User talk:DCDuring/2008 QI

Alpinisms?

Hello DC -- Are you really sure about the validity of this plural form? I can't find one convincing usage anywhere. Can you? -- WikiPedant 05:26, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

I thought that I had found at least 2 on g.b.c. Perhaps more importantly I took the fact that it was part of the mass addition or requested entries as indicating something of the reality of the term. Who is responsible for that big addition of requests in the As and Bs to the ReqE list? What is the source? I've been working frequency lists but am getting increasingly frustrated with them as well. I may just need a break. DCDuring 12:04, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

παιδεία

Hey, just thought I'd comment that the etymologies of Ancient Greek words do not need to state "Ancient Greek" if they're derived from other A. Greek words. The language only needs to be cited if the etymon is of another language. Also, placing the {{AGr.}} template there categorizes the word in [[:Category:Ancient Greek derivations]], a category which is for English words only. Thanks. Atelaes 22:43, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

Sorry. My finger habits got the better of me. I've been using the Greek entries for sources of Greek script for some English etymology. In such English entries the AGr template is normal. When I inserted the term template my habits took over. Thanks for catching it. DCDuring 22:46, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

No worries. I figured it was probably a simple mistake, but since there's so much confusion around concerning etymology templates and such, I always try to make sure. Atelaes 22:49, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

I'm trying to get the hang of the term template and revive and use my long-ago education in the Classics. I still haven't found my Liddell and Scott in my attic, but picked up a Cassell's Latin-English for cheap. I'm working on my Old English. Now all I'll need is some good Old French and Old Norse references. How much value is there to my inserting "lang=grc" in the term templates? How would it be used? DCDuring TALK 23:01, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

To be completely honest, at least for now, it doesn't do anything. Ancient Greek is pretty much always the first entry for a word containing Greek characters (as the A in "Ancient Greek" comes before the G in "Greek"). However, I still think it a good idea to make the specification, so that in the future when Hippietrail's new format is implemented or we're using harvesting bots or........whatever, it's there. Are you talking about writing etymologies, or actual AGr. entries? If the former, please feel quite free to fill up Wiktionary:Requested articles:Ancient Greek. If the latter, you should check out AAG (in fact, check this out regardless). In any case, please feel quite free to make whatever use of me that you can. Atelaes 00:19, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for your kind offer. I'll check out AAG. I'll probably ask you questions when I'm confused.

I'm willing to invest a few keystrokes in an uncertain future prospect for use, as long as there is some prospect - as there seems to be. I am unlikely to be making many new Ancient Greek entries for now. Etymologies is more my speed. I look forward to the harvest bots, I think. Harvesting term templates, right, or lines with AGr (or Gr) templates or any greek script? I assume that 95+% of the Gr lines should actually be AGr in English entry Etymology. DCDuring TALK 00:41, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

Actually, if you feel like hitting up some etymology stuff, that's a great place to start. [[:Category:Greek derivations]] needs to be basically emptied. A lot of those entries are screwed up beyond just catting in at Gr. Many have romanizations instead of actual Greek characters, many are just plain wrong (see Special:Contributions/Kassios, basically everything in there is wrong). So, yeah, that's a great place to start if you care to. Atelaes 01:02, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

I need to find my L&S first. DCDuring TALK 01:05, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

Eye-talian

I have responded to you on my talk page. DAVilla 17:19, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Please don't feed the trolls

anymore, on WT:ID. --Connel MacKenzie 22:40, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

What do you mean? I was trying to get my own "troll" experience and take it off the ID. I think we need some way of handling such "contributors" that doesn't make WT look like a closed little club. I'd be willing to waste minutes on contending with each one of such folks (for a while) to keep WT from looking bad. It may well be true "stupidity" in every case where that word appears on the edit summary, but that does not make it smart to put that on the edit summary. This particular case is certainly one of a particularly offensive bit of "contributing", but I still believe we need to look better while repelling such "contributors". DCDuring TALK 22:54, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

obtuli

I quote from the DK Illustrated Oxford Dictionary (1998):

"oblate² adj. Geom. (of a spheroid) flattened at the poles. [from Latin oblatus, literally 'carried inversely']"

So it is probably not related to the meaning of offero as 'offer, put oneself forward' but indeed the literal meaning above. Felicitas bona tecum sit! Harris Morgan 17:26, 24 January 2008 (UTC).

Neither do I understand the 'inversely' bit. But I presume you have seen that it was made simply to contrast to pro-, so the ob- can be interpreted in many ways. The origin? I have another quote, this time from the The Oxford Dictionary of English (2nd edition revised):

"early 18th cent.: from modern Latin oblatus (from ob- ‘inversely’ + -latus ‘carried’), on the pattern of Latin prolatus ‘prolonged’."

So you could actually avoid the 'inversely' bit and just mention that is was made in a contrast. But that somewhat destroys understanding the whole word. Harris Morgan 17:52, 24 January 2008 (UTC).

Many of the etys I've looked at do mention 'modelled on "prolatus"'. I'll look at prolatus again. I wouldn't have bothered you or anyone else, but for the need to restructure entries to split out the etymology of the geometric sense from that of the the 'offered' senses. DCDuring TALK 18:12, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

I think there is some confusion here. Classical Latin oblatus is a form of the verb offero (offer) and is the source of the English oblation. But English oblate doesn't seem to come from this word. The OED gives it as a medieval or modern Latin coinage from (deprecated template usage) ob- + lātus (“broad, wide”), an hence "spread(ing) out, widening out", which makes much more sense anyway. --EncycloPetey 05:32, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

one's bark is worse than one's bite

I'm glad you're helping clean up non-standard headers, but that's definitely not a proverb. It's an idiom. Rod (A. Smith) 20:23, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

I just don't know what to do with sentences that might not be proverbs. "Idiom" is not a PoS. Proverb is the only heading that is appropriate for sentences. I think of idiom as being a non-standard header itself, belonging at the sense line. DCDuring TALK 20:36, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, I have trouble with chosing a proper POS in cases like this, too, but WT:POS says that "idiom" is acceptable, so I think that's the right choice. Rod (A. Smith) 20:53, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

Phrasal verbs without prepositions

Hi. Answer in my talk page. -- Algrif 13:28, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

Admin

Hi, it looks like you're taking up the cause, and I'd like to nominate you for admin so that you have a little more to play around with as you adjust. Would you be ready to accept? DAVilla 16:54, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

I would be happy to. I'd especially like to learn more about measures of WT success or progress and the potential for getting more contributions, especially from the more casual visitors. I'm sure that you can use more hands for some of the scut-work as well. Let me know about what is expected or hoped for from admins and what specific tasks need doing. DCDuring TALK 17:15, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

Oh, there is plenty lots to do! But nothing expected more than of any other contributor. Please accept here.

The best way to get more contributions, in my opinion, is to make it easier for new editors to get the help they need in learning about how Wiktionary works. Documenting templates is good, and so are explanations on how templates work in the first place. I remember when I came I didn't even know how to find a template's talk page, or what that really meant. DAVilla 19:45, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

Shorthand

There are many entries early in the "a"s that have shorthand in them. Although there does not seem to be anyone interested in continuing to add them, there might be in the future. However unlikely, it is conceivable that someone might find such content useful. In any event, it is relatively harmless at the bottom of the page. I'd recommend that you restore it. You might raise the question of the value of Shorthand at WT:BP. A bot might then remove it all. DCDuring TALK 11:53, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Are you seriously suggesting that I add back information and Wikipedia links about shorthand to the Wiktionary entry abandon? What on earth for?

I wasn’t starting a project to eliminate it from en:wikt, just removing irrelevant info when I saw it. Isn’t that the kind of thing that editors do?
☸ Moilleadóir 14:14, 30 January 2008 (UTC) ☏

Only that it would merit a mention to see what group preferences are. It's obviously not one of the most useful efforts of an editor, but some thought and effort went into it. It is well formatted and apparently correct. There are many little labors of love in Wiktionary that have purely antiquarian interest. Maybe we should have these things in an appendix with a link to the main entry. There is some active discussion on how to allow users to customize their view of entries to suppress what they don't want to waste screen space on. DCDuring TALK 15:33, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

My apologies, it was late and I didn’t read those sections carefully enough to realize that they gave the shorthand version of the word. Never having seen them before they just looked like random information. My bad. ☸ Moilleadóir 00:36, 31 January 2008 (UTC) ☏

Nothing to apologize for, but thanks. It wouldn't have been a big deal. They are a remnant of someone's excess of ambition over sense. Your midnight assumption that they were junk is not far off. There are only about 40 of them, all in the "ab"s. Shorthand is going the way of Morse code, anyway. DCDuring TALK 00:48, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

Adminstration

Congratulations, you are now an adminstrator! If you have any questions about what this entails, please contact one of the other administrators. Enjoy your new role. — Paul G 20:52, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

• Cool. Thanks. I assume that comes with the customary doubling of my pay. DCDuring TALK 20:55, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Double the work, double the pay! Atelaes 21:16, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

chiché

We mustn't assume anything. We must know it. SemperBlotto 16:51, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

It is a revisable improvement. Knowing is never absolute. That's why I am a fallibilist. And, this is a wiki, after all, premised on the idea of gradual improvement.

Procedurally, is it better to leave things in such a rustic state? I was reasonably sure that while it remains in rfv it cannot go far of the rails because of the attention it receives. I also took a look at the french wiktionary entry. The open question is mostly whether it is in the English lexicon as well as its correct spelling in French and English. DCDuring TALK 17:03, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

But I'm pretty sure that it isn't a real word in any language. We should wait for it to be verified or else deleted. In the meantime we could add chiche using the text of the fr.wiktionary entry to figure out an English translation. SemperBlotto 17:09, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

I have found it with approximately the same meaning in a downloadable 1830s English dictionary (Richardson) here:[1]. It certainly is hard to find current English usage. It's interesting to see entries in the raw state they are so often delivered. DCDuring TALK 17:19, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

Citations is a namespace now

Should be Citations:lede Robert Ullmann 12:08, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

I didn't find the documentation and [[fell into]] what I did using the templates. We need to make things easier for contributors, somehow - and not just for this. Obviously the problem is much worse for someone who doesn't do this a lot. DCDuring TALK 12:23, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

If you are going to be tweaking them, you might as well move them. (Why did you copy the one for lede instead of moving it?) Robert Ullmann 12:45, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

I'm not 100% comfortable with the software, especially the first time I do something, so I left a copy where I could find it - and forgot to clean up. I consider myself not atypical of users. Is there a template in the works to make this process semi-automatic? I'm obviously not the one to write it at this point. DCDuring TALK 12:52, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

postal/ZIP code

I think you may be making too much a difference between ZIP code and postal code. To me, they are the same thing, they just happen to look a little different in different countries, but they serve exactly the same purpose. The words might be compared with truck and lorry. One is a US term and it has the wheel on the left, the other is a UK thing and has the wheel on the right. Still they are regarded as synonyms, and the British call happily the trucks lorries and vice versa. ZIP code and postal code should also be regarded as synonyms, IMHO. Take a look at postal code, if you have not checked it earlier. Hekaheka 06:38, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

Each English-speaking country has its own formal name for its own system of postal codes, popularly referred to in each county with some combination of the morphemes "post" and "code" with or without a hyphen or a space and with or without capitalization, or, as in the US, using some other morpheme(s) with or without one of the others. The formal name has some influence over the popular name (ZIP Code => zip code => zip). "Postal code" and "post code" seem to be the most readily understood generic terms. In the US many people use one of the three terms for the local codes to refer to any postal code for any destination. The analogous would be true anywhere.

An analogy is use of the terms "state", "province", and "shire" in the larger countries of the English-speaking world. (What about the islands and African countries?). "State" is not a synonym for "shire".

A dictionary is in the business of teasing out these kinds of distinctions. Failing to do so leads to the missing senses that make our definitions of common words incomplete if done from scratch or antiquated if still relying on the old Webster 1913 entries. I would further argue that failure to pay attention to detail will make us look amateur. DCDuring TALK 11:18, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

Latin etymons

The policy stated at Wiktionary:About Latin is that Latin verbs should be cited in the present active indicative, first singular, not PA infinitive. I realize this can be a bit tricky, as a lot of sources only list the infinitive. I don't have access to the correct form for lapidate, but I should be able to find it later today. We may want to create a template so that people can request fixes for such things if they can't find them themselves. Atelaes 21:39, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

All right, all right. I was being lazy using what was already there. lapido (“I throw stones at”) it is, then. BTW, what do you do about entering accented characters and Greek characters conveniently in etymologies when one must switch among alphabets? DCDuring TALK 21:50, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

The easiest thing is to get a Greek keyboard. I am rather fortunate in that Vista comes with a lot of good ones, including a nice polytonic one. There are also ones that you can download, but the one I used before I got Vista is no longer free, so I don't know what to tell on that. Barring that, the edittools should contain all the characters you need to write any grc word. It is a bit cumbersome, admittedly, but it works. Also, two minor things: EP doesn't want the gloss to use "I", as in "I throw stones". The I is present in the Latin entry itself, but for the glosses should not be used. However, I would prefer to have it in the glosses of grc words. It's really not a huge deal either way, but there you have it. Finally, please try and include macrons when you can. Again a lot of sources don't have them, so a word without macrons is definitely better than no word at all. I've modified lapidate accordingly. Atelaes 23:37, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

Thanks and a note

Hey thanks for blocking User:HotTea. That was fast. As a note, when adding {{etyl}} to non-English entries make sure to use the second language parameter. That way they get don't get incorrectly categorized. Cheers, --Bequw → ¢ • τ 21:12, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

It was my first block and I botched a rollback. I hope I did a good-enough job and don't get retribution.

I'm still confused on the etyl point. Why is the second parameter important? What current software gets confused? Is it for the future? It seems very strange that we have an entire chain of etys and it is all suppose to point to en. Or does this relate the problem that the guy is having with swedish etymology for bus? DCDuring TALK 22:37, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

For example, take the category [[:Category:Ancient Greek derivations]]. All English words that come from grc should get put in there. However, this category is only for English words which comes from grc. If a Latin word comes from grc, it goes in [[:Category:la:Ancient Greek derivations]]. So, if you wrote the etymology for a Latin word and included <nowiki>{{etyl|grc}}, it would go in [[:Category:Ancient Greek derivations]] (which is wrong, as that category is only for English words). So, you put <nowiki>{{etyl|grc|la}}, and the word is put in [[:Category:la:Ancient Greek derivations]]. I apologize if I'm being overly didactic here. Atelaes 05:49, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

Long etymologies

As you may have noticed, I am very concerned about the amount of space taken by items that appear above the definitions. Although etymologies rarely are offenders, rarely taking up as much space as pronunciations, there may be entries where there is a long etymology. The notorious example is serendipity, but we may get ambitious with citations and etymologies of different senses. How do you think such a thing should be handled? Would the {{rel-top|}} family of templates work? I view this as a practice case, like alternative spellings (resolvable by placing the alternatives on a horizontal, rather than a vertical, list). The more important spsce consumers are the ToC and Pronunciation. ToC would require a more technical solution if folks come to agree with my assessment of the usable-content-on-first-screen issue. A solution that worked for the few long etymologies might work for Pronunciation. DCDuring TALK 19:20, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

The problem is a pickle, no doubt about it. I have had a couple thoughts on this, but I feel fairly confident that the community would reject them out of hand. Firstly (and this is something I intend to pursue in time, but not now), I believe that entries should have an option for an "In Depth" subpage. One of the things I would like to see happen to Wiktionary is its development into a serious linguistics tool, as I feel that it has a capability to do this better than anything else I've seen. Many words could have a very concise ten page essay (at least) written about them, were they given to the properly knowledgeable person. At the same time I would like to see Wiktionary remain a usable dictionary. An encyclopedic type subpage seems the ideal means of coexistence. However, we are not really at the point where writing such pages is really feasible. Secondly, I am anxiously waiting the arrival of new software which is under development (although it is stalled at the current moment). Writing a dictionary using encyclopedia software is cumbersome at best. My hope is that, in the future, we will have easy-to-use interfaces, where users can choose what they do and do not see. A half-measure towards this goal would be to put everything (except POS line) in hidden boxes. EncycloPetey thinks that such a route would confuse many of our users and casual editors. I guess I have less concern and compassion for the inept than he (call me heartless if you will). A half step towards this half step (which might possibly be accepted by the community) is to have really long etymologies (such as serendepity) be enclosed in hidden boxes. Sorry to have ranted on for so long. Ultimately, I have little in the way of useful answers to your question. Atelaes 05:22, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

Horizontalization, {{rel)) templates, other namespaces, and new software. That's the list, isn't it?. I had noted that changing the order, moving etys after the group of common-derivation PoSs was considered and rejected. The first two are implementable now, if needed, but etymology has always been at its practical maximuum for etymologies. Citation namespace could work for serendipity. Ety namespace is long-term. The software is our great hope. Who is writing the software? Is there any discussion of features available anywhere?

Your "rant" is useful for me to check my own judgment and perceptions, which are quite similar to yours in this area. Thanks. DCDuring TALK 09:59, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

get and associated phrasals

If you could point me to the list, I will take a look. Get phrases are particularly messy, as we all know. It is on my do list, but I keep shunting it lower down. It is a daunting task, not made any easier by the potential for controversy! -- Algrif 13:09, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

Re: new user messages

There is no clear answer, I certainly vary widely. If the users first few edits are blatant vandalism I head straight to the "indef block" button - there is no point in trying to educate such users. If their first edits show that they are completely clueless when it comes to wikiing I try and leave a personalised welcome message that explains why what they did in particular was wrong, and gives them the links from the welcome template in some more friendly prose. If they clearly know what they are doing, and they make a mistake I will normally add a line saying "please look at [page]" which explains why what you did was wrong and see the links below for more information, and then add a welcome (or pediawelcome) template below. For registered users a response is almost always required as they tend to stick around, the opposite is true of IP addresses as they often won't come back - though again judgement is needed. If an IP adds offensive or personally identifiable information I block them for a day, if it is just stupidity I silently rollback on the first edit and block on the second (if there is a second). For an IP who is clearly trying to be helpful but making a complete pigs ear over Wiktionary syntax I normally put a {welcomeip} template on their page and hope they read some of it, and then if the problem persists warn them more clearly or block them, depending on the situation. I hope this is of some help to you, it is certainly interesting for me to write out - as I just did it without really thinking before. Yours Conrad.Irwin 23:38, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

I'm thinking in terms of a self-taught apprenticeship sequence for giving folks (like me) exposure: a chance to both see what is coming in and to learn how to help. That might make it possible for veterans to work on training, documentation, managing hard cases and crises, tool creation or selection, etc. In a security-related field like this it must be important that some things not be disclosed very widely and preferably not written down. I am not tempermentally inclined to being a policeman, nor am I very technical. My motivation is good citizenship, curiosity, and a desire to be able to participate more knowledgably in documentations development for new users and in "policy" discussions.

The new user log is the best place to look that I am aware of.

Is it possible for an admin to monitor the input of a group of users (probably mostly new, non-admins, non-whitelisted) to look for problems or "teaching opportunities"? Does this risk looking like stalking? Is it more productive to monitor IP addresses or ranges with a mix of good and bad users? Whom else should I bother with such questions at my current state of ignorance? (I do hope to remain on speaking terms with CM!) DCDuring TALK 00:01, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

The only real way of doing that is to keep an eye on Recent Changes, I wrote some things down (at Connel's behest) on the end of Help:Patrolled edits which should hopefully be helpful, but to be honest it is much better learned while you are doing it. (Also, if you don't mind chatting with others listening, the IRC channel tends to have a frequent patroller or two online at most times.) In terms of what is most productive, there are lots more IPs than new users, however they don't stick around and so spending too long writing a message is counter-productive - the new users, when you find them, are definitely worth keeping sweet. From my experience they like to be told how they can do things better, though they don't like to be told that they are doing things wrong - so phrasing comments is tricky. In terms of talking to other people, User:Connel MacKenzie and User:SemperBlotto do about 80-90% of all patrolling, so ask one of them; though I would advise patrolling for a bit first so that you can understand their, often extreme sounding, point of view. Conrad.Irwin 15:31, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

re: plurals of bunkum

I stand corrected. Thank you. Rossami 01:15, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

huh?

this and this ?? Robert Ullmann 15:18, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

I seem to have a misunderstanding about how roll-back works. I thought it would be possible to roll-back multiple edits and mark as patrolled all at once. Is Mutante an admin? Does that make a difference? DCDuring TALK 15:21, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

Rollback undoes all the contributions by the last user who edited the page, so if Mutante got there before you then clicking rollback on him will only undo his fixes, not the vandalism too. Yes he is an admin though a fairly new one. Conrad.Irwin 15:35, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

Learning by making mistakes instead of readng the documentation. Thanks. DCDuring TALK 15:36, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

Re:Categories and Inflection Templates

Thanks for the advice! I'm still relatively new to Wiktionary although I have edited on Wikipedia for years now. I was aware there were inflection templates that standardise the information on the entry, such as category and whether the noun is countable or not, but I do not know where to find them. Is there a page on Wikt that lists all of these templates, both in English and for other languages. Thank you for your help. DaGizza 21:49, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

Your question illustrates a problem that we have. You are an experienced WP editor. Why should this be hard to find? First, I hope that you noted that the templates are at the bottom of your edit window, in the default user skin. For documentation, go to: Wiktionary:English_inflection_templates. For the templates themselves go to [[:Category:English_inflection_templates]] If you look at "what links here", you will note that there are hardly any pages that point to it. The inflection templates are not all that powerful, but do give us some standardization of appearance, while preserving flexibility. For each template, if there is documentation, it is on the talk page. The edit window shows the wikicode, or whatever it's called. You might give some thought to what your fellow veteran WPedians would most want/need to know. You could put a bunch of links that you find useful in adjusting to what's different here and perhaps we could make those links available to WPedians coming here in some kind of improvement of the registration procedure or redesigned help. I don't have my own set of links working yet because I've already learned most of the things that I do on a daily basis. I just stumble around, make mistakes, and bother people when it's something new. But selected links would help in the process. DCDuring TALK 23:41, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

no, thank you (re: chugger)

thank you man - its so cool when someone bothers to comment like that - you probably guessed, i'm a street-fundraiser myself and find the word chugger personally offensive - i'm not a criminal, everyone who donates through us does so willingly and are glad they did so. they feel a lot better about themselves, i suspect, than the self-opinionated, anonymous clown that put the previous entry up.

i do believe we could raise more funds however, were we to be given guns - have suggested it to my bosses.

thanks again buddy - stay in touch

--Kylemew 13:22, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

winnow

The OED has multiple citations of transitive use in this sense. --EncycloPetey 23:42, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

Do you have a usage example? Is that still a current usage? I can't make that sense match any in my MW3. Teasing apart all these senses can be difficult. I often find what look like virtual duplicates, sometimes a sense from 1913 that seems to be duplicated by something in more modern wording. DCDuring TALK 23:51, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

I have the original OED, and thus the latest clear citation I have is from Shelley's Prometheus Unbound (1820):

"...hear I not
The Æolian music of her sea-green plumes
Winnowing the crimson dawn?

--EncycloPetey 02:27, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

But that could be, for example, senses 3 or 4 more readily than the RfV sense, no? DCDuring TALK 02:32, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

No. In senses 3 and object is being sifted in the wind by means of a fan. In sense 4 the object is being blown. In the quote from Shelley, the dawn is neither being sifted with a fan, nor is it being blown. There is merely a wving to and fro. --EncycloPetey 02:43, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

zygodactylæ

Botany ? --EncycloPetey 02:23, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

Now that you mention it, probably not. That what happens when you have quantitative objectives. DCDuring TALK 02:26, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

gimp

I can't help you with your specific questions, but in looking at the entry and at b.g.c. a thought came to me about the etymology of the well-cited sense of "gumption" or "guts". It didn't seem to fit with the etymology it now has. I think it connects to the reinforced silk thread sense. You must have noted all the angling usage of "gimp". Apparently the wire reinforcement was used to protect the silk thread from the bite of fish, especially pike, which seem to have especially sharp teeth. The notion of toughness seems to fit well in timing and sense to the "gumption" sense. I took the liberty of inserting the angling sense beneath the thread for clothing sense. DCDuring TALK 00:16, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

Interesting. Your thoughts about the origin of the "gumption" sense make sense, however, I would doubt if it's little more than a theory... do you have any references? Obviously, the way English works, some coastal folks likely felt the influence of the fishing wire metaphor when they comprehended the "vigor" sense of gimp, while other non-anglers perceived no connection. In truth, I feel it probably has a stronger etymological connection with the word "gumption" itself, as a shortening thereof. But that's just a theory, like yours. Considering the fluid nature of language, especially colloquial English, making one conclusion about the origin of a word is often erroneous, because another explanation may have had equal influence on the word, which new word in turn influenced its source and on and on in all directions. It's truly "chicken bofore the egg", and I wish we had a better way of getting that across. -- Thisis0 17:22, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

They were fresh-water fish they were talking about, especially pike, which have sharp teeth and long snouts that generate lots of force when they thrash about. And it seems to be in The Complete Angler. I was surprised at how many scanned fishing books had a discussion of this usage, more books even than the clothing usage. Gimp was also being used, partially for its toughness, in making fairly durable, yet delicate looking decorations of clothing, drapery, and, possiblt, upholstery. "Gimp nails" (used by upholsterers) are a related usage. Since we can't rely on our own original research, we can only use such "research" to inform our assessment of secondary sources. I just had a hard time buying the placement of the "gumption" sense of "gimp" under the etymology where I found it. A separate ety would be better. On a more directly useful front, I found one citation of gimpy in the sense of lame, limping that puts it back before the Online Ety Dict date of 1925/7. Jacob Riis, the US muckraker published Children of the Streets in 1902? and referred therein to "Gimpy" as the appropriate nickname of a particular limping street urchin. DCDuring TALK 17:42, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

Nice work on gimp. I'm still not sure that I understand what gimped leather or lead would look like. Too bad they didn't have more illustrations specific to that point. What do you think? When the cite says "gimped or serrated", are they intended to be synonyms or alternatives (near or distant)?

Also, don't you think that the gimp verb senses 2 and 3 are more closely related to Etymology 1. It seems so to me, but you now have the best informed judgment onf the subject. Do you have any thoughts about the sequence of etymologies? DCDuring TALK 00:46, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I think at least those two verb senses do not correctly fall under the "US slang 1920's, limp" etymology. However, I couldn't tell you under which they fall. It seems they originated with a regional dialect and I am unsure that they aren't pronounced jimp, jimped!! At least it's certain that many of those senses were at one time, or in one place, indeed pronounced with a soft G. I do feel the sense of gimp "to wrap, wind, with wire" is that which likely influenced the "gumption" noun sense. And the rare dialectical "to notch, to dent" sense possibly may have more directly influenced the common "cripple" sense, via the adjective gimped meaning "jagged, dented, damaged". There are still more uses of this word that are elusive, and more research seems to uncover even more. And, pronunciation concerns remain, as well as interpreting the senses precisely. Anyway, here is a fairly good illustration of the gimped lead ribbon, kind of like corrugated cardboard, rolled up and inserted in the cylinders, for whatever exciting new electrical purpose it served in a plethora of 1906-1908 citations. -- Thisis0 03:29, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

Re: How can I help?

Hi, I replied to your comment on my talk page, I normally don't but now it is such an unreadable mess I think I am going to have to get into that habit... Conrad.Irwin 21:03, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

You might be interested in a paper by Adam Kilgarriff about choosing good examples sentences.--Brett 15:10, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for thinking of me. I will give it a read. I was looking at the Ogden Basic English site and rated the no-context senses of head. Ugh. some 25 words, ~8-10% outside the word list, including some I would never have expected. We probably need a 20,000 word corpus to give us a chance to make improvements without losing contributors. Or we need a cadre of simplfiers. I'm probably not one of them, but I might be able to learn. DCDuring TALK 16:03, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

User/DCDuring/Useful

(Move log); 08:03:09 . . Mutante (Talk | contribs | block) (User/DCDuring/Useful moved to User:DCDuring/Useful: move out of main namespace, i guess was just typo / instead of : --> User:DCDuring/Useful )

Mutante 07:25, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

[[bustle with]]

This entry was deleted. I have restored it because it is not customary to delete an item under active discussion. If you do not believe that the entry is truly a phrasal verb or in some other way meets WT:CFI, then it probably should be deleted, perhaps going through RfD. DCDuring TALK 22:29, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

Who deleted it? I didn't. In that thread, I did recommend it's deletion once the ergative sense was properly added to (deprecated template usage) bustle, but I also wouldn't have deleted it until active discussion had long ceased. -- Thisis0 22:35, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

Paul G must have thought he should. It appears in the Cambridge dictionary of phrasal verbs, so I wouldn't recommend deletion until our phrasal verb advocate (whose name escapes me at the moment) takes a look.

when he's at home

Also consder the following citation:

• 1998, Robert Jordan, The Path of Daggers, page 533

  “Who might you be when you're at home?” Rand said lazily. “Whoever you are, didn't anyone ever teach you to knock?”

Because almost any pronoun goes into that slot we would make the entry at "when one is at home", even though nobody would ever use that particular form of the phrase. If we have each pronoun in a usage example the search engine is sure to find it after the next indexing. Even if we don't the search engine will almost certainly find it. DCDuring TALK 22:48, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

This is a case where I would fight for actual value of an entry over some rigid format. The rules can't apply to everything everytime because of the nature of English, and this seems to be one case where the phrase is set pretty solid so that it has a certain cadence when spoken. It just feels wrong as "when one is at home" or "when one's at home" (Because the un-contracted form surely does not even exist!) I don't think there's an appropriate way to get this to toe the line on Wiktionary's central set of formatting rules. If we dare to define and include phrases like this, let's at least do them justice. -- Thisis0 23:01, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

The rules on this point aren't very settled. You should search for discussions of phrasal forms and idioms and their inflected forms to get a feel for the discussion I think it's in current WT:BP. I focus on whether someone searching for the term would find it. Others have standards of completeness. Others believe that the entries can't be readily maintained. Still others dislike the appearance of redlinks. User:Algrif has an interest in phrasal verbs. They seem to be hard for learners, witness the specialized dictionaries for idioms and phrasal verbs. (What PoS was "witness" just there?) I'm trying to take the stance that we need to make more of our entry decisions from the point of view of a mythical "normal" user, that is a non-contributor, possibly who will never be a contributor. I'm not sure whether that has much bearing on either "bustle with" or "when X Y at home" (where X is a pronoun and Y an appropriate form of "to be"). DCDuring TALK 23:52, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

witness was a verb in the imperative mood.

As far as "when X Y at home", I don't feel it comes in any more variations. Always "when he/she/it's at home." Always contracted, always present tense. -- Thisis0 02:01, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

Consider the following counterexample:

• 2001, Gale Zoe Garnett, Visible Amazement, page 105

  What, I wondered, was "a tongues meeting" when it was at home?

On my page is a quote in the "you" form. Do not underestimate the power of speakers and authors to inflect complex phrases. DCDuring TALK

Ah. Excuse me a moment, I gotta get this egg off my face. And there seems to be some sort of foot in my mouth. I will endeavor to nevermore underestimate the infinite variety of language users, especially regarding phrases I just learned. Ok, then. How do we make when he's at home all-inclusive without making it look totally retarded. -- Thisis0 16:01, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

I prefer my eggs scrambled with spinach and cheddar. I'm happy to find someone who is having the same kind of experiences I was having a couple of months ago with this kind of thing. Now I usually get my egg elsewhere. The "counterexamples" are certainly relatively rare forms, but I don't think that our entries should imply logical prohibitions where only empirical scarcity is what is occuring.

The checking for alternate forms thing can be fun, but it does lead to the problem that we can show that many expressions have 2 or 3 components that may inflect, which leads to an explosion of possible entries. Perhaps we should revisit the "one's" formulation and/or just put a variety of forms in quotes in the most common (probably "it's") or both or 3 including "he's". Usage notes can be a way of putting any apparent limits or common usage practices (contractions, for example, though maybe that just results from it often being used in colloquial and informal speech). This is a UK expression, it seems. Don't know about elsewhere in the former Empire.

As to linguistic creativity, it would be interesting to see whether anyone has tried to use the construction with a substitute for "house" ("in bed", "in his house", "with his kids", "with his wife") or for "when" ("while", "if"). Were it common, it would actually weaken the claim of the expression to be an idiom and, hence, includable under WT:CFI, though not likely to actually disqualify it. DCDuring TALK 17:14, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

People are constantly massacring colloquial expressions. There are plenty of websites devoted entirely to that phenomenon. Surely, someone has and will massacre this one as well, but do those isolated and erroneous examples force us to put forth an indirect, confusing entry? I think in this case the entry should be titled with the most easily comprehendable title, i.e. the most common form. Why can't any and all variations be listed in Usage Notes at that entry rather than being forced to invent a never-spoken all-inclusive form? -- Thisis0 17:53, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

Well, the argument might be that we need some "lemma" form. The important things from my perspective for inflectable idiomatic phrases are that the entry:

1. be locatable (once indexed), appearing on the first page of the search results, by any plausible correctly typed variant of the phrase;
2. be recognizable once presented to the user as a version of the phrase entered; and
3. indicate the range of utilization.

Using "one" in the lemma form meets these needs, though could challenge some of our users on recognizability. Including only one of the pronouns doesn't meet the third requirement very well, even with a usage note, because (IMHO) users often do not read usage notes. Some of the means that folks use include redirects that show the form typed while taking the user to the lemma form entry. Though users do not have much trouble typing in lemma forms for words (singular, a present form for a verb, non-comparative for adj.), phrases seem to give them more trouble. (They also don't seem to want to transform transform participles to verbs, possibly because they use them as nouns or adjectives.)

We are also a little sloppy about attestation of such phrases. One (!) could argue that each inflected form should meet our attestation standards. (Don't laugh.) There is some mention of easing that requirement, especially for idioms.

IOW, I wouldn't fight any of "one", "it", "he", or "she". Nor would I insist on recognition of the past tense, though it might merit a mention in the usage notes. The entries would need to be appear on each other's "related terms" lists if they were separate. There is also the possibility of an "alternate forms" section without entries for some of the forms. DCDuring TALK 18:44, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

Dude, I'm finding a lot more in the form "when it was at home"... sheesh. -- Thisis0 07:21, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

Incomplete reversion

When you made this reversion [2], you missed previous edits by the same vandal. Another editor had made changes in the midst of the vandalism, so the reversion only went back to that anon editors additions, and did not remove all the vandalism. --EncycloPetey 03:52, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

Stutz Bearcat:Citations

Um, Citations:Stutz Bearcat ? Robert Ullmann 15:26, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

Duh. Thanks. DCDuring TALK 15:29, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

Not counted

Um, how did you manage to randomize the whole list? (;-) Robert Ullmann 16:08, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

I did nothing out of the ordinary. I deleted a few and saved. I don't recollect after which of those saves the order was lost. I haven't noticed any change in the items at the head of the list after the last saves. From my POV, it makes little difference since I couldn't figure out any way that raw alpha order could speed up the process. I look forward to the shortening of the list when you next do your run on the XML dump. If you can sort it that would be nice, but the loss of order would be frustrating if we don't know how to keep it from recurring and invest effort in making some order. DCDuring TALK 16:17, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

this edit dropped the header and essentially randomized the rest. (?) the order doesn't matter except that it collects all the Japanese, Korean, etc together for someone working on those. I'm going to improve the program a bit. Robert Ullmann 16:22, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

I wish I could see what I was trying to delete at the time. I must have inadvertently highlighted just the header (I have a touchpad which facilitates such errors) and had the header off the screen so I didn't notice it. I don't intentionally highlight disconnected text and I didn't delete the first content entry. Sorry to make work. At least the list has been worked down a bit. Plenty of entries need the bracket-inside-the-template trick (which works for plural, verb inflection, alt spelling). Multi-word entries benefit from the inf=, pos=, or sg= trick. Synonyms often work. Misspellings need the most creativity. Is it intentional that the brackets-inside-the-template trick doesn't work for them and for the suffix and prefix templates ? DCDuring TALK 16:36, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

Misspellings aren't really "supposed" to be counted, so the brackets trick isn't there. In almost all cases, the thing that is needed is wikilinking some word in the definition itself. Robert Ullmann 15:52, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

Do note that I had the program read and reformat the list, not re-read the XML, so your previous deletions are still gone ;-) Robert Ullmann 15:41, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

Thank you. It's lovely. I take it that a horizontal TOC doesn't work for this. How often do the XML dumps happen?

About once a month; they only take an hour, but are in a rotating queue with en.wp and other monstrosities; there are 3 threads, but at any given time all 3 are working on some large pedia. Repeated pleas to Brion to restrict one thread to smaller projects have gone nowhere :-( Robert Ullmann 15:52, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

I'm re-running the list now as we got a new XML yesterday; you'll need to re-do the strikeouts from the last few minutes ... (see how much smaller it gets? It grew the first time I re-ran it ;-( Robert Ullmann 17:57, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for letting me know. Well worth doing, though. Abbreviations and proper nouns are very big contributors. I wonder if adding some reminder to new-entry templaes or a warning on saving would help. I've gotten interested in getting more translingual-derived Latin entries (botany, zoology). Do we need any cooperation from Wikispecies to get an XML dump from them? What I am thinking of is using the words they use as a source of entries. Also the entries with English vernacular names would be useful (via transwiki) for English entries, the initial definition of which could be the species name. Together with WP and WSp links and any photos they had, it would make a respectable entry. I'm not sure that it is a good idea to import all of their two-part names, partially because it might piss them off. I would also like to make sure that all of our taxonomic name entries have links to them. And also that all of our existing animal and plant (also mold, virus, fungus) entries have links to them. It beats the hell out of all those redlinks under the genus names as "Derived terms". Thoughts? DCDuring TALK 18:14, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Species is dumped like all the other projects: [3] presently 11 MB compressed, so not hard to deal with. A spork-bot is a fine idea. Lots of details. (not sure about the transwiki process itself, are there entries we want to copy or just information to steal?) Images? Ah good, they always upload to commons! Panthera leo, Species:Panthera leo ... interesting idea. Robert Ullmann 18:30, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. Their format is built around the taxonomic hierarchy at present, with some vernacular names and some pictures. For one-word entries we would want the next higher and lower taxons and any vernacular names in languages we support and links to pictures and wikipedia. For two-part names, I think we want the vernacular name (to be our entry name) and the two-part name to be our definition as well as the other info. We would also want a list of all of the second words in the two-part names, which are fairly useful New Latin entries. We might want to limit ourselves to those that are used in more than 1 or 2 two-part names to avoid being overrun with New Latin names that are the adjectival form of not-so-well known naturalists.

Honestly I think WikiSpecies plays an icredibly useful role in collecting and organizing txonomic information and that we should utilize as much as possible of what they have done and will be doing. How do you think we should play nice with them? I thought that the links to WikiSpecies may draw people to their wiki. Is there someplace where we could express our appreciation for what they have produced that we have used? They also might like any work that we can do in providing vernacular names, especially multiple ones.

What is a spork-bot? What's good software to decompress the bz2 files? Is this kind of thing that I could use my own PC to create files to upload? What format does a file have to have for efficient importing of new entries? I assume that importing would not overwrite an existing entry and that I could get a file of both successful and unsuccessful imports. If I am just adding material to an entry, is there a way to automate that? DCDuring TALK 20:44, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

RfD of em (proper noun sense)

On [[29 December]] you marked the proper noun sense of em for deletion, and copied the content to Em.

You apparently didn't list it at RfD though. I've just done this, so you may wish to view and comment at Wiktionary:Requests for deletion#em. Thryduulf 13:20, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

many

I always learned that it was many - more - most but now it went from many - more many - most many to an eradication of more and many? LOL...

I suppose Dutch schools will have to alter their books. Jcwf 02:32, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

I'd like to think it was a result of carelessness or errant habits. It could also have been a kind of "subtle" vandalism. DCDuring TALK 02:36, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

It is a result of the way the en-adj template is put together. You cannot use more and most in it because it triggers the repetition of the 'many' bit. Maybe not use the template at all and write it out in full?

Jcwf 02:40, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

The earlier verision had used the template, but the contributor had manually typed in the comparative and superlative forms into the template. The template has a switch to show "non-comparable". That would seem to be the easy way. DCDuring TALK 02:48, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

there is more more on more..

Jcwf 02:57, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

I had missed the point due to native-speaker blindness. I just use the words without thinking of them as comparative and superlative. In any event, I have use a simple kludge to allow use of the en-adj template. Brackets sometimes defeat bad behavior and did in this case. DCDuring TALK 03:01, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

Lol, isn't language fun?

Jcwf 03:03, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

Thanks a lot for picking up on the problem. I've got to make changes on more and most and check on much DCDuring TALK 03:09, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

fyi

Fixed invalid title. --Connel MacKenzie 03:46, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

Template:see

I thought the template was always supposed to be placed at the very top of an entry, before all other wikicode. Did a discussion change that? --EncycloPetey 13:01, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

I hadn't seen anything mandatory, but I hadn't looked at individual votes. I usually figure that if something hasn't made it to the main documentation about entry layout it couldn't be mandatory. I specifically looked at ELE to find something about it. With the often-overlong TOC and user habits often directed below the TOC (IMHO), I fear that top of the entry is not very useful for cases of non-orthographic English-language confusions. If the template can't be used in a way that I understand, I will of course stop using it. DCDuring TALK 15:39, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

There have been sporadic discussions, but no votes AFAIK. Basically the rationale is that {{see}} is intended only for language-neutral use, and any non-typographical see-alsos should be in a ===See also=== section. I have my own issues with this, though; there are definitely cases where a see-also link at the top of a language section would be very useful. -- Visviva 12:24, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

citizen of a state

I really must insist that this entry be deleted. The sense that the contributor is trying to put forward is a hoax. Cheers! bd2412 T 17:52, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

Inline links to Wikispecies

As it happens I created a template for this purpose some time ago, {{temp|spelink}}, which checks whether a term has a local entry and, iff it does not, links to Wikispecies instead. Of course there's no way for the template to check whether the Wisp entry exists, so that has to be done by hand. I stopped using {{temp|spelink}} a while back, as I had some qualms about whether it was appropriate to blue-ify links that arguably should be red (if you accept that we should in principle have local entries for all taxonomic names). Anyway, feel free to use or improve it. -- Visviva 12:21, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the template info. I will check it out. The species area is one of those for which I would argue that we should use the sister project. I would think that we could serve them by actually having all the scientific Latin etymologies, even exempting scientific latin used on their wiki from RfV and they would serve us by maintaining that hierarchy. We haven't even been doing our part of that and we are certainly far behind them in populating and maintaining the taxonomic hierarchy and nomenclature changes. I should think that:

1. all taxonomic entries should have the wikispecies sister project box.
2. all the two-part names that are embedded in any of our entries should automatically be linked to them
3. all one-part names or parts of names that are undefined by us should link to them
4. we should have periodic updates of those that do not have corresponding entries in their wiki for us to make entries
5. we should provide them with our list of taxonomic entires.
6. we should use their list of words used as a list for missing entries
7. we should extract from them all English "vernacular" names they have any other languages for which we have admin volunteer support.

I think that the taxonomic hierarchy has its own complexities, special structure, sources, etc. and is best handled by specialists. I'd be surprised if many of them had the patience to learn our procedures. Our RfV procedure is largely irrelevant for taxonomic names and would be counter-productive. As much of an inclusionist as I am, I am not a Wikitonary imperialist. I suppose I think that whichever WMF project can be most inclusive of entries of a given type should win our support for that area. If someone wanted to start a "Fictionary" for characters from fiction, drama, games, movies, radio shows, etc. then I would think we would encourage that. Similarly for place names, trademarks, product names, corporate entities etc. I really like Conrad.Irwin's recent initiative in this general direction. Some rant, eh? How do you recommend I procede? Convince our Latinists to get busy on defining taxonomic name elements? Changing RfV for taxonomics? Winning support of some techs? DCDuring TALK 13:38, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

WikiChemipedia

Hmmm, interesting, but then I am a chemist. ;-) Jcwf 152.1.38.46 18:39, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

I am not a chemist but have come to question some of the "all words in all languages" ambitions of Wiktionary. Scientific language has a number of special features: translingual, special structure, special graphics needs (esp. chemistry), special syntax/morphology; a normative, rather than descriptive approach; special sources of information, often open. I'm sure there are others. Although there are many species names and chemical names or abbreviations that Wiktionary should have, there are many, many more that we will never be able to enter and manintain. I am beginning to try to see whether we can work out some meaningful cooperation with Wikispecies, which seems to be struggling a bit, but has amassed a much, much more complete database than Wiktionary has of species names. WikiChemipedia or WiChemictionary (WiCheMixtunary?) is just a thought. It came to me only because of looking at hypo- and reading IUPAC's Principles of Chemical Nomenclature. I wonder whether there any folks at de.wikipedia or en.wikipedia that have seriously considered this.

In the meantime, I am looking through the IUPAC booklet for lists of basic chem words that are not yet in WT. DCDuring TALK 19:17, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

caroliniana

Trnaslingual? Yes it is used as an epithet in species names, and the species names are translingual, but it does not follow that the epithet alone is translingual. This is New Latin. --EncycloPetey 03:49, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

Yup. And it doesn't belong in the taxonomic anmes category either. DCDuring TALK 03:58, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

ironwood

I'm starting to think the best option might be to take the list at wp: and use it in a synonym box titled "species called ironwood", what do you think? My main annoyance is not at including any specific name, but including only one, which is at best misleading. Circeus 15:56, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

I thought you had a reason. I'm glad I've developed the AGF habit and (mostly) practice it.

I've just inserted the species list from WP under the Hyponyms heading, but that might not be correct, let alone appropriate for a work used by the general public (What's a hyponym, again?). Our headings shouldn't need to be linked! "See also"? I'm really open to suggestions and to looking at examples. I am trying to explore the role of Wiktionary relative to WikiSpecies and WP. In the areas of vernacular terms, etymology and definitions of the component terms, which ought to be our strength and contribution, we aren't holding up our end, IMHO. I'm beginning to wonder whether we should waste too much time on two-part species names as entries, instead using the two-part names as definitions with in-line links to wikispecies and wikipedia. Part of the problem is that there is a case for linking to 3 projects, internally to any WT entry, and externally to WSp and WP. A long three-link-pre-row table seems excessive, but might be useful. DCDuring TALK 16:12, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

pantherinus

You were missing a macron, but I added it. Also note two other changes I made: (1) It's easier for people to read the {{term}} syntax if lang=la is placed last, since that template really does need you to count the position of the arguments. (2) The Latin inflection tables will link words, but you need to incluse the macron-free stem before any macron-bearing one. I have made these changes, so you can see exactly what I mean. --EncycloPetey 22:53, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. I'm cutting my teeth on taxonomic names. I'm going to work over some of our entries before getting into wholesale importing from WikiSpecies. I'll probably need some consultation on that. There might be thousands of new entries, many of New Latin, but some from Pliny that we don't have, as well as whatever vernacular names they have that we don't but want. I think New Latin is highly regular so automatic entry creation should be feasible. Elsewhere, here, and here on this page are some of my thoughts on this, which I will soon consolidate in a subpage. I would welcome any thoughts, even negative ones, though contructive criticism is my favorite kind of criticism. OTOH, if there are any problems or likely opposition, I'd much rather hear about them now. Whom would you advise that I consult with? I have borrowed a copy of Stearn's Botanical Latin, which has very helpful lists (e.g., of suffixes and prefixes). I have more personal interest and knowledge in botany than in zoology, let alone microbiology, phycology, etc. DCDuring TALK 23:17, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

I'll help as much as I can. Harris Morgan has proven to be really good with Latin entries as well, so he might help at times when I'm not around, too busy, or just can't. It would be very exciting to move Latin up put 6000 entries (currently we have about 5760). Latin has long been bottom on the list of much-edited languages here, at least in terms of numbers of entries. HM and I (and a few others) have also been working to make the average Latin entry better than the average entry for most other languages and cleaning up early Latin contributions. --EncycloPetey 23:23, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

I'll consult with him too. He was high on my listlet of possibles. Thanks. Any animal, fish, insect, and plant entries are of high interest to me. I think I would like to have ideal models of entries of different kinds of entries: Translingual one-part names, Translingual two-part names (lower priority), New Latin words, pre-New Latin ancestors of Translingual names and New Latin words. Wikispecies now has 130,000k entries. We should be able to get. I'm sure that we could get many hundreds, even low thousands of New Latin adjectives, even excluding adjectives based on the names of naturalists. I'd like to make sure that the relationships among these are correct and can be done automagically. Separately, but somewhat relatedly, there may be importing of vernacular names linked to the two-part and some one-part taxonomic names.

A micro-cluster of such names: Betula, *Carpinus, *Carpinus caroliniana, *Carpinus betulus; *betula, *carpinus, *betulus, *carolinianus, *carolinus, *carolinensis; birch, hornbeam, American hornbeam, *European hornbeam, *musclewood, and ironwood. Entering two species and following up led to 11 new entries(*), 3 Translingual, 2 Classical Latin, 4 New Latin, 2 English and more meat and links on the 5 exisitng entries. Obviously the ratio of new words to new species entries would diminish as more of the adjectives and nouns had been encountered with previous entries. Even if we didn't enter the 2 two-part names, we would still have 9 new entries for the two species. Even a yield of 1 new word for each Wikispecies entry would be huge. Even getting a complete set of pre-New Latin animal, plant, insect, and fish names should yield hundreds of words, some of them root words. DCDuring TALK 00:00, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

One tidbit of guidance I can give: adjecitve forms ending in -us or -is are the lemma forms. Those ending in -a, -um, or -e are non-lemma. That will work for about 99% of the epithet adjectives you'll come across. --EncycloPetey 00:05, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Mauritian Creole

You were driving me nuts with edit conflicts! ;-). We have {{ethnologue|code=xxx}} which gives an ext link that is useful, and a convenient place to put the code. (one of the first things I invented on the wikt ;-) Robert Ullmann 15:32, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

So that's how it's done. Thanks. Sorry about the conflicts. I should have realized you'd be all over the Mauritius entry. DCDuring TALK 16:15, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

A great day in Classics at Wiktionary

I have finally unearthed my Liddel and Scott and my Bennet's Latin grammar. And I've ordered Botanical Latin. This should facilitate an improved level of my contribution to Latin, Greek and Translingual! Less tidyng for you. DCDuring TALK 20:36, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Cool. I recommend Langenscheidt's Latin-English / English-Latin Dictionary as well. It's very good and very cheap (about $10). →ISBN. I got mine at B&N. --EncycloPetey 20:39, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Let me second that "cool." We can always use some more classics folks at Wiktionary. Additionally, I don't know how much (if at all) I'll be contributing to Wiktionary for the next couple of months, as school is really catching up with me. So, any slack of mine that you can pick up will be greatly appreciated. Also, let me clue you in to a little trick of mine with Ancient Greek. I bought a copy of Liddell Scott from the late 1800's a while back. The beautiful thing is that it's out of copyright, and so can be copied wholesale. The entries are then developed and updated with newer sources (such as the latest edition of LSJ). While this often amounts to the same thing as copying straight out of the new LSJ (they really haven't done all that much updating), the fact is that it's not. :) While I can't give you my old LSJ, you can get it online at [4]. Also, while I probably won't be contributing much for awhile, I will be around, so any questions you might have I'm more than happy to hear. -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 04:47, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

I'm glad you share my joy. It was like a reunion with an old friend, much better than buying a replacement. I'm also interested in using the WikiSpecies XML dump to get a large number of Translingual words, some of which will have corresponding Classical Latin entries and virtually all of which will have Classical etymologies, Almost always Latin, sometimes Classical Greek as well. I've got to work on my tech skills a bit for that project. I hope to make some progress soon. DCDuring TALK 11:22, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

My local library has a copy of Botanical Latin (for reference only) - I had a look through it a few weeks ago, and it seems very good. SemperBlotto 11:25, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

I still have my library's copy, but the convenience factor finally bacame overwhelming. I'm hoping that it is a good model for most of the practices of the other scientific fields' uses of New Latin. WikiSpecies has 130K+ entries, perhaps 1.5 headwords per entry. After omitting all the species name components that are derived from the names of lesser known scientists, perhaps we'd be back down to 1. I don't have a good estimate of duplication, but it must be very high and is likely to increase over time. It would still seem likely that we could obtain many thousands of pairs of entries (Translingual and Latin). In addition there would be vernacular names (starting with English), which many of the species- and genus-level entries have. Also probably thousands of entries. Adnittedly many of the higher order names are mere suffix-enhancements or variant forms of the species and genus names, but I'd be surprised if this source didn't add 5-10% to our entry count. Much of it could be automated. DCDuring TALK 11:56, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

Extracting and ranking page titles is a task simple enough that it can be done in Excel (using the page-titles dump and splitting fields by spaces). Not that I would ever suggest that anyone do something so blasphemous. Vernacular names are another matter, of course; for that you would need the actual XML dump. Anyway, congrats on the book finds/acquisitions; good luck! -- Visviva 12:52, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

Thanks to all. Amazing how a small thing can bring joy, far beyond the monetary value. Unfortunately, it is also positive feedback for my packrat tendencies, which need no further encouragement. Au contraire. DCDuring TALK 15:34, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

palus

When you give an etymology for a Latin word that comes from another Latin word, you shouldn't include an {{etyl}} tag, just as we don't for English words that come from other English words. --EncycloPetey 15:58, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

tardigrade

The second "Adjective" sense you added is merely attributive use of the noun. This is a standard phenomenon in English, and we do not create a separate definition for it. So, we wouldn't call refrigerator an adjective just because of "refrigerator magnet" or call dog an adjective because of "dog collar". Almost any English noun can be used to modify another noun, and this is called the attributive use of a noun. --EncycloPetey 16:10, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

sore throat

What is the difference between these senses?—msh210℠ 17:39, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

cause and effect DCDuring TALK 17:41, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

I'm not following. The first sense is "an inflammation" and the second is "a symptom", by which I assume you mean "a particular symptom" (not any symptom), viz inflammation. So they're the same. No?—msh210℠ 17:43, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

How about #(pathology) An inflammation of the pharynx that causes soreness: a common symptom for many viral and bacterial infections.?—msh210℠ 17:55, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

The ordinary-speech sense is ordinary, not medical, so we should have one that is ordinary. Your medical sense is definitely an improvement over mine. DCDuring TALK 18:02, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

Ah, I was confused, then. I thought that medical professionals use the word the same way the rest of us do: to mean "an inflammation of the pharynx that..." (what I wrote, just above). If they use it that way, and the rest of us (except me, apparently) use it differently, then I stand corrected, and apologize for wasting your time with this.—msh210℠ 18:08, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

I'm sorry that I was a litte short with you. It's almost a philosophical point. Ordinary experience is not a fuzzy version of scientific or professional experience. They are two realms. I don't think that the ordinary-language version of "sore throat" is worth an encyclopedia article (although an anthropologist might find cross-cultural experience of disease worthwhile), but in Wiktionary it is worth not forcing it into the mold of our current understanding of medicine or pathology. DCDuring TALK 18:23, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

(No offense taken; and I hope I didn't offend.) I (finally) get what you're saying, and agree. I'm modifying the entry a bit; please feel free to revert or emend.—msh210℠ 18:29, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

Not to worry. Sometimes it takes an interaction like this for me to clarify my own thinking. I was leaning this way for a few years before coming to WT, but my WT experienced has convinced me of the importance of respecting the separation of realms and the independence and value of ordinary experience. You can see many instances of folks becoming upset because the world fails to conform to their model. See the history and discussion about stakeholder for a recent example. DCDuring TALK 18:39, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

go

If you found cites you feel distinguish sense 1 from the two removed ones, by all means restore. I looked around a bit and thought about it a bit and then cheated and looked at a few other dictionaries, the consensus is that there is no distinct sense for the two which I removed. There are tons of missing senses still, but they will come with time. I personally think the two removed senses are sub-senses of the first sense, but I don't own that particular page, so you can do as you like ;) - [The]DaveRoss 00:31, 11 March 2008 (UTC)