Wiktionary:Tea room/2020/May

discussion rooms: Tea room • Etym. scr. • Info desk • Beer parlour • Grease pit ← April 2020 · May 2020 · June 2020 → · (current)

---

Iesus

I undid User:Bakunla's addition of a macron to the second syllable because it caused module errors, not because I think they were wrong (I wouldn't know). Would someone who knows both Latin and the workings of our Latin declension modules (@Erutuon, maybe?) either fix them so they can handle this, or explain why the status quo is correct? Thanks! Chuck Entz (talk) 02:43, 1 May 2020 (UTC)

Pinging User:Benwing2, who wrote Module:la-nominal. — Eru·tuon 04:55, 2 May 2020 (UTC)

@Chuck Entz, Erutuon Fixed. Benwing2 (talk) 06:23, 2 May 2020 (UTC)

It is a bit strange that the initial I mutates into a J in the oblique cases.  --Lambiam 13:47, 4 May 2020 (UTC)

@Lambiam: Fixed. — Eru·tuon 22:21, 4 May 2020 (UTC)

location vs localisation

What's the difference? Is location rather geological and latter rather general? --91.42.34.154 12:51, 1 May 2020 (UTC)

Both words have multiple meanings, which overlap partially. The most common meaning of location is “a particular point or place in physical space”, as in “this is the location where Caesar was killed”. In that meaning, you cannot replace it by “localisation”: *”this is the localisation where Caesar was killed” does not work. Another meaning of location is “an act of locating”, that is, determining a particular point or place in physical space; in that sense it is a synonym of one of the meanings of localisation. To avoid confusion between the act and its result, may authors prefer to use “localisation” when referring to the process of determining the location (position in space) of something. Finally, localisation can also mean something entirely different, namely “making something (appear) local”. The well-known octagonal STOP sign reads ARRÊT in France; this is an example of localisation. Used in this sense, it cannot be replaced by “location”.  --Lambiam 14:16, 4 May 2020 (UTC)

歐式管 or 歐氏管 ?

I wonder if 歐氏管 (“Eustachian tube”) should be the more common and preferred form. Currently we have 歐式管.

Previously posted in the talk page Talk:歐式管. --Frigoris (talk) 13:12, 1 May 2020 (UTC)

@Frigoris: I think so. Guoyu Cidian and Cross Straits Dictionary have 歐氏管. 歐氏管 and 欧氏管 are also used in Korean and Japanese, respectively. 歐式管 seems to be a misspelling based on 歐式 (European-style), although it is sufficiently common (e.g. [1] [2] [3]). — justin(r)leung _{{ (t...) | c=› }} 17:38, 6 May 2020 (UTC)

brumate, brumation

Does anyone know enough about reptile behaviour to improve these definitions? A formulation like "similar to X but not the same" is far from ideal for almost all lemmas. ←₰-→ Lingo ^Bingo _Dingo (talk) 13:12, 2 May 2020 (UTC)

There seem to be number of states like this in various animal groups that are rather hard to define and distinguish. For insects, it's diapause. The definition there is deceptive, because an insect in diapause can stay in the same place without moving for a year or more. Then there's aestivation, which is the warm-weather counterpart of hibernation (both are named after the season they're associated with). I think torpor is another one. See Dormancy at Wikipedia for more details.Chuck Entz (talk) 19:20, 2 May 2020 (UTC)

slim to none

Worth an entry? Is it a cross between slim and close to none? It doesn't make much sense to me.

• “slim to none”, in Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster, 1996–present.

PUC – 12:21, 3 May 2020 (UTC)

The grammar of it, considered as SoP, is non-standard. See “slim to none”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.. DCDuring (talk) 12:26, 3 May 2020 (UTC)

To me, it seems an example of the general pattern "X to Y", indicating a range. Mihia (talk) 22:52, 3 May 2020 (UTC)

Slim is an adjective; none is a pronoun. This indicates a range, but a range would normally involve two terms that were the same PoS. DCDuring (talk) 23:10, 4 May 2020 (UTC)

I know, but I still think it is within the bounds of normal usage: "slim to nothing", "small to zero", etc. Mihia (talk)

But it's much more common and doesn't 'feel wrong' to me. I didn't even notice its ungrammaticality until it was brought here. Your examples do 'feel wrong' to me. DCDuring (talk) 23:27, 4 May 2020 (UTC)

OK, well, to me, e.g. "the chances are small to zero" does not sound wrong all, though I would accept that it is no doubt much less common than "slim to none". Mihia (talk) 00:12, 5 May 2020 (UTC)

I would agree with Mihia that it's a range. I can see why the grammar might be criticised ("slim" is an adjective, "none" is... a noun? or not an adjective anyhow) but the intent is clear. Also "slim" is used to describe chances in many situations, and doesn't require "none" nearby. Equinox ◑ 00:16, 5 May 2020 (UTC)

I'm new to this, but I would have thought this merited an entry. It seems significant that its use is constrained to particular contexts (i.e. describing probabilities) in a way that would not be inferrable from looking at its components. If we read the phrase as meaning in the range between zero and a small amount, then why can't it be used to answer questions like "How many are we expecting at the party?" or "What's the interest rate?". Colin M (talk) 16:22, 4 June 2020 (UTC)

out of a bandbox

It seems we're missing an idiom here. What should be the title, though? look as if one has come out of a bandbox, look as if one came out of a bandbox, look as if one stepped out of a bandbox, come out of a bandbox, step out of a bandbox, fresh out of a bandbox, out of a bandbox?

• “bandbox”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.: "I'd go out looking fresh out of a bandbox"
• “bandbox”, in Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster, 1996–present.: "she looked as if she came out of a bandbox"

PUC – 12:58, 3 May 2020 (UTC)

If anything, just out of a bandbox, because there are just too many variations (“as though it came out of a bandbox”; “like they just stepped out of a bandbox”) with some redirects and a usage note saying that this is used in combination with a variety of verbs whose meaning is “to emerge”. If the etymology and definition clarify this is used in similes about someone’s appearance, it is IMO not necessary to include look and as if in the main lemma.  --Lambiam 15:59, 4 May 2020 (UTC)

be not to know

Per the discussion at Talk:be not to know, should this be moved to be to, or possibly have no entry at all? PUC – 16:23, 3 May 2020 (UTC)

Be to can have many other meanings: “children are to obey their parents” (obligation), “you are to undergo a radical transformation” (expectation), “it was to keep you safe” (intention). The meaning here, possibility, is not tied to the verb know: “how were we to guess what you meant?”; “how was I to pay that amount?”. This possibility meaning seems to have negative polarity, but perhaps the negative polarity transforms the expectation meaning into that of an unreasonable expectation, as made explicit in “how could you expect me to pay that amount?”.  --Lambiam 15:33, 4 May 2020 (UTC)

As you say, "How was I to ~ ?", meaning "How could I (have) ~ ?", does not seem to be specific to "know". However, I can't at the moment think of any parallels to "I wasn't to know", where "I wasn't to ~" means "I couldn't (have) ~". Is this unique to "know"? Mihia (talk) 20:04, 4 May 2020 (UTC)

e.g. "They should have known I wasn't to be trusted with large amounts of money". Equinox ◑ 20:18, 4 May 2020 (UTC)

-a

Ety 6, "Added to lines of poetry and verse to maintain metrics.", definition "Added for metrical reasons to poetry and verse." Probably this is obvious and I'm just having a brain fart, but can I get an example of this? In particular, is it suffixed to (the end of) entire lines of poetry as the ety says, or to individual words? And is it a suffix, or a space-separated particle? - -sche (discuss) 16:29, 3 May 2020 (UTC)

I can only think of this. —Mahāgaja · talk 17:29, 3 May 2020 (UTC)

There is a Christian children's song called I Wanna that does this: in the first verse wanna is rhymed with uponna (and it's clearly not intended to be "upon a"), and there is a four-way internal rhyme between none-a / done-a / one-a / Son-a and gonna. The song also uses the more traditional diminutive -y: In the last verse "oh yes He" is rhymed with messy and transgressy, which are functioning as nouns, not adjectives. I always thought of the -a and -y as being essentially diminutives, used to make the song sound cute ... it's intended to be sung by young children. But now it looks to me like the -a is being used in the sense we requested rather than being a mere diminutive. This is a fairly obscure song but the lyrics of two of the three verses are typed up online, and the full song can be heard on YouTube.

Regarding the other questions, it seems that it can appear in any place within a line, and the author of at least this one song used dashes, making words like "upon-a", which I respelled as uponna because there is no pause before the suffix. —Soap— 19:58, 3 May 2020 (UTC)

Thanks, both of you. I've added the first one as an example, which should show readers how it's used. :) - -sche (discuss) 21:13, 3 May 2020 (UTC)

@-sche: What about I need a one dance? --Backinstadiums (talk) 09:46, 4 May 2020 (UTC)

I’d have spelled that, I needa one dance.  --Lambiam 15:11, 4 May 2020 (UTC)

@Lambiam: how do you parse the whole sentence? where's the verb? Unlike wanna, currently needa doesn't include the sequence need a. --Backinstadiums (talk) 15:19, 4 May 2020 (UTC)

By interpreting needa as need +‎ -a, with the meaningless metrical suffix discussed here. It is a matter of orthography; need-a would also have been fine with me, but need a is not: the sentence cannot be parsed with a standalone a.  --Lambiam 15:43, 4 May 2020 (UTC)

Hmm I thought of another example, I guess .... Jimmy Buffett "Just-a one more" .... and it seems that particular phrase appears in many other songs as well. We seem to have established ample attestation for the requested sense .... though so far all of our examples are songs, so I wonder if finding examples from poems might be more difficult. —Soap— 15:41, 4 May 2020 (UTC)

Pager codes

If I wanted to make entries for pager codes like 143 (I love you) and 637 (Always and Forever), would sites like this one and this one count as attestation of use? Few people these days use pagers and people who used pagers likely seldom wrote down what they dialed anywhere else. I would only be interested in listing the ones for which we can provide an etymology. People generally agree that 143 means I love you and that it comes from the number of letters in the words, and there are some where the numbers are meant to be letters read upside down. —Soap— 17:28, 3 May 2020 (UTC)

Apart from Buzzfeed not being durably archived, that's a clickbait listicle, naming words without using them in a real context; use-mention distinction. (BTW, any such entries should be Translingual, not English, I suppose?) Equinox ◑ 17:33, 3 May 2020 (UTC)

Okay thanks. That is going to make this nearly impossible .... though I'll add that my main interest in this is because way back in 1993 I saw a girl write 143 in a letter to her boyfriend. I was mystified and too shy to ask what it meant, and I only found out some years later when I came across 637 online and the person explained to me the meaning and derivation of both abbreviations. I have never used a pager. But clearly the usage of at least some of numbers spread beyond pagers if I was able to come across them in use on the Internet and even in a handwritten letter. So perhaps it's shown up in a romance novel somewhere. Still, I'm surprised you mentioned the use/mention thing as if it were an absolute rule because certainly some of our entries are just taken from other dictionaries? —Soap— 20:02, 3 May 2020 (UTC)

Yes, some of our entries are taken from other dictionaries, but if they get taken to RFV and found not be actually used, they'll get removed, possibly to one of the "dictionary-only terms" appendices. This doesn't apply to limited-documentation languages, where even a single mention is sufficient for us to include a term, provided the source is deemed reliable enough. —Mahāgaja · talk 20:22, 3 May 2020 (UTC)

"shake off poverty" 脫貧／脱贫 (tuōpín)

I am passingly familiar with the common parlance and special pronunciations used in English language state media and culture in mainland China, and I believe I have found a great example of a "Chinese English" translation: use of "shake off poverty" to translate 脫貧／脱贫 (tuōpín), which is used in name of a state/party campaign to eliminate poverty in China. How can we note or tell the readers on the 脫貧 page that 'shake off poverty' is an approved terminology, while 'to lift oneself out of poverty' is probably more in line with American English? I don't mean to say that 'shake off poverty' is illegitimate as an English language phrase, but that it should be noted for what it is- a phrase used almost exclusively in the mainland China variety of English. Here is an example video that I added to Wikipedia as a source that uses the phrase: [4] Google News seems to only have China state media sources using the phrase "shake off poverty". --Geographyinitiative (talk) 05:41, 4 May 2020 (UTC)

I added a 'usage note'- [5] not sure if this is the correct way to convey this information to the readers. --Geographyinitiative (talk) 06:03, 4 May 2020 (UTC)

Hmm... I understand 'shake off poverty', although I wouldn't say it. I don't think it qualifies as an idiom in English, so a usage note in the Chinese entry is probably the best solution here. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 06:17, 4 May 2020 (UTC)

@Metaknowledge I agree that the phrase 'shake off poverty' is understandable but strange to the ear. 'shake off' is the kind of emotional feeling that comes from the character '脫' I guess (or maybe they didn't want to use other wordings). I have added some new details about the campaign against poverty that is associated with this wording. --Geographyinitiative (talk) 10:21, 4 May 2020 (UTC) (modified)

Fwiw I came across the entry lodge solemn representation recently which is in the same set of "official translations from Chinese"—notably it's the only member of the category Category:English officialese terms. I think that one is much less comprehensible than "shake off poverty" though. —Nizolan ^(talk) 21:57, 5 May 2020 (UTC)

If a particular translation is customary, I think usage notes are a reasonable place to mention that. :) Who is the actor and who is the subject of the verb, here, though? "To lift out of poverty" sounds like something you do to someone else: if you do it only to yourself, I'd add "oneself" to the definition, or if you can do it to someone else or yourself, then "to lift (oneself or someone else) out of poverty". To "shake off poverty" sounds like something one does oneself (otherwise I would expect something like "shake poverty off of"). The current definition, listing both, is therefore a little confusing. - -sche (discuss) 18:17, 4 May 2020 (UTC)

@-sche: It looks to be intransitive, as you expected—a quick search suggests "help someone shake off poverty" is the standard transitive form in Chinese media. —Nizolan ^(talk) 01:41, 6 May 2020 (UTC)

more

Pronoun

1. A greater number of people or things.

Noun

1. An extra amount or extent.

Does anyone understand why one of these is classified as a pronoun and the other as a noun? Mihia (talk) 10:24, 4 May 2020 (UTC)

• I think it is wrong. "More" used to be a true noun, e.g. meaning "high-ranking people" (as in Macbeth, "Both more and less have given him the Revolt"), but as far as I know all these uses are long obsolete. Ƿidsiþ 10:28, 4 May 2020 (UTC)

Thanks. Do you think both should be pronoun then (assuming we aren't going to list them under "determiner")? Do you have any clear test to distinguish noun from pronoun? Mihia (talk) 11:47, 4 May 2020 (UTC)

Nouns refer to some concept independent from the context. A pronoun depends directly or indirectly on some noun or pronoun, possibly implied or yet to be spoken. Nouns can be modified by an adjective; pronouns normally not. Except for uncountable nouns, nouns can usually also have an article (a(n), the). You can say, “The It girl has a certain ‘It’”, but that is not standard use.  --Lambiam 14:39, 4 May 2020 (UTC)

We should also list obsolete senses (while marking them as such).  --Lambiam 14:18, 4 May 2020 (UTC)

Isn't it used as a pronoun in terms such as "the more the merrier"? SemperBlotto (talk) 15:37, 4 May 2020 (UTC)

Not necessarily: the is not a determiner here. See the#Adverb. PUC – 16:03, 4 May 2020 (UTC)

AHDE and M-W call it a noun in the "the more" construction. M-W also calls it a noun in the definition "something additional : an additional amount", which appears to be referring to a use like "if you run out, there's more in the cupboard", but then later seems to contradict this. Collins calls "more" a noun (rather than pronoun) in all "noun-like" uses under the "American English" heading, but not under "British English", which seems weird to me and may be a random divergence. Other dictionaries seem to mostly call it a pronoun in "noun-like" uses. Mihia (talk) 18:00, 4 May 2020 (UTC)

If “more” in “the more the merrier” is a noun, then surely so are “sooner” and ”older” in “the sooner the better” and “the older the sillier”.  --Lambiam 19:31, 5 May 2020 (UTC)

more (2)

This definition, under "determiner", is a bit of puzzle to me:

Bigger, stronger, or more valuable.

He is more than the ten years he spent behind bars at our local prison, as he is a changed man and his past does not define him.

I suppose a simpler example of the same kind of use might be "She is more than a friend". I am far from convinced that the definition is optimally written, and since "more" has no noun object, not even seemingly an implied one, I don't really see how it can be a determiner. So what is it? A pronoun meaning e.g. "something extra/additional"? Mihia (talk) 18:11, 4 May 2020 (UTC)

The usex does not make sense semantically, and syntactically the term “more” is not a determiner here. Something like “I felt more woman than ever” is a better fit. I think that “more” in “she is more than a friend“ is best classified as pronoun (“an extra or additional quantity” – although here an additional quality rather than quantity).  --Lambiam 19:25, 5 May 2020 (UTC)

To me, the use of "more" in the usex in fact does make sense (though the part after the comma doesn't flow completely perfectly to my eye). It is saying that the ten years in prison is not all there is to him; there is more than that. In the "more woman" quote that you suggest, I think she is saying she felt more womanlike, not that she felt e.g. a stronger woman, though it is slightly ambiguous. The other slight issue is that "bigger, stronger, or more valuable" does not directly substitute into that sentence. Mihia (talk) 21:44, 5 May 2020 (UTC)

Agreed that the example makes perfect sense to me, though it's a bit stilted. From a phrase like "You're more than that" there is an inferred meaning of "(morally) better", not simply another extra quality. It isn't the same usage as in "more woman than ever". I would analyse it simply as an adjective though—like the terms given in the gloss, or my "better"—and not a determiner or pronoun. —Nizolan ^(talk) 22:07, 5 May 2020 (UTC)

Thinking about it, the example "she is more than a friend" is probably unhelpful since it generally does refer pronominally to some specific extra quality—lover, ally, etc.—which would have to be understood from context. "He is more than the ten years he spent etc." is better in this sense since it's unambiguous—there's no expectation that something specific is being referred to. —Nizolan ^(talk) 22:21, 5 May 2020 (UTC)

Adjective. Hmmm. It slightly distresses me to add back an adjective section when the traditional adjective classification of the main modifier usage has been "modernised" to "determiner". On the other hand, if we can definitely show that these uses are not determiner or pronoun ... and there are also cases such as "something more" where "more" seems suspiciously like an adjective. Mihia (talk) 17:38, 6 May 2020 (UTC)

bean

"(specifically) The edible seed of the broad bean." I find it difficult to believe that "bean" by itself refers specifically to the broad bean any more often than to any of a number of other beans (the immediately preceding sense). Should this be removed? Or do we want to try to cite all the other specific kinds of beans anyone has ever referred to as "beans", presumably as subsenses of sense 2? - -sche (discuss) 22:03, 4 May 2020 (UTC)

Yes, a nonsensical specificity. Please remove this abomination from the face of the page.  --Lambiam 17:04, 5 May 2020 (UTC)

I notice that the usage notes (and e.g. the Old English entry) claim that bean originally referred only to broad beans, but Wikipedia, the Middle English Dictionary and Bosworth-Toller contradict this, saying it referred to all different kinds of beans. - -sche (discuss) 18:44, 5 May 2020 (UTC)

Except that the vast majority of beans people in the West eat today are cultivars of Phaseolus vulgaris, which is a New World plant and was therefore unknown to speakers of Old and Middle English. The broad bean is Vicia faba, which is an Old World plant and may have been the only kind (or at least, by far the most common kind) of bean available in pre-1500 England. —Mahāgaja · talk 21:02, 5 May 2020 (UTC)

True. Also, Middle English beeste will not have been used to refer to bush dogs or Tasmanian devils. But that is not a good reason to redefine the sense as “An animal or creature (living thing in the kingdom Animalia), except for bush dogs, Tasmanian devils and other species that were unkown at the time”.  --Lambiam 11:34, 6 May 2020 (UTC)

No of course not, but the Anglo-Saxons knew far more than just one species of animal, while they may very well have known only one species of bean. If King Alfred had somehow been confronted with a pinto bean, there's no way to know whether or not he would have considered it a bēan, while it is fairly easy to predict that Geoffrey Chaucer would have considered a bush dog a beeste if he had ever seen one. —Mahāgaja · talk 12:28, 6 May 2020 (UTC)

The Middle English Dictionary cites a book from the 1400s that refers to Lupin beans as such ("like in colour and in shappe to lupynes i. benes of Egipte" ... "þe mele of benes of Egipte"), and I didn't even try to work out how many other Middle English texts refer to e.g. non-broad Vicia species. Bosworth-Toller says beán meant "a bean, all sorts of pulse; faba, legumen; beán pisan a vetch", and indeed the "Old English glosses in the Épinal-Erfurt glossary" has an example of fugl(a)es bean meaning a vetch. At least some vetches are still sometimes called beans, like Narbon beans. I think there's a case to be made for defining Old English bean as meaning "especially" (but clearly not "exclusively") a broad bean, which is how I just redefined it, but the argument for giving "a broad bean" as a definition of modern English bean is a lot less persuasive, IMO. - -sche (discuss) 05:10, 7 May 2020 (UTC)

beat one's meat

"to masturbate with a penis"??? PUC – 23:02, 5 May 2020 (UTC)

I think this should be reverted. PUC – 23:05, 5 May 2020 (UTC)

The intention is probably to include trans women who have not undergone reassignment surgery. —Nizolan ^(talk) 23:08, 5 May 2020 (UTC)

I see. I'll leave it to others to sort it out, but for the record, I don't think "to masturbate with a penis" makes much sense. "to masturbate by touching one's penis", maybe. Or maybe the label "of a male" should be replaced by "of a person with a penis". PUC – 00:00, 6 May 2020 (UTC)

I've reverted it. Mihia (talk) 00:27, 6 May 2020 (UTC)

Don't remember intent, but men can also masturbate by stimulating the prostate directly. Don't really care though.__Gamren (talk) 16:04, 6 May 2020 (UTC)

I think if we could find a better phrasing than "with a penis" there ought to be no objection to mentioning the specific method, and in fact it might help to link in to literal meaning of the phrase. It's just that, to me anyway, "with a penis" sounds kind of weird, like it's a separate item that one employs to do the job. Mihia (talk) 17:31, 6 May 2020 (UTC)

I agree. Maybe something like "to stroke one's penis; to masturbate"? (The only hit I see for google books:"beating her meat" is indeed about a her with a dick, so it does seem to be organ-specific more than gender-specific per se. "Beat(ing) its meat" turns up an interesting array of hits, from monkeys (etc) stroking their penises to figurative usage saying that e.g. the Soviet space program was the Union beating its meat. Not sure if we want a separate sense for that or not; we do have a figurative/extended sense at masturbate.) - -sche (discuss) 03:49, 7 May 2020 (UTC)

Maybe "stroke or rub" would do? Mihia (talk) 19:48, 7 May 2020 (UTC)

orphan

Could it be possible that this term once referred to a parentless person of any age (not chiefly a minor)? I note that the missionary translator James Legge (1815–1897) used it thus: "A superior man, when left an orphan, will not change his name." Reading this in 2020, the sentence jars somewhat, so I was wondering if there had been a shift in usage. Thanks. ---> Tooironic (talk) 06:30, 6 May 2020 (UTC)

I suspect the usage hasn't changed; it's always been chiefly a minor but never exclusively a minor. —Mahāgaja · talk 08:12, 6 May 2020 (UTC)

Is it not exclusively a minor in contemporary usage? The OED defines it as simply "a child whose parents are dead". I would be interested if the non-minor usage could be attested in texts written over the past century. I note all the relevant information at the Wikipedia page points to children. ---> Tooironic (talk) 19:54, 6 May 2020 (UTC)

Then again, I suppose the OED, by way of "child", may mean "one's direct descendant by birth", that is, regardless of age. The example sentences given, however, denote minors ("he was left an orphan as a small boy", "an orphan girl"). ---> Tooironic (talk) 00:20, 7 May 2020 (UTC)

crackered

Our entry at crackered marks it as the past tense of cracker, but there is no verb entry at cracker. The only usage of "crackered" I can bring to mind is adjectival, meaning "knackered" (from cream crackered) but I haven't got time right now to investigate further. Thryduulf (talk) 11:30, 6 May 2020 (UTC)

The page was created at the same time as a verb entry at cracker here, reverted there a few days later. —Nizolan ^(talk) 13:25, 6 May 2020 (UTC)

• deleted SemperBlotto (talk) 13:59, 6 May 2020 (UTC)

re-engining - or re-engineing?

I think the first one is correct, but looking at reengine, where someone didn't bother to format the inflections properly, it made me think. I have just created re-engine, which I consider to be the preferable form. No entries for inflections have been created, mercifully. DonnanZ (talk) 13:51, 6 May 2020 (UTC)

• Fixed (without a hyphen). SemperBlotto (talk) 14:00, 6 May 2020 (UTC)

Thanks! DonnanZ (talk) 14:24, 6 May 2020 (UTC)

both

1. Both you and I are students.
2. There was a great deal of them, lavish both in material and in workmanship.
3. You and I are both students.

Dictionaries disagree about the PoS of "both" used in combination with "and". You can pretty much take your pick. We give (1) and (2) as examples of a conjunction. We don't presently have an example exactly of the form of (3). My feeling is that "both" is most probably an adverb in (2) and (3) at least. Any views? Mihia (talk) 20:17, 6 May 2020 (UTC)

"Villain, I have done thy mother."

In the quotes for do, sense 21, there's a super cool quote from Titus Andronicus:

Demetrius: "Villain, what hast thou done?"
Aaron: "That which thou canst not undo."
Chiron: "Thou hast undone our mother."
Aaron: "Villain, I have done thy mother."

A centuries-old "yo' mama!" burn! It shows up in modern texts, but the corresponding points in the First Folio (p. 45, left column) and in the First Quarto edition just skip the line. I'd like to properly cite the usage. Does anyone have any idea where that line came from? grendel|khan 00:23, 7 May 2020 (UTC)

The footnote here claims the line is found in all early Quartos, which seems to be contradicted by its apparent absence in the Q1 of 1594 linked to above. However, that Google Books facsimile version skips an entire page just at the critical junction. The line is present (in the spelling “Villaine I haue done thy mother”) in an html edition of Q1. The curious numbering "1759.1" – the last line on the preceding page is numbered "1759" shows, though, that something strange is going on. The line is also found (with a comma, as “Villaine, I haue done thy mother”) in an edition of the 1600 players’ text.  --Lambiam 06:56, 7 May 2020 (UTC)

@Lambiam: Wow, that's a lot of work! You're right that the page is missing; I noticed that the Google-digitized copy on HathiTrust does have the missing page, though that copy appears to not be on Google Books, confusingly. I've sent the appropriate feedback to the Books team. I'm not sure what the best course is here; I guess I can wait until Google fixes their copy before using the template? grendel|khan 18:01, 8 May 2020 (UTC)

Don’t hold your breath waiting for a Google fix. Which template are you referring to? As long as we have a satisfactory bibliographic ascription to the first Quarto, we don’t need a link to an online copy. And if we need a link, the HathiTrust copy should do.  --Lambiam 19:40, 8 May 2020 (UTC)

@Lambiam: I'm using {{RQ:Shakespeare Titus Andronicus Q1}}... which does have a freeform URL parameter, come to think of it. And there we go! grendel|khan 07:13, 9 May 2020 (UTC)

88 14

Irrespective of the meaning, can anyone provide a pronunciation for this? "eighty-eight fourteen" or "eight eight one four". Thanks!

In theory, "eight eight fourteen" would make the most sense. I have no clue how it's actually pronounced, and I have no desire to find out, Chuck Entz (talk) 04:35, 7 May 2020 (UTC)

Judging by Google and Twitter search results for various spelled-out versions, it seems like both "eight eight fourteen" and "eighty-eight fourteen" (barely) exist, as well as the other ordering of the numbers (which might even be more common), "fourteen eighty-eight" and "fourteen eight eight". "One four eight eight" also seems to be used, though perhaps more in the same kinds of situations where you would spell out a word letter by letter. - -sche (discuss) 05:37, 7 May 2020 (UTC)

Yes .... the linked Wikipedia article makes clear that it's 14/88, not 88 14. It wouldnt surprise me if both forms were in use just like people play with different forms of hello, but 14/88 or 1488 or some other spelling form is clearly the canonical form. —Soap— 16:36, 7 May 2020 (UTC)

I moved the page to 1488. - -sche (discuss) 02:38, 11 May 2020 (UTC)

xenosexual

At least one (perhaps both) of the citations relate(s) to human-alien sex. So perhaps that's what it means, rather than just different species (which would cover e.g. Earth dog and Earth wolf). It's so rare that it's hard to tell. Equinox ◑ 06:01, 7 May 2020 (UTC)

The things I search for for this website... >.>

Poking around Usenet, I see some uses on furry "sites", but some of those uses specify that they are referring to "alien sex", likewise on a Lovecraft-related "site", there is the line "I wonder what an individual who is sexually attracted to otherworldly spawn > is termed? Apart from "dead" that is.... Xenosexual? Mythosexual?" This is in line with your feeling. On a werewolf "site" (what is the term for these? I keep wanting to say subreddit... newsgroup?), someone opines that "A xenosexual would be someone primarily attracted to strangers or foreigners." and someone on soc.bi speaks of "[being] interested in members of a different sex, which might be xenosexual... I kind of like xeno." I haven't found any further uses of either of those possible meanings, though. I added an "especially aliens" clause. Someone would have to dig a bit further to see if application to bestiality etc (or just to non-alien furries) can be ruled out. Probably some further tweaking is needed to clarify that one of the entities involved has to be human or at least ...sapient?... since as you say, an Earth dog banging an Earth wolf would be sexual action between different species but does not seem to be covered by this term. - -sche (discuss) 02:35, 11 May 2020 (UTC)

(The discussion sites you are talking about are probably Web forums.) Equinox ◑ 03:16, 11 May 2020 (UTC)

straight-line: adjective

1.  (U.S.) in, happening along, or measured along a straight line: straight-line motion; a straight-line extrapolation of growth
2.  (U.S.) having components that are arranged in a straight line 
3. designed to move or transmit motion in a straight line 
4. prorated over a given term in equal amounts payable or deductible at specified intervals: straight-line depreciation
Microsoft® Encarta® 2009

--Backinstadiums (talk) 10:00, 7 May 2020 (UTC)

• Seems to be attributive form of the noun. SemperBlotto (talk) 10:04, 7 May 2020 (UTC)

zone in (on)

hone in (on) is a well-known dumbass error (aka, per our usual euphemism, "Some educators or other authorities recommend against the listed usage") for home in (on), but some people also use zone in (on) to mean the same. Is this another mix-up, possibly between hone in and zero in, or is it a valid phrase? Or maybe there is also some overlap with zone in, an opposite to zone out? Mihia (talk) 19:46, 7 May 2020 (UTC)

Probably zoom in. Equinox ◑ 01:26, 8 May 2020 (UTC)

Mandate of Heaven

This split etymology seems dubious to me. Usually era names are transcribed (Tianming, Tiancong, Chongde, etc.), not calqued, right? ---> Tooironic (talk) 22:31, 7 May 2020 (UTC)

@Tooironic: I've opened an RfV. —Nizolan ^(talk) 05:03, 8 May 2020 (UTC)

Thank you. ---> Tooironic (talk) 05:10, 8 May 2020 (UTC)

Auger in Spanish

I think the whole section about the word auger in Spanish is a fake. I believe this word does not exist in Spanish (it is not present in the RAE). First, auger was put as a descendant in augeō by 201.191.99.167. Then the whole Latin section from augeō was put into auger and some changes were made by the same person. For example, auge was put in the Related terms section. However, this word came from the Arabic. What do you think? Greetings, --Adelpine (talk) 01:56, 8 May 2020 (UTC)

Good catch. Normally, this kind of thing would be sent to RFV, but I've deleted it out of process. This entry was created by an anon known for adding spurious Spanish entries reflecting hypothetical derivation from Latin. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 19:09, 8 May 2020 (UTC)

Is the spanish plural of lápiz mecánico really portaminas?

In the singular lápiz mecánico and portamina are both defined as "mechanical pencil" and are tagged as related to each other. Both explicitly declare their plural form to be "portaminas", which obviously makes sense for "portamina" but makes less sense for "lápiz mecánico" except that "lápices mechanicos" is a mouthful and is not listed in the wiktionary.

Here are a few other entries I've found that share a definition with a related word and then borrow its pluralization:

• lápiz mecánico: portaminas
• pan rebanado: panes de molde
• mate del pastor: jaques mates
• corrompedor: corruptores
• quitavidas: quitamiedos

Should these words keep their unusual, explicitly defined pluralization or should they be fall back to what the "likely" pluralization is for each of them even if that usage does not yet have an entry? JeffDoozan (talk) 18:38, 8 May 2020 (UTC)

These are nothing more than copy-paste mistakes by @Vivaelcelta. I have now fixed them. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 19:04, 8 May 2020 (UTC)

@Metaknowledge, JeffDoozan:. Yes. Sorry. I have to pay more attention. The copy-paste is dangerous. Thanks Metaknowledge for correcting it. --Vivaelcelta (talk) 03:09, 16 January 2021 (UTC)

Italian Suffixes

We seem to have large numbers of Italian suffix entries that are unnecessary. To the extent that affixes can be SoP, we have -arsi, -ersi, and -irsi (as well as some more creative ones like -eggiarsi and -evolmente). There are also some that don't seem to be affixes at all, like -coltura (equivalent of English -culture, as in agriculture, aquaculture, bioculture, etc.; words that should be treated as compounds, not noun-suffix combinations), -terapia (same rationale), and -cismo (an awfully specific particle that happens to apply to a small set of words, but whose general meaning can't really be generalized; we also don't have the English equivalent -cism). There are probably countless other examples, and likely some faulty prefixes too. Do we have any standards for the "SOPness" of affixes or any responses to the comments above? Imetsia (talk) 20:16, 8 May 2020 (UTC)

A prefix can certainly be SOP. I've just nominated -evolmente for deletion; I believe I was the one who emptied and deleted that category, but didn't think to nominate it at the time. -culture has already failed RFD for English and French, so I see no reason not to RFD these as we come across them. Ultimateria (talk) 23:04, 9 May 2020 (UTC)

Latin -formis: is it really best categorized as a "suffix"?

Currently there is an entry for -formis as a Latin suffix. On the one hand, I think it's likely that a number of people, including some coiners of new specific epithets in biology, think of -formis as a suffix. But on the other hand, my view would be that it is more accurate to see this as just the combination of the base forma and the suffix -is used at the end of a compound word, and I also think that this decompositional analysis is more consistent with the treatment of other words: we don't say that -pennis, -collis, -cornis or -rostris (from penna, collum, cornu and rostrum) are suffixes even though in distribution and sense these endings are closely analogous to -formis. For the sake of consistency, should the entry for -formis be removed as being, more or less, SOP of forma and the suffix -is (as much as an element for making compound words can be SOP)?--Urszag (talk) 18:17, 9 May 2020 (UTC)

@Urszag It's likely that these same people don't think of Latin as a language, but as a subset of English morphology. It's telling that -form is listed as a suffix but shaped or headed as adjectives (which, honestly, what? A shaped and bearded man? A headed goat? It's clearly a bound form, an affix). The Latin item is clearly a SoP - one look at this entry is enough: -is. Brutal Russian (talk) 08:36, 12 May 2020 (UTC)

@Urszag, Brutal Russian: It should be considered as a compound from -forma in classical/late terms at least, but the New Latin taxonomic and anatomical suffix is fixed with a more specific meaning and originated as a Latinisation of Greek -ειδής in preference to the hybridism of -ideus/-oideus (as in conoideus; hard to find online sources on this but e.g.). —Nizolan ^(talk) 22:33, 17 May 2020 (UTC)

Publicly available article discussing some of it: [6] —Nizolan ^(talk) 22:40, 17 May 2020 (UTC)

about

1. In a circle around; all round; on every side of; on the outside of. [First attested prior to 1150.]

...

9. In the immediate neighborhood of; in contiguity or proximity to; near, as to place. [First attested around 1350 to 1470.]

1892, James Yoxall, chapter 5, in The Lonely Pyramid:

The desert storm was riding in its strength; the travellers lay beneath the mastery of the fell simoom. […] Roaring, leaping, pouncing, the tempest raged about the wanderers, drowning and blotting out their forms with sandy spume.

I am having difficulty seeing why "about" in the quotation supporting sense #9 does not mean "all round", which is the same as sense #1. Can anyone come up with an example that illustrates more clearly how #9 is distinct from #1 (and, of course, from all the other senses that are listed)? Mihia (talk) 21:07, 9 May 2020 (UTC)

For sense 9:

John is somewhere about the woodshed. There were abundant mulberry bushes about the castle.

I would say the quotation belongs under definition one, since it seems clearly distinct from the example I just gave (which I would mark as archaic or at least dated). Andrew Sheedy (talk) 21:28, 9 May 2020 (UTC)

Thanks. To me, the mulberry example seems perilously close to sense #2 "here and there in" (assuming it isn't intended as #1, "all around"). Perhaps the singular nature of John and his whereabouts could provide more of a contrast with #2 though. Mihia (talk) 21:39, 9 May 2020 (UTC)

Sorry, actually I guess the distinction of #9 ought to be that John is not inside the woodshed (and if he was, the woodshed would probably be too small for "about" to be suitable, in the way that we can say e.g. "John is somewhere about the house", meaning somewhere within the house). I guess that is what you meant. Mihia (talk) 22:44, 9 May 2020 (UTC)

Anyway, I made the suggested changes, but if anyone wants to look further at this, please note that I have reordered the senses so #9 is now (at the time of writing) #7. Mihia (talk) 22:54, 9 May 2020 (UTC)

Yes, I think there is a certain degree of ambiguity in most phrases. You'd need context (often including time period) to be sure exactly which sense of about is intended. Perhaps that's why some of the senses have fallen out of common use. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 02:03, 12 May 2020 (UTC)

-izo/*-izo

This is a bit of a knotty point but I think there's some confusion going on between (reconstructed spoken) Vulgar Latin *-izo and (later literary) Medieval Latin -izo. I suspect that all of the suffixes listed at *-izo as "borrowed" should in fact be listed as borrowed from Medieval Latin. Generally since we treat Vulgar Latin as a reconstructed phase in derivations from Latin to Romance languages, "borrowings" from Vulgar Latin seem unlikely in Romance languages themselves (and indeed Category:Terms borrowed from Vulgar Latin is pretty sparse).

Our entry for English -ize traces it from Vulgar Latin via Old French -iser (we only have a modern French entry). But the suffix inherited in Old French from the VL is -oiier. The French Wiktionary notes that -iser first appears in the 16th century, and lists latiniser from "Vulgar Latin" latinizare as the first attested case, but properly the source should then be Medieval, not Vulgar, Latin, since the derivation is from Latin terms in use in the 16th century. —Nizolan ^(talk) 03:22, 10 May 2020 (UTC)

I've changed the etymology at -ize anyway to specify Middle French from Medieval Latin rather than Old French from Vulgar Latin given that the French is first attested in the 16th century. —Nizolan ^(talk) 03:33, 10 May 2020 (UTC)

Monday was a week.

I have added a Preposition section to was to cover some strange uses I came across recently. It doesn't seem to be covered by most dictionaries (the OED treats it, sort of, under the verb) and I have found it tricky to describe. Any suggestions on possible rewording would be welcome. Ƿidsiþ 07:00, 10 May 2020 (UTC)

I question whether this is a preposition. Wouldn't it be short for "Monday, (it) was a week (ago)", or something of that nature? Mihia (talk) 09:33, 10 May 2020 (UTC)

I also am not sure about this. I put "determiner" first, but that didn't seem right. It seems to form an adjectival phrase now, so I think it acts as a preposition but I'm still not sure what construction it came from. Ƿidsiþ 15:18, 10 May 2020 (UTC)

The whole phrase "Monday was a week" (or "Saturday was three weeks", etc.) behaves like an adverb / adverbial adjunct to the verb of the main clause (like "three weeks ago" or "yesterday"), but I don't think that should make any difference to how we should parse its components. There are two levels of analysis here. Similarly, I have no idea how French à mouchoir que veux-tu is built exactly, but I can see the whole phrase behaves like an adverb. PUC – 15:29, 10 May 2020 (UTC)

It seems to me that the PoS of the whole phrase depends on the sentence context, just as with e.g. "Monday" or "Saturday" alone. For example, in the first quotation, "Miss Lardner (whom you have seen at her cousin Biddulph's) saw you at St James's church on Sunday was fortnight", presumably "Sunday was fortnight", if this is indeed one phrase, cannot be adverbial in itself, but must be a noun phrase, the object of "on". Mihia (talk) 17:43, 10 May 2020 (UTC)

It seems possible to analyze "on Sunday was fortnight" in that case as having the structure [[on Sunday] was fortnight].--Urszag (talk) 18:17, 10 May 2020 (UTC)

I agree. Mihia (talk) 19:30, 10 May 2020 (UTC)

@Mihia: Indeed, I hadn't noticed the preposition in that quote. PUC – 12:46, 11 May 2020 (UTC)

What a fascinating phenomenon. As to what part of speech it is: it's hard to search for examples of this because there's so much chaff, but I'm trying to see if it can be found in the plural or in other tense forms, e.g. "New Year's and Christmas were a week and a fortnight" or "Sunday is a week" or "Sunday will be a week", and it seems like it can. The English Dialect Dictionary, in the entry for "be", has "6. Phr. [...] (6) to-morrow, &c. is a week, a week tomorrow", with these examples:

• "(s.Wm.) Ye dunnet addle as mickle ta day, as we did Friday was a week, Hutton Dia. Storth and Arnside (1760) l. 28."
• "(s.Oxf.) Us clubbed together las' Thursday was a fortnight, Rosemary Chilterns (1895) 98.:
• "(Nrf.) Lizzie comed last Wednesday wus a week (W.R.E.)."
• "(Suf.) 'Twas there to-morrow is a week (M.E.R.)."

The existence of "is a week", the present tense in what otherwise looks like the same situation, seems like evidence that this is a verb, no? I'd also love to see if it goes any further back. The Middle English Dictionary has "last was, last (Friday)" with citations like:

• "(1449) Paston 2.104 On Fryday last was, we had a gode wynd."
• "(1465) Paston 4.126 : He is come ridyng homeward on Friday last was."

but I'm not sure if that's the same (kind of) thing or not, what do you think? As an aside, the EDD also has a preposition be ≈ "by", with plenty of citations, which we're missing. - -sche (discuss) 16:42, 11 May 2020 (UTC)

I added the above-mentioned (and unrelated) preposition be. - -sche (discuss) 04:57, 12 May 2020 (UTC)

Yes, I had assumed that the usage I added evolved from an earlier form "Friday was" (=Friday a week ago), although I can't remember if I've ever actually heard this or if I'm just imagining it (I don't live in the UK anymore). The present-tense example is very interesting. A future-tense version does exist with "come" – "Sunday come a sennight" for example. Ƿidsiþ 05:33, 12 May 2020 (UTC)

While searching for more examples, I happened to find that this is discussed in David Crystal's 2017 The Story of Be: A Verb's-Eye View of the English Language:

"Some temporal be-idioms are no more, in standard English. How do we nowadays refer to previous Mondays? 'Monday last. [...] Three weeks ago last Monday...' In the fifteenth century, a more succinct expression emerged, which could apply to any specific period of time: Monday was a week. (=on the Monday a week before last Monday)

[...Crystal then quotes the OED's examples, including "since August was Twelvemonth" and "about last Christmas was 4 years"...]

The was is often omitted: I was in London Monday three weeks.

In Maria Edgeworth's The Absentee (1833), the expression is hyphenated: his mistress was in her bed since Thursday-was-a-week.

Some quite complex constructions arose, whose interpretation now requires some effort. What does 'On the evening of Saturday was sennight before the day fixed' mean? [...] The construction may have died out in standard English, but it was alive and well in some regional dialects during the twentieth century, and [...] as recently as 1981."

That doesn't help with defining it, but does help with the part of speech. I can also find examples of "tomorrow will be a week [since X]", "tomorrow will be a week that I have been here", but I'm not sure if that's the same kind of thing as this. - -sche (discuss) 07:45, 12 May 2020 (UTC)

Great find! Ƿidsiþ 16:05, 12 May 2020 (UTC)

OK, I moved this to be#Verb, but left both a usex and a quote of this at was#Verb to hopefully direct readers to be, and added a quote (of what is at least a related sense, if not this exact one) to is. I tried to tweak the definition a bit and also added a second, more complex usex. I am considering adding a usage note to mention that sometimes the verb can be elided entirely, as Crystal says. Further revisions to the definition, criticism of my changes, etc welcome. In particular, if we want to handle "Monday was a week", "tomorrow is two weeks", and "tomorrow will be two weeks" all as one sense (which I am at least tentatively inclined to think is reasonable), then the definition needs to be worded better to cover all three. - -sche (discuss) 19:29, 13 May 2020 (UTC)

I don't think those present-tense examples are the same. Ƿidsiþ 06:46, 14 May 2020 (UTC)

As far as the usexes are concerned, now it reads:

third-person singular simple past indicative of be.

It was a really humongous slice of cake.

I saw her Monday was a week: I saw her a week ago last Monday (a week before last Monday).

Personally I am not a huge fan of this presentation. To be mentioned as one of just two examples of such a common word, it looks as if this obscure or specialised "Monday was a week"-type phrasing is actually a typical and common usage. Mihia (talk) 17:20, 14 May 2020 (UTC)

OK, I dropped the usex (left the quote of real usage, tho), and moved the disputed present-tense cites to the citations page. I added the quotation of Miss M. E. Rope from the EDD. I also discovered the phrase "on tomorrow week", a different but also somewhat odd time-related word usage. Will add a usage note about the possibiltiy of omitting the verb entirely later — may try to find citations first rather than just trust Crystal. - -sche (discuss) 07:01, 15 May 2020 (UTC)

Hmmm, personally I still think it looks odd to have this highly atypical "Tuesday was a week" example as the sole quotation for the sense "third-person singular simple past indicative of be" at was. I think that many people might not even understand what it means without explanation, and might puzzle at what it is doing there and whether it is a typo. Also, the entry for the relevant sense at be says "now chiefly in the present tense; rare and regional in the past tense", but both usexes and seven out of eight quotations are for the latter, which again may be a puzzle for readers. Mihia (talk) 19:34, 16 May 2020 (UTC)

about (2)

Adverb sense:

1. Here and there; around; in one place and another; up and down.

Bits of old machinery were lying about.

I am not clear what kind of usage "up and down" is referring to here. Can anyone see what it means, or provide an example that is consistent with the "here and there" or "in one place and another" theme? (Note that uses such as "leaping about", which could in some sense mean "leaping up and down", are covered by a different definition.) Mihia (talk) 13:41, 10 May 2020 (UTC)

I think every use of this in its bare form (i.e. not a preposition) could be substituted with around and that it is no more than a synonym of around. —Soap— 14:13, 10 May 2020 (UTC)

It's true that there are many cases where "about" and "around" mean about the same, and some sort of reconciliation of the two articles is something that I have in mind doing at some point, but personally I would not be happy with removing the separate content at "about" (adverb) and replacing it with the single definition "synonym of around". Anyway, does this observation help with understanding what "up and down" refers to? Mihia (talk) 14:21, 10 May 2020 (UTC)

Scots

How is there an Old English translation of this? Scots developed from Northern Early Middle English, so how could there have been an Old English term for it? Tharthan (talk) 15:42, 10 May 2020 (UTC)

Where do you see that ? Leasnam (talk) 15:54, 10 May 2020 (UTC)

Translation table of the noun section. Old English Niðerscyttisc. PUC – 15:55, 10 May 2020 (UTC)

Removed. Added by a US IP who also added terms in Acehnese, Asturian and Kabardian to other entries, which suggests they were using the interwiki links in Wikipedia articles. Chuck Entz (talk) 16:33, 10 May 2020 (UTC)

秋子 vs. 楸子

A species of crabapple, Malus prunifolia, goes by the name 秋子 in Flora of China[7] and by the homophone 楸子 in Chinese Wikipedia.[8] Is one of these spellings more correct? As I write this we don't have either. Vox Sciurorum (talk) 20:29, 10 May 2020 (UTC)

breathe some relief

Is this a regional expression? I was sure this was an accidental change of breathe a sigh of relief and was very surprised to find widespread use on line. --Espoo (talk) 11:56, 11 May 2020 (UTC)

There are a couple of literal uses, like "breathe some relief into your muscles" ... here it is clearly no mistake, since the longer form would be semantically inappropriate. The rest I think are just malapropisms .... I note quite a lot of the hits on Google are just requotes of the same article about San Francisco rents, and on Google Books there are very few examples. —Soap— 16:21, 11 May 2020 (UTC)

anterodorsal

I don't like the definition of anterodorsal, "in front and toward the back". Is it front or back? Make up your mind. There is a specific definition in entomology: when the legs of an insect are stretched out to the side, the anterodorsal face is the one on the upper half in front, between the pure anterior and pure dorsal faces. In an insect the anterior and dorsal directions are at right angles to each other. Web searches have left me more confused of the application to humans. Anybody have a clear and accurate rewrite? Vox Sciurorum (talk) 20:59, 11 May 2020 (UTC)

• I've tried to make it a bit clearer. SemperBlotto (talk) 06:15, 12 May 2020 (UTC)

composition fee?

Is "composition fee(s)", meaning tuition fees at certain old UK universities like Oxford and Cambridge as well as (apparently) Hong Kong University, a surviving fossilized usage of the obsolete sense 6 of composition, "agreement to pay money in order to clear a liability or obligation"? The judicial usage of "composition fee" mentioned in 19th century books—a fee levied by a court to take a particular case—makes me think so, though the waters are muddied a bit by the fact a few private secondary schools have recently taken to using it to mean paying several years of tuition in advance. Could merit an entry of its own? —Nizolan ^(talk) 01:15, 12 May 2020 (UTC)

I'm still confused by this after searching for more examples. This source from the 1980s says that the "composition fee" at Cambridge referred to "students taking certain aggregate courses", but that's not how it seems to be used originally: in the 19th century it looks like a "composition fee" at a university was simply a fee paid to gain the right to attend lectures. (Today it is simply a tuition fee for a graduate course.) This reference from the 1830s mentions "a composition fee" being paid by tenants to the lord of a manor for the right to marry someone. Then there seems to be a surviving usage in Indian law where it similarly means a fee paid for a certain right or exemption ([9]). I suspect the confusion is because of reanalysis of "composition" after its "payment" sense became obsolete in English: in Medieval Latin a compositio is principally a fine or a payment in settlement, and it's likely that any legal jargon would have derived from the Latin. —Nizolan ^(talk) 12:46, 13 May 2020 (UTC)

Have created composition fee, I think the examples given support the derivation from the obsolete sense. —Nizolan ^(talk) 13:19, 13 May 2020 (UTC)

оловок or оловокъ

(Notifying Benwing2, Cinemantique, Useigor, Guldrelokk, Fay Freak, Tetromino, PUC): In the past оло́вок (olóvok) has failed a couple of times, please see Talk:оловок. I found it hard to find citations. Some IP contributors pushed the term in various places - synonyms, translations, cognates or entries. I am able to find a bit more now, especially if we look for pre-reform spellings. I found a couple of uses in old chemical books.

Vladimir Dal labels the term "оловокъ" as зап. каранда́шъ (karandáš). The abbreviations "зап." must stand for западные наречия/диалекты - Western dialects. He may have meant Belarusian, denying the language its status. The term also appears in other dictionaries - Ukrainian and Belarusian. Well, "Словарь бѣлорусскаго нарѣчія" uses the old Belarusian spelling of ало́вак (alóvak), which was "оловокъ" and Ukrainian dictionaries keep mentioning it as a cognate for the Ukrainian оліве́ць (olivécʹ) and Polish ołówek, e.g. https://goroh.pp.ua/Етимологія/олово#12833

Vahagn Petrosyan has created Appendix:Armenian dictionary-only terms for Armenian dictionary only terms. Shall we re-create or make a similar entry for Russian dictionary only terms? I am not sure we can find enough good citations.

The stress is assumed on the Belarusian spelling/pronunciation. EDIT: corrected the stress as per Dal, it's different from Belarusian. The stem has definitely a reducible "о" in the suffix.

Modern:

Declension of олово́к (inan masc-form velar-stem accent-b reduc) 

	singular	plural
nominative	олово́к olovók	оловки́ olovkí
genitive	оловка́ olovká	оловко́в olovkóv
dative	оловку́ olovkú	оловка́м olovkám
accusative	олово́к olovók	оловки́ olovkí
instrumental	оловко́м olovkóm	оловка́ми olovkámi
prepositional	оловке́ olovké	оловка́х olovkáx

Pre-1918 spelling:

Pre-reform declension of олово́къ (inan masc-form velar-stem accent-b reduc) 

	singular	plural
nominative	олово́къ olovók	оловки́ olovkí
genitive	оловка́ olovká	оловко́въ olovkóv
dative	оловку́ olovkú	оловка́мъ olovkám
accusative	олово́къ olovók	оловки́ olovkí
instrumental	оловко́мъ olovkóm	оловка́ми olovkámi
prepositional	оловкѣ́ olovkě́	оловка́хъ olovkáx

Hint: when searching in Google books in quotes, remove stress marks, remove similar languages from the search. --Anatoli T. ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 06:02, 12 May 2020 (UTC)

If it is only that it is claimed to be Russian but it is actually Belarussian or Ukrainian then it is not dictionary-only. Since if one saw Russian as broader then it was consequential to see more words in it which we do not see as Russian. And Appendix:Armenian dictionary-only terms was not created by Vahagn Petrosyan but another annoying IP, pretending to have negative knowledge which it doesn’t have. I cannot recommend such an appendix, for most languages; probably for none except English and French. It is too difficult to positively know that something does not exist. And few terms unattestable by the present editors are actually ghost-words. It is just often that words are non-standard, dialectal, obsolete, and there are fewer and lesser corpora for such. For example common knowledge and usage of Russian literature seldom goes before Pushkin, and that’s also where Google Books usually ends for Russian, also because it has diffulties with the font types used for Russian until the early 19th century, and one should not depend on Google anyway. Most Wiktionary editors will go to hell for promoting evil by upholding Google. And for more complex scripts and many of the allegedly “well-documented” languages printing did not even start until around 1800. You may try for the names of fabrics in 16th-, 17th-century Russian, everyday items, like бязь (bjazʹ) / безь (bezʹ) (بز), фата́ (fatá) in the original meaning. Original texts with such words are hard to find on Google Books, mostly quotes from inventories (i.e. other texts), and some specialized primary dictionaries; and that even less so for Ukrainian and Belarussian, allegedly well-documented languages. And all of the terms under كپنك (“cloak”), a term that spread in the 15th-16th century in Europe and then fell out of fashion before reaching any standard. And are the terms in “Dictionary of obsolete and provincial English” mostly made up? No; there just isn’t such a thing as a “well-documented language”, as the larger a language is, the more words there are that exist but one has difficulties to quote; most terms found in medieval Arabic dictionaries can now not be found by searching, and of course the lexicographers did not lie, rarely there has been a confusion. Here, оловок, of course, there is grounds to assume that it didn’t exist: A Belarussian or Ukrainian word was held as Russian. Without specific reason why a word do not exist one should not claim it to not exist, and without specific reason why something be a ghost-word one shouldn’t let a word appear as if it were one. For this оловок there is a specific reason to assume that it doesn’t exist in Russian as defined here but there is no specific reason to assume it is a ghost-word or dictionary-only word since one hasn’t used to claim it as being present Russian-in-the-current-definition. A ghost-word or dictionary-only word is a word that exists in no capacity, and since according to some definitions Belarussian is Russian this word is not a ghost-word or dictionary-only word. Fay Freak (talk) 14:11, 12 May 2020 (UTC)

An update: There was another attempt to add the word at diff by Ευγένιος69 (talk • contribs). Thanks for reverting, User:PUC.

@Fay Freak: We're talking about the Russian word, not Belarusian. It's not clear what Dal meant. He included the term in the Russian dictionary. The Belarusian term is defined. --Anatoli T. ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 00:08, 3 June 2020 (UTC)

tu pac : series of difficult hills in competition

tu pac: in stunt bicycling, an extremely rough or difficult series of hills in a competition (slang) 
[Late 20th century. After the U.S. rapper Tupac Amaru Shakur (1971-1996)]
Microsoft® Encarta® 2009

--Backinstadiums (talk) 15:11, 12 May 2020 (UTC)

I can't find anything whatsoever about this online. Can you? It almost makes me suspect a copyright trap. Equinox ◑ 13:03, 14 May 2020 (UTC)

clown shoes

Are we missing a sense? This article says "'Clownshoes' or 'clown shoes' is a form of mockery. Clownshoes means that something or someone is laughable or absurd, and not to be taken seriously. The expression comes from the preposterous costume shoes." PUC – 20:02, 12 May 2020 (UTC)

How someone use the term to express mockery? As an "interjection"? As part of a phrase? DCDuring (talk) 00:00, 13 May 2020 (UTC)

Haven't heard it. There's a handful of Web hits for e.g. "clown shoes politics". Perhaps connected to the recent Internet slang "clown world", describing (from a right-wing perspective) a world that has gone crazy with political correctness etc.? Equinox ◑ 00:12, 13 May 2020 (UTC)

Seems easier to find without the space. ("While human civilization goes totally clownshoes" [10], "The whole thing on both sides was totally clownshoes" [11], "totally arbitrary clownshoes nonsense" [12]). —Nizolan ^(talk) 12:28, 13 May 2020 (UTC)

I've heard it used in spoken English (early 2000s New England, well before the "clown world" meme) to informally refer to an incompetent person, sort of an extension of clown, e.g., "the new guy they hired was a total clown shoe". Looking on Usenet, I see [13] "What a fucking clown shoe you are, Billy. Ya got nothing." (2007), [14] "Sorry, clown shoe. I'm not going to click any tinyurl link that you provide […] " (2006), [15] "You have no "professional reputation," you fucking clown shoe." (2015). I'll add them to clown shoe. grendel|khan 00:15, 16 May 2020 (UTC)

Merge ringer etymologies 3 and 5?

Investigating a possible police sense of ringer (car with fake documents made from reclaimed parts etc.) I notice that we have these two etymologies:

• Etymology 3, "Probably from ring the changes": (i) proficient sportsman brought in, often fraudulently, to supplement a team; (ii) horse entered into race under false name; (iii) something that can be mistaken for something else due to close resemblance (usu. dead ringer).
• Etymology 5, "Perhaps dissimilated from Middle English wringere (“stingy person, pennypincher, one who financially oppresses, an extortioner”)": (slang) Any person or thing that is fraudulent; a fake or impostor.

Should we merge the etymologies (and even perhaps the latter two senses)? Equinox ◑ 00:22, 13 May 2020 (UTC)

On the face of it, the etymologies seem different to me. Has roughly the same meaning developed via two different routes? Mihia (talk) 20:54, 14 May 2020 (UTC)

turn state's evidence

What sense of turn is used here? Chambers 1908 also has turn King's (Queen's) evidence: "of an accomplice in a crime), to give evidence against his partners"; and then there's turning approver. Equinox ◑ 02:45, 13 May 2020 (UTC)

I think it's "become": you could paraphrase it as "become state's evidence". A similar expression is "turn traitor." There are also phrases used to emphasize a dramatic change in role such as "passerby turned good Samaritan" or "enemy turned ally". Chuck Entz (talk) 04:01, 13 May 2020 (UTC)

Agreed, via sense 3 of evidence, "one who bears witness". Also attested as a noun phrase similar to "enemy turned ally", see e.g. here. —Nizolan ^(talk) 12:23, 13 May 2020 (UTC)

Interesting. I'd always assumed the evidence was being "turned" in some way, but couldn't see how. Equinox ◑ 12:57, 13 May 2020 (UTC)

No OneLook reference has an entry for state's evidence. Several, including MW, Oxford, and Collins have entries for turn state's evidence. DCDuring (talk) 14:05, 13 May 2020 (UTC)

Having looked at Google Books hits for "states|state's evidence", which suggests that virtually all use of state's evidence is NISoP unless used with turn, I have requested a move to turn state's evidence. DCDuring (talk) 14:20, 13 May 2020 (UTC)

Sense 3 of evidence looks very plausible, but does not fit the current definition of state's evidence.  --Lambiam 21:12, 13 May 2020 (UTC)

Good point. I'd be interested in whether there was use is that sense in this millennium, outside of turn state's evidence. DCDuring (talk) 23:38, 13 May 2020 (UTC)

It probably doesn't fit since the definition currently given is incorrect. It fits perfectly with the definition at e.g. Merriam-Webster. The OED similarly lists "turn [state's/queen's] evidence" under the "one bearing witness" sense of "evidence" and gives a post-2000 example from The Times on 22 August 2002: "Stewart has grown increasingly paranoid since the investigations began, and now even former friends are turning evidence against her." Googling "turning evidence against her" yielded an even more recent result, from 2018 [16] ("her former partner in love and crime turning evidence against her to save his own skin"). —Nizolan ^(talk) 00:09, 14 May 2020 (UTC)

Also a useful older example from the OED, without the "turn": "Mr. Bartlett Channing Paine comes into court, and, as state's evidence, gives the following testimony" (1886). —Nizolan ^(talk) 00:13, 14 May 2020 (UTC)

So I guess the lexicographer's at those other dictionaries must be wrong to include turn state's evidence. DCDuring (talk) 02:47, 14 May 2020 (UTC)

Most likely there's reanalysis going on given that this sense of "evidence" is probably obscure to the majority of people. After digging around I found what looks like a clear example of this: [[17] "Requested access to the content of the “state’s evidence” turned in [...] This must not be mistaken with the testimony turned as “state’s evidence”"—here they've reanalysed it as ellipsis from "turn in". I think an entry at turn evidence would be a good idea. —Nizolan ^(talk) 12:30, 14 May 2020 (UTC)

Also consider that become state's evidence exists Chuck Entz (talk) 14:01, 14 May 2020 (UTC)

The British equivalent is turn king's evidence / turn queen's evidence. SemperBlotto (talk) 14:23, 13 May 2020 (UTC)

Found this: 1861, John Henry Willan, A Manual of the Criminal Law of Canada (page 7): "The whole learning of approvements (i.e. trial by the evidence of an approver) is now obsolete being superseded by the modern practice of allowing an accused person to turn evidence for the Queen". Equinox ◑

For the British use see e.g. the Feb. 15, 1697 entry here: "One Cardell Goodman was apprehended for being concerned in the plot against his Majesty and turned King's evidence." —Nizolan ^(talk) 12:59, 14 May 2020 (UTC)

Late update: Chambers 1908 also has king's evidence (no turning involved!), defined as "a criminal allowed to become a witness against an accomplice". Equinox ◑ 15:53, 26 November 2023 (UTC)

referee and umpire

Both pages have the same usage note,

"In general, a referee moves around with the game, while an umpire stays (approximately) in one place."

Are we sure that this is an actual grammatical usage (semi-)rule? Or is it just a historical coincidence that football has referees and cricket has umpires? As a counter example, the referee in tennis does not move around with play (how could he) and is not even on court most of the time during tournaments with multiple games being played simultaneously. In fact the role of the tennis referee as arbiter of rules disputes between player and umpire is more in keeping with the etymology of umpire than with referee. Cricket itself also has a referee with that function. If I were to appoint a referee for my children's game of Monopoly, it seems hardly credible that I would be criticised for using that term rather than umpire. SpinningSpark 10:59, 13 May 2020 (UTC)

I don't think usage notes aren't restricted to grammar. Semantics seems like fair game. I have no opinion on the substance. w:Referee is informative about nomenclature in 37 sports. w:Umpire redirects to w:Referee. DCDuring (talk) 14:31, 13 May 2020 (UTC)

Even accepting that semantics are "fair game", where is the evidence that such a distinction is made. The Wikipedia article makes no such distinction, nor can it be inferred from the 37 sports described. Many of them provide counterexamples. SpinningSpark 17:22, 17 May 2020 (UTC)

To repeat, I have no opinion on the substance. But you might want to itemize the counterexamples. DCDuring (talk) 01:04, 31 May 2020 (UTC)

It seems that (field) hockey, Australian rules football and netball also have "umpires" that "follow the game" like a referee in football (soccer). I think that the distinction mentioned in this usage note is probably bogus and may be based just on one or two instances that came to the writer's mind. Mihia (talk) 17:45, 15 May 2020 (UTC)

I doubt that this is true even now, let alone for all historical usage of the words. Ƿidsiþ 16:33, 17 May 2020 (UTC)

• @Algrif, the editor who provided this note. SpinningSpark 17:32, 17 May 2020 (UTC)

Not up to me. I'm no referee nor umpire. GENERAL (please note I used this word) usage is that a referee moves around with the game, while an umpire stays (approximately) in one place. I feel this is simply a helpful note for GENERAL usage. Remove it if you think Wikt is a place to proscribe this kind of note. I care not a jot nowadays. Too many nit-picking time-wasters on board, IMHO. -- ALGRIF talk 18:33, 25 May 2020 (UTC)

Actually, I do care just a little. You have three choices. 1) You can claim that referee and umpire are synonyms (which they most definitely are not!). 2) You can clearly explain with definitions how they are different. (Good luck with that!) 3) You can leave the note alone, or re-write it, if you think you can do better. End of concern. -- ALGRIF talk 10:15, 26 May 2020 (UTC)

On checking, I see you have already decided off your own superior intellectual bat that option 2 is correct and have deleted the Usage Note. Just the sort of reason I no longer really care about this tower of Babel project. I also see this has resulted in you having missed out literally 100's of sports and situations where it should be umpire but not referee and vica versa. I fully expect you to extend your lists of definitions in both entries accordingly. -- Or you could put in an orientative Usage Note. (They were proposed many years back precisely for this kind of situation.) -- ALGRIF talk 10:25, 26 May 2020 (UTC)

I see other works of reference seem to agree with me. My original source was the fact that EFL text books I have been using for the past 20 years or so also give this difference as a general guideline to students who very often ask about this. Here is one ref that seems to agree with me pretty much word for word - [18] and here [19] -- ALGRIF talk 14:33, 27 May 2020 (UTC)

Cite a more reliable work if possible. My impression is that WikiDiff just pulls content from other websites, including Wikipedia and Wiktionary itself. — SGconlaw (talk) 14:41, 27 May 2020 (UTC)

The reason Wikidiff agrees word for word is that it has copied it word for word from Wiktionary. SpinningSpark 16:13, 30 May 2020 (UTC)

nemo resideo

Is that real or incorrect pseudo-Latin? Shouldn't that be nemo residet? The Internet is full of claims that this is an ancient Latin expression, but no reputable site even mentions it. My attempts to find the origins of leave no man behind and no man left behind and evidence as to which is older also failed. --Espoo (talk) 17:09, 14 May 2020 (UTC)

It is pseudo-Latin. "Residet" is right, though it doesn't look like "nemo residet" appears in any classical texts either so it's unlikely to be an ancient Roman proverb. There's another crinkle, though, which is that resideo is intransitive—it's not "left behind by" something, it's better translated as "no one remains". When the phrase "nemo residet" does appear in Medieval Latin texts it means that no one is left behind at a certain location because it's a ruin or under occupation (see this charter for an example: "In prioratu S. Adriani ... nemo residet, nec celebratur ibidem missa", "In the priory of St. Hadrian ... no one remains, nor is Mass celebrated there"). If it followed its historical usage it would either be a very aggressive motto or a rather defeatist one. —Nizolan ^(talk) 17:54, 14 May 2020 (UTC)

Puzzling out why we have a passive listed for resideo in the first place did prompt me to add a usage note about its transitivity. —Nizolan ^(talk) 20:48, 14 May 2020 (UTC)

factual -- two senses?

My impression is that there are two distinct senses of "factual" 1) true, accurate as in "all those claims are completely factual" and 2) pertaining to objective claims as in "most of the factual claims made are accurate, but they are presented in a misleading manner". Is this correctly understood?__Gamren (talk) 23:43, 14 May 2020 (UTC)

That seems accurate to me. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 01:49, 15 May 2020 (UTC)

I've taken a stab at revising the entry. See what you think. - -sche (discuss) 22:41, 16 May 2020 (UTC)

I like it, but both of the defs make use of the word fact, each using the corresponding sense of that word. I think that would be confusing.__Gamren (talk) 17:27, 17 May 2020 (UTC)

ethnography

This can refer to both the literary genre and the field of research, correct? Surely these should be differentiated. ---> Tooironic (talk) 10:14, 15 May 2020 (UTC)

bar room

Can this be used attributively with more or less the (pejorative) meaning of cracker-barrel? "bar-room philosophy", etc. I've found this thread but I'm not sure. I'm looking for translations of French de comptoir. PUC – 12:11, 16 May 2020 (UTC)

Something like that: b~ politics for example. Equinox ◑ 12:16, 16 May 2020 (UTC)

Thank you. Should we add a sense, or create an entry for the pseudo-adjective bar-room? PUC – 12:29, 16 May 2020 (UTC)

I notice we have an adjective section for water cooler (which I did not add, it was already there before my edits), which is also used similarly. PUC – 13:13, 16 May 2020 (UTC)

eurytopical

Eurytopical seems to be a rare variation of eurytopic, less than 1% as common in a search of Google scholar. Google adds "Did you mean: eurytopic?" I don't see any difference in meaning. Do we dismiss this as a mistake or add it as a rare and/or proscribed variation? Vox Sciurorum (talk) 12:32, 16 May 2020 (UTC)

It looks like it has decent attestation so labelling it a rare alternative form seems right to me. Like -ic/-ical in general the -topic words seem to have reliable alternate forms in -topical (I tested "cochleotopical" from cochleotopic as a random example), and since it's found published in peer-reviewed journals and the like I would hesitate to call it proscribed. —Nizolan ^(talk) 20:51, 16 May 2020 (UTC)

I went ahead and created it. —Nizolan ^(talk) 00:46, 17 May 2020 (UTC)

talk through one's hat

Do we need two senses? I don't really see a distinction. PUC – 13:12, 16 May 2020 (UTC)

The quotations given for sense 2 only make sense with sense 1 ("He's conceited and opinionative and argues all the time, even when he knows perfectly well that he's asserting something as true or valid"??) —Nizolan ^(talk) 15:53, 16 May 2020 (UTC)

I think the definitions can be seen as distinct as written; the question for me is more whether the second sense actually exists. Collins dictionary [20] gives two senses under the "British English" heading: "a. to talk foolishly; b. to deceive or bluff", roughly reflecting our distinction I suppose, certainly as far as "bluff" is concerned, but only one under "American English": "to make irresponsible or foolish statements; talk nonsense". I am a BrE speaker, but I can't say I am familiar with the "deceive" or "bluff" sense. Mihia (talk) 19:49, 16 May 2020 (UTC)

Also, at [21] I found this sense:

2. To exaggerate one's achievements or knowledge; to bluff or boast.

Dorothy keeps saying she can outrun anyone in our school, but she's talking through her hat if you ask me.

It seemed like the candidate was talking through his hat for a while when the debate turned to the topic of tax policy.

I can't say I understand either of these examples as meaning anything other than "talking nonsense". Mihia (talk) 19:49, 16 May 2020 (UTC)

If the distinction's between general bullshit and intentional deception then I guess sense 2 should specify "falsely assert something". Something else to throw into the mix: a user here also points out with a quotation that the original meaning may have been "to talk drunkenly". —Nizolan ^(talk) 20:35, 16 May 2020 (UTC)

At that forum they also quote https://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/talking-through-your-hat.html, which says that the phrase "began life in the USA, in the late 19th century, with a slightly different meaning from the present one. It then meant to bluster." This accords with my feeling, from looking at some other randomly Googled material, that senses like "boast, bluff, bluster" may be older meanings that have now been supplanted by the "talk nonsense" sense. Mihia (talk) 22:05, 16 May 2020 (UTC)

The way my father used it (learned English 1933 et seq.) was as meaning "hold forth about something one knows very little about.", to use a definition from AHD. I have no specific recollection of hearing it from anyone else.

Thus, it's not necessarily a question of deceit, except perhaps in pretending to knowledge one doesn't actually have. Further, I would allow for the possibility that one could "talk through one's hat" mistakenly, not deceitfully, believing that one was saying was true. DCDuring (talk) 01:59, 17 May 2020 (UTC)

That's more or less how I understand the distinction between the two senses if the sources above are right: 1. holding forth on subjects you don't understand, which doesn't have to involve actual deceit or lying, vs. 2. deliberate bluffing / deceit. I haven't heard sense 2 myself either. —Nizolan ^(talk) 02:09, 17 May 2020 (UTC)

irrumation

Potentially not restricted to the mouth, as an IP editor tried to point out. — surjection ⟨??⟩ 13:38, 16 May 2020 (UTC)

google books:"irrumation of" is not netting me anything specifies a particular body part, so I can't tell. I do see one (1) hit for "irrumate her anus sac", and this odd occurrence. - -sche (discuss) 07:52, 17 May 2020 (UTC)

Doesn't seem worth a separate sense; maybe if there really are quite a few such uses, the def could be reworded to "…of the mouth (or sometimes, by extension, of other parts of the body)", or similar. Ƿidsiþ 16:32, 17 May 2020 (UTC)

the gender community, the (anti-)gender movement, etc

I came across the phrase google books:"the gender community" today, in such phrases as google books:"women and the gender community" (which makes as little sense to me as "Australians and people with accents", or better yet "Australians and people with nationalities"). Poking around, it seems to be intended to mean "the transgender or non-binary community", and this or a similar sense seems to be found also in e.g. ["the" / "the anti-"]google books:"gender movement". (See also Talk:gender ideology.) I'm not sure where, how, or even whether to define this: maybe gender#Adjective as "transgender or non-binary"?? That seems very sub-optimal to me. It's probably connected to the idea that only trans or non-binary people have genders and "normal" people don't, which means it might not be lexical, it may just be a peculiar use of the "usual" sense (much like "I don't have an accent, I speak proper English, only other people from other regions have accents" wouldn't be a reason to add a "new" sense to "accent"). Thoughts? - -sche (discuss) 23:09, 16 May 2020 (UTC)

That's a weird one. "Gender movement", "gender ideology" etc. seem different from "gender community" to me as they refer to the concept of gender, whereas I think "gender community" refers to gender itself. Maybe "gender community" merits an entry of its own—here's one example where it seems to be used as a proper noun: "The ‘Gender Community’ is made up of transsexuals, transgender people, cross-dressers, and all others whose gender identity does not fall in line with the Western dichotomous view of gender" (p. 47). —Nizolan ^(talk) 02:19, 17 May 2020 (UTC)

Barnstars

How can be included a link in barnstar to go to see more info in Wiktionary:Barnstars.?. --BoldLuis (talk) 23:40, 16 May 2020 (UTC)

It shouldn't be. With rare exceptions, dictionary entries are for users rather than editors, and should not link to Wiktionary-internal pages. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 23:47, 16 May 2020 (UTC)

It could be linked. {{selfref}} is what you're looking for - it's used on beer parlour, for example. --Undurbjáni (talk) 23:55, 16 May 2020 (UTC)

In this case our barnstar policy page is a mostly empty stub, so not worth doing. Equinox ◑ 10:43, 17 May 2020 (UTC)

What is the Latin pronunciation of "Czechia"--How do we know the answer to this question, and does it even make sense?

In October 2019, I removed pronunciation for the Latin entry for the proper noun Czechia. This had previously been auto-generated by the la-IPA template, yielding a transcription with the extremely unlikely initial cluster [kz] or [kd͡z]. I did not add a replacement pronunciation because there are as far as I know no general rules about the pronunciation in Latin of the un-Latin digraph "cz", and I have no experience with hearing this word pronounced aloud in Latin.

In January 2020, a new pronunciation was added with an initial cluster /ts/. While not as improbable as [kz] or [kd͡z], I'm still kind of suspicious about whether /t͡ʃ/ might be used instead (as in the Czech word Česko, the alternative form Cechia, and the Italian word ceco), or whether this term even has appreciable usage in speech as opposed to writing. How should pronunciations for entries like these be evaluated? I don't know the basis of the edit that added the /ts/ pronunciation: maybe it is more than just a guess, but there's no easy way to find out. My own feeling is that it would be better to omit pronunciation than to list a pronunciation that is just a guess, but evidence about pronunciation is harder to cite than evidence about usage of a word in writing.--Urszag (talk) 01:55, 17 May 2020 (UTC)

Terms invented after the death of Latin as a spoken language shouldn't have classical pronunciations listed in the first place and, as for the ecclesiastical, I would hazard a guess that it's "however the speaker would say it in their native language". So I agree the pronunciation should be removed. (Are there even any ecclesiastical instances? "Bohemia" is used in church documents as late as 1978, cf. this letter by Paul VI) —Nizolan ^(talk) 02:05, 17 May 2020 (UTC)

Hmm, I found a use of "Czechia" in an odd document from 1765, as part of some screed that also includes "Zecchi", "Zechi", "Zichi" and "Zingi" as names that supposedly could have an etymological relationship, which implies that to the author there was some notable similarity in the pronunciation of "cz" and "z" here. Zecchus seems to be the name of a mythological founder figure of Bohemia. Now I also see that there is extensive discussion of the issues of pronunciation and spelling over at the talk page for the Latin Wikipedia article for the country. Interestingly, a native Czech speaker indicates that--maybe because cz is no longer used as a digraph in Czech itself--Czech speakers do in fact use /kz/ when they pronounce Latinized forms spelled with <cz>. Urszag (talk) 02:27, 17 May 2020 (UTC)

Interesting discussion. I see someone else there also mentioned that it'll differ "according to the underlying native language of the Latinist". The book link's also fascinatingly weird. I'm sure it's well-attested in New Latin writing; the problem is that our "Ecclesiastical Latin" pronunciation essentially just indicates how it's read in a church context according to a specific Italian-style standard that really only emerged in the 19th–20th centuries, so I don't think it makes sense to list an ecclesiastical pronunciation if the word itself can't be parsed according to the rules of that standard and has no actual church usage anyway. How Latinists pronounce terms in other contexts is a separate and much more intractable problem—there are different national standards for pronunciation in Latin teaching, for example—which I don't think it's worth getting into. —Nizolan ^(talk) 02:47, 17 May 2020 (UTC)

(straying off the immediate topic:) I disagree with the idea that terms from after Classical Latin should never list Classical pronunciations, and I've supported it when other editors have changed entries to un-suppress such pronunciations, since all our "Classical" pronunciations are based on modern theories rather than period audio recordings(!) anyway. (It's been suggested before that the label should perhaps be changed to "Classicist" or something, either generally or at least in the case of "post-Classical" words.) We also give all the [Latin] words a normalized spelling (in lowercase, etc) without regard to whether it was attested in that period. However, if in this specific case we have a sequence of letters and don't have a basis for knowing how that sequence would've been pronounced, then sure, omit the pronunciation. On rare occasion entries use "like X" or "see X" instead of IPA; if we have reason to think this would be pronounced like Cechia we could say something like "probaby like Cechia". - -sche (discuss) 07:44, 17 May 2020 (UTC)

Hmm, I'm not sure I agree with that reasoning. Late Latin can definitely include it as a next best thing, but to me the reconstructed classical pronunciation indicates how a term probably was spoken by native speakers of the language (around the time of the Principate). Even after the classicising wave of the last century or so the pronunciation of most modern Latinists typically only approximates this reconstructed classical pronunciation and varies by country. I won't go round suppressing it in existing entries but I've set classical=no in entries I've added for Medieval Latin coinages. —Nizolan ^(talk) 10:30, 17 May 2020 (UTC)

黃俄

What's 黃 refer to in 黃俄? --Backinstadiums (talk) 14:52, 17 May 2020 (UTC)

Skin colour (cf.) —Nizolan ^(talk) 19:23, 17 May 2020 (UTC)

@Nizolan, should we have a racial sense at 黃／黄 (huáng)? —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 03:45, 19 May 2020 (UTC)

@Metaknowledge: It would fall under sense 4 of English "yellow" right? Granted I think it's considered slightly less intrinsically offensive in Chinese than in English —Nizolan ^(talk) 10:58, 19 May 2020 (UTC)

But I'm asking about the Chinese entry, which doesn't have such a sense. @Justinrleung? —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 14:50, 19 May 2020 (UTC)

@Metaknowledge: I guess so. It doesn't seem to be commonly used outside of 黃種, but I can think of one instance where that's used on its own - in the song 耶穌喜愛世上小孩 (Jesus Loves the Little Children, translated from the English song). — justin(r)leung _{{ (t...) | c=› }} 16:49, 19 May 2020 (UTC)

@Justinrleung: Would you mind adding that to the entry? I was going to, but I'm not sure what context label to use, and I wouldn't be able to add the quote from that song correctly. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 17:10, 19 May 2020 (UTC)

@Metaknowledge:  Done. Some versions of the song use 紅黃黑白棕 (equivalent to the version with "red, brown, yellow, black and white" in some renditions of the English), which would be more obviously independent of 黃種, but I chose the version that is published in a hymn book, which has 紅黃黑白種. — justin(r)leung _{{ (t...) | c=› }} 18:14, 19 May 2020 (UTC)

I can see a few attestations on Google for 黄色力量 too ("yellow power" in the racial sense), though they need to be disentangled from other political uses of "yellow". —Nizolan ^(talk) 18:27, 19 May 2020 (UTC)

There're some uses (what its entry calls "short for") not included yet, such as a bound nominal form for 黄金; for more info. see about elasticity --Backinstadiums (talk) 12:39, 20 May 2020 (UTC)

Ellipsis notation

[22] Equinox ◑ 12:25, 18 May 2020 (UTC)

To summarize my points, is there any particular reason or guideline to use {{...}} or {{nb...}} just to generate "[...]" instead of just typing the latter if one is not wishing to use the tooltip feature of those templates? At the moment, using the templates just seems like creating unnecessary transclusions. Why not reserve the use of those templates for situations when it is actually desired to use the tooltip feature, like this: {{...|Some text that doesn't need to be displayed}}? — SGconlaw (talk) 13:33, 18 May 2020 (UTC)

Those templates generate the single ellipsis character "…", which people may not know how to type directly, rather than three separate dots. I don't know how important this is though. Mihia (talk) 13:54, 18 May 2020 (UTC)

It adds extra machine-readable info too (e.g. classes for the square brackets), though how useful that is I can't say. At any rate transclusion isn't an ill by itself so if someone else troubles to add the template I wouldn't remove it. —Nizolan ^(talk) 14:16, 18 May 2020 (UTC)

The original logic by Equinox was completely valid, too. Sometimes the merit of being machine-readable is just because we know that original text and Wiktionary annotations are fundamentally different things, and we can easily conceive of an algorithm or bot needing to access that difference, so we put in the work beforehand to facilitate future work. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 17:14, 19 May 2020 (UTC)

about (3)

Examples are sought for the adverb sense "Near; in the vicinity". I am reasonably happy that this does actually exist, but I have been unable to come up with good examples that are clearly distinct, especially that are distinct from the sense "Here and there; around; in one place and another". I have deemed uses such as "there's a thief about" to be adjectival not adverbial. Mihia (talk) 13:50, 18 May 2020 (UTC)

Does something like "His house should be right about here" count? —Nizolan ^(talk) 19:26, 18 May 2020 (UTC)

If interpreted as an adverb, I think "about" would mean "approximately" in this example (which is a separate definition). If it means "near", I would say it is probably a preposition, and in fact we already have this for preposition:

In the immediate neighborhood of; in contiguity or proximity to; near, as to place.

John is somewhere about the woodshed.

Mihia (talk) 20:09, 18 May 2020 (UTC)

Fair point. How about something like this quotation: "the watch which was lying about on the deck" ([23]—can't be the "here and there" sense since it's one object and not a preposition since "on the deck" isn't a noun phrase).—Nizolan ^(talk) 20:54, 18 May 2020 (UTC)

Does it seem to you as if "about" does really mean "near; in the vicinity" in that example? Mihia (talk) 17:23, 19 May 2020 (UTC)

Yes. Does it not to you? (Incidentally I was looking for "lying about" since the OED cites a very similar one for the "in the vicinity" sense—"Lying about was what seemed to me to be the old altar-stone"—but I wanted to avoid throwing in yet another OED quote.) —Nizolan ^(talk) 19:04, 19 May 2020 (UTC)

To me, no, not really, not in ordinary use. I interpret "lying about" as meaning "lying somewhere random-ish", like what "here and there" would mean if it could apply to a single location. Originally, as of the time of the OED quote, no doubt it meant what they say, but for me the modern, more colloquial sense of "about" dominates in all these kinds of "V-ing about" examples that I have been able to come up with. I can see the "in the vicinity" sense, but it is a stretch, and feels archaic, like something out of an old book. Mihia (talk) 21:35, 19 May 2020 (UTC)

Mm, the difference between "somewhere random-ish" and "in the vicinity" seems much smaller to me, given that the sense isn't literally somewhere random but somewhere in a definite area. Fwiw the OED combines "around the place" and "in the vicinity", so e.g. (as an example I've made up) "reeds growing about the river" would also be the same sense. Of course both the OED's and my own example for the singular usage are indeed from old books. —Nizolan ^(talk) 21:59, 19 May 2020 (UTC)

they's: singular they

Is they's also used for the singular they? --Backinstadiums (talk) 17:35, 18 May 2020 (UTC)

"Singular they" does not need an entry and the red link is misleading. Give an example of the sentence you are imagining. I don't think "they's" is a normal word used by normal humans. Equinox ◑ 18:50, 18 May 2020 (UTC)

@Equinox: there's somebody in that house, but I can't see what they's doing --Backinstadiums (talk) 19:30, 18 May 2020 (UTC)

@Backinstadiums:. No; singular they, like singular you, still takes the plural verb: "I can't see what they're doing". —Mahāgaja · talk 19:53, 18 May 2020 (UTC)

"Eye's right and they's wrong" is the title of a 2007 book. They's is readily attestable in dialog in books. Also, in some uses it seems to be short for there is or there are. It also sometimes seems to reflect the addition of a pluralizing -s to they: “You go in there y'self, and they's be cuttin' the price way down on you." And even possessive -'s: "Said they needed a proper community for they's child if it was to blossom."

I don't know how widespread the use is in actual speech, as opposed to in fictional dialog. It does appear in works by Ring Lardner, John Steinbeck, H. P. Lovecraft, the Brontes, Norman Mailer, James Agee, Damon Runyon, George R. R. Martin, James Whitcomb Riley, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Tennessee Williams, Studs Terkel, and a host of lesser and newer authors, starting in the second half of the 19th century. DCDuring (talk) 23:34, 18 May 2020 (UTC)

I think "Eye's right and they's wrong" is probably a use of non-singular they with non-singular 's (as already described somewhat in the entry, although this phenomenon occurs in other dialects than AAVE).--Urszag (talk) 02:08, 19 May 2020 (UTC)

Certainly for almost all the authors above, most of the print attestation is not AAVE. DCDuring (talk) 03:38, 19 May 2020 (UTC)

I should clarify I was talking about standard English, not nonstandard varieties in which plural subjects take singular verbs. I suspect in AAVE, Backinstadium's example sentence wouldn't have copulas anyway: "There somebody in that house, but I can't see what they doing". —Mahāgaja · talk 06:25, 19 May 2020 (UTC)

As others said, standard English uses are with both singular and plural they. But to OP's question: if a speaker uses singular is together with plural they, I'm sure they will also use is with singular they.
I've also met people who used the standard they are for groups or an unknown person, etc, but overthought things when talking about one non-binary person and used they is in that case; it wouldn't shock me if that were even CFI-attestable. But I'm not sure any of this affects our entries, since it seems adequate to define they's as a contraction for "they is" without specifying exactly which senses of the third-person pronoun "they" apply. (Naturally, we could do a better job of specifying what dialects it's found in, and I would add a separate line for occurrences of "they's" that use etymology 2 of they and mean "there is".) - -sche (discuss) 09:09, 19 May 2020 (UTC)

I have always used "they" for a person of an unknown sex where some use "he/she" or "he or she". And, @Backinstadiums: I have always used "are" with it, in those cases. Tharthan (talk) 14:05, 19 May 2020 (UTC)

@Tharthan: are you an AAVE speaker? --Backinstadiums (talk) 16:14, 19 May 2020 (UTC)

No, but... AAVE is not exactly standard (at least, not the broadest form of it). I thought that you were asking about standard English. Tharthan (talk) 16:44, 19 May 2020 (UTC)

fik

This has been listed as "dog's name" in Dutch since the page's creation in 2004. Can someone move it to Fik if it's attestable? Ultimateria (talk) 04:19, 19 May 2020 (UTC)

die Zeit

i was wondering if Die Zeit sounded like deceit; what a name for a newspaper!

So for the first time ever, i listened to a Wiktionary audio file. Two, actually, both from the Zeit page:

• audio (Austria)

  (file)

• Audio

  (file)

Does audio (Austria) actually say "die Zeit" instead of just "Zeit"? Is that acceptable? My guess is the "the" should go. How does a person edit an audio clip on Wiktionary? (Probably download it, edit it, delete the old, and upload the new, not that i know how to do that either. Oh, well; i'm probably not allowed to anyway unless i register an account.)

If audio (Austria) is correct, is Audio incorrect? If both are correct because the word has different pronunciations in different regions, then Audio should specify where that pronunciation is common. Change Audio to audio (Germany), perhaps? (Assuming that's where the pronunciation occurs.) And maybe put the Germany version first, since the word is so German-y.

To quote a comic strip, donkey shorts.

96.244.220.178 04:59, 19 May 2020 (UTC)

Yes, File:De-at-Zeit.ogg is die Zeit, not just Zeit. But we have a lot of audio files for nouns with the definite article, especially in French. I don't think it would be desirable to edit someone else's sound file like that, at least not if the intent is to overwrite the original. It would be acceptable to upload the edited version under a different file name, though. But probably not necessary, since File:De-Zeit.ogg already has Zeit without die, and there's no significant pronunciation difference between the two. —Mahāgaja · talk 06:23, 19 May 2020 (UTC)

gie

's: = us pron. Now dial. exc. in let's = let us (colloq.).
1893 Crockett Stickit Minister 100 What'll ye gie's?
https://www.oed.com/oed2/00211177

What does gie mean here? give? how's it pronounced? --Backinstadiums (talk) 10:08, 19 May 2020 (UTC)

See the Scots entry at gie. Tharthan (talk) 14:09, 19 May 2020 (UTC)

luh: love

luh seems predominant for the non standard pronunciation of (only the verb?) love (see I Luh Ya Papi ) . Likewise, final /v/ sounds are lost in many other words, but I do not know what phonological context triggers it --Backinstadiums (talk) 15:14, 19 May 2020 (UTC)

I have also heard love (usually intentionally nonstandardly) pronounced with /f/ instead of /v/. Dropping the consonant altogether sounds very nonstandard indeed to me. But we could add an entry if it's citable. There do seem to be enough hits at google books:"I luh you" (and two at google books:"luhs you" and one at google books:"luhs her", with two of those three being "I luhs"), and one of the top ones makes the curious claim that "I can say, “I luv you” or “I luh you” and they would both sound the same, even though they are both a “short” form of love; no one would ever know the difference until I spell it out". - -sche (discuss) 00:27, 20 May 2020 (UTC)

insomuch as

Shouldn't some of the senses of insomuch be moved to insomuch as, the way we also have inasmuch as and not just inasmuch, insofar as and not just insofar, and inasfar as and not just inasfar, for the common senses of those words which are likewise [now] typically bound to "as"? - -sche (discuss) 18:24, 19 May 2020 (UTC)

AM

Note at https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/largesse :

Regional note: in AM, use largess

Does anyone know what "AM" means here? Mihia (talk) 19:45, 19 May 2020 (UTC)

It seems to mean American English. Why they abbreviated it, I dont know .... there's plenty of room on the page. Anyway my hunch is based on what I get when I look at pages like https://www.collinsdictionary.com/us/dictionary/english/lift , https://www.collinsdictionary.com/us/dictionary/english/indicate , and https://www.collinsdictionary.com/us/dictionary/english/about . —Soap— 20:55, 19 May 2020 (UTC)

Hmm, thanks, yes, it seems you may be right after all, though I have never heard of such an abbreviation, and it is also completely inconsistent with the entries on the same page, which give "largess" as an alternative spelling for British English but not for American English, where they give only "largesse". Ngrams also gives "largesse" as the most common spelling in AmE, just as it does for BrE. Mihia (talk) 21:20, 19 May 2020 (UTC)

vulnerable

Sense 2:

(computing) More likely to be exposed to malicious programs or viruses.

a vulnerable PC with no antivirus software

Is there really a distinct computing-specific sense of this word? Mihia (talk) 20:26, 19 May 2020 (UTC)

What would convince me is if we took the example sentence and stripped off the second part, and just used "a vulnerable PC". Would people know we meant software? Probably we would be understood, as opposed to someone thinking that e.g. the PC was sitting under a leaky ceiling or on a slanted table. But those situations are of course far less common than the intended sense so .... I dont know, I guess I dont really have a strong opinion here. But I also wanted to say that I think that vulnerable to me implies "naked; unarmed; unshielded" as if something that is normally present has been stripped away. That would eliminate the ceiling and table situations. —Soap— 20:41, 19 May 2020 (UTC)

To me, "a vulnerable PC", without more information, could mean any of those things: vulnerable to malware, vulnerable to being knocked over, vulnerable to being stolen -- anything, just depending on context. Mihia (talk) 21:39, 19 May 2020 (UTC)

I agree, though I wonder if this sense was added because of the technical usage of "vulnerability" as a noun in cybersecurity. I could perhaps see the argument for a subsense. —Nizolan ^(talk) 22:04, 19 May 2020 (UTC)

To me it might be worth a usage example under the common normal definition (#1). Otherwise we would need subsenses for every context-dependent kind of vulnerability. I would contrast this with the missing bridge sense of vulnerable, which most dictionaries have. I haven't found any other dictionary that has a specialized computing definition. I'd put it through RfV.

AHD has 5 subsenses, without an explicit unifying sense:

a. Susceptible to physical harm or damage: "trees that are vulnerable to insects."

b. Susceptible to emotional injury, especially in being easily hurt: "a lonely child who is vulnerable to teasing."

c. Susceptible to attack: “We are vulnerable both by water and land, without either fleet or army” (Alexander Hamilton).

d. Open to censure or criticism; assailable: "The mayor is vulnerable to criticism on the issue."

e. Susceptible to loss or poor performance: "a team that is vulnerable going into the tournament."

DCDuring (talk) 23:24, 19 May 2020 (UTC)

I wonder whether RFV is appropriate since there is no doubt that "vulnerable" can mean this -- just that it can also mean countless other things too, so why single out this one. Mihia (talk) 19:57, 21 May 2020 (UTC)

pronunciation of lacunae

At -ae, we list three possible pronunciations, /-i/, /-aɪ/, and /-eɪ/ (of which the last one seems to closely match the Ecclesiastical Latin). In Merriam-Webster's entry on lacuna, they also give the pronunciation of lacunae (the only dictionary I have found which does), and they give it as either /-i/ or /-aɪ/. Can lacunae also be pronounced with /-eɪ/, like (according to our entries) words like alumnae or formulae? (I would think so, but finding evidence is...nontrivial.) - -sche (discuss) 22:06, 19 May 2020 (UTC)

I think /-eɪ/ usually is much rarer than the other two for -ae, and I agree it's probably at least influenced by the Ecclesiastical Latin pronunciation (where /-aɪ/ is classicising and /-iː/ is the inherited English one). As it happens anecdotally I'm fairly sure I do recall hearing "lacunae" pronounced with /-eɪ/, maybe not coincidentally in the context of academic discussion about Catholicism. It wouldn't raise my eyebrows at least. —Nizolan ^(talk) 22:19, 19 May 2020 (UTC)

material

In Roman Catholicism, "material" is applied technically to sins with a meaning something like "present in its characteristic objective behavior, but not necessarily performed with the knowledge that would make the sinner morally culpable". An example of this is the term material heresy, which should really be SOP with this definition in mind, but could be widespread enough compared to other "material sins" to be considered a fixed phrase.

That could merit a sense at material, but it's derived from the scholastic concept of the material cause, which is why it's contrasted to formal (from formal cause). I think—and Google suggests—that there are other cases where "material" is used that reflect specifically this derivation rather than any of the existing senses, for example in law (e.g.), but I'm less sure about them. Can anyone shed light? —Nizolan ^(talk) 23:51, 19 May 2020 (UTC)

@BD2412 might have insight into whether a sense like or related to this is also found in law. I can find some examples of "material crime" being contrasted with "formal crime", but two are clearly referring to religious crimes, and in one case specifically heresy. - -sche (discuss) 00:20, 20 May 2020 (UTC)

I don't really have any insight into this. In law, we literally use the language of materiality to indicate that something matters. I have not come across the "material crime" distinction before, but have mostly encountered the term with reference to material facts, material statements (i.e., if you lie in a deposition about whether you saw the crime, that's a material fact, whereas if you lie about what you had for breakfast and it has nothing to do with the controversy at issue, it's immaterial), and material variations from contractual terms. bd2412 T 00:51, 20 May 2020 (UTC)

I am only familiar with this in "material heresy", which means heresy that is not a sin, because it is unintentional. The sense is that the "matter" for sin is present (such as a heretical belief), but ignorance or some other factor precludes it from being sinful. Since a quick Google search reveals that "material sin" is a term in use, perhaps it should have its own entry (given that AFAIK most theologians would maintain that it is not in fact sin), with an additional sense at material to cover the sense used in "material heresy." Alternatively, if the sense used in "material sin" is predominant, the entry for "material heresy" could be kept and an additional sense added to material to cover the sense used in "material sin." Andrew Sheedy (talk) 02:41, 21 May 2020 (UTC)

Category:English terms spelled with '

This category, which I resurrected today, had seemingly failed RFD in 2012. However, I couldn't bear to believe that that RFD, whatever its result, could possibly be valid. Due to the widespread use of the apostrophe in the past centuries, it is no longer possible to document English without apostrophes. Once we move into the coming 1984 style newspeak phase of English, then apostrophes will be eliminated. But before we get there, we haven't gone there yet, and hence I'm advocating for keeping this category. "Slowly but surely, the apostrophe has been forgotten or purposely left behind in an increasing array of words." --Geographyinitiative (talk) 01:31, 20 May 2020 (UTC)

Do not waste your time manually adding entries. You should edit I have edited the standardChars field for English in Module:languages/data2. DTLHS (talk) 01:41, 20 May 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for your help. Let me know if there are objections or problems arising from me doing this. --Geographyinitiative (talk) 02:25, 20 May 2020 (UTC)

These "English terms spelled with" categories are only useful with characters that are rarely used. It's precisely because the apostrophe is a basic part of English that one would want to delete its categry. It's the same reason we don't have "English terms spelled with e"- it would be like a category for "bodies of water that are wet", or "Mandarin terms spelled with Chinese characters". Chuck Entz (talk) 03:25, 20 May 2020 (UTC)

In that case the category should be deleted again for having been recreated despite a previous RFD. @Geographyinitiative, if you feel that the category should be revived for some reason, you should file a request for discussion at Wiktionary:Requests for deletion/Others. — SGconlaw (talk) 05:36, 20 May 2020 (UTC)

To me, it seems that the "bodies of water that are wet" and "Mandarin terms spelled with Chinese characters" analogies are invalid comparisons because apostrophes are not part of the alphabet. To me, this very obviously qualifies as useful category because it's a character that is relatively rarely used and is not a bona fide letter (not in the alphabet). I added the category to Wikipedia's page on apostrophes [24] so let me know if you do delete this. --Geographyinitiative (talk) 05:51, 20 May 2020 (UTC)

I have come close to getting banned on Wikipedia for my love of the apostrophe which had been described by other users as obsessive or bizarre if I remember correctly, so I may be too forward of an advocate for their continued use and I bow to the wisdom of the community on this issue. --Geographyinitiative (talk) 05:53, 20 May 2020 (UTC)

I've deleted the category; please start a discussion on the page mentioned above if you feel it should be recreated. I'm also a stickler for apostrophe use, but having a category for entries that contain one is not, in my view, particularly helpful for this cause. — SGconlaw (talk) 09:03, 20 May 2020 (UTC)

@DTLHS: think you'll have to edit "Module:languages/data2" again to remove the apostrophe until a proper undeletion discussion of the category has occurred. — SGconlaw (talk) 09:07, 20 May 2020 (UTC)

I'm sorry, I let my annoyance at your over-the-top, baseless DRAMAH!!!! goad me into a knee-jerk reaction. I stand by the general principles that I stated, but in this case the category itself wasn't unmanageably full. Chuck Entz (talk) 14:37, 20 May 2020 (UTC)

As long as we're already checking pagenames to determine if they contain any of the characters we do categorize by, is there a cost associated to checking for additional characters? I imagine there may be. If the cost were not high, I would say: why not categorize even the common ones? I mean, if someone wants a list of English words spelled with "x", why not let 'em have it? (If the answer is "because it would be hella expensive, Lua-memory-wise", then I understand, but otherwise, what's the harm?) - -sche (discuss) 09:27, 20 May 2020 (UTC)

Personally I've no objection one way or another, but since there was a previous RFD discussion the correct procedure should be followed for re-creation of the category if thought fit. — SGconlaw (talk) 10:33, 20 May 2020 (UTC)

While there's probably no technical justification for categorically banning these, I am concerned about clutter. If this were taken to its extreme, it would lead to multiple "filler" categories added for each language section. No one is proposing that, but we have a large number of entries with dozens and dozens of categories at the bottom, and I don't want to make it worse for little or no benefit.

I also have a philosophical concern about proliferation of contentless filler- what I like to call the "well, duh!" factor. We have an editorial responsibility to choose what we present and not just throw things in because we can. I think some people forget that technology is a tool to accomplish things, not a reason on its own to do them. Yes, we can create categories for words that have both "c" and "n" in the same word, or that don't contain the letter "r", but is this information useful? We only have so much real estate on the screen- we don't need to look for ways to fill it up. Chuck Entz (talk) 14:37, 20 May 2020 (UTC)

Yes (to Sgconlaw's point), I agree this shouldn't be recreated without re-discussion per procedure. For my part, I just wanted to feel out if there might be support, or a big technical impediment, to (discussing) creating such categories generally. To Chuck's point, if we did it, we should probably "hide" the "basic" ones the way we do maintenance categories (like, display "English terms spelled with ḱ" but hide "English terms spelled with k"). But, while there have been one or two times when I could've used a list of "[X] terms spelled with [Y]" for some [Y] we didn't categorize, I've survived not having them, heh, so I don't suppose it's pressing. (I don't recall exactly what I was doing that I wanted the full list. I ended up using AWB to search a database dump or dump of all page titles for such entries, though AWB maxes out after a certain [albeit high] number of entries.) - -sche (discuss) 20:11, 20 May 2020 (UTC)

I'on't: I don't

Mostly in AAVE, and mainly in the sentence "I'on't know", e.g. here, here, here, here, and even y'on't --Backinstadiums (talk) 01:59, 20 May 2020 (UTC)

Academic theory --Backinstadiums (talk) 15:42, 20 May 2020 (UTC)

list'ning

Does list'ning or list'nin(') represent a common pattern to signal syllabification? --Backinstadiums (talk) 02:10, 20 May 2020 (UTC)

youtiao

This is the first time I have added IPA for an English entry. Could someone please check it is written correctly? Thank you. ---> Tooironic (talk) 02:53, 20 May 2020 (UTC)

@Tooironic: I've made it approximate (North American) English sounds. It's probably not a good idea to just take the Mandarin IPA and take out tones. — justin(r)leung _{{ (t...) | c=› }} 06:52, 20 May 2020 (UTC)

Thanks mate. ---> Tooironic (talk) 08:41, 21 May 2020 (UTC)

,

The examples "Le debo 7,14 €." and "J'ai payé 10,14 €." on the page , (comma) have their language codes in the source code of the wiki pages, but the language names are not visible in the page. I think they should be. The example "Le debo 7,14 €." should look like "(Spanish): Le debo 7,14 €. ― I owe you €7.14", but I'd guess it would be better to make the template behave in that way rather than adding that manually to the wiki page. Mölli-Möllerö (talk) 10:58, 20 May 2020 (UTC)

Actually, 99 percent of the uses of that template are in language sections, where displaying the language is a bad idea. Why make the template more complicated just so we can accommodate the occasional usage example in a translingual section? Chuck Entz (talk) 14:46, 20 May 2020 (UTC)

I've added the language names using the q= parameter. – Einstein2 (talk) 15:04, 20 May 2020 (UTC)

cartoon character

What about the figurative usage:

"That charlatan became a cartoon character in his disgusting display of irresponsibility this morning."

, meaning, "exaggerated villainous figure" or (in other usage) "wacky, ridiculous figure"? Tharthan (talk) 18:10, 19 May 2020 (UTC)

For what it's worth, I've mostly heard this as cartoon villain (e.g. "my opponent, who was a cartoon villain, stole the voices of Georgians" [25]). —Nizolan ^(talk) 20:45, 20 May 2020 (UTC)

Do „drunter“ and „drüber“ count as being prefixed with „dar-“?

I have just created drüber, which is an alternative form of darüber in colloquial German speech, after finding it high up on User:Matthias_Buchmeier/German_frequency_list-1-5000 as a redlink. Its standard form is in Category:German words prefixed with dar- for obvious reasons. In the case of the antonym darunter/drunter, both pages are not in this category. I am new to editing Wiktionary, so I'm not sure how to proceed here: should I manually add all three to the category (or maybe just darunter?), should I add the etymology dar- + unter to darunter and manually categorise the alternative forms for both words, or something else entirely? --Der Trutinator (talk) 11:00, 21 May 2020 (UTC)

It's probably better to treat them as alternative forms normally are treated: leave the etymology to the man form unless there's something unique to the alternative form. That way you don't clutter the prefix category with multiple variations on the same word. Chuck Entz (talk) 13:50, 21 May 2020 (UTC)

add in quadrature

I added an example of the phrase "add in quadrature" to the second definition of quadrature but I'm not confident it belongs there. Any opinions? Does it go where it is, on a different or new sense, or on a page of its own for the phrase? Add in quadrature means take the square root of the sum of squares, i.e. the side of a square that has the same area of squares with sides equal to the two values being added in quadrature.

Definition and example:

1. (mathematics) The act or process of constructing a square that has the same area as a given plane figure, or of computing that area.
   • 1982, “Theory of generation‐recombination noise in intrinsic photoconductors”, in Journal of Applied Physics, volume 53, →DOI:

     The derived expression for the g‐r noise consists of a thermal component and a background component which add in quadrature.

Vox Sciurorum (talk) 16:00, 21 May 2020 (UTC)

I don't see how it can belong under this sense. It seems different altogether. Does the "square root of the sum of squares" meaning exist only in the phrase "add in quadrature", do you know? Mihia (talk) 22:12, 21 May 2020 (UTC)

No other use comes to mind, but I can't swear I haven't seen it. Vox Sciurorum (talk) 22:25, 21 May 2020 (UTC)

I moved the meaning to a new page add in quadrature. Vox Sciurorum (talk) 12:44, 2 June 2020 (UTC)

hawk

Does anybody have an example of noun sense 3 of hawk, "An advocate of aggressive political positions and actions", prior to the Vietnam War? It's a hard sense to search for. (At least for me without an OED subscription.) Vox Sciurorum (talk) 22:23, 21 May 2020 (UTC)

After writing the preceding question I checked war hawk which has that phrase going back to the 19th Century. But I'm still curious when it was shortened to just plain hawk. Vox Sciurorum (talk) 22:27, 21 May 2020 (UTC)

The OED lumps this in with a broader figurative definition that we don't seem to have. Their sense 3 says, "Applied to a person, in various senses derived from the nature of the bird of prey: e.g. one who preys on others, a rapacious person, a sharper or cheat; one who is keen and grasping; an officer of the law who pounces on criminals (as in vagabonds' phrase, ware the hawk [...]). Also in Politics, a person who advocates a hard-line or warlike policy, opposed to a dove [...]." They have citations going back to 1548, which seem to be fairly metaphorical in use. The first clear citation they have for the political sense is from 1962, in reference to the Cuban Missile Crisis. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 04:05, 22 May 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for the research. With that clue I found a use from the Cuban Missile Crisis and added it as an example. Vox Sciurorum (talk) 11:57, 22 May 2020 (UTC)

carnet

Is there a case to be made that carnet d'adresses, carnet de bord, carnet de commandes, journal de bord, and/or livre de bord are SOP? I have too little knowledge of French to really know, but just a cursory look at these words makes me suspect they might be. Not to mention, the fact that there's 19 derived terms of the form "carnet de/d'/a [X]" (mostly redlinks) on the carnet entry leads me to the same conclusion. Imetsia (talk) 00:28, 22 May 2020 (UTC)

These all feel like set phrases to me (which is why I've created entries for them), but yes, they're borderline cases. Maybe it would be better to have them as usexes only at carnet, journal and livre. I really don't know. PUC – 13:46, 22 May 2020 (UTC)

Raise a hand against

Reading about the rfv for a sense of raise one's hand, it occurred to me that we don't seem to have coverage for this archaic-sounding expression, which means to attack or threaten. One could substitute "lift" for "raise", and "a" for "one's", or insert "in anger" before "against", so I'm not sure where the lemma would be. Am I missing something? Chuck Entz (talk) 03:29, 22 May 2020 (UTC)

There is also raise a finger against. Equinox ◑ 09:46, 22 May 2020 (UTC)

The latter being a negative polarity item, right? DCDuring (talk) 13:35, 22 May 2020 (UTC)

Not exclusively. "Woe betide you if you raise a finger against her" etc. Equinox ◑ 15:38, 22 May 2020 (UTC)

That kind of conditional is one of the contexts that licenses the use of negative polarity items. DCDuring (talk) 23:01, 22 May 2020 (UTC)

superhabitable planet SoP?

Is this more than a p~ that is s~? The entry talks about "exomoons" etc. Equinox ◑ 09:53, 22 May 2020 (UTC)

• Looks pretty SoP to me. SemperBlotto (talk) 09:56, 22 May 2020 (UTC)

  Especially given our definition of superhabitable, but does superhabitable appear in any other collocations? DCDuring (talk) 13:42, 22 May 2020 (UTC)

  Answering my own question: world, moon, candidate, zone, exoplanet, star, galaxy. Superhabitable can also appear after copulas. Also, it seems silly to call the word "not comparable", whether or not we can find attestation at this time. DCDuring (talk) 13:58, 22 May 2020 (UTC)

English "mes"

Sample citation:

• We'd book the whole restaurant of romantic tables for two and take over the lot. Yous and 'mes' everywhere having fifty different conversations simultaneously and trying out the entire menu and wine list all at once. It's like speed dating in fast forward.

I think we need to add a noun me to cover this usage of the pronoun. However, does this usage automatically derive from the pronoun and therefore not need an entry? Is the plural unobvious enough that it merits an entry?

For English, it seems that one of the commonest occurrences of "mes" is as a typo for 'times'. If I add the plural of "me" as a noun, should I also include this typo? --RichardW57 (talk) 11:36, 22 May 2020 (UTC)

I wouldn't bother with the typo for this or any other short string of characters.

You can see why other dictionaries don't bother with the noun PoS for the uses you've identified, but it doesn't seem wrong. DCDuring (talk) 13:39, 22 May 2020 (UTC)

Yes, this is rather like it#Noun. Somebody or something can be "an it", hence plural "its". Please don't create the typo for "times"; it seems worthless clutter. Equinox ◑ 17:21, 22 May 2020 (UTC)

(Straying off-topic) this reminds me of something which I'll post in the BP about in a sec, because it's more general than just this one word. Btw, another plural we're missing is google books:"adulterings", which I picked at random while trying to find an example of an attestable plural we didn't have, but have subsequently come to think is probably inclusion-worthy. - -sche (discuss) 19:44, 22 May 2020 (UTC)

Audio clip at raudus

Can someone please check the audio clip at Latin raudus ? Thanks ! Leasnam (talk) 15:58, 22 May 2020 (UTC)

It was the wrong file. In the future, when the file name doesn't even match the page title, you can just remove it yourself... —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 01:13, 25 May 2020 (UTC)

AAVE deletion of alveolar stops before -ing

They riding for us /ˈɹaɪjɪn/ (min: 2:12). I'd like to know whether whether it's represented somehow in writing.

Secondly, what phonological process enable it? --Backinstadiums (talk) 17:10, 22 May 2020 (UTC)

See -in'. Historically, it is the dropping of voiced stops after nasals, which was largely reversed in the case of the alveolar (a.k.a. dental) stops. Thus, we have the frequent pattern of lamb and sing, but only a few words like bine.

If you read that again, you'll see that what is meant is the loss of the sound before -ing, not at the end of it. As for the question, I suspect it's part of the same process that converts a lot of oral final stops into glottal stops for many US speakers, and the well known Cockney loss of some medial consonants. This seems like a sort of fading of phonetic distinctiveness in sounds away from primary and secondary stress: if all you're paying attention to is the sound at the start of a stressed syllable, it doesn't really matter whether another sound at the start of an unstressed syllable is velar or alveolar- or glottal. Chuck Entz (talk) 00:15, 23 May 2020 (UTC)

I'm clearly not up on the relevant lexicons, because I interpreted the verb form as wriʼinʼ. British English habits will record a glottal stop after a vowel by an apostrophe, but I didn't think that was restricted to Britain. Larry Niven's singular fiʼ of fithp in Footfall is the same spelling convention. --RichardW57 (talk) 22:29, 23 May 2020 (UTC)

@RichardW57: See here --Backinstadiums (talk) 14:23, 24 May 2020 (UTC)

stiff as a post (stand stiff as a post?), stiff as a stick, stiff as a flagpole, stiff as a ramrod (straight as a ramrod?)

Worth entries? PUC – 11:24, 23 May 2020 (UTC)

only

Adverb sense:

Introduces a disappointing or surprising outcome. See also only to.

They rallied from a three-goal deficit only to lose in the final two minutes of play.

I helped him out only for him to betray me.

As far as it can be assigned to a traditional PoS, I think that "only" is a conjunction in these examples, not an adverb. I'm listing this here before I move it, just in case other people disagree. Mihia (talk) 14:11, 23 May 2020 (UTC)

We have only for as a conjunction and it feels like the same "only". Equinox ◑ 14:22, 23 May 2020 (UTC)

Thanks. I feel unsure about this now, looking at it again. I think I will leave it as is for now. Mihia (talk) 11:06, 3 June 2020 (UTC)

nomen invalidum

The plural doesn't seem to be rendering correctly. Do translingual terms have plurals? We all know it's really Latin anyway. Equinox ◑ 14:53, 23 May 2020 (UTC)

I have seen similar terms used in the plural following Latin rules. The specific word nomen invalidum may be limited to botany rather than taxonomy in general. Zoology and botany have different names for similar concepts. There's a missing technical sense for legitimate which is used in botany and not in zoology. Vox Sciurorum (talk)

I added a quotation and then something occurred to me: is it right to put an English-language quotation below a Translingual definition? Vox Sciurorum (talk) 23:10, 23 May 2020 (UTC)

There are no rules for Translingual entries. DTLHS (talk) 23:14, 23 May 2020 (UTC)

аккордеон

Does this Russian word mean 'accordion' or 'piano accordion'? The Russian Wikipedia page is linked to "Piano accordion" in English Wikipedia, but on the other hand, the title of the Russian Wikipedia page for 'accordion' is "Аккордеоны" which is just the plural form of аккордеон. Mölli-Möllerö (talk) 09:32, 24 May 2020 (UTC)

I don't know Russian, but w:ru:Аккордеон does distinguish between клавишные аккордеоны (klavišnyje akkordeony, “piano accordions”) and кнопочные аккордеоны (knopočnyje akkordeony, “button accordions”), so it does seem that аккордеон (akkordeon) alone does not necessarily refer exclusively to the piano kind. —Mahāgaja · talk 14:59, 24 May 2020 (UTC)

by nature

Worth an entry? PUC – 14:25, 24 May 2020 (UTC)

Probably not. "By" can be followed by any number of nouns. ---> Tooironic (talk) 01:48, 25 May 2020 (UTC)

frequency

The second example sentence for sense#1 reads "The frequency of bus service has been improved from 15 to 12 minutes." Since I am not a native speaker, would you agree that the "from 15 to 12 minutes" part is confusing or simply wrong? The question came up here [26]. And also, why is it labeled uncountable? What is wrong with "The frequencies of bus services A, B and C have increased"?--Debenben (talk) 16:25, 24 May 2020 (UTC)

• I've modified it a bit. SemperBlotto (talk) 16:30, 24 May 2020 (UTC)

in: 'n

Google Books offres several examples of "what'n / how'n the hell" --Backinstadiums (talk) 16:32, 24 May 2020 (UTC)

English tends to reduce vowels in unaccented syllables, and when those syllables end in a sonorant the reduced vowels can disappear altogether, leaving a syllabic sonorant. That's not at all unusual- many speakers do it all the time except when they're being very careful to enunciate. Indicating it with an apostrophe is just a stylistic device to emphasize the informal nature of the person's speech- a textbook case of eye dialect. Chuck Entz (talk) 21:13, 24 May 2020 (UTC)

@Chuck Entz: There's no, say, why'n or when'n though --Backinstadiums (talk) 15:49, 25 May 2020 (UTC)

Oh, really? [27], [28], [29] are all examples of "why'n". As for "when'n", remember that this is a stylistic device, not a rule. "When in" doesn't seem quite as common or as colorful as the others, so it may just be that no one has bothered to treat it that way. I think you're trying to read too much into this phenomenon. Chuck Entz (talk) 17:15, 25 May 2020 (UTC)

Plurale tantum sense of Esperanto hejmtaskoj

My understanding is that hejmtasko, "homework" (from hejmo "home" + tasko "task"), actually cannot be used in "all senses", as its entry currently states. Rather:

• The singular hejmtasko means "a homework assignment", but
• The plural hejmtaskoj can be either:
  1. the ordinary plural of hejmtasko, meaning "homework assignments", or
  2. a plurale tantum sense of hejmtaskoj, meaning "homework in general, as a concept or as a student's ongoing obligation".

That said, this understanding is based entirely on feedback correcting me for using it wrong. Neither form of word is found at all in La Plena Ilustrita Vortaro de Esperanto (PIV) or any other reference source besides Wiktionary I've found. (If hejmtasko/j were an ordinary compound word, that would be unsurprising, since PIV doesn't bother with defining self-explanatory compounds, but this unusual plural would ordinarily require an entry.)

Might someone have a source for this so it isn't just anecdotal? (I know some non-English languages have English Wiktionary portals to connect with other editors of interlingual entries, but I haven't found one for Esperanto—if it exists, a link would be welcome so I can bring this up there, too.)

If it seems sufficiently attested, I'll happily do the editing work necessary, which I think consists of:

1. Modifying the definition in the hejmtasko entry
2. Adding senses to hejmtaskoj so it isn't merely an inclusion of {{eo-form of}}
3. Adding a link from hejmtasko to that new sense
4. Altering hejmtaskojn to point to hejmtaskoj instead of (or in addition to?) hejmtasko
5. Adding hejmtaskoj to Category:Esperanto pluralia tantum.

But I need more than "people randomly correcting me" to feel this is really attested.

Thanks! TreyHarris (talk) 19:59, 24 May 2020 (UTC)

@TreyHarris Ideally, we should base the entry on the word's usage in durably archived sources. I'm looking at the two definitions you gave and I'm struggling to see how we could tell the difference. If the plurale tantum sense exists, how would we be able to distinguish it from the normal plural sense? What would evidence for the plurale tantum sense look like? Or alternatively, what kind of mistakes were you corrected on when using this word? —Granger (talk · contribs) 22:54, 3 June 2020 (UTC)

Hmm, were your mistakes sentences like #Mi malŝatas hejmtaskon or #Mi havas multan hejmtaskon? If so, I think the mistake is that you were trying to use it as an uncountable noun (like English homework) when it's actually a countable noun in Esperanto. Maybe the definition should be changed from "homework" to "homework assignment" or "piece of homework". —Granger (talk · contribs) 23:04, 3 June 2020 (UTC)

@Mx. Granger My mistakes were actually the reverse, treating hejmtaskoj as "multiple individual pieces of homework" instead of as "homework in general". For instance: #Multan tempon ŝi pasigas, bedaŭrinde, nur pensante pri hejmtaskoj. It has been explained to me that this shouldn't be read without further context as suggesting "she" is a student; to the contrary, it suggests she is an instructor, as she's thinking a lot about homework in general, not the mass of homework assignments she has to do; that would be …pensante pri siaj hejmtaskoj or …la hejmtaskoj or …amaso da hejmtaskoj. One went so far as to say using the singular hejmtasko is extraordinarily rare to the point of having become a degenerate back-formation from hejmtaskoj, and would usually only be spoken in a sentence like Bonvolu, enigi vian hejmtaskon. --TreyHarris (talk) 16:09, 6 June 2020 (UTC)

The example you gave doesn't seem all that different from plural nouns in English – compare She spends a lot of time thinking about grades and She spends a lot of time thinking about her grades. I'm still not seeing this as evidence of two separate senses, but it's possible there's something here that should be clarified in a usage note. It does seem to be true that the plural is more common than the singular; this could be indicated with something like {{label|eo|chiefly in the plural}} or a usage note. —Granger (talk · contribs) 16:21, 6 June 2020 (UTC)

囝 pronunciation

囝 is listed is a Min-only word in Chinese but has pronunciations for Mandarin and Cantonese. Should it have those pronunciations? Added by a now-retired editor in [30]. I showed the character to a native Mandarin speaker who did not know its pronunciation. She had seen it, possibly in Fujian. Vox Sciurorum (talk) 00:30, 25 May 2020 (UTC)

Yes, it should be listed, as it is in many Chinese dictionaries, including the Zhonghua Zihai and Xiandai Hanyu Guifan Cidian, among others, with the reading of "jiǎn". There are thousands of hanzi which are not commonly used or known by native speakers of Chinese, and dictionaries still include them with a Hanyu Pinyin reading for reference purposes. ---> Tooironic (talk) 01:47, 25 May 2020 (UTC)

polo-neck

A woman with a polo-neck shirt (according to the entry "polo neck")

This is what I understand with a "polo neck" a.k.a. "turtle neck".

I'm confused. Our entry for "polo neck" defines it as "turtle neck":

1. (British, India) A high collar covering the neck; a turtleneck.
2. (British, India) A light type of shirt with such a collar.

Yet it has a picture of a woman wearing a polo shirt which funny enough does not (as far as I understand) feature a polo neck. --Hekaheka (talk) 07:57, 25 May 2020 (UTC)

According to w:Polo neck, it looks like you're right. Ha ha, I always thought a polo neck was the type of collar on a polo shirt. According to the OED polo does refer to the game, so perhaps at some early stage the attire for playing the game had a polo neck. Then in the 1920s the polo shirt came along, which now causes confusion about what type of collar is meant. — SGconlaw (talk) 08:56, 25 May 2020 (UTC)

I've updated polo-neck and polo shirt. — SGconlaw (talk) 09:29, 25 May 2020 (UTC)

procuratore della repubblica

Hi there,

it seems that they usually capitalize "repubblica" in this phrase, as "procuratore della Repubblica". However, at the Italian Wikt (where that entry is absent altogether), they don't seem all that concerned about capitalization : "Repubblica" takes you directly to it:repubblica without a redirect. —Jerome Potts (talk) 20:42, 25 May 2020 (UTC)

That sort of thing will happen at any wiki: if a spelling occurs with only one capitalization, the system will automatically redirect you to that capitalization. To get a redlink for another capitalization, you have to use the search box at Special:Search. Chuck Entz (talk) 22:29, 25 May 2020 (UTC)

Ah, indeed, thank you. So, should we rename our entry ? —Jerome Potts (talk) 20:33, 26 May 2020 (UTC)

I think so. In this context, Repubblica is short for Repubblica Italiana, which is a proper noun.  --Lambiam 20:35, 27 May 2020 (UTC)

ablative absolute

This is given as an example, but even if it's perhaps a nominative absolute, it would in any case only be appropriate as a translation of this in Latin: The food being good, they ate well. --Espoo (talk) 22:45, 25 May 2020 (UTC)

Ablatives absolute used in English are ceteris paribus and mutatis mutandis. For a Latin sentence using the latter:^[31]

Proprietates autem omnes quas in Ellipſi demonſtravimus; mutatis mutandis etiam Hyperbolæ competunt.

Moreover, all properties we have shown in an ellipse, apply mutatis mutandis also to a hyperbola.

 --Lambiam 20:28, 27 May 2020 (UTC)

psychosis

If anyone feels like it, there's an IP with poor English skills who's posted about 10k worth of quasi-technical verbiage on the talk page. They may have a point, but I'm not going to wade through everything to figure it out. Chuck Entz (talk) 23:13, 25 May 2020 (UTC)

• Reverted. SemperBlotto (talk) 04:26, 26 May 2020 (UTC)

victory point

Is "victory point" (in the context of tabletop games) considered idiomatic according to the criteria for inclusion in Wiktionary? To me, it certainly seems idiomatic. When I first heard the term "victory points", I did not understand why not just call them "points" (as is done in, for example, Scrabble). Also, it is not immediately clear whether "victory point" is a fancy word for "victory" (like points in chess scoring), or a fancy word for "point" (like points in Scrabble scoring), or something else entirely.

I think so, and its short form VP. Vox Sciurorum (talk) 20:14, 26 May 2020 (UTC)

Never heard of them. It seems they are points that count toward a final win of the game, as opposed to other temporary points like magic or mana...? See this Reddit discussion [32]. Equinox ◑ 22:42, 26 May 2020 (UTC)

Contrary to the Reddit question, victory points rather than points is not new. It was standard terminology during the height of board wargaming c. 1980s. As a reply notes, there are many kinds of points. Victory points are the way, or one of the ways, to determine who wins. Victory points can be accumulated during the game or calculated at the end. Sometimes there is a sudden death criterion as well, like you win notwithstanding the VP count the moment you capture your opponent's capital. Vox Sciurorum (talk) 17:03, 27 May 2020 (UTC)

don't try to teach grandma how to suck eggs

The etymology section:

Came from a translation of Francisco de Quevedo

   "You would have me teach my grandma to suck eggs"

I can't find the wording of the quote at Google Books.

What was the original (Spanish) text? What was the English translation? Who did the translation? When? DCDuring (talk) 23:35, 26 May 2020 (UTC)

Apparently "The comical works of Don Francisco de Quevedo" translated by John Stevens, 1707, which is somewhat difficult to find online and isn't viewable on Google Books. DTLHS (talk) 23:49, 26 May 2020 (UTC)

I hope someone can find the Spanish original. DCDuring (talk) 01:03, 27 May 2020 (UTC)

Gutenberg has a few Spanish titles by Quevedo, but I can't find Stevens' translation, except in secondary sources. DCDuring (talk) 01:27, 27 May 2020 (UTC)

I note we have a translation into Ancient Greek. Could there be a classical origin for this phrase? ---> Tooironic (talk) 03:09, 28 May 2020 (UTC)

要#Japanese

1. 𛀁 (HIRAGANA LETTER ARCHAIC YE, U+1B001) seems pretty obscure and users are unlikely to have a font supporting it. Should it be used?
2. I cannot find verification of the Kun readings かのめ (kanome), ぬま (numa), and ぬみ (numi).

— This unsigned comment was added by 98.110.34.222 (talk).

• Re: 𛀁 (ye), that is currently the only hiragana glyph included in Unicode for this syllable. There is nothing else for us to use, and rather that it is indeed part of the Unicode specification, we would be remiss to use anything else. Font support is an orthogonal issue. Users can still click the link, or even copy the glyph, regardless of whether it is rendered correctly or as tōfubake.
• Re: readings,

• See also ja:要, which includes sense lines for the ぬま (numa) and ぬみ (numi) readings.
• See also https://www.weblio.jp/content/要, where the topmost Daijirin section includes entries for the ぬま (numa) and ぬみ (numi) readings.
• See also the KDJ section for 要 here at Kotobank, where the first subsection for the かなめ (kaname) reading lists かのめ (kanome) as a synonym, and where the second subsection includes an entry and quotes for かのめ (kanome) (cited to 1140). In addition, see also the KDJ section for 要害・要 here at Kotobank, which includes entries and cites for ぬま (numa) (cited to 720, though not phonetically) and for ぬみ (numi) (cited to 720, but again not phonetically).

I hope the above addresses your concerns. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 21:19, 27 May 2020 (UTC)

Fair enough — 98.110.52.33 00:23, 28 May 2020 (UTC)

I've expanded the 要#Japanese entry, including references and definition dates.

• The かのめ (kanome) reading is not terribly surprising, given the term's derivation from 蟹の目 (kani no me, literally “crab's eye”): kani no me → *kannome → kanome. The shift from kanome to kaname is also not terribly surprising in light of the re-analysis as kana- (“metal”) + me (visually prominent feature).
• The ぬま (numa) and ぬみ (numi) readings appear in the same ancient text. I am mildly surprised to see both listed in the Daijirin, considering that this is ancient usage. However, the cites are from the Nihon Shoki, one of the seminal Japanese texts, so these might be some of those ancient terms that educated modern folks may have run into through the course of regular Japanese schooling. I cannot find anything further regarding derivation or later use, and I suspect that these are 1) obsolete, 2) effectively allomorphs of each other, and 3) perhaps borrowings from some other language, such as Baekje or Goguryeo or something like that. From what I can find in Batchelor's Ainu dictionary, it's not a borrowing from there. A native-Japanese derivation doesn't fit either, given that the closest phonetic match is 沼 (numa, “swamp, bog”), but that is most likely root nu- (“swamp, bog; wet”, possibly cognate with Korean 늪 (neup) and other areal words related to swamps and wetness) + 間 (ma, “space, area”), and any cognacy between numa “fortress” and numa “swamp” seems ... unlikely. (Setting aside, of course, that lovely bit from Monty Python.)

HTH, ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 17:15, 28 May 2020 (UTC)

phytomorph

Currently defined as "the representation of a plant". Is that right? I can see a few uses that seem to mean "plant-shaped thing" (e.g. referring to pictures in the Voynich manuscript), but others are less clear to me ("a basket-like bryozoan is encrusted on the inside by a phytomorph"; "we believe that Archimedes is a compound organism of Fenestella and a phytomorph, apparently an alga"). Equinox ◑ 02:03, 27 May 2020 (UTC)

I see three weird, rare definitions that are attestable, and have added the other two. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 02:37, 27 May 2020 (UTC)

farlie

Discussion moved to Wiktionary:Etymology scriptorium/2020/May#farlie.

richen, enrich

Just so that we have it for the record here, how much overlap is there in the senses of these words, and which senses are particularly distinct to one or the other? Tharthan (talk) 08:37, 28 May 2020 (UTC)

Ooh, can we also have Appendix:English synonyms that are also anagrams of each other? —Mahāgaja · talk 10:06, 28 May 2020 (UTC)

That would be an amusing, if trivial, category. But since we have bizarre or pedantic categories like "English words following the I before E except after C rule/English words not following the I before E except after C rule", I can't see a reason not to have it. Tharthan (talk)

My suggestion was for an Appendix, not a Category. —Mahāgaja · talk 06:23, 30 May 2020 (UTC)

There's enrichener (automotive term); I don't know enough about the subject to say whether this device is thought to "enrichen" something. Equinox ◑ 07:33, 31 May 2020 (UTC)

Probably; a fuel/air mixture is said to be rich (sense 10) if the proportion of air is relatively low, and the choke controls the proportion of air to fuel in the mixture. —Mahāgaja · talk 07:47, 31 May 2020 (UTC)

In my experience you "richen" a mixture with a device called (for example) a mixture control or a choke. The opposite setting of the lever makes the mixture lean. Many airplanes have three adjacent levers: throttle, prop, mixture. Vox Sciurorum (talk) 13:33, 31 May 2020 (UTC)

Fuel mixture adjustment is particularly important for aircraft engine performance, as air becomes much thinner with increasing altitude. 2602:306:CD89:8710:447:D3B1:C01:8D60 00:31, 17 July 2021 (UTC)

My personal feeling: I honestly didn't know "richen" was a word (which is amazing because I have spent so much time here and studied various dumps of the English Wikt) and would never have used it. "Enrich" is a word I would usually use in a figurative way, like "XYZ will enrich our children's education", not usually about literal wealth/money (would just say "make them richer"?). Equinox ◑ 08:24, 31 May 2020 (UTC)

In my experience, "enrich" can be used in the money sense but it is something other people do that you don't quite approve of. I work, you earn, he enriches himself. Vox Sciurorum (talk) 13:22, 31 May 2020 (UTC)

钻牛角尖

A Chinese speaker was trying to explain an argument at work with a stubborn colleague and didn't have a good English word for his behavior. She offered the Chinese phrase 鑽牛角尖／钻牛角尖 (zuān niújiǎojiān), but I don't think the definition "split hairs" adequately translates the concept she had in mind. She agreed that 固执 (“stubborn, obstinate”) was close to her intended meaning. Anybody fluent in Chinese and English have thoughts on the definition? Vox Sciurorum (talk) 11:39, 28 May 2020 (UTC)

@Vox Sciurorum, perhaps to go down a rabbit hole, specifically sense 3 of rabbit hole? ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 17:19, 28 May 2020 (UTC)

I considered go down a rathole, which has much the same meaning. But I understood the use of 钻牛角尖 to be more about obstinance than digression. Vox Sciurorum (talk) 18:13, 28 May 2020 (UTC)

• @Vox Sciurorum The Xiandai Hanyu Guifan Cidian defines it as 死抠无法解决或没有价值的问题 ("to pick at an issue that cannot be solved or that has no value"). The Cross-Straits Chinese Dictionary defines it as 費力地研究探討無法解決或沒有價值的問題 ("to strenuously probe a problem that cannot be solved or that has no value"). Baidu Baike defines it as 一个人死脑筋，遇事不灵活的表现 ("a person with a stubborn attitude who is inflexible when handling matters"). Hope that helps. ---> Tooironic (talk) 01:38, 7 June 2020 (UTC)

  Thank you. Definition probably needs an added adverb. Vox Sciurorum (talk) 14:02, 7 June 2020 (UTC)

Latin - passive of proficio?

Why is proficio listed as having no passive non-finite forms, when there is a page for profici listing it as the present passive infinitive? There is a use of this form in Caesar's Gallic War. GBrowning3 (talk) 02:24, 29 May 2020 (UTC)

I've marked it as having an impersonal passive, but this is technically wrong - we're dealing with a generic/pronominal object (prōficere aliquid/nihil). Apart from the description, the two differ in that for generic/pronominal objects, the plural is possible: ea prōficere. More difficult are cognate objects (also called figūra etymologica) such as pugnam pugnāre or servitūtem servīre, where the gender isn't the pronominal neuter, but defined case-by-case - note that some, like viam īre are only semantically "cognate". pugnāre and servīre also listed differently for no good reason as well. For all of this see Oxford Latin Syntax p.84+. The only verbs that seem to be incompatible with any passive forms are statives like lūcēre and pūtēre. Normal intransitives can in most if not all cases be expanded with some sort of object which makes passive forms possible - even impersonals like pluere : lapidēs, terram. This also reminds me of the Adverbial Accusative issue that we still haven't really resolved, as well as the fact that the form in sōlī lūcendum est is still not handled by our website, while pugnandus is still listed as a future participle.

@Benwing, do you have any ideas on what we could do about this? Brutal Russian (talk) 09:44, 31 May 2020 (UTC)

соня

This is an obvious misconception. It is obvious to everyone that there is no analogy.

They wrote

Etymology From сон (son, “sleep”), by analogy with Со́ня (Sónja, “Sonya”), a diminutive of Со́фья (Sófʹja).

I conjure you, it is... How to say it softer what. Longbowman (talk) 15:08, 29 May 2020 (UTC)

@Longbowman The definitions and etymologies may need rephrasing and formatting but the entry is not lying.

1. Со́ня (Sónja) is a diminutive of the female first name Со́фья (Sófʹja) (or less commonly these days, in Russia proper Софи́я (Sofíja))
2. со́ня (sónja) means "sleepyhead" but it sounds exactly as Со́ня (Sónja), the difference is in the capitalisation and they have this common syllable со́н (són, “sleep, dream”), obviously of a different origin. The name Со́фья (Sófʹja) or Софи́я (Sofíja) are of Greek origin but their diminutive/caressing/pet forms are not necessarily. You'll find that many Russian pet/diminutive names sound very different from their full forms.
3. Both can take a slightly ruder or more colloquial form Со́нька (Sónʹka) / со́нька (sónʹka) with the same meaning - name or "sleepyhead".
4. It may sound somewhat offensive to women called Sophia but it is what it is. "со́ня" or "со́нька" is mostly used in a friendly or jocular way, used with kids quite often and the name Софи́я (Sofíja) and its pet name Со́ня (Sónja) are quite popular with no negative perception.
5. The analogy is in the sound.

Please let me know if I misunderstood your concern. --Anatoli T. ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 08:46, 30 May 2020 (UTC)

Category:English terms spelled with ’

@Geographyinitiative Do all of these actually need to use ’ (curly/smart apostrophe) rather than ' (straight apostrophe)? These two symbols are not usually distinguished in English, and all our other entries use straight apostrophes. — justin(r)leung _{{ (t...) | c=› }} 08:08, 30 May 2020 (UTC)

@Justinrleung I copy-pasted straight from the source in most cases. I will do anything you say in terms of apostrophes. This is a whole wing of the English language that we are discovering here. You have to imagine my work as on par with the work that took place in the early stages of this website- primitive and crude stabs in the dark toward something that can be improved. --Geographyinitiative (talk) 08:16, 30 May 2020 (UTC)

@Geographyinitiative: Okay, please make sure you change all the apostrophes to straight ones then (i.e. retype apostrophes, which usually does the trick). — justin(r)leung _{{ (t...) | c=› }} 08:20, 30 May 2020 (UTC)

I mean yeah, I see what you are saying and I can do that, but it can't be quite as simple as that- why did my sources use this form? Error? --Geographyinitiative (talk) 08:28, 30 May 2020 (UTC)

@Geographyinitiative: Not error, but a typographical choice. Most printed books use ’ for apostrophes, but we don't for our entries. — justin(r)leung _{{ (t...) | c=› }} 08:34, 30 May 2020 (UTC)

I'm afraid they will look back at me and say I "did it wrong" if I totally ignore the spiritus asper concept. Is there any way to avoid the full on apostrophe? --Geographyinitiative (talk) 08:42, 30 May 2020 (UTC)

@Geographyinitiative: These are English entries, so Wade-Giles rules don't applied (even if the spelling is derived from Wade-Giles). The apostrophe you used for the entry titles aren't even true spiritus asper, which should be ʽ (Wade) or ʻ (Giles) rather than ’. I'm not sure what you mean by "full on apostrophes". — justin(r)leung _{{ (t...) | c=› }} 08:53, 30 May 2020 (UTC)

Okay well anyway, I will be implementing this decision. --Geographyinitiative (talk) 08:56, 30 May 2020 (UTC)

Pyramid-Etymology

After watching a historical documentary about the city of Pi-Ramses, it has just hit me, that, perhaps, the real, true connection of the early Hebrews (later aka: Israelites) as slaves in Ancient Egypt was preserved NOT only in ancient Egyptian records (The name: Israel appears in the "Merneptah Stele – also known as the Israel Stele or the Victory Stele of Merneptah –an inscription by the ancient Egyptian Pharaoh Merneptah"-https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merneptah_Stele.

However, more significan evidence is in "the name Shasu [which] is a name Ancient Egyptians largely used in reference to the Hebrews/Early Israelites. "The name appears in a list of Egypt's enemies inscribed on column bases at the temple of Soleb built by Amenhotep III. Copied later in the 13th century BCE either by Seti I or by Ramesses II at Amarah-West, the list mentions six groups of Shasu: the Shasu of S'rr, the Shasu of Rbn, the Shasu of Sm't [Semitic?], the Shasu of Wrbr, the Shasu of Yhw [Y-A-H-W-E], and the Shasu of Pyspsthrough" -see Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shasu) but ALSO, in & through words like: pyramid (unlike in Arabic, spoken in modern-day Egypt, where the word for a pyramid is: Al-Aharam. in Hebrew, by contrast, the name of a pyramid (closer to the word in English) is: pee-rah-meed-dah [Hebrew: פִּירָמִידָה-which is, perhaps NOT so coincidentally, also ALMOST the same word for a pyramid in Greek: πυραμίδα = pee-ra-mee-tha] memorializing/preserving & reflecting it the name of one of the most celebrious of rulers-Ramses the great or, Ramses the Second- & his main/capital city Pi-Ram-Se(s), pronounced: Pee-Ra-Mse (Mses-for Moses=the son of...). AK63 (talk) 07:26, 31 May 2020 (UTC)

FWIW, the Hebrew Wiktionary puts it in the category "Words borrowed from French" ("מילים שאולות מהשפה הצרפתית").  --Lambiam 20:15, 1 June 2020 (UTC)

fair copy

I don't believe that a fair copy has the be handwritten — surely a final, circulated, computer generated document can be called a fair copy. Certainly I might describe it in that way. — Saltmarsh. 11:10, 31 May 2020 (UTC)

d4 and friends -- role-playing dice

d4, d6, d8, d10, d12, d20... and probably more I have missed: these are (in role-playing and board-gaming parlance) dice with the given number of sides. So for example a d6 is the "normal" cube die you would roll in Monopoly. There is also a convention xdy meaning (I think...?) roll x of the y-sided dice: so your simple Monopoly roll would be 1d6, but in complicated nerd dragon-slaying games you might roll 4d8 and multiply it by seven, God knows.

The point is that this is a standard form, in the same way that x°C means a temperature in Celsius, or SxEy means a series and episode of a TV show. I don't think we should have these entries. I think we should cover it at d and explain (perhaps in usage notes) the xdy stuff. You really can use any number and I've heard nerds joking about a "d200" and so on. Thoughts? Equinox ◑ 18:14, 31 May 2020 (UTC)

If you aren't familiar with non-cubical dice, here are some nice pictures: [33]. Equinox ◑ 18:17, 31 May 2020 (UTC)

These feel a lot more like nouns to me than "4°C" or something; one speaks of "rolling a d20" or "rolling two d20s" and such, while you wouldn't normally speak of the temperature reaching "a 40°C" or even "increasing by a 1°C" or "by two 1°Cs", or sitting down to "watch an E4 of Supergirl". Yes, one could construct terms for any number of sides, but it seems more comparable to how one can also construct ever more-sided gons (quindecagon, pentadecagon, hexadecagon, heptadecagon, octadecagon, enneadecagon, ...) rather than to formulae. I concede that "4d20"-type usage does feel formulaic, and I wouldn't include that (I would probably view it as an abbreviation like "4c flour"). PS in the opposite direction from Equinox's d200, I learned just the other day that a d1, a one-sided die, exists. - -sche (discuss)

Does this mean that you are on the side of keeping plurals-of-words-of-words like "there were three thereafters in that document"? 'cause I think I just heard someone say weeaboo! Equinox ◑ 22:41, 31 May 2020 (UTC)

"There were three thereafters" is pretty clearly a mention, and even if one constructs a more use-y phrase ("I objected to all his thereafters, and to all his heretofores, his whole account was wrong"), having an entry or sense-line where a word is defined as "an occurrence of the word [x]" is rather different from having an entry for "dice" or "heptadecagon" or "d20" defined as a particular thing, no? (I have come to feel like we should tolerate liberal use of hard redirects for things like "thereafters", though.) I see how this could be compared to chemical formula like "add two Hs to an O and you get an H2O". Meh. - -sche (discuss) 23:15, 31 May 2020 (UTC)

Highest I have ever seen is a d100 aka Zocchihedron™. I am happy with the current situation: entries for the commonly used dice in the singular and the formula explained under d. I have seen a d7, allegedly fair (i.e. equal probability of landing on every face) but it was a novelty and I never played a game that called for one. Vox Sciurorum (talk) 23:17, 31 May 2020 (UTC)

There's d120 and d144 and while it's not a physical die (that I know of), d1000s.--Prosfilaes (talk) 09:31, 1 June 2020 (UTC)

Totally irrelevant but the British 50-pence coin is seven-sided. Definitely the best one we have got. Most of the other British coins suck, even BEFORE Wonderfool inevitably turns up and chats shit. Equinox ◑ 23:28, 31 May 2020 (UTC)