Wiktionary:Tea room/2016/May

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meropic

I came across this word and was surprised to find it has two oddly different meanings. Can anyone elucidate the etymology in particular? This, that and the other (talk) 12:02, 1 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The two "-opic"s of each definition are definitely unrelated. The "partially blind" meaning is from μέρος (méros) + ὤψ (ṓps). I believe the "able to speak" meaning is derived from ὄψ (óps) (voice) or some relative. Hillcrest98 (talk) 16:20, 1 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

hispānus

Is there any classical usage of either the noun or the adjective? DTLHS (talk) 01:18, 2 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Lewis and Short lists some uses, though I wouldn’t use the terms Spanish and Spaniard. — Ungoliant ^(falai) 01:25, 2 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

parell

I can't figure out what the entry is trying to convey here. The headword line says the noun is masculine, but the definitions are split between masculine and feminine senses. Is the noun really both genders? And what does the female equivalent parella mean? A "pair" is not something that is naturally gendered, so this seems like a misuse of the parameter. —CodeCa t 23:06, 3 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@Ultimateria —CodeCa t 17:45, 9 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

It's a peculiarity of Ibero-Romance dictionary formatting. "Parell" and "parella" are two distinct lemmas but are both listed under "parell" in dictionaries. "Parella" isn't a separate entry and doesn't even redirect to "parell". 90% of the time this makes sense as the masculine form has a feminine equivalent (e.g."pescador"/"pescadora") but obviously it can lead to confusion too. Ultimateria (talk) 20:46, 9 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

door prizes redirect?

i'm new here. Is there a reason door prizes has its own page instead of redirecting to door prize? Thanks.

71.121.143.244 23:32, 3 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

We don't do redirects like Wikipedia does. Separate terms, even inflected terms, get their own entry. See WT:REDIRECTS for more. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 23:35, 3 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Inflected forms, such as English plurals, have a minimal entry that amounts to a soft redirect. As the headword of an entry page may be a word in more than one language, a single hard redirect is not a general solution. See Category:English plurals for examples like [[abaisses]] (English and French inflected forms) and [[convives]] (English, Latin, Spanish). DCDuring TALK 23:42, 3 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Should sensu lato et al. be Translingual?

Are Latin-derived phrases like sensu lato or sensu stricto really Translingual? I realize that they can be used in more or less any language, but they almost certainly have different pronunciations in different languages (unlike, for example, IPA symbols), could conceivably have synonyms/antonyms in various languages, and might have language-specific usage notes (e.g. their use could be broader in one language than another, or a phrase/word native to that language might be preferred, etc.).

It may seem obvious to some that it belongs under Translingual, but one of the most common reasons I use dictionaries is for finding pronunciation (though not in this specific case). A Translingual entry doesn't really have room for that information. If, for example, I wanted to know if the pronunciation of sensu stricto remained similar to the Latin one in Portuguese contexts, or if it was pronounced like a Portuguese phrase, our entry would not help me as it stands. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 06:18, 4 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

(For what it's worth, Homo sapiens#Pronunciation does have foreign pronunciations. —suzukaze (t・c) 06:23, 4 May 2016 (UTC))[reply]

These pronunciations are ridiculous. No one is going to claim that "Homo sapiens" is Korean or Japanese. What's next? Pronunciation of "Homo sapiens" in Chinese? There is too much Eurocentrism and Latin Script-centrism here. Wyang (talk) 06:52, 4 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@Wyang We use Translingual for any entry that spans multiple languages. Hence the large number of entries for CJKV characters. Accommodating the description of pronunciations of pronounceable Translingual terms would lead us to large pronunciation sections comparable to translation sections, presumably reflecting the most common pronunciation of the terms within groups of native speakers of each language. We don't seem to have a consensus for - or against - such sections.

English Wiktionary is, by intention, Anglophone and therefore "biased" toward Latin script. DCDuring TALK 11:03, 4 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

This is why "Translingual" is so problematic, as it is in CJKV characters. On CJKV character pages, "Translingual" also includes Etymology's, which are more properly "Glyph origin"s that mostly belong in the Chinese sections. The pronunciations are not Korean and Japanese pronunciations of "Homo sapiens"; they are pronunciations of the Korean and Japanese borrowings of the Latin term (호모 사피엔스 and ホモ・サピエンス). Wyang (talk) 11:17, 4 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

We have decided that taxonomic names are NOT Latin. They are used in running text in many languages, including some not in Latin script. Whether some or most linguists would deem them "borrowings" is not determinative of how we present them, which is or ought be a matter of attempting to help users, within the limits of our technology, skills, and numbers. DCDuring TALK 13:33, 4 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Taxonomic names are only valid when written in the Latin script, according to the taxonomic codes agreed to by taxonomists worldwide, including in Japan. It's a simple matter to find plenty of occurrences of Latin-script taxonomic names in texts of just about any modern non-Latin-script language. Homo sapiens isn't a good example, because it's so basic that it's been borrowed into and naturalized into a number of languages, including English. Let's look at a more obscure name that I picked at random, Callianthemum miyabeanum. I sincerely doubt it's been borrowed into Japanese due to Japanese phonotactic constraints, and the fact that the plant already has a Japanese name. And yet, Japanese scientists, if nobody else, must have a pronunciation for it. Chuck Entz (talk) 13:38, 4 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@Andrew Sheedy What pronunciation(s) should appear in a Translingual entry's pronunciation section? As we are in principle descriptive, it would seem that we would have the pronunciation actually used by native speakers of different languages. That seems a bit silly, not to mention overambitious.

I would favor, say, Latin or Latinate pronunciations for taxonomic names. We could possibly justify "English" pronunciations as we are English Wiktionary. DCDuring TALK 11:03, 4 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

For taxonomic names I would support having proscribed Latinate pronunciations. There's too much variation in the way people pronounce scientific names for us to try to include all the different ways or even to try to find a standard pronunciation. For entries like the one under discussion, I think a pronunciation section like that at Homo sapiens would be best. I didn't realize that there was precedent for this, but it's good to know there is.

I can't think of other types of entries that would need pronunciation, besides IPA symbols, which is pretty uncontroversial. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 03:49, 5 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

At some point, I actually have asked for people to add multiple pronunciations in Homo sapiens, and they kindly did it. I support having multiple pronunciation sections for taxonomic names. (In other words, oppose removing the pronunciations if it ever has been proposed.) In fact, if one wants us to have Translingual sections for Latin phrases with multiple language pronunciations, then we are already working with the notion that it's possible for different languages to speak something in Latin using different pronunciations. Being a descriptive dictionary, it makes sense to me helping to pronounce each word as a speaker of each language would. Example: the "sap-" part in English is /seɪp/, which does not exactly seem to make sense in all languages.

It should make sense for us to have some form of attestation, though. Any TV shows or documentaries that mention taxonomic names and are durably archived? I'm pretty sure Callianthemum miyabeanum in Portuguese would be said by many people in my São Paulo, Brazil accent approximately as /kaliãj̃'temũ miabe'anũ/ (mind you, I'm not 100% good in IPA yet) though that transcription is prescriptive by definition unless it can be attested somehow, but the same would be said for multilanguage pronunciations of Latin phrases.

On a separate topic, I support using Translingual sections for the Latin phrases, regardless of what we actually do with taxonomic names. I think the notion that "we need separate language sections to keep the pronunciations!" has already been pretty much disproved. If fact, a single Translingual Pronunciation section would take much less space than having whole separate language sections just for the sake of their pronunciations. --Daniel Carrero (talk) 05:12, 5 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

実っている

Defined and categorised as a noun, but the definition is a verb. Which is it? —CodeCa t 21:13, 4 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Nuked on sight as SOP for 実る (minoru, “to bear fruit”) in the conjunctive 実って (minotte) conjugation + present-progressive auxiliary いる (iru).

花も実も有る

As above. —CodeCa t 21:14, 4 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

This is an idiom, literally meaning "it has flowers and fruit", but basically meaning that something is positive in both name and deed. I'll rework it at some point. (I was in the middle of doing so, and was nearly finished, when I ran into the keyboard shortcut issue mentioned here.) ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 23:44, 4 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
- Thank you, but there's still the issue that a noun is being defined as a verb. —CodeCa t 17:47, 9 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

environ

Can this also be used as a noun? —suzukaze (t・c) 04:36, 5 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Yes. We already had the plural, but I've added a singular as well. SemperBlotto (talk) 06:29, 5 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Oh, I didn't think of checking the plural page. It says "(plural only)" though, which now seems contradictory. —suzukaze (t・c) 06:37, 5 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
It may be that we need an inflection-line label usually plural in addition to plural only. The modules supporting {{en-noun}} should be able to handle it. DCDuring TALK 15:49, 5 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

red IPA in euvel

I just added IPA to the page for the dutch word euvel and when I saved it some of the transcription is in red, can someone help? How do I make it black? 2WR1 (talk) 00:59, 7 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

This is the wrong place for this discussion to be added (it's May, y'know), but whatever. It claims that the IPA character ø is not allowed, which is complete bollocks. I'm going to guess this is an undiscussed change by one of our module editors. @CodeCat, Kc kennylau —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 01:14, 7 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The module controlling this behaviour is at Module:IPA/data. DTLHS (talk) 01:31, 7 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

It's more specific than that. It's tagging an invalid phoneme. Short /ø/ is not a Dutch phoneme, long /øː/ is. —CodeCa t 01:37, 7 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Okay, that's good to know from a linguistic standpoint, but I guess this means that I'm right that this was never discussed? Seems like something that should be, given that last I checked, there were a whole lot of entries with faulty IPA that now have unexplained red characters. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 04:55, 7 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, that makes sense, but oddly, when I was double checking the pronunciation on nl.wiktionary.org, that was the IPA transcription given. Thanks! And sorry about posting in the wrong place, I didn't realise that the most recent were supposed to be at the bottom and I wasn't thinking about the month. I'll move it to the correct place. 2WR1 (talk) 06:25, 7 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Spell off

Posting here instead of at spell off per instructions.

"Goodale said plans are in place to spell off firefighters who have been battling the blaze this week." http://news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/growing-fort-mcmurray-wildfire-could-double-in-size-today-and-reach-the-saskatchewan-border

Please explain this usage of "spell off". The only usage on the spell off page has to do with bees. CapnZapp (talk) 09:09, 8 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

to replace a tired worker with a fresh worker in turns to allow a rest period; to spell (rest) firefighters with fresh firefighters in alternating shifts. —Stephen ^(Talk) 09:34, 8 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I think this usage must be specific to Canada or North America. I don't think it would be understood in the UK. 217.44.215.248 17:43, 9 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Done Added a sense at spell off. It may need a regional gloss. Equinox ◑ 18:29, 9 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

And it's not spell (“to work in place of (someone)" or "to rest (someone or something)”) + off (“so as to be removed or separated”)? DCDuring TALK 21:47, 9 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Since it's transitive (relieving someone) it could only be the second, but "spell" alone doesn't guarantee its existence (e.g. you can't "relieve someone off"); phrasal verbs are notoriously difficult for L2 English learners and are not obvious SoPs. Equinox ◑ 22:43, 9 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

We label both definitions as transitive, as the parenthesized placeholders above and in the entry redundantly show. You seem to have bought the argument that we shouldn't limit Wiktionary to decoding English, but we should allow for the possibility that someone might be able to find the entry for the purpose of encoding (or that we should have the entry whether or not anyone who might use could find it). If so, we're doomed. DCDuring TALK 23:47, 9 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Not really. It feels like push off or wake up to me. It's a not a verb construction that I recognise and I don't see how I could have known it was part of English by intuition. For example: if I let my cat go outside for a while, do I thereby "spell out" the cat? I doubt that is acceptable English, but it could (ignoring actual usage) be constructed along the same lines. Equinox ◑ 13:39, 10 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@Equinox That seems like a problem with one's understanding of the meaning or usage of spell which applies usually to people engaged in a task or having assumed to a duty. I find it a good deal easier to apply spell to a dog than to a cat. DCDuring TALK 18:25, 10 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Is it common in Canadian English? I don't think it would be understood in the U.S. either; at least, I require context to understand the sentence quoted above. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 14:12, 10 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I've not heard it before, and I've lived in Alberta almost all my life (I'm young yet, though, so that's not saying a whole lot). It's not something one would be likely to hear in everyday conversation where I live. I don't know what province the author of the article is from, though, and it's possible it's used more often out East. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 00:43, 11 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

That's easy. O-f-f. bd2412 T 16:06, 10 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Ha ha. DCDuring TALK 18:25, 10 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

autochtone

- The first IPA listing on the autochtone wiktionay page (https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/autochtone) , in French, is not rigth. It shoun't be /o.tɔk.tɔn/, but /o.tok.ton/. It's associated audio file is right, though, alhtough its creator has added the worh "un" (article) to it. - The second audio file listed on the same autochtone page is not right. We are expecting /ɔ.tɔk.tɔn/ but we hear /o.tok.ton/.

References: dictionnaire Le Robert (2003)

Hm, I'd expect /otoktɔn/. My Robert (1973) has /ɔ(o)tɔktɔn/; it gives /ɔ(o)–/, whatever that means, for many au– words. —76.121.122.152 08:49, 26 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

𩷆

The character 𩷆 is kinda look a Japanese shinjitai form to me (simplified from 鱠), but is only from Vietnamese source. Can anyone clarify this? Dingo1234555 (talk) 19:24, 9 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

GlyphWiki lists few Japanese sources (only one, which seems [to me] to contain all sort of wacky characters). Maybe it would be used in personal handwriting but it doesn't seem to be something Japanese variant-crazy character encodings have cared about, which suggests to me that it's probably not common. —suzukaze (t・c) 05:52, 10 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Google searches for expected ja combinations like 𩷆は, 𩷆が, 𩷆の, の𩷆, 𩷆とは yield zero real usages that I can see. 217.44.215.248 00:32, 11 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

comics

All these "plural senses" are a bit problematic. I would have thought that "plural of comic" covered the lot. Equinox ◑ 20:16, 9 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

We shouldn't mix lemmas and non-lemmas. —CodeCa t 20:34, 9 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Huh?

I have yet to find senses 3 and 4 ("A collection of comic strips" and "the page of a newspaper especially devoted to comic strips") every in a usage that is incompatible with sense 1 ("plural of comic").

Sense 2 ("an artistic medium ....") can be used with both singular and plural verbs. I haven't found any use of senses 3 and 4 with a singular verb. Instead there are uses like "The comics are on Page 51."

I'd be inclined to challenge senses 3 and 4 as either non-existent used with a singular verb or, in the case of 3, transparently the plural of comic and, in the case of 4, merely reflecting that one physical form of distribution of multiple comic strips was on a newspaper page. "Comics" also refers to comic books, comic strips appearing distributed on several pages of a newspaper or magazine mixed with other content, comic strips appearing as a separate section of a weekend newspaper, and possibly to other forms. Neither collectively nor separately do these forms warrant a dictionary entry.

Also, what would be better wording for the the label "singular or plural in construction", that is, agreeing with either a singular or plural verb or pronoun form? DCDuring TALK 22:22, 9 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Well, I've been horribly bold and deleted the senses other than "plural of comic". Equinox ◑ 00:16, 9 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

whitewash

Is the recently added sense "To use the features of the Caucasian ethnic group as a standard of beauty" distinct from the (recently merged, rather broad) sense right before it? I can't think of a usex so I can't tell. Equinox added "for (a TV show)", but if I heard someone say "they whitewashed The Foobar Show", it would suggest to me that they cast white actors in all the roles, rather than that they held non-white actors to white ideals of beauty. "Whitewashing beauty" would similarly suggest "making [the ideal of beauty] more white". - -sche (discuss) 03:26, 10 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

My feeling is (i) work out the transitivity of each sense (which might catch any issues); (ii) find citations for each sense; (iii) possibly gather senses under a heading. It certainly seems a bit weird to have four separate racial senses. Equinox ◑ 05:20, 10 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I hope that no one catches this act of microaggression. DCDuring TALK 12:33, 10 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

sangre (Mexico)

How do Mexicans pronounce sangre? --Romanophile ♞ (contributions) 07:55, 11 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Don't they pronounce it [ˈsaŋ.ɡɾe], same as virtually all other Spanish speakers? —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 11:57, 11 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@Angr: yes, but there’s a tendency in Mexico to drop the final e’s in speech. That’s why I asked. --Romanophile ♞ (contributions) 15:43, 11 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

After a consonant cluster? It would render the syllable without vowel and thus unpronounceable. Sobreira (talk) 21:46, 27 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

mʉr - Normalising medieval handwriting

The usage note is correct. But is the character used an adæquate rendering of a diagonally slashed u/v? Korn [kʰũːɘ̃n] (talk) 14:05, 11 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

There's a Unicode V with diagonal stroke (Ꝟ ꝟ), but I don't think there's a diagonally slashed U anywhere in Unicode. KarikaSlayer (talk) 16:46, 11 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

There's no rule saying we have to use only precomposed characters. We can use U+0337 COMBINING SHORT SOLIDUS OVERLAY to create u̷ or U+0338 COMBINING LONG SOLIDUS OVERLAY to create u̸. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 17:50, 11 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

It's not a question about how to represent the appearance of the character, but whether anyone would need or use such an entry. Does any other online source use such a character or character sequence for this letter? Would anyone ever search for the entry? If they did, would they know to use our representation in the search box?

Also, how does using a character in the IPA Extensions block of Unicode affect script detection, sorting, and other functions of our code? Would it require adding or modifying things in the data modules?

I vaguely remember we had discussions about using spacing modifier letters that look like superscript letters to represent abbreviations like Mr. and Wm. when the some letters are written smaller and higher that the rest of the letters in the word. I'm not sure how those discussions ended up. Chuck Entz (talk) 02:27, 12 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I don't recall how the spacing modifier letters ended up either. I do stand by my opinion that we should use them if and only if we have a born-digital source that uses them.

IPA extensions should be recognized as Latin, and combining characters shouldn't affect the script of the surrounding characters, provided all things are working as per the standard. Sorting should be relatively fine, again, if everything is per standard.

As always, I think we should be referring to published works only. Instead of trying to transcribe medieval handwriting, we should be using published copies, which use a normalized script with a limited set, that in almost all cases will be in Unicode. We could get quite creative trying to record w:Sütterlin or Pepys' unusual shorthand, but instead we record what's printed. I don't see any difference here; if medieval German linguists are using a u with diagonal stroke here, then we should, otherwise, we should use what they're using.--Prosfilaes (talk) 07:59, 12 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The character in question (slashed U) was the standard way to render the sound in an important region for a certain time. It is however not used in modern editions since the normalised script uses ü. So this might be a case of precedence for spellings of the category standard at the time, made invisible in modern prints. Korn [kʰũːɘ̃n] (talk) 08:27, 15 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The shape, a u with a diagonal slash, may have been the standard way to render the sound, but does that shape denote a separate character?--Prosfilaes (talk) 07:06, 17 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

As much as Danish O and Ø, yes. Korn [kʰũːɘ̃n] (talk) 14:05, 17 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

devoir surveillé

Currently a redlink, and I'm not sure whether it's SOP or not. @Renard Migrant, Romanophile — thoughts? —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 20:08, 11 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

My inclination is that it is not SOP. Why don't we ping actual French speakers: @Fsojic, Lmaltier, JackPotte, Jerome Charles Potts. --Wiki Tiki 89 20:44, 11 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I suppose you mean L1 speakers. I just wanted to ping a couple people who I think would want to see; there are so many Francophones around here that I don't have to bother people who may not be active or interested just to get an opinion. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 20:50, 11 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

It's not yet present in fr.wikt, but it's worth an entry: this phrase belongs to the French school jargon (at least in France, I cannot tell for other countries), and it's abbreviated as DS. w:fr:Devoir surveillé provides a number of synonyms in several contexts: DS, devoir sur table, DST, contrôle, partiel, épreuve partielle, interrogation écrite, interrogation surprise. Lmaltier (talk) 19:33, 12 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Some of those are clearly not exact synonyms (in anglophone schools, the boundary between test and exam is ill-defined, but a pop quiz is something very different). I'll create a basic entry, and you can feel free to improve it as you see fit. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 19:39, 12 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Another question to consider is that each noun might go with a different verb. In Russian for example, you say сдава́ть экза́мен (sdavátʹ ekzámen), but писа́ть контро́льную (pisátʹ kontrólʹnuju). In English I think you just use the word take for all of them. --Wiki Tiki 89 19:53, 12 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Glottal stops

See recent changes to Batman [1] and atmosphere [2], where glottal-stop versions have been added. I don't think this is a good idea; other dictionaries don't do it, and while the glottal stop is one possible realisation of a t, it's not conventionally listed among the phonemes of English, AFAIK. Thoughts? Equinox ◑ 01:14, 12 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

It's not a phoneme, but an allophone of /t/. So it doesn't belong in a phonemic representation. —CodeCa t 01:15, 12 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

It is the predominant pronunciation in North America and some other places. Please consider how even our logo has undue RP (UK) bias; shows a pronunciation for Wiktionary foreign to most North Americans and most English-speakers (2nd+ language speakers included). Outside of UK and some speakers in au/nz/za, 'dictionary' has 4 syllables; what's good for the goose is good for the gander. Warmest Regards, :)—_thecurran Speak your mind ^{my past} 01:59, 12 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

As CodeCat says, it shouldn't be listed in /slashes/ because it's not phonemic. It could be listed in [brackets] as a narrow transcription after the phonemic transcription, similar to what's done at cat. - -sche (discuss) 02:17, 12 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The phenomenon is so well-known that most lessons on the w:glottal stop specifically mention the pre-consonantal, word-medial t of GA the same way most classes on /x/ specifically mention the word-final velar fricative in Scottish 'loch'. According to w:allophone theory, an instance of w:t-glottalization from tʰ → t → ʔt → ʔ is complete enough to be considered a separate w:phoneme if the sounds exhibit complementary distribution and the sounds are phonetically dissimilar. RP audiences commonly refuse to accept the GA unaspirated word-medial t; they interpret it strictly as a /d/ unless the GA speaker unnaturally affects a /tʰ/. Please consider the pair 'sorted' and 'sordid'. Note that an aspirated alveolar /tʰ/ is certainly physically quite distant from a glottal /ʔ/ https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e4/The_International_Phonetic_Alphabet_%28revised_to_2015%29.pdf . Please listen to genuine ordinary GA pronunciations of 'Batman' and I'm sure You'll spot the /ʔ/ . Warmest Regards, :)—_thecurran Speak your mind ^{my past} 10:14, 12 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

But the sounds do not exhibit complementary distribution, so they aren't separate phonemes. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 10:58, 12 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I do pronounce the glottal stop, but then, I also add j to most front vowels and aspirate word-initial p,t and k. It's just part of the phonetic detail. We don't indicate the difference between the alveolar stop and diphthongized vowel in English dose vs. the dental stop and pure vowel in Spanish dos, so why should be indicate this difference? Chuck Entz (talk) 14:11, 12 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I'll just point out that the distinction between what is a phoneme and what is an allophone is very subjective and open to interpretation. The correct thing to say is that we treat [ʔ] as an allophone of the phoneme /t/ (and I'm not saying we shouldn't, but only that we shouldn't pretend that our way is the only way). --Wiki Tiki 89 15:08, 12 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

First if we remove anything, it should be the /t/ version since the /ʔ/ version is the standard; the copyrighted word was coined in GA, and the plethora of media produced by the copyright owner(s) is all in GA. The /t/ version is incorrect; a minority relegated to other dialects. Please take a moment to view a short summary on http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?id=2604 .

Aɴɢʀ, have You ever been a GA speaker living in an RP land? Perhaps You're an RP speaker in an RP land with RP dictionaries and your lack of broad experience may be producing tunnel vision. One friend, a Northern English immigrant in Australia broke down in tears because every single staff member they approached in Target to help them find a battery /ˈbæ.tə.ɹi/ heard their /ˈbæʔ.tʰɹi/ as 'bat tree' /ˈbæʔt.tɹi/, even though they were a Target employee. One GA immigrant relative was offended in Australia by hearing something they'd completed being called 'sorted' /ˈsɔː.tɪd/, an unfamiliar slang term they heard as sordid /ˈsɔɹɾɨd/. Then trying to incorporate the new term, they said sorted /ˈsɔːr.ɾɪd/ but it was heard as sordid /ˈsɔː.dɪd/. Beyond the complementary distribution, the ability to change the meaning by substituting one word-medial t sound for the other marks separate phonemes. Warmest Regards, :)—_thecurran Speak your mind ^{my past} 05:37, 13 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I've never been accused of being an RP speaker before! No, I'm American and a speaker of GenAm. I also have a Ph.D. in linguistics with a specialization in phonology, and I know that GA (like RP) has no phoneme /ʔ/, but /t/ has an allophone [ʔ]. Batman can be pronounced [ˈbæʔmæn] with a glottal stop, or [ˈbæt̚mæn] with an unreleased [t], or even [ˈbæp̚mæn] with an unreleased [p] (likewise, atmosphere can be pronounced with [ˈæʔmə-], [ˈæt̚mə-], or [ˈæp̚mə-]), but the fact that debuccalization is not obligatory and an alveolar stop is always possible (and not only in careful speech but even in casual speech!) establishes pretty clearly that these words still have /t/ in their underlying representation. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 14:36, 13 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Aɴɢʀ, I really stuck my foot down my throat this time; I'm pulling my head in and apologizing. Am I also wrong about /ʔ/ being involved in the majority GA pronunciation of 'Batman'? Do You have any thoughts on the aforementioned short info-graphic? Warmest Regards, :)—_thecurran Speak your mind ^{my past} 00:44, 14 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I said myself that Batman can be pronounced with a glottal stop. I'm not denying that for a moment. All I'm denying is that the glottal stop is phonemic. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 08:03, 14 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

It sounds like I hurt your feelings; I didn't mean to but I'll apologize again. Perhaps You think I'm being sarcastic; I'm not. I kowtowed and actually wanted You to teach me if my experience of most GA pronunciations having glottal stops is unrepresentative. I also wanted the benefit of your expert's-eye-view on a text that I find influential. Warmest Regards, :)—_thecurran Speak your mind ^{my past} 08:43, 14 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Shows how bad the Internet is at conveying emotions. My feelings weren't hurt at all, I just wanted you to understand that you are right that words like Batman and atmosphere are (often) pronounced with a glottal stop, but that doesn't mean the glottal stop is phonemic. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 09:44, 14 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Thank You. Warmest Regards, :)—_thecurran Speak your mind ^{my past} 06:02, 15 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Titania

How did /tɪˈtɑːniə/ take hold elsewhere if a vast majority of -ania words have /eɪniə/ (and thus came the AmE pronunciation)? Hillcrest98 (talk) 13:41, 12 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Surely it’s an attempt to sound more similar to Latin. — Ungoliant ^(falai) 14:45, 12 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

To differentiate it further from titanium (/taɪˈteɪniəm/)? DCDuring TALK 15:13, 12 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Is there any way of knowing how Shakespeare himself intended it to be pronounced? Or at least how performers of his plays pronounced it throughout the centuries? --Wiki Tiki 89 15:18, 12 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

English speakers have always traditionally pronounced Latin long vowels like English, up to about 1900. The [i:] and [a:] of Latin would have been well into the Great Vowel Shift in 1600, so [təɪ'te:nɪə] or perhaps [təɪ'tɛ:nɪə], giving rise to modern (traditional) [taɪ'teɪnɪə]. --Hiztegilari (talk) 15:51, 12 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

But it's not so simple. If an Italian woman walked up to Shakespeare and said her name was [tiˈtan.ja], Shakespeare would more likely have approximated it as /tɪˈtɑːnɪə/, don't you think? It's not as though we suddenly became aware of the Great Vowel Shift in 1900; England was not isolated from the outside world. --Wiki Tiki 89 16:59, 12 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

KISS

Is this ever used independently without "principle"? If not does it pass CFI? --Dixtosa (talk) 19:56, 12 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

google books:"don't forget k.i.s.s." returns some relevant hits (among all the irrelevant ones). However, it seems that each one that actually explains the acronym uses a different word for the last S. --Wiki Tiki 89 19:59, 12 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

cot

In cot, two IPA pronunciations are given at the top level - UK, Australia, Boston: /kɒt/ and US: /kɑt/, but then below these, different pronunciations are given - Received Pronunciation: [kʰɒt], Australia: [kʰɔt], Boston: [kʰɒːt] and General American: [kʰɑt] and US-Northern Cities Vowel Shift: [kʰat]. That seems confusing. Why not separate UK, Australia, Boston into UK, Boston: [kʰɒːt] and Australia: [kʰɔt] (and remove the separate UK and Boston pronunciations), and at least change US: /kɑt/ into [kʰɑt] since the ʰ is in both of the entries below (General American: [kʰɑt] and Vowel Shift: [kʰat])? --V111P (talk) 20:28, 13 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Do you understand the difference between a /phonemic/ and a [phonetic] transcription? (I just thought that this might be the problem. However, you might be a professional phonetician or something. In that case I'm sorry because it's probably me whod doesn't properly understand your question :)) Kolmiel (talk) 23:28, 13 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the reply, Kolmiel, I'm not a phonetician, and I'm also not a native English speaker, so I really didn't understand what is going on there, but now I do. :) --V111P (talk) 00:03, 14 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Reichenau Glosses

What do we consider the language of the glosses in the Reichenau Glosses to be? Late Latin? Medieval Latin? Proto-Gallo-Romance? KarikaSlayer (talk) 21:24, 13 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

assimilateness

"The state or quality of being assimilate.". Can assimilate be used as an adjective? I don't see much if any usage. DTLHS (talk) 22:02, 14 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

It's in Sheridan's old (1700s) Complete Dictionary of the English Language, where it is defined as "likeness". Actual usage seems hard to find. No such adjective as "assimilate" in Chambers. Equinox ◑ 22:22, 14 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I can find assimilate as a noun, and have added that POS. I can't find much evidence of it as an adjective, and in the later examples I can find, it's not always clear if it's a typo for "assimilated" or not. The 1898 one, however, does use "assimilate" twice in places where an adjective is natural, and uses "assimilated" once elsewhere, so it at least does seem to attest the adjective. Whereas, a different page of the 1971 citation has "These acts are assimilated to...", suggesting that its use is a typo; likewise, the 1985 citation elsewhere frequently speaks of things like rain and mana being "assimilated" to the feet, the sky, etc. I assume the 2007 one is also a typo.

1898, The United Service Magazine, volume 17, page 96 and 103:
The Prince made known to me that he was exceeding interested in the matter—the details of which were assimilate to those herein published, having reference to the four points already distinguished—and himself suggested [...]

[…]

[...] concentration of this energetic devotion in a department assimilate to that serving each of the other sections of the United Kingdoms.
1971, U.S. Assistance Programs in Vietnam: Hearings Before a Subcommittee of the Committee on Government Operations, House of Representatives, Ninety-second Congress, First Session, volumes 74-77, page 205:
~~Then it [some other text which is being quoted] says:~~
~~Shall be considered as Pro-Communist Neutralist a person who commits acts of propaganda for and incitement of Neutralism: these acts are assimilate to acts of jeopardizing public security.~~
1985, Valerio Valeri, Kingship and Sacrifice: Ritual and Society in Ancient Hawaii →ISBN, page 93:
Thus two ali'i of the same rank, their regalia, and whatever they put "under the shadow" of their kapu, that is assimilate to their persons, are noa to one another because they have the same position in the social syntagm, because they are equivalent.
2007, Елена Наумовна Зарецкая, Rhetoric: The Theory and Practice of Speech Communication →ISBN:
~~[...] thinking by timorous steps (O. Mandelshtam) - in all enlisted metaphors the various characteristics (those which the object and its characteristics are assimilate to) [...]~~

I also find this one where Google won't show me the snippet and I suspect the sentence the search engine provides (below) is a conflation fragments of each column on the page:

1960, The Numismatic Scrapbook Magazine, volume 26, page 2741:
~~The Emperor, being all-powerful, was assimilate to the gods; with many in. fact, be soon replaced them.~~

- -sche (discuss) 01:22, 15 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I suppose assimilateness needs a better definition. It seems to be very rare. DTLHS (talk) 01:28, 15 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Assimilateness seems to be almost as rare as adjectival use of assimilate. Still, I suppose it's best to use a more comprehensible definition and relegate assimilate (adj) to "Related terms" or the etymology ("From the rare adjective assimilate +‎ -ness"). - -sche (discuss) 01:42, 15 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

paries#Descendants

What does pared mean in Occitan? --Romanophile ♞ (contributions) 16:20, 17 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

couch (verb)

We currently show 2 etymologies for the verb couch: 1). to recline on a couch, and 2). to embed or conceal (in a word, statement, etc.) a hidden meaning. But isn't the furtive sense just the an extension of the literal sense(s) ? Leasnam (talk) 17:36, 17 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Further, I would suggest moving all verb senses to Etymology 2 and split the Etymologies by POS. Thoughts ? Leasnam (talk) 17:37, 17 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Our entry for couchier#Old French doesn't provide what is needed for the verb etymology. The required content is probably in Robert's entry for coucher, for which my French is inadequate. DCDuring TALK 18:05, 17 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I follow. I will look to see if the split occurred further back... If not, and it occurs in English, then I suppose I will proceed with the above, if that's acceptable Leasnam (talk) 19:11, 17 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I have no objections. What you propose is consistent with Douglas Harper (2001–2024) “couch”, in Online Etymology Dictionary., a generally good source. I don't have access to OED. DCDuring TALK 21:13, 17 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Okay, thanks. Yes, it looks like that meaning developed in English (early 16c). Leasnam (talk) 15:03, 20 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Done. Leasnam (talk) 15:34, 20 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

leg

Is it a general consensus that the English word "leg" excludes the feet (as our definition says)? -- (I added a note that the German Bein (see there) often or usually includes the feet, but I'm wondering if there's a real difference there between the German and English words, because - I s'pose - some Germans might also exclude the feet from their understanding of "Bein".) -- So, is it an obvious thing that the feet are excluded or might our definition of "leg" be too narrow and subjective? Kolmiel (talk) 18:29, 17 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I'm fairly sure that it is used both ways, though it may be more commonly used excluding foot. Most definitions focus on use "a limb used for locomotion" A couple have something like "a human limb; commonly used to refer to a whole limb but technically only the part of the limb between the knee and ankle". DCDuring TALK 00:08, 18 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The medical/anatomical/zoological definition excludes both foot and thigh. I don't know how ankle and knee are treated. If limb is used as the hypernym in the definiens, as it often is, leg would presumably inherit its scope, though it is often defined as "arm or leg". DCDuring TALK 00:15, 18 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Okay. So there's no substantial difference, as I had supposed. Well, thanks! You guys must know whether to change the definition in the lemma "leg". (I think it may be useful.) Kolmiel (talk) 01:25, 18 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

About "menhir"

I have removed the German word "Hinkelstein", since "Hinkel" appears neither here nor in the Cassell's German Dictionary. I have added instead the words "Druidenstein' and "Hünenstein" from Cassell's. Caeruleancentaur (talk) 19:05, 17 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Please put it back on. It's the commonest word, though probably not scientific. See this: [3]. Kolmiel (talk) 19:08, 17 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

By the way: Hinkel is a dialectal word that means "chicken". I don't think it has anything to do with this. But a Hinkelstein is a Hinkelstein. You can't delete a compound just because you can't attest one of its parts on its own. Kolmiel (talk) 19:10, 17 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I think Hinkelstein is the usual word for menhir in the German translations of the Asterix comics, in case someone wants to look for attestation. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 09:57, 19 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, it is. That's where you'll come across it most often. But I don't think there can be much doubt about it even outside of Asterix. If we did need to look for attestations it would be for "Druidenstin" and "Hünenstein", which I have never heard, nor would have understood. Kolmiel (talk) 20:00, 20 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I had a quick look. They are both attestable. Nothing much in recent decades, however. Kolmiel (talk) 20:07, 20 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

trade crop

Is this the same as a cash crop? —Aryamanarora ^{(मुझसे बात करो)} 20:44, 17 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

And market crop AFAICT. Contrast with cover crop and subsistence crop. DCDuring TALK 22:07, 17 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

hwa

Is the declension table correct? After looking into

Eduard Sievers: Angelsächsische Grammatik. Dritte Auflage. 2. unveränderter Abdruck. Volume 3 of the series Sammlung kurzer Grammatiken germanischer Dialekte edited by Wilhelm Braune. Halle, 1921, p. 183

and

Joseph Wright, Elizabeth Mary Wright: Old English Grammar. 1908, p. 232

the declension should be like this:

	m	n
Nom.	hwā, hwa	hwæt
Gen.	hwæs	hwæs
Dat.	hwǣm, hwām	hwǣm, hwām
Acc.	hwone hwæne	hwæt
Instr.	—	hwȳ, hwī hwon

Differences:

The masculine nominative can also be hwa with a short vowel.
Only the neuter has instrumental forms, the masculine hasn't.
There is another instrumental form, hwī.

Also Wiktionary might miss the following information:

The accusative hwæne is younger.
The instrumental hwon only occurs in adverbial phrases like tō hwon and for whon.
There is also the instrumental form hū with the adverbial meaning how.
There were other dialectal forms like Kentish neuter hwet.

-Ikiaika (talk) 04:14, 18 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

1). Old English didn't adequately represent vowel length orthographically, so it's possible that an unstressed form hwa could have existed in speech...

2). The masculine and neuter agree in declension, save in the nominative and accusative, since PIE times, so, the masculine instrumental is accurately shown to be hwȳ/hwon (hwon = suppletive?)/and yes hwī (same as hwȳ). Now, whether it was ever attested to mean "by/for/with that (masc) person or object" outside of just a general meaning of "why" or "for what (reason)" remains to be explored.

3). Yes, just an alternative form of normalised hwȳ. Leasnam (talk) 18:17, 19 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

4). There is also an alternative to hwon: hwan Leasnam (talk) 18:26, 19 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for your reply!

1) I've read that Anglosaxon sometimes marked long vowels, as huus or hús for modern hús, hûs or hūs. So maybe the vowel sometimes was marked. Or maybe one could find out the length from poems.
Wright states (p. 232, and p. 35 and 44): "On the vowel in hwā, see § 79." and "The Short Vowels of Accented Syllables. [...] § 79. Final a was lengthened to ā in monosyllables, as hwā (Goth. [..]), who, swā (Goth. swa), so." In context of the personal pronouns he writes (p. 225, and p. 49): "In forms marked with both long and short vowels, as in [...], those with short vowels were the unaccented forms, see § 95." and "§ 95. Final e was lengthened to ē in monosyllables as hē, he [...]". So the length should depend on accentuation.

2) It could be that Anglosaxon used the dative hwǣm and not the instrumental for persons or masculine nouns, while the neuter could have preserved the instrumental, at least in some fixed expressions or in certain circumstances.
Wright writes in another context (p. 161): "OE. nouns have [...] five cases: Nominative, Accusative, Genitive, Dative, and Instrumental. The dat. is generally used for the instr. in OE., so that this case is omitted in the paradigms, see § 334."

3) I'd guess that Wright uses a normalised orthography, so both hwȳ and hwī should be normalised spellings.

Greetings, Ikiaika (talk) 20:02, 19 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

ihne, wene

German dative forms like deme, ihme, weme can be explained by Middle High German forms like dëme and ime. But how about German accusative forms like ihne and wene? Such forms seem not to existed in Middle High German. Two possible explanations came into my mind but they are just poor guessings:
(a) Maybe that are Upper German forms like jedwederer for jedweder, and maybe some words were prolonged for prestige in Upper German regions.
(b) Middle Low German forms are these:

	m	n
Dat.	deme, dem, den
Acc.	dene, den	dat

	m	n
Dat.	eme, ome, en	eme, em, ome, en
Acc.	ene, en, one, on	it, et

	m	n
Dat.	weme, wem
Acc.	wene, wen	wat

Source: Agathe Lasch: Mittelniederdeutsche Grammatik. Volume 9 of the series Sammlung kurzer Grammatiken germanischer Dialekte edited by Wilhelm Braune. Halle a. S., 1914, pp. 216, 218, 220.

The source also mentions that dative and accusative sometimes got mixed up which might explain the the Middle Low German accusative -e: Having a dative -e and mixing up dative and accusative could result in an accusative -e. Maybe Low German speakers then used their accusative -e in High German too.
Hopefully someone can enlighten me and explain to me where the High German accusative -e comes from. -Ikiaika (talk) 05:18, 18 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Middle Low German accusative forms with -e are a regular development and did not intrude from the dative. The mixup mainly concerns writing -m for -n. It could very well be that the accusative-e in High German is a dialectal development from northern (High German) regions with similar forms or that the E is merely written, because in the dialects employing these forms, /ə/ had already become silent. Korn [kʰũːɘ̃n] (talk) 11:05, 18 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for your reply!

Silent letters are common in English (island, shine), but in German? b in for example umb was or became silent, but no other example comes into my mind. In gedencken, Schrifft, Kaufleuth there were unnecessary consonant letters, but I wouldn't call them silent letters.
I just found the additions to Lexer's MHG dictionary. He mentions the accusative wene and gives a single source from Austria for this ("westen di luite, an wene si solten glouben, wen si solten haben zeinem vater"). Compared with the cites for wene from München and Dilingen (Dillingen an der Donau?), it might be a southern German or Upper German form, in some way similar to jedwederer for jedweder, seynd for sind, gesyn for seyn. I would explain such forms by prestige, that longer and older forms might look more elevated, noble, courtly. That might be an incorrect and poor explanation, but until now I've not seen a better one.

Greetings, Ikiaika (talk) 16:48, 18 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

masseuse

This page lists massager as a hyponym of masseuse. Shouldn't it be a hypernym? A masseuse is a female massager. Troyp (talk)

Done Equinox ◑ 15:25, 19 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

"entre los Ceibos estorba un Quebracho"

Wiktionary has no entry for ceibo, but it is defined at w:ceibo as the national flower/tree of Argentina and Uruguay. Quebracho is apparently a tree with very hard wood. I have no idea why they are capitalized in the Spanish phrase above, but it comes in a communication from the Organization of American States, so should be accounted for in our dictionary. Here is the OAS release (also Spanish) and what I think is the original song with video. (I suppose someone on Wikipedia would give me flack over a 'prohibited' external link with that, but frankly, the big lyrics sites have been up for 20 years now, they look like Fair Use, and I don't believe their 'illegality' is anything but a propertarian-fringe fiction at this point. I don't know Wiktionary's policy though)

Requests:

1) create ceibo

2) Do we need Ceibo? And why?

3) The phrase itself is being used with clear political significance here, and I think an entry on the whole thing entre los Ceibos estorba un Quebracho may be in order. I still have no idea what it means in the context of the OAS letter, at least.

4) also Quebracho???

5) explain this sense in quebracho.

Wnt (talk) 11:51, 19 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I don't have time to look into it at the moment, but see if ceiba is helpful. Linking to a website in a discussion to illustrate a point is different from including it in an entry. See WT:CFI for our policies on inclusion and citation. Chuck Entz (talk) 14:09, 19 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Wnt: The only reasonable request is your first one, which I have fulfilled. We do not include capitalised versions of words unless they are always capitalised, and we do not include quotes, no matter how much metaphorical weight those quotes may have, because we are not Wikiquote. As Chuck said, you can read more about what we do include at WT:CFI.

Chuck: Spanish is crazy when it comes to biological nomenclature. Unfortunately, the ceiba and the ceibo are completely different (although there may be some dialect where that's not the case). —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 14:52, 19 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

refrain#Verb: an example is present for two senses

In the page about refrain, senses 1 and 3 share the example “Refrain thy foot from their path.” --Anareth (talk) 17:53, 19 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

nitor

There's a footnote in the conjugation section that the verb also has the past participle nīsus. Can this be added to the conjugation table and headword line as well? —CodeCa t 18:16, 19 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

ultimately, second sense

The definition: “Indicating the most important action.” An example: “[…] the ultimately luckless Hennessey, who was […]” The example does not match the definition.

It seems to mean "in the end". Equinox ◑ 17:54, 20 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Both of the definitions now in the entry are awful. They are neither substitutable nor worded clearly as non-gloss definitions.

The second definition could be worded as "Most importantly".

The word is sometimes used to mean "originally" as in "The word is ultimately from Latin." That is, the implied sequence or order can be either forward or backward from the reference time. For the backward use in the end is not right; it might be in the beginning. This suggests that we need two usage examples if not two definitions

The first definition might be better as "Eventually" or "Finally" or we may need something more extensive. The existing usage example seems phony to me. DCDuring TALK 22:59, 20 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

selbig

Predicative forms like "er ist selbig" and mixed forms like "ein selbiger" should be nonexistent.
Weak forms should be complicated: While spellings like "der selbige" exist, modern prescribed forms with the definte article should be derselbige etc.

-Ikiaika (talk) 20:38, 19 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

You can create derselbige, of course. But I don't agree that "ein selbiger" shouldn't exist. Google it, it has a lot of justified hits, like: "Wo kein Markt ist, kann ein selbiger sich auch nicht bereinigen." I wouldn't write that, personally, but it sounds okay to me. Kolmiel (talk) 22:22, 19 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for your replies! I googled it at books.google, but maybe not good enough. Your example can be found at radioforen.de, but with "Selbiger". I don't think that that is a good example (also compare with *ein selber), but let's put it aside for now. [A small PS: As selbig means the same, ein selbiger would mean a the same which makes no sense, and for the same reason there should be no *ein selber.]
What about the predicative forms, do they exist? And what about the spellings with the definite article? Of course one can create entries for derselbige etc., but the template just mentions "der selbige". I'd guess, that it at least requires a note like "Spellings like der selbige are nowadays proscribed, while spellings like derselbige are prescribed." (compare with der selbe and derselbe, e.g. korrekturen.de, lektor.at). Greetings, Ikiaika (talk) 00:22, 00:34, 20 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Well, they used it. To me personally it even sounds grammatical, but it needn't be grammatical as long as it's used. And selbig doesn't mean "the same" but "same", so ein selbiger is "a same", which might (is it?) still be ungrammatical in English, but need not be in German. Generally, things don't have to make sense, they just have to be attested. A better wording, of course, would be "ein solcher", but that's not the question. --- As far as template and programming questions are concerned, I can't help you unfortunately. Kolmiel (talk) 13:40, 20 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

PS: You also find relevant hits on google.books. E.g.: "Er kann sich in diesen vergegenwärtigen gemäß der jeweiligen Bestimmtheit ihres Seins, so daß seine Ausdrucksformen sehr verschiedene sind, während er selbst doch ein selbiger ist." Obviously there's nothing to be "put aside for now". It's part of our language whether we like or not. Kolmiel (talk) 13:53, 20 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

German Wiktionary says there also was "der jener" (which developed into derjenige). So indeed, strange forms could have been used. But if incorrect forms were or are used, then it requires a note. For example, "Ich muss gehen, weil die Geschäfte machen gleich zu." is incorrect it normal German, even if it is used colloquially.

How about predicative forms? Till now I can't see any example for that. Examples from books.google for "ist selbig":
- "... das 'Was etwas ist' [...] ist selbig mit ihm ..." — there selbig should mean identical and not the same, that is, it should have another sense.
- "sondern ist selbig mit sich selbst" — as above, and the meaning identical should be philosophical.
- "... so ist selbig den Zöllnern ..." — there selbig should be short for selbiges (similar to "unser täglich Brot" besides "unser tägliches Brot").
- "Herzog Hand Ernst [...] ist selbig 16[line break]26. Jar [...], als er [...] erkranckt, den 15. December todts verfahren" — that should mean "ist selbiges 1626ste Jahr", that is "he died in the same 1626th year".
- "Nachdem Martin [...] baden wollen, ist selbig ertuncken" — that should mean "ist selbiger ertrunken".
- "... aber ist selbig nit wegen sein, sonder ..." — there selbig should be short for selbiges

So while selbig exists, I can't find any example like "er ist selbig" meaning "he is the same".

As for ein selbiger:
- The example from radioforen.de is not durably archived, spells it Selbiger and might be colloquial.
- The example with "ein selbiger ist" is from a philosophical book out of the 1970s or 1980s. (a) Sometimes philosophers redefine words, so it could have a different meaning. (b) Some sources (e.g. DWDS) say that selbig is "veraltet", so the author could have used it incorrectly.
Comparison with selber/selbe: selber and selbiger have the same meaning, (the) same. But ein selber and er ist selber shouldn't exist, and same should be true for selbig.

To sum up, ist selbig (or more complete: ist selbig mit) and ein selbiger might exist. But both should have another meaning: ist selbig mit should mean is identisch mit or is identical with, and ein selbiger should mean ein solcher or such a. Also these meanings might be less common, younger (from the 20th century), and philosophical or colloquial. -- Greetings, Ikiaika (talk) 17:03, 20 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, we could add a note that these forms are rather uncommon, why not. They definitely aren't colloquial because the word selbig is by itself elevated and archaic. (And the word as such is actually uncommon in contemporary German.) However, we don't say that things said and written by native speakers are "incorrect". We do say that such things may be "proscribed", but in that case I think you'd have to produce a source that proscribes it, and you'll hardly find that, because no one has probably ever written anything about "ein selbiger". Kolmiel (talk) 17:46, 20 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Older grammarians like Gottsched and Adelung already criticised or even proscribed some words or usages (e.g. in case of was in front of nouns like was Volk), so they could have proscribed ein selbiger. Also there might be another way to justify a label "proscribed". If a grammarian declined selbig and only has (no article) selbiger and der selbige or derselbige, it could mean that ein selbiger does not exist or is incorrect.
But IMHO it's not a matter of proscribed or not, but of the meaning. selbig meaning the same shouldn't have forms like "er ist selbig" and "ein selbiger". selbig with the rare meaning solcher or such has forms like "ein selbiger", and selbig with the rare meaning identisch or identical has forms like "ist selbig (mit)". This would also explain why there is ein selbiger but no ein selber: selber simply doesn't have these other meanings. But I'm not sure if these other meanings really are attestable.
PS: Well, ein selber might also exist as in: "Folglich bezieht sich das Endliche auf ein selber endliches oder verendlichtes Nichtendliches." But there it should have another meaning too. Also ATM these mixed forms aren't mentioned in selbe or selber. -- Greetings, Ikiaika (talk) 22:06, 20 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

There's no such thing as "the word shouldn't have these forms". It's not the way we work here. Who decides what forms a word should have? It yourself who say that it shouldn't have them. I say it should. (And neither is important.) And as far as "proscribed" is concerned: I don't see how something can be proscribed when no one has ever proscribed it. You may discuss that with someone else, I personally think it's ridiculous. What we can say is something along the lines of "some language users may find this use abnormal", which is a safe call. -- So, and that's it for me concerning this topic. Kolmiel (talk) 21:38, 22 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

selber, selbe

There should be two words selber and not just one: (a) A word meaning himself etc., and (b) an inflected form of selbe. Compare for example:

"er selber hat" (a) and "selber Tag" (strong form of b in the nominative)
"am selben Tag[e]" (weak form of b) and "an selbem Tag[e]" (strong form of b)
"und gab demselben den Rath" (weak form of b) and "und gab selbem den gewöhnlichen Segen" (strong form of b).

So word (a) is uninflectable and placed after another word, while word (b) is inflectable and a form of selbe. Also, maybe the declension tables from the entries selber and selbe should be in the same entry. -Ikiaika (talk) 20:38, 19 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

So create etymology 1 for the adverb, and etymology 2 for the inflected form. Kolmiel (talk) 22:22, 19 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The etymology could be the same or at least similar, and I can't say anything about it. I slightly changed the entries (see selber, selbe), but IMHO both tables should be in one entry. Greetings, -Ikiaika (talk) 00:22, 20 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

They should be two etymologies, I think. We generally put inflected forms in a separate etymology, as far as I'm aware. "Selber" (= -self) is a lemma, while the inflected form is not. Strictly speaking you're right, but this is more a question of layout. (I'm not a huge expert on our layout though. You might want to ask someone else.) Kolmiel (talk) 13:34, 20 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Well, one could also say that selber (= the same) is a lemma too. In case of Alter, Beamter, Kleiner the strong form is used, while the weak is just an inflected form. So selbe could point to selber. On the other hand, the weak form selbe might be more common, at least nowadays. For comparision, German Wiktionary missed the strong forms completely. -Ikiaika (talk) 15:12, 20 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps the Dutch approach could be used as a comparison. Dutch also has the same distinction, but since neither word inflects it's much easier. See zelf, zelfde. —CodeCa t 17:16, 20 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Okay, true. Since there is no "selb", in this case "selber" would be the lemma. (In adjectives without predicative form we always use the er-form as lemma.) Make it one etymology then, or make it two, whatever you like. ---- Comparing with Dutch, the difference is that German "selber" can both be zelf and zelfde, so while there is a semantic distinction the two occasionally overlap formally. Kolmiel (talk) 19:49, 20 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

aperto

apertus is already the past participle of aperiō. Can this be looked at? —CodeCa t 20:49, 19 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Could it be a frequentive like spectō? I don't see the problem. Renard Migrant (talk) 21:12, 19 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

It is a frequentative. The problem is that apertō, like all frequentatives, is a 1st conjugation verb, so the expected participle is apertātus. —CodeCa t 21:32, 19 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Well, you knew the problem, but were unable to fix it? I fixed it for you, anyhow. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 23:52, 19 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I knew there was a problem, didn't know what the correct fix was. Maybe apertātus was also wrong, for all I know. —CodeCa t 00:00, 20 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

apo, apio, apiscor

De Vaan gives apiō while we have apō. The derived verb coepiō preserves the -i-, as does apīscor. So is the verb actually attested only as apō, or is apiō also found, as De Vaan indicates? —CodeCa t 20:55, 19 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Tonsillas apiunt [not apunt], configunt litus, aduncas, or They fasten the hooked poles, they grip the shore, from Ennius in Isidore of Seville, Etymologies, 19.14: Tonsilia uncinus ferreus vel ligneus ad quem in litore defixum funes navium inligantur. De quo Ennius (Ann. 499): Tonsillas apiunt, configunt litus, aduncas. As before, I don't know the manuscript tradition and possibly my editions are mistaken, but Ennius is one's first hope for this sort of problem. Isomorphyc (talk) 22:41, 29 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

'

' (easier to click link) is used in English distinctly from the suffix -' in words like talkin'. We have no entry. Also, is this 'punctuation' or what? Renard Migrant (talk) 21:10, 19 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

It's punctuation in the sense that it is a mark that is not a letter. I guess we should define it as something like Indicates that a letter has been omitted from the word. Perhaps it should even be translingual. --Wiki Tiki 89 21:24, 19 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

(Not a suffix, of course, as it occurs in other places like shan't and 'phone.) Equinox ◑ 21:34, 19 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Is this adequate? - -sche (discuss) 14:43, 20 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Does no one else think this should be translingual? I know it at least applies to English and French, but I guess I'm not sure to what it extent it applies to other Latin script languages. --Wiki Tiki 89 15:18, 20 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Except from "often [...] they are no longer pronounced" it also applies to German: Katz' (also Katz) for Katze, Leut' (also Leut) for Leute, freud'ger for freudiger, geh' (also geh) for gehe, Baum's (also Baums) for Baumes. However, there might be different views about when to use an apostroph. Forms like Baum's were rare, forms like Katz' might be younger, forms like geh' might nowadays be questioned. Also the apostrophe might be restricted to just replace a few letters in a word. I can't remember to have seen something like "fo'c's'le" (three apostrophes) in German. Greetings, Ikiaika (talk) 17:17, 20 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

An apostrophe is certainly used to mark elision in Italian as well. Still, this seems to be an eye-dialect marker more than a mark of elision because the g isn't actually pronounced in -ing: it's just an orthographic device used to distinguish a velar nasal from an alveolar one. Chuck Entz (talk) 18:07, 20 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

If "ng" means /ŋ/ and "n" means /n/, then pronouncing "ng" as /n/ is dropping the "g". Otherwise, you're taking technicalities too far. --Wiki Tiki 89 18:11, 20 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Well, either interpretation requires playing games with abstractions, since we're talking about dropping a written "g" in pronunciation. After all, I doubt pronouncing thing as "ting" would be called "dropping the 'h'". Chuck Entz (talk) 18:30, 20 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Given the definition as "Replaces one or more letters which have been removed from a written word, often but not always because they are not being pronounced", I don't see how that can possibly be interpreted as excluding talkin’. --Wiki Tiki 89 18:41, 20 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Given that -in' represents the vast majority of uses (I can't think of any others off the top of my head), "often" wouldn't seem to be correct if this isn't a case of "because they are not being pronounced". Chuck Entz (talk) 19:33, 20 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Firstly, I'm not convinced that -in’ represents any kind of majority or plurality of uses (I would think contractions like -'s and don't would take that title). Secondly, I will still maintain that the distinction between /ŋ/ and /n/ is commonly referred to as pronouncing or not pronouncing the "g". If you really want a more technical justification, you can say that the "g" is a velarization marker when following the letter "n", and in talkin’, the velarization marker "g" is not pronounced. --Wiki Tiki 89 19:41, 20 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I forgot we were talking about ' rather than -'. My bad. Chuck Entz (talk) 19:53, 20 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Even in those examples, the apostrophe is replacing a letter that is not being pronounced. (Leute: /ˈlɔʏ̯tə/, Leut’: /ˈlɔʏ̯t/.) - -sche (discuss) 18:14, 20 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

But it is being pronounced- as a schwa. To be analogous, you would have to be talking about the difference between /ˈlɔʏ̯te/ and /ˈlɔʏ̯tə/. Chuck Entz (talk) 18:30, 20 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

No, it's not being pronounced: Leut’ is /ˈlɔʏ̯t/, and rhymes in songs with freut and other such things. In Leute, the final letter is pronounced (/ˈlɔʏ̯tə/), and thus in that pronunciation the apostrophe (which replaces unpronounced letters) is not used. - -sche (discuss) 18:34, 20 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

My point was that the g isn't pronounced in either the alveolar or the velar variant. ~~In the Leute vs. Leut' example, on the other hand, the e is pronounced in Leute, but not pronounced in Leut'.~~ The German example fits the definition where the English one doesn't. My "/ˈlɔʏ̯te/ and /ˈlɔʏ̯tə/" hyothetical doesn't quite work, but it was just an aside. Chuck Entz (talk) 19:33, 20 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I see your point now. I forgot that Leute can represent either /ˈlɔʏ̯t/ or /ˈlɔʏ̯tə/, depending on the context. Chuck Entz (talk) 19:58, 20 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

There were a number of usage notes about German use of ', located at ’ (the curly version), which have become casualties of the move to translingual. - -sche (discuss) 18:34, 20 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

rice

Do we need both "Cereal plants, Oryza sativa of the grass family whose seeds are used as food." and "A specific variety of this plant."? I am unsure of how to distinguish cites of the two senses, if that is even possible. DTLHS (talk) 21:10, 20 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

It was probably intended to be the countable sense. I've added the label and corrected the inflection line. Is that OK? Arguably something similar would apply to many vernacular names of plants: "The forest contained much pine/many pines (types of pine or indvidual trees)." DCDuring TALK 22:31, 20 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

coincido

The inflections need to be looked at. The verb comes from incidō with a short i, rather than incīdō with a long vowel. So a short vowel would also be expected in the derivative, and the expected participle would be coincāsum. —CodeCa t 23:44, 20 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

It isn't in Lewis and Short or Oxford, so it seems not to be Classical Latin at all. Maybe someone with access to a Medieval Latin dictionary could look it up. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 08:40, 21 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources has an entry for coincidō. Du Cange doesn't. KarikaSlayer (talk) 18:34, 21 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Unfortunately the entry you linked to above doesn't provide any information about what the third and fourth principal parts would be. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 14:51, 22 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

cuck

This clearly has another use, but it’s difficult to define since it’s applied so loosely. I originally suggested ‘[a] man who respects women and girls and sees them as people,’ but that’s probably either an exaggeration or exceedingly specific. One possible solution is to simply use {{non-gloss definition|A term of abuse}}, but even that may be too broad. Perhaps we could use ‘a weakling with progressive views.’ --Romanophile ♞ (contributions) 19:05, 21 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Given your disinterest in this matter, I’ll be forced to resolve it by myself. --Romanophile ♞ (contributions) 06:11, 24 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Well, the new def seems better. And you have to be patient. Sometimes an entry sits at RFV for months before it gets cited. You don't have to put "delete, no-one cares" on a talk page just because nobody replied in a week, etc. Equinox ◑ 06:21, 24 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The verb "to be"

I was trying to check the Sanskrit verb "to be" (as listed in w:Russian grammar), so I thought the "Translations" section under be would help. But oh dear... Well, "translation" is really the wrong word, because this is about "corresponding words", and yes, a traditional (mis)conception of translation is that it is about replacing words by their corresponding words, then patching up the grammar. But really and truly, translation is about writing something in a second language which has the same required functional effect as something already written in a first language. But leave that aside for now.

In any Indo-European language, saying "the verb to be" normally means something. In (any?) non-Indo-European language it probably means nothing at all. But it really would help for all IE languages just to give the verb to be. It might be labelled as such, and only IE languages included, or it might be labelled as "the copula" (not sure quite how general this term is).

But currently, there is a whole string of supposed uses, and I think the closest to "the copula" is probably: "used to indicate that the subject plays the role of the predicate nominative". What on earth is this supposed to mean (particularly, for example, in the case of Japanese, which does not have subjects or cases)?? I have looked through the Japanese "translations" given: in most cases it really is unclear what the target is supposed to mean, and in many cases the word given is utterly wrong. But it is unreasonable to expect any fluent speaker of Japanese to be able to guess what the heading is supposed to mean. I particularly scratched my head over "occur, take place": how is this the verb to be?

I suggest that this is an unsalvageable disaster, and invite comments. Imaginatorium (talk) 07:00, 22 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Not a disaster at all. Indeed it is quite good. The sense of to be that you are looking for is probably (7), a copula "used to indicate that the subject and object are the same." In the translation section for that sense, the Sanskrit is अस्ति (asti). The entry for अस्ति (asti) needs a lot more work, but I believe it’s what you were searching for.

Note that English Wiktionary is not intended for the use of native Japanese, it is for native speakers of English. Native speakers of Japanese should avail themselves of ja:いる and ja:ある instead. Also, the various senses of the verb are not for Japanese or other languages, they are for the English verb. Sense (8) is a copula that is "used to indicate that the subject plays the role of the predicate nominal." That is a description of the English sense, and has nothing to do with Japanese. In the translation section for this sense, the various languages, including Japanese, show a common word in each language that is used to translate this particular sense of the English verb. Any description of the Japanese verb will be found on the entry for the Japanese verb, that is, at である. —Stephen ^(Talk) 08:28, 22 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

IMHO

IMO, use of "IMHO" is, as likely as not, will convey (at best)

"I'm in on the [post-?]post-modernist joke that claims that the act of typing 'IMHO' is inherently arrogant, and i

am amused that trying to convince you that saying 'my opinion is humble' is a paradoxically arrogant act,

and/or

don't care whether i offend you."

for which reason i would never use it where it might be construed that "humble" was meant sincerely. That's too meta to go into a dictdef, but shouldn't there be some sort of "subject to ironic use or misinterpreation" annotation?
--Jerzy•t 12:00, 22 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

IMO, no. DCDuring TALK 14:15, 22 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Wolfgang

Yeah, I don't know why this article is locked. The oldest attestations of this name date to the 8th century CE (cf Förstemann ibid., Col. 596). There are also sources from the 9th Century Reichenauer Verbrüderungsbuch(Reichenauer Verbrüderungsbuch, p.126: Vuolfkanc am unteren Ende der rechten Spalte.)So it is clearly impossible that the 10th century Catholics were the first to use this name. This is in addition to it being a pagan name.

There seems to be a consensus on this, but for some reason, one user has had this page locked. There are also random useless sections on there. Like Wolfgang in Portuguese is Wolfgang. Wow. That was hard to figure out. Shouldn't there only be variations listed that are actually different? And, why Portuguese? It's not like the name is popular there.

How do we fix this page? What is the purpose of locking pages? Isn't that pretty much against everything wiki?DEUTSCHBLUT (talk) 01:37, 23 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The page was locked because one user decided to rearrange the page contrary to Wiktionary's standard format, which was arrived at by the community over more than a decade and a series of votes, then edit-warred with several others when corrected. This same editor then proceeded to post a series of belligerent demands to add to their empty accusations of vandalism, showing a blatant disrespect for all the other contributors to the article and for the Wiktionary community.

But then, you already know that, because you're continuing the same bombastic tirade, just using an account rather than an IP. Chuck Entz (talk) 02:26, 23 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

They did the same thing at Wikipedia. —CodeCa t 15:43, 23 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

crebesco

Is this perhaps a typo for crēbrēscō? The latter is listed at crēber under related terms. —CodeCa t 22:03, 23 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

This is a genuine mediaeval and renaissance usage, a frequent manuscript variant, and incrēbēscunt appears in at least some good editions of Catullus. I can't speak to the transmission history which led to this reading. I wouldn't guess that /r/ is a terrible candidate for hapology, like nutritrix > nutrix, but I don't know anything specific here. Edited: possibly I misunderstand what you are asking. Isomorphyc (talk) 22:48, 29 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

get better

Can someone please fix the past participles. I tried but the template doesn't want to co-operate. Gotten better is obviously American, got better is used in Britain. DonnanZ (talk) 15:12, 24 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Done. --Wiki Tiki 89 15:28, 24 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, I was trying the other way round. Cheers! DonnanZ (talk) 15:34, 24 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

It doesn't matter, feel free to swap them. At least you know how to do it now. --Wiki Tiki 89 15:41, 24 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I tried to copy from get and ran into trouble. Actually I don't think there's any need for "head=" now, things have changed since the entry was created. DonnanZ (talk) 15:47, 24 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

peiero

According to De Vaan, there's another synonymous verb meaning "worsen", from peius. Can anyone confirm this and include an entry if it exists? —CodeCa t 21:44, 24 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

go or be hard in the paint

What is the origin of this phrase and what does it mean? - -sche (discuss) 03:40, 25 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

In basketball, to play hard (physically) in the painted area between free-throw line and the basket. "Go" is mostly used for the offense, "be" for defense. To me only the sense of paint (which we already have) is dictionary-worthy. DCDuring TALK 10:35, 25 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Aha! But I see some use which isn't referring to any literal painted area; e.g.:

2013, Danette M. Verchér, As The Spirit Leads: An Apostolic & Prophetic Discipleship, ... →ISBN:
He may not ever know that this little power packed lady in the Holy Ghost, in Hughson, California, was “going hard in the paint on his behalf.”

And (although I haven't found a durable example yet) uses like "Toni Morrison Went Hard in the Paint for Angela Davis". - -sche (discuss) 16:36, 25 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Sports is often is source of good popular metaphors. To the paint and in the paint are used without go or be. See this for the source of the metaphor. Urban Dictionary would be a convenient source for this kind of thing, but we are too good for that. DCDuring TALK 21:19, 25 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

infatuation: merge definitions?

Here are the current definitions:

The act of infatuating; the state of being infatuated; folly; that which infatuates.
An unreasoning love for or sexual attraction to.

According to the pages infatuating and folly, I fail to perceive the first meaning as distinct from the second one. If they are indeed identical, the definitions should be merged (I suggest simply deleting the first one, because the second seems much clearer). However, if the meanings are distinct, clarifications should be made. --Anareth (talk) 08:01, 26 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Pronunciation of ‘shew’

There is no complete pronunciation listed at shew, although at least the rhyme -əʊ is noted. However, one of the definitions, the East Anglia past tense, has a different pronunciation, with the rhyme -uː. (See [4], for example, which cites the OED). I'm not a Wiktionary regular, and I don't know how to properly record this in the entry, but its Talk page told me to come here. —Toby Bartels (talk) 10:49, 26 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for asking. I have added {{rfp|lang=en}}. I'd be surprised if it isn't usually pronounced to rhyme with eschew in US classrooms. DCDuring TALK 11:00, 26 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Done —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 11:01, 26 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Wouldn't the dialectal past tense be /ʃjuː/? --Wiki Tiki 89 14:48, 26 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Do any varieties of English allow /ʃj-/? Certainly RP doesn't, and I thought East Anglian was famous for reducing /juː/ to /uː/ everywhere, in even more contexts than American English. For example, I thought the stereotypical East Anglian pronunciation of beautiful was /ˈbuːtɪfəl/ (cf. w:Phonological history of English consonant clusters#Yod-dropping). —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 14:54, 26 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

You're probably right. --Wiki Tiki 89 15:17, 26 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

opetustaulu - teaching poster?

What are these teaching aids called in English? For the Finnish entry opetustaulu I defined them as "type of poster or placard formerly used in schools as teaching aid, consisting of an educative image fixed on stiff cardboard". From Wikipedia I learned that they are Schulwandbild in German, skolplansch in Swedish and schoolplaat i Dutch. I'm pretty sure these tables have been used in the English speaking world as well. I tried "school poster", "educating poster", "teaching poster", "school display" etc. in Google image search, but the results didn't look quite the same. All searches produce pictures of self-made boards. --Hekaheka (talk) 04:51, 27 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I would be tempted to simply call them diagrams, though that doesn't refer to a poster, but rather the image on the poster. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 09:22, 27 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

It's a wallchart. Equinox ◑ 15:22, 27 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think English really has a common fixed name for them. I've certainly never heard "wallchart" used. They're posters, with an appropriate adjective if the distinction is necessary. Or diagrams, as Andrew suggested.--Prosfilaes (talk) 21:12, 27 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I 100% agree with Prosfilaes' every word here. --Wiki Tiki 89 21:16, 27 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Search for "educational poster" produces the type of result I was looking for. Thanks again for help. --Hekaheka (talk) 06:46, 29 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

dash

On the Wikipedia talk page of w:Prime (symbol), it is mentioned that this symbol is also sometimes called a dash, at least in some contexts, in various varieties of English. Can this use be verified? --Florian Blaschke (talk) 14:04, 27 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Some Borderline-SOP entries

There are several entries by the same IP user (geolocating to Montreal), that are marked by a restricted definition for an otherwise-SOP term.They all are composed of <adjective for a nationality> + <name of a food> all have the same cookie-cutter etymology: {{compound|lang=<language code for the entry>|<adjective for an nationality>|<name of a food>}}, from being the stereotypical, common, and most frequently encountered type of <name of a food> in <adjective for a nationality> cuisine. These include:

English

French

I'm not really sure how to deal with these: it's true that one can go to a supermarket and find products for sale labeled with these terms with contents that agree with the descriptions in the definitions. The hard part is figuring out if the restriction to this specific sense is part of the language, or just the result of the current relative availability of such things. For instance, most of us outside of the tropics will think of a w:Cavendish banana when someone says "banana", but that's just because that's the type that dominates the mainstream market. How do we tell whether something has become a lexical distinction? Do we look for quotes that say "when I said Italian tomatoes, I didn't mean w:San Marzano tomatoes, I meant w:Roma tomatoes"? Chuck Entz (talk) 04:31, 28 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

google books:"Chinese mushroom" finds as many hits where it's used as a name of Volvariella volvacea as hits where it's used of Lentinula edodes, but that doesn't rule out the possibility that it might be idiomatic with multiple senses. Uses like Some studies on the cultivation of Chinese mushroom (Volvariella volvacea (Fr.) Singer) on sugarcane industrial by-products seem to treat it as a proper name. There are also a few hits where it refers to Ganoderma tsugae or to the wood ear, and a few where it is unambiguously SOP, e.g. "Cordyceps is a Chinese mushroom". There are a number of cookbooks that call for e.g. "100 g of Chinese mushroom", but again I'm not sure if that suggests idiomaticity (identification of it as a specific thing) or not, since a recipe for Chinese food might call for any (edible) Chinese mushroom.

The idiomaticity of "Italian sausage" is clearer, since it is frequently found as such right next to other Italian sausages such as salami. Compare "Italian beef".

"Italian tomato", on the other hand, seems SOP. all the hits for google books:"of Italian tomato" and google books:"g Italian tomato", which I hoped would find hits of recipes calling for it in a potentially idiomatic way, are SOP.

- -sche (discuss) 07:53, 28 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Pronunciation of indirect

For any native:

IPA^(key): /ɪndɪˈɹɛkt/, /ɪndaɪˈɹɛkt/, /ɪndəˈɹɛkt/

Is that this way? Inferred from direct and indication. Sobreira (talk) 10:03, 28 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

We could probably stand to separate them out by accent. I don't think Americans would usually say /ɪndaɪˈɹɛkt/, nor Brits /ɪndəˈɹɛkt/. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 10:56, 28 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

If someone separates them by region, note that both pronunciations are common in Canada. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 06:41, 31 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I checked Cambridge: indirect and direct, and they don't match with what you say.... Sobreira (talk) 11:06, 31 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Well, they agree with me that Brits are unlikely to say /ɪndəˈɹɛkt/ (with /ə/, as opposed to /ɪndɪˈɹɛkt/ with /ɪ/). I stand by my statement that Americans would not usually say /ɪndaɪˈɹɛkt/, but perhaps it's not totally unheard of. Merriam-Webster and American Heritage do both list /ɪndaɪˈɹɛkt/, but if I ever heard an American say it, I'd probably think he had been living in Britain for a while. (Or was actually Canadian and not American after all.) —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 11:16, 31 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe I'm odd, but I prefer the US pronunciation in Cambridge (listen to the audio). Oxford has the same pronunciation on both sides “indirect”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.. DonnanZ (talk) 11:35, 31 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

How about this indirect#Pronunciation? No stated preference but order marks "frequency of use". I don't know why ʌ in Oxford (=a?, different?), as the brevis and macron of American Heritage (I guess is the schwa and the dyphthong), but I reflected it as well. Sobreira (talk) 07:53, 7 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

There's no difference between /ʌɪ/ and /aɪ/; they're just two different ways to transcribe the same sound. The convention at Wiktionary is to use the latter, while the convention in Oxford dictionaries is to use the former. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 08:08, 7 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

IME, /ɪndaɪˈɹɛkt/ is common among Americans in academic settings (like processes ending in /iz/, although that one's spurious). —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 08:19, 7 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

for cryin' out loud

What's the feeling about this kind of thing? On Google Books I found "fer cryin' out loud", "fer crying out loud", "for crying oot loud", and "for cryin' oot lood" (the last two presumably representing Scottish accents). Having entries for every permutation of a longish proverb with dialect-variable words could get very silly. Equinox ◑ 06:10, 29 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I'd favor having a lot of them as alternative forms in the entry for the mainstream-spelling version, but not with separate entries for each form. This would let the search engine do its work. The alternative forms could also be concealed "under" a show-hide bar. DCDuring TALK 08:41, 29 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that it would get very silly if every possible combination of variant spellings within a multi-word expression were listed. I don't think it should be attempted. If someone encounters "for crying oot lood" they can look up "oot" and "lood" and then put two and two together. 109.145.177.121 02:27, 2 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I think this is a case where we can get away with a hard redirect to for crying out loud. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 09:43, 2 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, OK, I didn't think Wiktionary allowed those. The couple of times I have tried to create a redirect I think it has been converted to a full entry, even if the definition ultimately pointed the reader to the original redirect target. 86.171.174.114 19:35, 4 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

We don't use hard redirects a lot, but in cases where it's unlikely that the page would ever be used for another language (as is the case here), we do use them sometimes. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 19:49, 4 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Maroon (case issue)

A definition on the page maroon makes use of the word with a majuscule (Maroon). Is this usage incorrect, or should the page Maroon be created?--Anareth (talk) 17:23, 29 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Category:English terms derived from Dickensian works

Hey all. I just made Category:English terms derived from Dickensian works and added a bunch. Not sure how best to name the cat (or cat the cat, as catting has got way to complex in the last decade). Also, is there a similar Shakespearian cat? --J19idf (talk) 18:48, 29 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I see Category:en:A Christmas Carol. I don't like that cat's name, personally. But it should have some connection to the aforemensht --J19idf (talk) 18:50, 29 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The name is pretty bad. Why not the simpler "derived from works of Dickens"? —CodeCa t 20:02, 29 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

clam

Clam means (among other things) female genitalia. This meaning is not included in the Clam article.

We have bearded clam. The New Partridge Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English also has hairy clam. I'm not sure about "clam" alone. Equinox ◑ 21:26, 29 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I can find some uses:

1999, Richard Price, The Wanderers →ISBN:
"[And] in fifteen minutes I was back in my place, an' in twenty, I'd say twentyseven minutes, I was gobblin' her clam like it was the last supper."

- -sche (discuss) 21:57, 29 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

accommodate (on an internet dating site)

What does the word accommodate mean on an internet dating site. Here is an example. "OK I'm married for starters so if you don't approve read no further, so discretion is a must so can't meet evenings or weekends, if you can accommodate even better, I don't really 'do it' in cars, I do like my comforts."

It means to offer accommodation, i.e. to provide a place for meetings. The writer would prefer to go to the other person's place. Equinox ◑ 08:16, 30 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I would say it's sense 8: "To adapt one's self; to be conformable or adapted; become adjusted."--Prosfilaes (talk) 20:56, 30 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

A Google search finds usage like "able to accommodate at a normal time not 2am", "able to accommodate in Swansea city centre & discreet", so it seems to relate to time and place. Equinox ◑ 22:32, 30 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

This is the same ordinary sense of "accommodate" as in "if you can accommodate my needs", just with the object elided. I suppose we need a sense to cover that, or else need to remove the "rare" tag from sense 8 if it already covers that. - -sche (discuss) 22:49, 30 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

MMD

I haven't heard of this being used to refer to anything other than MikuMikuDance itself... —suzukaze (t・c) 08:36, 30 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

discrepo

Are these really two different verbs? It looks more like it's one verb with two alternative perfect stems. —CodeCa t 16:26, 30 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Does one see discrepav* more than once in Varro (Lingua Latina 8.38) and here and there in Mediaeval and newer sources? Perhaps this only warrants a small note, more than its own conjugation table, unless there is a possibility such a usage is very frequent in Mediaeval writings? L&S does not mention this variant at all, though of course L&S is only classical. I wish I knew why it had been listed here as an independent verb. Isomorphyc (talk) 18:37, 30 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Rhymes:English/ɪlk

Most of the two-syllable rhymes here are wrong, aren't they? (SOY-milk, not soy-MILK.) Equinox ◑ 16:56, 30 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

But don't they have a secondary stress that still makes them rhyme when the stress patterns match? Like: "cornsilk" and "breastmilk"? I think it's chiefly a question of definition. If our rhymes have to be first class, then they're probably wrong. Kolmiel (talk) 17:50, 30 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

contoured

Currently "contoured" is listed as being the simple past of "contour" (as well as being an adjective in its own right), but "contour" is only listed as a noun. I'm not sure what the appropriate solution is - I guess someone should add a verb meaning for contour. (The adj. meaning of "contoured" is "smoothly shaped" - would adding a verb meaning to "contour" as "to smoothly shape" then render that separate adjective definition redundant?

I don't know a verb contour, though of course it could well exist. I would take contoured to be taken directly from the noun, like bearded. This is an original function of this affix and goes right back: Latin does the same thing with the equivalent, barbatus, and it's common in English in parasynthetic compounds like long-tailed, white-eared, and red-haired, where there's no question of going through a verb. --Hiztegilari (talk) 11:25, 31 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

There's definitely a verb contour in reference to makeup ("In Asia they don't contour their cheeks", "I could tell that he contoured his cheeks and wore mascara too", "Although most women think that contouring the nose is strictly to make it look smaller or narrower or longer, ..."), and I found several other uses on b.g.c where the verb seems to mean something like "trace the contour of, follow the contour of". Unfortunately I'm not sure how exactly to define the makeup sense, so I don't feel able to add it myself. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 12:16, 31 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I think it would be more like "apply makeup to (part of the face) to improve its contour", e.g. to make a wide nose look slimmer. Equinox ◑ 15:11, 1 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

For the makeup sense, yes; but it's also used as a verb in non-makeup senses, and there it seems to mean "trace the contour of, follow the contour of". In the makeup sense, I think (but I'm not positive) I've heard "to contour" used in contrast to "to highlight", where "to contour" means "to apply darker makeup to make something less prominent" while "to highlight" means "to apply lighter makeup to make something more prominent". For example, I saw a video with two drag queens where one recommended to the other one that she should "contour your Adam's apple", where the idea is not to improve the contour of the Adam's apple but to make it less prominent. Though you could say the idea is to improve the overall contour of the throat. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 15:27, 1 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

เจ๊ก, Pākē, Intsik, amoi,

Thai: เจ๊ก (n): Chinese, from the Min Nan 叔 (zêg4, “father's younger brother”)

Hawaiian: Pākē (n, v-s): Chinese, from the Cantonese 伯爺 (baak3 je1, “(other's) father; term of address for a man”)

Tagalog: intsik (n): Chinese, supposedly from the Hokkien 引叔 (ín chek your uncle) I am not sure if this etymology is entirely correct

Indonesian: amoi (n): Chinese girl, said to be from either the Hakka or Hokkien 阿妹 (younger sister)

I'm sure that there are more words like this in other languages, but these are all that I have found. Does anyone have any insight as to why the words for Chinese in quite a few languages arose from Chinese words referring to familial relations? DerekWinters (talk) 18:33, 31 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

As I understand it, w:Filial piety is a core value of w:Confucianism, and society is seen as an extension of the family, so referring to someone from a Confucian background as an elder relative would be a good way to show respect. I'm not sure how that applies to calling someone a younger sister. Perhaps it has to do with the well-known linguistic relationship between respect/distance and informality/closeness: referring to someone as younger might be a way of expressing affection for them. Anyway, this is just abstract theoretical musing. To know for sure, you'd have to talk to someone familiar with the culture. Chuck Entz (talk) 02:54, 1 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]