I've found a short 1898 study by Émil Goeldi on the etymology of this name. [1] It's in Portuguese, but it says that the name comes from the Arruan matá, meaning "skin", with the repetition (matá matá) giving the idea of "full of skin" or "flabby". This is the only reference I've found on this etymology, with others going back to this one (or saing it's Tupi, with no evidence).
The problem, though, is the name Arruan. Not only it's the sole reference to the etymology, but also to this people and their language. The book Guia histórico Amazônia exótica rewrote it as Aruan[2] and I also tried arruã and aruã, but couldn't find anything, at least on the internet. Perhaps they were refering to the Aruás? Trooper57 (talk) 00:33, 2 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The etym. on this page plainly states that this word is a combination of two words, "bug" and "man". The "man" makes sense, but where does the "bug" come from? — This unsigned comment was added by CitationsFreak (talk • contribs) at 01:57, 7 April 2023 (UTC).[reply]
@CitationsFreak, I don't know the word or its origin, but two possibilities come to mind. 1) The (possibly archaic?) noun sense "a self-important person", as in big bug, or B), the verb sense "bother, annoy", as in don't bug me. I have no strong argument for either option, though.
1886 July 8, “The General Election”, in The Pall Mall Budget, page 26:
A colonial “big bug” himself, he [Sir Samuel Wilson] has ousted another, for Mr Vanderbyl, the Ministerial candidate, is an Australian Vanderbilt, though less famous than Sir Samuel.
Quite possibly. That Wikipedia page mentions the famous theories of David Icke and his 1999 book but not the less famous author Fritz Springmeier whose 1998 book he clearly based a lot of his stuff on (of course it’s all nonsense though). Overlordnat1 (talk) 16:31, 11 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The term is definitely associated with the political right, but Im not sure its a political insult. On a hunch I searched silicon valley bugmen and came up with a few hits, including a picture of an auditorium with hundreds of people sitting in close quarters wearing identical VR headsets and other electronics i couldnt identify. Yes, I narrowed my search on purpose based on a gut instinct, but i think there's something to this ... a bugman is someone so dependent on the artificial and plastic that they've lost their humanness, and even their animalness, to become something barely recognizable as alive, and identical with every other one of its kind.
A Vantiy Fair article at this URL includes the sentence People use the derisive term “bugman” to describe liberal men who lack tangible life skills like fixing trucks or growing food—guys who could end up spending their lives behind the bug-eyed screen of a V.R. headset. That reporter may be making the same assumption, but perhaps taking it more literally than i did. —Soap—16:16, 12 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
In my impression, there are more alt-righters than alt-lefties who would take the Reptilian conspiracy theory at face value. The lefties would reference it ironically, but don't accept it as gospel, unlike various fringe conspiracy theory alt-righters. Wakuran (talk) 19:47, 12 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry, I should have linked it in my post. It was right in my face when i searched the phrase silicon valley bugmen so i figured it was unnecessary, but it didnt occur to me at the time that Google loves to filter-bubble us, so what I saw isnt necessarily what others see. Indeed the search has already changed for me just in the last hour, maybe because it wants me to see new content.
That said I dont think this has anything to do with the reptilian theory, simply because reptiles arent bugs .... and because the impression I get is that this word really only appeared in the past few years. And I may sound like a stopped clock bringing this up so often, but i wonder if this word has already passed its peak and we are a bit late to the party. If so there might not be anything we can do to turn up the etymology besides work together to make educated guesses. —Soap—20:23, 12 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
That looks distinctively plausible. We should probably settle on a vague and heavily qualified etymology containing words like 'possibly' and 'perhaps'. Something like:- "Possibly from the notion that the elite want to force us to eat bugs but perhaps instead from the perceived similarity between bugs, generally regarded as unpleasant and unlikeable, and the elite." As there probably aren't any conspiracists around who believe that humanoid creatures that are literally part-bedbug, or part-insect more generally, secretly control the world then the connection with the reptilian theory can probably be discounted tbh. --Overlordnat1 (talk) 22:31, 1 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
As a person who has actually considered eating bugs (I draw my line at seafood, however), I might not be the best person to respond, but my impression was that there were unexpectedly many fringe conspiracists that actually believed in the reptilian conspiracy. Anyway, as the origin seems unknown, I guess there could be three-to-five different etymologies posted, anyway. Seems that most of them would be somehow connected to loosely aligned alt-right movements, anyhow. Wakuran (talk) 11:00, 2 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Yes but we'd have to show that people actually believe in an 'insectian' conspiracy rather than a reptilian one - I suppose a handful of such lunatics may exist, though I was probably too hasty to assume they did in my earlier comment. The origin is vague though, that's for sure. --Overlordnat1 (talk) 11:19, 2 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Or, what I intend to say, is that it seems that in the circles, several of the theories might be less or strongly believed by the involved individuals, but the various notions and semantics still play off of each other. Wakuran (talk) 11:59, 2 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The most important function is of course simply to dehumanize and to evoke disgust. The choice for "bug" is fairly obvious and unsurprising in that regard and does not require much additional explanation. As Equinox mentioned, the "eating the bugs" meme also influenced this choice of words and its memetic success without a shadow of a doubt in my mind (knowing the current far-right internet discourse), and likely so did the hive-like, apparently brainless, "soulless" and collectivist ("NPC-like", to reference another similar meme originating in far-right internet culture) behavior of many bugs in general. — Mnemosientje (t · c) 12:41, 2 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
(As someone y'all would probably consider fringe right) I would consider this correct, the term is in reference to conformity of said bugman or bugmen being relatable to a hive of ants or bees or Borg or Formics - compare with the term "hive-mind". It can be used to describe conspicuous consumption, group think, etc. Can also have racial or nationality implications though not always, such as "the Chinese Bugmen"
The etymology at super-app says it was coined "by BlackBerry founder Mike Lazaridis, during a speech at Mobile World Congress in 2010." I can find lots of people on the web saying the same thing (in nearly the same words), but can't find the actual speech, nor details about it. I looked at half a dozen articles all published after 2020, and mostly citing one another. None give specific details about the Mobile World Congress address they refer to.
I found one instance of the word in a paper (PDF here) from 2017, written in Italian, but I don't really read Italian.
Nel caso della Cina, Internet ha rafforzato il substrato culturale trovando un terreno fecondo nella 关系, assumendo una forma differente e creando le super-app;
In the case of China, the Internet has reinforced the cultural substrate, creating a rich terrain for 关系 [connections? interoperability?], assuming a different form and creating the super-app [italics in original]
(The paper also mentions Lazaridis as co-founder of Research in Motion, but doesn't connect the word super-app to him.)
If I understand correctly (and please don't take my translation without a grain of salt!), this is suggesting that the apps developed in China, but that doesn't preclude the notion that Lazardis coined the word. I would just like to be able to point more convincingly to when and where he did so. Cnilep (talk) 05:00, 7 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for that! I also found a (presumably durable?) version at Mobile World Congress's web site. I noticed that Lazardis says "we call them super apps", suggesting that this was already BlackBerry in-house usage, and not necessarily something that Lazardis coined, but I've added a quotation to the entry. Also, Lazardis's super apps don't seem to critically include financial services (for example, he calls viewing Twitter from your BlackBerry in-box "a super-app thanks to the seamless and efficient integration made possible by our platform"). Cnilep (talk) 08:24, 17 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
In some sources, I've found that the etymon of "mustache" is probably not Doric Greek mustax 'upper lip', but rather Latin mustus 'unfermented wine', via a form like Latin mustaceus, describing a moustache covered in wine. We should probably have the etymology pages, at least, describe that the complete origin is unclear, and it might come from a conflation of mustax with mustaceus.
Maher 1977 goes into detail about the theory, evidently from a previously published paper, also citing Tovar 1969, which I cannot find anywhere. I also have seen Maher's work on the etymology of "mustache" cited in [1972]
Perhaps, but it leaves me wondering .... what was the Latin word for mustache beforehand? Presumably there was a two-word phrase like ....-us mustaceus, originally meaning "wine-soaked mustache" ... this would parallel the word for liver coming from iecur fīcātum.... but what was the missing word for mustache?
Secondly, there's also a double semantic leap here, from unfermented to unfermented wine, and then from the wine sense to wine-soaked. Whereas with the liver--->fig development, there is only one semantic leap. How confident are these scholars that the liver>fig thing happened twice in one word? —Soap—12:41, 14 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
According to an article in The New York Times, Romans thought the very idea of a mustache without a beard was outlandish.[5] You were either clean-shaven or grew a beard. So there may not have been a term for just a mustache. --Lambiam18:11, 1 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
AlfilThe head of the medieval chess piece depicted here may have represented elephant tusks, later interpreted as a bishop's mitre.[6] --Lambiam18:24, 1 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Interestingly, this question was also addressed to Irving Finkel, who relates to the chessman's shape but interpreted as the fou's cap, supported by detailed images from the MET's collection. Their catalogue notes, as does the linked-above article, that what they call bishop is older than the name. More important I think is the movement of the figures. So I gather this bishop may as well be a coinage as the rules may be. Albeit, Finkel stresses that, paraphrased, such things don't come from manuals; or 11th century manuscripts as the case may be for regina. That said, it could pass for a learned, as is only appropriate for a game of chess, regardless how it was corrupted, and I would not call fantastic changes such as Läufer from le fou a case of folk etymology in the sense of Förstemann, who termed these termini initially, i.e. "gelehrte Etymologie". A notable unrelated example is Mond (xxi) in place of French monde (xxi) rather than lune (xvii) in southern German trump cards (Tarock).
The Proto-Slavic part is loosely sourced from etymonline and is incompatible with our analysis in related entries, and the Turkic part is loosely sourced from the American Heritage Dictionary and shows real confusion about Turkic etymology (an Old Turkic stem with a Proto-Turkic suffix as ancestor to an Old Bulgar term? Really?). Chuck Entz (talk) 21:26, 8 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Pinging @Cepyita, 沈澄心 as users who speak one of the languages above and have edited Proto-Sino-Tibetan entries : any idea if the Burmese word is related to the Chinese word and how (borrowing? cognate?), and any idea what the origin of the Naga word is? - -sche(discuss)18:36, 11 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, the Burmese word Dah (ဓား) is our own main native word for sword and knife. According to Stephan Baron's proposal, it is cognate with Chinese 刀(dāo). Both are said to be descended from Proto-Sino-Tibetan *s-ta-w, with a sparsely attested suffix *-w retained in Sinitic yet lost in Tibeto-Burman. Cepyita (talk) 19:18, 11 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Our current etymology sources this from Dutchwater. Over in a Reddit post, a user pointed me to this monograph from 1898, which mentions that the word is citable to a text from 1421, before Dutch contact:
Our only recently-active Sinhalese-speaking editor seems to be User:Lee. Lee, I don't know whether you have access to any dictionaries that might have information about what the origin of වතුර is, but perhaps you can at least determine whether watura does mean water in the text linked above? (It does seem odd, though not unheard of, that such a basic word would be borrowed.) 18:06, 11 April 2023 (UTC)
Another hypothesis is that Dutch influence would have reinforced a native word, causing semantic shift... (I'm just saying it's possible. I'm not speculating whether it's likely.) Wakuran (talk) 19:10, 11 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Would Japanese gaiken be a calque of German Aussehen or Dutch uitzicht, or are they unrelated? (The semantics fit, but maybe Germanic borrowings in Japanese are of a comparably late date.) Wakuran (talk) 22:38, 11 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Nihongo Kokugo Daijiten attests 外見 from 1171. By comparison, it suggests that 惑星(wakusei, “planet”), calque of Dutch dwaalster, comes from the 蘭学 period (roughly 1720-1868; Wiktionary attests it from 1792), and dates 炭酸(tansan, “carbonic acid”), from koolzuur, to 1834. I don't know of Germanic influence before the Dutch traders. Cnilep (talk) 00:24, 12 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Does anyone have a source on the current Wiktionary etymology (arum+σῆμα)? The Flora of North America, which is a pretty well-researched source on taxonomic etymologies, has it as aris (a name "used by Pliny" for arums) + αἷμα ("blood", referring both to the red-spotted leaves and the blood-red fruits). -- Photosynthetic430 (talk) 17:02, 13 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I defer to FNA, at least with respect to αἷμα(haîma). I don't know what their source for aris is. L&S has aros, aron, and arum for Greek ἄρον(áron). The Pliny text at Perseus has inflected forms aro and ari (of arum#Latin) apparently referring to the plant in question or a close relative. DCDuring (talk) 18:19, 13 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Latin "ae" usually comes from Ancient Greek "αἱ", not from "η", so our current etymology looks highly unlikely to me. Here is the Lewis & Short entry at Perseus for the plant Latin aris, and here is the Gaffiot entry.
As for the genus itself, here and on the following page is the original description, which I'll quote here:
Der verdienstvolle Erforscher der Flora indica, Wallich, hat in seinem tentamen florae nepalensis drei Arumarten beschrieben und abgebildet (A. nepenthoides, costatum und speciosum). Diese sind durch Mangel der Afterblüthen, durch Stamina columnaria und durch Spadices dioices ausgezeichnet, und verdienen daher ebenfalls als eigene Gattung aufgeführt zu werden. Wir wollen solche einstweilen mit Beziehung auf die Variegation dieser Arten Arisaema nennen, und folgendermaassen definiren.
XI. Arisaema, Fleckenaron, Mart. Spatha basi convoluta Spadix dioicus, apice longe nudus. Staminodia et pistillidia nulla. Antherae verticillatae in filamentis distinctis, transvere bivalves, unilocellares. Ovaria distincta, unilocularia, ovulis paucis basilaribus. Stigma peltatum. Baccae distintae, oligospermae.
Hierher gehört vielleicht auch A. Dracontium, das wenigstens im Bau der Antheren übereinstimmt.
@Photosynthetic430: after looking at the illustrations at Arisaema speciosum I see that I was wrong about "speckles", though the markings on the spathe look like blood-colored stripes. So the part about the Ancient Greek and Latin is correct, but the feature on the plant referred to was wrong. Chuck Entz (talk) 23:50, 21 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
...Huh, apparently I was wrong about that, too. I'm more familiar with Arisaema triphyllum, which often has similar dried-blood-colored stripes, but A. triphyllum stripes can fade out lower on the spathe. For some reason, I thought the fade zone was sometimes speckled, but after a quick image search I'm not sure where I got that idea. Whoops. That species'll be blooming around here in a week or two, and you bet I'll be checking it out when it does! Photosynthetic430 (talk) 19:23, 27 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
What's the ety? The Diccionario de la lengua española says it's from Latin bis "two" + rotula, but clearly there must've been intermediate steps to get from bis rotula to vilorta. - -sche(discuss)17:07, 15 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
In Spanish, b and v would regularly gets merged to a sound between the two, so orthographically, a v could be chosen for spelling a word just as likely as b. Then, I guess the dropping of a final -s isn't unlikely, whereas rotula -> lorta could be due to metathesis, which has been very common in the history of Spanish. Wakuran (talk) 01:44, 16 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I haven’t been able to find any source for this surname. it’s the origin of the given name Beyoncé, and there’s an odd claim that it means “beyond others”, which I’d think just came fancifully from the musician. I was thinking that it could be related to boire or bouillir, but that was just my first thought. Thanks for any help CanadianRosbif (talk) 22:46, 15 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The origin of the given name Beyoncé is actually her mother's maiden name, which was a typo on her birth certificate. It was supposed to be Beyincé, which seems to be a Louisiana Creole name. At any rate, Beyoncé's grandfather's surname didn't have an o in it, so a connection with boire or bouillir seems unlikely (though not as unlikely as a connection with English beyond, which is ludicrous). —Mahāgaja · talk08:18, 16 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
This suggests that the next stage back in time from it being a Louisiana French/Creole surname was it being a Canadian French surname, but I haven't managed to spot anything else about the origin. (I did come across yet another spelling, Buyince.) - -sche(discuss)09:58, 16 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I didn't know the term "bama", when I read that article, but apparently bamma is a reclaimed term for a black hick. (Would that be a "blick"?) Wakuran (talk) 11:36, 16 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The request for clean-up is basically a RfE: Which sense of Schaft respectively -schaft is this?
I am leaning towards -schaft(“-ship”) because it is more abstract and morphologically plausible (except that "pet" would be a cranberry morpheme). On the other hand, as shaft might indicate, any oblong shape is enough to warrant semantic drift.
That said, I wonder if the occurance is too late for any reinforcement by the family of shape as in Landschaft(“landscape”). Is it reasonable to infer phonologic variation long before it surfaced in writing? 88.128.92.6607:32, 16 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
In hindsight, the abstract femininum is less likely. I had not seen it used in a sentence. The originally Slavic word could be m. and f. Deutsche Wörterbuch attests to m. and n. only.
A metaphoric meaning akin to f. Bürgschaft is not evident, and I am not sure if the synonymy with Siegel extends to senses that are (see DWB 3, d, also 2, n).
Confusingly, Schweizerisches Idiokiton comments to compare Petschaft to a feminine noun with examples that can be related to bedstead, respectively Werkstatt and workshop. Hence I am still thinking that a case can be made while the cranberry remains questionable.
On the other hand, the masculine Schaft as synonym to Griff(“(knife) handle”) is probable. I have initially found Petschaft online translating poinçon from a gloss to Middle French grafete(“poinçon”), akin to It. graffito, APr. grafi "signature" (cf. Französisches Etymologisches Wörterbuch: graphium). Griffel(“stylus”) is a true homophone, unrelated to greifen(“grab, hold”). Griffel(“paws, fingers”) is clearly figurative, anyway.
The oddest part is that graben is significantly collocated:
du solt auch ein stirnblat machen von feinem golde, und ausgraben, wie man die siegel ausgrebt (DWB, cited as 2 Mose 2, 36, found as 2 Mose 28, 36).
I can barely gather from patyczek do bierek "pick stick" (PWN and machine translation) what the idea is, which says nothing of the other sense, i.e. "chess piece or pawn". Vasmer compares it with бйрка(bjrka), takes on two hypotheses and one internal derivation, indeed from a form of бирать(biratʹ), only to conclude that it is difficult. The wiktionary entry follows suit but omits bierka. Miklosich has it along with Bulgarian birka(“tally stick”) and similar forms with different meanings under the same etymon (s. v. ber), which Trubachev hasn't as far as I can tell.
No, it wouldn’t be. But as a 2023 philologist, I have found the origin in ten minutes. The cognateship to Russianби́рка(bírka) meaning a tally stick and nameplates of sheep is the most certain part here. From here we find Polish bierka, birka used in Podhale and Slovakbirka also meaning a race of sheep and being cognate to Hungarianbirka(“sheep”). Ukrainianби́рка(býrka), беру́лька(berúlʹka) means “young ewe”, Czechberuška, berunka “lamb”. It was actually known in the 19th century already to be a Turkic borrowing all (František Pastrnek (1893) Slovenské Pohľady (in Slovak), volume 13, page 694), ultimately Classical Persianبره(barra, “lamb”) (Borovičok seems to have had doubt about this Iranian origin at Bashkirбәрәс(bərəs)), which according to usual vocalization scheme is bərə in Turkic languages. Connection to *baranъ of generally known Turkic origin, notably in Czech having the form beran, is also seen (Melnychuk, O. S., editor (1982), “беру́лька”, in Етимологічний словник української мови (in Ukrainian), volume 1 (А – Г), Kyiv: Naukova Dumka, page 175, by all likelihood a now extinct form). Fay Freak (talk) 18:20, 16 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Does that establish a relation to the game pieces?
I have now read a description of the game with drawings of pieces[1] and I suppose it must be compared with berti, σπείρω or bwrw, but the reconstruction is difficult as Hamp argues "Der traditionelle Vergleich mit uridg. *bʰer- ‘tragen, bringen’ (ved. bhárati, gr. φέρω, got. bairan) ist semantisch schwierig (vgl. dazu Hermann Studi Baltici 3 (1933: 65-68))."[2] The images resemble chess pieces more than spillikins.
The etymology for genuine seems to be a little suspicious. The etymology states is from Latin gignere, which it states is from Old Latin genere, and that is what I have some issues with. First, genere does not link to an Old Latin word, but to a declined form of genus, which is by the by.
What I am more confused about is how gignere comes from genere? The etymology section for gigno says its a reduplicated stem from Proto-Indo-European *ǵenh₁- (which seems accurate to me because of Ancient Greek γίγνομαι), but is does not discuss genere in the etymology section of gigno at all. Unless Old Latin didn't reduplicate in the present infinitive (which doesn't make sense looking at both Classical Latin and Ancient Greek), I don't understand were genere comes from at all? Anyone know what this might be referring to? SanctaSofya (talk) 21:52, 16 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@SanctaSofya: the etymology was imported many years ago from the 1911 edition of the Century Dictionary, and such sources always refer to Latin verbs by their infinitives. Our entry is at Latin genō. Chuck Entz (talk) 23:16, 16 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The etymology at geno then states that geno and gigno are from the same root, but were separate, so gigno does not come from geno. So this only invalidates the etymology of genuine on its page because if gigno is not from geno, genuine cannot come from geno ultimately.SanctaSofya (talk) 23:05, 17 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
"From genus(“birth, origin”) + -inus(“-ine”)" still doesn't fully explain the origin of the word. As the stem of genus is gener-, how do we get the 'u' in genuine? Would it be from confusion with genūn(“knee”)? The latter has a very occasional genitive singular genoris. --RichardW57m (talk) 08:44, 18 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
According to Onions' Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, the Latin word indeed derives from the word for knee, from the acceptance of a new-born child by the paterfamilias taking it upon his knee. --RichardW57 (talk) 04:23, 19 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Both [Gaffiot] and [Millet] list genuinus from genu; the latter (Millet) specifies that it does not descend from gigno (as some say), because its root *genə (which is the same as geno and genus) does not include any theme in -u-. On the contrary [Lewis & Short] list geno and gigno as the etymologies with no further explanation. There is also an other genuinus which means "pertaining to cheeks" and comes from gena. As for ingenuus all agree it descending from the genus / geno / gigno root. --SZC_03 (talk) 19:35, 1 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Etymology 4 probably needs expansion. With its current vagueness I'm not sure if it's even true. It was added based on "some cursory research". Aaron Liu (talk) 01:20, 17 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Here is a source with an explanation. It seems to be a Canadian and possibly also northern US term based on the stereotype of American Indians "chugging" alcohol. Chuck Entz (talk) 02:35, 17 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
If that's the case, shouldn't it be moved to Etymology 1, with a note in that etymology section explaining the semantic development? —Mahāgaja · talk10:11, 17 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Literature notes Gothic 𐍅𐌰𐍂𐌳𐌾𐌰(wardja) (suggestive of a PG *wardiją) as the closest attested parallel.
On the other hand, -ja is also the native actor noun suffix, so this could've been based also on a Germanic verb like *wardāną. Votic has varrita 'to guard', which doesn't seem to directly match Germanic, but also does not look denominal (unlike e.g. Finnish vartioida). --Tropylium (talk) 17:22, 22 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The current entry claims that "applet" originated in AppleScript, which was released in 1993. The individual applications in the Windows Control Panel were referred to as "Control Panel Applets" in Windows 3.1, which was released in 1992. The term might be older. The Control Panel was introduced in Windows 1.0 (1985) but I don't know when "applet" was first used. Regardless, Microsoft's usage predates Apple's. 2.27.171.15613:33, 18 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Wikipedia traces it to PC Magazine in 1990, but there's nothing of value to see at the URL given. Apple had an earlier programming language called HyperCard that was capable of producing standalone applications, but I couldnt find any evidence of the term applet being used in HyperCard. All viewable Google Books results containing both words are of a more recent printing date. —Soap—15:50, 18 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The early 1990s were the heyday of big paper manuals for software programs, so there should be ample material to search through .... though I dont know how much of it is online, as there is little incentive other than nostalgia to bring such things to the Web. Even so, in just a few seconds I found a use of the word CPlApplet (that's c-p-l, not c-p-i) in a paper manual about the Windows API, in a book written in 1992 by the Borland software company. If CPlApplet existed, Im sure applet did too; that at least debunks the AppleScript theory. I think youre right that it probably goes back at least a little ways longer. —Soap—15:56, 18 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
One more comment .... it seems CPlApplet is most likely an abbreviation for control panel applet, the very thing you were talking about. It didnt occur to me at first because it was so easy to misread as CPI with a capital "i". —Soap—16:41, 18 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I wondered about the etymology of the surname "Bezrukavenko" (or Bezrukavnikov). My best guess right now is that it means "sleeveless", because the word for sleeve in many Slavic languages, including Ukrainian (where this surname is from), is рукав. Also, the suffix -енко forms patronymics/matronymics, so this can be "son of a sleeveless person." Can anyone confirm this? Cheesypenguigi (talk) 02:14, 19 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I have just been editing pharate - etymology. pharos has several translations, and this is the only one to suggest sense in context.
Ancient Greekϕᾶρος (phâros) + -ate in this sense mantle, cloth, or web, suggesting the process of being about to shed the old skin.
I don't really understand what you're asking. φᾶρος(phâros) means 'a large piece of cloth' or more specifically 'a wide, sleeveless cloak or mantle'. Your link uses the wrong character for the first letter; it should be φ (the Greek letter) rather than ϕ (the mathematical symbol). —Mahāgaja · talk09:02, 20 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Why does the incorrect letter still get transliterated as if it were the correct one? When I type {{l|grc|ϕᾶρος}} using the wrong phi, it gets automatically transliterated as "phâros". Mistakes like this would be more noticeable if it had been transliterated "ϕâros". —Mahāgaja · talk08:53, 21 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I agree, and if possible include [[Category:Cleanup]] as part of the generated transliteration so it goes into that or a more specific cleanup category. What do you think, @Erutuon? - -sche(discuss)09:31, 21 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not enthusiastic about adding category links to transliteration because it makes it impossible to put the transliteration into a clickable link (which might occasionally be wanted), but User:Theknightwho might know whether any transliteration modules currently add category links. They aren't visible like cleanup categories, but we have already had tracking templates for ϕ, ϑ, ϰ, and ϱ in Greek or Ancient Greek text for a long time. — Eru·tuon20:46, 21 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@Erutuon There is a way to add categories from transliteration modules without them interfering with linked transliterations, so that's definitely an option here. Tracking would also work too, and is probably a simpler approach.Theknightwho (talk) 21:15, 21 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@Erutuon: The obscurantist TKW is referring to an undocumented, indeed apparently unexplained changed that he made to the tr() function of all transliteration modules, whereby they can return 3 values rather than just one, namely the transliteration, some undocumented success flag, and a list of categories (again in undocumented form - is 'category:' part of the name?). The actual invocation is in Module:languages/doSubstitutions, which in spirit shows a finger at oldtimers' coding conventions. --RichardW57m (talk) 12:48, 24 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Now, is there any good way of putting data on the problem into the category information, or would an investigation have to go into the module immediately and convert placement into a maintenance category to the raising of a module error so that the problem could be investigated? --RichardW57m (talk) 12:48, 24 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Actually, it would work to use a generic language-specific transliteration problem maintenance category plus an ad hoc unhidden category to give problem details. --RichardW57m (talk) 11:28, 25 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@RichardW57m Stop being rude. It is getting extremely tiresome, and I have asked you numerous times now, which you have ignored every time. It is starting to feel intentionally inflammatory. You seem to care more about picking fights with people who you disagree with than coming to a mutually beneficial solution. Theknightwho (talk) 01:08, 4 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@Theknightwho: In this case I started the topic Wiktionary:Grease_pit/2023/April#Documentation_of_Transliteration_Interface with a view to getting the documentation included. Pertinently, these categories are currently only published for link modules - they look like unfinished work. Do you not see anything wrong with referring to an undocumented feature you added as though everyone should know about it? Incidentally, your complaint was attached to the wrong paragraph - possibly due to a tool failure. --RichardW57m (talk) 09:34, 4 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@RichardW57m I said there is a way to do it, and also suggested an alternative which I called simpler. I never implied “everyone should know about it”, and in any event it didn’t warrant your insulting response. Theknightwho (talk) 10:08, 4 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I would much rather incorrect inputs get corrected (as they do now) and categorised, instead of displaying half-baked transliterations that need to be spotted. We can expand the automatic correction to cover the link and the display character, too, so that it looks right and points at the right place; meaning that any clean-up is just about good housekeeping, rather than necessary. This is already done for Cyrillic palochkas in many languages, as they're frequently wrong. Theknightwho (talk) 21:15, 21 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@RichardW57m I thought We can expand the automatic correction to cover the link and the display character, too, so that it looks right and points at the right place was very self-explanatory, but it means that characters like Latin "l" or "I" will be handled as though they were palochkas for those languages. As such, {{l|ce|цӏа}}, {{l|ce|цlа}}, {{l|ce|цIа}} all give the same output: цӏа(cʼa), цӏа(cʼa), цӏа(cʼa).
@Theknightwho: Thank you. I think WT:Glossary needs to contain 'display text' and 'display character', and a link to the display_text field in the language data files would have helped. Is 'automatic correction' expounded anywhere? I suggest Template:link/documentation would be a good place to expose the concept to non-developers. --RichardW57m (talk) 12:30, 4 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@Erutuon: I just cleared the mainspace and citation pages from the ϕ list. Some were added by people like Doremítzwr, I'm so meta even this acronym and This, that and the other who certainly know the difference and would never use the wrong character on purpose. The problem is that with a few notable exceptions such as Perseus, most online sources were OCRed from images somewhere in their history, so there's always the potential for the characters to be switched. Certainly Google Books should never be trusted, and probably not HathiTrust or the Internet Archive, either. I wonder if there's any way for the edit filters to access the tracking-template links- or do those operate during the wrong stages in the process? Chuck Entz (talk) 21:57, 21 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@Chuck Entz: Unfortunately there are no abuse filter variables related to templates (transclusions). Most of the wikitext-related variables seem to deal with the initial state of the wikitext before parsing, except for the pst (pre-save transform) variables and the links (external links) variables (judging by this edit where I added a nowikified link but it doesn't show up in added_links). — Eru·tuon00:02, 22 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Hello all. Geleia is the type genus of a protist family, the Geleiidae. But Alfred Kahl in 1935, here, does not seem to have given us the meaning. In Greek we have γελι, geli, to laugh, but I don't think that's the right track, but rather the eponymous name of a person whose name I don't know. What is your opinion ? Thanks in advance for your help. Gerardgiraud (talk) 17:20, 20 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Old English. Given that the word exists only in Norse and English, and not in other West Germanic languages, are we sure that Old English tōl is really inherited from Proto-Germanic and not borrowed from Old Norse? —Mahāgaja · talk10:04, 25 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Since Old Norse Old Norse tól still says "cognate with Old English" now, might we want to add something there too for consistency? Simply change to more general "related to"? --Oidfbosizrb (talk) 20:59, 5 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I try to use "cognate with" when words descended from a parent term. I try to use "related to" when the terms belong to the same family of words, that share the same ultimate root, so it can vary in degrees of relatedness. English shoe is "cognate with" German Schuh, but English shod is "related to" German Schuh (?). But I haven't always abidden[sic] by this in the past. Leasnam (talk) 18:32, 6 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
There are several terms unique to only Old Norse and Old English: Old English calan is one. brego is another. stacga and sċeacga are others. This doesn't seem to be too out of the ordinary to me, and I also see this strict grouping sometimes with Old English and Gothic (Old English eġle & Gothic𐌰𐌲𐌻𐌿𐍃(aglus)), and sometimes just between all 3 (excluding all other West Germanic) like Old English hūsl, Old Norsehúsl, and Gothic𐌷𐌿𐌽𐍃𐌻(hunsl). Is there anything particularly unique in tōl which makes it seem more likely to be a borrowing ? Leasnam (talk) 18:53, 6 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
You mean in its phonology or semantics? No, probably not. It's really just the grouping of Old Norse + Old English and exclusion of the rest of WGmc that makes me suspect a borrowing. —Mahāgaja · talk14:22, 7 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
If you compare the derivations, it seems that nguba might refer to the nut, and mpinda to the pod, but that is just a guess. Wakuran (talk) 00:18, 26 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
If Ancient Greek ἕλκος(hélkos, “wound, injury”) comes from Proto-Indo-European *h₁élḱos(“wound, illness, ulcer”), as seems virtually guaranteed on semantic grounds, why does it start with /h/? Word-initial PIE *h₁ disappears without a trace before a vowel in Greek, while /h/ usually comes from PIE *s or *y. Was it somehow influenced by ἕλκω(hélkō, “to drag”)? If so, why? There's no particularly close semantic association between the two. —Mahāgaja · talk09:37, 26 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Everyone assumes folk-etymological influence of ἕλκω(hélkō, “to drag”), without explaining the motivation. The influence doesn't seem strange to me. Imagine the body being hurt by being dragged against a hard surface. Vahag (talk) 11:52, 26 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
At least the British English version, fringe, makes some obvious sense. My 1969 edition of The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language has this to say:
“Perhaps ultimately from Old Norse banga, to cut off (perhaps imitative).”
Does this constitute sufficient grounds for plugging that into our entry? And if so, is it kosher to do so word for word, or would that infringe IP?
Does anybody have better or more authoritative information on this burning question?
I note that bang (singular) says "In the sense of a fringe of hair, from bang off", citing no source; it would be good to either find a source for that or remove it. Dictionary.com says bang ("usually bangs") is "an Americanism dating back to 1870–75; short for bangtail"; Merriam-Webster says the same. I can only find Old Norsebanga in the meaning "hammer, bang", not "cut", and Dictionary.com and Merriam-Webster take banga to be related to the other ("beat, pound") sense of bang, not the hair sense. (On the origin of bangtail Dictionary.com says only "1885–90; bang cut (nasal variant of bag cut < ?) + tail. Cf. pigtail".) - -sche(discuss)03:12, 27 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I always assumed he rather odd word bangs referred to hair that was 'bang against' the forehead. Surely a bangtail is hair that is 'bang on' a certain length and I suppose it could be the real origin but I can't see how 'bang off' fits in. Am I missing something obvious here? --Overlordnat1 (talk) 00:33, 28 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The noun ("fringe") comes from the verb ("to cut hair, dock [as a horse's tail]") which comes from the adverb ("suddenly, abruptly") from the adjective ("fierce, violent, vehement"), which is probably from the verb ("to strike noisily, explode"). Going on logic, I can envision that holding a horse's tail bunched together with one hand and docking it between the base and where it's held will produce a tuft of hair upon release that appears to "explode" with a "bang". Perhaps this is how the sense developed. Leasnam (talk) 00:38, 4 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I see we don't have an adjective sense, but one is found in Scots and means "fierce, violent, vehement, strong, agile and strong". Usage dates for the Scots cites in SND [[8]] are between 1791 and 1923. Leasnam (talk) 00:42, 4 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Leasnam, you state your etymological thesis quite definitely. But were the situation as clear as your tone suggests, then I doubt it would have escaped those responsible for the American Heritage entry. PaulTanenbaum (talk) 20:58, 4 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@PaulTanenbaum, Century, here[[9]] is the only place I could find anything that made any bit of sense; they do show the development, but you have to piece the bits together: the bang2 noun (page centre) comes from the bang2 verb right above it, which comes from the bang1 adverb immediately above that, which ultimately comes from bang1(“to strike, thump, make a noise, move suddenly”, verb). I was unfortunately unable to verify the Old Norse banga meaning "to cut" mentioned above in any Germanic or Norse reference. I can only find Old Norse banga meaning "to knock, strike, hammer, beat". Leasnam (talk) 04:54, 5 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I provisionally conclude that this sense of this term originates in the 21st century: see diff. This is a kind of unexpected result for me, which is why I bring it here-- I hope someone more adept can show me wrong, probably easily. I'm looking for unambiguous reference to territory inside Russia called 'Outer Manchuria' from the period 01 Jan 1980 to 12 Dec 1999 (or 01 Jan 1900 to 12 Dec 1999). The cites I have from Henry Kissinger &c. prove that the English langauge term 'Outer Manchuria' can refer to an area in Russia near to China as of circa 2010. But I would like to determine when this specific sense originated in English. For instance, did this term exist in 1990? 1980? Please note that some Google results talk about an 'outer Manchuria' that is inside China (the 'outer part' of Manchuria), for instance: [10] "Like many urban youth of her generation, she was sent to a military farm in the Great Northern Wilderness of outer Manchuria to accept education from farmers and soldiers during the Cultural Revolution in 1969." That seems to be a reference to an area inside the PRC and not a reference to a place in the USSR. Something interesting to me is that I would expect Chiang Kai-shek's English literature from Taiwan to mention ROC claims on 'Outer Manchuria' (the English langauge term) if that term were an established term in the 20th century. Or failing that, I would expect Ivy League texts to mention this term in conjunction with territorial claims of the ROC. Yet I don't see it! (See Talk:Outer Manchuria) --Geographyinitiative (talk) 08:22, 27 April 2023 (UTC)(Modified)[reply]
(Hey anyone who sees this:-- I know I'm just another online crank, but what I think I've "discovered" here is pretty wild. I'm hoping that someone will totally discount what I've "realized", which is basically: English Wikipedia's Outer Manchuria article is the origin of the term 'Outer Manchuria' (in English) when it refers to the territory ceded by the Manchu Dynasty to the Tsars.-- I recommend bringing this to the (See Talk:Outer Manchuria) page. I am looking forward to being undone, discounted, shamed, and mocked.) --Geographyinitiative (talk) 22:41, 30 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Our definitions of this and similar terms now under the "See also" heading are weak, almost indistinguishable from each other. At the very least some of them differ in usage context, eg, pattern paper (another similar term) is used in apparel manufacture.
The tag is from a shortening of tagboard i assume, though we dont have that sense yet, and doesnt solve the question of why tagboard is called that. I always assumed it was called oaktag because it was made from the pulp of oak trees, at least originally, but I suppose that might be difficult to verify. —Soap—19:53, 28 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Tagboard is used to make tags, as on merchandise. This source claims it has some oak content. Oak is a very hard, dense wood, and tagboard is said to be hard and difficult to tear- so the connection would seem to make sense. Chuck Entz (talk) 22:29, 28 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
RFV of the etymology. vertō is third-conjugation. oportet and oporteō are second-conjugation verbs. *verteō does not exist. It is problematic in Latin to derive an eh₁(ye)-stative verb from a root thematic verb. --Daniel.z.tg (talk) 23:51, 28 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
In Ernout-Meillet the same issue is posed, but no alternative etymology is provided (translated from french): "It has been explained as coming from *op-uortet, from uorteō which would be akin to uertō (cf. τρομέω, τρέμω, and, in meaning, καθήκει). But Latin does not have a verb preverb like the slavonic vrŭtĕti "to turn", and the etymology remains up in the air." cf Ernout, Alfred, Meillet, Antoine (1985) “oportet”, in Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue latine: histoire des mots[11] (in French), 4th edition, with additions and corrections of Jacques André, Paris: Klincksieck, published 2001 p.831 --SZC_03 (talk) 21:58, 1 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Hmm. dō and trādō have 1st and 3rd conjugation and they come from different stems/suffixes in PIE with dō losing the reduplication and having the laryngeal reanalyzed. Now looking at it, oportet irregular from *opvortet may indicate that the prefix was added in PIE instead of Latin, perhaps to the stative stem *wortéyeti instead. In this case of mixed stems like Ancient Greek, this finally makes sense. Daniel.z.tg (talk) 23:54, 26 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Finding the Wiktionary-Wikipedia disagreement got me curious. Neither that Spectator article nor the Beeb's podcast provided any substantive evidence for which word came first, so I started Googling. That hasn't unearthed anything authoritative. What I have turned up includes a flurry of articles in the popular press that (like that Spectator piece) were all occasioned by Langenscheidt's having anointed Smombie their "Youth Word of 2015." I also did find one peer-reviewed article that says that the term "was coined in Germany in 2015." But it's a paper about safety science and published in Transportation Research Part F: Traffic Psychology and Behaviour, so again not an authoritative source for etymology.
On the other hand, not even our own reference strikes me as unambiguous. It calls Smombie a neologism while also saying that it might have been borrowed. If it doesn’t count loan words as neologisms, then our source is of no help at all in settling my question.
Does anyone here know what the actual story is? I'd love to (1) ensure that both our entries are accurate and (2) arrange that they and the Wikipedia article all tell consistent stories. PaulTanenbaum (talk) 22:26, 30 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Who has seen the English word? Even with excessive internet usage in which English-language sources take a higher share of consumed media, I might have not encountered it, while as German it is well-known. You don’t even easily find it when you search for it. Even the quotes given for English usage refer to occurrences on the continent. There are no reliable sources, only our philological experience, particularly as we track primary material, and it says that by how things usually look like, English borrowed from German. But as you see, you can “cite” this claim, and it is the editorial judgment then, relying on the linguistic evidence, which claim of sundry contradicting ones is the better. We also know how claims about language in popular sources use to come about—they don’t have the experience in writing etymology that we have, and even transmit the claims of users who are more clueless than them as authoritative: so if you ask a youth from the slang milieu, of course the term in German is “from English”, which is not wholly untrue, either if it is formed within German according to English wordhoard and word formation rules or within German by employing words borrowed from English. Them youths don’t think that complicated nor exact as we need to write etymologies. Fay Freak (talk) 17:24, 2 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
As you say, Fay Freak, we must apply our editorial judgment based on the linguistic evidence, and it’s that evidence that I was requesting. At the moment, en.wiktionary asserts that English smombie was constructed from a pair of English words and that German Smombie was subsequently borrowed from it. What is the linguistic evidence, I wonder, for either of those assertions? And what evidence is there against them? Also, do I understand correctly that you yourself have tracked primary material? If so, then which ones? And what are the results? PaulTanenbaum (talk) 21:52, 2 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
You understand wrong, I have “tracked” it in so far as I have not forgotten how it has been used from all usages that have confronted me randomly and that I can search like you for it and the overwhelming appearance in German texts and the circumstance that the few quotes Wiktionary editors have gathered for the English refer back to Germany are typical for its having been German in the first place. One quote or the other will not do it, sometimes it is the general impression of the attestation situation. Often an argument for borrowing is to be made from one term or family of terms being often and regular in one language but less so in the other, perhaps also with particular emphasis of older occurrence. (I speak of occurrences collectively.) Since both languages appear equally well in the media we can access, it is also expected that the order of occurrences there reflects the order of reality of language used in sum: so I could recognize the presumable direct source of طِرِّيخ well. Or for قُدَّامَ also with frequency of patterns being used for a certain function in either language. Does English smombie even sound like it would be likely said in English? I have phonetic concerns about its “transmissibility”. Due to grammatical functions of trailing /s/ and other conflicts in English (sounds exactly like mom and be etc.) it would easily be misheard, so a German speaker is more likely to drop the word. Also, note the second option of it having been formed independently in both English and German, it being not super creative to be only possibly invented once, but even then if the German has had success then the scarce English occurrences more likely depend on the existence of the term in German overall. Fay Freak (talk) 22:33, 2 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Perhaps we're best off just noting in each entry the existence of the other and the uncertainty as to which came first. But my anecdotal experience matches Fay Freak's : I've only seen it in German, and it doesn't seem like a likely English formation because the first component isn't recognizable and is easily confused with mombie. - -sche(discuss)00:32, 3 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I quite agree, I have never encountered it in English. And I’d wager that even if it did have some popularity, it was a nonce word that has since disappeared. Your suggestion seems a good one to me. PaulTanenbaum (talk) 01:47, 3 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Quod erat demonstrandum: In English, all kinds of words begin with sm. In German, smart in certain derivations, of which the smartphone is most evident to govern lives, is the most notorious one. (Since in German that sequence became /ʃm/〈schm〉.) Only in the latter the functional load of the sequences befitted for the term to gain distinction. Fay Freak (talk) 03:21, 3 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Done, would you take a look? Aaron Liu (talk) 11:28, 17 April 2023 (UTC)
