Wiktionary:Tea room/2021/July

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Greek

Hello ! Is there anybody who speaks currently modern Greek ? My name is Anna and I want to write on a card "Happy Birthday" to a woman named Eleni. I found in Google translate : "Χρόνια πολλά, Ελένη από την Άννα". Would you say this in such a case. If not, which were the simple way to speak ?

Thanks in advance.

--Kyriannoula (talk) 17:49, 1 July 2021 (UTC)

You can’t go wrong with Χρόνια πολλά (Chrónia pollá), literally “Many years”, and somewhat simpler than Χαρούμενα γενέθλια (Charoúmena genéthlia), literally “Happy birthday”. A weird colloquial idiom is the wish Να τα εκατοστήσεις (Na ta ekatostísis). (The Greek Wiktionary spells it Να τα εκατοστίσεις, which I think is etymologically more correct but far less common.) Literally, this means “may you centimetre them”, a wish for them to reach 100 years (not quite usable as a jolly wish for an almost centenarian). The verb uses the familiar second person form, so this is less suitable for say a business acquaintance. You can see this for example in the sidebar here, or on these digital Happy Birthday cards: card 1, card 2, on the last card supplementing Χρόνια πολλά. I'd put από την Άννα ("from Anna”) on a separate line.  --Lambiam 19:52, 1 July 2021 (UTC)

Efkaristo, Lambiam ! Kyriannoula (talk) 07:43, 3 July 2021 (UTC)

object - missing sense?

Are we missing the sense of "object" as in "money is no object"? ---> Tooironic (talk) 12:16, 2 July 2021 (UTC)

We are missing an entry no object, whose meaning is not entirely transparent – in fact, rather murky. Garner writes: This phrase, literally speaking, should mean “not a goal; not something considered worth achieving.” In fact, though, writers use it to mean “no obstacle” or “no objection”.^[1] He then cites examples in which “[t]he nonsense of the phrase is apparent”. When used in another collocation than the stock phrase “money is no object”, the senses assigned to the now generalized predicate are all over the place. Looking at the earliest uses I could find, in which the combination is often <something> is no object to <someone>, the sense seems to be “no concern”, “not something of sufficient importance that it is worth paying attention to”.  --Lambiam 21:55, 2 July 2021 (UTC)

I can find citations where people speak of money or time as an object = ~goal, and it seems intuitive to me how "if money were no object, I'd (do X costly thing)" type usage derived from that, still meaning "if having money were not a goal", before the sense of the overall utterance led to an understanding somewhat more like, as Garner/you note, "if money were no objection / obstacle". However... when I find citations that contrast money or time being no object with it being an object, I realize how hard it is to rule out the "~goal" interpretation and be sure of the "objection / obstacle" interpretation. - -sche (discuss) 13:47, 4 July 2021 (UTC)

Specifically, I don't know that I've seen a citation (in my admittedly limited searches today) in which "if money were no object" actually couldn't be interpreted as using the "if making / having money weren't a goal" sense, so it might be something to address in a usage note more than in an entry for no object...? But other dictionaries do have entries: Merriam-Webster has no object as "used to say that something is not important or worth worrying about" (arguably consistent with an interpretation as ~goal), MacMillan as "used for saying that something, especially money, is not a problem or difficulty", Collins as "not a hindrance or obstacle", and Lexico as "Not influencing or restricting choices or decisions", and Cambridge has be no object as "it does not need to be considered as a problem, because you have a lot of it". - -sche (discuss) 14:24, 4 July 2021 (UTC)

āṣana

@Victar, Mahagaja, GabeMoore Which form is correct, āṣana or āṣaṇa? Adams (2013) cites the latter in the entry for Tocharian B aṣām. --Frigoris (talk) 16:17, 2 July 2021 (UTC)

You're correct, this should be at āṣaṇa. --{{victar|talk}} 21:39, 2 July 2021 (UTC)

are too much better than

If I want to say "the officials feel that A and B are too much better than X and Y to be allowed to compete against them" (in the same competition / category as them), is "...are too much better than..." a grammatical way of saying that, or how should it be said? - -sche (discuss) 17:02, 2 July 2021 (UTC)

I can’t find anything ungrammatical with this phrasing. Here are some uses in the wild of too much better than: [2], [3], [[4]].  --Lambiam 11:57, 3 July 2021 (UTC)

An alternative: "the officials feel that A and B are so much better than X and Y that they should not be allowed to compete against them"? PUC – 12:02, 3 July 2021 (UTC)

आजिवीके, ājivīke

Hello @GabeMoore, I think the Sanskrit entry आजिवीके (ājivīke) may have been created in error. The (Sanskrit) lemma should have been आजीविक (ājīvika) according to the MW dictionary, referring to the Ajivika. The Tocharian B term is a borrowing likely from Prakrit or Sanskritized Buddhist text. The earliest form of the term "Ajivika" appears to be in Ashokan Prakrit, as attested in the stone inscriptions (described in the Wikipedia page).

To make things more confusing, the definition given in Adams's dictionary ("Jain monk") appears to be wrong. In the Buddhist literature (where the Tocharian B term obviously came from) the Ajivikas and the Jains were clearly distinct schools. --Frigoris (talk) 11:17, 3 July 2021 (UTC)

Also the lemma form in Adams's Tocharian B dictionary appears to be wrong, too: The inflected forms on page 43 clearly shows ājīvike but for some reason the headword was given as ājivīke. --Frigoris (talk) 11:20, 3 July 2021 (UTC)

Script + writing system

I hit a problem when I wanted a quick reference for the term 'script' when documenting a template. Is the following language, taken from Wikipedia, the sort of language that Wiktionary will document:

"Other scripts support many different writing systems; for example, the Latin script supports English, French, German, Italian, Vietnamese, Latin itself, and several other languages."

The usages of the term 'writing system' is clearly incompatible with the Wiktionary definition of 'writing system', and I'm struggling to persuade myself that the usage of the term 'script' is compatible with the definition "a system of writing adapted to a particular language or set of languages". In particular, I can't persuade myself that Pinyin and Wade-Giles are the same system of writing Mandarin Chinese, but I have no doubt that they use the same script.

What should I do? Request clarifications or verifications of the current meanings, or add new meanings and for clarity hasten the provision of quotes for the currently alleged meanings from linguistics? --RichardW57 (talk) 13:31, 3 July 2021 (UTC)

Note that the WP article is titled "Script (Unicode)". It is not about the real world, it is about the conventions of Unicode, a non-scholarly enterprise for the purposes of satisfying immediate computing requirements in various environments. It is bound to include any particular insanity perpetrated by a national character set, to assure "round-trip integrity" - if you go from character P in language X to Unicode and back you always get the same answer. (Examples are the way that all CJK character sets include so-(mis)called "full-width" versions of the Latin alphabet and Arabic numerals, which are really a typesetting kludge, or that the Korean codes include a number of precisely identical hangul characters intended to differentiate syllables derived from different Chinese characters.) So you must ignore anything the WP article says. Imaginatorium (talk) 07:04, 14 July 2021 (UTC)

boss rush

In my experience, "boss rush" doesn't always refer to "an extra stage". In a case where—right near the end of a game—the bosses fought up until that point are then all fought again (but this time, one after the other), that situation is also often referred to as a "boss rush".

Sometimes something like that happens right before the final boss.

If that sense is attestable, then it probably ought to be included. Tharthan (talk) 22:57, 3 July 2021 (UTC)

Yeah, I don't know why this is qualified as "an extra stage", I think it should just "an instance" or "a situation" or something to that effect (or "a situation (often an extra stage)" if that's true), even if narrative or gameplay reasons mean it may often be a separate stage. In the first of these citations, it is an extra stage unlocked after completing other stages, but in the second it's "a preamble to the final battle", in line with what you say. - -sche (discuss) 13:22, 4 July 2021 (UTC)

Feel free to fix. I rarely play this type of game. The one I remembered was Tumblepop (1991), where the boss rush is indeed an extra level at the end. Equinox ◑ 13:50, 6 July 2021 (UTC)

Tweaked. - -sche (discuss) 00:04, 13 July 2021 (UTC)

ri- + vowel in Italian verbs

(Notifying GianWiki, Metaknowledge, SemperBlotto, Ultimateria, Jberkel, Imetsia, Sartma): Verbs like riavere, riabilitare, riaccennare, riacchiappare, riaccogliere, riaccreditare, riadoperare, riadunare, riaffiggere, riaggravare, riammettere, riamare, rianimare, riannaspare, riannodare, riappaltare, riapparecchiare, riardere, riarmare, riarrangiare, riasfaltare, riassegnare, riassorbire, riassumere, riattaccare, riavvolgere, etc.: Do these verbs consistently have a hiatus (i.e. a syllable break) between ri- and the following -a-? Dictionario Italiano seems to agree, e.g. for riaccogliere, but User:GianWiki specifically created the pronunciation for riaccennare as /rjat.t͡ʃenˈna.re/, with no hiatus. Which is correct? Maybe the pronunciation with the hiatus is the "modern" pronunciation, and the one without it is the "traditional" pronunciation? However, DiPI has riammettere, riannettere, riannuvola, riarso, riassetto, riavere, riavviare with only one pronunciation, with the hiatus. Normally DiPI indicates "traditional" pronunciations if they exist. Benwing2 (talk) 04:19, 4 July 2021 (UTC)

I must have been using a kind of pronunciation found in less-careful speech. — GianWiki (talk) 08:19, 4 July 2021 (UTC)

@Benwing2: I think ri + verb beginning with a vowel always has a hiatus. But I also doubt that any Italian without linguistic training (and possibly those with linguistic training either) would ever hear (or be able to hear) a difference between /ia/ and /ja/ in that phonetic environment (unstressed word boundary) in normal speed speech. Sartma (talk) 12:42, 4 July 2021 (UTC)

monophthong

Is this broad pronunciation transcription correct? Aren't /ɑ/ and /ɔ/ the same sound in US English? In general, /ɑ/ is the "a" in father and and /ɔ/ is the vowel in pot, but these are the same sound at least in US accents with the cot-caught merger, and the spelling suggests that the vowel should be the same even in those accents that don't have the merger. Interestingly enough, this has the same American transcription except for vowel length. If I hadn't seen any transcriptions, I would have transcribed the US pronunciation as /ˈmɑːnəfθɑːŋ/ (and the British one as /ˈmɒnəfθɒŋ/, precisely as it's listed on the previously linked website). Mölli-Möllerö (talk) 12:35, 4 July 2021 (UTC)

@Mölli-Möllerö The broad transcription is correct. /ɑ/ and /ɔ/ are not the same in US accents without the cot-caught merger (like mine), and the vowel in -ong is indeed /ɔ/ not /ɑ/. Where you are mistaken is in thinking that /ɔ/ is the vowel in pot; that is rather /ɑ/, same as in father. /ɔ/ is the vowel of caught, and also occurs when spelled o before the sounds /s/, /f/, /θ/, /ɡ/, and /ŋ/, as in loss, off, moth, dog and long. Benwing2 (talk) 13:09, 4 July 2021 (UTC)

BTW for more information see lot-cloth split. Benwing2 (talk) 13:10, 4 July 2021 (UTC)

OK, thanks for the information. I had never heard of this lot-cloth-split before. That's rather confusing now, as in British English the vowel in loss, off, moth, dog and long is the same as in cot and pot, and (if I remember correctly) English textbooks for Finnish schoolchildren use /ɔ/ as the transcription for the cot vowel and /ɔː/ for the caught vowel (British pronunciation is taught here in schoolbooks while some teachers do use an American accent). Mölli-Möllerö (talk) 13:35, 4 July 2021 (UTC)

By the way, do you know if there are American accents that don't have the lot-cloth split and do have the cot-caught merger? Since I've never learnt which words use /ɑ/ and which use /ɔ/ as such things were never taught to me and there was nothing even remotely incentivizing me to listen to that difference, that would be the only kind of American accent I could try to learn to speak with with a reasonable effort. Mölli-Möllerö (talk) 13:43, 4 July 2021 (UTC)

I think Midwestern American English uses /ɑ/ in all cases. Certainly in Western Canada, that is the case (I was not even aware of the lot-cloth split till now) and we have pretty well the same accent as the American Midwest (which is a fairly neutral/non-distinctive accent). Andrew Sheedy (talk) 03:27, 24 July 2021 (UTC)

subimperforate

This came up in a Wikipedia sweep of possible typos. A Google Books search shows use in descriptions of mollusks (e.g., 1887, Manual of Conchology, Structural and Systemic, p. 61: "Subimperforate, rather solid, white, minutely spirally striated; whorls 9, well rounded, with very fine close lamellæ, a little crispate at the suture"), but all of the uses are like that. The actual meaning does not appear to be provided anywhere. bd2412 T 02:11, 5 July 2021 (UTC)

Knowing how terminology works in the life sciences, I would interpret subimperforate as meaning partially or almost imperforate. Chuck Entz (talk) 03:05, 5 July 2021 (UTC)

Thanks. The word can be cited, but I am actually on the fence about whether it is worth including, since our definition will be guesswork (even if educated guesswork). bd2412 T 06:14, 5 July 2021 (UTC)

There is the option of a non-gloss non-definition like we use for some extinct languages' opaque words, "a word of uncertain meaning, possibly X" ... but I think we can probably work out the meaning of this from context, perhaps even better (given the standardized jargon) than some recent slang words or neologisms not covered by other dictionaries or glossed in sources which we have to determine the meaning of from context. Some books speak of shells which are "imperforate or subimperforate", others speak of shells which are "narrowly perforate or subimperforate", so it's something between perforate and imperforate, in line with Chuck's understanding. We could also look for illustrations of the species the works describe as subimperforate, and see what they are. (Side note, a biology word like this would make a better example of sense 3 of sub- than subhuman, which I think conveys more of sense 1.) - -sche (discuss) 22:13, 5 July 2021 (UTC)

Okay, I've gone ahead and defined it as "nearly imperforate". bd2412 T 00:35, 6 July 2021 (UTC)

FWIW, Sphincterochila candidissima and Sphincterochila cariosula have illustrations of organisms with a subimperforate shell, Macrochlamys indica and Zonitidae a perforate shell, and Sagda alligans and Astele speciosa imperforate. (I can't say the distinction is clear to me, but I didn't spend overly long trying to spot it.) Sphincterochila cariosula's description makes me wonder if we're missing a sense at carious...? - -sche (discuss) 16:29, 6 July 2021 (UTC)

I don't know if it helps any, but you can increase your sample size by looking at Latin subimperforata, which is obviously where this came from. Also, we should check whether @Metaknowledge knows anything about this. Chuck Entz (talk) 05:10, 7 July 2021 (UTC)

Chuck's definition is right. I've only seen this terminology used on a microscopic scale, in which case you won't find any good pictures (well, you might, but Commons isn't replete with SEM images). That said, the malacological uses seem to intend it on a macroscopic scale, so who knows. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 05:24, 7 July 2021 (UTC)

exchanging phone numbers

“Mary smiled at me and suggested that we exchange phone numbers.”^[5] One can also exchange experiences^[6][7][8] or ideas.^[9][10][11] Currently, the entry for the verb to exchange provides two senses: (1) To trade or barter. (2) To replace with, as a substitute. The uses above are a figurative of sense 1, but in the literal sense of trade or barter, parties that exchange each give up something in place for something else. Should we recognize this figurative sense – and if so, how can we define it? Would “to share” (sense 4) do?  --Lambiam 10:04, 5 July 2021 (UTC)

I think "trade or barter" does cover it. Possibly a subsense (because there are aspects of trading that would never happen over phone numbers, such as haggling). Equinox ◑ 22:26, 6 July 2021 (UTC)

"Exchanging amorous glances" might be a more interesting example. Compare "trading blows" (as boxers do). Equinox ◑ 22:27, 6 July 2021 (UTC)

Red link that isn't

Lugnasad, in its etymology section contains an implicit link to nasad. But nasad has no Old Irish section (it's Polish only), so we end up with a link that is blue, but whose destination doesn't actually exist. I'm sure there must be a standard way of coping with this, but I don't know what it is. --ColinFine (talk) 11:24, 5 July 2021 (UTC)

In Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-gadgets, turn on orange links. :) - -sche (discuss) 22:15, 5 July 2021 (UTC)

So the answer to an unhelpful and misleading link in Wiktionary is for those users who have accounts and know about the issue to turn on a gadget that warns them???? Can't we do better? --ColinFine (talk) 15:01, 6 July 2021 (UTC)

I'd been treating the solution to misdirecting blue links as being to create the target, even though I had no attestation of the word! (Typically, the word would have been recorded for one script or writing system of the language, or would be an inflected form of another word that had an entry.) My justification was that misdirecting blue links make Wiktionary look bad, which outweighed the risk that the word might not have been used in the form linked to. Was I doing wrong? Of course, there is still the possibilty that the blue link takes one to a homograph, in which case my old solution still seems applicable. --RichardW57m (talk) 16:14, 6 July 2021 (UTC)

...I suppose we could enable it by default and let users opt-out. How do people feel about that? - -sche (discuss) 16:42, 6 July 2021 (UTC)

Much better. --21:23, 6 July 2021 (UTC) — This unsigned comment was added by RichardW57 (talk • contribs).

I 100% support such a proposal, I think that these fake blue links are very frustrating for new users (they certainly were for me). — This unsigned comment was added by Mårtensås (talk • contribs).

Support. PUC – 17:48, 12 July 2021 (UTC)

I like the idea of the orangelink default, but I think we need to have some terse explanation that appears on hovering over such a link, if possible magically directing users to a fuller explanation. while also permitting them to click through to the orange-linked term as well. This would be directed at new users and also at those with visual impairment that prevented them from benefiting from the color change. DCDuring (talk) 01:24, 13 July 2021 (UTC)

يحيى article seemingly vandalised

I while looking at the يحيى article (https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/يحيى) I saw that it didn't mention the Mandaeans who use this name as well. While looking further I found in its history that the etymology section claiming the name is a misreading of a Qur'anic spelling is seemingly vandalism as the name is used in Mandaeic (ࡉࡀࡄࡉࡀ) for example in the Ginza Rba (http://sidradhiia.blog.ir/2017/09/25/‘niania-and-Qabin-انیانی-و-قابین) which of course pre-dated the Qur'an significantly. So I don't know how I would find an actual etymology or if there even is one but if someone could help with removing what clearly seems to be misinformation like the purposeful adding of an n to ىحںى in the article talking about an undotted rasm, I'd be very thankful! Pari Sarcinator (talk) 03:16, 6 July 2021 (UTC)

(You touched on this, but I'll add as an explicit question: these two changes to the rasm change the letters somewhat and also make it display (for me) as unconnected letters rather than something the same shape as يُحَنَّى but without the dots; are those edits correct?)
Pinging @Fenakhay, Fay Freak are folks with knowledge of Arabic. - -sche (discuss) 16:41, 6 July 2021 (UTC)

@-sche: All three variants display connected for me. I am not sure about the “standard way” to encode rasm, Unicode isn’t diachronic in the first place (hence the debatable distinctions between ك and ک or or the different encodings for 4–6 in Eastern Arabic numerals though I have seen either form in both Persian and Arabic books, but in the 1990s all seemed obscurer.

Thanks for your contribution, @Pari Sarcinator. However our etymology wasn’t a troll or vandalism, but of course long proposed by philologists; see Jeffery, Arthur (1938) The Foreign Vocabulary of the Qurʾān (Gaekwad’s Oriental Series; 79), Baroda: Oriental Institute, pages 290–291 for the theories already around at that time. There it is said that the Mandaean form is after Islamic influence, after Nöldeke who calls that even secure (p. 158–159, indirect link now since MENAdoc has a new browser and the pages are right now building or something, you have to DL the whole article), however at the same time inscriptional evidence is proferred for the name-form having existed before the Qurʾān, the main one Mission archéologique en Arabie 2.1 228 Nr. 370 (elsewhere in that work there are also facsimiles). Fay Freak (talk) 21:15, 6 July 2021 (UTC)

The usage example(s) of အန္တရာယ်

I would like to know what "လက်နက်ကိရိယာများမကစားပါနှင့် အန္တရာယ်ရှိသည်။" or "ကပေါတ်လဝဟ် လ္ပဝေၚ် နွံကဵုအန္တရာယ်။" means. The current translation, "do not play with weapons equipment, have danger," does not make sense. Do these sentences mean something like "do not play with weapons. They are dangerous"? Thank you. --A.S. (talk) 13:40, 6 July 2021 (UTC)

@咽頭べさ —Suzukaze-c (talk) 18:58, 8 July 2021 (UTC)

@Alifshinobi,Yes! This အန္တရာယ် term is called (Do not play with weapons, that's dangerous), it is difficult for me to learn English vocabulary because of the variety of English vocabulary thanks.--Music writer Dr.Intobesa of Japanese idol NMB48 and BNK48. (talk) 02:35, 9 July 2021 (UTC)

Thank you. --A.S. (talk) 04:48, 10 July 2021 (UTC)

wax poetic

I think we're missing a connotation here: often, more than being verbose, "waxing poetic" about something conveys floridly / effusively speaking about and (often) praising the thing. For example, most of these cites (only the last one seems like it could mean just "verbose"). I can find a few citations where someone waxes poetic about how bad something is, so it's not always praise, but I suspect "florid" (more so than "verbose"/wordy?) and "often in praise" are elements of the definition. No? - -sche (discuss) 17:34, 6 July 2021 (UTC)

(Sorry, bit of a derailing.) The first time I encountered the word "wax" in this verbal sense was in a kids' joke book where (sorry, I forget the joke) someone's mother "waxed lyrical" about a sunset. Aren't these "wax ADJ" phrases SoPS? See also red-linked "wax eloquent" in this entry. Equinox ◑ 22:19, 6 July 2021 (UTC)

They're borderline SOP, but some of the connotations (like being verbose and positive/praising, which poetry doesn't have to be) push it towards idiomaticity. wax lyrical (which has a definition we could take inspiration from when defining wax poetic, IMO) was deleted but then undeleted by separate RfD discussions. - -sche (discuss) 23:47, 6 July 2021 (UTC)

I wonder if the wax lyrical definition is actually really accurate: merely being enthusiastic? I thought it implied some kind of... hmmm... weepy poetry, in fact, I would have thought it a synonym for waxing poetic, or poetical, or even romantic (in the literary sense). Yes I could go and try to prove or disprove this with citations but I am not that interested: I just think we may have a poor definition at one entry, and a new entry that could be its synonym, but won't be helped by being the syn of a poor entry. There's always time to come back. (We can at least be sure that we are talking about lyric poetry here [oh no, phrasebook!] and not just "lyrics" in the modern pop-song sense.) Equinox ◑ 00:19, 7 July 2021 (UTC)

I do think that each entry's current definition is inadequate on its own, and that the two should be defined similarly. - -sche (discuss) 07:25, 9 July 2021 (UTC)

false dichotomy - mutual exclusivity sense

The false dichotomy and the false dilemma pages mention a definition about the presumption of missing alternative choices, listing:

A situation in which two alternative points of view are presented as the only options, when others are available.

Although some mention that the two terms are interchangeably used, others differentiate the two terms, attributing a presumption of mutual exclusivity to false dichotomy.

A website called Effectiviology says:

A false dilemma (sometimes also referred to as a false dichotomy) is a logical fallacy (...)

A website called Ricochet says:

Those are not the same mistake. The Frodo arguments are asking us to choose between only one of two options when we can actually have both; the Sam arguments are asking us to choose one of two options when we can actually reject both. (...) So which arguments improperly cut or divide two options?  Those would be the Frodo arguments.  So a good name for the Frodo arguments is “false dichotomy fallacies.”  And which arguments give us an improper set of two options?  Those would be the Sam arguments. So a good name for the Sam arguments is “false dilemma fallacies.”

A Quora answer says:

A false dichotomy, then, refers to a situation in which the two components are neither mutually exclusive nor contradictory, meaning there is actually no dichotomy. (...) A false dilemma, then, refers to a situation in which not every alternative is objectionable, meaning there is actually no dilemma.

I'm noting that the Quora answer says that there are no differences between the two. I do not agree that there is none.

I believe that a second definition should be added. This definition should be:

A situation in which two options are presented as mutually exclusive when they are not.

Should this definition be added? LightNightLights (talk) 08:06, 7 July 2021 (UTC)

What matters here is not how people define these terms (obviously variously), but how they use them. See Use–mention distinction on Wikipedia. So the question is, do people actually use false dichotomy to refer specifically to this situation, or are potential examples merely accidental instances of the more general situation in which two options are falsely presented as constituting a dichotomy?  --Lambiam 12:19, 7 July 2021 (UTC)

I can find citations which use or present the two as synonyms: Citations:false dilemma. There may be others which make a distinction, of course. - -sche (discuss) 19:32, 7 July 2021 (UTC)

I am not convinced by these citations. Only that from 2015 is a true use; in the others you can put the terms in italics or between quotes. And in the 2015 citation, it is not clear that the terms are used as synonyms, and not in their respective SOP meanings. One sense of false is “having the appearance of, while not being” (as in false cognate, false door and false teeth). Applying this meaning, a false dilemma is something that looks like, but isn’t, a dilemma, and a false dichotomy is something that looks like, but isn’t, a dichotomy. A true dilemma implies a (true) dichotomy in one’s choice space, so one of the ways a dilemma can be false is that the implied dichotomy is false – and an apparent dilemma based on a false dichotomy will often be a false dilemma. Something presented as a dichotomy that separates a choice space C in two regions A and B can fail to be a true dichotomy in two ways: (i) there is an element x of C that is present in both A and B; (ii) there is an element x of C that is present in neither A nor B. A false dichotomy can fail simultaneously in each of these two ways, as in “Italian or vegetarian?”. This then equally applies for false dilemmas. Conversely, however, a dichotomy is often not a dilemma; counting off ten seconds one can count up (“one, two, three, ...”) or down (“nine, eight, seven, ...”), but not both. The counter has to make a choice, but it is not a between undesirable alternatives. TL;DR: in the SOP interpretation, a false dilemma is often based on a false dichotomy, but a dichotomy – false or not – need not present itself as a dilemma. Final thought: a dilemma can also be false while being based on a true dichotomy, namely when the choices are made to appear undesirable, while at least one is actually just fine.  --Lambiam 20:57, 8 July 2021 (UTC)

These variations, which are consistent with my experience of the usage of the collocation, make me believe that we should RfD false dichotomy, at least the non-botanical sense, which, if we cannot reword it promptly, should be speedied. DCDuring (talk) 19:44, 12 July 2021 (UTC)

have

According to a note at have:

"In certain dialects, expressions, and literary use, the lexical have need not use do-support, meaning the sentence Do you have an idea? can also be Have you an idea? This makes have the only lexical verb in Modern English that can function without it, aside from some nonce examples with other verbs in set phrases, as in What say you?"

Before I change it, is there some reason why this is not also true of the verb be? E.g. we say "Are you cold?" not "Do you be cold?" Mihia (talk) 10:51, 7 July 2021 (UTC)

"Be" is a copula, so it would be very strange for it to need do-support, since it functions differently than other verbs. It doesn't take an object and doesn't express an action, and in no language that I'm aware of that has an equivalent to it does it behave like other verbs, in terms of the case that follows it (always nominative), etc. So I don't think it should be mentioned as an exception to the rule, except maybe with an explicit acknowledgment of its distinct status. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 13:48, 7 July 2021 (UTC)

Although "feel" is also copular in e.g. "I feel cold", yet we say "Do you feel cold?", not "Feel you cold?". Mihia (talk) 14:26, 7 July 2021 (UTC)

Lexicality is probably not cut and dried. In the context of English, the verb 'to be' is the copula --RichardW57 (talk) 17:59, 7 July 2021 (UTC).

The runner-up is to become, which needs do-support.  --Lambiam 18:28, 8 July 2021 (UTC)

We say that a lexical verb "includes all verbs except auxiliary verbs", and Wikipedia says the same, albeit one may have been copied from the other. Although I find the word "includes" somewhat confusing here, this does seem to imply that if copular "be" is not a lexical verb then it must be an auxiliary verb. Is that right? At https://www.grammar-quizzes.com/presten-be.html#lexicalaux, uses of "be" are classified as either lexical or auxiliary, with copular use in the former category, though it is only a "random website" that came up, so I don't know how authoritative it is. Mihia (talk) 21:31, 8 July 2021 (UTC)

We have an entry for there be, classified as a verb. It needs no do-support. Consider also archaic “here be dragons”, in which to be is not auxiliary.  --Lambiam 10:47, 10 July 2021 (UTC)

• I have added the text " ... and aside from the verb 'be' where this is considered lexical". If anyone is sure that this is incorrect, i.e. there is no relevant case where 'be' could be considered "lexical", please remove it. Mihia (talk) 19:09, 10 July 2021 (UTC)

On a loosely related note we have ‘Your wife hasn’t been reading that nonsense, has she?’, under sense 10 of ‘have’ labelled as ‘U.K usage’. Is the phrase ‘has she?’ (and ‘has he/it?’) really only used in the U.K?Overlordnat1 (talk) 09:37, 12 July 2021 (UTC)

It's used in the US. Tag questions in general aren't used less in the the US than in the UK, are they? DCDuring (talk) 17:02, 12 July 2021 (UTC)

I don’t think they are so I’ve just removed the odd labellingOverlordnat1 (talk) 22:52, 14 July 2021 (UTC)

About Prostitution across Wiktionary

About this discussion https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Talk:prostituo

I'm a casual editor. Brexit Things (talk) 18:52, 8 July 2021 (UTC)

There is no evidence that the Latin verb statuō means “stand up”, at least not in the intransitive sense (as in “everyone stood up and applauded”). L&S give as its literal meaning: To cause to stand, set up, set, station, fix in an upright position.^[12] For prostituō they give: to set forth in public, expose to dishonor, prostitute, offer for sale. (I think that to prostitute is a hyponym of to offer for sale, and that the sex-related sense arose in Latin as a euphemism; compare the expression “venal woman”.) Gaffiot has as its primary meaning: “to place in front, forward, to expose to the eyes”.^[13] The Latin verb is transitive and needs a transitive definition. I don’t see a “joke” that needs correction.  --Lambiam 21:44, 8 July 2021 (UTC)

But he meant the transitive sense innit. Fay Freak (talk) 21:48, 8 July 2021 (UTC)

When I see the definition “I stand up in public”, my inclination is to interpret this as “I assume an upright position in public”, and not “I bring something into an upright position in public”. Would you interpret this the second way?  --Lambiam 23:38, 9 July 2021 (UTC)

This is something I always wanted to say: 2000 years ago they did not make distinction between standing (in any position) and standing up. Life was not as comfortable as in modern times with the Industrialisation. You were either working (standing) or not. I never studied Ancient Rome, but I read about it here and there. In any case, the joke on setting up and erecting was there. That's a joke. ... i hope. Brexit Things (talk) 00:08, 9 July 2021 (UTC)

They made just as many distinctions then as we do now – perhaps sometimes different ones, like all languages make different distinctions. Life was quite comfortable (most of the time) for the Roman authors whose works have been preserved; they let their slaves do the grunt work.  --Lambiam 23:38, 9 July 2021 (UTC)

Seems as you just want to prove I was not correct in correcting, but cannot. I must be either correct or not.

The Roman authors did not invent the language for sure. The language comes from the streets. I'll tell more, Latin language I believe is divided into vulgaris and modern, because indeed it really belongs to the people of the streets. Brexit Things (talk) 02:54, 10 July 2021 (UTC)

You are the one who is making an extraordinary claim, so the burden of proof is upon you. Is there something specific to Latin that it “really belongs to the people of the streets”? Is that not equally true (or false) for Estonian, German and Japanese? The import you appear to be giving to this claim is very close to the etymological fallacy.  --Lambiam 10:28, 10 July 2021 (UTC)

The Roman empire had living cities and trafficked roads. So it was about people in the streets, and Latin speaking. Estonian, German and Japanese did not come to be foundational to all Western languages as Latin is instead. And so I think we tend to believe Latin is actually intellectual and academic. Instead, I believe it is as simple as common life in ancient times: live or die, eat or fast, stand (work) or rest. Brexit Things (talk) 11:33, 10 July 2021 (UTC)

Lambiam is very much correct - every dictionary makes it clear prostituō is transitive. "stand up in public" sounds intransitive and is wrong. — surjection ⟨??⟩ 11:58, 10 July 2021 (UTC)

Women's rights.. and all the rest. Whatever then. Brexit Things (talk) 18:59, 10 July 2021 (UTC)

I edited the entry-joke once again. Seriously, getting real on this. Brexit Things (talk) 19:51, 10 July 2021 (UTC)

It's understandable you get it wrong because Latin and English have almost nothing in common. For example to be or not to be is translated into wholly different sounds, listen, esse aut non esse.

Thus, esse is the translation of to be. That's very different. And don't get fooled then with aut non, as aut is the translation of or. However, still they match the no- root with regard to not. So in the end, not that different.

I am much more familiar with romance languages by the way, than with English. Brexit Things (talk) 21:24, 10 July 2021 (UTC)

Your comments make no sense. prostituo has a transitive sense. You're replacing the translation, which has a transitive verb, for that sense with a verb that appears to be intransitive, not transitive, and then to justify your edits go off on some kind of nearly incomprehensible tangents about women's rights and how English and Latin have nothing in common so you can't be wrong. Wiktionary, much like other wikis, is a collaborative environment. The consensus is clearly against your edits, yet you still keep edit-warring to restore them. — surjection ⟨??⟩ 22:34, 10 July 2021 (UTC)

No, I am noting how the translation, which has some verb in it, appears completely deplorable but even laughable, arguing that ancient latins could've never ever thought of prostitution as a means to set anything up erect. Feel me?

To prostitute was instead, simply to sell one's self by standing up in the streets. Whether technically perfect or not, my translation, the meaning is what matters. I am not a linguist thus have no familiarity with transitive and intransitive verbs, sorry. You linguists are a shame though. Sorry. Brexit Things (talk) 01:36, 11 July 2021 (UTC)

Your fancies about Ancient Rome have nothing to do with how the term was actually used, like here (line 46), or here (last line).  --Lambiam 09:30, 11 July 2021 (UTC)

I don't understand what you mean if you don't explain yourself. I have no familiarity with the study of languages, not a linguist myself. Brexit Things (talk) 17:28, 11 July 2021 (UTC)

OK, let me try to explain. You appear to have a rich imagination. You imagine how life was in Ancient Rome, and you imagine how the people in Rome used Latin words and what they meant by those words. That is fine; you can use that imagination to write stories about life in Rome two thousand years ago and try to get them published. However, your imagination is not a basis upon which to build a dictionary. In order to do that, we need to consider how the people who were native speakers of Latin actually used Latin, and what the words they used meant in context. As it turns out, this does not agree with your imagination. You can keep protesting this, but you should address your protest to these Latin speakers who (at least, according to your imagination) misused their language. Over here at Wiktionary we are descriptivists; we only care about actual use.  --Lambiam 21:15, 13 July 2021 (UTC)

"I'm not a mechanic and know nothing about cars but I'm going to hang around your garage all day complaining you are doing it wrong..." Equinox ◑ 21:32, 13 July 2021 (UTC)

We could vote on this. It's clear you believe the transitivity was intended on the penis, while I believe it was intended on the person standing up (the prostitute). But I also think you're, willingly or not, in bad faith, for the obvious reason being that sexual topics are.... alive. You know, what I mean, hopefully.

It's time to break 8 years (since 2013) of this wiki-nonsense then, so let's vote. I think I should win and laugh afterall. Brexit Things (talk) 23:40, 13 July 2021 (UTC)

There is nothing to vote on. The consensus here from five different people is that you're simply wrong. I'd suggest you stop wasting your time because this is one of the stupidest hills imaginable to die on. — surjection ⟨??⟩ 21:36, 14 July 2021 (UTC)

To argue it's clear what ancient people actually meant without providing reasonable evidence, is wrong. More opinions are needed then. Let's say, we need at least 50 votes, or a 1-month long poll? Brexit Things (talk) 00:05, 15 July 2021 (UTC)

• I think you are fundamentally misunderstanding what others are telling you.

I note that the English verb prostitute is transitive, with either a stated or implied object. I am not familiar with the etymology of this word or its sense development, but I would posit that the transitivity is likely a carryover from its Latin etymon prostituo, which is also transitive, with either a stated or implied object. The edits you made, such as this one, changed the sense to an intransitive verb that takes no object -- semantically and grammatically incorrect.

As you yourself stated on your talk page,

I am not a linguist thus have no familiarity with transitive and intransitive verbs, sorry.

Since the crux of the argument is whether the word itself was used and intended transitively or intransitively, you appear to lack the grammatical expertise required to make any cogent argument here. I wonder if this explains your (to us) strange non sequiturs above? ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 00:11, 15 July 2021 (UTC)

Pronunciation of Old English "þing"

Wiktionary has non palatalized "g" in all cases of sg. and plural. of "þing".

Hogg and Fulk (A Grammar of Old English or An Introductory Grammar of Old English) have palatalized g in the singular and unpalatalized g in the plural (presumably because of back-vowels - "u" in nom/acc having been dropped in proto OE.)

e.g. from the glossary of An Introductory Grammar of Old English:

þinġ, pl. þing n. thing, sake, reason, circumstance; adv. nān þinġ not at all 5.47.

I'm sure they have good reasons for doing so. I cannot judge.

There are the alternative forms þincg ("þinċġ"), and þingc ("þinġċ" ?), and þinc, þinċ; which show that palatisation did occur. We can also confirm this by ME spellings þenge, thynch, etc. The OE variants can be found used in combination with nān (i.e. nān þincg), but also with ǣnig, sum, and the plural demonstrative þā, so it doesn't really seem to be case- or number-related. It's merely an alternative form. Not sure where they are getting the link to grammatical case from. Leasnam (talk) 20:59, 15 July 2021 (UTC)

Spellings with “cg”/“gc” do not indicate palatalization (compare docga, frocga), just a pronunciation with greater occlusion than the usual fricative/approximant pronunciations of g. Cg is found for both palatal and non-palatal g after nasals or when geminate; non-palatal g is rarely geminate, which might be why some sources only mention the use of cg for the palatal plosive/affricate.--Urszag (talk) 17:14, 22 July 2021 (UTC)

Correct, cg is not necessarily indicative of palatisation; it is used for both....However, docga and frocga are formed by suffixation: docc/docs + -ga & frocs + -ga. These can have alternative spellings with gg (*dogga, frogga). There is no þingg. Leasnam (talk) 04:51, 29 July 2021 (UTC)

exit sign

This was deleted before. Should it be restored? Not all exit signs say the word "exit" or another language's equivalent on them. There are those with pictograms. 2600:1700:E660:9D60:8CE6:DE8C:C5F6:9E80 22:48, 8 July 2021 (UTC)

The argument was not that an exit sign displays the word exit, but that the term is a sum of parts. A destination sign is not a sign displaying the word destination, but a sign indicating the destination. And a town sign indicates the town; it does not display the text town – unless it is a sign for Town, Wales. Likewise, an exit sign indicates the exit, whether by saying ausgang or by some pictogram.  --Lambiam 23:56, 9 July 2021 (UTC)

Ading

Asides from Malay (as mentioned in https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/ading), the word ading is also found in Ilocano, possibly with the same etymology as the word in Malay. It's also used in Tagalog and Ibanag as a loanword from Ilocano.
The word is used in all three Philippine languages to refer to a younger person. It mainly refers to younger siblings but is nowadays used to refer to anyone younger than the person speaking. I'm not sure if the former is the proper definition and the latter is slang or if the former is simply an older definition.
It's usually pronounced /adɪŋ/, but as /adeŋ/ in certain accents (but this pronunciation is rare as far as I know).
--user:Moondust2365

yet

While it can be argued that e.g. "I haven't finished yet" means (more or less) "I still haven't finished", or the state of "haven't finished" persists, and e.g. "He is breathing yet" (literary/poetic) means "He is still breathing", or the state of "breathing" persists, is it reasonable to consider "yet" in these negative and affirmative sentences as exactly the same sense? What do you think? Mihia (talk)

I think that technically it is one sense, but for purposes of labeling and explanation it's probably better to treat it as having subsenses.

One interesting case I thought of was "I have yet to...", where the negative polarity is only implied by the construction. Chuck Entz (talk) 21:38, 9 July 2021 (UTC)

Yes, the "I have yet to ..." case is presently covered under its own sense. On the original question, I am having some doubts whether the negative and affirmative use really can be considered the same sense. For example, take "He is not breathing yet". This could be said of a new-born baby, where breathing had not started but was expected/hoped for in the future. However, a theoretical alternative interpretation is the true negative of "He is breathing yet", something like "He is no longer breathing", which seems different and indeed could not be used in the baby situation, with the difference apparently resting in the word "yet". Though the latter interpretation would never arise in ordinary English, I wonder whether just its theoretical existence does point to a separation of senses. Mihia (talk) 17:23, 10 July 2021 (UTC)

How do questions such as "are we there yet" figure into this? If I said "we are there yet" in isolation, that would mean we have been there and at this moment still are. If I ask "are we there yet?", that would normally mean that until recently we were not there, but we might or might not be there now (if it were in response to a statement like "we were there at the time", "are we there yet" would be a rather archaic-sounding way of asking whether we have continued to be there, and still are). It feels like aspect may be involved somehow. Chuck Entz (talk) 18:06, 10 July 2021 (UTC)

Another important consideration is that ‘not yet’ is not fully equivalent to ‘not+yet’, only to ‘not+yet’ in the sense where ‘yet’ means ‘(up to)now’, which is a point I’ve just raised in the RFD chat for not yet as a reason to keep it as an entryOverlordnat1 (talk) 16:22, 11 July 2021 (UTC)

Could you give an example of a case where you think "not yet" is equivalent to "not + yet" in the sense where "yet" means "(up to) now"? Are you talking about an archaic/poetic sense of "yet", that I mentioned above in the "breathing" example, or something different? Mihia (talk) 17:52, 12 July 2021 (UTC)

It seems to me, in ordinary English, that interrogative "yet" of e.g. "Are we there yet?" may be just the same sense as negative "yet" of e.g. "We are not there yet". For example, in ordinary English, if I ask "Are we there yet?" then the answer may be "No, we are not there yet", apparently echoing the exact same sense of "yet", but not, as you mention, "Yes, we are there yet". Analogously to the negative, there is an alternative theoretical poetic/archaic interpretation of the interrogative in which "Are we there yet?" could mean "Are we still there?", to which the affirmative answer could be "Yes, we are there yet". Interestingly, it has also occurred to me that a normal-English "not yet", let's say in "I have not yet finished", could be equivalent to an archaic/poetic-English "yet not", e.g. "I have yet not finished". Mihia (talk) 17:36, 12 July 2021 (UTC)

Yes, I think the sense of ‘yet’ is the same in ‘Are we there yet?’ as in ‘We’re not there yet’, which has basically the same meaning as ‘We’re not there now’ (something you’d be unlikely to say) and I also go along with your notion that ‘We’re not there yet’, or ‘We’re not yet there’, is the same as the archaic/poetic ‘We’re yet not there’ (which is itself not the same as ‘Yet we’re not there’, equivalent to ‘However, we’re not there’). To explain this without an entry for not yetthough, we’d need to very carefully word a usage note explaining how to negate the word ‘yet’ in the yet entry, it might be easier and clearer to keep not yet and add some appropriate wording there (but probably get rid of sense 2 of not yet, which seems to suggest that it can mean ‘not completely’ as well as ‘not currently’)Overlordnat1 (talk) 23:18, 14 July 2021 (UTC)

In my opinion we can hardly avoid explaining negative uses of yet at yet, especially since these can take various forms not limited to the literal phrase "not yet", and additionally because the exact same usage apparently occurs in interrogatives, as has been discussed. Therefore, however we decide to set out the article yet, it seems to me that not yet will be redundant, except for the translations, as you have pointed out. Mihia (talk) 20:10, 15 July 2021 (UTC)

• On the original point, I have split the negative/interrogative and affirmative senses into subsenses under the main sense, as suggested. Mihia (talk) 17:32, 18 July 2021 (UTC)

shvarts, extreme wandermeaning

Eric Fuß from the University of Leipzig, place of ominous leftist gatherings, explained to the Abendzeitung, that schwarz- in the Schwarzfahren (“fare-dodging”) ‘goes back to Yiddish שוואַרץ (shvarts, “poverty”)’. Is this true, can one expand the entry? I can’t really find it meaning “poor”, but we also miss transferred senses such as in שוואַרץ יאָר (shvarts yor); if it had that meaning then שוואַרצער (shvartser) also meant anyone poor and not only “jungle bunny”, which could indicate an other etymology of this sense than a calque from English which seems not too necessary an assumption in the first place (German Schwarzer is hardly a calque of English either, only sometimes, but this is if you sit in Germany and not the US).

I am afraid though this story is more whiggish than true, obviously fitting the narrative of liberal blogging circles who parrot these “expert opinions”. It is always great to be an etymologist if you haven’t got to provide loci! In Pfeifer, “schwarz” in Digitales Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache, we read that it is really only from schwärzen (“to work by night”), hence in Classical German the word for a smuggler usually was Schwärzer, as you see in many statute texts, if not Schleichhändler (Schmuggler only then gained ground).

There in Pfeifer there is also of interest to us that the terms in English, French, Russian, Italian etc., black, noir, чёрный (čórnyj), nero etc., are semantic loans from German, which he substantiates by attestation dates, all just from the 1920s or later. So hence the circuitous translations for terms like undeclared work, better known in Ireland as nixer, which is in German just Schwarzarbeit while in German Russian шварцо́вка (švarcóvka), verb шварцева́ть (švarcevátʹ), with the rest apparently recent inventions after the perestroika, rather passively understood in Germany.

We lack except for English also appropriate glosses in French, Russian, Italian etc., which all have terms equivalent to black market—in so far as the terms including such meaning aren’t calqued separately from German.

Is this “black” sememe mostly a meme started hundred years ago in Germany? E.g. Turkish kara and Japanese 闇 weren’t understood if used that way? After all even deep state started only a quarter of a century ago from Turkish, you wouldn’t believe if you knew not, and there are lots of covert calques from German, like free state, police state, state of exception, power politics, etc., but one somewhat removed this fact from consciousness as a consequence of World War I. In general these terms appear in the field of legal distinction, as of course with this deep-seated casuistic thinking English speakers lose any competition in legal dogmatics.

Surely, below a certain degree of development of institutions in society, words for black just couldn’t have that meaning, so it is not senseless to ask when these meanings started in Japanese or Turkish, and hence where it started or how it diffused. Have half of the languages of the world inadvertently been Germanized or what’s the crack? Fay Freak (talk) 00:00, 10 July 2021 (UTC)

I find it difficult to discard the notion that the component schwarz in the sense “illegal”, dodging payment due, also seen in Schwarzarbeit (work of which the income is not reported to the tax agency) and Schwarzmarkt (black market), is the figurative sense of secrecy, avoiding the daylight, not directly related to a notion of poverty. Apart from the difficulty of attesting the sense “poverty” (a noun) for שוואַרץ (an adjective), I’d like to see stronger evidence for schwarzfahren to be a partial calque or whatever from Yiddish than the mere unsourced assertion »nach weit verbreiteter Auffassung«.  --Lambiam 09:42, 10 July 2021 (UTC)

Yes, hence it was borrowed easily. The productivity of such expressions was not given everywhere from the beginning, and is still unequally distributed. Say, I dare doubt mid-18th-century Kazakh қара (qara) had this sense. Fay Freak (talk) 11:30, 10 July 2021 (UTC)

The French expression cabinet noir is from the 18th century. Inasmuch as this clandestine operation was reported on at the time in other languages, the term was almost certainly calqued (as in чёрный кабинет). This may have contributed to the popularization of the secretive sense symbolized by darkness.  --Lambiam 09:18, 11 July 2021 (UTC)

Senses of gloominess always existed, some such transferred sense generally exists for any language having a colour term “black”. But the question is the productivity of formations pointing to illegality. cabinet noir contrasts very much to these senses as an official or officially sanctioned institution. Fay Freak (talk) 02:24, 14 July 2021 (UTC)

@FqyFreak: I'd e interested to learn more about its development, but for the time being I suggest taking a look at evade and its translations, in particular those cognate with schivata (“to dodge”) from PGem *skiuhī. schwarz /ʃʋaɐ̯ts/ is typical, you know. I hope this is not too far off base, since smuggling virtually implies international transfer. However unlikely this may be absent evidence any such etymon would still require reanalysis as schwarz, so the question remains about the metaphor.

The oldest equivalent semantheme I can think of would be obscurus, camera obscura etc. As things go, it only came to mind after I saw Swedish skur (“barn”) as cognate to the above. Compare likewise bergen, burg, bargain, and incidently so verscheuern. ApisAzuli (talk) 16:54, 10 August 2021 (UTC) And as well bescheuert for it may loosely translate benighted. ApisAzuli (talk) 06:39, 12 August 2021 (UTC)

town

(humorous, ironic) A major city, especially one where the speaker is located.

• 2014, Megan R. Wilson, quoting Scott Talbott, “15 places in DC where lobbyists talk turkey”, in The Hill‎^[14]:

  There's always a business theme, even underlying happy hours. You're never off the clock in this town.

Does anyone see this extended sense as "humorous, ironic"? Mihia (talk) 17:50, 10 July 2021 (UTC)

Not in the slightest. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 04:50, 11 July 2021 (UTC)

Thanks, I don't either; I think I'll delete the label. Mihia (talk) 17:11, 11 July 2021 (UTC)

I agree with the deletion, though I’d say it could be labelled ‘colloquial’. What about the definition of ‘town’ as ‘city centre’? I don’t think that’s quite covered by our current definitions.Overlordnat1 (talk) 08:47, 12 July 2021 (UTC)

Isn't that covered by meaning 2, "Any more urbanized center than the place of reference", @Overlordnat1:? --ColinFine (talk) 19:18, 12 July 2021 (UTC)

I suppose it’s a subsense of meaning 2 but it tends to be used to mean going from a nearby town or village, or the outskirts/suburbs of a city into the city centre, rather than from a town or village to a suburb of the city (or for that matter going from a quiet suburb to a busier one). In fact I’m not sure sense 2 exists, apart from when the ‘more urbanized center’ is a city centre/center.Overlordnat1 (talk) 20:00, 12 July 2021 (UTC)

not look a day over

Worth an entry? PUC – 11:46, 12 July 2021 (UTC)

I’m tempted to say yes, even if only to list it as an antonym of if one is a day but I’m not sure it would pass the SOP testOverlordnat1 (talk) 12:19, 12 July 2021 (UTC)

Does not require "look". "She can't be a day over forty!" etc. Equinox ◑ 21:33, 13 July 2021 (UTC)

Also does not require "over", since "more than", "beyond", and "above" can also be used. Mihia (talk) 20:07, 15 July 2021 (UTC)

Ancient Greek number words

Why does the edit link of the info box on https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%CF%80%CE%B5%CE%BD%CF%84%CE%B5%CE%BA%CE%B1%CE%AF%CE%B4%CE%B5%CE%BA%CE%B1

go to

https://en.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?title=Module%3Anumber_list%2Fdata%2Fgrc&action=edit

whereas the heading of the info box goes to the completely different page https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix:Ancient_Greek_numerals ? --Espoo (talk) 14:47, 12 July 2021 (UTC)

Appendix:Ancient Greek numerals provides info in a readable format about the Ancient Greek numerals. If you think there is an error in the content of the info box and want to correct it, you have to make a change in Module:number list/data/grc, which is why the edit link sends you there.  --Lambiam 23:25, 12 July 2021 (UTC)

sex (verb) - translations

At sex/translations#Verb, for the meaning "informal: to have sex with", there is a bit of a mess, with some of the translations being transitive in sense including the "with", while others are intransitive (translating "to have sex"). In the definition itself, the single actual quotation supports only an intransitive meaning, so I deleted the "with", but the translations are going to need tidying up, preferably before they are further added to. --Dani di Neudo (talk) 19:16, 12 July 2021 (UTC)

I reply to your section because I feel it is related to mine above (which by the way, stays unanswered by the other partecipants..). I am past 40, and "to have sex" always implied "with somebody else" (masturbation never meant sex, because indeed it is not, it is masturbation). The point is life is changing with virtual reality tools. Read this (Ready or Not, Inexpensive VR Sex Is Going Mainstream Realistic VR sex has reached a price point almost anyone can afford) for example, or this (VR headsets let people 'have sex with their exes' by reliving past experiences EXCLUSIVE: Sex experts told Daily Star Online that virtual reality (VR) will allow people to "re-feel" their past sexual experiences. This would allow people to replicate sex with ex-partners), or just google what I just did, "virtual reality sex headset".

They really mean sex with.

I don't want to take sides eventually, I dislike factions. However, the point is I'm not sure it's correct to include it on the dictionary, just because a new technological toy is being released, is it?

I hope this is what you mean, otherwise I don't see why remove the "with". You probably mean something else.. something related to the mess on wiktionary with regard to sexual topics. Brexit Things (talk) 00:00, 13 July 2021 (UTC)

@Dani: I've added a transitive sense with citations, so the translations table could just be split. - -sche (discuss) 01:25, 13 July 2021 (UTC)

-sche: I wait for an answer above. Brexit Things (talk) 03:52, 13 July 2021 (UTC)

pay no mind

Wiktionary doesn't seem to have anything about the phrase "pay no mind to something/someone", I'm not sure where it should go. Troll Control (talk) 19:58, 12 July 2021 (UTC)

Perhaps we could do with a new definition of ‘attention or consideration’?Overlordnat1 (talk) 20:12, 12 July 2021 (UTC)

At mind, you mean? Yes, I should think so, since this meaning also exists in e.g. "give no mind (to something)", and also I think in a positive sense such as "give mind to", and perhaps in other combinations that I cannot bring to mind right now. Mihia (talk) 17:14, 13 July 2021 (UTC)

Yes, that’s precisely what I meant and I agree entirely with your reasoning above. Overlordnat1 (talk) 18:35, 13 July 2021 (UTC)

I’ve just added this sense to the article.Overlordnat1 (talk) 09:31, 28 July 2021 (UTC)

hostess with the mostess, hostess with the mostest, hostess with the moistest(???)

Is this a thing? PUC – 22:45, 12 July 2021 (UTC)

:It is not a governmental assembly, no. Tharthan (talk) 16:28, 13 July 2021 (UTC)

hostess with the mostest seems to be both citable and probably idiomatic; hostess with the mostess seems harder to cite (in the singular); hostess with the moistest seems like it might also be attested with one or more (idiomatic? e.g. sexual) meanings playing on the other, earlier phrase, in addition to some examples where it seems to be dialect or is an explained pun ("because her hands are always wet"). - -sche (discuss) 19:39, 13 July 2021 (UTC)

I imagine host with the most came first. We don't have that either. Equinox ◑ 21:34, 13 July 2021 (UTC)

My understanding (based on limited evidence) is that hostess is not necessarily merely the feminine equivalent of host. The social role of famous hostesses renowned for throwing glamorous and lavish high-society parties was quite different. As far as I can tell, the phrase, in the form the hostess with the mostes’ (with an apocopic apostrophe) , made its first appearance in the Irving Berlin song “The Hostess With the Mostes’ on the Ball” from the 1950 Broadway musical Call Me Madam. The epithet applies in the song to the fictional character Sally Adams, based on political hostess Perle Mesta. The epithet returns in 1957 as the title of the episode “The Hostess With the Mostes’ ” of the TV drama series Playhouse 90, in which the title character portrays Perle Mesta. Another famous hostess, Elsa Maxwell, is mentioned by name in the lyrics of the Irving Berlin song, and one can find the epithet (usually spelled “the hostess with the mostest”) applied to her,^[15] with some claiming she is more deservant than Mesta.^[16] Another recipient of the title is Sally Stanford.^[17]  --Lambiam 13:19, 16 July 2021 (UTC)

skeptic

Current definitions:

1. Someone who habitually doubts beliefs and claims presented as accepted by others, requiring strong evidence before accepting any belief or claim.
2. Someone who disagrees with a political decision but wants to be distinguished from conspiracy theorists. (We are the lockdown sceptics.)
3. Someone undecided as to what is true.
4. A type of agnostic; someone skeptical towards religion.

2 was added only a week ago in diff. I think the definitions could be improved, and some of them could be combined. For example, a person can be a sceptic vis-a-vis one particular thing, not only "Someone who habitually doubts [...] any belief or claim". And a person can be a sceptic of a particular course of action, not just a particular factual claim. I would suggest perhaps revising the senses along the lines of:

1. A person who doubts beliefs, claims, plans, etc that are accepted by others, especially one who habitually does so.
2. A person who is sceptical of religion.

Does this miss anything important? (Do we want to add a {{lb|en|historical}} sense for a member of the ancient Greek sect / school?) - -sche (discuss) 23:44, 12 July 2021 (UTC)

I reworded sense 1 and folded sense 3 into it. I think sense 2 could still use improvement. - -sche (discuss) 19:22, 13 July 2021 (UTC)

Is #2, "Someone who disagrees with a political decision but wants to be distinguished from conspiracy theorists", definitely a distinct sense with such specificity? I would understand the phrase "lockdown sceptic", given as the example, to mean someone sceptical of the benefit/necessity/desirability of lockdowns, i.e. just a.n.other thing that a person could be sceptical about, like "acupuncture sceptic" or "Mars colonisation sceptic" or whatever. On another point, I also note that we are lacking the philosophy sense. Mihia (talk) 14:00, 15 July 2021 (UTC)

Yeah, that sense was only recently added and it strikes me as a POV restatement of sense 1. I wasn't sure enough of that to merge it on the 13th, but it should probably be merged. (For a more extreme example, compare how some people describe themselves as e.g. "Holocaust skeptics" or as "skeptical of the Holocaust": it's a euphemism, but does it change the meaning of the terms skeptic and skeptical, or are they just using those terms in the usual meaning because those terms/meanings sound better than more blunt accurate descriptors like "denialist"?) - -sche (discuss) 00:11, 17 July 2021 (UTC)

should

1. (auxiliary) Indicates that the speaker has some strong advice but has no authority to enforce it.

   What do I think? What should I do?

   You should never drink and drive.

   You should always wear a seat belt.

2. (auxiliary) Ought to; Indicates the speaker's opinion, or advice, that an action is correct, beneficial, or desirable.

   You should brush your teeth every day.

   I should exercise more often, but I’m too lazy.

Yes, "You should never drink and drive" may have a more serious or strict tone than "You should brush your teeth every day", and yes, "ought to" tends towards the less strict end of the spectrum, but does this actually amount to two different senses of "should"? What do you think? 14:18, 13 July 2021 (UTC)

Yeah, I'm not seeing a distinction between the definitions as presently worded. Perhaps sense 1 was intended to cover theuse of should to "soften" a statement, which other dictionaries do distinguish as a different sense? But then the usexes are (mostly?) mis-assigned. FWIW, MW has five senses, namely expressing 1) conditionality, 2) obligation, 3) futurity ("she should have to do most of her farm work before sunrise"), 4) probability or expectation, and 5) softening of a statement or request (for which a better usex would be e.g. "I should think you would like to apologize"). Dictionary.com has senses analogous to MW's 1, 2, and 5. - -sche (discuss) 19:29, 13 July 2021 (UTC)

Modal verb articles are a can of worms, but anyway, I've merged the two senses above as I also can't see a clearly identifiable distinction. By the way, the "I should think ..."-type usage is presently under our sense #5. Mihia (talk) 14:12, 14 July 2021 (UTC)

Hmm ... though looking again at the latest version, perhaps the "instruction" and "advice" senses could be split out into separate sub-senses. I will have to get back to this later ... Mihia (talk) 14:34, 14 July 2021 (UTC)

I've put them as sub-senses under the same main sense, which seems a reasonable compromise. Mihia (talk) 17:23, 14 July 2021 (UTC)

begone

Is begone really an archaism? I've heard this word used enough in sincere contexts on the Internet, in recent literature, and in real life to the point where its labeling as an archaism seems inaccurate. NordaVento (talk) 22:28, 13 July 2021 (UTC)

My perception is that it would most likely be a "knowing archaism" in modern contexts. Could you give any specific examples of what you would consider "sincere" uses, or links to such examples, with a goodly amount of context? Mihia (talk) 00:15, 14 July 2021 (UTC)

slosh

I’ve just added a new sense to ‘slosh’ and two quotes to support it. As well as these quotes relating to bird poo and spilt milk, I stumbled upon an instance of ‘slosh’ being used to refer to whale’s blood on GoogleBooks. Are we happy with this definition and can anybody find evidence for ‘slosh’ = ‘wine’ (spilt or not)? Overlordnat1 (talk) 12:13, 14 July 2021 (UTC)

I have added a sense covering wine. Equinox ◑ 14:36, 15 July 2021 (UTC)

Thanks!Overlordnat1 (talk) 13:46, 16 July 2021 (UTC)

When pronunciations gang agley

I think an uncommon Chinese char has been misclassified as to pronunciation, not just here, but also at zh.wikionary . What's the process when 'obviously' wrong, but a confident fix would require a better dictionary/evidence than I've got?

Somehow char 罨 has been entered - both here and ZH - under lists for pronunciation guǎi , when its entries note only pronunciation yǎn .

罨 at en

has yǎn for 罨 , and *only* yǎn (Mandarin)

罨 at zh

has yǎn for 罨 , and *only* yǎn (Mandarin)

yǎn at en

has 罨 listed as item 40 (correctly)

zh:Appendix:汉语拼音索引/y#yan

has 罨 listed under yǎn (correctly)

but

guǎi at en

has 罨 listed as item 5 (wrongly)

zh:Appendix:汉语拼音索引/g#guai

also has 罨 listed under guǎi (wrongly)

My simply deleting the wrong listings would seem abrupt and unsupported, except by the evidence of our entries for the char. So, what to do? Shenme (talk) 12:46, 14 July 2021 (UTC)

@Shenme Bad data almost certainly formerly perpetuated by the Unicode's Unihan database (https://en.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?title=%E7%BD%A8&oldid=264298). —Suzukaze-c (talk) 20:45, 15 July 2021 (UTC)

@Suzukaze-c Ah, *those* guys. :-) Currently they only claim "yǎn". And as far back as Unicode 2.0 Unihan.txt has only yan3 . Okay, I guess I'll clean it up, removing guǎi here and at zh.wiktionary.

Looking over at the original import of zh:Appendix:汉语拼音索引/g#guai was 07:26, 7 May 2004 wikt:zh:User:Lqs with a whole lot of other data, and then they disappeared, so we can't ask.

Thank you. Shenme (talk) 21:45, 15 July 2021 (UTC)

should (2)

a) I suggested that they should be refused entry.
b) I'm surprised that he should say that.

Presently these examples are both under the sense "used to form a variant of the present subjunctive" (I put them there). This seems correct for (a), since it could also be written "I suggested that they be refused entry". While (b) "seems similar", I can't actually see a direct equivalent with a non-"should" subjunctive. Or is "I'm surprised that he say that" technically or theoretically possible? Is (b) the same sense, or is it actually a different sense, and if so what sense? Mihia (talk) 17:56, 14 July 2021 (UTC)

Also, I have had several attempts at creating an example "mandative" subjunctive sentence with "should" and verbs such as "recommend", "suggest", "insist", "demand", but I cannot come up with one where "should" cannot be interpreted as "ought to". Any ideas anyone? Mihia (talk) 21:30, 14 July 2021 (UTC)

The seemingly automatically generated conjugation table of the Latin verb perpendo is incorrect

Perpendo
The active indicative perfect, pluperfect and future perfect are all wrong. So are the active subjunctive perfect and pluperfect. Perpen.... incorrectly becomes perpepe... — This comment was unsigned.

Fixed, I think. (Please check.) - -sche (discuss) 01:45, 15 July 2021 (UTC)

Yes, the overall forms are perfectly in order now, thank you for your work!

However, I'm not sure about the macrons, as some sources have perpendīsti and others just perpendisti, and in present indicative: perpendīmus, while others:::perpendimus.

We'll have to wait for someone more knowledgeable about the accent marks for this verb to come along.

To explain the rule briefly: compound verbs with pendo lose the reduplication,( which in fact is correct in pendo , e.g. pependi), such as perpendo, appendo, compendo, etc. Cruxcruxem (talk) 13:59, 15 July 2021 (UTC)

marry fuck kill

The definition is inadequate because it doesn't make it clear that you have to use all three actions, one for each person (e.g. you can't choose "marry, marry, marry" or "fuck, kill, fuck"). Can anyone help fix the wording? Equinox ◑ 14:32, 15 July 2021 (UTC)

We could possibly replace ‘Select one of the three actions that they would do with each of them.’ with ‘Uniquely assign each of the three actions that they would do to each of them’?Overlordnat1 (talk) 09:47, 17 July 2021 (UTC)

I’ve just made the relevant alteration on the marry fuck kill pageOverlordnat1 (talk) 09:01, 24 July 2021 (UTC)

overfactorization

Defined as "excessive factorization", but no sense at factorization seems to make sense. From a very quick peek at GBooks, it might be something like "taking too many factors into account" (e.g. in designing a psychological survey). Equinox ◑ 16:21, 15 July 2021 (UTC)

@Equinox: Here is what I'm seeing, with some basic grouping:

• considering or looking for excessive possible factors (determining aspects)?, "the generation of hypothetical constructs that are explaining trends in error variances rather than in the pattern of variation in the original variables", (unclear, related to statistics), (unclear, related to statistics?)
• excessive use/dependence/exhaling of factories (buildings used in production)
• finding too many factors (parts equal to a given when multiplied) of a mathematical object?
• 'an importer "arranging" with their supplier abroad for the invoice to be drafted for a higher sum than actually paid' related to imports

There certainly do seem to be many related to psychology, I honestly wonder why. Tell me what you think about the quotations. —The Editor's Apprentice (talk) 03:43, 18 July 2021 (UTC)

Stats sense appears to relate to factor analysis; one of your cites also uses factorist, which I've just created. I have tweaked the entry we are discussing too, in light of stats sense. Equinox ◑ 14:37, 18 July 2021 (UTC)

Good stuff! I've listed overfactorization and underfactorization as antonyms of each other. Looking at some of the search results on Google Books, it seems overfactorisation and underfactorisation (note the ⟨s⟩) also exist with the same sense, but the low number of sources and my general ignorance of factor analysis make me less confident. Additionally, it seems we are also missing a sense of factor as a verb as well as overfactor and underfactor (both verbs) which are in turn probably the actual etymons of overfactorization and underfactorization.

Japanese entry: "3" a meaningful part of the entry?

In the entry 燃える, the conjugation section has a digit '3' following the content of the {{ja-ichi}} template. I am not overly experienced with Japanese entries; is there some relevance to its being here, or can it be safely removed? It seems quite clearly out of place, viewing the entry, but I don't know whether it was supposed to go somewhere else in the entry or whether it was just a meaningless typo. Thanks. Kiril kovachev (talk) 19:35, 15 July 2021 (UTC)

Looks like a typo. Removed. Equinox ◑ 19:43, 15 July 2021 (UTC)

Lexicality of Japanese で候 (de sōrou, de soro, de sō, de su)

Curious what others think of the lexicality of Japanese entry で候 (read variously as de sōrou, de soro, de sō, and de su).

I ask, in that this seems more lexical at the bare form without any leading particle. We can easily attest the use of に (ni) instead of で (de), or just the verb itself after a noun with no particle at all. See also the KDJ entry at Kotobank.

Pinging @TAKASUGI Shinji, Suzukaze-c, Mar vin kaiser, any other JA editor (in a rush, apologies for the forshortened ping list). ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 21:34, 15 July 2021 (UTC)

No opinion. —Suzukaze-c (talk) 22:58, 15 July 2021 (UTC)

If you categorize です and だ in verbs, do so for で候(そうろう) (de sōrō). — TAKASUGI Shinji (talk) 00:29, 16 July 2021 (UTC)

@Eirikr: I think if it is an archaic form of です, then for me it's worth keeping as one entry on its own, and should be included perhaps in a table of synonyms, which I see in the である entry. --Mar vin kaiser (talk) 07:03, 20 July 2021 (UTC)

• Thank you all for your input.

I think です (desu) and だ (da) are different in that these are unquestionably integral wholes, whereas で候 (de sōrou, de soro, de sō, de su) is clearly particle で (de) + following verb in various forms. That said, the analogy with である (de aru) is well taken -- even though this is also で (de) + following verb, it is treated by many sources as a lexical unit.

Cheers, ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 17:52, 3 August 2021 (UTC)

archwife

Was entered as English due to Webster 1913's treatment of words, but should be Middle English: however, the Chaucer use appears to be archewyves, so this modern spelling might be non-existent. Equinox ◑ 00:26, 16 July 2021 (UTC)

I've updated the Chaucer quotation, and added 4 others. We'll need to create a new, separate Middle English entry for the ME term. Leasnam (talk) 04:14, 16 July 2021 (UTC)

reigle = sluice?

The quote at reigle seems to indicate it's a sluice, but I'm not bold enough to add it. Roger the Rodger (talk) 11:14, 16 July 2021 (UTC)

I don’t think it indicates that. In the quotation, the reigles are long vertical indentations in the side posts on either side of a waterway. The gate consists of a flat rectangular board that can move up and down but otherwise is kept in place by these indentations. The whole contraption (gate + side posts with their indentations) serves as a sluice, but the reigles themselves are merely guides for the board.  --Lambiam 20:33, 16 July 2021 (UTC)

would

Used to give a conditional or potential "softening" to the present; might, might wish. [from 9^thc.]

• 2008, Mark Cocker, "Country Diary", The Guardian, 3 November:

  It's a piece of old folklore for which I would love to find hard proof.

I guess it seems clear from the example what kind of usage this sense is referring to, but I don't really understand "might, might wish", even assuming that it is supposed to read "might, might wish to". Does "I would love to ~" mean the same as "I might love to ~" or "I might wish to love to ~"? Does anyone get this? Mihia (talk) 19:16, 16 July 2021 (UTC)

I don’t think it can mean “might wish to” here. One can also say, “I have several items that have sentimental value that I would hate to see go”.^[18] One can grammatically substitute “might”, but that changes the meaning. “I would love/hate it if X happens” is IMO almost synonymous with “I will love/hate it if X happens”. The use of would instead of will signals an (uncertain) expectation that the hypothetical X will not come to pass any time soon.  --Lambiam 20:51, 16 July 2021 (UTC)

I'm wondering in fact whether "would love" is an atypical or even misplaced example for this sense, being somewhat idiomatic, in the manner of would like, which we have as an individual entry. I wonder whether a better example may be such as "I would ask you all to sit down", which is a "softening" of "I ask you all to ...", while "I would love to find" is not, in the same way, a "softening" of "I love to find". "I would ask you all to sit down" is in fact similar in meaning to "Might I ask you all to sit down", though not really, as far as I can see, to "I might ask you all to sit down". Mihia (talk) 21:16, 16 July 2021 (UTC)

I agree that ‘I would ask you all to sit down’ is a better example of ‘would’ being used to soften a statement referring to an event taking place in the present than the current Guardian quote, where it is used to express doubt about an event possibly taking place in the future. I think “Might I ask you all to sit down” is equivalent to “If I might ask you all to sit down”, in a similar way to how “If I were a rich man” could be rephrased as “Were I a rich man”Overlordnat1 (talk) 09:38, 17 July 2021 (UTC)

Yes, it seems to me that some uses of "would like" (and similar phrases such as "would love") are little (or no) more than the hypothetical sense of "would" with a vaguely or loosely implied condition. For example, "I would like/love to come and visit (if that's OK/possible etc.)". On the other hand, there is a seemingly more idiomatic use in e.g. "I would like to congratulate you on your results" (an existing example at would like), where there seems no implied condition. Is this actually a different sense of "would", do you (or anyone) think? Secondly, with sentences such as "I would ask you all to sit down", or "I would imagine so", which may be true examples of the sense quoted at the top of this thread, are these again fundamentally the "hypothetical would"? Or could some be a preserved use of the normally archaic "would = would like (to)"? Or something else? What do you (or anyone) think? Mihia (talk) 10:54, 18 July 2021 (UTC)

I think ‘I would like to come and visit’ is the clearest example of sense 2.1 (as it indicates a state conditional on another); ‘I would ask you all to sit down’ is as clear an instance of sense 2.2 (as it’s used to indicate a softening of the present) as can be constructed, if indeed the sense exists (one could argue that it’s short for ‘I would ask you all to sit down, if you haven’t had knee replacements’, or the like, thereby claiming it’s a conditional statement about the near future rather than a softening of the present tense command: ‘Sit down!’. To do so would be a bit of a stretch in my book.); ‘I would imagine so’ is a clear example of sense 2.3 (used to indicate uncertainty about the present). I would argue that any construction with ‘would like’ or ‘would love’ is sense 2.1, even though these constructions are substitutable with ‘want’. Also, I don’t think any of your examples in this thread use any archaic form of ‘would’.Overlordnat1 (talk) 16:25, 18 July 2021 (UTC)

I made some changes along the lines discussed (I split out the "explicit condition" usage from "no explicit condition"). However, I cannot really grasp the difference between these two senses:

Used to give a conditional or potential "softening" to the present. [from 9^thc.]

I would ask you all to sit down.

Used to impart a sense of hesitancy or uncertainty to the present; might be inclined to. Now sometimes colloquially with ironic effect. [from 15^thc.]

I would imagine that they have already left.

Are these definitely distinct senses? Isn't "hesitancy or uncertainty" just one reason for "softening"? Also, does anyone understand the "colloquially with ironic effect" comment? I'm not sure I understand what this is referring to. Mihia (talk) 16:55, 19 July 2021 (UTC)

’softening’ seems to be referring to making a statement more polite, rather than hesitant or uncertain, but I wouldn’t oppose a carefully worded merger. The "colloquially with ironic effect" bit doesn’t make much sense to meOverlordnat1 (talk) 09:18, 24 July 2021 (UTC)

OK, I merged them. Mihia (talk) 10:53, 25 July 2021 (UTC)

Great job!Overlordnat1 (talk) 13:05, 25 July 2021 (UTC)

feuillemorte, feuillemort, filemot, philomot

I reduced some of the duplication between these entries: each formerly had its own definition, now only feuillemorte and filemot do, and feuillemort and philomot are alt forms. But: 1) should filemot also be defined as an alt form (or synonym?) of feuillemorte (or vice versa)? 2) How are the words pronounced? feuillemorte claims /fɜːjˈmɔːt/, feuillemort claims /fœjmɔʁ/ which looks French and not English, philomot says /ˈfɪləmɒt/ and filemot doesn't list a pronunciation (Collins says /ˈfɪlɪˌmɒt/). Merriam-Webster has feuille morte pronounced as [their equivalent of what in IPA would be] /-mɔɹt/ with no first part given, but then they have an entry for feuille with a strange definition and the strange pronunciation /fœœj/ (a copyright trap?). Based on the French, and mille-feuille and feuilleton, I'd expect maybe /fɔɪ mɔɹt/ as one possibility. - -sche (discuss) 02:23, 17 July 2021 (UTC)

After some more digging, including confirmation of the derivation of filemot, I revised the pronunciations and made filemot a {{synonym of}}. - -sche (discuss) 20:52, 17 July 2021 (UTC)

Night fell

"Night fell." Which sense of fall is this? I can't see any that quite fits. I was thinking about it because I came across the much less common "day fell" recently:

• 1861, Elizabeth Gaskell, The Grey Woman

  At length, day fell. We had to drop into the stream, which came above our knees as we waded to the bank. There we stood, stiff and shivering.

Equinox ◑ 16:51, 18 July 2021 (UTC)

Good catch. Other dictionaries often have this under a sense along the lines of ~"come/envelope as if by dropping downwards/falling". (A few handle it under the general "occur, happen" sense.) Other things that can fall in this sense (or at least that can fall over a person or place) include calm, quiet, a sense of serenity, an ominous foreboding, and noise (google books:"noise fell over"). - -sche (discuss) 05:21, 19 July 2021 (UTC)

There is a corresponding, though rare, noun dayfall,^[19][20][21] which I take to be a synonym of dusk, especially the onset of dusk, whereas nightfall is rather used for its ending phase. The sense of the verb giving rise to this compound is clearly not of the day falling over a person of place. One can also say “the fall of day”,^[22][23][24] so any sense we come up with to cover the sense of the verb with (the) day as subject should be extended to the noun.  --Lambiam 11:29, 19 July 2021 (UTC)

Sense 3.2 is closest: "To occur (on a certain day of the week, date, or similar); said of an instance of a recurring event such as a holiday or date". This would work if it only said "occur", without the subsequent narrowing restrictions. Equinox ◑ 11:32, 19 July 2021 (UTC)

It fails the substitution test rather badly: “At length, day occurred.”  --Lambiam 22:05, 20 July 2021 (UTC)

How is that a failure? It makes sense. It just isn't the idiom. (But if, as suggested elsewhere in this thread, "day fell" means that day ended and not started, then yes, it's wrong.) Equinox ◑ 01:08, 21 July 2021 (UTC)

It is grammatically fine but semantically wrong. In the quotation that started this thread as well as in other uses I found, it is each time the end of day.  --Lambiam 08:29, 23 July 2021 (UTC)

I can find examples of e.g. google books:"D-Day fell on" ("June 6 rather than the planned June 5", etc), which suggests it's not limited to a recurring event. Even if we broaden 3.2, I suppose the question is whether it's better to consider "a sense of calm fell" and "night fell" the same sense as "Christmas fell on a Tuesday" or put them under a "To come as if by falling" sense. Is "the fall of night/day" "the occurrence of night/day", or "the coming on / onset of night/day"? - -sche (discuss) 17:56, 19 July 2021 (UTC)

“The fall of day” is the end of day (in the sense of the period of daylight).  --Lambiam 22:10, 20 July 2021 (UTC)

I did also find a couple of instances of "fall" (verb) referring to the day turning out a certain way weather-wise, e.g. "the day fell bright and warm". Mihia (talk) 21:34, 21 July 2021 (UTC)

I tentatively added a non-literal-movement sense "To come as if by dropping down" for "Once or twice a noise fell upon his quick ear", "a sudden calm fell on us like a cloud of fear" (does...calm normally operate like fear?), "thus night fell", and "a terrible noise fell over the desert". I changed "To occur (on a certain day of the week, date, or similar); said of an instance of a recurring event such as a holiday or date." to "To occur (on a certain day of the week, date, or similar); to happen." since I also added a cite about a non-recurring holiday/event falling on a certain day. "Night fell" could be argued to be "night occurred", but I think other dictionaries have a point in considering it to be a non-literal extension of the movement sense, and interpreting "a noise fell upon his quick ear" as "a noise occurred on his ear" seems less fluent. If other changes are needed let's keep discussing... - -sche (discuss) 17:49, 23 July 2021 (UTC)

NASA pronunciation of Charon

There seems to be a bit of confusion regarding the audio-clip pronunciation at Charon. According to the IPA, the stress should be on the first syllable. However, the audio-clip places it on the second. Can we please have this sorted out ? Leasnam (talk) 19:40, 18 July 2021 (UTC)

The audio is simply wrong. We need a new file so it can be replaced, ideally for both major pronunciations. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 23:43, 18 July 2021 (UTC)

fefnicute

@Equinox, Metaknowledge

This was deleted in 2017 for failing RFV. I think I've now found enough citations for this word if spelling variants are allowed, but please still check because I can't make heads or tails of the first two quotes (apparently in Lancashire dialect).--Tibidibi (talk) 05:13, 20 July 2021 (UTC)

I think I can translate the first one: "Aw’v no payshuns we um un ther kaps o liberte; ther naut but o parsel o feffnecutes, powsedurts us they r." It means: "I've no patience with [one of their?] caps of liberty; they're nothing but a bunch of fefnicutes [sneaks], powsedurts [worthless people] as they are." Equinox ◑ 05:44, 21 July 2021 (UTC)

Part of the second one: "What mak o' lennock faffnecutes an' ricklin bandyhewits are they? Tell me some sthrong words, Weighver; aw've noane 'at con do justice to sich heighvy-keighvy pickhawms!" = "What kind of lennock (weak, flimsy) fefnicutes and rickling (ramshackle, emaciated??) dogs (bandyhewits) are they? Tell me some strong words, Weighver [person's name?]; I've none [no words] that can do justice to such heighvy-keighvy pickhawms" (???). Equinox ◑ 05:49, 21 July 2021 (UTC)

Surely ‘um un ther’ means ‘them and their’ and ‘Weighver’ is a pronunciation of ‘Weaver’ as a profession not a surname (as the book title itself ‘Th’owd Weighver’ translates as ‘The Old Weaver’)? No idea about ‘pickhawms’ though Overlordnat1 (talk) 19:47, 23 July 2021 (UTC)

@Equinox Thanks. Should these quotes be "translated" (or at least rewritten in a more standard orthography, e.g. "patience" instead of "payshuns")?--Tibidibi (talk) 06:56, 21 July 2021 (UTC)

Is "standard" the new way to say "correct"? Why would you change the actual source text... just use it as it is. You can always add markup to explain it for us dumboes. Equinox ◑ 06:58, 21 July 2021 (UTC)

@Equinox You could use the "t=" parameter to input the standard English equivalent without changing the source text.--Tibidibi (talk) 07:02, 21 July 2021 (UTC)

@Equinox "heighvy-keighvy" is what WT has as havey-cavey, apparently. Still no idea about pickhawms, though.--Tibidibi (talk) 13:45, 21 July 2021 (UTC)

Wright's English Dialect Dictionary has hawm as a Yorkshire/Lancashire/Cheshire/Derbyshire word, seemingly related to what we have an entry for as haulm, meaning "a haft, the handle of an axe, [..] a pick-shaft". (His citations include ones of "pick-haum".) - -sche (discuss) 20:25, 23 July 2021 (UTC)

"one" and "someone" as literal words

e.g. go off on one: this always uses the word "one" (we assume that the "one" is a tantrum, or rage, or rant, etc.). But many other entries have one or someone to be replaced with pronouns or names. If I get angry with Esme, I am not "going off on Esme", I am "going off on one about Esme" maybe. So there's no way currently to distinguish between the replaceable "one/someone", and the fixed "one/someone". Shouldn't there be? How could we achieve this? Equinox ◑ 05:42, 21 July 2021 (UTC)

This is so interesting. I have always interpreted it as (go off on [=go into a tirade on/about]) + (someone [=person]), because you can omit the 'one' or 'someone' (ex. He went off = he got angry and began to shout). Now that you bring up the possibility that it's 'one' = "instance/thing" (e.g. tantrum, rage, etc) it makes me wonder if it might not also possibly be the number 1, meaning "go off from the start, go off immediately, go off at once"...like when someone says I'm going to count to ten to cool down, but they were so frustrated that they couldn't contain it and 'went off on 1" Leasnam (talk) 18:22, 21 July 2021 (UTC)

I have always understood "go off on one" to mean "go off on a rant/tirade/etc.", as Equinox says. I cannot imagine that "one" means "number one" (the stress is in the wrong position anyway, on "off" rather than "one"). Mihia (talk) 21:17, 21 July 2021 (UTC)

For an earlier discussion of the issue and a concrete proposal, see Wiktionary:Beer parlour/2019/August § I wouldn't mind a little something. A headline like the present put one's pants on one leg at a time would then become put [one's] pants on one leg at a time, disambiguating the functions of the two occurrences of one. I never got around to turning this into a vote. I have been trying to find a way of allowing this to be reflected in the page name, in which square brackets (or template applications) are not allowed. Also note that the heavily used Module:en-headword as presently coded cannot handle this.  --Lambiam 12:28, 21 July 2021 (UTC)

To me, put [one's] pants on one leg at a time reads as if the word "one's" is optional, or is explanatory wording that an editor has provided. Mihia (talk) 21:27, 21 July 2021 (UTC)

M–W sometimes uses parenthesis, as in “give (someone) the runaround”^[25] or “take (something) in stride”^[26], which gives much more a suggestion of optionality. I think I have seen smallcaps used for the purpose; then you get e.g. shove something down someone's throat.

I see "give (someone) the runaround" and "take (something) in stride" as different, in that "someone" and "something" are the supplied objects or indirect objects to "give the runaround" and "take in stride". In contrast, "put pants on one leg at a time" does not seem to be a phrase to which "one's" can be inserted, not in the same way. Mihia (talk) 23:04, 21 July 2021 (UTC)

After reading the previous discussion, Lambiam's square bracket suggestion seems to me to be our best option. I would support the creation of a vote, though it might be wise to have someone create a test version of Module:en-headword that could handle the change before starting such a vote. —The Editor's Apprentice (talk) 17:14, 24 July 2021 (UTC)

If we can't come up with a solution to represent it on the headword line, at least a usex like "he is going off on one about Esme" (or the current usex) at last helps clarify that Esme doesn't go into the one slot. At first blush, I like the idea of using parentheses. I use parentheses in definitions sometimes where a verb takes more than one object and so has to be expressed like "to foobarize (something) to" (someone). - -sche (discuss) 17:53, 23 July 2021 (UTC)

If I may make the same point again, while parentheses work for insertion of objects or other grammatical units into patterns, such as in "to foobarize (something) to (someone)", for me they do not work in a case such as "put (one's) pants on one leg at a time". To me this appears illogical, so I do not see how parentheses would be a general-purpose solution to the issue at hand. Mihia (talk) 21:09, 23 July 2021 (UTC)

@equinox: This post came just in time before I forgot my wondering for a cognate to German Wahn. Indeed I should say won-dering. I can't offer an etymology but I can vouche that the semantics are compatible despite our definitions, if to go off on one may as well mean to be crazy for, cp. wahnsinnig verliebt (crazy in love) which is in line with the etymology from "desire, wish, love", besides Größen-Wahn (megalomania) and similiar which was my point of interest. It's also relevant to my interest in the boat-vowel change. ApisAzuli (talk) 17:13, 6 August 2021 (UTC) I have to add that I hope now there's a minute chance that English was conservative about it, *wenH- < *h1en- and then some, cp. Ger. innig besides einig and the hypothesis thar derives *oynos "1" from *h1e(n)- (cp. indef. "one" *h1enos) also, why do we fall in love, and are into it? Might be sheer coincidence, of course, if it cannot be that simple. The suggestion just came as a compromise in case you prefer to read one as the determiner as per usual. ApisAzuli (talk) 17:27, 6 August 2021 (UTC)

It can't mean "be crazy in love". It's anger/rage. Equinox ◑ 18:48, 6 August 2021 (UTC)

@Equinox: Thanks for that tremendous insight. It doesn't have to be a perfect match. "might as well" is obviously hyperbole, as is your retort. In case you meant fury compare fervor. rage might impy violence but speech is typically not violent, that's not what you mean; where its etymon is glossed to rave, considerraving reviews; conversely, love could as well induce violence, people murder out of jelousy. Anger might as well imply an (obsolete) sense of pain or stinging. People suicide out of rejection. See therefore also woe and wode, wood and formaly equivalent German Weh tun besides wüten. I wone't explain that, but note that correslonding to my notes above, a cry for help might as well involve the locative particles. wanton offers a quite different etymology. Perhaps that's what I was hoping to find. That wenig does not belong with this and *wanaz "lack, vain" and rather with *wai (. v. woe) is just afol. You might say I'm one-zanny skepticist. Thanks again. ApisAzuli (talk) 17:36, 10 August 2021 (UTC)

bij in Albanian – again

So I already asked about bij in Albanian, as online sources don't give me the meaning "to grow, to sprout", which is the only one given here, and an Albanian Quora user told me bij = bie, and the entry has no source. I looked into the history of the page, and it's this revision by @Torvalu4 which seems to have added the Albanian section, so I'm asking this user directly: did you add the Albanian section, and if so, what is your source for this meaning? MGorrone (talk) 20:38, 21 July 2021 (UTC)

bough

WOTD.

1. A firm (and often larger) branch of a tree.

Isn't a bough always a large or thick branch? I mean, would you ever call a thin branch a "bough"? Mihia (talk) 14:34, 22 July 2021 (UTC)

Before I looked at this, I would have agreed with you 100%, however a Google search for "a narrow bough" and "a thin bough" seem to indicate otherwise.

A quote from a 2018 book Through the Fire contains this line: Desperate to stop before hurling herself off the edge of the cliff, she grabbed for a nearby tree branch, but the spindly bough snapped off in her hands.

"spindly bough" that "snap[s] off in [one's] hand" seems to imply that bough can also simply mean "branch" (?). Leasnam (talk) 18:47, 23 July 2021 (UTC)

I've modified the definition a bit to make it clearer, and added the citation above. Leasnam (talk) 19:11, 23 July 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for looking at that. Mihia (talk) 21:10, 23 July 2021 (UTC)

Out of curiosity, I poked around, and I can find uses of "thin bough" going back to 1829 and 1837, and an 1886 cite of "the long, spindly, and straggling boughs". Leasnam's definition better captures what seems to be the important part (that it's a main branch, which may nonetheless be small if the tree is small, etc), and seems consistent with how other dictionaries define it; otherwise (if not for the other dictionaries) I would've suggested the possibility that there were two senses, "A thick/large branch" and "(poetic) Any branch". - -sche (discuss) 21:39, 23 July 2021 (UTC)

篠/筱

@Justinrleung, Suzukaze-c, Frigoris, 沈澄心, H2NCH2COOH 新华字典 and 现代汉语词典 list 篠 as the 異體字 of 筱. More specifically, 篠 is classified as a 《第一批异体字整理表》以外的异体字. Meanwhile, only 筱 and not 篠 is in 通用规范汉字表 (2013). Should 筱 be regarded as the simplified form of 篠, aside from being a 異體字? RcAlex36 (talk) 17:23, 22 July 2021 (UTC)

@RcAlex36, 筱 is a headword in the Shuowen (5th character under 竹) but 篠 is not. Other traditional dictionaries list these two as variants to each other with the identical reading. I'm not sure about the status of 筱 as "the" simplified form; to me these two seems mutually exchangeable (although one has less strokes, hence more "simple", than the other). --Frigoris (talk) 18:45, 22 July 2021 (UTC)

I think 篠-筱 can be treated as a traditional-simplified pair, just like 為-为 is treated as such. However, 篠 probably should not be the main form for most entries. — justin(r)leung _{{ (t...) | c=› }} 18:51, 22 July 2021 (UTC)

@Justinrleung, do you mean 為-爲 ? --Frigoris (talk) 07:12, 23 July 2021 (UTC)

@Frigoris: No, I meant 為-为. 為 is in the same situation as 篠 as a 《第一批异体字整理表》以外的异体字. — justin(r)leung _{{ (t...) | c=› }} 15:55, 23 July 2021 (UTC)

@Justinrleung: I see what you mean. In that case, I think the case with 篠 has a difference, in that 筱 is allegedly a character collected in the Shuowen as a seal-script headword, at least in the current recension of the text (dated to the 10th century); while 为 is not (the character likely arose from cursive handwriting). That's how I see the limitation of the 為 : 为 :: 篠 : 筱 analogy. --Frigoris (talk) 16:53, 23 July 2021 (UTC)

@Frigoris: I agree, and that's why I said 篠 should not be the main form for most entries. For more context, this question actually arose from 新篠津／新筱津 (Xīnxiǎojīn), where most simplified sources would write it as 新筱津 (see Citations:新篠津). This question would help us decide whether we should have 新篠津 as the main form and have 新筱津 as a simplified form (so {{zh-forms|s=新筱津}} at 新篠津). — justin(r)leung _{{ (t...) | c=› }} 17:00, 23 July 2021 (UTC)

@Justinrleung, is the matter decided? --Frigoris (talk) 17:59, 27 July 2021 (UTC)

@Frigoris: This is all there is to the discussion, so I don't think anything has been decided. Do you think 新筱津 should be considered a simplified form of 新篠津 or treated as an alternative form? — justin(r)leung _{{ (t...) | c=› }} 18:03, 27 July 2021 (UTC)

@Justinrleung, personally, I feel that "alternative form" is safer in the sense that "simplified" is a special kind of "alternative". --Frigoris (talk) 18:08, 27 July 2021 (UTC)

citations for linear a KU-RO 'total'

i'm too lazy to find them myself but this is basically the only agreed upon word in the entirety of the linear a corpus so i can't imagine it would be too difficult. if someone could do that that would b great love yall kiss kiss

Does this refer to an existing entry in Wiktionary? I assume KU-RO corresponds to the sequence 𐀓𐀫, with phonetic values extrapolated from Linear B. It is not really clear whether this is a noun; it could be an imperative form. As far as I know it is only found preceding the numeral giving the total of an accounting list. Even if it is found in running text, it does not help if this is the only bit in a sentence for which we have a plausible guess at its meaning. A citation of the form “𐀓𐀫𐄌”, presumably meaning “total: 6”, is not very enlightening.  --Lambiam 23:02, 22 July 2021 (UTC)

счастье

Is сча́стье pronounced the same in the nom/acc and prepositional cases? because I know -ие nouns aren't Dngweh2s (talk) 14:45, 23 July 2021 (UTC)

Does your query apply generally to Russian nouns ending in -ье, or just to сча́стье? And by "pronounced the same", are you referring to syllable stress or something else? Voltaigne (talk) 08:58, 25 July 2021 (UTC)

@Voltaigne, Brutal Russian I'm pretty much asking if the nom/acc form is pronounced [-je] or [-jɪ] Dngweh2s (talk) 20:23, 26 July 2021 (UTC)

@Dngweh2s: I've had several discussions on this recently - in the standard pronunciation it seems that no, that ending isn't neutralised with /i/ but rather with /a/, so счастье~счастья; this is complicated by this not being categorical, at least to me - I perceive the target phoneme as /e/ because that's what it has in hyperarticulated speech. Some people insist that all three for them end in a schwa though - but hardly in [ɪ]. Brutal Russian (talk) 18:59, 29 July 2021 (UTC)

@Brutal Russian So is the prepositonal form "солнце" actually pronounced like it's spelled? Dngweh2s (talk) 14:07, 5 August 2021 (UTC)

@Dngweh2s: Not necessarily - it ends in phonemic /e/ with the target articulation [ɛ], but this is subject to duration-dependent phonetic reduction up to [ə], resulting in homophony with "солнца". Since the latter is impossible to account for in a single phonetic transcription, [e~ɛ] (depending on softness) seems to be a good option - but I would welcome an alternative transcription with [ə] to indicate the range of possible realisations. Brutal Russian (talk) 19:20, 6 August 2021 (UTC)

part of speech of various citations of racialized

(@The Editor's Apprentice) Is the assignment of parts of speech in diff and diff right? "not only is Oscar racialized as black, we can also see an ethnicization of race whereby Oscar is constructed as a black American" seems like a verb form comparable to "not only is Oscar regarded as black", and it's paralleled to another verb, "constructed as a black American". And cites like "is not only racialized, but individualized, and moreover diversified" also seem like a string of verb forms(?), since one can use the present tense and say that people racialize, individualize and diversify X, and since the same sentence but with the doer spelled out—"is not only racialized, but individualized, and moreover diversified by Y"—must(?) be a verb form. I admit it's tricky, though, and cites like "very racialized" seem (much?) more likely to be adjectives. (Then again, I find cites of google books:"are very regarded" where it still seems to be intended to function as a verb.) Other words in this ambiguous POS situation include gendered, raced, othered. - -sche (discuss) 17:40, 23 July 2021 (UTC)

Is there evidence of the forms racializes and racializing and collocations like to racialize and racialized by? If not and especially if there is evidence of racialized meeting the adjective tests (including predicate use after copulas other than be), then I would not add a verb PoS. But it is probably just a matter of time before those other verb forms and collocations appear in durably archived media. DCDuring (talk) 02:07, 24 July 2021 (UTC)

The first of the diffs above is to the entry on to racialize and its citations; I put more (of to racialize, racializes, and racialized by) at Citations:racialize. The verb has existed for over a century, and (to me) seems likely to be the origin of racialized#adjective. - -sche (discuss) 04:32, 24 July 2021 (UTC)

Trust me, I quickly started asking myself the same questions with regard to part of speech assignment after making the edits. I asked about it on the English Wiktionary Discord and got some ideas. I'll list them here and come back with a more detailed response later. —The Editor's Apprentice (talk) 05:09, 24 July 2021 (UTC)

• (Apparently based on WSJP policy) "We saved participles when their adjectival use wasn't figure-out-able (i.e. had a different meaning than the obvious) or if it was in significant enough use"
• (Proposed by me but apparently a false test) If you can add "being" in the phrase in order to create "NOUN is being VERBeb" without changing the meaning it is must actually be a verb.
  • Consider "the boy is being good" and "the blanket is being wet", "perhaps the test could be salvaged by using inanimate/abstract subjects." (Lingo Bingo)
  • "maybe [...] using an inanimate object will help for most adjectives, except for the ones associated with animate properties. Like "The rug is being weird" sorta works, because the adjective 'weird' associates with animaticity and so you imagine an animate rug. (Thadh)
• Being comparable

Okay, let me address some of the specific citations now. Rereading "not only is Oscar racialized as black" I agree with you, "racialized" is a verb there because of the "as black". I have something similar to say about "somatic Feeling is not only racialized, but diversified, [...] according to successive Periods of Life". It also seems to have "racialized" as a verb because of the "according to". The rest of the citations that I added seem be under the correct part of speech at the moment and I am open to also discussing them in detail. While looking to see what other writing has been done on this subject here on Wiktionary I found Wiktionary:English adjectives which is somewhat helpful to me, but seems to need copy editing. The example you gave of "are very regarded" is bewildering to me and prompts a lot of questions. I don't quite know what to do with the information. —The Editor's Apprentice (talk) 16:50, 24 July 2021 (UTC)

Sorry that I rushed and missed the point of -sche's objections.

I am skeptical that we can find unambiguous support for each of the four definitions shown under adjective PoS that also unambiguously shows adjectival use (ie, modification by very or too; use after copulas other than be; comparability; gradability). If a citation unambiguously shows a new meaning not included in the verb definitions or other adjective definitions, then, even if the definition meets no other adjective tests besides attributive use, it is valid evidence of a new adjective definition. Accordingly, I have RfVed each adjective definition.

No other OneLook dictionary has an entry for racialized as an adjective.

AHD makes distinctions in the meaning of racialize that no other dictionary does:

1 a. To differentiate or categorize according to race.

1 b. To impose a racial character or context on.

2. To perceive or experience in racial terms.

Each of these definitions leaves a burden on the entry for race or racial. Each also reflects a different role of the subject with regards to the object: describer; modifier; perceiver.

To the extent that they are deverbal our 5 citations mostly fit under 1a, the exception being the 1905 citation which seems to fit under 2. None of the citations are explicit about who or what is doing the racializing.

I have a specific objection to definition 2: Given that the sole citation (1905) coordinates racialized with individualized and diversified, then the citation would also seem to support definitions of individualized ("influenced or determined by individuality or individualism") and of diversified ("influenced or determined by diverse stages of life"). A simpler approach would be to read all three terms as past participles of the corresponding verb. In each case the term seems to mean "differentiated", respectively, by race, by individual, or by the diversity of an individual in successive Periods of Life.

As always, having a sufficient number of citations is necessary to provide usable definitions. DCDuring (talk) 17:50, 25 July 2021 (UTC)

non-

The usage note states that "Non- may be attached to nouns, verbs, adjectives or adverbs" - my concern is with the 'verbs' part. I know it might be possible that a noun that has "non-" attached to it can be used as a verb, but I'm trying to think of where non- + [verb] = [verb]. Does anyone know of any examples of this ? Leasnam (talk) 18:37, 23 July 2021 (UTC)

Browsing Category:English_verbs&from=non, there's the legalese-ish nonconcur (which however could be viewed as a likely back-formation from "non-concurring") and a baseball verb nontender (with a homographic but unconnected adjective). - -sche (discuss) 21:43, 23 July 2021 (UTC)

Okay Thank you ! :) Leasnam (talk) 23:19, 23 July 2021 (UTC)

It doesn't seem to be usual/common to attach the prefix to verbs, though. Maybe we are overstating things by just saying it can be attached to verbs without any qualifier as to how commonly. - -sche (discuss) 00:27, 24 July 2021 (UTC)

I was sorta thinking the same as well. Perhaps it just needs a slight rewording to: may be attached to nouns, adjectives, adverbs, and in rare instances to verbs Leasnam (talk) 15:32, 24 July 2021 (UTC)

nonconstat, non constat

nonconstat is defined as an adverb meaning "(law) It does not appear; it is not plain or clear; it does not follow."
non constat is defined as a phrase meaning "(law, religion, sciences) It is not certain; It is doubted."
These are not 100% compatible ("it is doubted" is different from "it is not plain or clear"), but it seems like one should be an alt form of the other. The spaced form seems markedly more common. Which definition is more accurate? Pinging @BD2412 in case you're familiar with this legal term. - -sche (discuss) 00:40, 24 July 2021 (UTC)

I am not familiar with the phrase, but the 1910 edition of Black's Law Dictionary defines it precisely as "CONSTAT. it is clear or evident; it appears; it is certain: there is no doubt. Non constat, it does not appear". bd2412 T 00:52, 24 July 2021 (UTC)

sextra

The word is clearly in use in several senses. Sextras are usually uncredited actors and actresses in pornographic or adult films, often during orgy scenes. [27] [28] [29] "Behind the scenes" footage, blooper reels, and outtakes in pornographic films are also sometimes referred to as sextras.

==English== ===Etymology=== {{blend|en|sex|extra}} (acting) ===Pronunciation=== * {{a|UK|US}} {{IPA|en|/ˈsɛkstɹə/}} ===Noun=== {{en-noun}} # A [[supernumerary]] or [[walk-on]] in a [[pornographic]] film or play. ===Anagrams=== * {{anagrams|en|a=aerstx|extras|taxers}} 2600:387:6:803:0:0:0:AE 01:31, 24 July 2021 (UTC)

The entry was deleted as part of mass-deleting uncited entries by a globally blocked user. However, this one is indeed (barely) citable, so I (re)created it. Unsure whether to restore the blocked user's revisions; they did include pronunciation info. - -sche (discuss) 04:42, 24 July 2021 (UTC)

Unexpected quarter

As seen used in

1940 May, “Overseas Railways: Acceleration Proceeds in U.S.A.”, in Railway Magazine, page 298:

But the latest Santa Fe development, while not spurring the Rock Island to any further acceleration, has drawn fire from a totally unexpected quarter.

The literal sense of quarter underlying this figure of speech is, I think, the rare sense 2.2: “Each of four parts into which the earth or sky is divided, corresponding to the four cardinal points of the compass”, generalized to mean “any direction”. The criticism came from a “direction” (the criticizing party) that the criticized party believed to have their back. But Cambridge Dictionary has a sense

“one or more people who provide help, information, or a particular reaction to something but who are not usually named”

with a usage example

“There is a feeling in certain/some quarters (= some people consider) that a change is needed.”

We do not have such a sense for quarter, but the idiom feeling/fear/expectation/hope in certain/some quarters (virtually always plural in this use) is definitely common. Is this really a figurative use of the same literal sense of quarter (in which case the latter is more likely sense 2.3: “A division or section of a town or city, especially having a particular character of its own, or associated with a particular group etc.”) or is Cambridge Dictionary artificially grouping two figurative uses? If so, should we also list this under quarter? If not, how can we accommodate these senses best? Are the idioms unexpected quarter and some quarters/certain quarters sufficiently non-transparent figures to warrant inclusion?  --Lambiam 09:41, 24 July 2021 (UTC)

I feel sure the same underlying sense is being used when one speaks of opposition google books:"from various quarters" or "from certain quarters" as when one speaks of opposition "from unexpected quarters" or "from an unexpected quarter", the same sense as when the opposition comes "from liberal quarters" or "...conservative quarters" (or in the singular, from GBooks: "From a Liberal quarter he had heard the criticism", "coming as it does from a Liberal quarter in politics", etc), or google books:"all quarters of the party", "all quarters of the communist party" or "...of the communist movement", or "...of the government", or "...of the globe", "Europe", "the country", "England", etc... likewise when "Robinson's installation as an Episcopal bishop was greeted largely by silence from gay quarters", "opposition from Catholic quarters was immediate", or there is "principled criticism of Obama from black quarters". (I also spotted a use by George Washington, "I have very pleasing accounts from all quarters of the purchase of large quantities of Clothing".) The meaning seems to be along the lines of ~"a section", compare sense 2 of section with its cite about "A broad section of the political class". Maybe: "a section (of a population), especially one having a particular set of values or interests"? (The various collocations all seem SOP, but could be redirects to the relevant def.) - -sche (discuss) 22:35, 24 July 2021 (UTC)

Sense 2.3 is apt. Certain American Revolutionary heroes would have been well acquainted with the quartier Latin (Latin quarter) of Paris. Surely a search of older English documents will reveal a plethora of examples of usage of "quarter" in this exact sense, e.g. "the goldsmiths' quarter". Did English also borrow this sense - literally, a residential division of a town by a certain group of people with common interests, and figuratively, that group - from French? yoyo (talk) 03:32, 25 July 2021 (UTC)

I added the sense, as I suggested above. Revise as needed. - -sche (discuss) 00:25, 27 July 2021 (UTC)

computer

Added new section to Discussion tab for article "computer".

Idojc (talk) 12:16, 24 July 2021 (UTC)

(See Talk:computer § Ido language has no official word for computer.) You can remove the translation yourself. The Ido Wiktionary lists all three as “proposed” words.  --Lambiam 16:56, 24 July 2021 (UTC)

Thank you Lambiam. Idojc (talk) 10:47, 25 July 2021 (UTC)

sinapi

Is the final vowel in the Latin word sinapi really short? I've never before encountered a Latin word that ends with a short "i", so I'm suspicious about this... Mölli-Möllerö (talk) 14:31, 24 July 2021 (UTC)

I don't know if it makes any difference, but it came from an Ancient Greek word with a short final vowel, and the Ancient Greek ending with that short vowel looks like it may have originally been tacked on to satisfy Ancient Greek phonotactics in a borrowing from Egyptian. Chuck Entz (talk) 15:26, 24 July 2021 (UTC)

@Mölli-Möllerö:. Really. In words coming from Egyptian via Greek, yes. Other examples are cȳphi, cīci, ami. You see a system already. Fay Freak (talk) 18:28, 24 July 2021 (UTC)

OK, thanks for the clarification. I haven't studied Latin, I've just made observations from macronized word forms and haven't come accross those words before. Mölli-Möllerö (talk) 19:38, 24 July 2021 (UTC)

Historically, final short -i became -e in Latin (e.g. mare from *mari from *móri). Loanwords that entered the language after this sound change stopped happening didn't undergo it and so they kept the short -i. —Mahāgaja · talk 20:42, 24 July 2021 (UTC)

How to add another sense: a noun, with a different etymology

Another sense of "gone" is as a noun, used in biology, with a different etymology (and probably pronunciation, to rhyme with "go", or with the first syllable of "gonad") - but where do I add it?

From <https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=&httpsredir=1&article=1001&context=onlinedictinvertzoology Online Dictionary of Invertebrate Zoology>, page 418:

gone n. [Gr. gone, that which produces seed] Any germ cell arising by meiosis.

Used in this sense in the following paper, available online: <https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/evo.14306 Three sex phenotypes in a haploid algal species give insights into the evolutionary transition to a self-compatible mating system, Takahashi et al (2021)>

(Also posted on <https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Talk:gone the Discussion page for "gone">.)

yoyo (talk) 03:15, 25 July 2021 (UTC)

When you have two etymologies with different pronunciations, you do it like this:

===Etymology 1===
From whatever...

====Pronunciation====
* {{IPA|en|...}}

====Part of speech====
{{head|en|...}}

=====Subheaders=====

===Etymology 2===
From whatever...

====Pronunciation====
* {{IPA|en|...}}

====Part of speech====
{{head|en|...}}

=====Subheaders=====

@Yahya Abdal-Aziz:, is that clear? —Mahāgaja · talk 07:26, 25 July 2021 (UTC)

We don’t seem to have the exact Greek word that this allegedly English word originates from but might γονή be its origin? (which would require a change of vowel sound to one more typical of an omega than an omicron if the first syllable does indeed rhyme with ‘go’, similar to what happened with the related word gonad)Overlordnat1 (talk) 09:08, 25 July 2021 (UTC)

@Mahagaja Yes, thanks, that's clear. yoyo (talk) 05:35, 26 July 2021 (UTC)

@Overlordnat1 I don't know the ancient Greek for it; however, the intro to the reference I gave mentions the chief sources they used - all dating from early last century! Maybe the OED has details of the etymology. But why do you write "allegedly English"? Yes, it's an English lemma: I found the word used in a modern English-language publication, technical no doubt, but still English. And the zoology dictionary doesn't describe it as being a foreign term, just having a Greek origin which they transliterate as "gone". yoyo (talk) 05:35, 26 July 2021 (UTC)

I didn't mean to sound harsh, I just meant that you allege that it's an English word and I'll have to take your word for it. If someone challenges this meaning of 'gone' then you would need 3 rather than 2 sources to verify the word's existence but then lots of our definitions aren't accompanied by quotes at all, or even usexes, still less three of them and I wouldn't be inclined to challenge or vote to delete this meaning anyway should someone create an RFV (request for verification) for it. Please do add this meaning to our gone entry, as it seems perfectly valid to me, given the academic nature of the sources you've providedOverlordnat1 (talk) 10:26, 26 July 2021 (UTC)

字幕組

字幕組 is currently defined as "fansub". However I'd consider that definition to be incorrect, as 字幕組 is defined in Wikipedia (and other places) as a team of fansubbers (the 組 here is shows that it is a group), while the definition of "fansub" is "subtitles translated by amateurs". I'm tempted to change the definition now but I need to make sure first. --ItMarki (talk) 05:05, 25 July 2021 (UTC)

I agree with it referring to a team. @Tooironic —Suzukaze-c (talk) 20:37, 25 July 2021 (UTC)

digital

While I'm here I noticed a possible problem with the Dutch translations of "digital". For meaning 2 "representing discrete values" Dutch "discreet" seems to be a translation of English "discrete". It doesn't seem to fit with the examples given in the article:

digital computer; digital clock

For both of these I believe Dutch has digitaal (in the form digitale). I will not edit the article as this needs to be verified by someone with Dutch native speaker level. Thank you. Idojc (talk) 10:53, 25 July 2021 (UTC)

blackjack

I’ve created definitions for card games at our blackjack and switch entries. Could anyone help find a third source proving that blackjack is a term occasionally used in the U.K for a ‘black drawing ointment/salve’ such as Aluminium Bitumenosulphate? I’ve found two quotes and put them on the REE page.Overlordnat1 (talk) 11:09, 25 July 2021 (UTC)

@Overlordnat1: TBH when there's a sense attested by other dictionaries and you can find two citations, I would just add them to the entry, rather than religiously insisting on the third. (Brownie points though!) If anyone doubts that a third exists then they can RFV it. Equinox ◑ 21:29, 27 July 2021 (UTC)

It may be a Birmingham dialect term as one website is a Birmingham one and the other cite is from a person who says ‘Mom’ rather than ‘Mum’ but is posting on a British website. Anyway, I’ve added it. Overlordnat1 (talk) 14:52, 28 July 2021 (UTC)

from

(mathematics, rare) Denoting a subtraction operation.

20 from 31 leaves 11.

Does anyone perceive this sense as "rare"? To me it is familiar enough. Perhaps it is more common in BrE than other varieties? Mihia (talk) 11:12, 25 July 2021 (UTC) ... though I wouldn't say it is a formal mathematical term, more an informal arithmetical one ...

It doesn’t seem particularly rare to me, I would posit that it’s probably slightly more commonplace than another informal way of saying the same thing, ‘31 take 20’. Overlordnat1 (talk) 12:59, 25 July 2021 (UTC)

I believe you may mean ‘31 take away 20’; or is ‘31 take 20’ a regional/dialectal way of putting it that I haven't yet encountered (?) Leasnam (talk) 23:03, 25 July 2021 (UTC)

We have it as verb sense 3, subsense 2 for take meaning ‘subtract’ (so yes, it is basically a shortening of ‘take away’). ‘Take 20 from 31’ is the usual way of using the word ‘take’ like this but ‘31 take 20’ is definitely something I’ve heard and I’ve not thought it to be incorrect or strange. Personally I alternate between ‘take away’ and ‘minus’ though rather than using these relatively rare senses of ‘from’ or ‘take’Overlordnat1 (talk) 23:30, 25 July 2021 (UTC)

I found: Maggs, J., Thyer, D. (1971). Teaching Mathematics to Young Children. Switzerland: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.p.46 - ‘Orally, ten take one is nine, nine take one is eight, eight take one is seven, etc., to two take one is one.’ on GoogleBooks. Though published in Switzerland, the publishers are American and I don’t know the nationalities of the authors. I’ve heard it used in England on occasion though, I’ll keep searching.Overlordnat1 (talk) 09:18, 26 July 2021 (UTC)

We also have Horn, J. S. (1872). Graduated Standard Arithmetical Exercises, Etc. United Kingdom: (n.p.). which contains a whole load of examples of the form ‘From X take Y’, though admittedly not ‘X take Y (is/equals/gives you) Z’Overlordnat1 (talk) 09:27, 26 July 2021 (UTC)

Anyway, I have deleted "rare". Mihia (talk) 17:23, 26 July 2021 (UTC)

A regional label might be appropriate. I've never heard this used in Canada and I suspect it's probably not much (if at all) used in the US. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 18:06, 26 July 2021 (UTC)

OK, well on the basis of available information I'll add "chiefly British". Mihia (talk) 21:50, 26 July 2021 (UTC)

deidentify

We have:

1. To anonymize data, often preserving the original identification data separately.
2. (psychology) To remove personal identifying information from data.

These don't seem distinct except for the "often..." proviso, and the psychology gloss. So should the senses be merged; or should sense 1 be a subsense of sense 2? Equinox ◑ 11:13, 25 July 2021 (UTC)

I don't think they're distinct; I've boldly merged them. Psychologists can also preserve the original identification data separately, broadly similarly to the data aggregators that I take sense 1 to be about, like social media sites selling to advertisers etc. - -sche (discuss) 23:00, 25 July 2021 (UTC)

open Adjective sense 22

"(computing, used before 'code') Source code of a computer program that is not within the text of a macro being generated."

If it's only used before code then we should have an entry for open code instead of this adjective. Conversely, if one can say "this code is open", then we should remove "used before 'code'". Which is it? (I don't know this phrase; it has nothing to do with open source.) Equinox ◑ 20:31, 25 July 2021 (UTC)

I don't know this as a general computing term, not that that means a great deal. The relevant hits that I found were all specifically in relation to SAS, which I am not familiar with. I couldn't find any evidence that this meaning of "open" is used outside of the phrase "open code". The existing definition is not that of an adjective, while as the definition of "open code", I am unconvinced that it is optimally (or even correctly) written. I wonder whether the definition should be more like "In SAS, those parts of a computer program that are not macro instructions". Mihia (talk)

Pronunc. of dat. sg. of is

@Brutal Russian: Could you, or anyone else interested in Latin pronunciation, provide some comments on the pronunciation of the dative singular of is, namely ei? Dictionaries, for what it's worth, usually report "eī"—and the L&S limits itself to giving a pronunciation with hiatus ("ĕï") before launching into anteclassical and inscriptional variants.

The Wiktionary article as it stands, however, claims that a monosyllabic pronunciation "is its normal scansion in Classical", but I have been at pains to find examples of this word in Classical Latin poetry to begin with (very much to my surprise)... Most instances seem to involve the interjection ei (which is certainly monosyllabic, just as dictionaries report), which makes me wonder if the comment was added by someone who mistook this interjection as the pronoun. I'm not wholly sure what to think of the various "ei miserō" in the corpus. One example I've been able to find on PHI, from Phaedrus, is the following, with my own parsing of the iambic senarius below:

 †Hoc argumen|tum veniam ei | dari docet 
 — — — —     | — uu u —     | u — u —

But the † cross sign alone tells me this is an editor's resolution, and probably one that the editor themself questions...... This is in essence an informal request for verification for the claim. Thoughts? --Ser be être 是^talk/stalk 21:58, 25 July 2021 (UTC)

P.S. I was able to find at least one example of monosyllabic ei in Catullus 82, a hexameter:

eripere ei noli, multo quod carius illi

--Ser be être 是^talk/stalk 18:46, 27 July 2021 (UTC)

@Brutal Russian I apologize for pinging you again for this topic, but now that the whole thing in the Beer Parlour seems over, I'd love it if you could comment on this. Largely because I find it fascinating that just about every textbook and dictionary might actually be wrong regarding dative "eī", that is, ei. Is there really no evidence in favour of a disyllabic e-ī? And do you happen to know of any discussion of this topic, or did you mostly do original research as I tried to do here? I was just able to find out, today, that you were the one who added that text to is in Module:la-adj/data! (I originally asked you because I (correctly) figured you'd know something about the topic.)--Ser be être 是^talk/stalk 18:58, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

@Ser be etre shi: OHCGL, addendum and this. Brutal Russian (talk) 14:03, 15 September 2021 (UTC)

@Brutal Russian: Ah, very interesting! Thanks! I can hardly understand why the ancient poets didn't use it much, as it seems easy to fit in metre...--Ser be être 是^talk/stalk 12:00, 18 September 2021 (UTC)

I'm trying to find the Greek etymology for the village of Cataloi, Romania

Discussion moved to Wiktionary:Etymology scriptorium/2021/July.

deepity etymology

"From deep + -ity, created by Miriam Weizenbaum but coined by Daniel Dennett with this meaning." Does this mean that Dennett's coinage was independent and had nothing to do with Weizenbaum? If so, why mention her? Equinox ◑ 22:04, 26 July 2021 (UTC)

OK, after some digging I found the explanation...

• 2014, Daniel C. Dennett, Intuition Pumps And Other Tools for Thinking, W. W. Norton & Company (→ISBN), page 56:

  WHAT IS A DEEPITY?

  My late friend, the computer scientist Joseph Weizenbaum[,] had a yearning to be a philosopher and tried late in his career to gravitate from technicalities to profundities. He once told me that one evening, after holding forth with high purpose and furrowed brow at the dinner table, his young daughter Miriam said, "Wow! Dad just said a deepity!" What a wonderful impromptu coinage. I decided to adopt it and put it to somewhat more analytic use. A deepity is a proposition that seems both important and true—and profound—but that achieves this effect by being ambiguous. On one reading it is manifestly false, but it would be earth-shaking, if it were true; on the other reading it is true but trivial. The unwary listener picks up the glimmer of truth from the second reading, and the devastating importance from the first reading, and thinks, Wow! That's a deepity.

(He gives "Love is just a word." as an example.) So, Miriam Weizenbaum came up with the word and Daniel Dennett gave it a technical definition. - -sche (discuss) 00:07, 27 July 2021 (UTC)

So to say it was "coined by Dennett with this meaning" seems incorrect; he didn't coin it, but only assigned the meaning. I'd have to change a template though... Equinox ◑ 00:09, 27 July 2021 (UTC)

hembrista

Senses overlap and I wonder if this is again people listing "different ways of expressing meaning x" as different definitions. (Are " misandric" and "msandrist" different defs of the adjective, for example?) The wording of some, and the usage notes, may be POV. Spanish Wiktionary's entry on es:hembrismo has a somewhat different division of senses, several tagged as needing citations. Some sources suggest different (or additional) definitions, e.g. this speaks of a "dedicated wife, self-sacrificing mother, obedient daughter" as a hembrista (in an English work discussing Spanish), which seems incompatible with defs like feminazi or misandrist. Who speaks Spanish and can look this over? @Ultimateria? - -sche (discuss) 23:44, 26 July 2021 (UTC)

The Spanish Wiktionary lists antonymous senses for the noun hembrismo, basically feminazism or the belief in the inherent inferiority of males, and the submissive attitude expected of women by machismo. The Spanish Wikipedia agrees that the neologism has these diametrically opposite senses, where the second sense is said to be used "within certain academic circles of sociology and psychology", so the first one seems to be colloquial. The same ambiguity can then be expected for hembrista, a follower, adherent or practitioner of hembrismo.  --Lambiam 12:31, 27 July 2021 (UTC)

I'll take a look later this week. Ultimateria (talk) 21:08, 2 August 2021 (UTC)

@-sche, Lambiam: I've cleaned up both entries and replaced the usage notes with something more neutral. I see several mentions of the older sociology sense, but so far no uses. I don't plan on sifting through cites for that sense, so I won't be adding it. Ultimateria (talk) 18:39, 6 August 2021 (UTC)

Thank you! I searched for hembrista + obediente and other keywords in an effort to find Spanish-language citations of the other sense, but in my brief search I wasn't able to find any. - -sche (discuss) 23:54, 6 August 2021 (UTC)

back

He was on vacation, but now he’s back.

The office fell into chaos when you left, but now order is back.

PoS of "back" in examples such as these. What do we think? Some people might call it an adverb. I am thoroughly unhappy about an adverb being the complement of copular "be", but I think some people accept that. OTOH, it may be questionable whether it is an adjective, albeit the present definition, "Returned or restored to a previous place or condition" (which I think I wrote), seems substitutable and plausibly adjectival. Any thoughts? Mihia (talk) 12:05, 27 July 2021 (UTC)

In many cases PoS assignment is somewhat arbitrary. According to Wiktionary, a prepositional phrase can function as an adjective or adverb. What do we have in “she is in bed”? Is it an adjectival use, being the complement of the copula, or is it adverbial as in “she lies in bed”? Are the assignments different in the uses in “I said I’d come back” and “I said I’d be back”? For an adjectival complement such as red, one can say not only “it is red” but also ”it became red”. One cannot say, ^✽“it became back”. (And “it turned back” is grammatical but means something quite different.) Note that the Spanish translation of “she is in bed”, “[ella] está en la cama”, uses the verb estar, which in this locative static sense is generally not considered copular.  --Lambiam 13:00, 27 July 2021 (UTC)

I suppose one might claim that it is the meaning of "back", not its PoS, that does not admit someone/something to "become back", in the same way that someone can hardly "become returned", albeit "returned" is only weakly a predicate adjective. As far as other copular verb possiblities are concerned, it seems possible for someone/something to "seem back", just about, as in "I called in at the office and order seemed back". "get back" (in the sense of "return", as in e.g. "What time did he get back?") is also interesting. Does this in fact mean "become back"? Mihia (talk) 21:38, 31 July 2021 (UTC)

In fact, no, I don't think that "get back" means "become back". Mihia (talk) 19:40, 1 August 2021 (UTC)

There is absolutely nothing wrong with adverbs of location being the predicate of to be. "I'm here; he's over there; where are you?". Those are all adverbs. So is back in the examples above. —Mahāgaja · talk 17:01, 27 July 2021 (UTC)

I have to disagree: logically I think that there is everything wrong with it, even though it may be a convention. Mihia (talk) 17:33, 27 July 2021 (UTC)

For sure, prepositional phrases can be problematic in a similar way, as can cases such as "she is outside", "the exam is tomorrow", etc., which do not seem adjectival, and yet if deemed adverbial require us to accept that someone or something can "be" an adverb, which my brain struggles to accept. AFAIK, there are zero examples of words that are truly unambiguously adverbs, e.g. -ly words, following the "be" verb as a complement. To me, cases such as "he is back", "she is outside", "she is in bed" etc. do not fit either PoS properly, but unless we have a watertight reason not to, I suppose we should follow the mainstream convention (I think) that these are adverbial. Mihia (talk) 17:31, 27 July 2021 (UTC)

There are different kinds of adverbs. -ly adverbs are adverbs of manner, and they really can't be predicates of to be, because they describe the manner in which the action of the verb is done, and being isn't an action. But one of the meanings of to be is "to be located", so it's completely logical and grammatical for it to be complemented by an adverb of location. —Mahāgaja · talk 17:59, 27 July 2021 (UTC)

In that case it should be possible to say "She is conveniently" to mean "She is located conveniently", or e.g. "It is proximately" to mean "It is nearby", but this is not possible. Mihia (talk) 18:08, 27 July 2021 (UTC)

Those aren't adverbs of location, though. I didn't say to be meaning "to be located" can be modified by any adverb that to be located can be modified by. —Mahāgaja · talk 06:47, 28 July 2021 (UTC)

Besides, "here" and "where" seem to be unambiguously adverbs. The usage of a basic verb with an adverb or adverbial phrase of location (including pre/postpositional phrases) to indicate a stative sense of being located somewhere is such a common thing across languages I don't easily see the problem... Very often it's a verb that also has uses as a copula too (Spanish estar, mentioned above, can be followed by an adjective as well), and the English ambiguity is also present in Arabic كانَ (kāna), which, like its English counterpart, can be a copula "be" followed by an adjective or noun, or appear in sentences like كانت في الحديقة kānat fī l-ḥadīqa(ti), lit. she-was in the-garden', or كانت هناك kānat hunāka, lit. she-was here. Sometimes though, it's a different verb entirely, without copular uses, as is the case of Mandarin 在 zài.--Ser be être 是^talk/stalk 13:02, 28 July 2021 (UTC)

How would you define "adverbs of location" so as to include "nearby" but exclude words such as "proximately" or "adjacently? Mihia (talk) 18:23, 28 July 2021 (UTC)

I just want to note that philosophers do modify be with -ly adverbs, like:

• 2014, Allan Bäck, Aristotle's Theory of Abstraction, Springer (→ISBN), page 209:

  [Aristotle says] Therefore that which is primarily and is simply (not is something) must be substance. [...] Only an individual substance, like Socrates, is or exists strictly, without qualification.

It's tedious to search for examples, though, because "is primarily X", "is simply X", etc. swamp them out. - -sche (discuss) 20:47, 27 July 2021 (UTC)

I think this is a different (non-copular) use of "be" to mean "exist". Yes, in this unusual case it can be modified by an adverb. Mihia (talk) 21:45, 27 July 2021 (UTC)

I can confirm that "be" isn't a copula in these cases, so it functions as a normal verb. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 17:15, 29 July 2021 (UTC)

The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language considers these to be prepositions without noun phrase complements, along with most of the words traditionally classed as ‘subordinating conunctions’. See this related Language Log post and, even more so, this related paper, both by one of the authors of the CGEL, for a summary of some of the arguments involved. — Vorziblix (talk · contribs) 04:12, 31 July 2021 (UTC)

Yes, now you mention it, I believe I have heard of this idea before. I can fathom "intransitive" prepositions in cases where an object is implied, e.g. "She is outside" understood to imply "She is outside the building". However, calling "back" a preposition in e.g. "He is back" is unfathomable to me, if that is what is being suggested. Having said that, to me there are serious problems also with it being either an adverb or adjective, so I suppose I ought to study the links that you provide to see if anything there convinces me that preposition could make sense. Mihia (talk) 12:14, 31 July 2021 (UTC)

Yes, that words like ‘back’ are prepositions in that sort of case is exactly what they argue. (Well, among many other things.) Basically, the gist is that the word is syntactically identical to a preposition (and incidentally not to any other kind of ‘adverb’), only that it licenses a different set of complements from what we might think of as the prototypical preposition — in this case, it takes no complement, instead of, say, a noun phrase. This is basically no different from the situation with verbs, where we still call intransitive verbs verbs even though they, too, license a different set of complements from transitive or ditransitive ones. Indeed, much as there are many verbs that can be used with multiple different valencies and types of complements, there are many prepositions that can be used either with a nominal complement, with a clausal complement, or with no complement at all, depending on the context. Overall, the syntactic arguments Pullum gives in the paper are, I think, quite convincing, and I wouldn’t hesitate to call these words prepositions myself. However, for the sake of general accessibility it might make sense to stick with the traditional classification of them as ‘adverbs’, unless we feel like being particularly daring. — Vorziblix (talk · contribs) 16:10, 31 July 2021 (UTC)

To the extent we have references arguing for or against one POS or another, we should summarize them in a usage note. "Many dictionaries analyse back in the senses [...] as an adverb,[1][2][3] but The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language argues [...]" - -sche (discuss) 08:07, 2 August 2021 (UTC)

or what

I think our entry is lacking senses; compare “or what” in Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English, Longman. PUC – 12:18, 28 July 2021 (UTC)

Is our definition abstract or what? Should we start with usage examples, cites, or what? DCDuring (talk) 14:45, 28 July 2021 (UTC)

Agreed (at least in UK slang): if you say something like "is he flirting with her or what" it's got some sort of emphatic function... I think... wow, I haven't heard this for years. Reminds me of this old ad, which played on the phrase: "Is he picking his nose, or what"? etc. Equinox ◑ 18:51, 28 July 2021 (UTC)

That’s made my day, thanks for sharing! (I’d have been either 8 or 9 when this came out and I’d forgotten about it). Overlordnat1 (talk) 12:34, 31 July 2021 (UTC)

AFAIK it's still current. I've used all three senses mentioned in Longman and hear them frequently (and I'm not very old). Andrew Sheedy (talk) 17:21, 29 July 2021 (UTC)

All three senses seem current to me too and in fact I sometimes use all three fwiw. The emphatic sense is perhaps a bit less popular than it used to be but I don’t think there’s much in it. Overlordnat1 (talk) 14:09, 31 July 2021 (UTC)

dossard (French)

One of the French definitions of dossard is "number on the back of a sportsman's shirt". It was FWOTD, so I imagine it had some eyes on it at some point, but does this word definitely mean the number, or does it mean the bib that carries the number? Mihia (talk) 18:00, 28 July 2021 (UTC)

It can probably mean both, primarily the bib, and by extension the number itself. – Jberkel 18:36, 28 July 2021 (UTC)

Right, thanks for amending that. Mihia (talk) 18:59, 28 July 2021 (UTC)

will

(archaic) To go.

• c. 1606, William Shakespeare, Macbeth

  I’ll to England.

I understand that the overall sense of "I'll to England" refers to going, but does "will" itself really mean "to go"? Mihia (talk) 21:12, 28 July 2021 (UTC)

Hmmm, Exactly. So does 'I'll will to England' therefore mean "I'll go to England" ? Leasnam (talk) 05:05, 29 July 2021 (UTC)

No, "will" doesn't mean "go" and never did. Rather, many auxiliary verbs could be used without a main verb and have "go" understood (e.g. "I must away now, I can no longer tarry"). This is actually still possible in German; I remember being startled when I was first learning German to hear someone say Ich muss zum Flughafen (“I must to the airport”) without a main verb. I'm not sure how to record this (either for archaic English or for contemporary German) in Wiktionary, though. —Mahāgaja · talk 07:37, 29 July 2021 (UTC)

This reminds me of sense 1 subsense 6 for would. If we can think of other verbs than ‘go’ that can get dropped after ‘will’, we could include a similar sense or subsense for our will entry, saying something like ‘used in various constructions with the ellipsis of the following verb’. Overlordnat1 (talk) 09:05, 29 July 2021 (UTC)

Hmm, of the three quotes used at sense 1 subsense 6 of would, I'd say the 1724 and 1887 quotes belong to subsense 7, and the 1846 quote is exactly the phenomenon I'm talking about, where the ellipsed verb is go. —Mahāgaja · talk 09:11, 29 July 2021 (UTC)

To me, the 1864 quote, "If I could fly, I would away to those realms of light and warmth", seems to be sense 2.1, an ordinary conditional use, the verb being "away". It may have been misunderstood that the verb e.g. "go" was omitted, e.g. it meant "go away", but I don't think that's the case. Mihia (talk) 09:27, 29 July 2021 (UTC)

That's quite possible too; I didn't realize that away could be a verb. —Mahāgaja · talk 09:59, 29 July 2021 (UTC)

Yes, it's poetic/archaic, but it fits well in that context. I'm pretty confident that "away" is meant as a verb so I'll move it. Mihia (talk) 16:33, 29 July 2021 (UTC)

Yes, it would be good to have examples of implied verbs with "will" other than verbs of motion, if any exist. "You have the meatballs and I'll the sausages"? Mihia (talk) 09:34, 29 July 2021 (UTC)

On second thoughts, sense 1 subsense 6 of would does seem like a ‘dodgy def’. Perhaps we should just replace it with a definition of ‘would go’, moving two of the quotes to subsense 7 and replace verb sense 8 of will with ‘will go’ instead? Overlordnat1 (talk) 10:07, 29 July 2021 (UTC)

I think it does rather depend on whether "go" is the only verb that can be ellipsed, which I am not sure about, though it wouldn't surprise me if other examples exist. I don't exactly understand the sense(s) in which "would" is used in the existing two examples (Defoe and Haggard) for 1.6. I added another one where "would" clearly implies "would go". I also don't understand "or postponement to a relative clause" in the definition of 1.6. An example of that would be good if anyone understands it. Mihia (talk) 16:58, 29 July 2021 (UTC)

It seems to me that a borderline acceptable non-go example of implied verb is something like "I would do the night shifts and he would the days", but somehow this seems to have a different nature, not particularly seeming archaic for one thing. Mihia (talk) 17:20, 29 July 2021 (UTC)

I know en-GB and en-US have different rules about verb ellipsis; to me (en-US speaker) "I would do the night shifts and he would the days" is ungrammatical. —Mahāgaja · talk 20:07, 29 July 2021 (UTC)

To me it is borderline ungrammatical. In any case, looking again, I don't know that it proves anything more than e.g. "When he wouldn't sing, I would" (= "I would sing"), which also seems very unlike the archaic examples implying "would go". Mihia (talk) 21:07, 29 July 2021 (UTC)

Regarding how to include it... off the top of my head, usage notes, or usexes with notes, i.e. put "I'll to Bristol" under the auxiliary verb definition-line and add {{q|with implied verb like "go"}}? - -sche (discuss) 15:38, 29 July 2021 (UTC)

Since we agree that the existing definition is just wrong, and since at the moment we have no examples of implied verbs other than "go" (or verb with similar meaning) that feel at all similar in nature (of course there are examples such as "If you won't ask then I will", implying "will ask"), I have for now changed the definition to read "Implying will go", but anyone else please feel free to change or augment this of course. Mihia (talk) 21:02, 29 July 2021 (UTC)

@mahagaja: Those examples are fairly limited, I wouldn't count können as primary example. must and 'll could in theses senses obscure reflexes of *mew- "move" and *h1ey- "go". *h1ey- derived the preterite of gaggan but was largely lost elsewhere, so our reconstruction of *gona is sketchy. Preterite became difficultly intertwined with mood and aspect, see coulda, would, shoulda. Why, by the way, those l's? Fairly obvious IMHO but very difficult to prove, not my job. ApisAzuli (talk) 22:05, 10 August 2021 (UTC)

to bid

Doesn't the sense "to pray" mentioned under etymology 2 belong with etymology 1? The cognates generally mean "to ask, pray", partially (e.g. in Dutch) also in the sense of "to say a prayer". 2A01:598:B101:7840:AED4:307B:5D5D:9DDE 11:12, 29 July 2021 (UTC)

See also Wiktionary:Etymology scriptorium § English bid (beodan and biddan).  --Lambiam 20:00, 31 July 2021 (UTC)

change definition of sona to be more broad

Doesn't sona refers to any representation of a person in fiction , like trollsona in homestuck. I don't know if definition from urban dictionary counts for sleng words urban dictionary Sona page but i think this term used in broader way, like "A representation of a person as a fictional character", could someone find better definition? 185.54.238.84 20:47, 29 July 2021 (UTC)

Hmm. You're probably right. I suppose it depends in part on whether we can find "durably-archived" examples (e.g. in books, magazines, etc) of bare "sona" to refer to non-fur sonas / representations of a person, or whether the broader meaning only exists in compounds like "trollsona" which might be viewed as uses of a suffix "-sona" or as blends of [other word]+"persona" (or +"fursona"). - -sche (discuss) 00:22, 30 July 2021 (UTC)