't know anything about industrial mettalurgy. Gonna check it out Tollef Salemann (talk) 18:07, 11 March 2023 (UTC)

You can see the 500/minute variety online. DCDuring (talk) 22:41, 11 March 2023 (UTC)

Yeah, i found it on youtube. Guess, im done with this one then: nail header Tollef Salemann (talk) 22:49, 11 March 2023 (UTC)

alkaline

Do we need two senses? I don't really see a difference. PUC – 13:41, 12 March 2023 (UTC)

The only justification I can see is that clearly before the invention of the pH scale in the 20th century people wouldn't have been using it intentionally to mean "has a pH greater than 7". But since the referent is still the same this would probably be handled better by merging the two senses into one line (which is also what Merriam-Webster and the OED do). —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 14:07, 12 March 2023 (UTC)

Funnily enough, I was pondering about this issue earlier today when editing Latin hepar. I added the gloss "large organ in the body that stores and metabolizes nutrients, destroys toxins and produces bile", which I pulled from liver, but I doubt the Romans knew as much about the role of the liver as we do, so leaving aside the case of Contemporary Latin, I wonder if it's really appropriate to gloss it like that. At what point does a redefinition become a new definition, or a connotation a denotation? PUC – 14:40, 12 March 2023 (UTC)

An alkaline battery is one that contains a certain alkali to power it; the battery as a whole need not have a pH measurement above 7. —Soap— 19:23, 12 March 2023 (UTC)

Geschoß

Isn't this southern variant of Geschoss (with a long vowel) also a neuter noun like the standard variant, in all meanings? Neither German wiktionary nor any authoritative sources (Duden, DWDS...) suggest otherwise. 176.93.255.63 15:02, 12 March 2023 (UTC)

I’ve fixed that for you. Fay Freak (talk) 16:44, 12 March 2023 (UTC)

ubiquity, omnipresence

The Wikipedia article about omnipresence says that "The term omnipresence is most often used in a religious context as an attribute of a deity or supreme being, while the term ubiquity is generally used to describe something "existing or being everywhere at the same time, constantly encountered, widespread, common". Ubiquitous can also be used as a synonym for words like worldwide, universal, global, pervasive, all over the place."

I don't know if that's true, but if there's a distinction to be made, it should be better reflected in our entries; at the moment the two terms are more or less treated as synonyms. PUC – 17:06, 12 March 2023 (UTC)

Well, the core fallacy of religions is that they abuse terms like “existence” and ”to be” and “to be present” that are designed to relate to actual businesses (Sprachspiel), so I don’t expect consistent usage—their use likely always is motte and bailey, some kind of “there” and “not there” in reality at the same time, strongly correlating with lacking experience regarding the occurrences of the world that would hint that definitely no one is there (otherwise it would have been leaked, isn’t it). Fay Freak (talk) 17:28, 12 March 2023 (UTC)

Checking collocations on COCA, it seems to be used with plenty of things before religion, i.e. omnipresent media. (granted that's the adjective, but hey) Vininn126 (talk) 17:38, 12 March 2023 (UTC)

-nil-

Should this entry be at nil- instead? It's used to mean zero in systematic names for chemical elements that don't have "real" names yet, e.g. "binilunium" would be an element 201. Yet we don't have -bi- for two, even though that can occur in mid-word too. We'd probably just say that bi- already covers it. The only reason that nil- never begins a chemical element name is a mathematical reason, not a morphological one: no element number will ever begin with zero, since prepending zeros to a number doesn't affect its value. Equinox ◑ 17:59, 12 March 2023 (UTC)

@Equinox (a) probably yes, (b) it wouldn't be an infix in any case but an interfix; infixes are inserted in the middle of a morpheme, while interfixes are inserted between morphemes. Benwing2 (talk) 23:06, 12 March 2023 (UTC)

I am a poor politician and should have said "WHO WILL DENY the proposed move to nil-?". Who will deny it? (Surah ar-Rahman) Equinox ◑ 03:04, 13 March 2023 (UTC)

Hmm, this is a hard case, isn't it, since will someone think to look up the nil in binilunium as nil-? (Maybe, IDK. Maybe we just solve that by having a hard, or more likely soft, redirect from -nil-?) It's tricky when something logically would be X but is only attested as Y. (Navajo has some interesting affixes in this regard: things like -ba and -d- are prefixes despite where the hyphens are.) - -sche (discuss) 04:41, 13 March 2023 (UTC)

Well, if someone sees "biopsychology" are they going to look up "-psycho-" because it's in the middle? I doubt it my friend. Equinox ◑ 04:43, 13 March 2023 (UTC)

Yeah, I suppose the number of people who'd see binilium and look up nil in any form at all is probably ... well, not nil, but not large, ha. (To be clear, I'm fine with putting it at nil-.) - -sche (discuss) 04:52, 13 March 2023 (UTC)

@Equinox I think that's a perfect analogy. We shouldn't have redundant infix entries for prefixes just because those prefixes happen to appear in words which have an additional prefix tacked onto them. – Guitarmankev1 ^(talk) 19:46, 13 March 2023 (UTC)

IIRC (it's been a few years since I've worked with these), agglutinative languages tend to have a canonical order of affixes, so there are "slots" for specific types of prefixes and suffixes: for Cahuilla verbs, the subject pronoun is always first, followed by the object; for non-possessed nouns, the absolutive suffix always comes last. The other prefixes and suffixes for things like syntactic features such as aspect and voice and case are in different slots from derivational suffixes like nominalizers as well as -ma[l] (for little things) and -we[t] (for big ones). They're all easier to deal with as prefixes and suffixes, even if some of them follow or are followed by slots that are never empty. I don't think there are any instances where an affix can be used both before and after the main part of the word. Chuck Entz (talk) 00:42, 26 March 2023 (UTC)

(Only semi-related: are there words not about chemical elements that use a nil- prefix? As it happens, apparently yes, like nilpotent and nilmanifold, which we would definitely analyse with a prefix if it was mono-, uni-, bi-, di- or what not. Do their etymologies link to a nil- page? No. Does the wiki drive the etymology? Oh hell yes.) Equinox ◑ 04:46, 13 March 2023 (UTC)

Definitely agree with this, we should have consistency between nil-, uni-, etc. Ioaxxere (talk) 04:56, 13 March 2023 (UTC)

These are prefixes in origin but used here as (compound) roots, and so are not really any kind of affix. But that's sophistry; for our purposes, counting them as prefixes is probably good enough. I suppose we could argue that they're prefixes followed by a suffix without any root. kwami (talk) 05:19, 13 March 2023 (UTC)

Not very much feedback, but I'm going to shift things to nil- and leave the redirect from -nil-. I believe it's sensible. Thanks. Equinox ◑ 09:57, 18 March 2023 (UTC)

Worth mentioning that we do atm have nilium listed as a synonym of neutronium (which in its original definition has atomic number 0 by definition and occasionally crops up in old periodic tables—hard to find examples online but I remember seeing the neutron listed with atomic number 0 in school and this journal article discusses it). Unfortunately "nilium" doesn't look particularly attestable apart from a few online references. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 14:18, 18 March 2023 (UTC)

tomorrow

We say the pronunciation with the final syllable as a schwa is "dialectal" in the UK and NYC- and Philly-specific in the US. I think this is not the whole picture: doesn't it also exist as a common colloquial variant (not dialect-specific)? - -sche (discuss) 04:59, 13 March 2023 (UTC)

I wouldn't say that that schwa-final pronunciation is limited to NYC and Philly (imagine how a Bostionian would pronounce it), but it's not a universal colloquial pronunciation either. Even between the cities of NYC and Boston it might sound out of place, and I would imagine that out in the western US it might sound strange too. Just my 2¢. – Guitarmankev1 ^(talk) 13:22, 13 March 2023 (UTC)

I'd definitely say that it's a colloquial rather than a dialectal pronunciation in Britain but the final vowel can get reduced in certain phrases like 'tomorrow night' and 'tomorrow morning' by speakers from all over the world. Perhaps outside of such phrases it could be labelled as dialectal in America, I'm not sure. It's hard to find people with particularly broad regional American accents saying the word 'tomorrow' on YouGlish to check. --Overlordnat1 (talk) 14:20, 13 March 2023 (UTC)

The unstressed /o/ > /ə/ shift is characteristic of Appalachian English but has spread outside its home area in words such as fella. Its possible that tomorrow is another one of these words; I've definitely heard this pronunciation, but i've never associated it with cities. Somewhat related, the Appalachian shift also encompasses /ə/ > /i/ ... i wonder if colloquial pronunciations like "yesterdy", "Tuesdy", etc might correlate with /o/>/ə/, if we assume tentatively that the relatively rare unstressed /ei/ was scooped up by the shift, perhaps if we mentally parsed it as /əi/? I suspect not, though, as we have no indication of the -/i/ pronunciations being regional. —Soap— 09:38, 14 March 2023 (UTC)

I don't think it's possible that the use of a schwa in tomorrow is spreading out of Appalachia (by which I mean, I think it clearly isn't limited to nor originating from there), if the places our entry acknowledges it so far are the big cities of NYC and Philly and then the UK. I couldn't think of a concise way to include this in my original post, but use of a schwa may not represent any shift of /o/ by anyone at all, but mere preservation of the schwa that was present at the end of (some pronunciations of) the Middle English word. It's /o/ which is the recent development; the Old English ancestor of tomorrow ended in /e/. I'm inclined to label it something like "colloquial or dialectal". - -sche (discuss) 10:37, 14 March 2023 (UTC)

That sounds like a good label. There's also the fact that many people in Scotland (and I think from memory also Geordies) say 'the morrow' for 'tomorrow' and 'the day' for 'today'. I'd say these are set phrases that deserve there own entries, though possibly as Scots instead of or as well as English. If someone said 'see you the morrow' then it would mean the same as 'see you IN the morning' (or 'see you ON the morrow' in standard archaic English), the preposition is always elided. 'see youse the morrow' yields a couple of Northern Irish uses on GoogleBooks and 'ra morra', broad Glaswegian for 'the morrow' has the full three hits. 'the day', 'the morrow' and 'ra' also appear in the DSL. We should probably create 'the morrow', 'the day', 'the night' (for 'tonight'), 'ra' for 'the' and 'morra' for 'morrow' at some point. --Overlordnat1 (talk) 12:28, 14 March 2023 (UTC)

tomorrow's, yesterday's, and today's

Do these fit the Criteria for Inclusion? I suppose that yesterday's might have a unique sense of outdated, but I'm thinking it's only like that in select phrases like yesterday's news and in general the term yesterday's doesn't really differ from yesterday + 's... – Guitarmankev1 ^(talk) 19:43, 13 March 2023 (UTC)

Probably not. They are possessive forms, aren't they? Otherwise we would have these for every noun. DonnanZ (talk) 00:27, 14 March 2023 (UTC)

There do exist a few other possessive form entries, but I think they're all possessive pronouns one's or somebody's. The deciding factor to include it would be if the possessive form conveys any additional meaning (like a figurative or idiomatic meaning) other than only "the possessive form of X". Fowler's, people's, and butcher's are all possessive=form entries, although the full list of words like that is very small. For example, one of the definitions under today's is "Relating to, or produced in, the current historical period", and similar definitions could be written for the other two, but I think these are piggybacking on existing definitions of the non-possessive forms, such as the definition under today, "In the current era; nowadays". I'm going to go ahead and put {{rfd}} tags on those pages to question if they qualify under the CFI. Reading around, that appears to be the proper procedure... – Guitarmankev1 ^(talk) 18:27, 14 March 2023 (UTC)

nuclide

The current definition of "nuclide" associates it an element's the "atomic mass", but more accurate would be with the "mass number". Also, the current entry for "atomic mass" has a usage note saying "or, commonly, as a sum of the number of protons and neutrons in the nucleus", but it would be more accurate to say this produces an approximation (which is the "mass number"). I suspect in the wild, these two terms are sometimes used as the current entries state, a "justification by usage", and the term "mass number" has come into use to avoid the ambiguities of the terms "atomic mass" and "atomic weight". In other words, within technical fields, more precise meanings have been adopted. 74.69.160.254 19:47, 13 March 2023 (UTC)

A Dutch IPA Converter ?

[8]https://github.com/Ascor8522/dutch-ipa running at [9]https://dutch-ipa.deno.dev/ isn't well trained.
Any such tool at ( CLARIAH for academic research in Humanities and Social Sciences ) ? [10]https://www.clariah.nl/clariah-resources-overview or elsewhere?
Thanks Flāvidus (talk) 22:45, 13 March 2023 (UTC)

飾 A request & a suggestion

1) Can we add or use "embellish" (To make something sound or look better or more acceptable than it is in reality; to distort, to embroider.) for the sense to cover up; to deceive
2) I am having a hard time with the tone numbers of "sik" in Cantonese, particularly "sik1" Is it like " seek ; basic" or "second" ?

By the way, it is on Forvo.com now. Flāvidus (talk) 03:52, 14 March 2023 (UTC)

On 2): The seek/second distinction you're talking about is a distinction of vowel quality, not of tone. There are phonetic tables at Wiktionary:About Chinese/Cantonese if you want more info. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 12:42, 14 March 2023 (UTC)

rumped

and other words used in combination. I don't know whether it is attestable apart from use in combinations. We show many derived terms there, but some of them are like bright-rumped attila, bright-rumped tanager, and bright-rumped yellow finch, which are vernacular names for species of bird. We deem such names to not be SoP.

1. Should the derived terms at rumped include such terms or only include terms like bright-rumped?
2. Are terms like bright-rumped SoP? (It seems possibly attestable as a hyphenated compound adjective apart from those vernacular names.)

Derived terms at bright-rumped could include terms like bright-rumped attila. DCDuring (talk) 17:00, 15 March 2023 (UTC)

Greek calque?

Gothic 𐌿𐍆𐌰𐍂𐌷𐌰𐌿𐍃𐌴𐌹𐌽𐍃 (ufarhauseins) and Russian непослушание (neposlušanije) - they must be some sort of calques from the Bible, amirite? Where is best to search the Bible Greek stuff like that? Or is it a native concept (compare to Norwegian Nynorsk høyra etter, Russian слушаться (slušatʹsja))? --Tollef Salemann (talk) 11:35, 16 March 2023 (UTC)

Calques on what? AFAIK the NT Greek terms for "disobedience" are παρακοή (parakoḗ), see παρα- (para-, “by; besides”) + ἀκούω (akoúō, “hear, obey”), and ἀπείθεια (apeítheia), see ἀ- (a-, “not”) + πείθομαι (peíthomai, “believe, obey”). The Gothic and Russian terms both reflect "hearing" etymologically but they don't look like obvious calques since the prefixes are semantically different from παρα—Gothic 𐌿𐍆𐌰𐍂 (ufar) is "over", Russian не- (ne-) is just "not". At most they might derive from terms originally coined for Bible translations, but it looks more like standard internal word-formation than calquing in a strict sense. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 11:50, 16 March 2023 (UTC)

Ok so you mean it might be just a common human concept to mix between "obey" and "listen", like Sumerian 𒄑𒌇? Thanks, im gonna agree on it, altough it seems contra-intuitive for me, thats why i asked, since i cant find any information on this subject. Tollef Salemann (talk) 12:13, 16 March 2023 (UTC)

The hear -> obey semantic development is fairly cross-linguistic, Sanskrit श्रुष्टि (śruṣṭi) also means "obedience" and is related to श्रुति (śruti, “hearing”), themselves cognate with the Russian word. See Khmer ស្ដាប់ (sdap) for a completely unrelated example. The other common one is follow (physically) -> obey. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 12:29, 16 March 2023 (UTC)

всьому́ vs. всьо́му

I'm hoping some fluent speakers can chime in on this one. We have the declension table for Ukrainian весь showing всьому́ (dat.sg.), всьо́му (loc.sg.) (with the same stress contrast also used at увес and ввесь). But is this right? So far as I can tell from the page history, the original editor used всьому́ for both forms, which was then changed at some stage (perhaps by a bot when the a template got updated) to the current one. However, Horoh shows both as всьо́му. Which is it to be? Or should we accept both?

Edit: there's also a similar thing with Русь. This time, there are four variants for the gen.sg.: Ру́сі, Русі́, Ру́си, Руси́. Horoh has Ру́сі, Ру́си; while the Kyiv Dictionary has Русі́. But I cannot find a source for Руси́. And what are the stylistic or other differences between -и and -і?

Edit 2: C.f. свій: своєму́ (dat.sg.) vs своє́му (loc.sg.), again manual declension table not supported by Horoh] or the Kiev dictionary. Helrasincke (talk) 10:32, 19 March 2023 (UTC)

всьому́ (dative) and всьо́му (locative) are correct according to official Ukrainian orthography: § 113 of Українська національна комісія з питань правопису (22 May 2019) Український правопис 2019 року [Ukrainian orthography of 2019], Kyiv: Naukova Dumka, →ISBN, page 143. However своє́му is both dative and locative (see § 110 on page 142 of ibid.) so the table at свій may need to be changed accordingly. Voltaigne (talk) 10:55, 19 March 2023 (UTC)

@Voltaigne: Thank you for this. A very useful resource. Helrasincke (talk) 03:20, 25 March 2023 (UTC)

Jitsuyo Nihongo Hyogen Jiten and 糞餓鬼

I think the recent series of reverts at 糞餓鬼 warrants a discussion. [11][12][13][14] @Fish bowl, Eirikr The main issue is how to treat the dictionary/website called 実用日本語表現辞典 (Jitsuyo Nihongo Hyogen Jiten), as a reference or a further reading.

To be honest, I'm not sure if we really need a reference or a further reading on this. This is a colloquial curse word, and I think that's why we don't find many trusted reference materials that describe it, despite its widespread use. (At least I couldn't find one quickly.) To be clear, there is no problem with attestation. I'm sure some of the examples found in NDL are usable [15], and that might be good enough for us. I'm not sure if there is more to say about the word than what the gloss currently says - the meaning seems to be fairly straightforward.

Our English gloss in the first version appears very close to what Jitsuyo says in Japanese. The redundancy and the lack of additional description makes it a poor further reading material, in my opinion. If we want to have it as a reference to back up the gloss, I guess we could do that, but I would still caution against relying on the anonymous source - we don't know who writes Jitsuyo and their level of expertise. Whym (talk) 12:25, 19 March 2023 (UTC)

in limbo — bị tù (senses)

• in limbo — bị tù mentioned at vi.wiktionary.org [16] Which senses do apply ?
  1) Any in-between place, state or condition of neglect or oblivion 2 ) (slang, archaic ? ) A lockup or jail cell.
  Thanks.

Flāvidus (talk) 19:05, 19 March 2023 (UTC)

Request for merge to: Pied Piper

As per Wiktionary:Tea room/2019/August#pied piper, uppercase Pied Piper should not redirect to lowercase pied piper. Both pages currently exist without redirect to each other (except for Template:also). As the entry is about a specific character, capitalized as a proper noun (also at Wikipedia), I propose that the lowercase entry is an incorrect duplication of the uppercase entry, and should be merged/deleted with redirect to the uppercase entry. — CJDOS, Sheridan, OR (talk) 21:13, 19 March 2023 (UTC)

@CJDOS: Wiktionary is a dictionary, not an encyclopedia, so we can afford to have both uppercase and lowercase entries. The proper noun and the common noun are completely different as lexical items, even though they share the same history. People write all the time about (metaphorically) hearing the call of a pied piper without thinking about a man in a story who plays a flute. They almost always spell it as lower case. People who write about the character generally spell it capitalized. Redirecting one to the other would just muddle things. Chuck Entz (talk) 00:37, 20 March 2023 (UTC)

Pajeet isn’t necessarily a slur or derogatory

I’ve heard it being used neutrally, more like a nickname, jokingly. —⁠This unsigned comment was added by 2001:56B:DD17:5C00:5085:E715:4BDD:B7A9 (talk) at 02:32, 20 March 2023 (UTC).

That’s its meme origin. They always joke on those internet boards like 4chan. Fay Freak (talk) 02:58, 20 March 2023 (UTC)

Use of Pajeet as an adjective.

I’ve seen it being used as an adjective, to refer to things relating to India, Pakistanis or Indo-Aryans and Dravidians in general. Maybe we should add it? —⁠This unsigned comment was added by 2001:56B:DD17:5C00:5085:E715:4BDD:B7A9 (talk) at 02:34, 20 March 2023 (UTC).

I think it is just attributive use of the noun, or compounding. Any noun can be an adjective on occasion if one really wants too. Fay Freak (talk) 02:57, 20 March 2023 (UTC)

𠵇𠺫

Discussion moved from WT:RFVCJK.

Chinese. Rfv-pronunciation: kiu4 liu1. This pronunciation was not found in sources like [17] and [18] Mahogany115 (talk) 02:52, 20 March 2023 (UTC)

@Mahogany115: This is not an RFV issue, but RFV-pron, which belongs in WT:TR. — justin(r)leung _{{ (t...) | c=› }} 02:59, 20 March 2023 (UTC)

@Mahogany115: 廣州方言詞典 p. 263 喬敹 k‘iu˨˩ liu˨˩꜒, 廣州話方言詞典 p. 118 喬溜 kiu⁴ liu¹. — justin(r)leung _{{ (t...) | c=› }} 03:39, 20 March 2023 (UTC)

Hyphenation of Cebuano ll in Spanish loans

I cleaned up some very obvious typos at User:Tbm/QA/Hyphenation, but noticed that we have inconsistent hyphenation of ll in Cebuano surnames of Spanish origin. See Category:Cebuano surnames from Spanish (and possibly more at Category:Cebuano terms borrowed from Spanish unless they are all respelled to have -ly-). Basically my question is .... should we write -ll or l-l? Can it be both? I couldnt find anything easily accessible online that explained the pattern, nor at our own pages such as Wiktionary:About Cebuano. I came here because this involves names and words that were never listed on the Hyphenation task page. Thanks, —Soap— 08:28, 21 March 2023 (UTC)

uphill

Looking at the comparatives for the adverb and adjective, it seems to me that they are the wrong way round, and should be swapped around. If that's the case, I think the usage note for the adjective would then be superfluous. DonnanZ (talk) 17:06, 21 March 2023 (UTC)

Adding just to note that downhill is patterned the same way. I wonder if it's better to just say that the adjective is noncomparable in these senses and that the far/further/furthest is a separate word. But I'll leave that to others to figure out ... classifying parts of speech has never been my strong point. —Soap— 21:19, 21 March 2023 (UTC)

hay loft, and other phrases that happen to exist in two languages

When I was living in Spain, I'd often see "hay pan" (there is bread) on shop signs. And I'd always chuckle as in English it would mean a pan for hay. Today I came across hay loft too (I shouldn't have added a Spanish section to that, BTW...). These "false friend sentences", or false friendtences as I'm coining them are probably about as a rare as palindromic phrases, so are there any other good ones out there where a combination of words have completely different meanings? Van Man Fan (talk) 21:43, 23 March 2023 (UTC)

soy sauce is another goodie. It means "I am willow" in Spanish. Van Man Fan (talk) 21:46, 23 March 2023 (UTC)

Not quite the same thing but I once thought a sign in France that read 'On peut pas battre nos prix' meant 'One can't batter our prizes' rather than 'One can't beat our prices.' --Overlordnat1 (talk) 00:34, 24 March 2023 (UTC)

I see no soy a lot on food packages, sometimes before the product name. For example, no soy teriyaki sauce. Well ... what is it then? —Soap— 08:31, 24 March 2023 (UTC)

The best one I've come up with so far is "quince pies", which is fairly ordinary in both languages, but completely different. Chuck Entz (talk) 05:17, 26 March 2023 (UTC)

Part of speech of possessive -'s

It was a suffix from 29 September 2005 to 28 April 2009; since then until 9 August 2022 a particle; and since then (changed by Dylanvt) until 2 March 2023 (changed by Tc14Hd to a suffix) an enclitic. Note that we currently call the similar -' a particle. J3133 (talk) 16:52, 24 March 2023 (UTC)

IMO "Suffix" is best for both since it's by far the most comprehensible option for readers (and our glossary definition of suffix adequately covers enclitics too: "A morpheme added to the end of a word to modify its meaning"). "Enclitic" isn't a generally valid POS header per WT:POS and I'm not sure what benefit we really get from listing them as particles or a more exotic POS instead of suffixes. In principle the dividing line between a suffix and a particle, as defined at the moment, is that particles are "words", and I imagine most readers will find it less intuitive to treat -'s/-' as a word. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 17:16, 24 March 2023 (UTC)

The thing is, -’s is not a suffix, and doesn't behave like actual suffixes. If you compare it to the suffix -s, it clearly patterns differently, and this is important to note in a dictionary:

The dog that I found (is very friendly) → The dogs that I found (are very friendly)

The dog that I found (has matted fur) → The dog that I found’s (fur is matted).

If we call it a suffix a non-native speaker viewing the entry would have no way of knowing that it patterns differently, being appended not to the head noun, but to the last word in the noun phrase (in the above example, to found). Dylanvt (talk) 06:01, 25 March 2023 (UTC)

They would know that from the (existing) usage notes. They certainly aren't going to figure it out based on whether it's called "suffix" or "particle". —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 11:16, 25 March 2023 (UTC)

No, I would never call 's a suffix. It's (it is) a possessive form, and a movable one, e.g. woman's handbag, womens' handbags (women's handbags may be preferable), and also used in contractions like it's (which shouldn't be confused with its). DonnanZ (talk) 10:34, 25 March 2023 (UTC)

I should add that our glossary definition of suffix does not adequately cover clitics: "A morpheme added to the end of a word to modify its meaning". Whereas -’s isn't added to the end of a word to modify its (the word's) meaning; it's added to the end of a noun phrase to modify its (the entire phrase's) meaning. And most sources, as well as most linguists, consider -’s to be a clitic, not an affix. I do see that 'clitic' is not considered a valid POS category per WT:POS, but I'm not sure why that's the case; seems a bit arbitrary to me. I suppose, though, that as long as the usage notes adequately explain these complexities, it's not the end of the world to label it a suffix. In any case, -' should have the same POS header as -’s. Dylanvt (talk) 12:17, 25 March 2023 (UTC)

I don't object to making clitic a generally valid POS header. It's currently "explicitly disallowed", but there was no real reasoning advanced for it at the vote that decided this (in fact it's only brought up almost tangentially there that the vote would have the effect of making it explicitly disallowed when it wasn't before). There'd need to be a new vote to overturn this, though. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 12:40, 25 March 2023 (UTC)

I agree. It seems like a strange decision. Theknightwho (talk) 12:50, 25 March 2023 (UTC)

I think the spirit of the vote was to limit PoS headers to those least likely to be discourage normal users. We could accommodate the needs and preferences of those more committed to other, possibly technically superior classifications by labels, categories, and perhaps usage notes. DCDuring (talk) 13:58, 25 March 2023 (UTC)

I always find these convoluted edit histories amusing.

In any case, I agree with Dylanvt that it's a clitic. I'm surprised 'clitic' hasn't been allowed as a header for all these years. Nicodene (talk) 23:31, 25 March 2023 (UTC)

@Theknightwho, Dylanvt, J3133: Actually I also found while searching for previous discussions that Wiktionary:English entry guidelines currently states that "While entries should note that they are clitics, the POS header used is Suffix for enclitics, prefix for proclitics, etc." Again, this seems basically arbitrary to me, though it's been there since the earliest version of the page (in the form "clitic ('s, 'd) - While entries should note that they are clitics, the POS header used is Suffix."). At any rate I've created a draft vote on allowing "Clitic" as a POS at Wiktionary:Votes/pl-2023-03/Allow "Clitic" as a POS header, do comment if there's anything else to mention there. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 14:02, 25 March 2023 (UTC)

Lots of aspects of Wiktionary content are "arbitrary", representing an effort to balance considerations such as the need to win the loyalty of normal users and the practice of specialist linguists. The important thing is not to get too invested in the metaphysical reality of technical entities, categories, etc. DCDuring (talk) 14:24, 25 March 2023 (UTC)

Of course, which is why I support deciding on it case by case. Ultimately, from searching prior discussions, I can't find any reason that has ever been advanced to justify the existing blanket-ban on the use of "Clitic" as POS in any entry. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 15:40, 25 March 2023 (UTC)

Interesting. Without expressing an opinion on what part of speech possessive 's is, I will note that both the statement that "clitic" is not used as a POS header and the statement that "enclitic" is not used are de facto not followed by entries (clitics: -s, -kaa, -e, etc; fewer enclitics: -li, -mo, etc). Possibly the guidance was intended to be English-specific, and/or editors of other languages unaware of it simply moved past it. (If we formally allow "clitic", do we still need "enclitic", or can enclitics be headered as ===Clitic===s at that point?) - -sche (discuss) 16:49, 25 March 2023 (UTC)

We still have nearly 800 entries that have {{pedia}} under the See Also heading. That's not a justification for the legitimacy of the practice. DCDuring (talk) 23:59, 25 March 2023 (UTC)

@-sche: I hadn't noticed that entries like that already exist. It's worth noting that the vote disallowing these POS's was justified at the time primarily as just codifying existing practice, so if practice has shifted since then, or if it never actually reflected the practice for some languages, then that's a good reason in and of itself to review it. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 00:05, 26 March 2023 (UTC)

To be clear, an enclitic is just a clitic that goes after its "host". So, "enclitic" is to "clitic" as "suffix" is to "affix".

One solution would be: since we have the headers "prefix" and "suffix", we should also have the headers "proclitic" and "enclitic".

Another solution would be: since clitics are less widespread and less widely known by the general readership than affixes, it might be best to avoid the headers "proclitic" and "enclitic" in favor of the overarching "clitic". Dylanvt (talk) 06:15, 26 March 2023 (UTC)

• I agree that possessive 's is a clitic. User:Dylanvt's example, which applies a standard test for clitichood, is a good piece of evidence for this. It's been a while since I took a linguistics class, but if I remember correctly, the behavior of clitics is analyzed as part of syntax (not morphology), so theoretically I would think they should have a part of speech like any other word. But clitics often have special meanings and unusual syntax – I suspect for a lot of them, we wouldn't be able to find a better POS header than the catchall "Particle". And at that point it's more informative and intuitive to use "Clitic" instead. I don't really see any benefit to using the POS header "Suffix" instead of "Clitic" when clitic is more accurate, except I guess that the word "suffix" is more familiar to some of our readers. —Granger (talk · contribs) 23:08, 25 March 2023 (UTC)

I think "suffix" is fine. One thing to note is that there is not consensus among linguists that '-s is a clitic: the Cambridge Grammar of the English Language argues that it is an inflectional suffix and not a clitic, based on how it interacts differently with words ending in the plural suffix -s and singular words that end in /s/ or /z/ (Chapter 5, pages 480-481 ("The realisation of the genitive is crucially bound up, therefore, with the inflectional formation of the noun, and this - like the suppletive genitives of the personal pronouns - rules out an analysis where the genitive is formed by the addition of a separate word cliticised to the noun").--Urszag (talk) 06:42, 26 March 2023 (UTC)

This is true. There are also analyses (vid. Lowe 2016) that it is simultaneously a suffix and a clitic. I think it would be fine to label it a suffix here, but in the usage notes explain the dispute, and that (syntactically) it patterns more like a clitic.Dylanvt (talk) 07:11, 26 March 2023 (UTC)

@Urszag, Dylanvt: The more I think about it, though, the point about phrasal scope strikes me as a much stronger argument (especially given how we've defined suffixes) than the Cambridge Grammar's argument from internal morphology, so if it's allowed perhaps it would actually be better to go the other way and list it as a clitic in the first instance and say it may also be analysed as a suffix? From a reader perspective a "Clitic" header would also encourage reading the notes for an explanation.

I also wondered whether the Cambridge argument is depending a bit too much on prescription rather than practice. Spencer and Luís, Clitics: An Introduction, point out that in practice at the phrasal level something like "one of my students'(s) assignment" can be pronounced both with and without the extra syllable, and indeed Googling "one of my students's" turns up various examples of people writing it as such informally apart from a few quoting that book. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 12:16, 26 March 2023 (UTC)

The main argument I've seen in favor of affixhood relies on the fact that the clitic is not always pronounced: cases like ducks’ (not pronounced after regular plurals), geese’s (pronounced after some irregular plurals), species’ (not pronounced after other irregular plurals), and James’ ~ James’s (optionally pronounced after proper names ending in [s] or [z]). The argument is that a clitic shouldn't exhibit lexical irregularities, since it's a syntactic unit. It seems that only regular plurals, optionally proper names, and the words species and series (which have so-called "zero-plurals") have a "silent" possessive (the last two in both singular and plural). This could probably be explained through some morphophonological rule(s), though, rather than through lexical irregularity.

I personally find the clitic analysis more convincing, and it certainly seems that a majority of linguists agree; but there are still adherents to the affix analysis (as well as to the affix+clitic analysis). Dylanvt (talk) 15:48, 26 March 2023 (UTC)

dove of peace

No other OneLook reference apart from WP has this. WP redirects to an article Doves as symbols on Wikipedia.Wikipedia . We have had a discussion of a definition of bald eagle as a symbol of the United States. We have nearly 7,000 entries that have Symbol as PoS. We have small number of items under Category:Symbols. We have many definitions of other terms that include "a|an|the symbol of|for". I am quite confused about what makes some items includable and others not.

This particular one seems lame and there are no lexicographic lemmings. I haven't looked at OED. DCDuring (talk) 19:53, 24 March 2023 (UTC)

Did Picasso have something to do with it? With dove#Noun sense 2 compared to hawk, both Collins and Oxford have this. The dove with olive branch is a well-known bible story from the Hebrew Scriptures. DonnanZ (talk) 10:06, 25 March 2023 (UTC)

Yunan^{[sic – meaning Yunnan]}

Hey all, please ping me if you have a comment on this: I'm just wondering if the 'Yunan' spelling for 'Yunnan' (see my cites at Citations:Yunnan under the heading "Yunnan as 'Yunan'") might constitute a common misspelling or a typo or perhaps a variant form. Different cites seem to point in different directions: it seems to be a variant (acceptable with three cites), a misspelling (acceptable if common) and a typo (not allowed) all at once, with it being a typo in modern texts, a misspelling in 20th century and a variant in the 19th century. I concluded this was primarily a typo and hence not worthy of its own sense at Yunan, but I did add 'Yunnan' at the top of the 'Yunan' page (see diff). I found all these high-level NYT, WaPo, AP News, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 19th century materials, etc etc cites because I knew from personal experience that this spelling would be pervasive if I lifted a finger to look for any. I've dealt with other variants, misspellings and typos, but this one is a little confusing because it (a) could not be right, ever (b) might have been semi-normalized at one point in the 19th century (c) now exists and will exist likely forever as a pervasive typo. --Geographyinitiative (talk) 14:56, 25 March 2023 (UTC) (Modified)

lleísmo

Could someone add an IPA pronunciation guide for the Spanish word lleísmo, please? This word is about a pronunciation phenomenon and if you mispronounce it, you might end up saying a word with the exact opposite meaning. Mölli-Möllerö (talk) 16:06, 24 March 2023 (UTC)

 Done Note that {{es-IPA}} is not perfect, but it's pretty reliable. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 19:30, 24 March 2023 (UTC)

@Koavf: I think Mölli's point was that lleísmo is inherently pronounced with [ʎ] in contrast to yeísmo, which is not reflected in the automatically generated pronunciation. See the intro at Wikipedia yeísmo. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 19:43, 24 March 2023 (UTC)

Oh, yeah, that does make a lot more sense. :/ —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 19:46, 24 March 2023 (UTC)

Yes, that's my point. I removed the es-IPA template as some of the pronunciations it generates are almost certainly wrong. Mölli-Möllerö (talk) 15:26, 25 March 2023 (UTC)

I've added the pronunciation with ʎ manually, do you think more explanation is needed? This is also what the French Wiktionary does for the term. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 16:31, 25 March 2023 (UTC)

No, that is sufficient for the page lleísmo, but now I noticed that a pronunciation template (es-pr) has been used in yeísmo as well! So that needs to be manually added too. I've removed the current pronunciation and replaced it with "(pronunciation needed)." Mölli-Möllerö (talk) 20:19, 25 March 2023 (UTC)

Now that I look, I'm not actually sure if the pronunciations generated by the es-pr template were wrong as /ʎeˈismo/ was not one of them. Feel free to undo my edit if this is the case. Mölli-Möllerö (talk) 20:21, 25 March 2023 (UTC)

I undid it for now, but I'm not confident about the regional variants since sheísmo and zheísmo are also attested for those specifically. I've tagged it for attention. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 20:48, 25 March 2023 (UTC)

powersport, powersports

The two definitions are currently subtly different; should they not be merged, or made synonyms? Equinox ◑ 16:29, 26 March 2023 (UTC)

Yeah, the only distinction I would expect to exist is singular vs plural, and the US/UK national difference in whether the singular or plural is used for the collective. I'll merge the content a la motorsport vs motorsports. The topic is little-discussed outside of being a buzzword in advertisements, though, so it's hard for me to tell whether the requirement for handlebars is definitional. - -sche (discuss) 23:28, 26 March 2023 (UTC)

"used horses" as an Old English translation of car ("automobile")

This has been added by Hundwine and removed by Anthologetes a couple times (see edit history). I am also inclined to remove it, but I guess we could replace it with {{not used}}, so I'm bringing it here to get more input. My initial reaction is (1) of course Old English didn't have a word for modern automobiles, and Egyptian didn't either, and they didn't have words for ICBM or Arizona either, but normal practice seems to be to just not include translations in such cases (it doesn't even seem to rise to the level of using {{not used}}), and (2) if the note is meant to be about the more general sense "a vehicle steered by a driver" / sense 2 "a wheeled vehicle, drawn by a horse or other animal; a chariot", then the note is wrong, Old English had words for that. - -sche (discuss) 17:07, 26 March 2023 (UTC)

Everything about having any sort of translation there is wrong and disingenuous. Vininn126 (talk) 17:13, 26 March 2023 (UTC)

It should definitely be removed. A horse isn't a car; you could just as well say "used feet"! It's not linguistic. Equinox ◑ 17:15, 26 March 2023 (UTC)

Agreed with all of the above. I noticed Hundwine justified this in their last edit summary by comparison with Latin, but there's nothing surprising about a Latin word existing for a distinctively modern concept when Latin is still used in the real world, as it were—check out the citations for pyrobolus atomicus (atomic bomb), which I made recently. This doesn't apply to Old English so there's no basis on which to expect it to have a word for "automobile". —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 23:21, 26 March 2023 (UTC)

dispatch

I put this on the discussion page of "dispatch", leaving it also here:

It seems dispatch and dispatchable may also mean to control and respectively being controllable or something like that (I'm not a native English speaker!) as in this extract from IEA report [19]Projected Costs of Generating Electricity 2020:

"Nuclear thus remains the dispatchable low-carbon technology with the lowest expected costs in 2025." Sivullinen (talk) 19:58, 26 March 2023 (UTC)

@Sivullinen: Wikipedia has an article on Dispatchable generation, and Google has references to dispatchable energy or power. It does seem to mean power sources that are controllable according to demand for power. DonnanZ (talk) 12:29, 28 March 2023 (UTC)

Pronunciation of upazila

Is it "a upazila" (you-pazila) or "an upazila" (up-azila)? DonnanZ (talk) 22:46, 27 March 2023 (UTC)

According to Wikipedia it’s neither. The first syllable is apparently “oo”. I haven’t checked the OED to see if it has an entry. — Sgconlaw (talk) 22:50, 27 March 2023 (UTC)

Ah, I forgot to look there, "an upazila", "an oo-pazila". It could do with IPA. Cheers! DonnanZ (talk) 22:58, 27 March 2023 (UTC)

I had a go at the IPA, using Wikipedia as a guide; it's more than likely wrong, so feel free to change it. DonnanZ (talk) 23:21, 27 March 2023 (UTC)

P.S. The OED doesn't have an entry for this word. — Sgconlaw (talk) 21:12, 28 March 2023 (UTC)

Thesaurus:person of color

Having this basically be a big list of slurs under "hyponyms" seems a bit questionable to me. I'm not totally convinced that it's semantically accurate to treat slurs as hyponyms of neutral terms like this—compare Thesaurus:European and Thesaurus:Asian—but, either way, it might make sense to separate them into a subsection? —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 17:39, 28 March 2023 (UTC)

Yeah, seems reasonable to at least split the list, neutral terms first, then slurs. (And having them in the thesaurus is an improvement over previously having them in the mainspace entries for neutral terms!) On Talk:black man, BD2412 and I discussed the idea of picking one slur for X and offloading all the other slurs for X to that entry, so n*gcel would be listed as a hyponym of n*gger, not person of color nor Thesaurus:person of color nor black man etc. BD even had the idea of moving all slurs to a single appendix of all slurs, though that'd probably attract more attention to them. BTW I trust we're only moving slurs for people/groups, and don't mind listing derogatory synonyms for e.g. die, as discussed halfway down this discussion. - -sche (discuss) 18:37, 28 March 2023 (UTC)

The appendix is so well-hidden and orphaned from the mainspace that even with an obvious title like "list of all slurs" I'd think not too many people would stumble upon it. And we could also choose a different title. That said, I dont think the appendix is such a good idea either since existing appendix pages tend to be almost wholly ungoverned. —Soap— 12:47, 29 March 2023 (UTC)

*Sigh* Or at least put all the derogatory terms in a collapsed section. — Sgconlaw (talk) 19:39, 28 March 2023 (UTC)

@Sgconlaw: Yeah, I've gone with this as the most obvious minimum solution for now. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 20:35, 28 March 2023 (UTC)

That sounds like a very good idea, -sche. CitationsFreak: Accessed 2023/01/01 (talk) 19:55, 28 March 2023 (UTC)

@-sche: From an end-user perspective the idea of moving the slurs to separate pages probably does make sense: if you're looking up synonyms of racial slurs you know what you're in for but I'm not sure it would be expected to see them lavishly listed under neutral terms. I think the current situation attracts more attention in that they appear in places where they're not necessarily expected. My concern about the semantic relationship is a bit more general—derogatory synonyms are of course still synonyms but I'm not sure to what extent it makes sense to list them as hyponyms and hypernyms. The inverse relationships, listing a slur as a hypernym of a neutral term and listing a neutral term as a hyponym of a slur, seem obviously tendentious to me. In a semantic map it might make more sense to group like with like and treat only neutral terms as direct hyponyms of neutral terms, and their derogatory equivalents as synonyms branching off from them at one remove. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 20:19, 28 March 2023 (UTC)

Yeah, I think that's a good metric, that someone should only be presented with these slurs if they're seeking to find slurs. (Obviously, we have to be prepared to deal with bad-faith or even good-faith trolling, like when some users recently argued white/whiteness was a slur/derogatory, but we already/always have to be prepared to deal with that.) When you say move them to separate pages, which of the various ideas discussed here do you mean? Offload all slurs for X to one slur for X (e.g. move all slurs for Black people to n*gger), or offload them to a central Appendix of All Slurs? Or offload them to, say, Thesaurus:person of color (derogatory terms) or some other title in that vein? That last one would do a good job of allowing e.g. Thesaurus:person of color to link to it in such a way that the link simultaneously is not a slur and yet clarifies for anyone seeing it just what they'd find if they clicked it. - -sche (discuss) 21:06, 28 March 2023 (UTC)

@-sche: yes, if it is decided that a separate thesaurus page should be created, I agree that a neutral description like "Thesaurus:person of color (derogatory terms)" should be used. — Sgconlaw (talk) 21:11, 28 March 2023 (UTC)

Multiple language codes for the same language

Hindko has two language codes, since it has different dialects – hnd and hno. What language code should be primarily used on Wiktionary? From what I know they're not that distinct from each other, so it would make sense to have it categorised under one language. نعم البدل (talk) 20:00, 28 March 2023 (UTC)

mañegu

o#Fala includes the template

{{lb|fax|Mañegu}}

which links to

wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Martín_de_Trevejo

where CTRL+F finds 0 matches for "mañegu" or "manegu".

Maybe a link to Wiktionary's mañegu page would be more useful? but what else does that template do? Would the below work?

{{lb|fax|[[mañegu|Mañegu]]}}

becomes

(Mañegu)

If that's an improvement, could someone program a bot to replace any instances of {{lb|fax|Mañegu}} with {{lb|fax|[[mañegu|Mañegu]]}}? 173.67.42.107 08:26, 29 March 2023 (UTC)