Talk:paparazze

RFV discussion: October–December 2012

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paparazze

(I also wonder about "(deprecated template usage) influenze".) Ƿidsiþ 20:19, 23 October 2012 (UTC)

The only English uses among Google Books' hits are two uses of it in italics as a singular(!) and one usage of it in italics as a plural. I've added the plural citation to Citations:paparazze. Doremítzwr had already placed one citation there, with an edit summary rightly noting that it's nigh-impossible to tell whether the citations are simply misspelling paparazzi, or intentionally using paparazze as the plural of paparazza to specify "female photographers". The only uses on Usenet are likewise split between singular and plural, and one clearly uses the plural to refer to a group of male paparazzi. I would banish it to the citations namespace.

I share your doubt of influenze. I found one citation of it as a plural, from the 1840s. I wonder if it is too rare to merit mention in the headword line—compare nexus. Citations will tell. google books:"the influenze" shows that influenze is more common as a misspelling or alternative spelling of the singular than as a plural, though "the influenze" is still dramatically less common than "the influenza" (154 BGC hits vs upwards of 10 000—supposedly 568 000). - -sche (discuss) 01:17, 24 October 2012 (UTC)

RFV-failed. - -sche (discuss) 22:03, 13 November 2012 (UTC)

influenze

Æ&Œ (talk • contribs) has posted several citations to the citations page, but in my opinion it's easier to read them as using an {{alternative spelling of|influenza}} than a {{plural of|influenza}}. The first speaks of "a severe epidemic of influenze", and while one could speak of an epidemic of a plural noun ("epidemic of bears"), it seems more usual to speak of an epidemic of a singular and/or non-count noun ("epidemic of the plague", "of the flu", "of flu", "of drug-resistent staph", "of HIV", "of blindness", "of racism"). "[A]n attack of influenze" in the second citation seems even more likely to be singular, and I would also read the third citation's "combined mortality from influenze and pneumonia" as "from flu and pneumonia" rather than "from (flus / kinds of flu) and pneumonia". The 1920 citation also uses "influenza"; it's debatable whether that suggests "influenza" is a misspelling, or a plural. If "influenza" is a plural, it should be possible to find more citations like the one I posted in the entry, where "various influenze" has to be read as "various flus" because "various flu" doesn't make grammatical sense. - -sche (discuss) 18:47, 31 October 2012 (UTC)

RFV-failed for now. - -sche (discuss) 02:20, 4 December 2012 (UTC)