Talk:abernathyites
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- Discussion moved from WT:RFDE.
minerals are uncountable Couscousous (talk) 09:21, 8 July 2024 (UTC)
- Not necessarily, could refer to varieties of said mineral, like quartzes. Justin the Just (talk) 02:58, 9 July 2024 (UTC)
- I think that would be if only the mineral had varieties, like in this case, quartz, which bears an enormous amount of types like Herkimer, Agate (which also has varieties shockingly), and more. Not in the case of abernathyite however! Couscousous (talk) 09:33, 9 July 2024 (UTC)
- RFV issue. Inqilābī 03:58, 9 July 2024 (UTC)
- I don't think it is an RFV issue. It has been used in a lot of informational texts like PDFs and etcetera studying it. I doubt abernathyite isn't a word; unless you're talking about abernathyites, which would make sense. Couscousous (talk) 09:35, 9 July 2024 (UTC)
The only uses of the plural I can find are in indexes - mentions, not uses, and likely dreamt up by some indexer who knew little about geology, or was used to pluralising all index lemmas (or was told to by a style guide). Taking to RFVE to see if anyone can do better. This, that and the other (talk) 01:26, 10 July 2024 (UTC)
- If a single example of abernathyite can be called "an abernathyite", then the plural may be assumed: several chunks of abernathyite would be "abernathyites". Since plurals like this have a regular formation, it's implausible that they would be called anything else, except in the collective. The fact that the plural form is found in indexes would seem to support that, even without usage examples. P Aculeius (talk) 14:20, 10 July 2024 (UTC)
- Standard English doesn't do that; if I have pieces of quartz, I don't call them "quartzes". That would refer to different types of quartz. But abernathyite doesn't appear to have types. In other words, the question is really whether the term is uncountable. I would argue that it is, and the indexer was mistaken. This, that and the other (talk) 23:20, 10 July 2024 (UTC)
- Actually you can call them "quartzes", just like you can refer to "agates" without them having to be different types of agate. Or rubies, or hematites, or alexandrites, or tektites, or pretty much any kind of rock that can be referred to as a singular one of whatever it consists of. It might not be the most obvious way of referring to them in the abstract, but if, for example, you had a mineral collection with several of them in a box, it would be quite natural to say you had "six tumbled abernathyites" (I don't actually know if you can polish abernathyites, but it's the kind of situation where you would typically refer to them in the plural), as opposed to "six tumbled pieces of abernathyite"—also valid, but it sounds overly precise. And this being the case, I don't expect or require proof that a word that's obviously capable of pluralization appears in print in the plural, although that would certainly be ideal. P Aculeius (talk) 01:54, 11 July 2024 (UTC)
- Standard English doesn't do that; if I have pieces of quartz, I don't call them "quartzes". That would refer to different types of quartz. But abernathyite doesn't appear to have types. In other words, the question is really whether the term is uncountable. I would argue that it is, and the indexer was mistaken. This, that and the other (talk) 23:20, 10 July 2024 (UTC)