Wiktionary:Tea room/2022/February

discussion rooms: Tea room • Etym. scr. • Info desk • Beer parlour • Grease pit ← January 2022 · February 2022 · March 2022 → · (current)

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unripened cheese

Our def is: "A type of cheese which is consumed fresh." (So just any cheese that I haven't allowed to grow stale?) I think this is wrong and the actual manufacturing process is what should be described. For example I found this: "Unripened cheeses are made by coagulating milk proteins (casein) with acid. Examples include soft cheeses like cream cheese, cottage cheese and Neufchatel. Ripened cheeses are made by coagulating milk proteins with enzymes (rennet) and culture acids. These cheeses are then ripened (aged) by bacteria or mold." Equinox ◑ 03:21, 1 February 2022 (UTC)

I would say "Cheese that has not been aged" covers it. We could also add examples ", for instance cottage cheese or cream cheese". However, "fresh cheese" appears to be a synonym, so the present definition, although misleading, is not totally daft. SpinningSpark 16:08, 1 February 2022 (UTC)

There is a considerable semantic distinction between cheese that is not supposed to be subjected to a ripening process and accordingly is sold and consumed without having been ripened (for which fresh cheese is used as a synonym), and cheese that is meant to be subjected to a ripening process but has not yet undergone it, and therefore should not be sold to consumers and may even be unfit for consumption.  --Lambiam 17:16, 1 February 2022 (UTC)

• See w:Types of cheese#Fresh and whey cheeses. No other OneLook dictionary has a definition. DCDuring (talk) 19:07, 1 February 2022 (UTC)
  • Mostly because native speakers have as superficially as conveniently deemed the cheese names SOP, though they are often defined by law, as general parlance is not even acquainted with most, so we again discern the fallacy of defining idiomaticity by common occurrence. We have the term cream cheese as a general-use term, but the actual translations are not general use. It translates to German Frischkäse as a German term of comparable use but the exact correspondance is according to the German Wikipedia article that the English Wikipedia article links the very technical term Doppelrahmkäse, of which Frischkäse is a hypernym, more closely corresponding to English unripened cheese and fresh cheese. Of that we have again a hypernym soft cheese. Fay Freak (talk) 22:20, 1 February 2022 (UTC)

    Is there evidence that unripened cheese and fresh cheese (also whey cheese) are legal/regulatory or well-defined technical terms? DCDuring (talk) 01:18, 2 February 2022 (UTC)

    Of course, just search search EU documents. Also if they aren’t well-defined they are terms of law, they would still need to be given a definition to be applied in legal practice, as it surely has a definition, otherwise no point of using it in this fashion: “cheese, butter, fermented milk and cream, to which no ingredient has been added other than lactic products, food enzymes and micro-organism cultures essential to manufacture, or in the case of cheese other than fresh cheese and processed cheese the salt needed for its manufacture” (obviously idiomatic here, even if the term can be SOP). Fay Freak (talk) 05:09, 2 February 2022 (UTC)

    Who needs to pay attention to the FAO and use their terms? DCDuring (talk) 20:27, 3 February 2022 (UTC)

    Something can have a generally understood definition in colloquial English and then a different definition in bureaucratese. Fresh cheese could be understood as freshly made cheese - and that has been around for centuries and was not the creation of a bureaucracy. One example is the EU definition of chocolate is more stringent than the common definition - they might require a certain % of cocoa. At one stage, England was told by the EU they'd have to relabel English "milk chocolate" as "vegelate" as it didn't mean the EU definition. Of course, if there are two definitions, one broader and colloquial, the other narrower and bureaucrat, they could both be entered as definitions.2A00:23C8:A7A3:4801:182E:8EE2:1C57:DE47 08:05, 2 February 2022 (UTC)

  There are regulatory definitions of unripened cheese.^[1] It appears to me, though, that it is not terribly relevant whether a term has a regulatory definition (as seen e.g. in, “For the purpose of this Law, a performer shall be understood to mean an individual who engages personally in the performance of works”; in the same text, performance is defined as originating from engagement of a performer, leading to infinite regress), since this definition may be limited in its scope to the regulatory instrument in which it is defined, or in other documents referring to it. A term may have an idiomatic sense, but also be used as {{&lit}}, as seen here for extreme prejudice. It is plausible that the FAO definition (“cheese which is ready for consumption shortly after manufacture”) is also a common sense found in uses outside regulatory FAO texts, but this is not obviously true; we need to examine the ranges of meanings in which it is actually used.  --Lambiam 12:35, 2 February 2022 (UTC)

  The WP article, in the second paragraph of the lede, talks about the lack of standardization of terminology, apparently in the industry. Are there terms that are/were used for customs purposes? I'm not sure that terms used only for statistical purposes are per se worth including. DCDuring (talk) 18:16, 3 February 2022 (UTC)

Etymology of 'heaven'

I stumbled across what looks like an error on the page for English 'heaven' but I am not confident that I understand exactly how it should be changed. There is a link on that page labeled as Middle High German heben ‘sky, heaven’, but following the link takes one to German heben ‘lift, raise’. I think that is a mistake. There doesn't appear to be a separate entry for a Middle High German heben. I don't know of an etymological relation between a verb meaning lift and the noun heaven, though it is not inconceivable.

I also found an entry for Proto-West Germanic *hebn ‘sky, heaven’ and thought maybe the English ‘heaven’ should link to that instead. Svenonius (talk) 22:10, 1 February 2022 (UTC)

The link doesn't take you to the German verb, but to the head of the page. That's normal and due to the simple fact that the Middle High German lemma hasn't been created. However, I think you may indeed have found a mistake here because the form "heben" for "heaven" doesn't appear to exist in Middle High German. At least none of the relevant dictionaries seems to mention it. The Deutsches Wörterbuch gives it for modern Low German (where some dialects e.g. in Hamburg shift -ven > [bm], spelt "ben"). 84.57.154.13 01:48, 2 February 2022 (UTC)

It occurs very occasionally as a clear borrowing from Low German, so 1785 in Anton Reiser:

Dann wurde in dieser Predigt auch oft ein Ausdruck wiederholt, der für Anton außerordentlich rührend war, dieser klang ihm als: »ihr kommt in den Heben«. – Das letzte Wort nämlich, was immer verschlungen wurde, so daß er es nicht recht verstehen konnte, klang ihm wie Heben, und dies Wort oder dieser Laut rührte ihn bis zu Tränen, so oft er wieder daran dachte.

Fay Freak (talk) 13:25, 2 February 2022 (UTC)

Translation statistics and cleanup

I generated some per-language statistics on the translations tables.

As of today's data export, there are 2,608,722 translation entries in 2,058,162 lines in 184,507 tables in 135,818 ==Translations== sections on 124,100 pages.

Finnish is by far the most widely translated language, featured on 100,266 (54.34%) translation tables!

If you're interested in error cleanup, each language has links to any lines that generated errors. Some additional table related errors are available here.

For the purposes of these statistics, an "entry" is a single {{t}} (or variant thereof) template plus up to one {{g}} and one of either {{q}} or {{lbl}} templates (or their variants). If there are multiple {{t}} templates, they must be separated by a comma or a semicolon to count as separate entries. If an "entry" has multiple {{tt}} templates, or has text outside of a template or uses unexpected templates like {{gloss}}, it is counted as a single entry, but also counted as an error. There's also error-checking to verify that the language id used in {{t}} matches the language name used at the beginning of the line. JeffDoozan (talk) 22:52, 1 February 2022 (UTC)

wild plum

User:კვარია has just created the Svan entry ბა̈რყუ̂ენ and lists the translation as "wild plum (Prunus cerasifera), but I noticed our entry for wild plum lists multiple meanings but not Prunus cerasifera...is there anyone around with knowledge or time to research who is able to say if this sense should be added to the wild plum entry or not? 37.110.218.43 10:03, 2 February 2022 (UTC)

@37.110.218.43: That should have said cherry plum, not "wild plum". I think I might have used a bad English-Georgian dictionary. As for Svan, which I corrected now thanks to you, it's glossed as Georgian ტყემალი (ṭq̇emali) in all Georgian-Svan dictionaries, which is indeed cherry plum. კვარია (talk) 10:11, 2 February 2022 (UTC)

vulvar pronunciation

Entry gives the UK pronunciation as /ˈvʌlvɑː/ and did not (until now) give a US pronunciation. Is it really not /-ə/ like other -ars? (Is the difference to avoid homophony with vulva?) If it is really /-ɑː/ in the UK, do Americans also pronounce it /-ɑɹ/ like exemplar? - -sche (discuss) 21:29, 3 February 2022 (UTC)

Merriam Webster gives both /ɑ/ and schwa as possible pronunciations. Most online dictionaries don't seem to have separate entries or pronunciations given for this word. I'd be surprised if schwa is not possible in British English; there's no general principle that prevents homophony between -a nouns and -ar adjectives, as shown by the pair peninsula and peninsular (the latter, which ends with /ə/ per the OED, is I think a somewhat common misspelling of the former for writers who speak a non-rhotic accent).--Urszag (talk) 23:11, 3 February 2022 (UTC)

/ˈvʌlvə/ is a reading pronunciation used by those who like the pronunciation to match the spelling. Most English people don't have /ʌl/ in their English. More natural is /vɐlvə/ - as if "volva" - and even more natural still is vocalisation of the l: /voʊvə/. /ɑː/ is totally wrong in this word in GB English.2A00:23C8:A7A3:4801:733E:646C:63DA:CF9D 12:00, 4 February 2022 (UTC)

Those are all possible but very much Southern English pronunciations. I completely agree that most English people don’t say /ʌl/ but many, even those not from the North who otherwise have the CUT-PUT split, say it as /ʊl/. This is also true for many Americans in fact: if you listen to the sound file at fulminate, it’s from an American who says the first syllable identically to the word full. The /ɑː/ pronunciation does sound odd, you’re right there. Overlordnat1 (talk) 16:14, 4 February 2022 (UTC)

oodle

This entry currently redirects to oodles, but there's another sense, synonymous with doodle#Etymology_2, I'd like to add based on Citations:oodle. Is there a proper way to convert a redirect to a regular entry without stepping on any toes?

Btw, "oodle" for "a large quantity" sense is probably attestable in the singular too, even if non-standard (e.g., search Google Books for "an oodle of"; there are some results). 70.172.194.25 23:15, 3 February 2022 (UTC)

The only reason to be concerned about converting a redirect to an entry would be if the page had been deleted or there was some consensus or compelling reason to not create one- a redirect is really just a variation on having no page at all. There's no discussion I can find in the Talk, User talk or Wiktionary namespaces about this, there was an entry created in 2007 consisting entirely of "(singular of oodles), eight." that was deleted 42 minutes later as "tosh", and the current version with the redirect was added less than 2 years ago by @Munmula, a Portuguese native speaker not known for their work with English entries. In short: if the new entry meets CFI, there's no reason not to create it. Your entry would link to oodles, so no information would be lost. Chuck Entz (talk) 05:16, 4 February 2022 (UTC)

柿右衛門

User:Thibaut120094 noted, "Pitch accent lacks sources". I changed template rfref to rfv-pron. Help needed from Japanese-language editors. Cnilep (talk) 06:24, 4 February 2022 (UTC)

In Japanese, this is apparently the given name of the potter who started this style. See also the corresponding pages at Kotobank and Weblio. Surname was 酒井田 (Sakaida), born 1596-11-15, died 1666-7-20. As is the tradition in various areas of Japanese culture, it seems the Kakiemon name is also used by the successors who have continued the family business.

I'm not finding any resources that give a pitch accent for this, which is commonly the case for names -- where these entries exist, they tend to be more encyclopedic anyway. Both the given name and the full name are listed in my local copy of Daijirin, but neither entry gives any pitch accent. Not listed at all in either the NHK Accent Dictionary or SMK.

From what I can tell, the EN Wikipedia definition of this term as “a style of Japanese porcelain, with overglaze decoration called "enameled" ceramics” might be specific to usage in English. There is no corresponding JA WP article linked from the EN one, and attempting to browse to w:ja:柿右衛門 redirects to the full-name article at w:ja:酒井田柿右衛門, which is about the people (the first Sakaida Kakiemon in the 1600s, and his successors up through the current Sakaida Kakiemon the 15th, who apparently was born in 1968 and took on the "Kakiemon" name in 2014). The article does mention the 柿右衛門様式 (Kakiemon yōshiki, “Kakiemon style”).

Not sure if this is dictionary material, though, as our entry is currently written? I'd be happier, from a lexicography standpoint, if we focused more on the "word-ness" rather than the "thing-ness" of this term. Wikipedia is for the "thing-ness". ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 00:02, 12 February 2022 (UTC)

Pronunciation of AWOL

AWOL only lists an "ay-wol" pron, while Merriam-Webster also lists an "A-W-O-L" pron. Is the latter considered rare or ignorant?

Reason for asking: In Michael Cimino's 1978 movie The Deer Hunter, Meryl Streep's small-town character says her boyfriend is considered "ay double-you oh ell" in Vietnam. I was wondering whether that was regular for a small-town girl, or intended to paint her as out-of-touch with the war? (I've also found an inconclusive WordRef discussion about another movie.) 77.147.79.62 19:36, 4 February 2022 (UTC)

If the spelled pronunciation is common enough among either small-town or out-of-touch people, of which there is no lack, it should be listable, but a usage note or similar may be in order. One wonders, though, how the character Linda in the film learned that her boyfriend is absent without official leave. If she is out-of-touch, she wouldn‘t know the term A-W-O-L as meaning “having deserted”, but as she apparently knows it, did she then pick up the term from reading it?  --Lambiam 10:02, 5 February 2022 (UTC)

Maybe I confused the issue with the "reason to ask", let me rephrase: I wish to add the A-W-O-L pron to the AWOL page but Merriam-Webster doesn't qualify the two prons and I don't know which qualifier to give it. Should it be:

1. (US, rare or humorous) IPA^(key): ā-ˌdə-bəl-yu̇-ˌō-ˈel
2. (US, nonstandard or humorous) IPA^(key): ā-ˌdə-bəl-yu̇-ˌō-ˈel

(I'll fix this IPA bridge when I'll get there.) 77.147.79.62 18:55, 8 February 2022 (UTC)

Pustel example pronunciation

/ˈpʊstl̩/ is the correct pronunciation and Duden confirms it. I thought the snippet sounds instead like a spelling pronounciation after pusten /ˈpuːstn̩/. It doesn't sound at all like the one at Engl. boost /bu:st/ either way.

I do wonder if either of the initials is aspirated, seeing that Duden notates square brackets without any need to. I can hardly make out the difference. ApisAzuli (talk) 10:11, 5 February 2022 (UTC)

The speaker has a long vowel, but that's a pronunciatiation you do hear. I've added both and called the long one a "rarer variant". Influence by "pusten" is quite plausible, but it wouldn't be a spelling pronunciation in the strict sense. The words are probably associated with each other on semantic grounds: "Pustel" ~ "pusten" like "Blase" ~ "blasen".

I'm not sure I understand what you mean with "either of the initials is aspirated"? The initial /p/ of both "Pustel" and "pusten" would be aspirated in German, yes (except in a Colognian or other regional accent). But we don't mark aspiration in our transcriptions. 84.57.154.13 10:01, 6 February 2022 (UTC)

I thought a short (lax) vowel might influence the phonetics, and that this should be relevant for the etymology mainly because of the very similar fistula, which however reflects *dh; could also remind of *bh, I mean. See pox alleging *b, bh, for one. ApisAzuli (talk) 21:27, 8 February 2022 (UTC)

Wait, I don't remember if any entry suggested *dh. Even furuncle also suggests *bh though the etymology ("thief") seems less than convincing. ApisAzuli (talk) 21:39, 8 February 2022 (UTC)

philology

I think the definition at sense 1 needs to be improved. I do not think it is so closely akin to historical linguistics as the wording suggests. ·~ dictátor·mundꟾ 18:42, 6 February 2022 (UTC)

I updated it. ·~ dictátor·mundꟾ 18:39, 7 February 2022 (UTC)

plug, noun

I've come across this quote from 1972:

• "A Beech-Nut gum ad stresses that each pack contains eight sticks and displays a Wrigley pack, which has only seven. A plug for a Volkswagen Type III sedan insists that it has just as much in its compact as Maverick, Toyota or Datsun."

Is "plug" a dated term for an advertisement in general? I'm having trouble finding other quotes that are clearly not sense 8. Speaking of which that definition can be expanded; it's not limited to interviews. Ultimateria (talk) 06:21, 7 February 2022 (UTC)

The definition reads ‘# (slang) A mention of a product (usually a book, film, or play) in an interview, or an interview which features one or more of these.’ but the accompanying uses refers to an author plugging his book in an interview, in other words not just mentioning it but advertising it, even though he’s not paying for it to be advertised (so plug can’t be thought of as equivalent to paid advertisement or commercial here. I think a better definition would be: ‘# (slang) An advertisement of a product (usually a book, film, or play), either in an interview or a commercial.’ The part which reads ‘or an interview which features one or more of these.’ seems redundant and in fact its meaning isn’t clear to me. Often when the word advertisement in a cryptic crossword, it functions to indicate ad or plug as the solution, or part of the solution, to the clue. I’m rather less familiar with plug being used in this way IRL but the usage definitely exists. Overlordnat1 (talk) 14:28, 7 February 2022 (UTC)

First of all, this is really just the nominalization of the verb sense, which I think is really about promoting something rather than advertising it, per se. Etymonline says it dates back to 1902, which would seem to predate our modern publicity culture. Chuck Entz (talk) 15:17, 7 February 2022 (UTC)

Yeah, it's definitely more than just "a mention", and "promote" is a good word; it probably connotes more clearly than "advertise" that the plug need not be for a commercial product and need not be something the plugger paid or was paid to plug. Indeed, it need not be for "a product", just "something": e.g. google:"a plug for free speech", google:"a plug for democracy", or google:"a plug for vaccination" (which finds e.g. "Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear used the state's predicted shortage of monoclonal antibodies as a plug for vaccination", presumably meaning "as an opportunity to plug", which may be the kind of thing that motivated the "or an interview..." verbiage, but it doesn't do a good job of covering that use). I wonder if it can be used for a negative: all those examples are plugs for something or to do something ("a plug to get vaccinated", "we performed it on one of the first cable TV channels as a plug to save the funding for Music and Art"), can you sneak a plug against X into an interview? - -sche (discuss) 18:28, 7 February 2022 (UTC)

See applique, cp. 1. to plug a hole, plug-in, German Flicken (patch, as in patch-work), etwas in's Gespräch einflechten (literally to "waeve" into the conversation) 2. Bewerbung (“(job) application”) (be)werben (“advertise”). Seems fairly obvious to me, as I imagine types of motto samplers as plastered all over race car drivers today. In this view it must be old, yes. See also to pull (drafting), Ger. riesen Wirbel machen, die Werbetrommel rühren, die Kriegsfahne hissen (it's been a while since I looked at werben, which isn't immediately relevant anyway). ApisAzuli (talk) 21:52, 8 February 2022 (UTC)

We were using "plug" as a verb meaning "promote" - whether a paid promotion or not - in the mid 60s, IIRC. No, I have no sources for that statement. @Chuck Entz: As for the negative, I've never heard or read of such a usage, "a plug against X". @ApisAzuli: Presume you meant "weave" - or is that too presumptuous? yoyo (talk) 05:44, 22 February 2022 (UTC)

pianella

Should we add pianella to our translations at slipper and mule? Our page for pianella says that it can mean mule and someone on the talk page for slipper claims that it can mean slipper. We’re also missing an etymology for pianella, the suggestion is made at the talk page for slipper that it comes from piano as people walk quietly/softly when wearing slippers or mules. This meaning of pianella is missing at Italian Wiktionary [[2]] but the dictionary references below the entry give meanings that could seemingly refer to either slippers or mules (seemingly referring in Italian to low-heeled or no-heeled shoes) and also give piano as the etymology. Overlordnat1 (talk) 21:46, 7 February 2022 (UTC)

Italian piano comes from Latin planus, which means "flat", and I suspect that's still the main meaning outside of music. A pianella would then be a "little flat thing". That said, it:Pianella (calzatura) seems to be something else, entirely- judging by the interwiki link to English, a chopine. I've never really studied Italian, so I'm not the one to sort this out. Chuck Entz (talk) 04:04, 8 February 2022 (UTC)

Platform shoes 50cm high - well I never! Plugging the Italian Wiki page into Google Translate [3] it seems to be saying that pianelle started out meaning chopines but that the word has come to mean any backless shoes with a flat and unraised heel, so slipper and mule may or may not substitutable with pianella depending on context. I’ve added this word as a synonym of mule but not slipper due to the requirement for it to be backless - of course Italian speakers can and should amend or revert as they see fit if this is wrong. Overlordnat1 (talk) 14:22, 10 February 2022 (UTC)

pump

The definition for pump is inaccurate as it doesn’t refer to trainers. A pump is a low-top shoe with a rubber sole and canvas upper and a trainer is a high-top shoe with a rubber sole and a typically synthetic upper, the only thing that they really have in common is that they have rubber rather than leather soles. As I understand it, a sneaker is just a rubber-soled shoe, so could mean either pump or trainer. May I suggest an improved definition: ‘A low-top shoe with a rubber sole and a canvas upper; A gym shoe; A plimsoll; A low-top canvas sneaker’. Also the tags ‘plural only’ and ‘chiefly plural’ at Thesaurus: sports shoe are somewhat misleading and untrue and does anyone in the U.K really use jogger to refer to a type of shoe? I haven’t heard it myself but it may be rare or regional. Overlordnat1 (talk) 23:32, 7 February 2022 (UTC)

I’ve improved the definition at pump but I’ve just realised that there’s another problem: we define gym shoe to mean trainer but gym shoes to mean pumps, even though these are completely different items of footwear (again the confusion may arise from Americans and Canadians using sneaker to refer to them both but we shouldn’t have a singular and plural form defined differently like this in any case). Overlordnat1 (talk) 12:35, 10 February 2022 (UTC)

I’ve just done a Google Image search and gym shoes is used overwhelmingly to mean trainers rather than pumps, in fact I can find only one hit where the image is of pumps[4]. However searching instead for gym shoe does yield a few more hits where the image is clearly of a pump/plimsoll[5]. I’ve amended both gym shoe and gym shoes accordingly as clearly gym shoe can be singular and plural and can clearly have two meanings: pump and trainer. Overlordnat1 (talk) 09:15, 11 February 2022 (UTC)

@Overlordnat1: you wrote: "A pump is a low-top shoe with a rubber sole and canvas upper ...". Well, I never! My Dad's "patent-leather pumps" in the mid to late 1950s were his prized, oh so glossy and soft, lightweight, dancing shoes. He never wore anything else on his feet when my parents went out dancing (a favourite pastime). Now, I won't swear that the soles weren't rubber, but that would have been very unusual at the time in Australia, when all the best shoes still had a fine leather sole. By the way, Dad had a couple of lasts and did all our footwear repairs; we typically went through two soles and three heels in addition to the originals, before we discarded any uppers. He only started using rubber soles in the early 60s; which made the timing of the Beatles' album "Rubber Soul" very with-it. yoyo (talk) 05:54, 22 February 2022 (UTC)

@Yahya Abdal-Aziz: I would say that your Dad’s shoes would come under the category of either sense 3 ‘dancing shoes’ (see ‘ballet pumps’ on Google Images for examples) or sense 4 ‘heel-less shoes’. Sense 1 of ‘pump’ (plimsoll) is different and arguably counts as a dialect word for plimsoll as in the parts of the U.K where people say ‘pump’ (Midlands, Northern England, North Wales), the word ‘plimsoll’ is at least recognised but not necessarily vice versa - ‘pump’ is the overwhelmingly preferred term to ‘plimsoll’ in the areas where it exists though. ‘Dap’ (South West England (‘West Country’) and South Wales) could also be considered to be a dialect word for the exact same reasons. I remember being astonished when my sister’s ex-boyfriend, from Essex, not only said ‘plimsoll’ but HADN’T EVEN HEARD of ‘pump’ when my sister (we’re originally from Birmingham) said it (Maybe that’s why he’s her ex?)! The Shakespeare quote does seem to be wrongly placed though and should probably be at either sense 3 or 4. Overlordnat1 (talk) 10:04, 22 February 2022 (UTC)

azure pronunciation issue

The given US audio doesn't match any of the three IPA transcriptions (UK or US)! She says it approximately the way I would (stressing the second syllable) but the three transcriptions all stress the first. Equinox ◑ 06:50, 8 February 2022 (UTC)

Odd, looks like this was brought up on the talk page years ago, by an editor who described second-syllable stress as "incorrect". It's not hard to find examples of that stress pattern using Youglish, but it might be a case like cyan where dictionaries have been slow to record it.--Urszag (talk) 07:34, 8 February 2022 (UTC)

I don’t know why I can’t find the old chat, even in the archives - most strange. Personally I also place the stress on the second syllable: I’m certainly familiar with the stress being on the first syllable too though, it immediately makes me think of Rule Britannia (‘When Britain ro-o-o-o-ose from azure main’). Another interesting Youglish link is for chorizo, searching for that word yields many examples of English and Irish people (and no doubt Welsh and Scottish if you scour it thoroughly) saying it as CHORITSO, CHOREETSO and the like - it’s not remotely surprising to me but is good proof that these pronunciations exist, even if they are proscribed. I might well add them to the chorizo article. Overlordnat1 (talk) 11:05, 8 February 2022 (UTC)

I agree with the American default being emphasis on the second syllable but that emphasis on the first syllable is out there. Also, the term is used in Mass Effect 2 & etc. as an in-universe sexual slang. Here's a clip: [6] @ 58:28. --Geographyinitiative (talk) 13:28, 8 February 2022 (UTC)

Good catch, what an omission! :o In this stackexchange thread, someone says "in the US, [stress] goes on the first syllable: AZH-uhr /ˈæʒər/, while in the UK, it's more likely to go on the second syllable: az-YOOR /azˈj(ʊ)ə/", but AFAICT both stresses actually exist in both places, since Americans can also stress the second syllable and British people can also stress the first. (One commenter says "OED is full of surprises. 2nd ed gives stress on the first syllable, which I have never heard", whereas another says "As an English native since birth (I'm 44 years old, as I write this), I have never heard the word pronounced with stress on the second syllable except by (some, not all) Microsoft employees".) Both stackexchange and this wordreference thread mention /ˈeɪ-/ as another possible onset BTW, which we apparently also listed at some time in the past? (Actually, I see we also listed the second-syllable stress for the US until it was removed in diff.) - -sche (discuss) 13:49, 8 February 2022 (UTC)

I don’t know how accurate the claims that on stack exchange that if an American stresses the first syllable he has a ‘Texan drawl’ but perhaps there’s an element of truth to it, as stressing the first syllable of cement and Japan that way are classic examples of Southern speech (listen, for example, to how June Carter says ‘Jaypan’ in the song Jackson [7]). We have an alternative pronunciation listed at cement, so we should perhaps add one for Jaypan (there are a surprisingly large number of hits for Jaypan on GoogleBooks [8]). Overlordnat1 (talk) 21:46, 8 February 2022 (UTC)

I doubt /ˈæʒɚ/ is a particularly Texan pronunciation (it probably exists there only to a similar extent as in the US in general, though it's too bad Stephen G Brown isn't around to say!), I suspect saying it sounds like a Texas drawl is indeed just referencing that Southern tendency to stress first syllables, so to someone who says /əˈʒʊɹ/, /ˈæʒɚ/ "sounds" like it might be Southern.
I don't think the Jaypan pronunciation is used any more(?) so if we add it, it's probably dated. (But based on it and police and TV and so on, I kinda suspect the way azure would actually get drawled if a Texan were stressing it on the first syllable is more like the /ˈeɪʒɚ/ pronunciation stackexchange mentions, but for all I currently know, they might never stress it on the first syllable at all, any more than assure.) - -sche (discuss) 23:03, 10 February 2022 (UTC)

FWIW, I just asked native English-speaking friends and the feedback so far is: one Englishman, an African-American, two white Americans and a Puerto Rican all rhyme it with assure, stress on the second syllable, but one Englishwoman does say /ˈaʒə/ like the dictionaries do. - -sche (discuss) 23:03, 10 February 2022 (UTC)

@-sche: I just asked another Aussie, and she also pronounces it as I do, as you described: "rhyme it with assure, stress on the second syllable"; but with a clear /z/ (not palatalised to /ʒ/), a glide /j/ and a diphthong: /azˈjʊə/. yoyo (talk) 06:39, 22 February 2022 (UTC)

I've only heard the stress on the first syllable. (US; NYC area) DCDuring (talk) 14:33, 22 February 2022 (UTC)

FWIW I always say /ˈæʒər/ with stress on the first syllable, maybe because I learned this term from singing "Rule Britannia". The pronunciations /əˈʒʊɹ/ or (more likely) /əˈʒɚ/ are grating although I hear them a lot in reference to Microsoft's product. Longman's Pronouncing Dictionary lists a second-syllable pronunciation as the 7th of 7 UK pronunciations, and gives the first-syllable pronunciation /ˈæʒər/ as the only possible US pronunciation. Likewise the Cambridge Dictionary [9] gives /ˈæʒ.ɚ/ as the only possible US pronunciation, and again likewise Merriam-Webster [10], and once again likewise the Collins Dictionary with /æʒʊər/ [11]. User:-sche, User:DCDuring do you think we should list the US second-syllable pronunciations as "sometimes proscribed" since they seem not to be in any dictionaries? Benwing2 (talk) 03:08, 16 June 2024 (UTC)

We seem to find it hard to support pre- and pro-scription in matters of grammar. It seems even harder for pronunciation. I have no opinion on the specific case, my inattentive tin ears not hearing this spoken very often. DCDuring (talk) 03:32, 16 June 2024 (UTC)

If a modern authority actively proscribes it i.e. affirmatively states "X is substandard/incorrect"/"don't use X", then sure (ideally we'd even write a whole usage note); OTOH, I would not use "proscribed" if it's merely passively not documented/mentioned. (Taking lack of mention to mean proscription leads to weird places, e.g. are new senses of words which other dictionaries haven't caught up to also all proscribed?) If something were too rare to have been noticed and proscribed, I'd go with "rare" or "nonstandard" instead of "proscribed", but in this case second-syllable stress seems too widespread to call it "rare", IMO. Maybe we write a usage note like: Such-and-such pronunciation is the only one mentioned in dictionaries A, B, and C. Online [at Youglish, etc], the most common pronunciations are 1, 2, 3. + anything else that's been said about it. - -sche (discuss) 03:58, 16 June 2024 (UTC)

FWIW, of the first 200 ostensibly US Youglish examples (which in fact include a very large number of non-US speakers), 154 usable videos, I hear:

• 109 (~70%) /ˈæʒɚ/ (dominated by references to Microsoft), albeit this includes a range of realizations such as instances with a noticeable degree of secondary stress (sometimes nearly equal stress) on the second syllable, as well as shifting of its vowel away from a true schwar towards the cure vowel or pore vowel but not enough that I would consider it phonemically different), plus 1 [ˈæʒjɚ] that had a particularly noticeable [j]. (This is more common than I realized, and second-syllable stress is less common than I realized, at least in this sample of this corpus.)
  • 8 /ˈæʒʊɹ/ (cases where the second syllable got so far away from schwar that it seems to be phonemically /-ʊ(ə)ɹ/ with the same vowel quality as in the examples where that second syllable was the one stressed)
• 16 (~10%) /əˈʒʊɹ/ (I am surprised to have found so few examples of this! Like Whoop whoop, this is the pronunciation I was familiar with, though it's clearly not as ubiquitous as either of us thought. Neat.)
• 15 (~10%) /əˈz(j)ʊɹ/, of which 12 are /əˈzʊɹ/ with no /j/, vs only 3 /əˈzjʊɹ/ with /j/
• 2 /ˈæzɚ/ (like the start of Azerbaijan)
• 2 /ˈæzjʊɹ/
• 1 /ˈæzjɚ/
• 46 videos were excluded due to being private/unviewable, because azure was not actually present in the video (instead the word was de jure /də ˈʒʊɹ/ etc and the transcriber misheard), as repeats of a previous speaker I happened to recognize (others slipped through into the counts above), for being machine-generated; or for being someone who was non-native or clearly stumbling their way through unfamiliarity with the word, including cases where the result was something off-the-wall like /-sʊɹ/, /-ʃʊɹ/, /ækʃʊɹ/.

(I might try and make a count some other time excluding Microsoft's brand-name product and only looking at other uses of the word.)

I didn't come across a single /ˈeɪ-/ (perhaps it's limited to singing and I didn't come across any songs, only speech). - -sche (discuss) 07:19, 16 June 2024 (UTC)

Interestingly, if I exclude videos about Microsoft Azure (and a few unviewable private videos, videos where the word didn't occur, or repeats), then of the first 700 ostensibly-US videos at Youglish, I find 59 videos of people using it as a color word, of which 64% have first syllable stress and 35% have second-syllable stress, each category being split between /ʒ/ and /z/:

• 19 (32%) have /ˈæʒɚ/ (incl. 3 with significant secondary stress on second syllable, /ˈæˌʒɚ/, and 1 with weak [j] [ˈæʒ(j)ɚ])

  3 more have /ˈæʒˌjɚ/ with a pronounced /j/

  and 3 have /ˈæʒˌjʊɹ/~[ˌjo̞ɹ] with a 'full'/non-schwa second vowel (perhaps from enunciating an uncommon word)

• 14 (23%) have /əˈzʊɹ/ (incl. two with second syllable approaching or reaching the pore vowel ~[ˈzo̞ɹ]; and 3 where the first, not-primary-stressed vowel approaches unreduced [æ], likely from enunciating for poetry or from unfamiliarity, like church singers pronounce angel /-ɛl/; and 3 with /əˈz(j)ʊɹ/ with a weak /j/)
• 10 (17%) have /ˈæzˌjʊɹ/~[ˌjo̞ɹ]

  2 more have /ˈæzʊɹ/~[o̞ɹ] without the /j/

  1 has /ˈæzjɚ/ with a reduced/schwa second vowel

• 7 (11%) have /əˈʒʊɹ/ (incl. a couple with the second syllable approaching ~[ˈʒo̞ɹ], and 3 where first vowel approaches enunciated/unreduced [æ])

(Not counted above but meriting dishonorable mentions are 1 mistranscription of du jour, 1 of de jure.)

- -sche (discuss) 19:21, 16 June 2024 (UTC)

So, Microsoft inflates /ˈæʒɚ/ (it's only 32-40% of uses of azure as a color word, but 70% if people talking about the brand name are included), and I still have never found /ˈeɪ-/. Also, /əˈzʊɹ/ is consistently more common than /əˈzjʊɹ/ so I may rejigger the pronunciation section to reflect that (it formerly only listed /əˈzjʊɹ/). - -sche (discuss) 19:25, 16 June 2024 (UTC)

That's quite the research! Thanks for the work. Definitely some comments in the Pronunciation section are in order. Benwing2 (talk) 19:30, 16 June 2024 (UTC)

I finally found /eɪ-/ in this, which says it's a recording of Rule, Britannia from 1899, and this, which says it's a recording from 1909. That pronunciation, mentioned in old reference works, would (along with /æ-/) be the expected outcome of the two Middle English pronunciations we list: /a/→/æ~a/, /aː/→/eɪ-/. I don't know if /eɪ-/ is still used. (This, from 1914, has the now-familiar /æ~a/.)
I suspect most uses of /əˈzʊɹ/ and /əˈʒʊɹ/ are spelling pronunciations, like the modern pronunciation of Alfred, nephew or adieu, but because I haven't managed to find anything to support or contradict that (and because e.g. Spanish and Portuguese azur and some other cognates stress the second syllable, so it's not completely inconceivable something else could be at work) I haven't put any claim of spelling pronunciation into the Usage/Pronunciation note I added. A few instances of /əˈz(j)ʊɹ/ I spotted were travel guides discussing the color of the sea near places that have French names with azur in them, conceivably trying to approximate French /a.zyʁ/ more closely than /ˈæʒɚ/ does. - -sche (discuss) 23:02, 18 June 2024 (UTC)

An excellent analysis. It’s also interesting to hear ‘all’ pronounced in an almost American way as ‘ahl’ instead of the standard ‘awl’ in all 3 of the early Rule Britannia recordings. That’s something that you’ll hear sometimes in decades old films with posh people speaking but even then it’s fairly rare. I suppose it was more commonplace a few decades before even those were made though. Overlordnat1 (talk) 00:30, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

Berlin, Bârlad and swamps

I am trying to find the exact etymology of Bârlad (a city in Romania).

The consensus in Romanian linguistics is that it's from Old East Slavic, from a root meaning "swamp" (t, the same root that is also found in Berlin, but I can't seem to find anywhere a proper Proto-Slavic root (Berlin also lacks the root, it says just "Proto-Slavic"). Bogdan (talk) 20:15, 8 February 2022 (UTC)

Probably *bara. You only have to search for "Slavic swamp" and a cognate appears among the first results. ApisAzuli (talk) 22:22, 8 February 2022 (UTC)

I don't quite understand how *bara could end up as *berl in both Western and Eastern Slavic languages. Bogdan (talk) 14:30, 9 February 2022 (UTC)

@Bogdan: It’s a novelesque fiction. The alleged “Old Polabian” (what ever that is, generally an imagination in my opinion) is sometimes starred as *berl or *birl , the alleged “root” *brl- I would only see in *bьrlogъ (“cave”); the ESSJa location for this word does not contain any similar words. “I remembered that the word ‘berl’ means swamp in many Slavic languages.” is from a parallel universe. “Swamp” is *bolto. Fay Freak (talk) 15:34, 10 February 2022 (UTC)

The Vocabularium Venedicum (most complete monument of the Polabian language) does not have it. It would be on page 282, but they have "Un marais. Pórou." (Same for this copycat source: [12], p. 122.) Unless this is the same word, but without an -l-? 70.172.194.25 16:21, 10 February 2022 (UTC)

Good find. I don’t know what all those orthographies of Polabian stand for, after it has been normalized countless times (the Wikipedias do not really tell us the correspondences of phonemes and spellings, fail!), but whatever vowel there could be I am afraid to be far of what is needed to have that outcome. Maybe @Gnosandes knows, but he is on leave. Perhaps @Bezimenen knows another match, since the ESSJa volumes, particularly the older ones, may not contain every Proto-Slavic item that there is good evidence for. I have reworked the Berlin article already. Fay Freak (talk) 17:01, 10 February 2022 (UTC)

I know of a few potentially related terms to Proto-Slavic *bьrloga, e.g. Bulgarian surnames Бърляв, Бърлев, nickname Бърльо, dial. бърли́в (bǎrlív, “bewildered, deranged”), Serbo-Croatian bŕljati (“to muddle”), bŕlja (“puddle; type of booze”) < presumably Proto-Slavic *bьrľь (probably meaning “disordered, confused”), further away Lithuanian bur̃las (“swamp”), but I can't tell if these bare any significance to the etymology of Berlin and Bârlad. On the surface level, Bârlad could reflect *bьrľь +‎ *-ědь (hypothetically “disorganized place”), however, this is just a speculation. Безименен (talk) 19:07, 10 February 2022 (UTC)

@Bezimenen: Thanks. The Serbo-Croatian is surely related to nothing else here. The Serbo-Croatian noun seems deverbal from the verb, which is merely a variant of pŕljati (“to muddle”), which gives us the normal word for “dirty” in BCS pȑljav, and seems to have an original meaning “to fill with litter, vollrümpeln” from pȓlj m (“pale, stake of wood, faggot”), there also being the deverbal pȑlja (“dirty spot, stain”), often mȑlja (“dirty spot, stain”), from which HJP derives the p-forms claiming mȑlja “expressive”, so also Skok sub voce mrlj. And Štrekelj, Karel (1904) Zur slavischen Lehnwörterkunde (Denkschriften der Kaiserlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften. Philosophisch-Historische Classe; 50. III. Abhandlung) (in German), Wien: In Commission bei Carl Gerold’s Sohn, page 38 (US-VPN!), deemed it loaned from Bavarian Merl n, Mirl n (“stain, blot”) found in Schmeller! Fay Freak (talk) 20:29, 10 February 2022 (UTC)

@Bezimenen: Via our entry for Latvian pùrvs (“swamp, morass”) I find that we have an entry for Polabian poro f (“swamp; mud”), a more usual spelling. It dubiously derives itself from Proto-Slavic *pàra, which is, as linked from other Slavic entries, rather the word for “steam”. I am going to emend that etymon to *bàra (“puddle”); it even has its accent, and it is also in in Lower Sorbian para (“mud”), one failed to note these devoiced forms at our Proto-Slavic entries. ApisAzuli was right in the end then, this poro f is the Polabian word for “swamp” and it is *bara. Fay Freak (talk) 20:47, 10 February 2022 (UTC)

@Bogdan: I talk of fiction because the Germanist works contain a lot of entries treating Slavic as though it weren’t a well-attested language group. Imagine the fancy by which low-brow academics treat actual Trümmersprachen!

In a treatise titled “Die Ortsnamen im Hannoverschen Wendland”, where some proposed Slavic terms look more Persian than Slavic (*kula …), where *bara is also glossed “swamp”, for Barnitz, I find, for Belitz, the claim of a *běla or *bělь, which latter you find in Trubachyov, Oleg, editor (1975), “*bělь”, in Этимологический словарь славянских языков [Etymological dictionary of Slavic languages] (in Russian), numbers 2 (*bez – *bratrъ), Moscow: Nauka, page 84, meaning “swamp”. But I think the meaning could have been the “бѣ́лое по́ле (bě́loje póle, “white field”) cited by ESSJa, in reference to the sandy ground of the area (it belonging to the so-called “märkische Streusandbüchse”).

“Swamp” seems to be a kind of racist meme, for it’s true that ancient Slavs “lived in the swamps”, but it does not mean that every location and location name has to be related to swamps, the more so if geographically the stead is not exactly Tenochtitlan.

Formally, as your German is probably low, I note that in the local accent of Berlin, as in most Low and Central German accents, postvocalic /r/ is vocalized to /ɐ/. I don’t know how old this feature is, but if it is then an ⟨r) after either ⟨e) or ⟨a) easily appears as a rendering of the outcome of the ѣ (ě) vowel.

The most strange occurrence however it is of course that it is only for some Wiktionarian to find the best etymology for the German capital. Fay Freak (talk) 16:15, 10 February 2022 (UTC)

Not that it matters but I would consider it uncertain anyway. ApisAzuli (talk) 10:01, 17 February 2022 (UTC)

@ApisAzuli: I do too, nonetheless we cannot but emphasize that the usual story about the origin is falsified, given the absence of the claimed etyma in Slavist literature or the materials of individual Slavic languages, and only supported by fake lexical items. Right now I have looked into German Wikipedia’s Berlin#Namensherkunft und erste Besiedlungen and they even mention an alleged current lake Berl in Berlin-Neu-Hohenschönhausen, not mentioned in the Deutsches Ortsnamenbuch referenced nor the best maps, nor is there a Berlsee or Berlteich or Berl separately searched with water words, the apparent reason why this Berl is not linked by Wikipedia with further information.

This fiction is apparently the Armutszeugnis our political landscape needs, so I won’t look forward to convince German Wikipedia or Wiktionary to remove the spurious: Mundus vult decipi, ergo decipiatur, it’s sinngemäß in their rules. While Bielefeld has seriös publication elaborating its etymological history, the capital of the nation needs a foundation myth, for what sport would arise if it became public conscience that the etymology of Berlin is unresolved? Not the same indifference that Bielefelders manifest about belonging to a city whose name as well as location in the physicial realm remains unresolved. Fay Freak (talk) 22:56, 17 February 2022 (UTC)

There is however a Perleberg (Kreis Prignitz) and I do wonder if it relates, seeing that *p is a regular correspondence as per pool, Pfuhl (Pfeifer considers Pfuhl uncertain) and the area is sprinkled with lakes. Lake Werbellin (Barnim) and Fehrbellin ("Belin", 1216) are close. These are notably stressed on the last syllable, so *lindos or llan for example should be fair comparisons. I'm not aware of any *Berl in the area of Weißensee-Hohenschönhausen; chances are the area got drained in the GDR projects – Orankesee would be the next familiar address. --ApisAzuli (talk) 10:09, 18 February 2022 (UTC)

The Deutsches Ortsnamen-Buch (ed. Manfred Niemeyer, De Gruyter 2012) honestly has Perleberg (1239 perleberge) as Prunkname from Perle (“pearl”), quite baroque really, "Johann Gans von Perleberg" as founder and a later attested river die Perle nearby. ApisAzuli (talk) 10:59, 18 February 2022 (UTC)

I have found Berlpfuhl n Ahrensfelde by Brandenburgisches Namenbuch. 10. [13] I have not heard of it @Fay Freak: --ApisAzuli (talk) 19:41, 18 February 2022 (UTC)

There is the Berl in Neuhohenschönhausen (Am Berl, 13051 Berlin –g-maps). ApisAzuli (talk) 12:00, 23 February 2022 (UTC)

Dragus Moldovanu discusses Bârlad: Reconstructing an Old Slavic toponymic field: the base *bĭrl- in Romanian toponymy and its historical implications (2009, DOI:10.1524/slaw.2009.0022). ApisAzuli (talk) 12:55, 23 April 2022 (UTC)

@ApisAzuli, Bogdan: A good overview of a reference, and speculative phantasy. The author makes no better comparisons than we do, mostly heterogenous-origin place names, including reference to the irreducible Proto-Slavic *bьrloga and Serbo-Croatian bŕlja which is probably wrongly adduced as shown above due to its dissimilatory relations, so there hasn’t been any *bьrľь as none is documented in Trubachyov, Oleg, editor (1976), “*bělь”, in Этимологический словарь славянских языков [Etymological dictionary of Slavic languages] (in Russian), numbers 3 (*bratrьcь – *cьrky), Moscow: Nauka, page 170, not to speak of Polish berło (“stick”) the Latin origin of which he recognizes.

The mentioned idea that Bârlad is a Cuman word from Arabic بِلَاد (bilād), like the now omnipresent French bled, is lovely though: in this position р (r) is well parasitic, as we witness in the example of the Turkism карма́н (karmán). (We will have to watch out for others.) Fay Freak (talk) 16:33, 24 April 2022 (UTC)

So now the berl- etymology is debunked, but without a wink we have 12th century Germany -er- < ѣ (ě) because "in the local accent of Berlin, as in most Low and Central German accents, postvocalic /r/ is vocalized to /ɐ/"? Call me old-fashioned, but I think the vocalization of /r/ is more (actually, much more) recent. The letters of Frederick II, which betray a radically naive way of spelling right as he spoke, have no sign of it in 18th century Berlinerisch.

Another case of r ex nihilo in a German loan from a Slavic source might convince, though. –Austronesier (talk)

@Austronesier: I actually tried to find information on the dating, and spreading, of this phonetic detail, back when this discussion was started, to little avail, perhaps as this is hard to search or has no certain name I know of, and as this is the area where the interests of exact phoneticians and knowledges of historical philologists coincide but little. The details use to become murkier beyond the age of the printing press however. There is some reason why one fellow speaks European languages of the 16th century but not 14th century or earlier, which would culminate into the trifles certain two people on Wiktionary who know Latin and its descendants well and are not me argue walls of texts about.

I do remember particular versions about the pronunciation of Middle High German, of which its alphabetic representation is an inadequate approximation, but then again the theory (which I have not even expressed at the entry page to the benefit of alternatives) was about Middle Low German and for the time in question the limit between Low and High German was farther south, no? Not going down this rabbithole again, in the end Berlin is at the apex of the High German area anyway and it is not determined whether it is e.g. an exonym. I also have redoubts whether the vocalization practice differed across social strata, of which Frederick’s pronunciation, or any one we tend to infer from written language in general, would only be the tip of the iceberg artificially reinforced; like you know, has been demonstrated for the English in New York City in the last century by certain famous studies.

This complexity of inquiry linguists run away from—they rather invent some origin words to call it a day. Not my fault anyway that the “ex officio” theories have even more problems. Fay Freak (talk) 19:55, 24 April 2022 (UTC)

The whole area of Berlin was (East) Low German-speaking until probably just a few generations before Frederick II, so we're definitely talking about loaning into Middle Low German. As for Frederick's German, it was probably decisively basilectal, since his German-language interactions were mostly restricted to communication with domestic personnel and lower-rank soldiers.

In the end of course I agree with you that the most honest solution is to say "we don't know", instead of presenting a spurious Polabian-based etymology that was carved out from thin air. –Austronesier (talk) 20:46, 24 April 2022 (UTC)

년료 (NK) - 연료 (SK) - 燃料 - fuel

I am having a bit of trouble verifying the North Korean variant 년료(燃料) (nyeollyo) of 연료(燃料) (yeollyo). Can something please confirm that this variant is valid? (Notifying TAKASUGI Shinji, HappyMidnight, Tibidibi, Quadmix77, Kaepoong, AG202): ? --Anatoli T. ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 22:58, 9 February 2022 (UTC)

@Atitarev Hmmm 조선말대사전, a North Korean dictionary lists it as 연료 (yeollyo) and 우리말샘 doesn't have a listing for 년료 at all either, nor am I seeing hits online so it makes me feel like it doesn't exist? But I could be wrong. AG202 (talk) 01:37, 10 February 2022 (UTC)

@AG202: Thanks! --Anatoli T. ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 03:07, 10 February 2022 (UTC)

Yep no problem! AG202 (talk) 19:17, 11 February 2022 (UTC)

jogger means ‘jogging shoe’?

At [[14]] and [[15]] we have jogger and joggers respectively listed as synonyms. On our actual entry for jogger though, this definition isn’t given. I found one Australian quote and added it to Citations:jogger and labelled the synonym as rare on the other two pages. In fact at [[16]] there’s a hidden reference, which can only be seen when one goes to edit the page, which claims that using jogger to mean jogging shoe is Geordie English - I imagine that this information was taken from Wikipedia [[17]] but their reference is in turn a dead link (it was the Geordie Dictionary at www.englandsnortheast.co.uk.). Can we find any other uses, or information as to where this term is used? Overlordnat1 (talk) 12:10, 10 February 2022 (UTC)

Interestingly, this link (https://englandsnortheast.co.uk/geordie-dictionary-i-l/) is similar to the Wikipedia one and works but instead mentions that jabs can refer to gym shoes/pumps/plimsolls/dabs and makes no mention of jogger meaning jogging shoes or trainers. Overlordnat1 (talk) 12:19, 10 February 2022 (UTC)

Since you suggested the sense was Australian, I tried w:Trove. A search there yields enough uses that this definitely passes CFI: [18]. It can also refer to a tracksuit, especially the pants, so some care is needed when adding quotations. Google Books also has results (again, some sifting is needed). I checked the first three relevant results and at least two of them had Australian authors. Btw, the Wayback Machine has the Geordie Dictionary page, but I don't see "jogger(s)" listed. And the version with the access date given on Wikipedia is no better. The reference does have sand shoes, so maybe they were only referencing that part. 70.172.194.25 15:07, 10 February 2022 (UTC)

Thank you for your excellent reply, I’ll create an entry based on the results you’ve found shortly. On a related note I rather doubt the other definition of jogger, as instead of meaning ‘a tracksuit, especially the trousers’ surely it’s always joggers that means ‘jogging trousers/bottoms’ and jogger refers to neither the tracksuit or the trousers/bottoms on its own - though I must admit to being very surprised at the large number of instances where ‘jogging bottom’ is used in preference to ‘jogging bottoms’ on GoogleBooks (and the same for ‘pyjama/pajama bottom’ vs ‘pyjama/pajama bottoms’). Overlordnat1 (talk) 16:34, 10 February 2022 (UTC)

It's easy enough to find citations for joggers in the missing "running shoes" sense here at Google Books. The use in the sense "running shoes" seems less common that that meaning "jogging suit" or "jogging pants", but hardly rare, nor limited to regional dialects. DCDuring (talk) 13:16, 11 February 2022 (UTC)

I don't know that one can find unambiguous use of jogger meaning "a single running shoe". DCDuring (talk) 13:41, 11 February 2022 (UTC)

The singular is attested, e.g.: [19], [20], [21] (attributive). 70.172.194.25 21:24, 11 February 2022 (UTC)

Thanks to you all for your help, I’ve now added citations to the page and deleted the associated requested entry. Overlordnat1 (talk) 03:02, 14 February 2022 (UTC)

Up and down

Kindly check my reasoning:

Sometimes, phrasals with "up" and "down" come close in meaning. For instance, "lock up/down (someone/something)". The underlying senses in question are "thoroughly, completely" and "into a state of non-operation", respectively. In case the verbal component has a sense similar to the latter, "down" more or less reduces to an intensifier. And as "up" acts as an intensifier as well, the resultant contrast is slim to none. Yes?

Of course, there may be other low-contrast "up/down" pairings that have other explanations, or are so noncompositional as to have no straightforward explanation at all. But all the ones that have come to mind so far follow said pattern, so I'm taking it to be the principal one.

Thanks!

ETA: "Burn up/down" occurred to me just now, and that one would seem to be at least somewhat different: "Up" should work the same, but "down" surely has a less abstract "to the ground" basis in that case. So the effect is once again to intensify the verb, more or less, but by yet another method. Hm.

- 2A02:560:4264:2A00:58D0:1659:D52E:6A02 13:51, 10 February 2022 (UTC)

I immediately thought of ‘shut someone/something up’ and ‘shut someone/something down’ as another example. Of course it doesn’t always work, one says ‘down to a T’ but not ‘up to a T’. Very interesting observation though. Overlordnat1 (talk) 14:14, 10 February 2022 (UTC)

To me, the primary meaning of tie up is the same as that of tie down; I do not feel a difference with the up version more emphasizing thoroughness; rather, perhaps, it refers more to the process and the down version to the intended result. Same for transitive shut up and shut down. But for write up versus write down, the contrast (if any) is perhaps the other way around. Whether a pair is “low contrast” is subjective; I’d use lock up for objects that have agency (animals, including presidential candidates), while lock down incapacitates inanimate objects (systems, universities).  --Lambiam 15:17, 10 February 2022 (UTC)

Tie it down - this is not exactly the same as "tie it up". Tie it down means to tie it in such a way that it cannot fly away, or so that it is affixed or nailed down in some sense. Tie it up places the stress on getting something all tied and roped, with rope or string around it. Tying something up may have the result that it is then tied down (can't be blown away), but is conceptually not the same thing. I agree this is a difficulty in English, must as understanding the rule of Russian prefixes can be.2A00:23C8:A7A3:4801:15B6:5E56:2E5D:F56B 16:02, 10 February 2022 (UTC)

I guess my criterion for whether a contrast is "low" is that it's considerably weaker than the diametric opposition of their primary spatial senses, like in "climb up" versus "climb down". But of course, those are verb phrases, not phrasal verbs, so the naive expectation that the latter "should" behave similarly even though the senses aren't necessarily spatial may well be misguided.

What I'd not completely considered is the circumstance that sometimes, a non-spatial "up" is juxtaposed with a spatial-ish "down", as in my "burn" example, and probably vice versa. Nor that there are cases in which a phrasal has more than one sense in turn, or in which it's unclear just how spatial a sense really is. Your "tie" example illustrates that well - overwhelmingly, it's going to be the ground (or maybe the deck of a ship or some such) relative to which we want the thing to stay stationary, so interpreting "down" as spatial and "up" as not is tempting. Whether that matches the intention is sometimes another matter. All that clearly muddies (heh) the waters.

Anyway, there likely will be very few, if any, cases in which the "up" and "down" versions are entirely interchangeable. I'm basing that on the general observation that language abhors precise synonyms. But that may as easily be the result of subsequently acquired connotations as of originally distinct denotations, and so may have little to do with an "up"/"down" contrast proper, spatial or otherwise.

- (OP) 2A02:560:4264:2A00:58D0:1659:D52E:6A02 22:25, 10 February 2022 (UTC)

New German noun template

Most German masculines and neuters form their genitives in either -s or -es. As mentioned under -s the two forms are by no means in random variation. Though both are correct and used, very often one is far more common. In compounds, but also generally in polysyllables, the s-form is usually preferred. We have always striven to put the commoner form first. The new template apparently puts the es-form first no matter what... At the very least, this template must be adapted such that it allows us to order them manually. But the terrible thing is that the automatic conversion already means the destruction of yearlong work. I don't know if the damage can still be undone. 84.57.154.13 15:03, 10 February 2022 (UTC)

See Wiktionary:Grease_pit/2022/January#Improving_Module:de-headword (Ctrl-F "ngram") where I supported standardizing the genitives' order under the assumption that German editors don't bother checking ngram results before adding a word, which, in light of your comment, seems to have been an inaccurate assumption. Pinging @Benwing2 and (Notifying Matthias Buchmeier, -sche, Atitarev, Jberkel, Mahagaja, Fay Freak): . — Fytcha〈 T | L | C 〉 15:15, 10 February 2022 (UTC)

No, it’s a stylistic question, nobody cares which one is more common, and surely it would be a waste of time to check “frequency”, which is not reliably measured anyway. Making it automatic undos a lot of damage that would occur in the future from missing opportunities of doing something more useful than deliberating how to sort the genitives. Fay Freak (talk) 15:19, 10 February 2022 (UTC)

How do you know that nobody cares? Did you conduct an exhaustive survey? Obviously 84 cares, so you are basically stating that their opinions don’t count.  --Lambiam 15:25, 10 February 2022 (UTC)

@Lambiam: Isn’t “nobody cares” an idiom generally not taken literally? The “word of God” also usually means “my opinion”. Pragmatics. Fay Freak (talk) 15:45, 10 February 2022 (UTC)

There is Ngrams, which for example tell us that "Gebrauchs" is 10 to 15 times (!) commoner than "Gebrauches". And that's very valuable for the user of a dictionary. Now I don't want to say that the distinction has always been made strictly around here. And indeed "Gebrauches" was mentioned first even before the switch. But in many other entries the forms were sorted correctly and all that information has now been lost. For example, "Gepäcks" also 10 times commoner than "Gepäckes" and formerly ordered accordingly. And of course it is a general practice to order variant forms - roughly - by frequence. 84.57.154.13 15:29, 10 February 2022 (UTC)

You can also sort by chronology or etymology.

It’s fine if the order is swapped in general but 84 should value his own time. Fay Freak (talk) 15:45, 10 February 2022 (UTC)

The information is still there. Looking at the edit summary of the change for Baum, we find: “...|Baumes|gen2=Baums|...”. One way or another, incorporating a preference indication in (a modified version of} {{de-noun}} based on the history is only doable if some form of automation is used.  --Lambiam 15:45, 10 February 2022 (UTC)

I don't think the distinction has ever been made here. If it was formerly "correct", it might have been by chance, it's not documented anywhere. And {{de-decl-noun-m}} etc. always listed -es first, so even if an order was specified in the headword template, the declension templates would have contradicted it. – Jberkel 15:53, 10 February 2022 (UTC)

de-decl-noun was another template and had nothing to do with it. When you look through the relevant words, you'll clearly find a pattern. I've tried a couple of them. At any rate, the ratio is very high in many cases. "Gefühls" is 20 times commoner than "Gefühles" (formerly ordered correctly), "Verlaufs" is 5 to 10 times commoner than "Verlaufes" (formerly ordered correctly), etc. etc. -- But the main problem is that as of now I'm not even able to order by frequence even manually... 84.57.154.13 15:59, 10 February 2022 (UTC)

Yes you can order them manually by using s:es in place of (e)s. If the community thinks the old order should be preserved, I'll fix things so we use s:es whenever the old order had that. Benwing2 (talk) 16:15, 10 February 2022 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Just remember the use s:es in both the headword {{de-noun}} and the declension {{de-ndecl}} so they don't get out of sync. Benwing2 (talk) 16:18, 10 February 2022 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Then I appologise. Thank you. -- I've been around here for 10 years altogether and I've always made the distinction. I also see that other users have made it because the order is predominantly by frequence in words I've never edited. I thought it was common sense, but it now appears that maybe the community does not value the old order as much as I do. I leave that up to them. I'm fine as long as editors aren't bound to put a form second that appears 90% of the time. 84.57.154.13 16:23, 10 February 2022 (UTC)

There is definitely a tendency to use -s more on longer nouns and -es more on shorter nouns. I once read a study showing that des Hofes is more common than des Hofs, but des Bahnhofs is more common than des Bahnhofes, and des Hauptbahnhofs is much, much more common than des Hauptbahnhofes. But I don't know to what extent we as a dictionary should feel obligated to codify that. —Mahāgaja · talk 16:17, 10 February 2022 (UTC)

I agree that we should provide both valid forms, code (if it's possible), so that the rare (obsolete, archaic, etc.) can be labelled accordingly. Dictionaries I learn German from use this notation for genitive forms: "Gebrauch(e)s" and I find it mostly satisfactory. Since "the less frequent" form is neither obsolete or archaic, I don't even think we need to label them.

Benwing2 has provided the flexibility of ordering. It's thanks to his coding skills but in general, I personally don't think frequency of forms is of great importance even for learners and I haven't seen it in other dictionaries. --Anatoli T. ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 21:07, 10 February 2022 (UTC)

leave behind

Aren't senses 1 and 2 the same thing? The difference seems to be only intentionality, so the true sense is what's underpinning both senses 1 and 2 but irrespective of whether it is done intentionally or not. — Fytcha〈 T | L | C 〉 15:08, 10 February 2022 (UTC)

Yeah, I think you're right. We don't have two senses for other verbs that can denote an intentional or unintentional act. At least, if there is a difference, the usage examples definitely do not show it. 70.172.194.25 15:14, 10 February 2022 (UTC)

It makes a big difference whether the act of killing another person is intentional or unintentional, both legally and morally. Yet intentionality does not enter into our definitions for the verb kill (nor should it). The definition “To forget about” is baaad; you can’t replace “I’m so sorry I forgot about your birthday” by “I’m so sorry I left behind your birthday”. Formulating an encompassing definition is not simple, though.  --Lambiam 16:18, 10 February 2022 (UTC)

I think we do have different definitions for intentional vs. unintentional/accidental acts. As do other dictionaries. Other dictionaries--or at least idiom dictionaries--have two definitions for forget about ("no longer remember", "put out of one's mind"). DCDuring (talk) 15:23, 11 February 2022 (UTC)

These correspond to different senses of the verb forget, transitive and intransitive.  --Lambiam 11:19, 12 February 2022 (UTC)

Are these American English words?

As an American, I am familiar with all of the following words from this list (and only two of the British ones). Are any of these Americanisms? Editing the entries on them, I don't see context labels saying that they are en-US specific:

• manicotti
• ziti
• tilapia
• garbanzo
• kabob
• kwanza (reckon this should have been “Kwanzaa”)
• crawdad
• hibachi
• sandlot
• acetaminophen
• tamale
• kielbasa
• conniption
• chigger
• tomatillo
• provolone
• albuterol
• staph
• goober
• luau

And the following are the Britishisms/Commonwealthisms:

• tippex
• biro
• tombola
• chipolata
• dodgem
• yob
• gazump
• abseil
• naff
• kerbside
• plaice
• judder
• chiropody
• korma
• bolshy
• quango
• pelmet
• brolly
• chaffinch
• escalope

Any thoughts? Particularly from non-USers? Aussies, Canadians, New Zealanders, etc.: do you use any of these terms? Thanks. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 22:38, 10 February 2022 (UTC)

Well, all those that you said are Briticisms are indeed so. I know them all. As for the Americanisms, I don't know any of them apart from knowing what Kwanzaa is (in the US context - this festival is based in the US), and apart from the word conniption(s) also, which means "fit" and is used in the UK too, although at a fairly low frequency. 2A00:23C8:A7A3:4801:15B6:5E56:2E5D:F56B 00:23, 11 February 2022 (UTC)

I first saw this list here [22], so in a way I’m familiar with them all, as I’ve seen them all there and read the definitions at the time but before doing so I was 100% familiar with all the British terms and far less familiar, or unfamiliar, with the American ones. I’d never even heard of conniption for example but one person on Ben Yagoda’s website replied in the comments that it still exists in West Country dialect, though tbh I did have to cheat to see exactly what a pelmet was myself (it’s probably best known in its figurative use, in other words in the phrase: “That’s not a skirt, it’s a pelmet!”). Overlordnat1 (talk) 00:58, 11 February 2022 (UTC)

Canadian here. Looking at the UK list, we definitely use korma – chicken korma is a staple of Indian restaurants in Canada. (Do Americans have a different word for it?) I think I've probably heard brolly used here, but that could just be because my parents lived in England, so take that one with a grain of salt. In any case, it's definitely more common in the UK. Yob is another one I'm unsure of, though it definitely strikes me as more common in the UK. Kerbside, quango, and probably naff are terms I'm certainly familiar with but can say with confidence aren't used in contemporary Canada. (Unfortunately, there isn't really a good equivalent to quango in Canadian English that is as all-encompassing.)

With respect to the US list, unless the British have another word for the foods, I think it's unlikely that they're strictly North American terms. I can confirm that these terms are used in Canada, though: manicotti, ziti, hibachi, acetaminophen, tamale, kielbasa (however, at least in Manitoba and Saskatchewan, it's pronounced quite differently and is probably more often spelt kubasa), conniption, provolone, staph, goober, and luau. Graham11 (talk) 05:33, 11 February 2022 (UTC)

I hear all on the American list. The only two I hear in the US on the UK list are korma, because I like Indian food, and kerbside, written in US as curbside. I recognize two (yob and brolly) on the UK list because I spent a little time in UK and Australia, chaffinch and plaice only from working on organism names at enwikt, biro and bolshy from reading. DCDuring (talk) 16:41, 11 February 2022 (UTC)

It seems like in some cases it's not the word that's dialectally restricted, but the thing which is regionally "restricted", e.g. Kwanza(a) is chiefly an American rather than British holiday, but I don't think it has a different name in the UK, so it'd be wrong to label it {{lb|en|US}} (the information should rather go in the definition). Likewise with many of the foods: korma is korma throughout the English-speaking world AFAIK (googling, I can find in on the menus of Indian restaurants in the US, Canada, UK, Ireland, etc), and tomatillos are tomatillos, but of course Indian food is better known to India's former colonial masters and North American plants and foods are better known in North America. Especially with things like kabob, I wonder whether the methodology is behind some of supposed regional differences: BoingBoing seems to be wrong when they state (in the linked story reporting on the same study's finding re men vs women) that some participants were "more likely than [others] to know the definition of" these words; AFAICT, the study did not test that, it only tested whether participants knew that a particular string of letters was a real word vs a made-up sequence of letters. Thus, a British participant who's perfectly familiar with kababs might've rejected kabob or kebub only because they thought the real spelling was kebab or something. (Some of these may still need labels, though.) - -sche (discuss) 21:27, 11 February 2022 (UTC)

Many of these terms (especially the foods) being "regionally 'restricted'" rather than "dialectally 'restricted'" is an excellent way of putting it. Graham11 (talk) 00:27, 12 February 2022 (UTC)

I've noticed that in many instances US/Canada dialectal terms here on Wiktionary aren't labeled as such. It seems to be the "default" assumption, or perhaps US editors adding them aren't aware that they are not used outside of the US? – Jberkel 10:48, 14 February 2022 (UTC)

I've noticed it with a few UK terms as well. It seems to happen with things that don't make it onto the usual UK/US English lists. Theknightwho (talk) 18:36, 14 February 2022 (UTC)

We (the users of all the different World Englishes) can all be parochial, blithely assuming that what we hear and use is right. As an Aussie, I often hear something as being (quaintly, or neologistically(?) ) British; and can quite readily identify Kiwi (NZ), Malaysian and Indian terms as being geographically or culturally restricted; US America is big enough to very distinctive regionalisms that we're familiar with thru' film and TV; Canada less so. To answer the original question, I think the partition into US vs. UK regional vocabulary is pretty accurate, never having heard or read a couple of the US terms (manicotti, ziti, which I'd guess as being loans from Italian; and kielbasa, which looks vaguely Germanic). However, we in Australia have certainly adopted similar loanwords (e.g. hibachi from Japanese, tamale from Latin American Spanish, provolone from Italian, luau from Hawaiian - tho' that last is dated, rarely heard here since the 1950s or possibly '60s). Another one is korma from Hindi; tho' I also know it as kurma from Malay and the English of Malaysia, where it's also an Indian loanword. The farmed fish tilapia turns up in our supermarket freezers, usually in highly processed forms such as (yuck!) fish fingers. We don't use acetaminophen at all; and we tell visiting Americans to ask for paracetamol. Fascinating how many of these words are food-related, or at least for things we put in our mouths! Also, conniptions (dated, or humorously archaic) and staph (as in "golden staph") are pretty much standard AusE.

As for UK English: brolly and naff, we understand but would only use jokingly, I think; kerbside we do use, as in the phrase "kerbside recycling"; quango was in use in the late '60s and early '70s in government offices and publications, but I've rarely encountered it since. We don't [use] tippex (verb and noun); we [use] white-out instead. We do use abseil, biro, dodgem, judder, gazump, pelmet, escalope (of veal, typically). We used to use bolshy, but it's dated; and I last heard tombola in the '50s. plaice and chaffinch aren't in the seas or trees round here, and both rarely seen or heard (of). chiropody still exists, along with its practitioner chiropodist, tho' I think far less commonly found than heretofore; podiatry and podiatrist are the usual terms. I think I've run across chipolata in the last decade, but don't hold me to it - and I don't even have a mental image to go with the word.

As for other AmE terms, a kebab is any meat on a skewer, often in the phrase "doner kebab" from Turkish, or "chicken kebabs" bought from the butcher to throw on the barbie; most other spellings: "kabab", "kabob", etc. are no longer recognised. A tomatillo is indeed a tomatillo, tho' this plant and food is little known here; likewise a pepino; pity, they're both tasty and versatile (and I've grown both in the garden). Kwanzaa evokes "What?!" from most of my compatriots. Yob is - or rather, was - a fairly common derogation of a boor; also in the form "yobbo". Garbanzo beans are usually known here as chickpeas, tho I've seen the term parenthetically on packaging. We know you Yanks have chiggers infesting parts of the South, and nearby in a waterhole or creek, you might find a crawdad; whereas we have the yabby and marron for our most widespread freshwater crayfish. Don't think we use albuterol or sandlot. Pretty sure that goober is strictly American. Our peanuts are called groundnuts in Malaysian English. Hope I've exhausted your lists! yoyo (talk) 12:38, 22 February 2022 (UTC)

предприняться

@Atitarev The future perfective of this is given as предпримёшься, but I'm pretty sure it is предпрИмешься. Maybe this verb is linked to the wrong conjugation pattern?2A00:23C8:A7A3:4801:733E:646C:63DA:CF9D 11:17, 11 February 2022 (UTC)

Anatoli has corrected this now.2A00:23C8:A7A3:4801:733E:646C:63DA:CF9D 13:27, 11 February 2022 (UTC)

Etymology of اسم التصغير

The word اسم التصغير, meaning "diminutive (noun)" is made of two words: the word for "noun" and "the act of making something smaller," the latter having a root and written etymology in its own page (تصغير), and it's uncommon to be used on its own. Should the etymology for the lemma be written? Panthera22 (talk) 20:56, 11 February 2022 (UTC)

@Panthera22: If you use a head template ({{ar-noun}}) then no etymology needs to be written, by reason that the head template links the parts and there is nothing else to say other than that the term is from those parts. Fay Freak (talk) 21:41, 11 February 2022 (UTC)

Medieval scribal abbreviations - how should we add entries for them?

I recently added the English entry p͛judice (“prejudice”), which uses the obsolete abbreviation p͛- (“pre-”) borrowed from an identical Latin abbreviation. This is fine, but it got me thinking about Cappelli's Lexicon Abbreviaturarum and similar dictionaries of Latin abbreviations such as Chassant's Dictionnaire des Abréviations Latines et Françaises.

My simple question is: how do we add entries for terms that can't easily be represented in Unicode? They were ubiquitous in scribal texts of the medieval period (and sometimes much later), and while we can use the existing Unicode diacritics (as I have done in p͛-), the Unicode Consortium will only encode separate characters when there is a semantic difference between them. When it comes to scribal abbreviations, they might take 10+ wildly different forms, but because they all mean the same thing they're all encoded as the same character. Unicode expects any variations to be represented by using variation selectors and having multiple font glyphs. I completely understand why they've done that, but that isn't really the approach that Wiktionary seems to take, given that we're happy to have separate entries for etc, etc., etcetera, et cetera and so on.

To illustrate an example of this: the "combining zigzag above" (U+035B) in p͛- means that "er", "re" or "rae" have been omitted after the letter, and has two very common alternative forms: a curled and an angled form. The Medieval Unicode Font Initiative, which is an informal extension of Unicode for medievalists, contains separate encodings for these forms at U+F1C7 and U+F1C8. Unicode will never encode these, because they're all variants of the same thing, but that isn't very helpful for someone who doesn't actually know that when trying to look it up. Many more don't even get that far, and have no encoding at all (informal or otherwise).

I'm not really sure what the best approach to take here, or how to make this compatible with Wiktionary's current format. Anyone have any ideas? Theknightwho (talk) 23:38, 11 February 2022 (UTC)

At the very least you could include an image, either from a real manuscript that uses it or from some modern font/vector drawing that replicates it. Ideally you could embed the font (if it's under a free license) and use the private Unicode characters, but I don't think that's the approach Wiktionary has taken even with regard to languages whose entire script renders as tofu, so I wouldn't hold your breath for them to add a font for such marginal characters. 70.172.194.25 23:56, 11 February 2022 (UTC)

Yeah, we could definitely use images from those dictionaries, given that they're in the public domain. It does raise the question of what you would even call the relevant pages, though. The tofu issue I can understand, as we know that the characters have a particular semantic identity, even if few people have the font to actually view them in a meaningful way. When it comes to anything outside of Unicode, you can't really do that. Theknightwho (talk) 00:02, 12 February 2022 (UTC)

You could make it under the canonical Unicode character and create different L3 sections under the same language, each having an image beside it for disambiguation purposes. Or, hypothetically, they could be created under the MUFI character titles, but (without checking) there may be a guideline against using non-standard characters. 70.172.194.25 00:06, 12 February 2022 (UTC)

If there isn't a guideline against doing that, I'd support there being one. In any event, I do like that idea of having different sections, though that does seem to be at opposite of the approach taken everywhere else on Wiktionary, where the form determines the page, and multiple entries are for when that form has different meanings. This would be organising it the other way around, listing all the different forms with the same meaning on the same page. I assume common sense applies, but as a different approach, is there scope for having non-standard page titles? That way, you could list them all under "alternative forms" on the primary entry, which would be in keeping with Wiktionary's general format. Theknightwho (talk) 00:11, 12 February 2022 (UTC)

Yeah, alternative forms and then links to non-standard page titles could be a good workable idea. Compare Special:PrefixIndex/Unsupported_titles/, which has a bunch of characters that cannot be included in page titles for technical reasons, like brackets.

As another idea, what about just doing one L3 entry, and having a gallery subsection like at g#Gallery, showing the g and g variants. If the characters are identical except for font rendering then this may be the simplest way, and is consistent with the regular Latin character variants. (I'm not a huge fan of how those galleries are centered, though it doesn't really matter.) 70.172.194.25 00:20, 12 February 2022 (UTC)

That's a good one - I like it. I've had a look at how it's done, and it seems to be through Javascript. That introduces the interesting possibility of having the page title be an image in cases where that's the only way something could be represented. Theknightwho (talk) 01:16, 12 February 2022 (UTC)

To the extent that we have entries for these, I like the idea of showing the variations via images, like in other cases where there's significant variation, like [[a]] and [[g]], as mentioned above. I'm halfway tempted to add images even to e.g. M#Old_Norse to show how, in manuscripts, it varied from an M-like form to an 0┐ shape. I recall someone else here having an interest in adding scribal abbreviations, although I can't find who; maybe it was User:I'm so meta even this acronym? (I see Romanophile added some, like cōtempt, but I think there was also someone else.) (I used to think trying to reflect every "stroke through the bottom of p, stroke through the middle of p, stroke though..." -type abbreviation was silly, but now I'm like "eh, whatever".) - -sche (discuss) 02:59, 12 February 2022 (UTC)

Those kinds of diagrams are already in use on many of the CJK characters (e.g. 龍 / 龙 (lóng) and 是 (shì)), so I think that would be a great idea for Old Norse. Theknightwho (talk) 12:05, 12 February 2022 (UTC)

Why are these being entered at all? A scribal abbreviation was never intended to be an alternative spelling of the word as such. 2A00:23C8:A7A3:4801:733E:646C:63DA:CF9D 08:32, 12 February 2022 (UTC)

Sure, but the same goes for any abbreviation and we have plenty of those. Theknightwho (talk) 11:41, 12 February 2022 (UTC)

mommy war

I used {{en-noun}} in the entry mommy war and it is categorizing the entry in Category:English lemmas. Is there a way of suppressing that behaviour, or should I be using a different template?

Additionally, do we usually include alternative forms in such entries? Graham11 (talk) 08:49, 12 February 2022 (UTC)

It should be in English lemmas; that is correct behaviour. Equinox ◑ 11:01, 12 February 2022 (UTC)

@Equinox That surprises me, as the two terms seem to share a common lexeme and only one entry has a full definition. What makes it a lemma in this case? Graham11 (talk) 08:13, 14 February 2022 (UTC)

@Graham11 A lemma is the main form of a word (like bath from baths, or jerk from jerking). It isn't the same thing as an alternative form: if we have mommy war and mummy war then they are both lemmas. Equinox ◑ 07:03, 21 February 2022 (UTC)

I think the concern here was not mommy war vs. mummy war (which obviously have the same status), but rather mommy war vs. mommy wars. If the main form is singular, then we make plural non-lemma. Do we do the reverse for terms that are "plural by default", or treat both versions as lemmas? 70.172.194.25 07:07, 21 February 2022 (UTC)

Right. I don't think anyone really cares about the lemma category. If you look at the en-noun and en-plural noun templates (and if you don't know how to do that, then read documentation or go to WT:GP), there is a way to indicate a less common singular. Does that help? Equinox ◑ 07:09, 21 February 2022 (UTC)

@Equinox I do know how to indicate a less common singular – as you can see, I already did so at "mommy wars". My concern is that the category it is in is currently inaccurate. Am I correct in understanding that the entry "mommy war" isn't a lemma as such? Graham11 (talk) 07:21, 21 February 2022 (UTC)

My understanding is that the lemma is the grammatically "basic" form, even if the plural is more common. For instance we talk about "peas" (vegetable) more often than "one pea", but "pea" is still grammatically the lemma. What is your actual goal here? Do you want to fulfil grammar? Or for some reason you are full of a burning hate to stop "mommy war" being in the lemma category? Why? Equinox ◑ 11:36, 21 February 2022 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Exactly, 70.172.194.25. mommy war is not an alternative form of mommy wars (at least not in the sense of {{alternative form of}}). This is a case where the plural serves as the lemma because the singular is very uncommon, if not rare. Given that the sole definition of mommy war uses {{singular of}}, my understanding was that it would not be considered a lemma, just as entries whose sole definition uses {{plural of}} would not be considered a lemma. Ping: Equinox. Graham11 (talk) 07:16, 21 February 2022 (UTC)

Kangxi taboo stroke omission

In the kx argument to Template:Han ref, we are currently inconsistent about how we treat characters which appear in Kangxi with strokes missing because of the naming taboo. For example we say 玄 doesn't appear, since 𤣥 appears in its place. But the other characters under that radical, like 玆, we say do appear, even though Kangxi omits the last stroke in the 玄 component for these in just the same way (page image: note also that 玆 is still counted as five extra strokes!). Which approach is better? 4pq1injbok (talk) 11:56, 12 February 2022 (UTC)

It is probably a question for the Unicode Consortium instead. Compare the kIRGKangXi values at the "Unihan data" link. —Fish bowl (talk) 12:24, 13 February 2022 (UTC)

Oh, I didn't know Unicode had this. So I guess the answer is "we're doing as Unicode does, leave it alone". 4pq1injbok (talk) 13:00, 13 February 2022 (UTC)

Hmm, but it does seem inconsistent if we're saying 玄 doesn't appear, since 𤣥 appears in its place, but saying 玆 does appear when it doesn't. I don't know much about this, but it sounds like a situation where the template should accept a parameter that would add, or work from a list to add, an explanatory note along the lines of what you said above "in Kangxi, this character appears without a stroke due to a naming taboo". - -sche (discuss) 21:18, 13 February 2022 (UTC)

Good idea. I don't have the template wizardry for that myself. I'll mention it on the template talk page. 4pq1injbok (talk) 22:36, 14 February 2022 (UTC)

backhoe

Hi. Which is the difference between the two definitions in backhoe? To me they mean the same thing. --Vivaelcelta (talk) 21:13, 12 February 2022 (UTC)

See Backhoe and Backhoe loader on Wikipedia. Chuck Entz (talk) 22:20, 12 February 2022 (UTC)

Now I understand. The first definition is just the piece and its arm to excavate/dig. Which is also used in the excavator.

And the second definition is the machine which is a mixture of the excavator and the loader/front-end loader. --Vivaelcelta (talk) 22:51, 12 February 2022 (UTC)

sniddy

This word failed an RFV, but we now have a new policy under which "Other online-only sources may also contribute towards attestation requirements if editors come to a consensus through a discussion lasting at least two weeks." So, let's discuss. I say that online-only sources are appropriate for this word because it's Internet slang, so despite a decent frequency of use on a variety of sites, it's unlikely to make it into print soon. —Kodiologist (t) 18:57, 13 February 2022 (UTC)

I understood the vote to mean, if editors decide sniddy needs to exist and the only way to get it is to allow citing Tumblr, then editors would add Tumblr to the approved sources list. Meaning, it's about sources rather than words. I see three uses in ephemeral internet fora. I would not support making DeviantArt, Tumblr, or Reddit a source counting towards CFI. At least the last two are known for deleting stuff (Tumblr banned porn and Reddit banned a major pro-Trump subreddit). The three uses may well be the tip of an iceberg, but we need to see evidence that the iceberg exists. Vox Sciurorum (talk) 19:10, 13 February 2022 (UTC)

What if we required that Tumblr pages be backed up by both the Wayback Machine and archive.fo, though? Then would there be any legitimate reason to think they would vanish? There would still be the issue of lack of editorial control, and the "plebeian" nature of the source, however (which applies to Usenet too). 70.172.194.25 19:15, 13 February 2022 (UTC)

Right, that's a problem beyond the volatile nature of the forum. I would not support counting slang on Tumblr the same as higher register words in professionally edited books and magazines. If it is "clearly in widespread use" on three major web sites (say, Tumblr, Reddit, and DeviantArt) then sniddy is a fine addition to the dictionary, but that's not evidenced by one user on each of the three web sites having used the term. And I think Usenet is overrated by CFI. In the 1980s and 1990s it was valuable evidence of use of tech terms, representing the tip of an iceberg with the main body being mailing lists and cubicle chats. Now, it's irrelevant and much harder to find. Vox Sciurorum (talk) 19:22, 13 February 2022 (UTC)

"If it is 'clearly in widespread use' on three major web sites (say, Tumblr, Reddit, and DeviantArt) then sniddy is a fine addition to the dictionary, but that's not evidenced by one user on each of the three web sites having used the term." — Are you saying that you would want to see more citations of the same kind? I'm sure one could find them without much difficulty, but it seems a little pointless; what's the number that's enough? Or are you saying you'd want some kind of comprehensive analysis of a large corpus from these sites or something? Possible, but seems like overkill for a dictionary entry on one word. —Kodiologist (t) 23:43, 14 February 2022 (UTC)

I'm asking somebody to do the work of a researcher or lexicographer and come up with a report on how widespread the term is and how wide the community of users is. Not simply find me N more quotes. Demonstrate that this is a common word with many users, not all from the same niche community, university, etc., that happens not to make it into mainstream media. Vox Sciurorum (talk) 13:15, 12 March 2022 (UTC)

Oh. I understood that as meaning a decision on a case-by-case basis, not e.g. "we must always allow Tumblr as a source now, because we used it once". This could be a problem. Equinox ◑ 19:50, 13 February 2022 (UTC)

I agree. If we leave that largely unchecked, it could open a can of worms that could lead to Wiktionary becoming more akin to Urban Dictionary, rather than what Wiktionary is supposed to be. Tharthan (talk) 20:40, 13 February 2022 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure the case-by-case sense is what was intended and how most voters read it. —Kodiologist (t) 23:46, 13 February 2022 (UTC)

I also always understood the intention of the vote that for each such term one would vote to allow the term and not at all make votes concerning any sources in general. This is why “other online-only sources” are spoken about collectively. But I can see that Sgconlaw voted for it because he understood that one would vote for sources being considered reliable, although perhaps not directly but by repeatedly allowing certain terms appearing on certain sites, creating a kind of case law: “whitelisting certain sources for which there is consensus that they are reliable.” But this understanding is influenced by a Wikipedia background that no one needs to have. Fay Freak (talk) 15:03, 14 February 2022 (UTC)

Whether the rule means "editors can allow Site X a word-by-word basis" or as "editors can allow Site X to cite anything", what site do you propose to use? Like Vox, I'm not inclined to blanketly accept Tumblr or Reddit. I suggest we find what the highest-quality places we can cite a term from are: for example, if we can find this in online-only magazines, we avoid needing to discuss whether to rely on one tumblr user who may delete their account a year from now and two tweets from those word-scraping bots that post snippets of text from WMF wikis + links to spam. (BTW, if people do interpret it as "we must always allow (or respectively disallow) site X from now on, since we accepted (or rejected) it here", that has interesting effects, if a discussion today finds consensus to use Tumblr for sniddy but another discussion a year from now when a different set of users happen to be active concludes "no, don't use Tumblr to cite foobar" so we go back and delete sniddy too. This is one reason I thought voted-on rules about allowing certain sites or categories of sites would be better.) - -sche (discuss) 21:14, 13 February 2022 (UTC)

This particular term does not seem to see much use outside of Tumblr, Reddit, Twitter, and comparable social media sites. I doubt, for instance, that you would find an online magazine using the term sniddy. (Well, what might be citable is an adjective related to snide, which you can find used on Usenet, also documented in some dictionaries [23] [24]. Not snake tiddy.) 70.172.194.25 23:27, 13 February 2022 (UTC)

I propose using DeviantArt, Tumblr, and Reddit, as I've cited in the entry. The DeviantArt one was the oldest use I could find. I understood the policy as requiring a discussion per word, not per website. —Kodiologist (t) 23:45, 13 February 2022 (UTC)

Kodiologist is now edit warring to restore an entry that has failed RFV. There has been no "discussion lasting at least two weeks" with consensus that these sources should count. If anything, the consensus so far is that they shouldn't, which I completely agree with. Blankly allowing sources like this will result in the exact same consequences as allowing any archivable source which will result in this dictionary being filled with crap. — SURJECTION ^{/ T / C / L /} 10:21, 14 February 2022 (UTC)

🙁 Yes, because due to their exceptional talent of botching rule formulations, Wiktionarians aren’t even sure what to hold a discussion about exactly. Fay Freak (talk) 15:03, 14 February 2022 (UTC)

If you don't want to have an edit war, then stop reverting the page. It's still premature to delete something before the discussion about whether to delete it has finished. —Kodiologist (t) 23:33, 14 February 2022 (UTC)

The consensus was established with an official RFV outcome. Restoring the entry without establishing a new consensus would be going against the previously established consensus. — justin(r)leung _{{ (t...) | c=› }} 23:43, 14 February 2022 (UTC)

Honestly I'm pretty unclear what consensus is supposed to count at this point, but since there's two of you and one of me, then that's how it shall be. I'll update the link the in the tea-room section title to the revision where you can see the entry, at least. —Kodiologist (t) 23:48, 14 February 2022 (UTC)

"If you don't want to have an edit war, then let me flout CFI and all established conventions to restore my favorite word in spite of not having consensus in peace." — SURJECTION ^{/ T / C / L /} 09:58, 15 February 2022 (UTC)

@Surjection: Unforunately, it can be hard to reason with some people. Good thing that the rules and consensus are not on their side. Tharthan (talk) 21:03, 15 February 2022 (UTC)

<irony>We don’t discuss enough. We should at least beat Wikipedia to it.</irony> Tbh I thought the intention was to add words in good faith that discussions about them would succeed in their favour, not (against the wording of the new legislation, but in accordance with its telos) only if discussions have already succeeded: have you been devising, or believed it the new rule, that we file an application for each word that we add and would not pass by durability criteria, @Tharthan, Surjection? Wiktionarians appear very eager to discuss new words to be included, and I am afraid that’s irony again—another reason to believe it wasn’t the intention of the vote in the first place. Fay Freak (talk) 01:26, 16 February 2022 (UTC)

No, as my understanding is that it is by source, see Wiktionary:Beer parlour/2022/February#Forming a standardized process for discussions about online-only sources and attestation and consider the wording, which was "other online-only sources may also contribute towards attestation requirements if editors come to a consensus through a discussion lasting at least two weeks", as in if there is consensus that an online-only source "contributes towards attestation requirements" through a "discussion lasting at least two weeks", it shall count. — SURJECTION ^{/ T / C / L /} 10:29, 16 February 2022 (UTC)

That's not a fair accusation. I'm happy to reason about things and I'm citing rules and consensus. —Kodiologist (t) 14:26, 16 February 2022 (UTC)

The CFI and established conventions are exactly what just changed. —Kodiologist (t) 14:23, 16 February 2022 (UTC)

No, they didn't. Nowhere does it say that the new CFI changes gives people carte blanche to restore words that have failed RFV. — SURJECTION ^{/ T / C / L /} 14:35, 16 February 2022 (UTC)

They did. Apparently they don’t say anything at all, one interprets them in a certain way and you also interpret them in a certain way, all different from what they say, as the wording is indistinct. But the wording is not the only means of statutory interpretation, the intention of the legislator is paramount. Falsa demonstratio non nocet. Fay Freak (talk) 15:53, 16 February 2022 (UTC)

As one of the people who voted for the expansion to the CFI, I understood the two-week discussion as providing a mechanism to defend the use of online sources providing part or all of the attestation requirements for a word (or sense thereof) challenged at RFV, rather than being something required before adding the word in the first place (i.e., a mechanism of preventing removal, rather than one of allowing addition). Having the two-week discussion be required before adding the word requiring the online source(s) for its attestation would be inconsistent with our general practice of allowing entries to go up and only then challenging and removing the bad ones; note that RFV/RFD/whatnot are exclusively, or nearly-so, for discussion on keeping or removing entries that are already in place, rather than for preemptively deciding whether an entry should be allowed to go up in the first place, and that we allow many, if not most, entries to go up with fewer than three citations (under the assumption that more can be easily provided to prove attestation is challenged). If this interpretation is correct, then Kodiologist is the one with policy now on their side. Whoop whoop pull up ^{Bitching Betty ⚧️ Averted crashes} 21:59, 19 February 2022 (UTC)

hog bed sense 3 with no definition

Sense 3 says "the meaning can only be guessed". Should something else be done with this, e.g. remove it, or relegate to the Citations page? Equinox ◑ 19:48, 13 February 2022 (UTC)

If there's only one cite (and not even of this spelling), then move it to the relevant citations page, but if there are other cites, we do have other entries "of uncertain meaning" like comneibi, indiges, armgaunt, μολοβρός, though I'd tweak the wording to be more in line with those (for consistency and hence findability via searches like that). - -sche (discuss) 20:32, 13 February 2022 (UTC)

My guess, given the context, is that it means pigsty: a house that is so messy and dirty that it is unfit for human habitation.  --Lambiam 22:41, 13 February 2022 (UTC)

It has been categorized all the time as of uncertain meaning. Fay Freak (talk) 15:12, 14 February 2022 (UTC)

This was of course all considered by me in the beginning, but it can be presumed from this familiar usage in the letter that in the environment of the speaker, i.e. his whole dialect and hardly only in his family, there was this idiom used, so there are more uses in the archives which we just cannot access with reasonable effort. Man could not even know where it should be lemmatized, e.g. perhaps on go hogbeds or hogbeds, but to the benefit of the reader I put it where it is easiest to find, as where one looks most likely first.

If as Lambiam suggests it is a figurative pigsty then there was also likely a literal sense of where swine abide, in some dialects. Fay Freak (talk) 15:12, 14 February 2022 (UTC)

A literal sense of hog’s bed or hog bed – the bed of a hog – is the sleeping place of a hog: [25], [26], [27]. Apparently, such hog beds have a characteristic appearance.  --Lambiam 11:44, 15 February 2022 (UTC)

What's the First Word in Wiktionary?

Just curious. If anyone knows it. The first word ever entered in Wiktionary. Thanks! --Mar vin kaiser (talk) 00:27, 14 February 2022 (UTC)

It was dictionary. DTLHS (talk) 00:28, 14 February 2022 (UTC)

...and the earliest diff that still works seems to be diff 3; diff 11 was to Wiktionary and then diff 12 was to dictionary, although that page is indeed older. - -sche (discuss) 03:13, 15 February 2022 (UTC)

Oh, 20th birthday coming up December 12th then. (Probably no one will take notice anyway.) – Jberkel 11:27, 15 February 2022 (UTC)

I got it written in my diary Zumbacool (talk) 16:32, 29 June 2022 (UTC)

Deletion of "anilinction"

I have never in my quarter of a century on this earth ever encountered the word anilinction before today, I've never read it on the internet nor heard it through my own two ears. Ought it be removed? There are no quotations there whatsoever, and calling it rare is an understatement. I didn't want to be too presumptuous and just take the initiative and delete it on my own, I'm still a little bit of a newcomer to Wiktionary and Wikipedia and such, but just thought that it seemed a bit hyper specific (if anything) and unnecessary. Maybe I'm just resentful about erokawa being deleted, but this thought crossed my mind, so here I am in the tea room seeking guidance. First time here! SalomeCzapiewski (talk) 01:31, 15 February 2022 (UTC)

It exists whether you've heard of it or not. Try searching Google Books. Equinox ◑ 01:37, 15 February 2022 (UTC)

Also, it is formed in accordance with Latin grammar, as also anilinctus, while the words in -lingus denoting practices are incorrect as they would need to denote the performer. To tell you which formations you have to expect. Fay Freak (talk) 01:57, 15 February 2022 (UTC)

I agree that if a word is attested, however rare, particularly in a reputable source, as is the case here, then it has a place in the dictionary. But to say "the words in -lingus denoting practices are incorrect as they would need to denote the performer" reflects a woeful misunderstanding of language itself. A word is a word if it is used and attested - not if its etymological derivation is determined to be sound. If we are agreeing that anilinction has a place in the dictionary because it is attested, how much the more so in the case of anilingus. The etymology is a complete irrelevance. We are not speaking some Romance language here. I could rush over the Germany and "tell" them not call mobile phones "Handies", but - do you know what? - I won't. I'll leave that to Freak.2A00:23C8:A7A3:4801:7D53:3C13:57A5:B73 11:39, 15 February 2022 (UTC)

It’s matter a of perspective. The important thing is that the perspective supports and hinders us not from describing the language and not from communicating as effectively as we desire. Speaking of incorrect origins is just my repertoire of bait that gets the points of language conventions across. For the same reason we keep anilingus in its practice sense and flora in its microorganism sense (that some IPs incomprehensively to me have tried to hide) and are explicit about Russian цо́кор (cókor) being a ghost word or Russian свекла́ (sveklá) a misreading. (Additionally, speakers of different languages vary in their intents to follow old models: Russians and Armenians have consider perspectives other than Anglophones and Arabic will always have to reflect on its being “classical” and the language of the Prophet: people from various language communities are different in what triggers them. For Handy: you satisfy the purist by claiming it German and writing it Händi, it is the spelling which is impure, it is apt to distinguish.) Fay Freak (talk) 21:45, 17 February 2022 (UTC)

I didn't know what a цокор was before this, and so thank you for that. When you say "Speaking of incorrect origins is just my repertoire of bait that gets the points of language conventions across", the point you should be making is that "language conventions" should accept all widely found native pronunciations. Or, maybe better phrased, that at some point forms that are regarded as incorrect become correct because (nearly) everyone uses them. For example, "you swine". Singular, or plural? It may be the plural of "sow", but is found as a singular noun in real usage (as least as a pejorative). There are quite a few foreign/international words used in Russian with a slightly different meaning. Адекватный comes to mind in the meaning of "civilised, of someone who goes about their business without resorting to abuse or violence, адекватный человек" (my slightly extended explanation of the meaning). All such things must be accepted, without reference to the origin. A French woman writing for the Telegraph wrote this week that "le shooting" means "a photoshoot" in French, and has nothing to do with killing people.2A00:23C8:A7A3:4801:733E:646C:63DA:CF9D 22:56, 18 February 2022 (UTC)

Cid, El Cid

Rodrigo Díaz is covered at both entries. Can he be "Cid" alone, as suggested, or only "El Cid"? Equinox ◑ 02:38, 15 February 2022 (UTC)

Cid alone occurs sometimes in cases where it functions like part of his name, and seems to also exist marginally in other ways, looking at google books:"y Cid" Diaz / google books:"de Cid" Díaz (the situation is similar in English and German). - -sche (discuss) 03:30, 15 February 2022 (UTC)

There are many uses of “my Cid”, mainly in translations of Cantar de mio Cid (“My Cid sighed, for he had many grave concerns”).^[28]  --Lambiam 11:08, 15 February 2022 (UTC)

We should add an English section, I suppose. But first we should decide, should the forms with articles (el, the, etc) point readers to Cid, or vice versa? - -sche (discuss) 21:00, 16 February 2022 (UTC)

We have Eiffel Tower but not (of course) "the Eiffel Tower". This one is funny in English since of course the article/determiner ain't English... which explains my original question. Equinox ◑ 07:01, 21 February 2022 (UTC)

PEEP

Initially, I wondered what the etymology of sense one was, and in trying to find that out, I find sources saying e.g. "In May of 1942 newspapers announced the armored division officially named the quarter-ton command/reconnaissance car the 'Peep'", or "During World War II, soldiers in some units called the Willys Jeeps "bantams" after the original designer, though "peep" remained popular, and the half-ton [...]", which, aside from the disagreement over weight, suggests (a) the lemma may belong at a different capitalization, and (b) the definition and label may need changing, if e.g. it's not that any WWII-era model of jeep attached to an armored unit was then and is still now today called a peep, but rather that armored-regiment soldiers in WWII called them peeps but other soldiers at that time didn't and/or people today don't. - -sche (discuss) 08:49, 15 February 2022 (UTC)

about town

We have man about town, woman about town, gentleman about town, perhaps more. Shouldn't this be X + about town? (I've recently come across girl about town, which I'm hesitant to create). – Jberkel 11:04, 15 February 2022 (UTC)

Also lady about town: [29], [30], [31]. Even cats and dogs can be about town personalities: [32], [33]. Someone can also be said to be about town – more an actuality than a disposition, with a sense not clearly covered at the preposition about: [34], [35], [36].  --Lambiam 11:28, 15 February 2022 (UTC)

скупиться

The entry says "to be sparing with, to be stingy with, to skimp, to scrimp (на (na) + accusative plural)". But I don't see why it has to be the accusative plural. It is in the case of скупиться на деньги, to skimp on the money, but that is because the noun is itself usually plural. Context Reverso has Нельзя же скупиться на лед! , "you never underbudget on ice", where лёд is accusative singular.2A00:23C8:A7A3:4801:7D53:3C13:57A5:B73 11:46, 15 February 2022 (UTC)

Is the rule perhaps that the singular is used for mass nouns, while the plural is used for count nouns? Compare English do not skimp on kindness (uncountable, so singular) versus do not skimp on kind words (countable, so plural). If so, there is indeed no point in specifying a required or preferred grammatical number in the entry.  --Lambiam 09:46, 16 February 2022 (UTC)

I don't recognise "count noun" as meaning anything in (educated) English, so I can't comment, I'm afraid.2A00:23C8:A7A3:4801:51D7:A024:883:1232 13:32, 16 February 2022 (UTC)

Ah: count noun, which gives the Russian translation as исчисля́емое существи́тельное. - -sche (discuss) 16:27, 16 February 2022 (UTC)

No - исчисляемое существительное means "countable noun". 2A00:23C8:A7A3:4801:51D7:A024:883:1232 19:21, 16 February 2022 (UTC)

“Countable noun” and “count noun” are synonyms (see Wikpedia). J3133 (talk) 19:42, 16 February 2022 (UTC)

(The IP seems not to know educated English that well, so a link to w:simple:Count noun might be more helpful.) - -sche (discuss) 20:58, 16 February 2022 (UTC)

Wikipedia is hardly a source. For a start, it is edited by Americans...2A00:23C8:A7A3:4801:733E:646C:63DA:CF9D 23:12, 18 February 2022 (UTC)

When you say "countable noun" and "count noun" are synonyms, I think you should add that progressive (arguably slangy) American is a dialect that uses phrases like "count noun". Another one is "skim milk", which you would no doubt claim was a synonym of "skimmed milk". "Swim team" is another annoying one, for "swimming team". In my local leisure centre, there are signs advertising "swim" (e.g. "adult swim, 7pm") and not "swimming", and they have received a lot of complaints (which they are ignoring). I know these words are used by native speakers (especially in America, probably not exclusively, as we are under US influence in England), so from a descriptivist point of view the words exist. But the dictionary here fails to capture the fact that educated Englishmen instinctively take umbrage at some US usages. This isn't something that an L2 speaker would need to take interest in, as he would be most likely to gravitate towards the dialect with the largest number of speakers. But it is a fact that many US usages strike Englishmen, rightly or wrongly, as uneducated. This isn't really a linguistic point, more a socio-cultural point of view. I also think Americans are entitled to think that Englishmen who do not use the subjunctive are not using correct grammar. So we all have our points to score.2A00:23C8:A7A3:4801:733E:646C:63DA:CF9D 23:05, 18 February 2022 (UTC)

@2A00:23C8:A7A3:4801:7D53:3C13:57A5:B73: A note on plural was added by the author User:Benwing2. I have removed it. You are right. It's used with both singular and plural.

The term has another perfective etymology, which I have added. --Anatoli T. ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 00:46, 5 April 2022 (UTC)

wipe oneself

Should we have an entry for this? When people refer to people wiping themselves, it implies wiping their buttocks, not for instance, people wiping their noses. 2600:1700:E660:9D60:75D4:F3CA:42D3:A772 23:09, 15 February 2022 (UTC) I have created an entry for this. I think it should have an entry. 2600:1700:E660:9D60:75D4:F3CA:42D3:A772 00:29, 16 February 2022 (UTC)

I agree that most of the time, and most idiomatically, it refers to cleaning the "lower regions" in the context of defecation, but it's not impossible to find other uses (e.g., [37]). 70.172.194.25 00:37, 16 February 2022 (UTC)

Yes, however outside of context when people refer to people wiping themselves, it refers to the buttocks. In that book context is making it clear that it is refer to the chin. 2600:1700:E660:9D60:75D4:F3CA:42D3:A772 01:06, 16 February 2022 (UTC)

The definition allows for the meaning of wiping one's buttocks to remove dirt, suntan lotion, or whatever. That's not specific enough. DCDuring (talk) 02:14, 16 February 2022 (UTC)

to be getting on with

I've used this phrase, and I found it used here ("Your father and I are fine. We'll have a roof over our head—and each other. That's plenty to be getting on with.") But I can't find it here. Is it entry-worthy? If so then what is the lemma? I'd define it as "to be enough to continue or progress despite being incomplete or imperfect". --RDBury (talk) 11:40, 17 February 2022 (UTC)

• Read it as "That's plenty with which to be getting on." Vox Sciurorum (talk) 14:09, 17 February 2022 (UTC)

  Don't we have get on with and get on? What different about the present progressive form? DCDuring (talk) 16:27, 17 February 2022 (UTC)

I'm not convinced it's the same meaning; there is an implication that the circumstances are less than ideal, but not so bad that one can't cope somehow. The normal meaning of "get on with" is after an interruption, and perhaps the person is just procrastinating, but I don't think that makes sense in the context of the above quote. Perhaps it could be listed as a new definition under "get on with", but I don't think I've heard this phrase in the meaning I'm thinking of with anything other than the progressive. --RDBury (talk) 22:59, 17 February 2022 (UTC)

It is the same sense(s) that we intend in the definitions of get on with and get on, however the definitions there are too goal-oriented, by the textual evidence you have provided. This is also evinced by the contradiction in the example “she's getting on very well at school” if we replace this “getting on” with “successful”. Lack of words makes us stagger. Fay Freak (talk) 23:21, 17 February 2022 (UTC)

berinjela pronunciation

The page for the Portuguese word berinjela cites pronunciations for Brazil, Portugal and Southern Brazil. While it is obvious that these are generalist and not meant to represent how every speaker says them, I'd say the pronunciation given at "Southern Brazil" describes perfectly how people from Bahia say the word, with an open /ɛ/ at the third syllable. — This unsigned comment was added by 201.157.197.119 (talk) at 12:25, 18 February 2022 (UTC).

groß as in "groß machen"

(sorry in advance for the subject matter!) There's a missing German adverbial sense, but I can't quite define it in a way that makes sense for that part of speech. "groß machen" is a slightly childish phrase roughly equivalent to "do a poo", but it's not just a set phrase: groß can also be used with other verbs similarly - groß müssen is "must poo", groß können is "can poo", groß gehen is "(go for a) poo" etc. It's definitely an adverb, because it's always lower case and not declined. How can we define this? Smurrayinchester (talk) 14:36, 18 February 2022 (UTC)

This sounds like the English number two, in contrast with klein which means number one in klein machen. It's mentioned in Redensarten-Index. Keep in mind that German only declines adjectives when they precede a noun, and the difference between an adjective and an adverb is fuzzier in German than in English because German does not require a suffix to make the transition. In fixed phrases the distinction is academic, and I would call groß machen a fixed phrase. With modal and modal-like verbs, German tends to drop infinitive verbs when the meaning is clear without them, so I'd consider the other expressions you listed as instances of groß machen with the machen dropped. Do you have any examples of this expression being use "in the wild"? It's hard to search for because groß and machen occur together a lot but not in the way you're talking about. Though it does give a whole new meaning to Amerika wieder groß machen. --RDBury (talk) 13:27, 19 February 2022 (UTC)

A couple of examples from books (you're right, I also found quite a few where it seems more adjectival than adverbial):

Deutsch für Pflegekräfte: Kommunikationstraining für den Pflegealltag, page 96:

Sarah: »Müssen Sie Wasser lassen oder groß?« Frau Sommer: »Ich muss groß. Das ist mein erster Stuhlgang nach der Operation.«

Sarah: "Do you need to pee or poo?" Frau Sommer: "I need to poo. This is my first defecation since the operation."

Das Kind ohne Vater, page 89

Bengt kam angerannt und musste zur Toilette. Klein oder groß? Pipi.

Bengt came running and needed to go to the toilet. Number one or number two? Pee.

Smurrayinchester (talk) 12:14, 22 February 2022 (UTC)

upper body

Worth an entry? PUC – 21:45, 18 February 2022 (UTC)

For the sake of defining the term, for WT:COALMINE, perhaps for translation hub and for etymology – from the top of my head I'd guess it's akin to German Vorbau, Vorderbau "bossoms", cp. face, facade, and that body was formed by analogy from such longer phrases; cp. build (build up).

It's not SOP if the limbs and heads are usually not included and torso or rump eg. not substituted, barring any obsolete construction, which if lexical, would only proof the point, or if not, shift the goal post with regards to etymology – cp. Oberkörper (“corpus”) like Kopf (“caput”), besides Haupt (“head”), Oberhaupt (“headmaster”); suppose the labial does anyway signify up; column, shows the same anlaut, whereas Knochen shows a rare form of reduplication, and neck vel sim. show a suffix associated with bodyparts; I'm not sure what, if anything, would *-bʰ. It's also in leibhaftig, whereas loaf, cheese presents with *h < *k in the anlaut; liver may compare with nephre; alpha, "bull, Taurus; ... and birdy, a cute baby duck, like -ly to like, eh ... see bulky, "top heavy".

I wonder where you'd draw the waistline, and I have to concede that the broadest possible definition does look SoP, "upper part of the body". Suppose my point is that a human body is more than the sum of its parts. ApisAzuli (talk) 21:21, 23 February 2022 (UTC)

@PUC: I said I wondered where you draw the wasteline?! ApisAzuli (talk) 20:23, 1 March 2022 (UTC)

decadal

I don't know if it's been raised before, but Wiktionary states the UK pronunciation is diKAYdal (if I may use lazy semi-phonetic representation), whereas the OED has dEkadal. I was about to say this word (rarer than you would think) earlier today, and suddenly realised I wasn't sure where the stress was. I think because it is rare, the pronunciation is probably gravitating towards diKAYdal, although most people rarely have a need for this word. But it's worth noting dEkadal too.2A00:23C8:A7A3:4801:733E:646C:63DA:CF9D 23:10, 18 February 2022 (UTC)

Yeah, I'd expect both first- and second-syllable stress to exist, as for decade (for which we list RP /ˈdɛkeɪd/, /dəˈkeɪd/ and GenAm /ˈdɛkeɪd/, /dəˈkeɪd/). Actually, it'd be good to find confirmation of the different first vowel we list (/ɪ/). - -sche (discuss) 22:55, 19 February 2022 (UTC)

Looking at Youglish [38], it seems like the usual pronunciation is with the stress on the second syllable in all varieties of English (though I think I would stress the first syllable personally). Overlordnat1 (talk) 11:50, 21 February 2022 (UTC)

@Overlordnat1: probably not quite all varieties: decade is pronounced /ˈdɛkeɪd/ in AusE (Australian English), while /dəˈkeɪd/ could only be heard here as meaning decayed. - yoyo (talk) 13:13, 22 February 2022 (UTC)

@Yahya Abdal-Aziz:I meant that most people stress the second syllable of decadal, not that they stress the second syllable of decade. Overlordnat1 (talk) 14:02, 22 February 2022 (UTC)

kick

Noun sense 11 for kick is defined as pocket but which sense of pocket is that and how can kick be used in its place? Can you say ‘put it in my trouser kick’ instead of ‘put it in my trouser pocket’? Overlordnat1 (talk) 03:21, 19 February 2022 (UTC)

It's in {{R:Partridge New|edition=2|entry=kick|page=1318}} with quotations:

Eric Partridge (2013) “kick”, in Tom Dalzell and Terry Victor, editors, The New Partridge Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English, 2nd edition, volumes I–II, Abingdon, Oxon., New York, N.Y.: Routledge, →ISBN, page 1318.

70.172.194.25 03:31, 19 February 2022 (UTC)

Thanks! I’ve now added a quote from Partridge and removed the tag, I’ve never used the Partridge template before though, so I hope I’ve got the formatting right. Overlordnat1 (talk) 10:57, 19 February 2022 (UTC)

It's mainly intended to be used in the References or Further reading sections, not as a quotation. That's probably why the formatting looks odd. However, you can cite one of the sources that the dictionary cites. (IANAL, but that should not be copyright violation since Partridge does not own the rights to those works. As long as one is not systematically copying references from Partridge, in which case one would be stealing their research. You could also just, like, find another quotation on Google Books[39][40]. Looks like the term may be popular in Australia.) 70.172.194.25 11:07, 19 February 2022 (UTC)

Could that be from a different etymology, like from pickpocket by some variety of rhyming slang? — This unsigned comment was added by DCDuring (talk • contribs) at 19:00, 19 February 2022 (UTC).

Good idea. It is possible that the terms in the US (documented by Partridge) and Australia (documented by the other source) developed independently. And there's also this source claiming it is used in Cockney English in London: [41]. I think it's rather unlikely that, if the term developed independently or originally in the US that it is from rhyming slang; but if it originated or developed independently in the UK and Australia, that origin has some superficial appeal. I'm not sure how we would substantiate this etymology, though; I'm not finding any specific sources connecting the "pocket" meaning of "kick" to rhyming slang. Of course, there's also the issue of the parsimony when it comes to positing two separate derivations for a word developing a specific sense.

On the other hand, what I did find for an etymology is:

“Kick” in [John Camden Hotten], The Slang Dictionary […], 5th edition, London: Chatto and Windus, 1874, page 207: “Kick, a pocket; Gaelic, cuach, a bowl, a nest; Scotch, quaigh”.

I do not know how plausible or reliable that is, though. The title of the dictionary does contain "anecdotal", after all.

Another theory, from {{R:Partridge Underworld|kicks|page=382}} [42] comes from the fact that "kicks" (cf. kecks) in the sense of "breeches" or "trousers" is attested from 1698 in British English, so the derivation would be "that in which one kicks one's legs" => "trousers" => "pockets". (On page 381, under the "kick" pocket sense, it says it is an extension of the "breeches" sense.)

And, whatever the origin of "kick" for "pocket", it is worth noting that sidekick is likely derived from this sense.

Hope that helps. 70.172.194.25 19:43, 19 February 2022 (UTC)

Thanks, I’ve now amended the page to include the quotations and a reference. Overlordnat1 (talk) 00:50, 21 February 2022 (UTC)

chilblain and frostbite

What's the difference between chilblain and frostbite? PUC – 13:09, 19 February 2022 (UTC)

Judging by the Wikipedia articles (in particular the section w:Frostbite#Diagnosis) and what other sources I could find that gave any detail, frostbite involves freezing of the skin or other tissues, causing "numbness [...] a white or bluish color to the skin[,] swelling or blistering"; "the underlying mechanism involves injury from ice crystals and blood clots in small blood vessels following thawing", whereas chilblains are from chilly but non-freezing conditions, which damage "capillary beds in the skin [...] when blood perfuses into the nearby tissue resulting in redness, itching, inflammation, and possibly blisters"; Wikipedia doesn't explain why the blood perfuses, but from looking elsewhere it seems the chill has various effects that result in blood gorging. Related issue: Wikipedia says a kibe is an ulcerated chilblain, but we say it's any chilblain or ulcer, and other sources also differ on what it is... - -sche (discuss) 23:31, 19 February 2022 (UTC)

CAT:Neo-Nazism

Is it not better to categorize terms like triple parentheses, ZOG, etc. as neo-Nazi terminology? Such a category could be a subcategory of CAT:Nazism. See also User talk:Equinox#Reverted edit. ·~ dictátor·mundꟾ 16:54, 19 February 2022 (UTC)

Is there any evidence that they are? Words like neo-Nazi are thrown about as terms of abuse, but it is more likely these terms are used by white nationalists (some of whom, but a tiny subset, are neo-Nazis). 86.153.174.69 17:35, 19 February 2022 (UTC)

Better to categorize triple parentheses as neo-Nazi than as what? If the question is if a term is better in the (neo-)Nazism category vs the white supremacism category, we could discuss that. If it's whether to split neo-Nazi vs Nazi words, I don't know that we should try to split those hairs, or could (many terms, and some Nazis, existed continuously before and after 1945); I think neo-Nazi terms can continue to be (as e.g. 1488 is) put in the Nazism category. Re Equinox's talk page, unless there's evidence the British Labour Party et al refer to electric Jew, it does seem to belong in (if not CAT:en:Nazism) at least CAT:en:White supremacist ideology, though I understand the argument that categorizing it as "alt-right" may be inappropriate if it predates them, unless it's now heavily associated with them. - -sche (discuss) 00:01, 20 February 2022 (UTC)

@-sche: Just to be on the safe side, should we remove the category CAT:Nazism from entries that are not really Nazism terminology, but merely associated with alt-right / Neo-Nazi groups? ·~ dictátor·mundꟾ 17:52, 21 February 2022 (UTC)

I think terms strongly associated with / used by (neo-)Nazis should be in the Nazism category, but if you have specific entries in mind, what are they? (Looking at what's in the category now, I do wonder about blitzkrieg, but e.g. triple parentheses are certainly heavily associated with neo-Nazis, even if other antisemites also use them, and anti-Nazis now sometimes "subvert" or "reclaim" them.) - -sche (discuss) 18:02, 21 February 2022 (UTC)

Wiktionary:Beer parlour/2021/December#User:PulauKakatua19's recent religious/political edits. I only need to repeat what I have said there about Category:Fascism for “Nazism” and “Neo-Nazism”: there was no ideological system with terminology peculiar to it, it was a syncretism of various right-wing and right-on views, held together by some regular commixions of pseudoscience. (Marxism, obviously, has much more of marked language.) And those views do not distinguish anyone, all citizens of any country are statists and conservatives by default but just few vocal and systematic about it, so no, there are just offensive terms but you won’t succeed in gathering everything vaguely rightist or vaguely extremely rightist. … Being “more often used” by group is not enough grounds for a term to be categorized into that group. Also those supporters are very rare. You can’t just take over what kids on the internet meme about Mussolini and Hitler and a possible revival, maybe it’s not even fascism.

Not every ideological category makes sense. It may be easier to see that Category:Liberalism and Category:Neo-Liberalism are indeterminate enough not to warrant us to have them. The similarity of constellation is great, but less conspicuous because the ideologies themselves are now rarefied and obscured; the problem is acerbated by some parties being interested in keeping it that way and strawmanning a bogeyman, supposedly to be recognized by clear symbols which are all not too clear and all not too essential to the ideological goals. Someone also created Category:fa:Ismailism which is way to narrow; the comparison size seems preposterous on first glance by the conventional triggers but who actually read Mein Kampf? As large as the ideology was, for the bulk of purported believers it was also empty and meaningless as such, somebody just marketed his product sucessfully, which wasn’t precisely the weltanschauung itself as in other cases: Marxism, Islam and Christianity have much clearer definition and thus also adherents, correspondingly we have naturally developed categories for them, but the categories “Fascism” and “Nazism” do not so much exist but tendentially have very specific terms about persons and occurrences in politics and history of then and today. Nazism was devised but as a solution to the former and the Weimar conditions imposed by foreign powers, the claim of an “ideology” was to obtain the same rank, for the diverse political goals of this pyramid scheme. It practically needed as much ideology as gift circles do, which also make various esoteric claims and paroles.

This means we will have an eternal NPOV problem. If we don’t have certain ideologies but they ain’t defined ideologies but only marketing terms (of groups to advertise their own services or denigrate competitors) this will needs appear inflammatory to the politically obtuse general public that uses to distinguish by typical symbols and won’t fathom the lexicographer’s forethought in his inequal treatment that intended to be as resolute as it was neutral. But in so much as we cater to this expectation of maintaining wastebasket categories we will include terms of diverse causality or systematic belonging and will thus necessarily be wrong. Because humans are complicated. Fay Freak (talk) 00:18, 20 February 2022 (UTC)

"arreee" (Kurdish?)

found in transcription of an ad-lib by the native Kurdish deutsch-rapper Diloman [43] it is impossible to search and it could be eye-dialect for something else by the sound of it (in passim) maybe mere udulation. More prominent ad-libs like ouais are so bleached it could be any kind of interjection. ApisAzuli (talk) 03:05, 20 February 2022 (UTC)

Most recognizably non-German terms are plain Turkish: müşteri, amca, taş, hapis, tek tek. Listening to the audio, I hear something somewhat indistinct, like [əriː], which may indeed be a shout like ayy, not having a fixed meaning.  --Lambiam 15:19, 20 February 2022 (UTC)

I am asking w.r.t. rhā́idios and was hoping for a little more specific data, that it might be similar to çüş (“brrrr – für Pferde ‚Halt!', Ausruf bei grober Zurechtweisung”) [44] for example something like ariba, ariba, andale – arrêter; easy fella.

I mean others from the team are called Azero, Kurdo, Shqiptar; hence I expect – let'say substrate influenced lyrics beyond Turkish.

I think I hear /h/ or other initial consonant. ApisAzuli (talk) 19:47, 20 February 2022 (UTC)

Maybe from Spanish/Portuguese arriba under the influence of Mongolian хаг (xag). Compare further Old Church Slavonic храбръ (xrabrŭ).  --Lambiam 00:15, 22 February 2022 (UTC)

FYI, I got confirmation that the word is understood. I heard an initial consonant all the same and from what I was told in German, "weitermachen", it could seem to be at least related to ku:here, ku:herîn, which see for more. ApisAzuli (talk) 19:58, 22 March 2022 (UTC)

fly#Etymology 2, Noun

There are two similar senses, originally widely separated, but I grouped them. I think they can be combined. Both have quotations, including one I just added to the second one.

• 14. (now historical) A type of small, fast carriage (sometimes pluralised flys).
• 15. (historical) A light horse-drawn carriage that can be hired for transportation.

DonnanZ (talk) 14:53, 20 February 2022 (UTC)

Good catch. Could have used {{rfd|sense}} and put it directly to RfD. DCDuring (talk) 19:31, 21 February 2022 (UTC)

• OK, done that. [:https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Wiktionary:Requests_for_deletion/English#fly] DonnanZ (talk) 23:34, 22 February 2022 (UTC)

Japanese おめこ use

The Japanese entry おめこ (omeko, “female genitalia”) currently has two quotes, but they are mention rather than use. The first is a footnote giving the Japanese reading of the Chinese term in The Carnal Prayer Mat; the other is a gloss of two terms for female genitals. As User:Bendono points out, the entry needs “to show "when" and "how" a word is used”, but these quotes do not do that. It's not really a case for RfV, though, as the word seems to be archaic, and is widely noted in other dictionaries. Help finding actual use will be appreciated. Cnilep (talk) 00:28, 21 February 2022 (UTC)

The first citation tell me that the word has existed since at least the early 18th century. (Any earlier citations would be welcome, too.) The second one even defines the word. This is exactly the kind of information that I look for when looking words up. As any Japanese speaker can tell you, the term is not archaic. In the right circumstances, you can hear the word almost daily. It is an extremely commonly word, particularly in western Japan. Please note that the second sense is not supported by anything. Perhaps it should be removed. Bendono (talk) 03:38, 21 February 2022 (UTC)

The problem is not with when, but used. These examples mention the word as a word, rather than use it to refer to a body part. Cnilep (talk) 04:03, 21 February 2022 (UTC)

Inclusion of figurative shape senses

Is it okay to add "Object having the shape of X" to an entry X if at least three citations for it can be found? I'm not sure if it's too obvious. 70.172.194.25 00:36, 21 February 2022 (UTC)

Are you talking about "X" itself, or using it as a wildcard ("if X does Y...") for anything that has an "object in the shape of..." sense? It's a thought-provoking question in either case. There's a line above which having such a sense seems absurd to me (e.g. defining "bear" as "anything shaped like a bear", even though this obviously exists, e.g. "they watched clouds float by, a cross here, a bear there"), but for things like X I'm not sure. We do seem to have a "shape" sense at cross and (sort of) at bow, and both RFDs at Talk:H-shaped were closed as kept, so I guess it'd be fine to add such a sense to all the Latin letters. (Such a sense seems to exist for some non-Latin letters, too.) - -sche (discuss) 16:47, 21 February 2022 (UTC)

Wildcard, sorry. I was trying to not be overly specific. What prompted my question in particular was hearing a trail called a "lollipop" (also used attributively: "a lollipop hike") in reference to having a linear stretch that connects to a circular loop. And then I did some digging and found the term used in other contexts to describe that kind of geometry. But X itself would make a good case too! 70.172.194.25 16:59, 21 February 2022 (UTC)

Oh, that's an interesting one. My initial reaction is that that feels idiomatic to me, if/because it invokes a specific shape whereas lollipops come in various shapes (rectangular; ring pops that look more like inverted ȣs; etc), and it doesn't seem as open-ended or trivial as my cloud example. In other cases, it may be sufficient to just expand the main sense to mention the shape, as with Fay Freak's example of batwing (at least for batwing sails). - -sche (discuss) 18:37, 21 February 2022 (UTC)

Those terms have failed RFD multiple times. However it may depend on whether an item even exists separately. A natural batwing generally does not exist separated of the bat, so the definition of a shape is even part of the first definition and there are no distinct senses. Fay Freak (talk) 16:56, 21 February 2022 (UTC)

job

I’ve created Citations:job and added a citation of ‘job’ meaning ‘a police officer’. Can anyone find any other uses of ‘job’ where this meaning is intended, or where it’s used to refer to someone in the same profession as the speaker even if that profession isn’t the police force? There’s one mention on GoogleGroups referring to the same TV programme I heard the expression in, namely The Bay, the one GoogleBooks citation that I’ve added and no other uses anywhere online that I can find. I’ve just listed it as a requested entry. Overlordnat1 (talk) 03:01, 21 February 2022 (UTC)

I think this is the sense described in {{R:Partridge New|job|edition=2|page=1274}}:

Eric Partridge (2013) “job”, in Tom Dalzell and Terry Victor, editors, The New Partridge Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English, 2nd edition, volumes I–II, Abingdon, Oxon., New York, N.Y.: Routledge, →ISBN, page 1274: “the job¶ the police (as a profession) UK”

By the way, the television program can be added as a citation using {{quote-av}}. 70.172.194.25 17:48, 21 February 2022 (UTC)

Now added. Overlordnat1 (talk) 23:45, 12 April 2022 (UTC)

Occasional gender/etc. deviations in German

(Notifying Matthias Buchmeier, -sche, Atitarev, Jberkel, Mahagaja, Fay Freak, Fytcha): In the process of cleaning up German nouns I have encountered quite a lot of cases where Wiktionary allows additional genders (sometimes additional plurals, genitives, etc.) that are not found in any other dictionary. The latest example is Plebiszit, which is listed only as neuter in Duden, DWDS, Pons and dewikt but is listed as neuter or masculine by us. Our entry was originally neuter only but an IP changed it and added the usage note "Generally and originally neuter, but occasionally masculine". Especially in a learned word like this, I suspect the use of the masculine is tantamount to a misspelling or a mispronunciation by people who aren't familiar with the word, and my instinct is not to include it. What I have actually been doing is removing the unverifiable genders and adding a comment indicating that the gender or alternative plural (etc.) is unverifiable, unless there is an explicit usage note, in which case I maintain the alternative but mark it as rare, archaic or obsolete, as much as I can tell what's actually going on. Yes, "all words in all languages" but including things like this adds undue weight to them. Other examples, none of which I can verify in dictionaries:

• Verbum alt pl Verben (in place of Verba)
• Voodoo neuter gender (in place of masculine), genitive Voodoos (in place of unchanged Voodoo)
• Topos neuter gender (in place of masculine)
• Back neuter gender (in place of feminine)
• Autokorso, Korso neuter gender (in place of masculine)
• Bison plural Bisone (in place of Bisons)
• Oktaeder, Polyeder and other -eder nouns: masculine gender (in this case, dewikt has masculine, but Duden, DWDS and Pons do not)

Thoughts? Benwing2 (talk) 03:52, 21 February 2022 (UTC)

I have similar concerns about listing obsolete alternative genders and declensions found in Grimm but nowhere else, as well as obsolete spellings like Uibersetzung. For comparison, Shakespeare is known to have spelled the word "girl" in at least six different ways in various manuscripts, but we don't include spellings like "gherle" and I would argue strongly against doing so. Benwing2 (talk) 03:59, 21 February 2022 (UTC)

Tell this the annoying people of the fashion “but it must be attested in this exact fashion and timeframe”, expecting Romans to write Gaulish briginos instead of briginus, to make out which spellings of ciclatoun would be original Middle English and New English, such that quotes are removed because Spenser under a Middle English header freaks them out, removing a quote at Muselman because it was an occasional compound Muselmanenmäusken, and similar sports.

Anyways, some points:

• -en is a natural outcome of Latin and Greek neuter plural -a, so it freely appears, and surely you know that Verben is a plural of Verb and it is the same problem as with Arabic of deciding which singular a plural belongs to: nobody hinders speakers to use one word and the plural of another related one with the same sense, and there intermediate states.
• Voodoo neuter seems good, you find it printed often and it follows the usual rule of English borrowings being neuter if in doubt.
• Misgendering an unadapted Greek word is indeed surely frowned upon, even if perhaps only few would notice.
• I don’t know this nautic term but one should not trust general dictionaries to document this area correctly, especially since they aren’t a part of general German, and rather particularist use should have more bearing. It is best to document all genders found there. Often there are alternative forms omitted by the dictionaries.
• Indeed neuter sounds questionable for Korso.
• Bisone sounds credible, Bisons is prescriptive “because it is an English borrowing” or French, or there is some meme amongst linguists that -s would be the “real” German plural suffix. Note that this animal is rarely talked about in Germany. But in biological literature it is used very deliberately; 1998 for the genus: “In der Gattung der Bisone und Wisente sind der amerikanische Bison und der europaeische Wisent die beiden einzig verbliebenen Arten der urspruenglichen Grossgruppe der Wildrinder.” The analogy to other plurals makes it sound better apparently: “viele Bisone, Rehe, Pfaue …”
• -eder nouns as masculine sounds also defensible. Either because of taking over the gender of a particular noun they are compounded with or just because of the suffix -er as in Quader, or because of having passed via French. Anyway it is frequent enough to be expected and noted in the entries, if you search der Tetraeder. Fay Freak (talk) 04:42, 21 February 2022 (UTC)

@Benwing2: I feel pretty strongly about documenting "das Voodoo" and "der Polyeder", they are very common and actually the genders I personally use. In the case of the latter, I have added citations spanning over 100 years attesting the masculine gender, even including contemporary mathematical literature. For some of the other forms listed, high quality quotations may be found too, e.g.:

• 1993, Martin H. Jones, Roy Albert Wisbey, Chrétien de Troyes and the German Middle Ages: Papers from an International Symposium (Arthurian studies)‎^[45], Boydell & Brewer, →ISBN, →LCCN, page 303:

  Wolfram überbietet schließlich das Topos der Rosen- und Lilienfarbe des Gesichtes, indem er die Gesichtsfarbe des jungen Mädchens mit der im Tau kaum aufgegangenen Rose (188,10-13) vergleicht, wobei er das Motiv der kaum aufgegangenen Rose […]

In general though, I see and I agree with your concern. The most extreme scenario to drive home the point would be three German language learners on Usenet, all independently misgendering a word the same way. While technically sufficing in terms of WT:ATTEST, I would of course be opposed to the inclusion thereof; in the limit, we'd just have all genders for all nouns: a mess! At the same time, defining any hard and fast demarcation seems rather difficult and we are probably better off judging on a case-to-case basis instead. I want to point out however that Duden is a prescriptivist dictionary, still lacking in its coverage of non-Germany German and severely lacking (intentionally?) with respect to obsolete German. I wouldn't take absence of evidence (with regard to Duden) as evidence of absence. In regard to "undue weight": can't we make the alternative genders gray instead of black to give them less visual weight? I thought about the same for diminutives, e.g. everything in Haus after the first two. The idea is to still have the information there but to "scare off" the people that don't know what they're doing. — Fytcha〈 T | L | C 〉 09:43, 21 February 2022 (UTC)

Yeah, some visual differentiation, perhaps even a click-to-expand, would be good. We have talked about qualifiers in headlines before but they aren’t enough for Haus. Fay Freak (talk) 14:51, 21 February 2022 (UTC)

The idea of click-to-expand to see obscure forms is intriguing (have to see how it'd look in practice, and for mobile users), or just systematically put them somewhere else, like the declension section, so people who want a machine-readable complete list have it, but without as much prominence. This could also apply to obscure forms of Haus and Obolus, and more generally to other languages with many obsolete forms. (Actually, it's interesting that there are people who want a complete machine-readable list of the obscure forms of Haus, but there's been less support for ensuring obsolete forms like houseth are systematically mentioned somewhere in house#Verb, which would be easy to do with a conjugation template.) We shouldn't rely on greying anything out; a recurring and correct complaint even from not-visually-impaired editors wheneveer someone tries that for something is that grey or fuzzy text is too hard to read or too easy to miss. - -sche (discuss) 16:03, 21 February 2022 (UTC)

@Fytcha Thank you for your comments and of course feel free to correct what I've done when it's wrong. The issue that I'm running into is there are so many mistakes in the remaining unconverted entries (as well as some extremely rare or obsolete terms like Tejostadt, often not properly marked as such) that it's often not clear to me what correct and what's not, so I tend to fall back to what's in dictionaries. BTW I will fix the remaining -eder terms to match masculine or neuter gender. Benwing2 (talk) 02:18, 22 February 2022 (UTC)

Another example I just came across: Ikterus (“jaundice”), which lists the plural Ikteri and says "Most often without a plural, but sometimes the plural is seen." In fact I find exactly 0 cites in Google for "die Ikteri". Sometimes it feels like people are adding obscure, possibly nonexistent forms just to try to be clever or "erudite" or whatever. Benwing2 (talk) 03:38, 22 February 2022 (UTC)

English 'nuff

Could someone fix the part of speech? ·~ dictátor·mundꟾ 13:15, 21 February 2022 (UTC)

 Done (adjusted to list the same parts of speech as 'nough which enough also lists). - -sche (discuss) 16:50, 21 February 2022 (UTC)

batwing doors

We have a citation which refers to "batwing doors" listed under the sense "The wing of a bat, or its shape". However, a Google Image search suggests that any set of "double" doors that swing open (perhaps especially ones that fit inside a single-wide doorway, and don't fill it completely at the top or bottom) are "batwing doors", even if shaped like normal rectangles or like a "hill"; it doesn't seem to refer to a bat-wing-like shape so much as to a specific manner of opening. Does this mean we need a separate sense at batwing or batwing door? - -sche (discuss) 18:42, 21 February 2022 (UTC)

Old-fashioned saloon doors generally do not have the shape of the wing of a bat either. A bat’s wing has three characteristic trailing-edge notches. Nothing in “a door in the shape of the wing of a bat” suggests (a) that they are a symmetric pair of swinging doors and do not lock; (b) that they cover only part of the vertical range of the door opening (roughly from the knee to below the neck, so that you can look over them).  --Lambiam 00:00, 22 February 2022 (UTC)

They must be called by their widely open state. The opening mechanism is not thinkable without that and is secondary, tempting though it be to see a particular definition therein. It is problematic then that they hardly resemble batwings (often less so than batwing sails), however our first definition does not say what a shape of a batwing is in general—’tis probably a very vague metaphor rather than geometrically grasped—, and there must be some resemblance in contradistinction from the wings of any double-door. I recommend adding a picture from Commons captioned “batwing door”, or two, one closer to a batwing shape and one farther, and hard-redirecting batwing door (there won’t be any translations to collect, “wing doors” are specific enough designations for most languages). Fay Freak (talk) 02:20, 22 February 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for the feedback. Indeed, when I checked more closely, I realized "batwing(s)" on its own (and not just in the longer phrase "batwing door"—"batwings door(s)" is also used, for whatever reason) is pretty common, which supports the idea that this needs its own definition line. I added one. Commons has surprisingly few images that I could find, but I added one (I'd've preferred a photo of just one set of batwing doors, maybe with one being opened, but the closest they had to that was a door taller than the person striding through it). - -sche (discuss) 17:57, 23 February 2022 (UTC)

Chief judge

I am having a hard time figuring out what to do for this definition:

• Should it be "chief judge", "Chief judge", or "Chief Judge". For instance, the top justice is Chief Justice (e.g., chief judge of each judicial circuit, the Chief Judge of the Court of International Trade).
• I took a stab at something that would be called "see also" in Wikipedia, but I don't think is used here. So, I said "Related:...." after the definition. Is that even close to the way to do it?
• I am having a hard time finding non-US definitions -- which is particularly an issues where the top judicial role in some countries is Chief Judge, rather than Chief Justice. Can I word a definition and use examples like Chief Judge of Lagos State?

I am trying to get a good definition here on Wiktionary that is linked from a number of non-US uses of Chief judge.

Thanks so much!CaroleHenson (talk) 23:31, 21 February 2022 (UTC)

per necessitas, prn (medical Latin abbreviation used in English)

Please see for the reversion of my first attempt at adding this: https://en.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?title=necessitas&diff=next&oldid=63664927 where I had it as a "derived term" in Latin.

I agree with the comment by the reverter (who was that?) it "should be an adverbial sense [of the noun]" - in Latin. But when used in English by a medical prescriber, it simply means "[take] as necessary". How should I go about adding this phrase and abbreviation to Wiktionary as English terms? — This unsigned comment was added by Yahya Abdal-Aziz (talk • contribs).

At first create the English entry (if it meets our criteria for inclusion). If it’s attested in Latin literature, then list that term as a derivation in the Latin section; otherwise do not. ·~ dictátor·mundꟾ 13:45, 22 February 2022 (UTC)

namaste

Definition:

1. Literally "I bow to you"; used as a greeting or acknowledgement of the equality of all, which pays honor to the sacredness of all.

Everything after "greeting" strikes me as commentary, like the person who wrote it is someone from the US or Europe who thinks everyday words in India are something exotic and esoteric. Chuck Entz (talk) 16:17, 22 February 2022 (UTC)

"A greeting used by people who are into yoga to signal their ingroup status." Certainly not an everyday greeting. Vox Sciurorum (talk) 16:37, 22 February 2022 (UTC)

That's what context labels are for: (India, yoga). 70.172.194.25 18:27, 22 February 2022 (UTC)

I added those labels to the interjection. Definition still needs work. Vox Sciurorum (talk) 18:44, 22 February 2022 (UTC)

It still needs another sense to acknowledge it as a regular greeting better’ 107.77.192.122 23:20, 22 February 2022 (UTC)

@Vox Sciurorum: I'm not sure the "India" gloss is appropriate. This word is often used by (say) New-Age Californians who want to appropriate Indian culture. That's different from our normal Indian gloss, which would indicate Indian English such as updation. Equinox ◑ 07:54, 28 February 2022 (UTC)

I agree with Equinox, from whatever use I've seen of this in English, it's definitely not the same level as updation, etc. And in most cases it is intentionally used, and is definitely not a naturalised everyday term unlike as it is in other Indian languages. —Svārtava (t/u) • 09:01, 28 February 2022 (UTC)

I think the precise usage and connotations for this term are too complicated to efficiently explain on the definition line and that it would be better to just have a pointer that something like "see usage notes below". A longer and more detailed explanation of the who and when of the term's usage can then be given in the appropriate section. —The Editor's Apprentice (talk) 18:29, 28 February 2022 (UTC)

Usage of כ and ק

When/how did the distinction between an unaspirated ק and an aspirated כ, as described in this Wikipedia article, become no longer present? I have been searching through lists of words that contain each letter, but have not found any distinct patterns yet.—107.77.192.122 03:14, 23 February 2022 (UTC)

I would think the best way to look for this would be to compare words borrowed into other languages to see if there are signs of diffent letters in the destination languages that correlate with the difference in the Hebrew original. Looking at Ancient Greek, for instance, there seems to be a distinction between Χαναάν (Khanaán) from Biblical Hebrew כְּנַעַן and Κάϊν (Káïn) from Biblical Hebrew קַיִן that are found in the Septuagint, but in the New Testament, Καφαρναούμ (Kapharnaoúm) comes from Biblical Hebrew כְּפַר נַחוּם. Interestingly, in the Septuagint, Χεβρών (Khebrṓn) comes from Biblical Hebrew חֶבְרוֹן, so כ seems to have at least partly merged with ח by that time. Not that this is exactly a definitive answer. Browsing through a few references on the spur of the moment isn't anywhere near as rigorous as even the most cursory of actual scholarly studies. Chuck Entz (talk) 04:59, 23 February 2022 (UTC)

Could a distinction between [x] and [ħ] be represented in Koine Greek? If not, we cannot draw a conclusion from both being represented by ⟨χ⟩.  --Lambiam 20:33, 23 February 2022 (UTC)

question regarding ordering of etymological descendants

I've noticed in a couple places a somewhat strange practice regarding how descendants are displayed in etymology sections. For example see the page for this PIE root. Beneath Ancient Greek: σύν (sún), ξύν (xún) we have first the modern Greek reflex, and then above all of the descendants in western European languages is listed Yevanic: שִׁין (šin). The way this looks at first glace, to my eyes, is as though the modern European descedents are from Yevanic, which surely isn't the case. It seems like what's going on is that arrow symbol represents borrowing, as distinct from being proper cognates, which is sort of sensible but pretty unclear?

I saw some similar style with a Sanskrit etymology recently, which listed the Pali reflex first, and then, IIRC, the re-borrowings into modern Indian languages, but I was legitimately confused as to whether those were regarded to have descended from Pali or Sanskrit, or to be proper descendants through Sanskrit. (I can't remember if there were any Dravidian languages in that list that would have clarified some. I actually can't remember what the word itself was, though it was something in Buddhist technical language etc.) — This unsigned comment was added by Hrschwartz (talk • contribs).

• You have to rely on indent level to understand what the parent is. A common practice is to list descendants first then borrowings at the same indent level beneath the same source language. If enough people find this unclear a CSS wizard could cook up some dotted lines to connect terms to their origins. Vox Sciurorum (talk) 19:10, 23 February 2022 (UTC)

I like this idea - particularly for where there are many descendents. Theknightwho (talk) 19:46, 23 February 2022 (UTC)

speedometer

A speedometer does not actually measure the speed of a vehicle. It provides an estimate based on the rotational speed of, assumed circumference of, and ,perhaps, the assumed or measured slippage of the tire. Should we remind users of this? If so, how? We have an RfV of Tachometer#German defined as "odometer". All three of the associated definitions might have to be improved in the same way. I am not absolutely sure that these three terms are only used for wheeled vehicles (automobiles, locomotives, bicycles, motorcycles etc.), but I think so. The lasers and "radar guns" used to measure speed are not called speedometers. Do all popular instruments need to be checked for the precise nature of the connection between what is actually measured and what is desired to be measured? DCDuring (talk) 19:54, 23 February 2022 (UTC)

Does an anemometer actually measure wind speed, or does it merely provide an estimate based on the rotational speed of a system of mounted cups? And what about a traditional thermometer? It provides an estimate based on the expansion of a column of some liquid, usually alcohol or mercury. And so on.  --Lambiam 20:49, 23 February 2022 (UTC)

ewe and hayi in Xhosa, Turkish related?

I had this question in mind for a while, I'd like to know more about this topic. — This unsigned comment was added by 88.230.54.78 (talk).

• Turkish hayır is from Arabic خَيْر (ḵayr) and Arabic contributed a lot of words at least as far south as Swahili. The problem with the connection is, the Turkish sense of "no" is a Persian innovation and Persian was not so influential in Africa. Vox Sciurorum (talk) 20:22, 23 February 2022 (UTC)
• It might be related to Swahili "eiwa" (modern orthography: "ewaa"), according to this Zulu grammar. This source gives the derivation as "e" + "we". 70.172.194.25 20:36, 23 February 2022 (UTC)

Example sentence of third meaning of chatte

The example sentence of the meaning 'luck' of the French word chatte has this example sentence: "T'as eu de la chatte de trouver un job si vite, compte tenu du la crise actuelle.". Is that correct? Can the word "du", which is a contraction of the preposition de and the article le be followed by another article la ("de le la")? Mölli-Möllerö (talk) 07:28, 24 February 2022 (UTC)

No, it's not correct. PUC – 10:27, 24 February 2022 (UTC)

Mysterious Korean entry

I'm looking at 吐, a Chinese character for ejecting bodily content from the mouth. I don't speak Korean, even though I roughly learnt Hangul one afternoon a long time ago (which is enough; it's the world's most logical writing system). Anyway, I read the Japanese section, and because I understand Japanese this is very easy; I imagine that a non-J reader would immediately guess that the bolded "On" and "Kun" might be types of something, and they are wlinked, even if the popup is no help to a non-J reader. But then I look at the Korean section, which is in large part generated by the template {{ko-hanja|토}}, and at first sight it tells me this is read eum, which I believe would be 음 (the "Korean Jamo" input below doesn't seem to work). But then it says "도 (to)", which is instantly more plausible, since it matches the J version. So what is "eum"? I am suggesting that whatever it is, this could be made clearer. Imaginatorium (talk) 09:26, 24 February 2022 (UTC)

@Imaginatorium: Much as Japanese as on and kun, Korean has eum and hun -- deriving similarly from 音 (JA on, KO eum, "sound") and from 訓 (JA kun, KO hun, "(native) reading", i.e. "meaning"). The entry at Korean 吐 only shows eum, which would correspond to the Japanese on, and is the reading based on the sound of the Middle Chinese. The entry at Korean 土 shows both eum and hun, where the eum reading of heuk is from Middle Chinese, and the hun reading of to is from the native Korean vocabulary.

Re: clarity, KO entries with both eum and hun show the combined eumhun as a link through to the KO entry at 음훈 (eumhun) with a definition. Ideally, KO entries with just eum or hun should link through in similar fashion. It looks like {{ko-hanja}} could use some reworking.

HTH, ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 22:09, 12 March 2022 (UTC)

undertake (road sense)

Is undertake (“to pass a slower moving vehicle on the curbside rather than on the side closest to oncoming traffic”) used outside of the UK? Vox Sciurorum (talk) 13:02, 24 February 2022 (UTC)

FWIW, although googling .gov sites turns up plenty of American laws and department of transportation regulations and teaching materials etc which use "overtake", I couldn't find any which use "undertake" in this sense ("undertake another (driver|vehicle)" or "undertake and pass another", etc). I didn't spot anything on Canadian sites, either. The only places I see it used are British. - -sche (discuss) 06:54, 27 February 2022 (UTC)

(Side note: I don't drive but I'm aware of this word, as a Brit.) Equinox ◑ 07:48, 28 February 2022 (UTC)

As another Brit, this is a very common term when driving. Probably worth checking if it’s used in Ireland, though I wouldn’t know where to look. Theknightwho (talk) 14:53, 28 February 2022 (UTC)

forget to take one's medication this morning

If the definition is, as stated, "to be annoyed or irritable..." then shouldn't the lemma be "have forgotten to take..."? We have have one's Weetabix but that definition says "to prepare to..." Equinox ◑ 23:37, 24 February 2022 (UTC)

Maybe the simple past is valid too, though: "Sounds like he forgot to take his medication this morning". 70.172.194.25 23:39, 24 February 2022 (UTC)

There's also "Sheesh, did he forget to take his medication this morning?" So I see where the choice of tense was coming from, but we may need to revise the definition. Maybe it should be a non-gloss like "used to express that someone is irritable [...]"? - -sche (discuss) 19:13, 25 February 2022 (UTC)

Is this distinguishable from off his meds? Vox Sciurorum (talk) 19:17, 25 February 2022 (UTC)

... or from the version without this morning? We have a flexible use of meds/medication/medications in too many forms. The sense at the unused singular med covers it well enough: "Medications, especially prescribed psychoactive medications." Vox Sciurorum (talk) 19:39, 25 February 2022 (UTC)

Good point, maybe it should redirect to a shorter form, or even just the single words you mention. One can "forget one's med(ication)(s)" without "take", or "not take" ("he didn't take his meds") without "forget", etc. - -sche (discuss) 22:56, 25 February 2022 (UTC)

I won't deny we can probably use a plethora of redirects for this one, but I hope we can make the lemma as sensible as possible! Equinox ◑ 07:47, 28 February 2022 (UTC)

maᵗⁱᵉ

Do we really want to have this kind of entry? No one will ever find this except from other entries- the last three characters aren't even from the same alphabet. I'm sure there are printed and handwritten documents that have something that looks like this, but then you can find things in Russian texts that look like English words: вор, сом, нор, он and рот. Chuck Entz (talk) 04:01, 25 February 2022 (UTC)

I can attest exactly that form in The Statutes of the Realm used multiple times in English - I just hadn't got around to putting a citation in yet. It's not a rough approximation, or anything like that. I'm unsure what you mean about the last three letters being from a different alphabet, though - they're superscript Latin "tie" from "majestie". Theknightwho (talk) 04:03, 25 February 2022 (UTC)

I've started an rfv-sense on one of those- it's a phonetic symbol that just looks like a superscript. I may go through and rfv some others. Then there's another phonetic symbol that you've mistaken for a superscript "l" in another entry you created. If you go to the entry for that character, you will find nothing about superscripts. Even the genuine superscript letters are problematic. I have my doubts as to whether the letters in abbreviations like this are really superscripts. Pinging @-sche who has expressed opinions about similar cases with spacing modifier letters in the past. Chuck Entz (talk) 04:41, 25 February 2022 (UTC)

If you check Unicode's data file here, U+1D49 ᵉ, U+1D57 ᵗ and U+2071 ⁱ are all noted as having superscript as an intended use.

I'm not sure what you're referring to when you say that you have doubts that they're being used as superscripts in abbreviations. Could you please clarify? Theknightwho (talk) 05:02, 25 February 2022 (UTC)

Just to clarify why I believe it's a superscript, this is how it appears in Statutes of the Realm:

Theknightwho (talk) 05:16, 25 February 2022 (UTC)

As I pointed out over at RFVN, saying a character is a superscript form of another character is not the same as saying that it's intended for use as a superscript. You're hyperfocusing on the appearance of the glyphs, and ignoring everything else. Chuck Entz (talk) 06:41, 25 February 2022 (UTC)

No I'm not: look at my detailed response on RFV. Please stop assuming I haven't understood your point.

However, I am still interested to hear why you think that abbreviations like this aren't using superscripts. Could you please explain? Theknightwho (talk) 16:16, 25 February 2022 (UTC)

For clarity, I think the RFV discussion is WT:RFVN#ᵗ.
My understanding is that superscripting is intended to be done by text formatting, not by these characters which are intended for contrastive uses in e.g. phonetics or physics, and that this is why Unicode doesn't add pseudo-superscripts of just anything that can be found in superscript position. One finds superscripts in Cyrillic or Greek text, but Unicode encodes only a few Cyrillic and Greek (pseudo-)"superscript" characters, because these aren't how superscripting is intended to be effected. I think TheKnightWho may misunderstand the admittedly terse Unicode data; for example, the field that takes "super" as a value can also take e.g. "<font> A font variant (e.g. a blackletter form)" although an old book written in Blackletter is not intended to be encoded via the special Unicode characters (which are for maths), but via normal letters + a font; the descriptions like "font" and "super" seem like indications of the [origin of the] glyph appearance more than statements of intended use for these classes. (The file also includes such things as "LATIN CAPITAL LETTER OI" which is famously not OI but w:Gha.) In the past, WT:Votes/pl-2012-02/Handling of superscript and subscript letters resulted in no consensus, but several examples (e.g. Talk:majᵗʸ) were deleted after RFV. That said, if we have direct attestations of people using these codepoints, which we might if we now accept various websites, then the case for including that modern (and thus not, as currently labelled, {{lb|obsolete}}) use is different, although even there we have employed some normalization (I've seen entries moved between the Latin vs Greek iota even when the source PDF had the wrong one, and I doubt we want to start including, say, English words where c has been replaced by the visually-identical Cyrillic es, like people do when evading text filters). - -sche (discuss) 19:08, 25 February 2022 (UTC)

I'll repeat what I wrote at the RFV (it is frustrating that the same discussion was initiated in two places, but hey ho):

Note Table 14 in section 5.7.3 of Unicode's Character Database here:

<super> Superscript form

This refers to decomposition mapping, which (in simple terms) is referring to where one or more characters are equivalent to another one, perhaps with some kind of modification.

Where you say "All I see is <super> followed by the code for another character", you can quite easily check that that other character is, in each case, the ordinary Latin character in question that it is a superscript version of:1D48 ( ᵈ ) is the equivalent to <super> 0064, and U+0064 is d. 1D57 ( ᵗ ) is the equivalent to <super> 0074, and U+0074 is t. Compare this to, say, 00C2 Â, which has 0041 0302(A + ◌̂) in the same field. The fact that these were added due to their use in IPA does not change the fact that they are recognised as being superscript forms. It's even repeated on the character chart for this Unicode block here. The reason that equivalents haven't been added to the superscript block is because letters were only added to that block in order to fill the gaps: it only contains ⁱ and ⁿ. There is no alternative option, here.

Even aside from that, trying to draw a semantic difference is as unhelpful as saying that we can't recognise different uses of characters like # or / because they're intended for some other use. Fundamentally, it's prescriptivist, but even on your own terms the evidence is right there.

Does that clarify things for you? -sche Neither the name of the character nor the block that it's in indicate intended usage (re your point on a misnamed character). What does indicate intended usage, however, is the data associated with the character such as <super>. This is actually a point that Unicode are very firm about, because they won't move characters or rename them. Even with <font>, the entire point of that is to make it clear that the blackletter forms should be interpreted as being semantically identical to using a blackletter font (and which Latin C and Cyrillic С are not). We don't have entries for them because of this, just as we don't for fullspace characters and so on. However, we don't really have an alternative when it comes to superscript forms as we can’t do the semantically equivalent superscript formatting, but there is a semantic different between maᵗⁱᵉ and "matie" so that’s not a solution either. Hence, we need to do it this way. Theknightwho (talk) 20:26, 25 February 2022 (UTC)

I believe "we need to do it this way" is the crux of the issue. There are some things that we can't do using Unicode entry names: crossing things out to indicate negation, for instance. In this case, there's a style of handwritten annotation that uses writing text above the baseline as a way of indicating parenthetical or inserted text: blah, blah^{I really meant this}, blah. I'm not convinced that abbreviations like these are actual superscripts and not written representations of that style. While we certainly can mock up visually-convincing substitutes, a zoo could also hire a man in a gorilla suit if they don't have access to the real animal. Chuck Entz (talk) 22:47, 25 February 2022 (UTC)

I'm not convinced. There are going to be (literally) millions of citations for abbreviations like 2^nd or 3^rd using superscripts, because MS Word implements them automatically, and given that there's a printed attestation for ma^tie above, what else would it be? Unlike 2^nd (where "2nd" is equally acceptable, though I strongly suspect it's a derivation due to typewriters), you can't omit the superscript with this one. Theknightwho (talk) 23:09, 25 February 2022 (UTC)

• From a technical perspective, I note that "2^nd", "3^rd" as rendered by MS Word are composed of the standard ASCII glyphs. You can select the ⁿ and confirm in Word's character-selector that this is the ASCII "n". Also, copy-pasting into another app that doesn't support RTF produces the regular non-supersripted ASCII.

This is not the case for "maᵗⁱᵉ". I have no idea how to enter the superscripted "ᵗⁱᵉ". These are not the ASCII glyphs, but instead are entirely different codepoints. It is unreasonable to expect our readership to understand how to input "maᵗⁱᵉ", and as Chuck noted above, readers are therefore unlikely to ever find this entry.

I would be in favor of moving this to some other location, possibly matie instead, as a much more user-accessible lemma spelling. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 06:13, 14 March 2022 (UTC)

The concerns about user accessibility are unfounded, as the term shows up in the search bar if you enter "matie". I am also against entering terms inaccurately, as that would be extremely misleading on a site where the vast majority of entries are painstakingly entered with the correct letter-case form etc.

The rest of your comment deals with the issues discussed above. The codepoints are irrelevant, as Unicode specifies that they should be interpreted as exactly the same thing by software. You'll note that they work in text search, for example, and it's exactly why the searchbar has no problem finding it. Theknightwho (talk) 14:19, 17 March 2022 (UTC)

I still have grave reservations about using obscure codepoints for dedicated characters to implement what should be formatting of standard ASCII. We already lemmatize Latin at forms without macrons and include the macrons in the entries themselves (such as abundāns lemmatized at abundans, etc.), so doing something similar here would not be out of line (such as by lemmatizing at matie and formatting the term within the entry as ma^tie).

Regardless of whether dedicated-codepoint version maᵗⁱᵉ is supposed to be functionally equivalent to ASCII+formatting version ma^tie, I note that only the latter is found on the page when searching for "matie". There are also presentation problems, as fonts seem to have spotty support for the dedicated-codepoint superscript letters. I see jarring formatting issues at dedicated-codepoint entry 2ⁿᵈ, for instance, where the superscript "n" and "d" have markedly different sizes. The use of dedicated-codepoint superscript glyphs still presents usability problems. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 00:10, 24 March 2022 (UTC)

The reason for the disparity with Latin is because the vast majority of uses of those terms in Latin are without the macrons.

I'm not sure what you mean about only the latter being found on the page when searching for "matie". The search function highlights the dedicated superscript form for me.

As for presentation problems, I agree with you that certain fonts handle this badly, but that is no reason to move the entry to something that is self-evidently wrong, particularly when it is going to confuse the reader with the genuine definition of "matie". Theknightwho (talk) 08:08, 24 March 2022 (UTC)

That's the disagreement, though; you think "ma^tie" is the "self-evidently wrong" of the two entries, but from my perspective (and apparently others' above) what's self-evidently wrong is instead "maᵗⁱᵉ" using the chance encoding of visually similar glyphs into a few different Unicode blocks (which is part of why fonts handle it badly). For my perspective it's like adding 𝘏𝘰𝘮𝘰 using Unicode italic characters to distinguish the italicized genus name from contrastively unitalicized German Homo, in that it's not how it should be encoded (IMO, but I can see why you think it is, in the case of the m-word). - -sche (discuss) 07:29, 25 March 2022 (UTC)

@-sche What you are saying is explicitly against the Unicode standard. You are simply wrong on this point. It's not that I think it's the same - it's that the standard explicitly states that it's the same, and as such they are not "chance encodings".

It is frustrating that I have now gone to quite considerable effort to explain the technical reasons why that is the case, only to be told that I'm wrongly focusing on visual appearance. It's simply not true. Theknightwho (talk) 09:09, 25 March 2022 (UTC)

It feels like a chance encoding. Look at how the psudeo-superscript I is so far below the rest. CitationsFreak (talk) 23:03, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

哹

Translation to English is required. According to 彙集雅俗通十五音 (六), it is or has something to do with "炊声".— Fredrick Campbell (talk) 07:31, 25 February 2022 (UTC)

advantage play, advantage player, advantage gambling

I don't think we have a sense in advantage that captures the exact use in these collocations; see w:Advantage gambling. — Fytcha〈 T | L | C 〉 14:45, 25 February 2022 (UTC)

See also play the advantage.  --Lambiam 22:57, 26 February 2022 (UTC)

Those redlinks should be blued up Notusbutthem (talk) 20:41, 27 February 2022 (UTC)

冰壺

This word also refers to 冰壶运动使用的器材，扁圆形，略像壶，用花岗岩制成, "The equipment used in curling which is oblate, looks like a kettle, and is made of granite". Does anyone have any idea what the English is for that? ---> Tooironic (talk) 05:49, 27 February 2022 (UTC)

Stone (noun sense 9) or rock (etymology 1, noun sense 13). Theknightwho (talk) 06:42, 27 February 2022 (UTC)

Many thanks! I have added it now. ---> Tooironic (talk) 06:12, 28 February 2022 (UTC)

it is easy to be wise after the event

Just made this entry, but ain't sure if we should have another entry for wise after the event. Am a little drunk […] Notusbutthem (talk) 20:43, 27 February 2022 (UTC)

get one's knickers in a twist: negative polarity item?

The entry get one's knickers in a twist was previously labelled with “chiefly in the negative” (later changed by me to “often in the negative” following a discussion with Graham11), and thus categorized into “Category:English negative polarity items”. The label has recently been removed entirely. I just wanted to seek views on whether this is all right. It seems plausible to me that the term is at least often used negatively. (@Graham11, Notusbutthem.) — SGconlaw (talk) 04:43, 28 February 2022 (UTC)

I was actually going to remove that label myself. It's probably slightly more commonly used in negative phrases, but it's very easy to find positive examples. Many of the major online dictionaries offer a positive usex as well as a negative one. This, that and the other (talk) 08:12, 28 February 2022 (UTC)

For context, the original discussion can be found at Wiktionary:Grease pit/2022/February § Word of the day – March 6. Graham11 (talk) 08:38, 28 February 2022 (UTC)

It’s certainly chiefly used in the negative, though whether it ought/needs to be labelled as such is debatable - I can’t say I’ve got a strong opinion on the matter. We now have an internal inconsistency though as if you click on the links to synonyms of get one’s knickers in a twist (e.g. panties in a wad) then you’ll find that they are all labelled as chiefly in the negative. Overlordnat1 (talk) 09:52, 28 February 2022 (UTC)

An assertion that it is principally used in the negative is, at best, a data point. I don't think it is principally used in the negative. That data point offsets a contrary single data point. We could use some facts. The "inconsistency" could be perfectly consistent with the truth: facts are required to determine where the truth likely lies. DCDuring (talk) 15:47, 1 March 2022 (UTC)

OK, it sounds like the label should be left off (and removed from all synonyms). — SGconlaw (talk) 19:18, 2 March 2022 (UTC)

TNG and countability

Please see [46] (TNG section: I can't link to it directly) and the little edit war at TNG. I think Graham doesn't understand countability. If "TNG" were uncountable, we would speak of "some TNG" or "a bit of TNG", but actually the letter T stands for "the" so it's one thing and very much countable. Community input please, before I go on one of my usual angry panic attacks. Equinox ◑ 07:44, 28 February 2022 (UTC)

The more significant question that I didn't manage to get an answer on was: What makes it a proper noun in your view? Your recent edit moved the new sense under the heading "proper noun", which I don't understand as this sense of TNG doesn't refer "to a specific, unique thing, such as Earth and the Alps" (Appendix:Glossary) any more than youth (sense 5) does. Before the question of whether TNG is countable comes into play, we must first know whether it is a proper or a common noun (as we don't list countability for proper nouns). Graham11 (talk) 08:08, 28 February 2022 (UTC)

We only don't have a single cite that unambiguously shows it used as a noun. We have one showing it unambiguously an adjective (in predicate use) and two three consistent with either adjective or noun word-class membership (attributive use). We have no cites that show whether it is countable or uncountable. If it is unambiguously used countably or uncountably, then, in such uses, it would not be a proper noun. DCDuring (talk) 15:38, 1 March 2022 (UTC)

@DCDuring I'm glad to see that there's an emerging consensus that the term isn't a proper noun.

I had interpreted the term's use in Meeker (2018), Young (2018), and Leiser (2019) as being as an attributive noun. Is there any way of distinguishing that from an adjective here? In the case of Arredondo (2016), I wonder if it's possible that it could be being used as a common noun, albeit with nonstandard syntax, but I suppose that's largely speculative.

Doing a bit more digging, I'm finding a lot of uses of the term as a generic word for a social club for younger BDSM practitioners (and not merely as a modifier). (Of course, in this other sense, the term is certainly countable.) I've edited the entry to add this sense and to clarify the existing sense. Graham11 (talk) 07:44, 2 March 2022 (UTC)

I think it's a singular only common noun. It's not fundamenally uncountable. Perhaps somebody on /b/ is writing about TNGs to include the 1-17 year old BDSM community. We could leave it uncountable, mark it plural not attested, or use {{head|en|noun}} to avoid any mention of plural. Vox Sciurorum (talk) 15:51, 1 March 2022 (UTC)

All the evidence is consistent with it being an adjective. We have no unambiguous evidence of use as a noun, common or proper. The Google TNG groups would require someone to join to gain access to their messages, which would still not yield durably attested cites. DCDuring (talk) 16:35, 1 March 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for that explanation, Vox Sciurorum. That being the case, if the word is deemed to be a noun, I would be open to marking it as a common noun with no attested plural. Graham11 (talk) 07:44, 2 March 2022 (UTC)

We lack sufficient evidence that I can find in the links that:

1. there is some kind of age limitation or focus
2. that it is a noun rather than an adjective in sense one (eg, three cites modified by a determiner, use as subject, use as object of verb or preposition, pluralization, etc. If a term is used attributively without sufficient evidence that it is used as a noun, then it is best classed as an adjective.)
3. that it is mostly singular in sense one, if shown to be a noun.

This resembles the low-evidence, high contributor-love state of many definitions in topic areas favored by a contributor and friends. Examples include terms in linguistics, internet slang, programming. I am probably guilty in taxonomic terms. Personal experience tells you how to look for evidence that meets WT:ATTEST; it is not a substitute for such evidence. DCDuring (talk) 18:30, 2 March 2022 (UTC)

Given that there aren't many uses of the term in sense 1 that aren't attributive in print sources available online, I'll go ahead and change it to an adjective, provided Vox Sciurorum (who suggested the term is a common noun) has no objection. Thanks for your help, DCDuring and Vox Sciurorum! Graham11 (talk) 05:17, 5 March 2022 (UTC)

I think it's a noun but I don't care strongly. Go ahead and change it. Vox Sciurorum (talk) 13:50, 5 March 2022 (UTC)

Naming a category for Japanese words strongly associated with the pre-WWII Empire of Japan

How should such a category be named? Can it be generalized in any way? Examples: 神兵, 神州, 若鷲, 玉砕. —Fish bowl (talk) 08:13, 28 February 2022 (UTC)

Category:ja:Empire of Japan?  --Lambiam 11:19, 28 February 2022 (UTC)

I think I want to capture the imperialism + militarism that was mostly ended with the end of WWII, but still persists in some parts of society (as with 英霊). Maybe it's not actually the "Empire of Japan". —Fish bowl (talk) 12:29, 1 March 2022 (UTC)

Does that apply to all terms associated with the Empire of Japan? Otherwise you could add a second label per modern usage. Theknightwho (talk) 06:52, 3 March 2022 (UTC)

Spanish Archer

I’m considering creating an entry for The Spanish archer but I’m not sure whether to create separate entries for give the Spanish archer and Get the Spanish archer to correspond with give the elbow and get the elbow - though there’s an argument to be made that both of these existing entries should be merged into a newly created entry The elbow anyway, in which case I’d just define The Spanish archer as The elbow. Any thoughts about this? Overlordnat1 (talk) 10:24, 28 February 2022 (UTC)

Zhengzhang OC 嫢

The second reconstruction listed at Module:zh/data/och-pron-ZS/嫢, "skʷe1", is an error for "skʷel" (it should end with letter L, not digit one). These module pages aren't editable and I was told to ask here instead. 4pq1injbok (talk) 09:39, 1 March 2022 (UTC)

 Done —Fish bowl (talk) 09:43, 1 March 2022 (UTC)