Talk:sely

Just adding the quotes for the rfq seemed out of place without the meanings for the quotes ... if I add one or two of the defs, I might as well add them all so I made it a full entry. Now those reading older texts can find the meaning of the word. --AnWulf ... Ferþu Hal! 20:46, 22 December 2011 (UTC)

Blimey, that little entry has certainly grown in a few days. It's like that Star Trek episode where Deanna Troi has a baby. Good job. Equinox ◑ 20:52, 22 December 2011 (UTC)

At the risk of sounding like a stuck record, our three citations are all before 1500, and Wiktionary:AEN#Etymology says that would be Middle English. Mglovesfun (talk) 20:59, 22 December 2011 (UTC)

Mm. Practically all of the Middle English terms I've added from Webster 1913 have a Chaucer citation (or an "rfquotek|Chaucer") so they will be trivially findable when someone can be bothered to make a bot do it. Equinox ◑ 21:01, 22 December 2011 (UTC)

And again to repeat myself, almost anything citable in Late Middle English is gonna cross over into early Modern English. Same goes the the Middle French texts I've read circa 1550, where Modern French is from 1600 onwards. Mglovesfun (talk) 21:08, 22 December 2011 (UTC)

RFV discussion: April–December 2023

The following discussion has been moved from Wiktionary:Requests for verification (permalink).

This discussion is no longer live and is left here as an archive. Please do not modify this conversation, but feel free to discuss its conclusions.

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sely

OED provides post-1500 cites for only the following senses:

• Wikt 7 = OED 5: innocent, harmless
• Wikt 9 and 10 = OED 6a: pitiable; helpless
• Wikt 12 = OED 7a: insignificant, trifling
• Wikt [missing sense] = OED 7b: frail, worn-out (OED also includes "crazy" in this gloss - not sure what sense of crazy they mean!)
• Wikt 1 and 8 = OED 8: foolish, simple, silly

The following senses are Middle English only:

• Wikt 4 = OED 2: fortunate, auspicious
• Wikt 2 = OED 3 and 4: spiritually blessed; pious, holy

The remaining Wiktionary senses (3, 5, 6, 11) are absent from OED. This, that and the other (talk) 22:55, 4 April 2023 (UTC)

Aside: I'm sceptical that it'd be conceptually possible to attest all our senses distinctly from each other. - -sche (discuss) 00:03, 5 April 2023 (UTC)

For example, I added one cite to the citations page, but it seems impossible to tell whether it means "wretched", "lowly", "weak", or "innocent" (or possibly other senses we have). - -sche (discuss) 05:54, 5 April 2023 (UTC)

To me this clearly belongs to our senses 9 and 10 (which overlap), since he is being heaped with sorrows and we are supposed to feel pity for him. OED has a cite talking about "seilie poore wretches" which it puts under sense 6a. Also the full book shows that the text is a modernised-spelling edition of a work from 1555; not a 19th-century text at all. This, that and the other (talk) 11:07, 5 April 2023 (UTC)

But shouldn't a cite with a modernized spelling be shown with the modern edition's date? DCDuring (talk) 01:04, 25 August 2023 (UTC)

Well yes, but since we can only use either the original edition or the modern edition by CFI's independence criterion, I'd rather use the original edition. The question becomes thornier when we deal with a modernised edition of a Middle English text, but thankfully that's not the case here. This, that and the other (talk) 09:19, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

I've removed some of the uncited senses. Others remain to be dealt with. Only "pitiable" has cites. - -sche (discuss) 22:19, 22 December 2023 (UTC)

If these senses are attested in the spelling silly, arguably we should not duplicate the in two places anyway, but just have the {{altform}}. If the senses are not attested in the spelling silly, we may need to RFV that term, which lists quite a lot of them... - -sche (discuss) 22:21, 22 December 2023 (UTC)

To help move this RFV along, I'd be willing to restrict the RFV to sense 1.1 of sely "(archaic) Worthy, noble, fine, excellent" only. This lacks any modern cites in OED. This, that and the other (talk) 11:51, 23 December 2023 (UTC)

Personally, I would prefer if once we've noticed the other senses aren't citable and/or are redundant to the definition as a "form of silly" where the same definitions are present, we deal with those senses now too. What do you think of this, dropping the senses for which neither we nor the OED have cites, and keeping the ones that seem to have at least one cite [in either us or the OED] in the {{q}}? Please improve as needed. - -sche (discuss) 18:12, 23 December 2023 (UTC)

Aha, I see that it was originally just an alt form, until diff. - -sche (discuss) 04:11, 29 December 2023 (UTC)

Resolved? - -sche (discuss) 04:11, 29 December 2023 (UTC)