Talk:unicorn

a blessing of unicorns

According to Wikipedia, the collective noun in English for Unicorns, is a Blessing. See 'Blessing'. 203.129.39.106 12:31, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

Though we already had that definition under (deprecated template usage) blessing, I've added a link from this entry too. ~ Röbin Liönheart (talk) 04:43, 19 December 2012 (UTC)

I also see a surprise of unicorns, with two actual uses.--Prosfilaes (talk) 03:46, 1 May 2013 (UTC)

Actually both your cites come from "The Boy Who Drew Unicorns" by Jane Yolan, published in two different books. ~ Röbin Liönheart (talk) 09:52, 2 May 2013 (UTC)

unihorn

NetHack players often informally refer to a unicorn's horn (a magical item in the game) as "unihorns"; see Usenet newsgroups: [1]. This will not pass WT:FICTION unless players of other roguelikes use the same terminology, which I can't ascertain. (Most uses of "unihorn", though, are sentences in books like "why aren't unicorns called unihorns?".) Equinox ◑ 13:36, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

unicorn in the context of Brexit

The word "unicorn" crops up repeatedly in relation to the United Kingdom Brexit and that usage is probably distinct enough to warrant a dedicated interpretation? RobbieIanMorrison (talk) 08:49, 1 April 2019 (UTC)

RFD discussion: January–April 2020

The following discussion has been moved from Wiktionary:Requests for deletion (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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"A representation of X" as a sense of X (unicorn, etc)

Bengal tiger, book, cockatrice, coronet, crown

double eagle, dragon, eagle, griffin, harp

heron, hunting horn, lion, mitre, popinjay

portcullis, salamander, wheel

~20 entries have one definition for an animal or thing, then another for "A [heraldic] representation of such a [thing]". I want to delete the "heraldic" senses as redundant to the main senses; compare how we deleted the definition of Talk:quadriga as a representation of a quadriga. Such a sense could be added to any common (and many uncommon!) plant, animal, or object: an oak, hawk, gauntlet, etc, all exist in heraldry as "a representation of such a thing", and the use of "eagle", etc to refer to a representation rather than a real bird, etc is not (as claimed) limited to heraldry: my friend has an eagle hanging on her fridge (that her kid drew), there's an eagle (stylized representation) on the coin in my pocket. In a few cases, the def adds additional info, e.g. that a heraldic wheel is "usually with six spokes": well, a "representation" of a house, if you ask any child or many adults to make a quick sketch, is "usually rectangular or with a triangular roof", but does this mean "house" needs another sense? Nonetheless, by all means say if you'd like to keep some and delete others.
Note: lion claims to be "a stylized representation of a large cat", but given the leeway of "stylized" surely it really means "a stylized representation of a lion". And Agnus Dei oddly distinguishes "A small model or a picture of a lamb with a cross" from "A heraldic representation of a lamb with a cross", while woodwose includes "...or a representation such" in its one singular definition. (Bezant, in contrast, says that in non-heraldic use it means a particular coin of either gold or silver, while in heraldry it's any gold coin, which if true makes it different; similarly, ichthys and gillyflower have no corresponding non-heraldic sense, so I'm not RFDing those.) - -sche (discuss) 08:55, 16 January 2020 (UTC)

Just droppin' in to say that I like the cut of your research jib. Wow, what a list. Actually: agree with the general point ("there's a bathroom in my daughter's doll's house" should not support "bathroom" as "a tiny model of a normal bathroom"). I do wonder about heraldry, because it's the most stylised thing in the world and there might be some cases where a heraldic X actually isn't very similar to a real-world X; but I admit I have no particular example to show and would just like to be sure that whoever deletes these does it conscientiously, and checks this stuff. Equinox ◑ 09:33, 16 January 2020 (UTC)

[[salamander]] says representations of them in heraldry "always" include flames, and though a look around Google Images turns up a few salamanders without flames (so the wording should be "typically"), that entry may be the best candidate for different treatment. (I'm open to the idea some of these may be keep-worthy even if the bulk aren't.) But then, it also looks like the flames aren't considered part of the representation of the salamander per se, but are blazoned separately, as "a salamander in flames proper", "a salamander argent, crowned and in golden flames", etc, so, meh. A phoenix, which does not currently have a heraldry-specific def, is also often represented in or near flames, if we decide that kind of thing is sense-worthy. - -sche (discuss) 12:03, 16 January 2020 (UTC)

Thinking more about the question of whether stylization is lexical: a "pedestrian" on a traffic sign almost always has a dot for a head (often unconnected from his body) and no hands, unlike a real pedestrian whose nonspherical head stays attached as long as cars brake for him, but is that lexical? Might it be sufficient to just put an image of a "pedestrian crossing" sign on [[pedestrian]], and of a unicorn supporter on [[unicorn]], etc? - -sche (discuss) 12:03, 16 January 2020 (UTC)

Such images are nice, even though not at all essential to understanding. The heraldic details are encyclopedic, not lexical.  --Lambiam 14:22, 16 January 2020 (UTC)

I don't think there is a practice under which the figure in the street sign is referred to as "a pedestrian" in the same way as an heraldic lion is referred to as a lion. If you incorporated the figure from the street sign into a coat of arms, I don't think people would look at it and say, "ah, a pedestrian, dexter, on a field argent". bd2412 T 06:00, 18 January 2020 (UTC)

Note that it's not just heraldry that has specific, well-defined ways of representing things. Eastern Christian iconography has well-established traditions in this regard. The vocabulary might be less technical, however. But it's the same general principle. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 05:14, 18 January 2020 (UTC)

• Ceci n'est pas une pipe Purplebackpack89 22:53, 26 January 2020 (UTC)
• Delete all where there is nothing uniquely special about the heraldic representation versus some other depiction. Mihia (talk) 21:11, 7 February 2020 (UTC)
• Delete all. Canonicalization (talk) 11:59, 9 February 2020 (UTC)

I deleted the heraldic sense from "Bengal tiger", the most egregious of these; it was defined as being used in the Coat of arms of Malaysia and Coat of arms of Singapore, but (1) the tigers on them look very different from each other but are clearly both representations of real tigers, and (2) neither is or is intended to be a Bengal tiger. I also deleted/merged griffin, harp, and popinjay. I struck double eagle; I expanded its heraldic sense slightly to include other iconographic and symbolic use; there's no other sense for the "representation" sense to be merged into.
Of the rest, only salamander (with its claim of being depicted together with fire), wheel (with its claim of a specific number of spokes) and hunting horn (with its claim of a specific shape) seem to go beyond being mere representations of the things. Crown tries to make itself sound idiomatic by saying it can appear on the heraldry even of an individual who has no physical crown (like the king of Belgium supposedly doesn't) or who has no head (like a town), but this seems vacuous as a city could also have a tiger or something on its coat of arms even if it does not have a real tiger within its city limits. - -sche (discuss) 06:21, 16 February 2020 (UTC)

I've merged the heraldic senses of "book", "cockatrice", "eagle", "dragon", "lion", "mitre", "unicorn", and "hunting horn" into the general senses, adding images of heraldic arms in the first few cases and revising the definition in the last case, since I also added an image of a real hunting horn of the type depicted in heraldry, showing that real hunting horns do not have to be a spiral. One thing that can be seen from the collage of heraldic eagles I added to "eagle" and from comparing the various coats of arms that feature lions or dragons is that there is no one depiction; different people traditionally or individually draw them in different styles and at often vastly different levels and directions of abstraction. - -sche (discuss) 20:38, 1 March 2020 (UTC)

I also merged the heraldic senses of "coronet" and "crown", as well as "portcullis", "salamander", and "wheel". I think this is all resolved. - -sche (discuss) 22:23, 23 April 2020 (UTC)