Talk:performant

This is not a word!

Ahhhh. Stop it! This is NOT A WORD. It was born of ignorance and perpetuated by stupidity.

Even if it was perpetuated by a small weasel with a hygiene problem, it's still a word in use, and thus should be recorded. It's how it works. --Wytukaze 5 July 2005 16:22 (UTC)

The anon raises a very salient point however: including such nonsense makes Wiktionary look truly idiotic to the general public. Right now we aren't even flagging it as blatant bullshit. I am working on a special template with this term to be the first test for it though... --Connel MacKenzie 9 July 2005 16:57 (UTC) & 9 July 2005 17:03 (UTC)

It's not a word in use, it's mangling of the language. It's not in any reputable dictionary, because it's not a word. How about 'This entry is included as a result of ignorance and stupidity, not because it's a word.' Irregardless could have the same template. 87.194.58.90 01:09, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

Many people in the computer industry use this word frequently and it has been used in trade publications. Therefore it is "in use". Webster added bootylicious by the way. Whether of not a word appears a printed dictionary does not make it "in use". It doesn't make Wictionary look idiotic - it makes Wictionary reflect the actualy speech and usage of the people that actually use it.

When performant is used in the computer industry, it is not only used frequently, it suggests characteristics about the predictability of a system and how it will react in the future given an un-testable set of circumstances that have not yet occurred. The concept is that the system will react favorably to the environment and the conditions that may exist because it is architected to be performant. Using other words as suggested would not necessarily keep the context of a sentence where performant is used. I suppose that software, megabyte, flash drive, e-mail, nanocomputer, and hard drive aren't words either. Oh yea, hard drive is just our commute to work. A language develops over time. I read somewhere that the English language has over 5,000 more words today than in the early 1400's. If we find a consistent use of a word over a consistent period of time with a consistent definition, then it seems to me that it should be documented as a word. 63.165.126.30 19:36, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

"it suggests characteristics about the predictability of a system and how it will react in the future given an un-testable set of circumstances that have not yet occurred. The concept is that the system will react favorably to the environment and the conditions that may exist because it is architected to be performant." There's no documentation supporting this definition. I suspect it's because this is a circular argument: a thing is performant because it is architected to be performant? I have yet to encounter a usage of this word in which "high performance" is not intended, and in most cases I've seen, something else altogether would be more precise and convey more meaning. This is clearly a word that falls into the same class as "administrate." Not only is it a mangled construction of an existing word, the existing words are more appropriate to use. Though this construction may be "in use," and though language is certainly fluid, the usage of this word is jargon at best, and its acceptance among prominent, authoritative professionals is reasonably questionable. 66.64.29.210 18:08, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Just because the guys at Oxford and Cambridge do not recognise a word does not make it so. Language is fluid, and constantly changing. If a word is recognised as such by enough people, then it is a word. The dictionary guys do NOT own the English language. Remember that.

Yes, although that means that you, etc also don't own the language and therefore this debate comes down to "it's a word that someone stole from French to spruce up his corporate speak report, should we let it in the English language?" I can't help but point out that if everyone's wrong about something it's still wrong.

The idiots are winning

As someone who works in software/IT, I am constantly being bombarded with usage that is depressingly sad. What bothers me so much is not that new words arrive, but that existing words are used in an ignorant manner. Here are a few gems to make those who know smile, and those who don't wonder what is my problem.

First of all there is the classic 'performant' ... I could have database agnostic software..eh? I could have something that is 'leveraging' something else I could be 'architecting'...really :-) I could encounter something that is 'depracated'..I doubt it I could 'inactivate' a user account..presumably a first cousin of deactivate — This unsigned comment was added by Jom ie (talk • contribs).

What is wrong with deprecated? What would you use instead? Equinox ◑ 14:32, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

Depracate is to show or express disapproval. I think that it is being confused with depreciated. I first encountered the word about 10 years ago and glibly assumed that it meant what I thought it meant. Then upon checking the dicionary I find that it means something completely different.— This unsigned comment was added by Jom ie (talk • contribs).

I don't think so, because "expressing disapproval" is precisely what deprecating is. For example, when the W3C deprecates the use of an HTML element, they aren't "belittling" or "reducing its value" (depreciate); they are formally saying that they now disapprove of it and you use it at your own risk. Equinox ◑ 14:43, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

Notice how you are using the W3C present day wishes against a past tense word. How can something BE deprecated. So while the meaning can be barely true in the context mentioned, the usage is still incorrect, thereby leading to the conclusion that it was first of all driven by misunderstanding. Whatever happened to plain English anyway, like '...no longer used'? I'm going to inactivate this discussion now :-)— This unsigned comment was added by Jom ie (talk • contribs).

"How can something BE deprecated". Er, the same way that something can be seen, heard, watched, dropped, or spoken? You seem confused about tenses. Equinox ◑ 15:21, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

No confusion here. It's the usage. I deprecate, you deprecate etc. The usage that I have encountered is mostly in the present tense e.g. this [item] is deprecated. But if the word is a present tense verb, how can the past tense version be used to describe its condition.— This unsigned comment was added by Jom ie (talk • contribs).

"I deprecate unwanted features. Afterwards, those features are [have been] deprecated." "I eat tasty things. Afterwards, those things are [have been] eaten." What is the difference? Equinox ◑ 19:01, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

I don't think that you can say have been deprecated. It's like saying if you disapprove of me then I am deprecated. If this is correct, then I will gladly retract my statement on the word. Any sad git out there willing to arbitrate? :-) — This unsigned comment was added by Jom ie (talk • contribs).

By the way, if you meant to say that "they have been disapproved" isn't grammatical, I'd agree, but that's because you "disapprove of" things, and you can't just drop that "of". However, there's no such auxiliary preposition with "deprecate". Equinox ◑ 20:30, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

Deprecate applies to the action, not the condition.

(Added 8 months later...) In computer science, "deprecated" is actually a condition, similarly to, e.g., "having a mental condition". Specifically, when a keyword of a programming language is associated with a "deprecated" status, it means that (1) programmers may still use the keyword in their programs and (2) compilers must accept this usage as legal; however, (3) sometime in the future such usage might become illegal and then compilers will reject said keyword. And so, a keyword can be deprecated (= have a "deprecated" status/condition associated with it) for, e.g., 10 years, and then lose this status and be completely removed from the language. --132.68.248.130 18:14, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

So how, specifically, is this different from "eat" in my example? Equinox ◑ 19:59, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

I'll sort this out (but I ain't no sad git :P). I agree with Equinox here; it's the same as:

Three people have been killed following...

I have been promoted

The competition has been won

Too bad I can't remember the tense name. Nevertheless, compare the examples at (deprecated template usage) pluperfect tense 50 Xylophone Players talk 20:28, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

Those examples are not particularly helpful, as the query was about usage in the form "is deprecated", not "have been deprecated". —DIV (49.186.209.102 02:24, 25 June 2023 (UTC))

Have you disappeared, "Jom ie"? 50 Xylophone Players talk 20:49, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

These are fine examples, but there is no entry in the dictionary to explain deprecated as a condition. It is just referred to as the past tense of the action. Just because you can do it with one word doesn't mean to say that you can do it with all. After all, you can say engineering, but not architecting. Anyway, it's out there now and it's not going back, so I am just ranting like a pedantic idiot. I CAN'T HELP IT!!! — This unsigned comment was added by Jom ie (talk • contribs) at 20:12, 8 May 2009 (UTC).

Perhaps, consider (deprecated template usage) deprecated as the past participle of (deprecated template usage) deprecate (sense 2). By the way it would help if you signed your comments (then I wouldn't have to keep adding {{unsigned}}). Simply click on the signature icon above the edit box or type four tildes (~). 50 Xylophone Players talk 20:33, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the signing tip PalkiaX50. I don't think that the examples above hold water. Think transitive verbs. Kill is mainly transitive, promote is definitely, but won may be intransitive as in the example. Deprecate is transitive, so should not be used to describe a condition. It is not an end in itself; something needs to come after it. --194.88.4.145 16:52, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

No. Eat is transitive, but in my original example you can say "food is eaten" as well as "I have eaten food". Perfectly fine grammar. You can do this with practically all transitive verbs. If you want to persist in this weird line of argument then provide some sort of evidence or we will go round in circles forever. Equinox ◑ 17:01, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

Eat is also intransitive. All I am saying is that the rules don't match the usage that I have seen. Deprecate is a transitive verb - agreed. Therefore, by the rules, it will require an object e.g. the action is applied to the object. Using the past participle, the action was applied to the object. To say that something is now deprecated just does not match the usage rule of this word. --Jom ie 09:40, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

Just one more point. Have a read of http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.4.2/docs/guide/misc/deprecation/deprecation.html. This fellow has gone off on such a tangent that it is possible to see how the usage evolved i.e. taking the deprecate from its use in an adjective (hyphenated word at that) and applying it accordingly as an adjective and a verb. Once again, all I will say is that I was introduced to this word via articles like the aforementioned. I suspected the meaning from the usage. But wheh I finally look it up in the dictionary (aaah, the good book!), I can't relate the true meaning to this type of usage. --194.88.4.145 13:25, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

Talk:deprecate is where discussion about deprecate belongs. 66.64.29.210 21:21, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

It's either a neologism or French

How is it a neologism if it's a word already?

Neologisms are words; they just haven't caught on very widely yet. We used (deprecated template usage) protologism around here for something that's so newly invented that nobody is using it. Equinox ◑ 14:52, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, you've misunderstood me - it's either a neologism or French. How is it a neologism (a newly coined word) if it's a [French] word already? That is it's not newly coined 86.160.41.198 23:17, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

In principle, from the context of current usage it might be possible to show that it was actually coined rather than borrowed in the meaning in question. DCDuring TALK 12:18, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

I wouldn't mind some citations here. I've never heard this in English. Mglovesfun (talk) 23:27, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

Widespread use in academia

The word, as defined here, is in widespread use in academia: [1] with occurrences in 10500 english language academic papers from this one search alone.

Sorry if this is offensive, but how many of those uses were by someone who only speaks English as a second (or third, or fourth, etc...) language? I laughed the first time I saw this word in use, and since, I have only become concerned that, like sheep, computer people with low self confidence (as opposed to those with enough to recognize the use of a non-word by their idols) simply mimic those who they perceive to be their intellectual superior, regardless of that superior's grasp (or lack thereof) of the English language.

Even people that are not native English speakers are still English speakers, though. If they widely use words in a certain meaning and they are understood, then it can be considered part of the language, even if it's just slang, jargon, or dialectal. Wiktionary doesn't consider whether things are 'words', it only considers whether terms are used enough to conform to WT:CFI. —CodeCat 14:38, 22 June 2011 (UTC)

If it has a meaning it's a word. Likewise, conformant is a word despite its different root and conforming is a word despite its improper inflection. Nonetheless performant, performing, and a-performing aren't English. The English should be a-forframing (I prefer a'forframing.) and the Englisc forframende. Lysdexia (talk) 17:10, 12 May 2019 (UTC)

I would support the hypothesis that non-native English speakers tend to be less capable of distinguishing between widely accepted English words or terms (e.g. high-performing and high-performance) and words that almost nobody uses in day-to-day life (e.g. performant). Presumably such authors see the word somewhere (e.g. a bilingual dictionary, or perhaps a software specification or a journal article), and simply re-use it.

Given that WT likes to find quotations from reliable sources, academic papers are commonly looked at, and nowadays a huge proportion of those are written by non-native English speakers (many based in countries where English is not the official language, but also many outside their homeland, as international students or expatriates). The journals' editing staff will typically not amend 'unusual' word choices, and peer reviewers may not notice or prioritise it. (Prior to submission a third-party editing service may be used — with varying results — but may not be.)

I acknowledge that there are some non-native English speakers with excellent fluency, matching or indeed exceeding the skill of typical native English speakers. And similarly there are some native English speakers with very limited language skills.

Either way, if the purported word gets a wide enough usage, there is a justification for adding it to WT (and other dictionaries). WT tends not to be highly prescriptive/proscriptive, but in some cases Usage notes would be warranted, and this could be a place to explain that, say, the word has become more prevalent recently through adoption in computing contexts, but is otherwise practically unknown in day-to-day communication. (As a matter of fact, I think I'll add that text, and see if it sticks...)

—DIV (49.186.209.102 02:10, 25 June 2023 (UTC))

History?

Does anyone have any sources on when this word started to "pop up"? Jimw338 (talk) 03:49, 17 December 2019 (UTC)

The earliest examples of the controversial adjective I've been able to find are from the 1970s. DTLHS (talk) 04:06, 17 December 2019 (UTC)

I was just looking on Google Ngram before finding this Wiktionary entry, and while performant has very low usage (compared to, say, performance), Google Ngram shows a usage in 1850. https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=performant&case_insensitive=on&year_start=1800&year_end=2008&corpus=15&smoothing=0&share=&direct_url=t4%3B%2Cperformant%3B%2Cc0%3B%2Cs0%3B%3Bperformant%3B%2Cc0%3B%3BPerformant%3B%2Cc0#t4%3B%2Cperformant%3B%2Cc0%3B%2Cs0%3B%3Bperformant%3B%2Cc0%3B%3BPerformant%3B%2Cc0 Benbradley (talk) 04:36, 21 May 2020 (UTC)

That seems to be all a combination of noun senses and scannos for variants and inflections of perform and performance, with just one reference in a legal decision to "the party performant" Chuck Entz (talk) 05:55, 21 May 2020 (UTC)

Nested

Do we really need a nested definition here? Not performant. – Jberkel 20:07, 28 January 2021 (UTC)

@Jberkel: I was indicating that the computing sense was a sub-sense derived from sense 2, but I suppose it can be a sense on its own as well. — SGconlaw (talk) 04:23, 29 January 2021 (UTC)

Is it really necessary to have a separate sense for this? We only have computing-related quotations. Jberkel 21:47, 29 January 2021 (UTC)

@Jberkel: it is listed as a sense in the OED with corresponding quotations. I have no reason to doubt it is verifiable. The general sense is different; it refers to something being excellent, whereas the computing sense refers to something that may merely be adequate. — SGconlaw (talk) 22:20, 29 January 2021 (UTC)

Ok, I wasn't aware of this other sense, surprising, given how contentious even the computing sense is. – Jberkel 23:30, 29 January 2021 (UTC)

Some of the current quotations go beyond computing. (Perhaps they were added after the above comments were made.) —DIV (49.186.209.102 02:14, 25 June 2023 (UTC))

Too many quotations, not enough citations

There seem to be a large number of quotations, but zero citations. My understanding of WT guidelines is that (roughly) quotations are there to illustrate usage, and should be limited in number, whereas citations can be more numerous, and are there to substantiate/justify definitions and provide greater insight into history/evolution of usage. —DIV (49.186.209.102 02:17, 25 June 2023 (UTC))

I'm not sure if this is a useful distinction. Most quotations do a little bit of all the things you mentioned, it's not black/white (in contrast to usage examples, which are meant to illustrate usage). Can you give an example of what you're after? Jberkel 15:44, 25 June 2023 (UTC)