Talk:wood-elf

RFD discussion: February 2021–January 2022

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wood-elf

"An elf which inhabits woodland." In other words, SOP, whether with a hyphen or a space. Of course, if you compare distinct works of fantasy wood elves often have several coinciding characteristics, but those are all accidental features and part of the world building of a specific setting, not part of the definition. ←₰-→ Lingo ^Bingo _Dingo (talk) 19:04, 23 February 2021 (UTC)

• Obviously not meant to refer to a wooden elf. DonnanZ (talk) 09:30, 26 February 2021 (UTC)

  @Donnanz Of course not, the relevant sense of wood is “forest, forested area”. It is SOP if you consider that sense. I did not find any lemmings, by the way. ←₰-→ Lingo ^Bingo _Dingo (talk) 13:59, 26 February 2021 (UTC)

@Lingo Bingo Dingo: A lack of lemmings is not surprising, but judging by the attached quotes, a lot more could be found for wood-elves... not that I've met any. DonnanZ (talk) 14:17, 26 February 2021 (UTC)

• Keep (Note: If kept, we must move to wood elf since we have a policy about these hyphenated terms where a space works too.) — Dentonius

  @Dentonius May I ask for your rationale for keeping this in some form? Do you disagree with the claim that it is SOP? ←₰-→ Lingo ^Bingo _Dingo (talk) 08:14, 28 February 2021 (UTC)

May I also ask you or anyone where that policy is stated? I don't think I have ever heard of it before. Mihia (talk) 18:36, 6 March 2021 (UTC)

Dentonius has agreed to stop participating in RFD (see the Dentonius thread at the March Beer parlour), so it's best not to continue this. My best guess is that he was working backward from the idea that hyphens are irrelevant for SOP. Chuck Entz (talk) 21:31, 6 March 2021 (UTC)

Pretty sure it's not a thing. WT:ALTER even gives tea cup and tea-cup as examples of alternative forms that are properly assigned separate pages. Colin M (talk) 21:35, 6 March 2021 (UTC)

The definition as it stands is SOP, but it doesn’t accurately describe the term. In universes I’m familiar with, wood elves are a distinct race of elves, not just any elf that lives in or comes from the woods. It is as idiomatic as polar bear or red deer, that encompass polar bears born in a tropical zoo and albino red deer. Whether it passes WT:FICTION is a different question, but I’ve seen the term often enough in unrelated universes that I assume does. — Ungoliant ^(falai) 15:38, 28 February 2021 (UTC)

I agree with this position. --Geographyinitiative (talk) 01:44, 5 March 2021 (UTC)

@Ungoliant MMDCCLXIV Even then, the improved definition would basically amount to "a member of a grouping of elves that tend to live in woodland"; whether wood elves are a race or subrace or merely form a specific polity depends on the universe. Of course, wood elves tend to be more proficient in archery and maybe melee combat than magic relative to other elves, tend to have light skin tones and blond hair, tend to be less technologically advanced, etc. but that may differ in some universes (e.g. some settings have wood elves as advanced as other elves; some online artists have wood elves with brown skin, not sure if that is in anything durably published yet). ←₰-→ Lingo ^Bingo _Dingo (talk) 19:54, 7 March 2021 (UTC)

I don’t disagree, but I still think that doesn’t necessarly exclude it from being a concept distinct from a mere elf of the woods and worthy of a definition. I’m not voting anything yet (since I’m a fan of Tolkienesque fantasy and want to see more arguments to avoid my own bias) but I feel like there is a Catch 22 going on: we either analyse wood elves from distinct universes as distinct concepts (and thus each individually fails FICTION) or we take them as a single concept and since every author implements the concept uniquely, it fails SOP because the only truly universal feature is the association with woods.

If we take this approach, many names of established fantasy tropes that, like wood elves, always or almost always indicate a distinct concept in the works where they occur, will be excluded from Wiktionary. Perhaps that is for the best -- god knows how much gibberish from works of fiction we’ve had to deal with -- but I also don’t see a problem in taking a middle ground approach and defining these terms with the properties that are common even if they are not universal. — Ungoliant ^(falai) 23:31, 7 March 2021 (UTC)

Re your second paragraph: I'd be curious to hear of any examples you can think of of any similar terms that would be at risk for deletion if wood elf falls, and which you think would be a shame to lose. Colin M (talk) 06:41, 9 March 2021 (UTC)

Some that come to mind: light elf, high elf, dark elf, half-elf, mind flayer, hill giant, rock troll, fairy/faerie dragon, black pudding, dire wolf, hoop snake, possibly smoke monster. — Ungoliant ^(falai) 22:07, 9 March 2021 (UTC)

There are entries for light elf, dark elf, half-elf, dire wolf, hoop snake and black pudding (which I do not recognise as a fantasy term and there is no definition like that in the entry). I wouldn't nominate any of those for deletion, usually because of a mythological or taxonomic sense that seems wholly idiomatic to me, and I would not suggest to delete high elf or mind flayer either (if the latter is independently verifiable). However, I do not understand why you'd want to apply the reasoning about taxonomic vernacular names to fictional creatures. ←₰-→ Lingo ^Bingo _Dingo (talk) 18:16, 11 March 2021 (UTC)

Mind flayer was specifically not released by Wizards of the Coast when they released most of base D&D under the Open Gaming License, so the implication is that it's not independent of D&D. Black pudding was released[1]; used under license is still not exactly independent, but at a certain point (possibly not reached) some of these creatures may start to be so universal the fact that it's freely licensed may be moot to us. Noteworthy to me is that Paizo, the largest single publisher of works under this license, has avoided using tiefling and other such words in its fiction, and have moved away from some terms in its rulebooks, apparently not to be entangled with the license.--Prosfilaes (talk) 04:50, 7 October 2021 (UTC)

• Delete, as it stands. Unless we can find a secret meaning somewhere. --Robbie SWE (talk) 18:50, 28 February 2021 (UTC)
• Comment. There seem to be numerous "X elf" combinations (with or without hyphens, which I will ignore for these purposes) such as snow elf, ice elf, field elf, water elf, sea elf, sand elf, etc., all apparently characterised by living in the stated type of habitat. I don't know how many of these are cross-universe, however, and I haven't bothered to research it. Is there any reason why we would have wood-elf and not numerous others? Mihia (talk) 18:30, 6 March 2021 (UTC)

  The question is whether these combinations refer to an independent meaning in the language as a whole rather than either to a part of a fictional universe or to a transparent combination of meanings. I have a hunch that the Tolkien legendarium's influence on the creation of so many other fictional universes has resulted in some terms from that universe seeming more universal and established. If we're asserting that there is something called a wood-elf that's more than just an elf associated with woods, we need to explain how to tell a "real" wood-elf from an elf that happens to live in the woods. In Middle Earth you have the Quenya and the Sindar, which have different histories, different characteristics and different languages. What is there outside of Middle Earth (or any other given fictional universe) that makes a wood-elf a wood-elf? Chuck Entz (talk) 21:31, 6 March 2021 (UTC)

  This is an interesting point. As Chuck alluded to, there's a lot of incestuous borrowing that goes on in fantasy. e.g. you have lots of modern ("roguelike") fantasy games which borrow monsters, races, items etc. from the 1980 video game Rogue, which borrowed tropes from Dungeons & Dragons, which borrowed from Tolkien, who borrowed from all kinds of folklore. Stepping away from just elves, I can think of lots of other compound names for fictional species that are liable to recur, e.g. hill giant, deep dwarf, cave goblin, high elf, shadow orc. There's enough shared genetic material being passed around that it's not surprising that you have multiple fictional fantasy universes that use these terms, nor that they use them with similar meanings. Colin M (talk) 22:01, 6 March 2021 (UTC)

  @Mihia I believe the main distinction is commonness, so one could in theory maintain that wood elf is a set phrase compared to the other [insert biome] elves. Of course, that is not my view. I think that the most common collocations other than wood elf are high elf, dark elf and half elf (all of these are not coincidentally used by Tolkien, though not quite in the way most modern fantasy settings use these labels). Then there is silvan elf/sylvan elf, which I believe is usually a synonym for wood elf but there might be arcane distinctions in some settings. ←₰-→ Lingo ^Bingo _Dingo (talk) 19:54, 7 March 2021 (UTC)

• Delete. I applaud Geographyinitiative for adding a quote going back to 1893, and indeed Google Books shows a fair number of pre-1900 uses. But, looking at those uses, alongside the more modern ones, I'm not seeing much consistency. In some cases, the term is used to refer to a little trickster creature akin to a brownie or a gnome. Sometimes it refers to a dryad. And sometimes it refers to a noble Tolkienesque creature. The only properties that unite them seems to be that they're some sort of elf that lives in the woods, i.e. SoP. But if someone wants to do the legwork of looking more deeply into uses of the term and manages to identify a more specific meaning that is used across multiple independent works, I would happily reconsider. (But I would be reluctant to consider modern fictional works that share a common descent from e.g. Dungeons and Dragons to be truly independent in this context.) Colin M (talk) 22:30, 6 March 2021 (UTC)

  @Colin M I am afraid that for the purposes of CFI, the Tolkien Legendarium, Dungeons and Dragons, Warhammer, Warcraft, The Elder Scrolls and all the others are to be considered independent from each other. I would argue for each of these franchises being internally dependent to avoid wrangling between alternative universes, expanded universes and different settings, but I don't think that has been established as policy. In any case, all works written in e.g. the same D&D setting cannot be considered independent. Also, thank you for your observation that some of the uses of wood elf relate to brownies, dryads, etc. ←₰-→ Lingo ^Bingo _Dingo (talk) 19:54, 7 March 2021 (UTC)

  I'd say that all English fantasy written in the last 35-40 years that's set in a fantasy world is influenced by D&D.--Prosfilaes (talk) 04:50, 7 October 2021 (UTC)

• Keep and send to RFV, if necessary to determine distinctness. My impression is that "wood elf" is far more common across different universes than, say, "dark elf" or "mountain elf". There are definitely non-SOP meanings of the term that exist; the question is whether or not they can be adequately cited, or are too universe-specific. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 05:15, 10 March 2021 (UTC)

  @Andrew Sheedy I am not sure whether it is true that "wood elf" is far more common than "dark elf" in different franchises, although you are correct about its commonness in comparison to "mountain elf". As said above, I would not nominate dark elf for deletion. ←₰-→ Lingo ^Bingo _Dingo (talk) 18:16, 11 March 2021 (UTC)

  Yes, you're probably right. I would also vote to keep dark elf if it was RFD'd. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 05:43, 12 March 2021 (UTC)

I believe woodelf is citable, so keep per coalmine. DAVilla 13:27, 6 August 2021 (UTC)

Can this belief be borne out by some cites?  --Lambiam 11:11, 6 October 2021 (UTC)

Having glanced at Google Books... I found cites in The Santa Claus Book (2000), Nis-o-was-sa: A Poem (1900), and the self-published A Fan's Guide to Neo-Sindarin (2017), as well as every copy ever of Anne of Green Gables has "wood-elf" mis-scanned as "woodelf", Woodelf being a common username/alias (including Woodelf, a Wikipedian author of material that made it into the POD Wikipedia dumps), a name of noteworthy English Springer Spaniels, a "Woodelf Rhododendrum" variety and a lot more mis-scans. Bleh. I'm not citing it, nor arguing against it if it is cited.--Prosfilaes (talk) 04:50, 7 October 2021 (UTC)

I tried to cite woodelf but failed. The first two are inaccessible to me and the occurrences in "A Fan's Guide to Neo-Sindarin" seem to be mentions rather than uses. If this cannot be cited, the RFD will result in deletion by discounting @Dentonius and @DAVilla. — Fytcha〈 T | L | C 〉 03:13, 11 January 2022 (UTC)

I've found a few cites for woodelves do they count? General Vicinity (talk) 04:13, 11 January 2022 (UTC)

Yes. —Svārtava ^{[t•c•u•r]} 06:38, 11 January 2022 (UTC)

• RFD-kept by WT:COALMINE (which is a voted upon criteria, FTM) and per the above votes. —Svārtava ^{[t•c•u•r]} 06:38, 11 January 2022 (UTC)