Wiktionary:Information desk/Archive 2009/January-July

January 2009

How do I track changes made to an entry?

I edited the etymology of "abet" and found my edit deleted within a day. How may I track the change and, ultimately, contact the person(s) who deleted the change so we can discuss that change? Thanks. craigsalvay

Just click on the "history" tab at the top of the entry and the changes will appear, together with (linked) information who made them. --Duncan 18:54, 1 January 2009 (UTC)

Since you have an account, you can just click the tab at the top that says "watch". However, in this case I'm inclined to agree with the reversion; a direct derivation from Hebrew is an extraordinary claim which would require extraordinary evidence. -- Visviva 04:13, 2 January 2009 (UTC)

I completely agree with Visviva. When one is claiming a non-evident etymological connection between distant languages, such as English and any non-Germanic or non-Romance language, one is supposed to show evidence/reliable sources/ in order to achieve cogency and persuasion. Evidently this is not the case in abet. Bogorm 12:46, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

Contacting the person is not exigent, editing Talk:abet should suffice, that is its purpose. Bogorm 12:48, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

Locking User Pages

I don't know how to lock pages (or if it is even possible by a non-administator) and I would request to have my User Page;User:Dictionman locked from editting from any other user (exept me and the administrators) from editting my profile, as an anonymous user continues to vandalize my User page. --Dictionman 01:15, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

Page protection is a sysop only function. Since there has only been one instance of vandalism, I suggest you leave it unless if becomes a trend. There is no way (that I'm aware of, anyway) to allow exceptions, so if I were to protect your page, you wouldn't be able to edit it, which would obviously be a hassle. However, if you have further problems, by all means contact any admin, and they can protect it for you. -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 02:14, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

Hang on a sec Atelaes, if this happens again can't you get a indefinite edit block for the page (for unregistered users only)? 50 Xylophone Players talk 15:47, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

What is the function of allowing any user to edit another users profile? Isn't a profile unique information solely about the user, as in name, sex, hobbies, etc.? BadKitty 15:09, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

No one is supposed to edit another’s user profile. However, if a user can edit his own, then anyone else can do it, too. If we protect the user page so that no one else can edit it, then the user himself cannot edit it. It is possible to give a partial protection so that unregistered anons can’t edit it, but anyone who has a registered username will still be able to. —Stephen 16:46, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

Diacritics and pronunciation for Spanish and Tagalog?

Is there an existing appendix explaining how the diacritics on Sp and Phil. language words work? I've searched around; if there is, it does a good job at eluding me. :P

What I plan is to have diacritic versions of a Philippine word to serve as its pronunciation. An entry would look like this (prospective pronunciation for bayanihan):

===Pronunciation===

• IPA^(key): /ba.ya'ni.han/

* bayaníhan

There are two other diacritics, which makes them á, à, and â. Basically, these three are all that's needed to pronounce Tagalog words; other pronunciation info could be looked into at an upcoming Wiktionary:About Tagalog. Spanish words here don't do this, so I don't know if it's a good idea. I'm hoping for:

===Pronunciation===

• IPA^(key): /ba.ya'ni.han/

* { { Tagalog diacritic } } bayaníhan -- new tag!

The IPA is to still be universal, while the latter is specifically for Tagalog and Spanish.

Amicably, Icqgirl 11:03, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

Three things:

1. You've used an apostrophe instead of a stress mark. A primary stress mark in IPA is added using ˈ, which is a character available under the "IPA" section of the Edittools, which is visible below any edit window. It has a drop-down menu allowing you to select from several scripts and character sets. You can probably find the various diacritical characters you're looking for there under Latin/Roman.
2. Are you sure the IPA is correct that you've given? The [y] in IPA is a vowel. Based on the Tagalog article at Wikipedia, I'm assuming that the letter y is pronounced /j/ in Tagalog.
3. For Tagalog, I assume you're intending to add a version marked with a diacritical to serve as a simplified pronunciation for people who already know the basic phonemes. Our Italian entries are now doing this, because that's how Italian dictionaries mark the stress. It should not require a template, unless you mean creating a template that simply identifies that this is what the diacritical version represents, which would be a good idea. However, I'm really not sure what it is you're proposing to add for the Spanish words. The Spanish words have their accents in the standard written forms anyway, so there would be no reason to duplicate this..

--EncycloPetey 18:58, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

Sorry for the IPA entries; I'm still learning the ropes. I'll correct them. Thanks for pointing my mistakes out. It does sound like /j/ is the character.

You hit the mark. Tagalog dictionaries provide the simplest way to note stress, and I want to copy that here as it seems to be most suitable for the language, and easier to read for those who have a grasp of its pronunciation. A template is called for, to serve as a link explaining how the marks work, for identification, and organization (listing down "marked" words in a category somewhere). What do you think would be a suitable name? Is tl-pron fine?

Right, Spanish words do use the stress marks already. Silly me.

Thanks again, EP.

Icqgirl 17:41, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

The name {tl-pron} is the expected name for a template used to make the inflection line of a Tagalog pronoun. I recommend {tl-stress} instead, since that is (after all) what the template is really designed to show. --EncycloPetey 19:57, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

Hey EP, I found your entry on buwan. Below the ==Noun== code there's the word with a diacritic. It seems more convenient to do such to all Tagalog words instead than having to try start and implement a new template (tl stress) for it. What do you think? It would just have to be noted that diacritics are not used in everyday writing. Icqgirl 10:10, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

It's been decided that ===Alternate forms=== be used. --Icqgirl 07:40, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

Words of the year ... .some random data

The transparent hoax that is the "Global Language Monitor" was making the rounds of news shows a little while back with the words of the year for 2008. It's a great concept, somewhat weakened in the execution by the fact that the words in question were obviously cherry-picked to entertain the media. (I defy anyone to come up with a plausible algorithm and data set that yields "greenwashing" as a keyword for 2008.)

Anyway, just for fun I ran Antconc over the last two years of the New York Times to find the words that were most distinctively frequent in that publication in 2008 as opposed to 2007. I thought folks might be interested in the results; at least they show what words have been salient in the (US) public discourse lately. The lowercase word forms with a log-likelihood keyness exceeding 1000 were:

1. crisis
2. bailout
3. economy
4. financial
5. campaign
6. banks
7. recession
8. economic
9. voters
10. stimulus
11. prices
12. election

(in that order). No surprises there... The top 10 uppercase words were Obama, McCain, Palin, Barack, Clinton, Paterson, Olympic, Favre, Olympics and Beijing. No scientific validity is claimed for any of this, though I do note that this list is at least based on, you know, data, rather than some guy in Texas spinning around in his chair.

BTW, I'm extremely impressed with Antconc's performance here -- tasked with processing two corpora of more than 25 million words each, it did not hiccup or crash, though it did take about an hour to complete the task. Definitely the best free desktop concordancer you're likely to find. -- Visviva 07:51, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

Is there a SUL Box template as in en.wiki?

Is there something like w:en:Template:SUL Box here in english wiktionary? --Wallach2008 20:38, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

Don't think so, just put {{wikipedia}} on your userpage. Conrad.Irwin 20:56, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

The SUL Box looks like a particularly useful template. We ought to consider having it here. --EncycloPetey 21:08, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

See WT:UBV.—msh210℠ 21:14, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

{{g}}

Is there something like this for declension? 50 Xylophone Players talk 15:28, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

You mean, like a "Category:Language_name words lacking inflection information"? I don't think so, no. Inflection information is a lot less standard across languages than gender; I think we'd only want this sort of category for languages where we have the infrastructure for editors to add that inflection information (fairly) easily. —Ruakh_TALK 19:44, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

You can use {{attention|XX|can you add declension?}}, where XX is the language code. It works well with Russian, possibly also with Armenian, Finnish and Hungarian (but I’m only sure of the case with Russian). —Stephen 19:50, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

Okay, thanks Stephen. 50 Xylophone Players talk 19:52, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

That (what Ruakh said) said, you can, if you foresee lots of use for it, invent a language-specific category for the language of your choosing, e.g. Category:Hebrew requests for verb conjugation table, categorize that category into Category:Requests (Hebrew) (e.g.), and add the category to entries (manually or, if there's some need for it, via a template). But {{attention}} exists, its categories are watched, and it should do the trick. Note incidentally the existence of {{inflreq}}, but that's meant for requesting a specific form, not a whole table.—msh210℠ 20:25, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

Extra chars in editTools

Is it possible to add a custom menu item in the editTools drop-down menu, like on WP. I tried "window.charinsertCustom" in monobook.js without success. Some words in Old Norse has a "ǫ", and I always forget where I used it last time. So i would like to add an item for Old Norse to the list. – Leo Laursen – (talk · contribs) 17:29, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

You can create a custom list of items by creating a User:Your Name/edittools file. You can look at mine as an example. You also have to adjust your monobook, but I don't recall pecisely how. However, User:Conrad.Irwin should know, since he set up this feature. --EncycloPetey 02:12, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

Abrasion/Attrition in geographic erosion - what is the difference?

How would you describe the distinction between Abrasion/Attrition in geographic erosion? — This unsigned comment was added by 213.36.237.27 (talk).

I think this example using a river sums it up: With abrasion the river uses its load to wear away its beds and banks (through friction), making itself deeper and wider. With attrition, however, the load is wearing itself away. 50 Xylophone Players talk 01:34, 24 January 2009 (UTC)

Editing with a slow connection

I am editing with a slow connection at the moment, is there a way I can stop all the characters and templates of various languages from loading each time I edit a page? It is terribly slow for me on this connection, and annoying to wait whilst one line of useless random letters after another unfolds. Kaixinguo 23:15, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

Unfortunately, no. I have had the same problem from some computers, and agree that it has become a problem. However, there has been a tendency over the past few years to add everything that anyone would ever want to insert into the Edittools. The Grease Pit would be a better place to raise this issue, since it is a technical one. --EncycloPetey 02:07, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

Spiral Walkway

I really need to know what a spiral walk way is called usually used at sporting stadiums to let alot of people leave quickly. I thought it was called a vomitron but clearly not. Can someone please help me?? — This comment was unsigned.

I imagine you're thinking of the word (deprecated template usage) vomitorium, which does fit, but is liable to be misunderstood. —Ruakh_TALK 02:29, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

IPA?

At the wikipedia article w:Knowth I'd like to add the IPA pronounciation. I'm told the pronounciation is "Like the Engish word "now" with a 'th' on the end, more or less." Could someone put that in IPA for me, please? RJFJR 16:14, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

• /naʊθ/. —Ruakh_TALK 16:18, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

Spelling

spelling for 'challis' ? or , as in 'cup of Christ"

See chalice. —Stephen 18:26, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

License question: including wiktionary entries in a shareware product

I would like to include wiktionary entries in a shareware product but was wondering about the licensing issues.

Is this the best forum to discuss this? If so I will expand my queries anon. If not could someone please point me to the best place?

See Wiktionary:Copyrights#Users.27_rights_and_obligations. In principle there should be no problem, but any derivative work must also be GFDL-licensed (this is some seriously retarded legalistic crap IMO). So it probably depends on exactly how you want to use the entries -- just a verbatim inclusion with the GFDL attached should be no problem, but if you're going to reformat or rewrite them in some way, that would also need to be released under the GFDL. Anyway, IANAL. -- Visviva 06:46, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. As I want to display it in desktop software I want to convert it (to RTF so I can use a RichEdit control), and probably edit it down. So I think rather than chase whoever up for definitive legal judgement I'll just do it (and credit Wiktionary and provide the RTF (under the GFDL as you say) on the web somewhere as I interpret the GFDL).

founder/floundering

excellent usage note, great help with something/a topic that genuinely has been confusing to me for the longest time, thank you so much!!

[See ? If I have something positive to say per any observation of mine, I will do so too! Winking smiley

[Though I still not understand why instead of providing a clear and concise and conscript explanation so many definitions opt for an assembly of synonyms instead, isn't the synonym section intended for that ? Would this be something that would be worth while to be discussed in the beer parlor?I definitely think it is something that defines in its own right the accessibility and usability of the English wictionary say for non-native speakers; English bein' the like de facto world language, thus I'd foresee that the English version will become the most extensive and exhaustiv one among the wictionaries, already sheerly by the volume of possible contributors [say 3,000,000,000 or so], and to be fair to that part of the users and contributors, it should also take into account this very majority constituted by non-native users, among the population able to use English, in its [Wiktionary's] construction and set up!

[am I mistaken, or is it easier for educated native speakers to glean the meaning of a definition from a group of synonyms? This is a sincere question, I would assume that say, a teenager in a steep learning curve in matters acquiring new vocabulary would also benefit from an explanation- style definition, as in my experience non-native speakers do, but how that looks for native speakers with an already well established and expensive vocabulary, I just don't know for sure, perhaps synonyms for such users are a convenient shortcut, on the other hand, even when in the beginning asking for some adaption time, I would assume that the latter population of users might be as well served by explanation- style definitions as by synonym- based ones; as there isnt anybody serious and engaged enough available in my direct physical surroundings to ask, thank you so much in advance for your invaluable feedback Wiktionarian community!!

Yes, this is da [please allow me that liberty with the definite article for just once in this essay smiley] part of me that holds an educational degree speaking, and as such, users and contributors with such a background should only be considered and constitute an enrichment for the wictionary community in my view! [but read about W. M. f. and you will find very similar things being said like that with every new surge of new users and contributors, in their experience the various projects only benefit and progress, and to me such makes sense, apart from that they presented this as a fact, which they mentioned in my impression to convince the "oldbies" about the advantages of new blood coming in, despite the initial perceived disturbances and training/guiding/help effort required]

Thank you so much for reading till here!!!--史凡 17:51, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

New entry blues

I found the new entry templates hard to comprehend, and the tutorials and "help" to be of very little such. Anyway, I managed to create a new entry for a verb. The word is crackelate.

1)I don't agree with the automatically generated "present participle" and "simple past and past participle". How can I edit/modify these forms?

2)My main entry seems to have auto generated past tenses, which are covered in my main entry, but is now listed in the auto generated section, as non existing entries. How can I make these "not yet written" tenses/entries point at my original posting?

Rkov 20:42, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

I’m assuming {{en-verb}} gave you something like:

to crackelate (third-person singular simple present crackelates, present participle crackelateing, simple past and past participle crackelateed)

This can be solved by explicitly stating the verb’s entire conjugation, expressed in wikicode thus:

{{en-verb|crackelates|crackelating|crackelated}}

Which renders:

to crackelate (third-person singular simple present crackelates, present participle crackelating, simple past and past participle crackelated)

I don’t really understand your second quæstion / point. Nota WT:ELE and that most of the information about a word is given at its lemma; the inflexions are also given entries, but they tend to be stubs with purely grammatical definitions. The non-infinitive forms of crackelate would be defined as:

1. crackelates — “Third-person singular simple present indicative form of crackelate.”
2. crackelating — “Present participle of crackelate.”
3. crackelated — “Simple past tense and past participle of crackelate.”

Unfortunately, your original entry was deleted as a præsumed protologism. (All the words that Wiktionary includes, at least in principle, need to satisfy our criteria for inclusion — which (deprecated template usage) crackelate, admittedly, prima facie does not do.) I have since looked for some citations to back up this word. It’s pretty rare, but I managed to find about four; I say about four because only two are clearly of a verb use, whilst one seems to be of an adjective which only looks like a verb form (crackelated), and another is of a plural nominalisation (crackelations). I’m not sure whether so little evidence would be enough to satisfy the criteria for inclusion; give it a shot — maybe the closely-related adjective and noun will be accepted in pursuance of the term’s verification. † ﴾^(u):Raifʻhār ^(t):Doremítzwr﴿ 19:38, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

Question

What is it called when you swop the first letter of two words. — This comment was unsigned.

A spoonerism. -- Visviva 08:35, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

Changing the "Category" of a word

I added a Spanish noun, but the "category" had defaulted to "English" and I don't know how to change it...

What Spanish noun are you speaking of? We have to see how you did it before we can tell you what’s happening. —Stephen 16:17, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

The words were (deprecated template usage) diablura and (deprecated template usage) travesura. The problem was that you used the English noun template, instead of one of the Spanish noun templates. The prefix (en- or es-) names the language of the template you are using. For Spanish nouns, we currently use the templates {{es-noun-m}} and {{es-noun-f}}. --EncycloPetey 16:24, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

Way to fetch just the source text of a page

I'm using Wiktionary as part of a dictionary program, but I'm hesitant that fetching an entire HTML page for every search is wasteful. Is then any way (like a PHP title=title&action=getSource) to fetch only the plaintext source of an article? Thanks --Estemi 23:55, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

http://en.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?action=raw&title=something . However, if you are doing anything serious, it's recommend that you download the XML dumps so that you don't hammer our servers. You may also be interested in the API if you are doing more than just the entry text. Conrad.Irwin 00:01, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

Thank you. Estemi 00:44, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

hungarian wiktionary

The Hungarian wiktionary are 100000 articles. I ask one of the admistrators to transfer it in the 10000+ the Hungarian wiktionary at the wiktionary.org. Thank you! Hi, Einstein2 from the Hungarian wiktionary.

WOTD by e-mail

Hi all. Do we yet have a function that automatically sends Wiktionary’s Words of the Day to subscribers’ e-mail accounts? If we don’t, how feasible would it be to create one? † ﴾^(u):Raifʻhār ^(t):Doremítzwr﴿ 15:58, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

Retitle?

Is retitle a real English word? There is an entry, but I think that it is a mistranslation from another language. I did not find the word in The OED, Miriam Webster, or Chambers.

Hi Bob & Tom. Teri here. First-time caller. .... Wait .. uh ..

Religion in the Middle East

I'd love some help with what I am trying to do. I am currently reading a book titled "The Final Move Beyond Iraq" (The Final solutions while the world sleeps) by Mike Evans.

What I want to do is create a chart mapping who is who in this book. ie

- Mahmoud Ahmadinejad - president of Iran -Isser Harel - founder of Mossad, Isreal's intelligence agency Moshe Ya'alon - - retired Lt. General Isreal Defence Forces

I want to create a chart document which shows & tells me which religeous group inhabits which areas in the middle east, who the respective leaders are.... I need something to use a learning aid that is visual ... maybe even color coded, to learn and remember who all the 'players' are. I can't pronounce the names of the people and towns yet along remember them, so I'm trying to create a learning board for me. I'd want to see current boundaries, past boundaries, proposed etc. I guess I need an "ABC's" of the middle east et al. Can anyone help? It should probably resemble a family tree in some ways. I just gotta have a visual aid or I'll never keep all this data in my brain cells that are loosing connective pathways at a rapid speed.

Molto gracia!

See w:Religion in the Middle East. —Stephen 21:10, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

slumlord

the word slumlord. i feel it is not right. i believe a slumlord is someone who rents out bad broken down or poor condition housing. but slumlord stats bad too. but why does it mean he is a bad landlord?

i know a good slumlord. he gets screwed on his rent all the time and never kicks out his tenants always makes excuses for them how they are down on there luck. so why should he be generlized as a bad landlord or slum lord. what if i owned a big beautiful house and never did anything for my tenants? am i a slumlord or a bad landlord?

We just describe how people use words, which certainly can be unfair. DCDuring TALK 17:45, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

'Parthian shots' and 'parting shots'

Parthian shots - were made off horseback, using arrows, over the hindquarters, at the enemy, from which they were making distance between. Parting shots - in conversation is a usually aggressive comment made at the 'enemy' when leaving them or the subject at hand, of which there was some disagreement.

What's the difference? Are they related somehow?

P.S. Sorry about my definitions. But I didn't have an effective dictionary close handy.

parting shot probably derives from Parthian shot and they have similar meanings. A parting shot is a figure of speech for the heated last word in a testy argument; a Parthian shot is used literally to refer to the tactics of Parthian mounted archers, who would fire a salvo of arrows at the enemy, then move quickly out of range. —Stephen 17:36, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Which dump contains the actual words and definitions?

This is my first post so forgive me if I am not doing this correctly. I am a newbie working with a developer to assemble a list of plural forms for a database we're building. We downloaded a dump only to find that the words and definitions were not contained in the tables. Which dump has the words, definitions, synonyms etc...?

Is it one of the dumps on this page? http://download.wikimedia.org/enwiktionary/20081214/

More recent is one of the ones on http://download.wikimedia.org/enwiktionary/20090203/, and he one that's every entry, including definitions, is pages-articles (I think).—msh210℠ 17:59, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Non-English definitions

In geled, I gave the definition rank and specified the sense (The lines or rows of people in an organization). An editor changed the text to (A line or row of people, mostly about soldiers). That makes it less clear what sense is referenced, but may be better as a definition. What is the best practice for specifying senses in foreign language entries? – Leo Laursen – (talk · contribs) 10:48, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

If the modification is correct, and this word is used mostly in reference to soldiers, I would personally lean toward one of these:

1. (military) ranks (the lines or rows of people in an organization)
2. The ranks of an organization, especially a military one

If the word is distinct enough in meaning that an English gloss or glosses are not sufficient, then there isn't really any getting around having a real definition IMO.

Complicating the matter, I have no idea why that sense is at rank rather than ranks; it's even defined as plural. Does the same situation apply to the Danish word, or is geled normally used in the singular? -- Visviva 11:35, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

I prefer something slightly more gloss-y:

1. (military) ranks (rows of people)
2. ranks (of an organisation, hierarchy etc.)

But this probably just demonstrates that we don't have a clear consensus on this sort of thing yet :) Ƿidsiþ 11:40, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

"Geled" is usually translated as rank, but the basic meaning is a disciplined line of people, as in a military formation. Conversely rank is usually translated to rang. The definition from sproget.da is:

• two or more persons, often soldiers, standing side by side, shoulder by shoulder
  • things placed side by side in a row

In the sense, rising in ranks (Danish: stige i geledderne) it is usually used in plural, but basically the connotation is formation rather than ranking. – Leo Laursen – (talk · contribs) 12:29, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

twisted chromesones

could you please explain whast this is and the treatments ,. thank you

alcohol

I have tried to add "alcohol" to the etymology scriptorium but I cant seem to make it work. could someone help?J8079s 23:38, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

Done. That is a little tricky. -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 23:48, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

query by an anon

is there a site that can help me with in better american grammar — This unsigned comment was added by 24.126.168.60 (talk) at 18:54, 26 March 2009 (UTC.

I am so unhappy.

I am very sad. I joined Wiktionary in the hope of finding some meaning and significance in my life. Sadly, this has not happened. No matter how many entries I make, I am still unhappy. I just want to be loved :-(

I knew I had a twin somewhere. Equinox ◑ 23:36, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

I'm trying to find a template to enter a "missing" work in the dictionary. Can someone tell me how to do thiss?

verify word Abroholos?

There is a WP article w:Abroholos that says it is a Brazilian word meaning squall (but it isn't clear to me if this is the plural). I tried to check the Portugese wiktionary (which is hard because I don't speak any Portugese but I'm assuming that was the search button I clicked). Any suggestions on how I'd go about proving or disproving this as a name? (And determining if this is the Plural since it ends in S.) It might be a local term, the WP article isn't great which is why I'd like to clean it up. Thank you. RJFJR 15:53, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

Abroholos squall, more properly the Abrolhos squall. Abrolhos in Portuguese is a plural, from the archipelago of that name which was discovered by Amerigo Vespucci, who is said to have commented upon seeing the islands: "abre os olhos" (keep your eyes open). In Portuguese, when it means squall (uma borrasca), it’s lowercased: os abrolhos. —Stephen 14:18, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

Thank you. RJFJR 20:48, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

Inflection data / algorithm

I'm trying to put together a list of English nouns and their plurals. I thought Wiktionary's data would be a good place to start with this. However, after browsing through the single, almost-a-gigabyte (!) XML file, I've found that most nouns just use the 'en-noun' template and their plural is not in the article. I'm guessing it is either in a table outside of the article space, or it is calculated by a rule/regex-based algorithm. Is this table or algorithm available?

Thanks! Duckwizard 17:37, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

Edit: I see now that nouns of various pluralization forms have the form indicated in the template definition. I think I can use this to construct my 'master noun list' (although if such a list already exists, that would sure be nice...) Duckwizard 17:53, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

Some caution is required. Many uses of the en-noun template with the argument "-", meaning uncountable, are not correct. Many exceptional cases exist (non-English plurals eg (deprecated template usage) octopus, mass nouns, plural-only, singular-only, dual (deprecated template usage) eyeglasses). If your algorithm is supposed to be as good as a dictionary, it will need a fairly big look-up table. Most humans are not nearly as good as a dictionary. DCDuring TALK 18:27, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

the word loont

I am extracting information from a record dated 1823 it is a proprietor and next to the last name is the word loont, what does this word mean? These are Great Britain records. Thank You for your help.

hedgefund explanation

Why do you use British spellings?

Could I ask why you use British spellings (e.g., "realisation" and "Beer Parlour")? Just by sheer numbers, most users are probably in the US.

• Actually the main entry is at realization. I think the reason ‘beer parlour’ was used is that the thing was thought to be more of a British phenomenon. But in general we have no bias in either direction, and don't forget that there are also many forms of English besides those of just the US and the UK. Ƿidsiþ 09:58, 5 April 2009 (UTC)
• Whoever adds a definition uses the spelling that he/she finds most natural. We seem to have more editors that use British rather than US English. It is considered bad form to change the original spelling. SemperBlotto 10:01, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

In fact, by the actual numbers, only 17-34% of the users of the English Wiktionary are in the US. (Figures from Alexa, they don't give the cross-tabs. Users in the US account for 17% of all traffic, and 50% of the traffic is to English. 17% assumes that the proportion of users in the US going to English is the same as for other wikts, 34% assumes that users in the US only use the en.wikt. So a good guess for usage of the en.wikt might be about 1/4 in the US, 3/4 from elsewhere. In any case, US users of the English wiktionary do not exceed 34% ;-) If one was to go by the user base, UK/Commonwealth spellings would be preferred. Robert Ullmann 11:51, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

• Dude, you are so cheating. :-P   According to that page, most of the user-base is from non-English-speaking countries. There are probably more users from the U.S. than from all other English-speaking countries put together. (I say "probably" because 13% of the user-base is from "other", which makes it hard to be totally sure.) And that's even counting India and Canada as English-speaking countries with U.K. spellings, which is only partly true; if we leave them out (treating them as neutral parties), the U.S. probably outstrips U.K.-spelling countries by a factor of about 3 to 1. —Ruakh_TALK 15:21, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

• You've left out Australia & New Zealand. :p --Tyranny Sue 05:05, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

• Why not ? --Elkaar 12:06, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

why does the pronunciation not play automatically?

Why can't the pronunciation play automatically on wikitionary as on awww.answers.com when we click the sound (Blowhorn) icon. Why is it in ogg format and why does it ask us to save the file first... (saving is ok but should be optional)? Am I asking this at the right place?

69.14.222.205 01:35, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

Hello. This depends on your Web browser configuration. Your browser probably isn't set up to play ogg files, so it considers them to be "unknown" data files and tries to save them to disk instead. Have a look at your browser's documentation; you can probably configure it to play them automatically. Equinox ◑ 01:40, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

The free, open Ogg format was chosen to avoid limits on the availability of software to play the sound files. Such software is rarely included in commercial operating systems like Mac OS and Windows. You need an Ogg plugin, or an Ogg codec for Quicktime or for WiMP. Click the “help” link next to the speaker icon for directions. —Michael Z. 2009-04-06 16:02 z

I think that what he is saying is that, even with the right plugins, you don't just get the sound of the word. A new mediaplayer window opens (after a short pause), the sound plays, and you are left with the window to deal with. I never use the system. SemperBlotto 16:06, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

It shouldn't open a new window if you have an appropriate browser plugin. In Safari/Mac, with the XiphQT codec installed, the player fills the browser window, but then the browser's back button restores the entry view. Although it would be slicker if it just played the sound, this works quite smoothly and gives you a controller bar. But I never use it either. —Michael Z. 2009-04-07 05:33 z

The prepositions/adpositions must be given with each verb or noun

I want to get the adposition used with verbs e.g. attentive to their needs, separately from its neighbors and as used with nouns a thirst for revenge, an amendment to the constitution. But many verb definitions and noun definitions does not include this information. This is very important for people with English as a foreign/second language. Is there a page on wiki projects which has this information?69.14.222.205 02:29, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

I agree, this is very important, but it has not yet received much attention, whether in English or any of the other languages. —Stephen 03:16, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

Stephen, do you know any admin or editor so that we can request them to create a robot or make a rule about entering this all the time. another example is worthy 'of' praise.. Just telling the meaning of worthy does not let a person know about what is the adposition to use with it ('of' in this case). 207.148.219.146 13:05, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

I agree that this is vital to foreign learners of English, but not only of English. One should also mention at neugierig that this adjective is used only with auf, sich erinnern with genitive or an and so on. In Wikiwörterbuch the editors have not bothered to include it either... The uſer hight Bogorm converſation 16:15, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

What's the best way to present this to the reader? It's essentially usage information. But I think it could be presented either as a separate usage note, or by providing an example quotation, or as a phrase in the definition, or in a structured label in the definition. Is there any reason to structure this with templates, or collect it in categories? —Michael Z. 2009-04-06 16:25 z

• We seem to be having this conversation already in the Beer Parlour, but see die, verb sense 1. This was how I tried it last time the issue came up, using subsenses. I quite like it but not everyone does. Ƿidsiþ 16:27, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

  That's not bad, but they aren't dictionary subsenses. (But since we don't officially condone subsenses, this may be an acceptable use for sub-lists – perhaps they should be bulleted instead of numbered). Adding bulleted examples under Usage notes might fit our framework better. —Michael Z. 2009-04-06 18:17 z

Is there a robot for this?

Is there a robot which can collect noun definitions where the plural of a word is not mentioned. I hate entries of nouns where the plural is not given.69.14.222.205 02:29, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

Adding a category

The category: 'English words suffixed with -age' should (I think) be added to

• shortage
• foliage

I'd be happy to be taught how to do this. Thanks. :) --Tyranny Sue 05:01, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

We already have Category:English words suffixed with -age. All you have to do is add [[Category:English words suffixed with -age]] at the bottom of a page such as shortage. —Stephen 12:16, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

Or you can do it like this - but it only applies here, what Stephen showed you works generally. --Duncan 16:36, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

Category for backformations or innovations?

I'm currently working on the word shat (past tense of 'shit') and am wondering do we have a category for backformations or innovations or otherwise non-etymological verb tenses? Or perhaps even a category for forms that first appeared, say for example, in the early 18c? Any of these would be useful. Thanks very much :) --Tyranny Sue 06:04, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

I think if you wanted to make a project of determining backformations, then a Category:Backformations might be reasonable. —Stephen 12:11, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

Widespread (& accepted by many) (mis)pronunciations of commonly used non-English words (e.g. 'paella', 'chorizo')

Just wondering if it's part of the Wiktionary project to document widespread pronunciations no matter what. As in, say a non-English word is being widely used (I'm thinking specifically at the moment of 'paella' and 'chorizo') and also widely mispronounced (in the English-speaking world, perhaps less so in the USA). Would it not be worth noting that mispronunciation down? (For 2 reasons:

• 1. To show, e.g. Spanish-speakers, what the hell these English-speakers are trying to mean?

and

• 2. To try to show non-native speakers how it shouldn't be pronounced. (Or would that be regarded as overly prescriptive?)

Thanks--Tyranny Sue 09:53, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

We're mainly a documentary dictionary. If paella is pronounced a certain way in the USA, then that is the US pronunciation, even if it would be a vulgar mispronunciation in Spanish. If you want to know how it's pronounced in Spanish, then see paella#Spanish. —Michael Z. 2009-04-07 10:17 z

On the other hand, with the English (mis)pronunciation is documented, I would want to know if that anglicized version is a different, vulgar word when head by a native speaker. Maybe in usage notes? DAVilla 01:57, 14 April 2009 (UTC)

Dubious. Why shouldn't every English word which sounds like a vulgarity in another language be so noted, or every word in every language crossed with every other language? Just vulgarities, or insults too? The majority of English words have been borrowed within the last 2,000 years – so even if we restricted this to direct borrowings, where would we draw the cutoff? We aren't a multilingual pronunciation dictionary which indexes terms by their pronunciation (is there such a thing?), so it's not in our mandate to do this as a rule.

So is there something you're trying to say about the way paella is pronounced in North America? I've only ever heard /pa'jeja/, /tʃo'rizoʊ/ in Canada. Did I shock my server in that Cuban restaurant? —Michael Z. 2009-04-14 05:14 z

using Template:t with multiple scripts

I was trying to combine the translations of aunt for Mandarin and Serbian but the documentation at {{t}} doesn't say how to do so. I got as far as this:

• Mandarin: (father's sister): 姑 (gū), 姑媽 / 姑妈 (gūmā), 姑姑 (gūgu), 姑母 (gūmǔ); (father’s elder brother’s wife): 伯母 (bómǔ); (father’s younger brother’s wife): 叔母 (shúmǔ), 嬸母 / 婶母 (shěnmǔ), 嬸嬸 / 婶婶 (shěnshen); (maternal): 姨 (yí), 姨媽 / 姨妈 (yímā), 阿姨 (āyí), 姨母 (yímǔ); (in-law): 舅母 (jiùmǔ), 舅媽 / 舅妈 (jiùmā), 妗母 (jìnmǔ), 妗 (jìn)
• Serbian: тетка / tetka f; (in-law): ујна / ujna f, стрина / strina f

The Serbian is okay because it only uses links, but the Mandarin using {{t}} obviously doesn't look right. Could someone show me how to correct it?

Also, is it correct to use {{sense}} in this manner? The documentation seems to indicate that {{italbrac}} is more appropriate, but that doesn't look ideal either. DAVilla 01:53, 14 April 2009 (UTC)

There must be other methods but since I didn't find or didn't understand, I created new ones:

{{zh-tsp|中國|中国|Zhōngguó}} produces: trad. 中國 / 中国 (Zhōngguó), simpl. 中国 (Zhōngguó) (pinyin: Zhōngguó)

{{zh-zh-p|北京|Běijīng}} produces: Template:zh-zh-p

Anatoli 02:28, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

Sigh. You are making it so hard on yourself. Just don't try to put "/" in anywhere, use the template one at a time. ("/" doesn't mean anything; having any meaning requires tagging things somehow)

Don't bother with xs=. That is placed (and removed) by Tbot as an optimization.

(why do you have everything tagged for simplified script? trad should be Hant, t/s should be Hani)

Like this: (removing a lot of stuff where you are simply trying way too hard)

• Mandarin:

  (father's sister) 姑 (gū), Template:zh-tra 姑媽 / 姑妈 (gūmā) Template:zh-sim 姑妈 (gūmā), 姑姑 (gūgu), 姑母 (gūmǔ)

  (father’s elder brother’s wife) 伯母 (bómǔ)

  (father’s younger brother’s wife) 叔母 (shúmǔ), Template:zh-tra 嬸母 / 婶母 (shěnmǔ) Template:zh-sim 婶母 (shěnmǔ), Template:zh-tra 嬸嬸 / 婶婶 (shěnshen) Template:zh-sim 婶婶 (shěnshen)

  (maternal) 姨 (yí), Template:zh-tra 姨媽 / 姨妈 (yímā) Template:zh-sim 姨妈 (yímā), 阿姨 (āyí), 姨母 (yímǔ)

  (in-law) 舅母 (jiùmǔ), Template:zh-tra 舅媽 / 舅妈 (jiùmā) Template:zh-sim 舅妈 (jiùmā), 妗母 (jìnmǔ), 妗 (jìn)

(some of those still need Hans->Hani, and it might be better to leave off the tr= for the tra in tra/sim pairs; did that) I did create {{zh-tra}} and {{zh-sim}} to abstract those abbreviations (they need a bit of CSS too), as used in {{zh-ts}}. They probably should follow the {t} template, but we can look at that later.

Please remove the other templates that you created and tag them with {delete}, as they don't generate the links to zh.wikt and aren't compatible with several other things.

And note the way Cyrillic and Roman script are handled in other entries. (There is an example in WT:ELE; and there has been some discussion of improving it, but for now, this is the way it is.) Robert Ullmann 12:35, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

You're right, it's pretty hard to do when you're not sure how. I don't see any documentation about this at either Wiktionary:About Mandarin (which doesn't exist) or Wiktionary:About Chinese. Thanks for clarifying because it is pretty simple after all. I wasn't trying to add xs=Mandarin by the way. I'd simply left those in when merging the two lines.

In contrast to {{zh-tra}} and {{zh-sim}} which you created, I thought Acai had been using slashes as in:

• Mandarin:

  (father's sister) 姑 (gū), 姑媽 / 姑妈 (gūmā) / 姑妈 (gūmā), 姑姑 (gūgu), 姑母 (gūmǔ)

  (father’s elder brother’s wife) 伯母 (bómǔ)

  (father’s younger brother’s wife) 叔母 (shúmǔ), 嬸母 / 婶母 (shěnmǔ) / 婶母 (shěnmǔ), 嬸嬸 / 婶婶 (shěnshen) / 婶婶 (shěnshen)

  (maternal) 姨 (yí), 姨媽 / 姨妈 (yímā) / 姨妈 (yímā), 阿姨 (āyí), 姨母 (yímǔ)

  (in-law) 舅母 (jiùmǔ), 舅媽 / 舅妈 (jiùmā) / 舅妈 (jiùmā), 妗母 (jìnmǔ), 妗 (jìn)

I sure would like to see that Serbian example in ELE changed some day. For now I think it's best to have it removed. DAVilla 21:48, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

Reference Tags

Hi, how can i use the ref, /ref tags and the reflist template? When i used the above (as is done in wikipedia), i get an error message that says that references/ does not exist. How are references/ and reflist related? Psoup 08:10, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

You can use the ref and /ref tags, but there is no "reflist" template. Under the References section, one line should read <references/> (which is what the pedia template does, with cruft wrapped around it). Please only use rerf tags in running text (e.g. etymologies), and keep in mind that simply putting a reference in the References section as a bullet point is the preferred style. Robert Ullmann 11:57, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

Diacritical?

What is the word for the little marks under the n and d in maṇḍala?

The general term is just "dot" or "underdot" (I think the Unicode standard uses "dot under"). However, in the case of Indic languages, this dot transcribes a mark of the original scripts called the anusvara. Circeus 22:35, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

threat

When I look at this page i get the following error: [ object HTMLInputElement ] is there something wrong? 128.232.247.55 00:56, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

I don't see that error, but I'm probably using a different web browser from yours. What browser are you using? —Rod (A. Smith) 02:13, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

My vandalism

I came here a while ago when I should have been studying and vandalised two pages. I've thought about it and now regret doing that, so I've reverted myself. Sorry, and if it means I get blocked then fair enough. 86.166.68.63 19:00, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

formatting for Chinese entries

Hi everyone. I hope I'm posting this in the right place. I'm a complete newbie to wiktionary, so please excuse my ignorance. I've been editing/creating a few different Chinese-English definitions and noticed there seems to be varying ways of formatting things like simp/trad, mandarin/other dialects, pinyin, etc. Is there any agreed convention on this? Also, could someone direct me to a page which shows me the best way to create a new page for a Chinese word? I've made a few in the past but I'm afraid they might not be up to standard. Thank you. Tooironic 22:40, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

Hi again. 你好

You get different answers on translations and entries, I look at existing entries for comparison:

I haven't created many entries but I've been adding translations.

Check these:

• template_talk:zh-tsp
• template_talk:zh-zh-p

See hotel with the examples of both. I don't know many active Chinese editors here, perhaps we should get them from chinese-forums :)

(aka atitarev) Anatoli 01:00, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply, Atitarev. Small world, eh? Two Melburnians who both happen to frequent the same Chinese forum also happen to be editing Wiktionary at the exact same time! Your templates are very helpful, thanks, but what is to be done if there is more than one dialect being defined? Also, I can't help but wonder if wiki could possibly develop some kind of standard format. It would certainly save a lot of hassle in the long run, wouldn't it. I only recently discovered this place, and am already addicted. Cheers, Tooironic 04:55, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

A couple of thoughts, with the provision that east Asian languages have always rather mystified me, so I might be off a bit off on some of this. First, WT:AZH should contain our highest concentration of formatting polices for Chinese. Secondly, User:A-cai is our best Chinese editor, so his thoughts should certainly be requested. Finally, I think it's been fairly well established that we're not treating Chinese as a language, but rather as a language family, with its component languages being Mandarin, Min Nan, etc. Both the L2 headers and translations should reflect this, although it is probably best to group them all under "Chinese." -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 05:40, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

The language family concept is not followed and I am not the first to break it. Mandarin = Standard Chinese and most dialects don't have a written form. The Min Nan users just add their pronunciation, in Cantonese (Hong Kong style), they write the traditional characters + translations. Chinese dialects are presented very poorly in Wictionary, Cantonese entries often have no pronunciation, might as well be flagged as Chinese. Min Nan just shows the pronunciation, no hanzi.

IMHO, this is sufficient:

Translations

...

• Chinese: trad. TRADITIONAL, simpl. SIMPLIFIED (pinyin: PINYIN) (this is default, pinyin shows Mandarin pronunciation)

  Cantonese: TRADITIONAL (pronunciation) (if exists)

  Min Nan: TRADITIONAL (if exists)

....

The characters are identical in 99% forms, at least for standard written Chinese.

I agree Chinese dialects have a lot of differences but as far as the written entries go, it make sense to group them together. Provide Mandarin entry first (implied) and dialects. A similar practice is used for Arabic, where dialects go underneath the main Arabic translation entry. As an alternative, "Mandarin" could appear under "Chinese" but then you will have a blank unused line:

Translations

...

• Chinese: (unused space)

  Cantonese: TRADITIONAL (pronunciation)

  Mandarin: trad. TRADITIONAL, simpl. SIMPLIFIED (pinyin: PINYIN)

  Min Nan: TRADITIONAL (pronunciation)

....

Small world, huh? :) Anatoli 06:07, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

I'm not going to argue this, as my knowledge of Chinese is zilch, but this does need to be done consistently. I suggest opening a BP thread, get A-cai involved, and settle this one way or the other. -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 06:10, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

Yes, thanks. I have just described the de facto standard, which I just continued to use. The actual entries are separate for Mandarin, though, as the talk about pronunciation, have audio links, etc. Perhaps someone will join here to discuss. If the suggestion doesn't work then there's a lot of work to do to change all translations!. I seldom see "Mandarin" in translations. Anatoli 06:18, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

By the way, these are not pronunciations in brackets, they are transliterations or romanizations. See also Wiktionary:Beer parlour#Recurring problem with Chinese vs. Mandarin 72.177.113.91 04:58, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

DEFAULTSORT on entries

Do we do this? if so, for which languages/scripts?—msh210℠ 17:03, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

It would seem to be appropriate when you can definitively claim that the sorting information is correct for all languages that could have that term. As that is highly unlikely, I'd think we'd be against this. --Bequw → ¢ • τ 23:28, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

Well, it's just a default sort; it can be overridden in individual language sections if need be. I believe that without it, MediaWiki defaults to ASCIIbetical order (or whatever you call it when you've the full Unicode repertoire to collate, and use their numeric codings), so that Category:English_nouns?from=Z contains English nouns that start with uppercase Z followed by the first hundredsome English nouns that start with lowercase a. It's ridiculous. I for one would be quite happy if someone would automatedly {{DEFAULTSORT:something more reasonable}} almost every entry containing /[^a-z]/, even if it's not perfect. (Alternatively, maybe this is something that can be done using a MediaWiki extension or the like? Non-default default sorting?) —Ruakh_TALK 00:42, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

I agree with Ruakh; it is surely better to list Übermensch and übermensch just before uberty than it is to have the former listed after zwitterion but before åkermanite with the latter appearing much later amongst the other ‘ü’-initial words, for example. † ﴾^(u):Raifʻhār ^(t):Doremítzwr﴿ 01:06, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

Oh, yes, please!

We need one default mixed-language sorting scheme for general categories. Unicode actually has a collation scheme, but for starters we just need basic dictionary sorting: all lowercase, remove diacritics, collapse spaces, apostrophes, and hyphens, etc. I don't think it's possible to make diacritical letters sort after plain ones this way, but c'est la vie.

Phase 2 would be to add a sort field to inflection templates, and use language-specific rules there, so, e.g., Category:Swedish nouns uses Swedish sorting. —Michael Z. 2009-04-22 01:30 z

How many languages include sort fields in the POS heading templates? French does. Circeus 04:30, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

Can't edit 'sexy'

I'm a complete newbie. Can someone please explain to me why I can't edit sexy? I'd like to add a Chinese definition. — This unsigned comment was added by Tooironic (talk • contribs) at 09:45, 22 April 2009.

It’s protected because so many people try to vandalize this page. If you tell me what Chinese you’d like to add, I will add it for you. Or you may edit it yourself if you register under a user name and log in. —Stephen 13:03, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

Yes, you may tell the definition here or on Talk:sexy. But, Stephen, the user has an account here, he is no anon, why can he not edit? How can he be made autoconfirmed in order to edit the entry? He has good intention. The uſer hight Bogorm converſation 13:07, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

Just a little bit too new. Give it another 20 minutes (;-). Robert Ullmann 13:18, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the help guys :) I've added the new definition Eng->Chi (can't believe no one had done it before), as well as Chi->Eng (性感). Love this site - so addictive :) Now we just need to standardise all the Chinese templates... Tooironic 23:42, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

There's still a lot of entries/translations missing for Chinese and not only Chinese, Tooironic. Please continue the good work! I've been adding translations too. The entries are a bit to complicated and one has to do them twice, thanks to jiantizi/fantizi problem. The translations are problematic as well, there are a few similar templates. I can't use assisted translations, since there is no accommodation for simp./trad., if they are different. Anatoli 00:28, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

penis

Tooironic has requæsted the addition of the Chinese translation at Talk:penis#Chinese definition. The entry is protected (which I support, because the plural form was vandalised), so could any administrator add the Chinese translation from Talk:penis#Chinese definition? The uſer hight Bogorm converſation 09:19, 25 April 2009 (UTC)

ÖDA

To Whom It May Concern:

Your meaning of ÖDA is:

    1. waste, to spend in vain, often used about time

Other places found on the web ÖDA means:

    Swedish form of  Old Norse  Auðr, meaning "deeply rich." http://www.20000-names.com/female_o_names.htm

Which one is correct?

Thanks.

Baki holland

The Modern Swedish verb öda is correct. Names can be quite different from regular words and difficult to trace. I believe the name you’re referring to is related to Otto and has a different origin, and it means rich. So both are correct. —Stephen 19:12, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

sounds like memesis

I heard a word that I thought was 'memesis' (I thought it sounded like mem-ee-siss), seemed to mean something like an ideal example. Can anyone take a guess about what word I really heard? RJFJR 14:19, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps (deprecated template usage) mimesis? DCDuring TALK 15:50, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

Sounds possible. Thank you. RJFJR 15:59, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

May 2009

Languages on "no page title matches"

When I search for a word and find no page, Wiktionary returns a page asking which part of speech and which language the word belongs to, in case I'd like to write a new article. The four languages that I can choose from are English, American sign language, Spanish and Swedish. Except for the sign language, those are exactly those languages that I speak and understand. Is this just a coincidence, or have I set this somewhere in my preferences? --Joti 14:34, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

We all see the same ones. (Spanish adjective and noun give me empty edit boxes, in case anyone can fix this). —Michael Z. 2009-05-02 15:52 z

I see. Thanks.--Joti 17:19, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

Where am I supposed to enter translations of derived terms?

I made an entry for put in place and would like to add German translations. Am I supposed to make an entry under the headword put or the derived term itself? -- CvL11c 8:43, 5 May 2009 (MESZ)

• You should put corresponding translations in either of the three sections of put in place - these should really be translations that have the same form e.g. not all the translations of "allocate" etc. SemperBlotto 07:41, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

Thanks a lot! CvL11c 15:48, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

synonym in context

If a word is a synonym of another but only in a specific context, would we call that a synonym, or a hypernym/hyponym pair, or what? For example: A mathematician might use the word volume to refer to the area of a figure in the plane. In that limited context, volume and area are complete synonyms. The relevant sense of volume though (which we don't have) is "{{context|measure theory}} A measure of any subset of Euclidean space" (or something that; don't copy that to the entry, as it's not a good definition), and doesn't mention the plane at all. So the relevant context is "in the plane": in that context, volume and area are synonyms. —msh210℠ 18:29, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

In the general case it would be a qualified synonym for the closest sense, I think. In the instant case, I would treat it that way, too, because most other nyms are already pushing the limits of normal users' vocabulary. Qualifications might be a bridge too far for other nyms. DCDuring TALK 20:29, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

Words that are blends

I would like to know how you know if a word is a blend. Then whether it is a blend from the beginning or the end of the word.

Some words are fly, dry, kind, straw, stop, crow, lift, ask, and, brown, last,

A blend is identified by the merger of (most often) two multisyllabic, and a definition that is transparent. Almost always, the word could be expressed as an attributive of preposition construction: anecdotal data -> anecdata, informative/ion entertainment -> infotainment etc. The words you list have nothing to do with blends or portmanteaus. Circeus 04:57, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

Or do you mean a consonant blend? (We should have that sense s.v. blend, I think. It's pretty common, I think, in elementary education. But I haven't checked, so before adding it someone should check for cites.) An explanation of consonant blends is in Wikipedia s.v. consonant blend; see there for the answer to your question.—msh210℠ 15:39, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

Need help

I'm doing a poem, and I don't remember a third person pronoun. Would anybody like to help me? Thanks.

He, she, it, they; him, her, it, them. —Stephen 19:03, 9 May 2009 (UTC)

Translation section in non-English words' articles

Hello! I'm pretty new to Wiktionary (but a member and an administrator on Wikipedia in Macedonian for about 4 years now), and I was wondering why the translation section in articles for non-English words should be omitted. I know we're supposed to just provide a link to the corresponding translation in English, and not write a definition, but what happens if there is no article (article or entry, what's it called on Wiktionary?) on the word (the corresponding translation), or even no equivalent of the word being translated in English? For example I want to write an article about инает/инат, but there is no way that that word could be translated in English (not using just one word at least), so what do I do now? guitardemon 21:50, 9 May 2009 (UTC)

All words have to be defined, not only English words. In my opinion, a translation in English is a definition (but it usually requires a gloss: a single word is ambiguous in most cases). When no translation is available, of course, a normal definition should be given. Lmaltier 16:36, 10 May 2009 (UTC)

Just define it in English using whatever words are necessary. Then link important terms in the definition, even if there are no articles yet in existance. If the definition requires some words that don’t go together as a single term in English, that’s all right. —Stephen 22:50, 10 May 2009 (UTC)

The question still remains, that if there is a word a in language A, whose translation in English does not correspond to any single word Wiktionary entry, but to a phrase, say "b c", in English, then if a translates to d in language D, then this translation cannot be filed either under b or under c, because neither of these words entries, by itself, means the same as a. So wouldn't a have to have a Translations section under which to file d? —AugPi 21:08, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

I guess that the answer would be that the translation d would be filed under entry a in the A-Wiktionary, i.e. the Wiktionary for language A, not the English Wiktionary. —AugPi 21:17, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

An example fwiw is de rien = de nada = על לא דבר, for which there isn't really an idiomatic English equivalent.​—msh210℠ 22:56, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

No, sorry, this is not what I really meant. All three entries above translate/define to the single entry you're_welcome in English, so all three can be filed under you're_welcome, which is actually the case. I struck through and rephrased my previous writing in order to clarify. —AugPi 03:23, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

An example: "allerlei" in Dutch means English "all kinds of" which has no single entry, but it also means Ido "omnaspeca". —AugPi 02:53, 21 June 2009 (UTC)

Another answer would be to create a single entry b_c, which is possible (by CFI) as long as b_c is more of a set phrase than a sum of parts. Then both a and d can be filed as translations under b_c. —AugPi 03:23, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

Otherwise add a translation section for the given foreign word, e.g. see aardoppervlak. —AugPi 02:37, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

No, our primary policy document (WT:ELE) says in regard to Translations sections: "Translations are to be given for English words only." That's pretty clear. --EncycloPetey 03:10, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

The more direct definitions should be in the other wiktionaries (and if they're not, add them there!). On the entry in this wikt you can point them to the other pages using {{trans-see-flw}}. --Bequw → ¢ • τ 23:54, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

Niche Glossaries

Hi everybody, I have a question about whether this is right for Wiktionary: I need to put together a glossary of fairly specialist technical terms, Acronyms and organisations for an online project. I'd like that glossary to live somewhere with more general access, the option to contribute to and shape definitions and a longer guaranteed lifespan than a private website. My question is whether Wiktionary would be the right dictionary for this. (Mediatoad)

What is the subject matter? We have some of there already, but mostly they are moved here from Wikipedia or arise from the need to have a home for things that do not warrant real entries. See category:Glossaries for examples of what we have. DCDuring TALK 16:31, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

Hi, thanks for those examples. Actually that is exactly what I am trying to do. The subject matter is British Prison, Probation and post-release support services. (Mediatoad)

Once material is here you are not guaranteed that it will remain. The GNU Free Documentation License, under which any material must be submitted to any Wikimedia Foundation wiki, allows anyone else to use it and modify it. See Wiktionary:Copyrights for an explanation and more links. There may also be other wikis that would afford your material a home under different terms. DCDuring TALK 11:42, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

Thanks DCDuring, the reason why I wanted to put this glossary on Wiktionary in the first place was so that other people could use, add and edit it. I suppose I wouldn't be happy if it was all deleted, but according to the guidelines and copyright link that wouldn't happen without a valid reason. Unless it's vandalism.

I suppose what I was worried about was what I know as notability from wikipedia, because it's a niche subject matter. Of what I saw that doesn't seem to be an issue in my case. However if anybody knows a better or more appropriate wiki project to set this glossary up, maybe you can let me know.(Mediatoad)

Definitions of transitive verbs

While browsing Wiktionary I sometimes come across definitions of transitive verbs that seem to me to be logically flawed. The following, a definition of "to catch", is typical:

"To seize a moving object, with the hands or otherwise."

I'm always tempted to change these to:

"To seize (a moving object), with the hands or otherwise."

But then I wonder if this is being too fussy. What do you think? 86.146.47.184 22:26, 14 May 2009 (UTC).

No, that is not too fussy, IMO. There is a great deal of inconsistency in how we handle these, including outright error. No-parentheses versions can lead to outright error in the case of verbs that take two direct objects. What you suggest (parentheses) is the best way I know to handle cases where the restrictions on the range of objects of the verb needs to be specified. I prefer it to the option of using "context" labels. I would love to hear a better idea if there is one. DCDuring TALK 23:13, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

Using Tea room

Where can I find about how to use the Tea room? Things unclear about it to me include:

• Should the heading of an issue be striked-through upon closing the issue?
• Is there some minimum time for which an issue should be left open?
• What are the steps upon closing an issue? I would estimate that these are (a) striking-through the heading of the issue, and (b) removing {{rft}} from the discussed article. Is this correct or should this be extended?

Thanks. --Dan Polansky 10:01, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

One additional helpful thing would be to move the material to the Talk page for the associated entry. I haven't given any thought to this though and don't know procedure. It is less fraught with risk than an RfD or RfV. I can't imagine anyone objecting to closing a discussion after, say, three months of no further discussion, especially if the material remains at a Talk page. DCDuring TALK 11:52, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

The alternative of inserting in the talk page a (section) link to the archived material would be satisfactory though it increases the risk that someone would add to the dead discussion despite the warnings. DCDuring TALK 12:04, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

How to get all edits?

I have made some edits on this computer but they don't show up on my profile, how do you get them to appear? — This unsigned comment was added by Lizhoumaster (talk • contribs) at 08:34, 16 May 2009.

Well, according to Special:Contributions/Lizhoumaster you have made only the edit on this page, but if you have another account, try to edit only from one, several accounts for one single contributor (except for bot purposes) are not welcome. If you were not logged in, then insert the IP wherefrom you have edited after the slash at [[Special:Contributions/]] and they will be visible. The uſer hight Bogorm converſation 11:44, 16 May 2009 (UTC)

Can I delete a user?

I am new to Wiktionary and accidentally created a new user whereas I had already had a user from Wikipedia that I had shared over to Wiktionary. Is there any way to delete this accidental user? Thanks! --Spellingfreak 19:17, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

What username are you talking about? —Stephen 19:21, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

(I just changed users) I was using the new one. Spellingfreak is the user I would like to delete. --Logomaniac 19:28, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

If Spellingfreak were an existing user page, I could delete it for you, but it isn’t. There is no page for Spellingfreak, so just ignore it. —Stephen 22:23, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

OK ... thanks!! --Logomaniac 23:37, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

force and velocity

What is the fastest speed a bullet can be projected? What form or other force can reject the the velocity of a bullet?

A bullet fired on a planet in a galaxy at the edge of the known universe will be moving at almost the speed of light in relation to Earth. A bullet’s velocity can be affected by gravity or the electromagnetic force, as well as any matter that it encounters or passes through, such as water, stone, or air. —Stephen 17:21, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

When to use brackets and parentheses for the IPA

I've noticed that when the IPA for a word is included it's always written in between either parentheses or brackets, is there a difference?--Megaman en m 11:03, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

Slashes /.../ for a broad w:phonemic representation for a particular language, which is usually most suitable for a dictionary pronunciation. Square brackets [...] for a narrow w:phonetic representation, a detailed breakdown of the precise sounds that most people don't pay attention to. More at w:IPA#Usage. Round brackets are either incorrect, or just parentheses. —Michael Z. 2009-06-05 12:34 z

Thanks, for some reason I wrote parentheses instead of slashes.--Megaman en m 13:23, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

Definition

What is the definition of Insurance Enterprises?

Russian pronunciation question!

I have heard that Russian is not a 'phonetic language', meaning it isn't always pronounced as it is written. The Russian entries here on Wiktionary include pronunciation guides. Here's my question: Do these guides indicate the way the word is actually spoken in Russian?, or,

Are they strictly phonetic (i.e. just telling how the word SHOULD be pronounced according to a basic understanding of the Cyrillic alphabet)?

Thanks.

but they don't know, cause they don't have to, and i'll admit, it feels a little strange 16:38, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

Our transliterations are essentially phonemic, as opposed to phonetic. After you learn the rules of Russian pronunciation, you can deduce the phonetic pronunciation from the phonemic transliteration. For example, Russian unstressed а and о are pronounced alike. They are only differentiated when stressed. Or the letter щ, which is transliterated as šč (which is the traditional way), yet it is pronounced ɕɕ, a light sh sound with no ch at all. The letter е is usually transliterated as e, but when you learn the pronunciation, you know that it also serves to palatalize the preceding consonant. Or the letters я, ё, ю (ja, jo, ju) really do not have the y sound as suggested by ja/jo/ju, but instead they palatalize the preceding consonant. —Stephen 21:33, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

Out of curiosity: Why do we transliterate е as "e" (not "je") if ё is "jo"? And why do we use j's, not y's, in transliteration on English Wikt?​—msh210℠ 21:46, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

It’s because there are so many e’s. All of the j’s (or y’s) are a distraction. The letters я/ё/ю are not all that common, their hard counterparts being the common ones. With e, it’s its hard counterpart, э, that is uncommon. When Americans students of Russian first begin trying to transliterate it (without having studied a system for doing it), they always begin putting y’s everywhere that there is a soft vowel or palatalization. Almost immediately, they see the folly of that and drop ye in favor of e, treating Roman e as though it were the Cyrillic e.

As for j versus y, I have asked many times over the past six or so years what system most of us preferred, but not many were interested at all. Of the few answers I got, only User:Eclecticology rooted for the y; the few others interested preferred the scholarly j. —Stephen 22:50, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

Ah, thanks fyi.​—msh210℠ 23:52, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

Russian isn't always pronounced as it is written, there are also some exceptions. Common ones when ч should be read as ш in some words (что, чтобы, конечно, etc.), г should be read as в in some endings - кого, его, нового (новый), сегодня, etc. Some consonants can be dropped in clusters or merged (солнце "сонце", грустный ""грусный", счастье "щастье", etc.). Endings -ться, -тся - are pronounced as "-цца". The transliteration shows the spelling, not the pronunciation in all these cases. Anatoli 20:36, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

lack of common sense

My older son recently watched a program on the Discovery Channel about people with a lack of common sense. I have a younger son who is ASD but is very high functioning, but not asperger's which is a high I.Q. He does however seem to lack common sense --- for instance when I send him to get the clothes out of the dryer if it is still damp he brings it upstairs. Even though he has been with me a lot of times when I have had to reset the dryer to finish drying the clothes. His answer is "Well you told me to go get the clothes out of the dryer." But I would think common sense would dictate that he needed to set the dryer going again since the clothes were not dry. My older son said there was a name for this condition but he could not remember it --- I am hoping someone here can help.

Out of curiosity, what made you look in a dictionary website for an answer to your question? --EncycloPetey 03:14, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

Well, it's rather rambling a bit, but the question "what is the word for 'lack of common sense'" looks clear to me. Circeus 04:35, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

A "common sense deficit" comes to mind. A severe lack of common sense may be referred to as perplexity. Does that sound like what you were thinking of? —Stephen 22:11, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

dawkins fleas

i read http://debunkingchristianity.blogspot.com/2009/06/my-first-flea.html

i had no idea what a flea was. i found it is a common term at richarddawkins.net and is beginning to be used on blogs and in secular discussion groups as well, being a descriptive and somewhat mean spirited, hence provocative term. 360 entries for compound term at google http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&rlz=1C1CHMZ_enUS302US304&ei=SjgxSsi6HOCLtge45ODfBQ&sa=X&oi=spell&resnum=0&ct=result&cd=1&q="dawkins+fleas"&spell=1

afaik there is nothing else like it except generic terms like rebuttal.

the first use i found is: http://richarddawkins.net/article,634,My-critics-are-wrong-to-call-me-dogmatic,Richard-Dawkins

Sir, Alister McGrath (Faith, Feb 10) has now published two books with my name in the title. If I seem "grumpy", could it be because a professor of theology is building a career riding on my back? It is tempting to quote Yeats ("Was there ever dog that praised his fleas?") and leave it at that. I will, however, dignify his article with a brief reply.

I'm sorry, but I don't understand what question you have about Wiktionary. --EncycloPetey 17:23, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

where do i go to discuss creating this entry? it was deleted for being too new.

Ah, you didn't mention that before. You could raise the issue at WT:RFV, although the term would not be accepted if it doesn't meet our criteria for inclusion. --EncycloPetey 17:40, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

How long does it take newly added Wiktionary entries to be recognized in "search" boxes?

I added some several hours ago, and they haven't appeared yet. Thanks.
- Soargain 23:38, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

It varies. Which Search box do you mean? The term lightning mapper, which you added about half an hour ago is showing up for my searches. --EncycloPetey 23:41, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for responding. I meant such as the box under the word "search" in the column down the left side of this page. Going forward, I'd be interested in knowing about how long to expect it to take, since I'm adding references to them from Wikipedia which of course I would like to work immediately. I'm reasonably expert in web and DB technology, so I'm also interested in knowing what's going on behind the curtains? -- Soargain 03:35, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

I don't know the mechanics that make the search function, but as I said, some of them seem to come up quickly and some don't. I'm not sure what you mean by "adding references". Wiktionary is very different from Wikipedia. References (in the Wikipedia sense) are not often valuable. We prefer direct citations demonstrating use in durably archived media. To see what support for a term looks like, look at the pages Citations:parrot and Citations:listen. These are some of the best-supported words we have, at least in terms of the breadth of citations included. For a more modest collection of citations, see a page like horseshoe, where the few citations are included directly in the entry, one below each sense (definition) which is meant in the quote. This is what Wiktionary considers valuable support for a term. We prefer a use of the word in context, rather than listing titles and authors where addiitonal information may be found. That latter kind of listing is useful for an encyclopedia, but not for a dictionary. --EncycloPetey 03:47, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks again, particularly for the extra info which I didn't actually intend to ask about but am glad to learn. I discovered the reason for the long delay on one term: I had a buried browser window in which I had entered and Previewed that term but not yet Saved it. Regarding adding references, I meant embedding the terms in doubled square brackets in a Wikipedia article, so that the terms are displayed as a link to their Wiktionary definitions. (Right?)

Only if you specify a Wiktionary link. The double bracket default is to the same project. To link a word in Wikipedia to its Wiktionary article, you must use [[wikt:term|term]]. Such links work immediately once the article on Wiktionary exists. --EncycloPetey 04:34, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

kl

When adding translations, or creating entries for the Greenlandic language, should the term Greenlandic or Kalaallisut be used? I believe I have come across both... surely there should be a uniform decision as to which to use on the English wiktionary?

Many thanks Jakeeveritt 15:22, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

The term "Greenlandic" should be used. --EncycloPetey 15:35, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

Formatting for examples of words used in sentences?

Hello, I'm looking for some guidelines on how examples of words usages (and any citations) should be formatted. I've seen a few different styles (e.g. at you where examples are in italics, and at shat where they're not). Thanks. --Tyranny Sue 20:02, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

In general, made-up examples should be italicized, but direct citations from published sources should not. The two styles you've seen reflect this difference. Direct quotations should preserve the typography of the original source as closely as possible, including italics, underlining, quotes, punctuation, etc. The word of interest should be in bold, and no words in the example or quote should be linked. --EncycloPetey 20:05, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

Have a peek at this: Wiktionary:Entry_layout_explained. There are separate sections on example sentences (ones you make up) and actual quotations. Equinox ◑ 20:06, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

possessive of corps: corps' or corps's?

Is the possessive of corps: corps' or corps's? (Does it matter if it the singular or the plural?) RJFJR 20:37, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

I’d opt for (deprecated template usage) corps’s in the singular but (deprecated template usage) corps’ in the plural. † ﴾^(u):Raifʻhār ^(t):Doremítzwr﴿ 20:50, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

Smart writers will choose “of a corps,” or the attributive corps (e.g., the corps commander, not the corps' commander)). —Michael Z. 2009-06-15 22:28 z

Can Wiktionary Be Searchable/Indexed by Pronunciation?

I like the way that the English Wiktionary has a universal index for all languages in all scripts. What might also be useful is if the Wiktionary were searchable or alternatively indexed by pronunciation. This way, if someone heard a word from any language, but didn't know how to spell it in its native script, one could search for it by typing in IPA or SAMPA characters into a search tool. — This unsigned comment was added by WalterZiobro (talk • contribs) at 18:44, 16 June 2009 (UTC).

Unfortunately, only a small portion of our entries have pronunciation information at this point. Pronunciaiton is also a bit subjective, and requires considerable skill to encode. Consider the word (deprecated template usage) more. In the UK, the standard pronunciaiton is /mɔː/, but in the US, the standard pronunciation is /mɔɹ/. If you were to hear a local dialect, it might be as [ˈmɔ.ɚ] which would not match the standard pronunciations at all in a search. And that's just a simple monosylable case where the vowel sound is mostly the same. Far more complicated cases exist. So, I'm afraid that even if we had IPA pronunciations on most entries, such a search is currently beyond our technical capabilities. --EncycloPetey 19:00, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

Certainly, encoding pronunciation is a challenge for any dictionary maker. Nevertheless, Wiktionary has encouraged posters to provide pronunciation via IPA or SAMPA in their entries. Whether the pronunciations given are comprehensive of all dialectical variations is always problematical, especially as a given language evolves with new, non-native speakers, or acquires new terms from other languages. However, it seems to me that so long as pronunciations are provided in Wiktionary, a search tool can be devised to search whatever is currently available. In time, the vast army Wiktionary posters will certainly expand the entries with more pronouncing variations. -Walter Ziobro

You've missed the second and larger part of my reply. Even if the pronunciations are encoded, how will users know which combination of symbols to search for? The presence or absence of a . can throw off the search. The choice between /dʒ/ as separate symbols and as a joined single charatcer can throw off a search. And there are countless additional such variations that make searching impossible unless you know the exact sequence of characters that were used to encode the pronunciation. Given that, a site specific Google search could be used, but you still have to know the exact sequence of symbols. --EncycloPetey 14:04, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

Exactly. Moreover, we can hardly expect readers to be able to recognise sounds which don't appear in their native language (or those languages they might be best accustomed to) - I can't imagine anybody but a linguist typing into the search box things like eg /brɯ-iɲ/, /ʎɔ-ər/ or /ɣɔ̃ / (Scottish Gaelic for "speak", "book" an "[to] me". --Duncan 15:00, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

smt

What is the meaning of the prefix "smt" preceding the name of the president of India?

It means "shrimati", and is the Hindi equivalent for Mrs.. --EncycloPetey 15:21, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

template with blank numbered parameter: inconsistency

Why is that template:done, when presented with a blank first parameter {{done|}} or a space as first parameter {{done| }}, interprets it as I intend, by replacing {{{1}}} with a blank or space, whereas template:arc, when presented with the same, does not, but rather uses the brackets called for by its {{{1|[}}}? Here's the evidence.​—msh210℠ 19:52, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

That's because {{arc}} uses l= (the lowercase L) rather than 1= (the Hindu-Arabic numeral א). (But depending on your font, you may not be able to see the difference.) —Ruakh_TALK 20:06, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

Ah! Thanks much.​—msh210℠ 20:26, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

Is It True???

I just watched the Science Channel this morning. The narrator (Wil Lyman) said that YOU CAN NOT wear deoderant while on a nuclear submarine???

Is that TRUE??? I had never heard of such a thing!!!

— This unsigned comment was added by 205.208.227.56 (talk) at 15:09, 24 June 2009 (UTC).

Hi. This is a dictionary. For information on what that means, please see dictionary. —Ruakh_TALK 16:02, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

But to answer your question, on a sub you can use roll-ons but not aerosols. You don’t really need roll-ons, because the air is permeated with motor oil. —Stephen 03:28, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

How to add a language to the request by language page?

Hi, I'd like to request that the following Setswana words be defined on Wiktionary, but Setswana is not currently amongst the list of languages.

• Mma (title, like Mrs)
• Rra (title, like Mr)
• dumela (greeting)

Thanks!--Tyranny Sue 05:47, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

We use the name Tswana, rather than Setswana. We have an entire Category:Tswana language. --EncycloPetey 05:51, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

Hmm, it doesn't show up at Category:Requested_entries_by_language, which is one of the places I looked for it (as well as Setswana). Perhaps a link from Setswana to Category:Tswana language would help people, since there's no Setswana category.--Tyranny Sue 06:21, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

That could be done under a "See also" section. And no, not all of our languages have requests pages. In general, a page is created when requests appear for that language, or when someone takes the initiative to do so. Usually this is also because we have had someone edit here who knew the languagea dn began editing in it. In this case, it looks like all the Tswana entries were added by someone not familiar wth the language, but who had found a short word list. We don't have many people editing in sub-Saharan languages; I can only think of three such peple offhand. --EncycloPetey 14:13, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

I put the preamble to Wiktionary:Requested entries:Tswana which links it to the appropriate categories. --Duncan 19:32, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

Suggestion: links (like the selfref one at etymology) between relevant terms and Wiktionary formatting guideline pages

Selfrefs

In order to make it easier for users to quickly find Wiktionary formatting guidelines, it would be great to have a link like the selfref one at etymology on other similar pages (e.g. quote, reference, citation, quotation, format, layout). However, I've just been told that I shouldn't add the selfref template in the namespace (following the example at etymology) to the above pages, but was not told why, or where it could be added, or given any links to anywhere that might explain this. Could someone please tell me why?
Thanks for anything enlightening. --Tyranny Sue 06:08, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

Or another way of doing this might be adding a permanent link to the Wiktionary layout guide page at the top of every Wiktionary page? However, a more targeted link would still be useful. Perhaps at the bottom of entries, so as not to seem like any kind of intrusion into the definition.--Tyranny Sue 06:25, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

This is a good idea — it’s just the kind of hook one needs when he forgets the name of a policy page in the Wiktionary: namespace. Furthermore, the format used atop (deprecated template usage) etymology seems perfect to me. I don’t see why this ought not to be done. † ﴾^(u):Raifʻhār ^(t):Doremítzwr﴿ 11:23, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

This becomes visual clutter in places that one person thinks others might look for assistance. Why would someone look up the definition of "layout" expecting to find help? We have our help pages linked via the main page. We've set up names for our style guides so that they parallel the titles of sections. I could see keeping the {{selfref}} on the entry for etymology, but only because it is exactly the same as a section header we have. Introducing additional style points all over the main namespace is a bad idea, IMHO. --EncycloPetey 14:08, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

To answer your question above, because it's intuitive. Why not look up 'layout' expecting to find help? I really don't see anything unbelievable about it and am surprised that anyone would.

Second reason: because of the example set by etymology--Tyranny Sue 15:38, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

Because our policy page is called Wiktionary:Entry layout explained; mentioning that atop (deprecated template usage) layout (and possibly (deprecated template usage) format) is more intuitive than if it were atop (deprecated template usage) entry or (deprecated template usage) explained. This affects very few pages, and is not obtrusive even for those it does affect. Though I no longer need these hooks to remind myself of policy pages, I know from experience how useful this sort of thing would be for newer editors. † ﴾^(u):Raifʻhār ^(t):Doremítzwr﴿ 15:11, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

If we would like to help new editors while they are editing, then the left hand side (navigation and toolbox areas) would seem logical. Another possibility is a small help window that gave the user fast access to our vast array of high-quality guidelines, policies, and help, or to a list of shortcuts. Of course an experienced regular user can achieve the effect by having a separate browser window open to one's own personal wiki cheat sheet library. DCDuring TALK 15:29, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

A user could do all of those things, as well as referring to the {{welcome}} or {{welcomeip}} message that should’ve been subst:’d onto his talk page. However, I think that the {{selfref}}s will be more intuitive to look up, and their use has virtually no drawbacks. That’s my opinion anyway, and I think it’s supported by the fact that Tyranny Sue suggested this very thing. † ﴾^(u):Raifʻhār ^(t):Doremítzwr﴿ 15:53, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

Thinking back on my own initial experience, I was often defeated by the other tools. Although my general appreciation for "modes" meant that it was not the first place I would look for something about Wiktionary and its own use of terms, I sometimes resorted to the searchbox. As I recall the default did not search very much outside principal namespace (???). Accordingly it often did not get me what I needed. I sometimes found what I wanted via a helpful link to something in Wiktionary space, often near the bottom of the page under "See also".

The problem with putting something to help new users using the most prominent space on the screen is that it would be there for everyone all the time. (Making it something that could be eliminated WT:PREFS or the "my preferences" tab is good for hard-core users, but not occasional non-newbie, non contributor users.) I believe that {{also}} and a {{wikipedia}} (to a disambiguation page only, especially for proper nouns) help a larger class of users.

If there are any limits in WT:ELE or our generally accepted practices that keep us from inserting such appendix, glossary, and help links in "See also" (or perhaps more prominently low on the right-hand side), they should be eliminated. I'd favor making sure that all terms in Wiktionary:Glossary got such treatment in the corresponding entry and that they get an "only in" entry if there is no such entry. Would this be worth a BP discussion? DCDuring TALK 16:51, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

Could we not make them only visible to registered users? That would be to the benefit of the clear majority of our users. † ﴾^(u):Raifʻhār ^(t):Doremítzwr﴿ 18:41, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

I don't know. But, if we could and we could also allow users to turn them off, then there are only small (?) performance and complications questions. That means the target user is a registered, non-veteran contributor? If that could be implemented, it seems like a winner. Frankly, it seems like a much more useful aspect of presentation to be able to turn on or off than some of the other items in preferences and WT:PREFS.

I suppose what I was thinking about is aimed more at early-stage serious, but non-contributing users. It would be nice to have some information about the non-registered, non-contributing, non-vandal users. WT:Feedback is better than nothing, but it doesn't help very much on usability, at least not without some calibration. DCDuring TALK 19:19, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

Suggestion for new Category

I suggest that 'English words commonly affected by confusion' (or perhaps 'Difficult English words'?) would be useful. (Including, e.g. affect, incredulous, comprise & other such words where one is often mistakenly used in place of the one whose meaning is meant; i.e. affect instead of effect, incredulous instead of incredible, comprise instead of compose).--Tyranny Sue 06:42, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

(She has since created this at Category:English_words_affected_by_confusion — not sure how to link to a category.) Equinox ◑ 10:35, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

With a colon: [[:Category:English words affected by confusion]].​—msh210℠ 20:02, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

I don't much like the proposed template names. "Difficult English words" would include long technical and scientific ones that are not commonly confused, and "affected by confusion" seems quite broad and nebulous (or maybe that's the point of the unifying category). Equinox ◑ 10:37, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

After posting, I discovered Categories#To_create_a_new_category, which seemed to imply that it was ok to just create the category. Since no-onen had replied to my post, I thought maybe a discussion here wasn't necessary.--Tyranny Sue 03:41, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

You can link to (rather than categorising into) a category by prefixing it with a colon; e.g.: [[:Category:English words affected by confusion]] = Category:English words affected by confusion.
I propose instead Category:English terms often used catachrestically or Category:Common English catachreses. Whatever the title, I very much support the spirit of such a category. † ﴾^(u):Raifʻhār ^(t):Doremítzwr﴿ 11:17, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

Good suggestions, Raifʻhār. I think Category:Common English catachreses would be a better way to go.--Tyranny Sue 03:41, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

Who would use the category? To what question or problem is it the answer? DCDuring TALK 11:44, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

I would and so, I assume, would Tyranny Sue. There are certain terms which people often misuse (if you would permit me such a prescriptive term in description of their oft-proscribed usage); it would be handy to have them all listed in one place so that a user could read the usage notes of all these terms of which he’d like to get a better idea how to use. † ﴾^(u):Raifʻhār ^(t):Doremítzwr﴿ 13:14, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

People interested in characteristics (and examples) of catachresis (in English) would use it.--Tyranny Sue 03:41, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

If it is to be used only "by insiders", why not make it a hidden category? That means that there need be no normal-user considerations in naming it. All and only those who can use WT:PREFS the preference tab would have visibility. DCDuring TALK 13:51, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

No, I’d intend this as a category for the man-in-the-street user who wishes to refine his use of oft-misused terms. This sort of thing would be of no use to an editor qua editor, so making the category hidden would entirely defeat the point of it. † ﴾^(u):Raifʻhār ^(t):Doremítzwr﴿ 15:16, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

How did you meet this man in the street? Coming out of a bookstore with "Eats, Shoots, and Leaves" and "Ad Herennium"? I'm just a wee bit skeptical that the man in the street is going to grasp the utility to him of a category bearing a name from classical rhetoric.

Moreover, someone who knew his Quintilian or his Wikipedia would wonder why we were using the term for affect/effect and incredulous/incredible which don't fit the much more specific meaning of catachresis, which seems to have to do with the use of inappropriate figures of speech rather than words of the wrong meaning. That we follow some lesser dictionaries in selecting the vaguer sense of a polysemic word is understandable. That we would use it where we should be a model of clarity and unambiguity is not understandable. DCDuring TALK 05:17, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

I’ve now referenced the OED. That can hardly be called a “lesser” dictionary, and it has the rhetorical sense tacked on to its single definition almost as an afterthought. Furthermore, the related terms (catachrestic(al)(ly)) seem only to carry the general sense, rather than the specific, {{rhetoric}}al, one. Maybe that isn’t the case in Latin or Ancient Greek, but we run the risk of flooding the category with excessively esoteric logomachies if we engage in such a level of atavism. † ﴾^(u):Raifʻhār ^(t):Doremítzwr﴿ 10:39, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

My concern is for the choice of word as a category name because of:

1. its ambiguity with respect to the subject matter of the category. The 17 usages at COCA are in the narrower sense. Contrast with another polysemic category name: "Birds", for which there can be little doubt which sense is applicable.
2. its modest level of usage outside academic writings and consequent low utility for most men in most streets, not to mention others. 15 of the 17 COCA hits were categorized as academic, the other two being in the same article in American Spectator. DCDuring TALK 13:38, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

Seems very POV. Is every English word that has a usage note to be included? Every {{proscribed}} English word? They all are subject to confusion of one sort or another. (Or most are, anyway.)​—msh210℠ 20:02, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

My choice of word, i.e. "confusion", was perhaps not have ideal. This can be changed. However, the spirit of the category is not 'very POV', as what is meant are words (mainly word pairs - please see category description Category:English_words_affected_by_confusion ) frequently pointed out in external sources (e.g. style guides)(and I've added this proviso to the category description). As far as 'all English words' being 'subject to confusion of one sort or another', these are specific cases. The type of catachresis we're talking about here is chronic, widespread and usually applying to pairs of similar-sounding English words. They constitute, in fact, only a very small fraction of the English words in existence (and use).

The purpose and motivation of this is merely to promote the understanding and effective use of English terms, and (as I said above) for people interested in catachresis itself.--Tyranny Sue 03:41, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

The word catachresis as it would be used here is merely a [adjective omitted] synonym for "abuse". In Latin rhetoric it was called abusio. The more specific sense does not seem to actually include affect/effect and incredulous/incredible and comprise/compose.

Why is a category the right tool for this job? Alternatives include:

1. Usage notes, some of which are very explicit in contrasting the terms.
2. Appendices which can be linked to from Usage notes or See also which can list, say all catachreses and or use other words more intelligible to the other 99.44% of our users.
3. Homophones to at least identify one subclass of the words.

I can't quite picture how a category alone would help a normal user. Would the user be searching for all possible word pairs that might cause confusion of a certain type? I could see how it might help us find the terms so that we could take the best example of how to present the issue and try to apply it to the other cases. That would seem made to order for a hidden category. DCDuring TALK 04:34, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

I tend to think that an appendix would be better, since it would be useful to be able to list the word pairs (or triads, or whatever) together, with en dashes — something that cannot be done in a category. (Or can it?) † ﴾^(u):Raifʻhār ^(t):Doremítzwr﴿ 10:39, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

I wonder if our existing appendices are sufficiently linked to from the entries that they reference. It would be simple enough to fix that. DCDuring TALK 13:38, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

Entered word missing

After creating an account, I entered a new word/definition (Kimberlin) and clicked 'save'. However, when I went back to the main page and entered the word - not from vanity, but to see whether it had registered! - I found it is still listed as 'no word found'. What am I doing wrong? — This unsigned comment was added by Jhowlett (talk • contribs) at 13:17, 25 June 2009 (UTC).

I have no idea what happened. What was your entry’s original content? † ﴾^(u):Raifʻhār ^(t):Doremítzwr﴿ 13:29, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

FYI, your contributions page shows this post to the Information Desk to be your first and only contribution here. † ﴾^(u):Raifʻhār ^(t):Doremítzwr﴿ 13:30, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

Alternate spellings

I am new with Wiktionary and I want to fully understand the purpose of "Alternate spellings" in some Witionary's entries. For example, I mean: "What is the use of this field in an entry such as Polack?" Thank you, --Jazzeur 02:47, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

In the case of "Polack", the Alternative spellings just provides different ways of spelling "Polack" which are all supposed to be correct (i.e. not misspellings). In this case, I don't know if the alternative spellings are actually correct, but as you already know, this is currently being discussed in RfV. —AugPi 02:59, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

A more well-established example is "judgment" which can also be correctly spelled as "judgement". —AugPi 03:01, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

Sometimes an alternative spelling is due to a difference between American spelling and Commonwealth spelling, for example see "jeweler" and "jeweller". —AugPi 03:04, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

If this is the case then it should be indicated in parentheses. —AugPi 03:05, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

Thank you for all the quick replies. One further question: "Do all those alternate spellings have to have the same meaning as the entry in question?" --Jazzeur 03:09, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

Yes, although some of the alternate spellings might be polysemic which means that they can have other meanings as well. For example, "Pollock" is polysemic: on the one hand, it is an alternative spelling of "Polack", but on the other hand, it means either a surname or a painting by Jackson Pollock. —AugPi 03:19, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

For words borrowed from a foreign language, like "Polack", the spelling used could be based on the writer's transcription from the other language or a phonetic rendering of the pronunciation of the word. "Polack" was probably Shakespeare's version of how to spell it to make it come out of actors' mouths the way he wanted it to. The spellings "Pollock" and "Polock" are spellings some more recent authors use to reflect the pronunciation they may have heard. Alternative spellings are less common or sometimes regional (eg, UK vs. US). We would like someone who came across one of the other spellings to find our main entry. The alternative spelling entries serve that purpose.

What spelling should one use? If capitalized, none of the spellings should cause much confusion. Any of them might be a last name, but the context usually would make that obvious. But to be nice to readers, the most common spelling ("Polack") increases the chances that the reader will either recognize it from previous reading or find the meaning even in a dictionary with fewer alternative spellings than we have. DCDuring TALK 03:29, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

Transwiki:Ababil_(disambiguation) - What happens to "transwiki" bot copies from Wikipedia?

I noticed on Wikipedia that a bot had created the page Transwiki:Ababil_(disambiguation) here.

Is there some official process (queue/list) here at Wiktionary that examines these copied pages and determines if an entry in Wiktionary mainspace should be created? Thanks. (PS a ref for ababil (ref: The Young Naturalist's Book of Birds)) Proofreader77 18:47, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

If it satisfies the criteria for inclusion into Wiktionary then anyone can format it according to WT:ELE and move it to the appropriate page (I guess [[ababil]] in this case).​—msh210℠ 22:28, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

It is likely that it would be converted to the Arabic alphabet, Persian ابابیل (abābīl, “swallow”) or Arabic أبابيل (’abābīl, “flock of birds”), which may be a plural of إبالة (’ibāla, “bundle, bale”). —Stephen 07:53, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

follow-up: Help:Transwiki

Many thanks. Are there people (some project/group) who regularly look over these transwikied pages, OR is it more of a black hole? :) Proofreader77 23:46, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

People go through them from time to time. There's someone who's been doing so wholesale, but I don't remember who, and don't know whether he still is. This is a wiki: feel free to contribute.​—msh210℠ 15:12, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

Do you mean User:Goldenrowley? —Stephen 04:13, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

Many thanks. Yes, User:Goldenrowley ... I'll follow up with them. Proofreader77 20:05, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

How to input special characters

How do I input the Greek letter upper case omega? The help file says, "You will almost certainly find any character you need in the box below the “Save page” button in editing mode."

Using my browser there is no box below the Save Page button in editing mode.

There should be a short pull-down menu below the "Save page" button when you are in the edit window. It may say "Default", or it may say something else, but once you click on it, you can pull down to "Greek (Modern)" or "Greek (Ancient)", where you will find the omega and other Greek letters. --EncycloPetey 02:21, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Am I the only registered user not able to input special characters in the search box? I used to be able to. DCDuring TALK 00:18, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

超常 leads me to $1 ???

Hi. I'm trying to add a new entry for 超常, however when I try to do this it comes up with 'Wikipedia may have an article on $1'. Then, strangely, when I try to add a Wiktionary entry it tries to create one for $1! What the---? UPDATE: I've just realised, this $1 thing only comes up when I use the Wiktionary search box on the left OR the search engine add-on in firefox to search for the word. However, if I click on the red link - 超常 - it goes straight to Editing 超常 as normal. Tooironic 10:50, 5 July 2009 (UTC) Tooironic 10:50, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

By the way, myself and another user have added the definitions for Mandarin and Japanese respectively, so this $1 thing won't appear anymore... Perhaps it was just an enigma anyway... Tooironic 11:08, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

Explanation is at WT:GP#Search:_where_did_the_preload_templates_go.3F.​—msh210℠ 17:40, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

I encountered this (being sent to $1) on es.wikt when I had my user-interface preference set to English. When I switched it to the native wikt language (in this case Spanish) the problem went away. Do you by chance have the interface language preference set to something other than English? --Bequw → ¢ • τ 01:21, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

Nope. At any rate it's not happening anymore which is good. Tooironic 03:51, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

Suffix Bunch

Hello. Is there any grammatical name for the words that are formed by adding multiple suffixes at once, so that the between forms are not used (do not exist)? It happens sometimes in Hungarian entries that a word has a suffix at the end but taking it off will produce an unused form, not even worth an entry. It means the word got its suffix in a bunch, not one-at-a-time. Is there a name for this? It is not back-formation but rather a fastforward-formation. But that is not too linugistical. Thanks Qorilla 14:26, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

Many American Indian languages have inalienable nouns, which can only exist with an attached pronoun. For instance, Ojibwe or Navajo -bid is not a word, but you have to say niibid (“my tooth”) in Ojibwe, or shibid (“my stomach”) in Navajo. Sometimes a Navajo dictionary will give abid (“someone’s stomach”) or bibid (“his stomach”) as citation forms. —Stephen 04:25, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

Seems to me like a variaton of a bound morpheme. Maybe cranberry morpheme is the word we're looking for? Circeus 13:41, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

I guess there is no word for this. I try to illustrate: say there is a word "driverlyness" (the state of being like someone who drives; Hungarian uses this kind of suffixes all the time even for the most basic stuff). And say that 'driverly' is never used for some reason (so it shouldn't get an entry) but 'driver' is. So 'lyness' is one group in the entry-sense, but two in reality because everyone knows and feels that it is -ly + -ness. Now what to do in the Etymology section for 'driverlyness'?

1. say it is 'driverly' (nonexistent, red link) + '-ness';
   • create an entry for 'driverly', only to make the link blue, but without any relevant information, as the word is not used.
   • not linking 'driverly' and leaving it black. Then one cannot know what the suffix is attached to.
2. say it is 'driver' (existent) + '-lyness' (nonexistent);
   • create an entry '-lyness' stating it is a compound of '-ly' + '-ness', but no relevant information, since the meaning is what you get if you add them up.
3. say it is 'driver' + '-ly' + '-ness'
   • needs template-editing because most of them only allow one suffix. Qorilla 10:48, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

I would do a handmade {{term|driver|lang=en}} + {{term|-ly|lang=en}} + {{term|-ness|lang=en}}. There are a fairly large number of these, even in English. It would not seem unreasonable to have a template that could handle these (assuming all in the same language, fewer than 10 affixes). In English, I suppose we like the idea of forcing the creation of redlinked "driverly", but, even in English, such forms do not necessarily exist, at least attestably. DCDuring TALK 11:15, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

Modify hu-suffix to take more than one suffix (three might be sufficient), hu-affix can take nine. --Panda10 21:52, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

SUL

It appears to be impossible to attach the english wiktionary username PizzaMan to my SUL, yet the user has never made a single edit since registering in 2006. Is there any way i can usurp this account to my SUL account? PizzaManTemporary 14:22, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

• Make a request at Wiktionary:Changing username SemperBlotto 14:27, 7 July 2009 (UTC)
  • Thanks :-)

Prefix template

I have been adding the prefix template to a number of pages, trying to fill out the English words prefixed with xx- pages. What should I do with a stem currently entered like this: term|curo|cūrō|take care ? The prefix template doesn't have slots for both curo and cūrō, so I would lose the diacritics if I wanted it to hyperlink. Brock 01:08, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

You need to use gloss1= or gloss2= for translations, and alt1= or alt2= for alternative display forms. However, you shouldn't need to use that for English words formed from prefixes. The {{prefix}} template is only meant to link to parts in the same language as the current entry because it categorizes. --EncycloPetey 03:23, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

Reading Entries Alphabetically

Is there a way to read Wiktionary as if one was reading a book? That is, one entry after the other in alphabetical order.

Maybe I'm warped, but I'd like to read the entries one after another alphabetically. The Random Entry feature is nice, but not exactly what I was looking for. WonderWheeler 03:02, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

Try Special:PrefixIndex. —Stephen 03:16, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

That's the best we can offer. It won't be in "alphabetical order" because some entries are not written with any alphabet. We have entries in hundreds of different languages, in many different scripts and forms of writing. --EncycloPetey 03:21, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the info. Not what we were looking for. Guess my mind works alphabetically to some extent, and would have liked to be able to look at words in adjacent alphabetic positions, especially when learning things or checking spelling. Apparently it would be a basic software issue. By the way, I was looking for a word that would include the letters LGBT (or GLBT) in order, similar to the way the initals GMW are in the word GuMWood. WonderWheeler 03:45, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

Put a "a" in the Special:PrefixIndex box and it shows all entries beginning with "a" alphabetically. For GLBT, Inglebert. —Stephen 04:15, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

...or Gilbert. And for LGBT, Longbotham or Longbottom. Doubtless others exist.​—msh210℠ 17:37, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

Try Index:English if you want just English words. (Other languages' indices exist, too, with similar titles.) Note that the indices are not up-to-date.​—msh210℠ 17:37, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for that, I like GiLBerT; also found: Like GangBusTers, LaG BolT, LarGe BuTT, LauGh BeTTer, LauGhaBiliTy, LiGhning BolT, LinGonBerry Tart, LivinG BeTTer, GLiBiTy, GLoBalisT, GLuaBiliTy, GiLl BoaT, GnarLy BuTT, GLass BoTTom, and some strange ones like LinGuolaBialTy, GLaBrescenT and GeLiphoBiasT. (pardon) WonderWheeler 07:00, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

prescriptivism and prescriptive - label pejorative?

I've noticed these words seem to be mostly used prescriptively, and often also autologically. Would a label or usage note be appropriate?--203.52.130.137 04:54, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

If you are talking about at Wiktionary, of course it is "pejorative" in the sense that prescriptivism represents a departure from the explicit principles of this dictionary and of all the Wikimedia foundation projects. I suppose it might be true more widely, although I'd like to see the evidence. There are many works that seem to revel in their prescriptivism. I don't think would find the term particularly pejorative. It can be descriptively accurate of their intended approach to language. And autology both is fun and may minimize demands on the reader's working memory. DCDuring TALK 06:50, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

(I started this section from a computer at my local library. I didn't have time to log in.)

Wikimedia politics aside, though, wouldn't you say that 'pejorative' accurately describes the way 'prescriptive' and (especially) 'prescriptivism' are used?--Tyranny Sue 15:51, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

"Prescriptive" has a few meanings. Assuming we are talking about linguistic prescriptivism, I still don't think the term is inherently pejorative, certainly not enough to warrant template {{pejorative}}. To someone with an anti-authority tendency, prescriptivism may seem intrinsically pejorative. But some of the linguistic academies explicitly take a prescriptive role in guiding the development of the language for which they have been assigned responsibilities. The don't seem to view that as negative in their self-descriptions (or translations thereof). Based on usage in COCA, BNC, and OED citations, it seems to more often have a negative tone than a positive one, but not overwhelmingly so. I have some guides like Strunk and White's, Fowler's, Barzun's, and Elbow's (also U of Chicago's guide) which are clearly prescriptive. They are like manuals of good practice to achieve a result: language engineering guides. DCDuring TALK 17:17, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

OTOH, you are probably not alone in your perceptions and reactions. I just can't imagine covering the range of valences for every hearer/reader and every context even in a usage note let alone a context tag. DCDuring TALK 17:22, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

Quick Question

As I was helping translate words, I stumbled upon this page Merv. There are two definitions; one is the short form of the name Mervyn, and the other is a place in Turkmenistan. The translations listed as needing to be checked are under the first definition, the name. However, I strongly believe that the translations correspond to the second definition, the place. I'm not really sure what to do. Thanks! Ethansmith 20:06, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

There is only one English definition given. The other definition is in a separate Turkish language secion. We don't include translations tables under any non-English entries, so you need not worry about the place in Turkmenistan .--EncycloPetey 20:13, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

OK, I see. But I checked the Wikipedia article for that Turkish definition of the place in Turkmenistan called Merv. The translations that need to be checked under the English definition mean the Turkish definition. Ethansmith 20:34, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

Mispelling:

On Community Portal page, Projects list, the last item is spelled " Mulitlingual coordination"

Thanks for pointing that out. Fixed. --EncycloPetey 17:52, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

ashes of rose

But she could not stay in the house this evening. Where should she go? She walked slowly down through the orchard, where the evening air was heavy with the smell of wild cotton. The fresh, salty scent of the wild roses had given way before this more powerful perfume of midsummer. Wherever those 'ashes-of-rose balls' hung on their milky stalks, the air about them was saturated with their breath. Paragraph of book "O Pioneers! (1913) Written by Willa Cather" would like to know more about 'ashes-of-rose balls' Nico Coetzee

The term ashes of rose (or ashes-of-rose) is the name of a color, specifically a pinkish gray. W. Cather is describing the color of the wilting roses. --EncycloPetey 18:06, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

rthere categories4[specificlanguage]+IPA?

so ionly get entriescontaining IPA--史凡/ʂɚ˨˩fan˧˥/shi3fan2 (歡迎光臨/Welcome! 請也用/Please also use skype: sven0921為我/since I suffer RSI!) 14:37, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

Try CatScan.​—msh210℠ 15:34, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

4Min nan,what2fill in pl?--史凡/ʂɚ˨˩fan˧˥/shi3fan2 (歡迎光臨/Welcome! 請也用/Please also use skype: sven0921為我/since I suffer RSI!) 16:40, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

You would be looking for pages that use both {{IPA}} and either contain the text "Min Nan" or a coding such as "lang=nan". You could also compare listings in specific Min Nan parts of speech categories, such as Category:Min Nan nouns --EncycloPetey 17:49, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

Or Category:Min Nan language, with some depth, with the use of {{IPA}}.​—msh210℠ 17:55, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

Wiki en.wiktionary.org search in category lang=nanwith depth3 for pages by category with depth for pages by template {{IPA}}inverse (untagged only) for all pages if you supply a template in the field above, tagged articles will be highlited for stubs having less than bytes less than links (main namespace only) for changes in the last hours, hide minor , hide bots , only new articles for all images for all categories Format:

Show category lang=nan as tree . Articles under lang=nan that contain template {{IPA}}:

no matches!

• [idontknow how2do screenshots :( ]
• a.tried w/[=with] category Min Nan
• also:meaning ofdepthhere?--史凡/ʂɚ˨˩fan˧˥/shi3fan2 (歡迎光臨/Welcome! 請也用/Please also use skype: sven0921為我/since I suffer RSI!) 19:11, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

[I] can hear a person talking who is eavesdropping.. his companion is silent.. is possible.. [if there uh is one].. however.. though[t].. you should know.. you are not responsible..

[I] want/wish to THANK YOU, for the article[s].. about PAN the DEITY.. as THEOS.. he [is] Malevolent God, [polytheistic].. the PANTHEON.. in France.. is something like.. his TEMPLE.. also it is that of BRAHMA[N].. Evil God [of Creation].. in the INDIAN PANTHEON..

sincerely, Dustin Collings in Seattle area, Washington [USA]

Aum nama Sivaya

Election Notice

Ladies and Gentlemen,

As you may be aware, there is concern that the sitenotices regarding submission of candidacy for the Board of Trustees election were not seen anywhere but Meta after the 11th of this month. Because of the potentially massive consequence of this, and to encourage a full and active election, the election committee has determined that:

- Candidacies will be accepted through July 27th at 23:59 (UTC)

- The period for questioning candidates begins immediately. Candidates that are "late to the party" will, no doubt, be scrutinized by the community. The Committee hopes that the community will work to actively ensure that all candidates receive equivalent questioning.

- The dates of election will not change. The election will begin on 28 July and end on 10 August.

Please know that we recognize the radical nature of altering the schedule in the midst of the election and would not do it if we did not absolutely believe that there was a possibility that others may be interested and qualified and may not have known about the key dates.

For the committee, Philippe 09:18, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

Onomatopoeia and what?

In Hungarian we have a name for a similar type of etymology to the onomatopoeia. In Hungarian it is named hangfestő or hangulatfestő, literally mood painting. These words express a feeling or mood about the thing that does not make any sound. Like icipici (pron. it-see pit-see) means tiny. And this word describes being tiny with these i sounds as that is similar to one one feels when showing between the thumb and first finger how small something is. But this is not an onom. because smallness does not make a sound.

Sorry if I'm over explaining, I don't know how known this is. I just can't find a word for it. Qorilla 21:27, 22 July 2009 (UTC)

We have things like that, such as itsy-bitsy (tiny), but the only label that I have seen applied in dictionaries is "babytalk". I know it really isn’t babytalk, but I that’s what we call it in American dictionaries. Perhaps the British dictionaries have a better candidate. —Stephen 21:49, 22 July 2009 (UTC)

I've got a feeling I've seen "imitative" in Chambers for words like this, even when it's not imitating a sound. Equinox ◑ 21:50, 22 July 2009 (UTC)

Ideophone seems like the word you're looking for (or close to it). "Mimesis", and more specific words like phenomime, are also used occasionally. -- Visviva 15:27, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

Thank you! Ideophone is really it! Should we use it in Etymology sections here on Wiktionary? Qorilla 17:22, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

Seems reasonable to me. Another question is whether we want to have "Category:Xyzy ideophones" and so forth. -- Visviva 17:51, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

momme - definition

I am new to the Wiktionary system so pardon me if I'm not addressing by the correct process. I came across a word being discussed on my RC Plane forum for which I could find no definition. The word is MOMME which evidently is a measure of silk or fabric weight. One of the forum contributors offered the following explanation:

Momme (pronounced "mommy" and abbreviated "mm") expresses the weight in pounds of a piece of material of size 45 inches by 100 yards. So, for example, a 50 yd. bolt of our 5mm 45" Habotai Silk fabric (#HS545) would weigh 2.5 lbs. (plus the weight of the cardboard tube it is wrapped around, of course). The higher the momme, the heavier and stronger the fabric. Anything above 28 momme is considered heavy-weight and generally used for curtains or heavier outer-garments. Silk under 20 momme is considered lightweight, and generally used for light blouses with a chiffon feel. Medium-weight silk (20 to 28 momme) is excellent for silk scarves, furnishings, wedding dresses and the ultimate luxury of silk sheets.

Does this word qualifying for inclusion in Wiktionary? What is the process? Please note that I am not an expert in the fabric industry nor entomology.

Rick

Yes, it does qualify, but not simply on the basis of what you have said above. Our criteria for inclusion requires three "durably-archived" citations, which usually means references in a published book, periodical, or similar. A quick search at b.g.c. turns up many published uses of "momme", so it meets our criteria.

PS - you don't have to know about bugs to add an entry here; an entomologist studies bugs. --EncycloPetey 15:19, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

Question about Puerto Rico

I work at a call center and my training class was wondering why "suspensión" is bad to say in Puerto Rico?

conspirator / co-conspirator

What's the difference between a conspirator and a co-conspirator? Is there one? Is it redundant? RJFJR 13:37, 27 July 2009 (UTC)

A conspirator is a person who agrees with another person to commit a crime. A co-conspirator is the other person with whom he agreed to commit the crime. Each of the perpetrators in agreement is a conspirator, and each of his partners is a co-conspirator. —Stephen 14:09, 27 July 2009 (UTC)

So if we conspire then I am a conspirator and you are my co-conspirator; equally, you are a conspirator and I am your co-conspirator. Right? RJFJR 16:45, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

Right. —Stephen 17:27, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

Where's the references?

I edit Wikipedia a bit, where I always use references. I've made only one edit to Wiktionary, at the word 'autistic'. I used two references (Yale Economic Review and Dictionary.com). I was swiftly reverted. The editor said on the discussion page that 'autism' and 'autistic' were not the same thing. Sure, they aren't. But I was editing 'autistic', not autism. Admittedly, the Yale article was referring to the French word "autisme". I got no response. I've noticed no Wiktionary pages which reference their sources, and that combined with the response to my references suggests to me that there's a dislike for references. What's the deal with that? ImperfectlyInformed 18:23, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

We tend to use citations instead: uses of the word matching the definition given. Equinox ◑ 18:34, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

I'm not following - I think the word matching the definition would be a circular citation. ImperfectlyInformed 19:11, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

No, if we define car as a vehicle and then quote a real, published book (independent of wiki projects) that mentions a car in that context ("He drove the car down the road"), that serves to verify the definition. Equinox ◑ 19:16, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

The etymology you added was not an etymology (from French autistique would have been an etymology, but I have not checked it). And the definition you added was not a definition of autistic, but of autism.

A citation is a reference, as it's a proof that the word exists and is used with the meaning given. Linguistic external links may be added, too, if you consider they are useful, but not inside the definition. Lmaltier 19:21, 31 July 2009 (UTC)