Talk:ichthyotoxicity

RFV discussion: October 2013–June 2014

The following information has failed Wiktionary's verification process.

Failure to be verified means that insufficient eligible citations of this usage have been found, and the entry therefore does not meet Wiktionary inclusion criteria at the present time. We have archived here the disputed information, the verification discussion, and any documentation gathered so far, pending further evidence.
Do not re-add this information to the article without also submitting proof that it meets Wiktionary's criteria for inclusion.

---

ichthyotoxicity

Rfv-sense: "toxicity due to poisonous substances derived from fish". DTLHS (talk) 21:30, 28 October 2013 (UTC)

• Tosh. I would have just deleted it. SemperBlotto (talk) 21:59, 28 October 2013 (UTC)
  • Not tosh. The usage is rare and overshadowed by that of the other sense, but it exists: this and this are pretty obvious, but the rest are cryptic snippets. this and this are likely, given the context, but it's not open-and-shut. It's pretty hard to tell which sense is used in a given snippet, since a great deal of human poisoning from fish is the result of toxic organisms ingested by fish that poison both the fish and the people who eat the fish. Chuck Entz (talk) 06:04, 29 October 2013 (UTC)

Sounds plausible, if we believe what the entry for ichthyotoxin says: it is both a substance poisonous to fish and a poisonous substance produced by fish. --Hekaheka (talk) 16:54, 29 October 2013 (UTC)

If a fish has a defense against predatory fish that includes a toxin, I would hold that one would call the phenomenon idioichthyotoxicity because it killed fish rather than because it was produced by a fish. I was unable to find any instances in the academic literature about fish that inconsistent with that view, which literature has well in excess of 90% of the book and article citations. The instance of human poisoning discussed in that literature make it clear that ichthytoxicity is about ichthycide, with human poisoning through seafood a derivative phenomenon about with the word is not used.

The two citations that Chuck found (the same that I had found) are not from that literature, but rather from more human focused and possibly less scholarly literature, where concern for human distress trumps ichthycide by a wide margin.

I don't think in each of the two usage communities, the dominant usage probably almost completely blocks the other, which may account for the anger that seemed present at and before the beginning of this discussion. DCDuring TALK 17:20, 29 October 2013 (UTC)

Is it only me, but I consistently fail to grasp the point in DCD's writings? What should we do with the entry? --Hekaheka (talk) 15:40, 31 October 2013 (UTC)

There are two meanings, one widely attested only in scientific usage (AFAICT), and a rare, possibly unattestable one used as if intended for a general population. Confusion seems to result from the same toxin that causes ichthycide also causing distress in humans. DCDuring TALK 17:44, 31 October 2013 (UTC)

Hekaheka could always try communicating directly, as if I were in the room. DCDuring TALK 11:48, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

• RFV failed: the only reported quotations for the sense are those by Chuck Entz above, all in the form of links. Chuck Entz himself only reports two of them as unequivocal, so I err on the side of RFV failed. Also, please at least place the text of the quotations here to the discussion rather than only posting links; of the two links posted as unequivocal, the first link gives me 404 error. (Citations:ichthyotoxicity is empty; no OneLook dictionaries have this.) google books:"ichthyotoxicity", google groups:"ichthyotoxicity", “ichthyotoxicity”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.. --Dan Polansky (talk) 10:52, 28 June 2014 (UTC)