Wiktionary:Tea room/2022/June

discussion rooms: Tea room • Etym. scr. • Info desk • Beer parlour • Grease pit ← May 2022 · June 2022 · July 2022 → · (current)

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platinum jubilee

I hate to be a party pooper, but is platinum jubilee (and coordinate terms like silver jubilee, ruby jubilee, etc., as well as entries like diamond anniversary and diamond wedding) not sum-of-parts? We do not have an appropriate adjective definition for platinum yet, but compare golden (“relating to a fiftieth anniversary”) and diamond (“of, relating to, or being a sixtieth anniversary; of, relating to, or being a seventy-fifth anniversary”). Thought I would raise the issue here to get some views before making any RFD nominations. (Pinging @LlywelynII who appears to have created many of these entries.) — Sgconlaw (talk) 22:28, 2 June 2022 (UTC)

Poop away! Seems to be a clear SOP to me. Overlordnat1 (talk) 11:31, 3 June 2022 (UTC)

Agree. SOP --Jonathan Webley (talk) 12:40, 4 June 2022 (UTC)

So long as we have the appropriate entries under the first word, they're all SOP. Theknightwho (talk) 21:28, 4 June 2022 (UTC)

The only question I have / thing I can see that might save them, is whether the longer phrases came first and pass the WT:JIFFY test. But I suspect if any phrase came first, it was "...anniversary", not "...jubilee", so yeah, these seem SOP. - -sche (discuss) 23:12, 4 June 2022 (UTC)

ḏrt

If the hand hieroglyph 𓂧 represents d, and the cobra 𓆓 represents ḏ, for example in the word "say" that is spelled 𓆓𓂧 (cobra + hand) and transliterated ḏd ... how come the word "hand", spelled using the hand glyph, is transliterated ḏrt and not drt? Was the word pronounced drt originally or in some dialects, only to shift to ḏrt? (If it was always ḏrt, why is it the glyph for d-as-opposed-to-ḏ; why not use a d-word to represent d?) - -sche (discuss) 22:05, 2 June 2022 (UTC)

The main spelling is phonetically d + t, but the alternative form is ḏr + r + t (the intermediate r is a phonetic complement). Also, 𓂧 on its own is apparently a logogram for ḏrt (which makes sense since it depicts a hand), so the reading could just be ḏrt + t.

Oh, I just noticed the footnote here, which says that the word used to actually be read dt, but it was revised based on Coptic ⲧⲱⲣⲉ (tōre). That looks like a more satisfying answer. 70.172.194.25 17:18, 3 June 2022 (UTC)

Yep, the hand glyph in the word for hand is being used a logogram for ḏrt rather than a phonogram for d (which is also why there’s no r glyph in the word, and why the most common way to write it ends with glyph Z1 (the vertical line), which is usually used to mark out logograms). (In regards to the footnote you mention, note that what Gardiner says about the word formerly being read dt is talking about an error made by modern Egyptologists, not the original Egyptian reading of the word.)

The reason why the hand was chosen to represent d is a matter of some debate; Gardiner (at the link you provided) gives one suggestion (‘from the old Semitic word *yad- (“hand”)’), but it’s not very satisfying. Other authors following the neuere Komparatistik school see Egyptian ꜥ as a reflex of earlier d and connect the hand to ꜥ (“arm”), making it a kind of doublet to 𓂝, but the neuere Komparatistik is far from universally accepted, and this answer isn’t very convincing either. Unfortunately, for a lot of the basic Egyptian phonograms we simply don’t know where their sound value comes from; compare the many equally unsatisfying hypotheses given at 𓅓. — Vorziblix (talk · contribs) 18:24, 3 June 2022 (UTC)

Thank you both. With 𓅓, the theories that "since it represents m, it probably came from a word for owl that started with (or at least contained) m" seem reasonable enough (even if there's no evidence for one over the other). A glyph representing d coming from a word that doesn't contain d [but instead ḏ] seems weirder, hence my wondering if it was originally drt. The possible connection to ꜥ, and of those words to /d/, is interesting. - -sche (discuss) 23:24, 4 June 2022 (UTC)

conscience

Is it just me, or is this word also pronounced /ˈkɒn.tʃəns/? ---> Tooironic (talk) 23:18, 2 June 2022 (UTC)

That's how I might pronounce it. Vininn126 (talk) 09:29, 3 June 2022 (UTC)

Many people in various countries say it like that as can be seen on Youglish [1]. The same process occurs quite often in reverse with the word bunch [2] and mince and mints are often homophones, either both as ‘mins’ or ‘mints’. Personally I use the s/sh rather than the ts/ch version of all these possibilities. Overlordnat1 (talk) 12:01, 3 June 2022 (UTC)

I think American English merges /nʃ ntʃ/ unconditionally and so the distinction never comes up .... it's a matter of analysis which is the correct underlying pronunciation. See prince for an example of where we distinguish two similar clusters. But I dont know how widespread the distinction is maintained outside the US. —Soap— 19:01, 4 June 2022 (UTC)

I definitely use nʃ with conscience, as distinct from ntʃ in (say) launcher. However, I know Brits who would use ntʃ in conscience as well. Might be worth amending the US pronunciation and having both for the UK, with nʃ coming first as I think it's more common. Theknightwho (talk) 19:43, 4 June 2022 (UTC)

It might even be worth listing three pronunciations for some of these, for example prins, prin?s and prints - like they do in Wikipedia [3]. Overlordnat1 (talk) 13:51, 6 June 2022 (UTC)

• Thanks everyone for your contributions. Listening to the audios on Forvo, it seems /ˈkɒn.tʃəns/ is a common variant, at least in BrE. I went ahead and added it. ---> Tooironic (talk) 11:26, 7 June 2022 (UTC)

That’s probably for the best. I realise we have dunsh and dunch as dialect words with the same meaning (to hit/collide) but presumably a different pronunciation too. I can’t say I’ve seen or heard the dunch form personally though, I’ve only ever heard/seen Geordies say/spell it as dunsh prior to intentionally looking up dunch on a ‘hunch’ that it might be an alternative form earlier today. Overlordnat1 (talk) 22:46, 7 June 2022 (UTC)

No, it's not /ˈkɒn.tʃəns/, and the entry you have put in Wiktionary today is just fraudulent. What it is is that in words like prince (=prints), some people preglottalise after the n. It can then be /ˈkɒnˀ.ʃəns/. The trouble with Wiktionary is that it is a dictionary that people with no academic knowledge of linguistics can edit. The Internet weaponises and empowers the uneducated. It is an editorial policy how narrow the transcriptions are to be. Unless all words like prince and mince show the glottal reinforcement too -- which is not usually found in /nʃ/ -- then it is wrong to enter it here. This has become a downmarket dictionary. Do you mark the preglottalisation of the /k/ in "dictionary"?2A00:23C8:A7A3:4801:733E:646C:63DA:CF9D 12:02, 8 June 2022 (UTC)

A related discussion took recently place here, presenting a reference to Wikipedia, Epenthesis § Bridging consonant clusters.  --Lambiam 14:25, 11 June 2022 (UTC)

It's a phonetic issue, not necessarily a phonemic one. /n/ followed immediately by a homorganic fricative (which applies to English /nʃ/ [ṉʃ]) always produces some amount of plosion by the nature of the sudden onset of the fricative. This is why prince and prints are often (or even usually) homophonous. — 69.120.66.131 01:06, 12 June 2022 (UTC)

Steps versus stairs

To my mind, steps are outside and stairs inside. Should the Wiktionary entry mention this? --217.155.28.98 10:05, 3 June 2022 (UTC)Jonathan Deane

I don’t think there’s such a strict division of meaning in most usages. — Sgconlaw (talk) 11:55, 3 June 2022 (UTC)

I think there might be a distinction in usage relating to the number, configuration, and purpose/setting of various sets of steps referred to as steps vs. stairs. Three steps do not make stairs. Typical stairs ascend a full storey. But in my idiolect there are not stairs but steps to the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC. There definitely is something to the indoor/outdoor distinction, but it is more complicated. We also have the terms staircase and stairway. I'd be surprised if other languages had exactly homologous groups of words, so we may need to try to make an effort to tease out differences in application of these words so that we have more precise placement for translations. DCDuring (talk) 16:03, 3 June 2022 (UTC)

Hmm. Can't be that simple. Inside a building, I think carpeted ones and long flights are more likely to be stairs and stone ones and short flights are more likely to be steps! Equinox ◑ 16:17, 3 June 2022 (UTC)

A "flight of steps" a Google Books is almost always outdoors, whereas a "flight of stairs" is almost always indoors. "Fire escape" co-occurs about equally with "flight of steps" and "flight of stairs". DCDuring (talk) 16:58, 3 June 2022 (UTC)

I could have sworn I recall reading discussion somewhere adjacent to osmwiki:tag:highway=steps about how 'stairs' in a 'stairwell' were a collection of runs of 'steps' plus 'landings', but a search there isn't turning up anything relevant. Arlo Barnes (talk) 18:48, 3 June 2022 (UTC)

The phrase "landing between stairs" is extremely common, so that distinction seems too narrow. Equinox ◑ 18:51, 3 June 2022 (UTC)

I agree that the number of steps, their setting, etc., probably influence whether stairs or steps is used, but doubt we’ll find enough consistency of usage to be able to capture it in the definitions or usage notes. To add to what’s already been said, I’d probably call them steps if they are broad lengthwise, and stairs if narrow. — Sgconlaw (talk) 21:16, 3 June 2022 (UTC)

For me, steps mostly rest on the ground, while stairs can be supported by some kind of framework. Chuck Entz (talk) 23:54, 3 June 2022 (UTC)

• This looks like a job for some weasel words in our definitions. One of my favorites is "typically". If not weasel words, then usage examples biased toward what we think are more common collocations indicating outdoor for steps and indoor for stairs. — This unsigned comment was added by DCDuring (talk • contribs).

I think there are definite distinctions, even though there is a huge overlap. In a use like “the steps leading to the podium”,^[4][5][6] you cannot substitute “stairs”. Here, and in many cases, I think of “steps” as the plural of “step”, as in “the three steps leading to the podium”.^[7] In contrast, “stairs” is somewhat uncountable, although it can function as its own plural, as seen in “either of two stairs”.^[8][9][10] instead of using “flights of stairs”.^[11][12] If you can immediately count the number of steps just by glancing at the steps, they are unlikely to be referred to as “stairs”. For a sequence of steps to be called “stairs”, the number of steps, and therefore the vertical distance bridged, has to be considerable.  --Lambiam 13:04, 7 June 2022 (UTC)

One can find "one stair" and "two/three... stairs" with stair meaning step. I think that stairs or steps is only very rarely used with a singular verb, whatever the definition; never in my idiolect. DCDuring (talk) 16:37, 7 June 2022 (UTC)

• And then, to keep things interesting, we also have stairstep... 😆 </gleefully_flinging_a_wrench> ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 19:11, 7 June 2022 (UTC)
  • From now on I am referring to everything as stairsteps. bd2412 T 19:33, 7 June 2022 (UTC)

I also spot a few cites of google books:"stepstairs". Oh dear! - -sche (discuss) 22:42, 7 June 2022 (UTC)

• Does stopper belong here too as a kind of stoop or buffer or is it just an ascending plane, ie. #9 "A playspot where water flows back on itself"? I can't explain succinctly why this matters. (found via Ger. Steppdecke where comparison to stopper "bung" seems to be implied).
• As regards Ger. Steiger, akin to stair, this is well relevant to the initial question pertaining to insides (sorry @DCDuring). That is a shaft for utilities or the conductors themselves, cp. Steigleitung and coincidently (unrelated to ladder) Leiter ~ Leitung (“conductor, duct”). This should of course remind of chimneys inasmuch as the architecture is concerned. On the other hand, the sense of connecting levels appears no less pertinent, that is summarized succinctly in the given definition of stairs.

The iconic fire escape from New York cinema deserves a notable mention, by the way. ApisAzuli (talk) 12:39, 12 June 2022 (UTC)

I presume you’re referring to the external fire escapes that lead to a landing with a ladder that people have to lower and climb down in an emergency? They certainly seem to be more common in America than elsewhere but I think they would be included in our existing senses, so there’s no need to create a new sense at our fire escape entry. Overlordnat1 (talk) 00:47, 13 June 2022 (UTC)

loll

The second and third definitions of "loll" are given as follows:

• 2. To hang extended from the mouth, like the tongue of an animal heated from exertion.
• 3. To let (the tongue) hang from the mouth in this way.

However, I do not understand why "from the mouth" is mentioned specifically, for you could "loll" your head on, say, someone's shoulder as well. If you look at the examples themselves, they, perhaps for this very reason, mention "tongue" explicitly: "loll" does not necessarily entail only the tongue:

• 2. ". . . With lolling Tongue . . ."
• 3. ". . . teeth glittering, tongue lolling."

Merriam-Webster and Cambridge Dictionary both do not restrict "loll"'s usage (in this context) to the tongue. — This unsigned comment was added by Cobalt.overshoot (talk • contribs) at 07:52, 4 June 2022 (UTC).

I agree. Also, the quote about cattle ‘lolling their way’ probably means they’re moving slowly, a special case of the ‘act lazily’ definition - I see no reason to assume their tongues are out. Overlordnat1 (talk) 13:57, 6 June 2022 (UTC)

King's Own and Queen's Own

...as used in the names of many British regiments. Just type "King's Own" into Wikipedia and you'll see what I mean. But what do these terms mean? --Jonathan Webley (talk) 12:43, 4 June 2022 (UTC)

heaumeau

Is this presentation of sense 2 ideal? It seems to me that this is typically use as a generic insult in a much wider sense, akin to how gay is used by the unenlightened. By extension I think it is not so much the case that this spelling is offensive, but that this spelling is often used in offensive senses or in offensive statements.
As an aside this type of spelling supposedly originates from the defunct forum Alt0169.com, so perhaps it can be found on archived pages of that site. ←₰-→ Lingo ^Bingo _Dingo (talk) 16:46, 4 June 2022 (UTC)

That translation of the quote looks wrong to me: "Not only is Marc Overmands gay, the entire team of Dicky should drop the soap." is a more literal translation and to me that sounds quite harsh actually. I agree, this doesn't seem to be a separate sense. Thadh (talk) 19:18, 4 June 2022 (UTC)

Yeah, it seems like the senses could be merged, to just define it as an alternative spelling of homo (with whatever context labels appropriate); that entry already covers the "general slur" use, so pseudo-duplicating it here but with (incorrectly?) narrower wording is bad. - -sche (discuss) 23:29, 4 June 2022 (UTC)

On the last point, I might be mistaken, but I feel like the spelling is mocking the "fabulous" aspect of homosexuals? In which case I think there's a slightly greater derogatory component there? But I'm not sure how to represent it in labels. Thadh (talk) 09:40, 5 June 2022 (UTC)

@Thadh While such overtones or undertones are possible, but this is also just the usual affected blog slang spelling that was first seen on Alt0169.com and then spread to GeenStijl and Retecool. Compare val deaut and the rare feauteaumeaudel. I think it is difficult to establish anything definite; it was mainly applied on words that bloggers and commenters wanted to mark, so it was not used for entire statements like leetspeak often was. ←₰-→ Lingo ^Bingo _Dingo (talk) 10:53, 5 June 2022 (UTC)

In that case I agree, we should get rid of the labels in the alt spelling entry. Thadh (talk) 11:28, 5 June 2022 (UTC)

Pronunciation of swaffelen

Someone has added /ˈʒʋɑfələ(n)/ as the transcription for southern Dutch. Does this really exist generally in such a large range or is it distributed more locally, if at all? @Rua, Morgengave ←₰-→ Lingo ^Bingo _Dingo (talk) 17:00, 4 June 2022 (UTC)

Here, in unmistakably southern Dutch, I clearly hear /s/. I’m not sure what the rules are for the “Belgisch kampioenschap zwaffelen”,^[13] but I imagine that people who spell this this way pronounce the term with /z/ and not with /ʒ/. --Lambiam 12:30, 7 June 2022 (UTC)

Please help add the singular of jammies

I want to add a sense of jammy we don't have, as an attributive singular just like pajama is, and paralleling words like sunglass. A usex could be such as Did you put your phone in your jammy drawer? As it stands now we link from jammies to jammy but nowhere on the jammy page is there anything about pajamas. Im sure most English speakers could figure it out, but a learner at a low level of fluency might think that the primary sense is "gun" or even "penis". My eyesight isnt very good and so I cant figure out how to work with the formatting ..... in this case I figured the better thing to do would be to ask for help instead of creating a messy entry. Thank you, —Soap— 18:48, 4 June 2022 (UTC)

@Soap: Added. This should have been at Wiktionary:Requested entries (English). J3133 (talk) 20:40, 4 June 2022 (UTC)

"Elsewhere" as verb

I have found this sentence: "Let us elsewhere ourselves."

The Enigma of the Warwickshire Vortex by F. Gwynplaine MacIntyre  position 8718 in The Mammoth Book of New Sherlock Holmes Adventures (ebook), published by Robinson →ISBN

— This unsigned comment was added by Prparga (talk • contribs) at 07:29, 6 June 2022 (UTC).

Thanks for the alert. We'll keep an eye on this; for inclusion in the dictionary we require two more uses in permanently recorded media (see Wiktionary:Criteria for inclusion § General rule).  --Lambiam 12:36, 7 June 2022 (UTC)

Someone should probably create Citations:Elsewhere. I’d do it myself but I’m not sure how best to format the cite, given that there’s no page number but a position number (8718) instead. Overlordnat1 (talk) 22:54, 7 June 2022 (UTC)

We know that this occurs on p458 of the hardcover version (→ISBN),^[14] even though GBS keeps this specific snippet under a shroud. The name of the story is “The Adventure of the Bulgarian Diplomat”, written by Zakaria Erzinçlioglu.  --Lambiam 23:51, 7 June 2022 (UTC)

How can we be sure it’s part of “The Adventure of the Bulgarian Diplomat” rather than “The Enigma of the Warwickshire Vortex”? Overlordnat1 (talk) 21:38, 15 June 2022 (UTC)

fivescore

I don't think this is a noun. Also, the quote should be correctly formatted. Pious Eterino (talk) 09:12, 6 June 2022 (UTC)

It appears in some archaic writings ([15], [16], [17], [18] and [19]). King’s speech seems to be considered as containing the words ‘five score’ rather than the word ‘fivescore’ here though ([20] and [21]). I can also find one use of five-score [22]. Overlordnat1 (talk) 11:18, 6 June 2022 (UTC)

Also consider fourscore which appears in (some versions of) the Bible and (some editions of) Shakespeare as quoted at our entry. We claim Abraham Lincoln said “four score and seven years ago” in the famous Gettysburg address at that entry and provide a quote from a book to support that but there are other books which quote him as saying “fourscore and seven years ago” - of course it would have sounded the same in any case, so it may be impossible to be precise about that. Overlordnat1 (talk) 11:30, 6 June 2022 (UTC)

The handwritten originals of the Gettysburg Address that I've found online all have four score, though, and the bunched spelling seems to only appear in later printed versions. It may be the reason why we arent quoting Lincoln on our fourscore page. (edit: i didnt see that we actually are quoting Lincoln.) —Soap— 11:50, 6 June 2022 (edited 14:57, 6 June 2022 (UTC))

That’s a good point but the quote is still at the fourscore entry. Perhaps we should list four score and four-score (see [23]) as alternative forms and keep it there. Another option would be to keep the quote at score, where it also appears, and delete it from fourscore. Similar considerations arise for five score/fivescore/five-score. Overlordnat1 (talk) 14:09, 6 June 2022 (UTC)

subhorizontal

Can somebody with the knowledge confirm the definition here ("Not quite horizontal in position or orientation")? I think it might mean "relating to a subhorizon", which is entirely different. Equinox ◑ 22:44, 6 June 2022 (UTC)

Probably both senses exist, e.g. "...in subvertical boreholes at depths below F.Z. 2 invariably produced horizontal or subhorizontal fractures..." seems like it's the definition in the entry, whereas plenty of cites at google books:"subhorizon" "subhorizontal" soil look like the definition you mention. How to tell which sense is meant in other less-clear contexts where it could be either, I don't know. - -sche (discuss) 00:44, 8 June 2022 (UTC)

are geological soil horizons always horizontal in the generic sense of being flat and at an even depth from end to end? I would say that perhaps the two definitions coincide in the field of geology, but only if we allow the definition of horizontal to also have a special sense. —Soap— 08:26, 8 June 2022 (UTC)

Well, approximately flat: [24]. A subhorizon might be "not quite horizontal in position or orientation", but there does seem to be a separate sense too, where "subhorizontal" specifically means "relating to subhorizon" and doesn't just describe any old thing with that orientation. Added. Equinox ◑ 14:59, 8 June 2022 (UTC)

epoch: computing vs. astronomy senses

• (astronomy) A precise instant of time that is used as a point of reference.
• (computing) A precise instant of time that is used as a point of reference (e.g., January 1, 1970, 00:00:00 UTC).

Why are these two separate senses? I'm only familiar with the computing one (it is, as far as my experience goes, the earliest date the computer can recognise, so that all other dates and times are measured by adding to that one). Equinox ◑ 22:59, 6 June 2022 (UTC)

Wikipedia gives this closely related sense: “In chronology and periodization, an epoch or reference epoch is an instant in time chosen as the origin of a particular calendar era. The "epoch" serves as a reference point from which time is measured.” This is not precisely the same as our sense 2: “A notable event which marks the beginning of [a particular period].” The instant in time chosen as the reference moment will preferably be a notable event, but this is not required. At least, I'm not aware of any notable event happening on 11 August 3114 BCE (Long Count 0.0.0.0.0). What is not explicit in these definitions is that the instant of time used as “a point of reference” serves as the zero in some system for identifying instants of time such as 18 brumaire an VIII. IMO we can unify these three senses, e.g. as

“(chronology, astronomy, computing) A specific instant of time, chosen as the zero of a system for identifying instants of time.”

 --Lambiam 10:11, 8 June 2022 (UTC)

I agree with this approach. The current entry using identical wording means that by definition they’re the same thing - both idiomatically and literally. Theknightwho (talk) 22:03, 8 June 2022 (UTC)

I had a go at updating the entry. I altered Lamb's gloss a bit on the basis that astronomical epochs seem to be used to define spatial coordinate systems as opposed to directly acting as the zero for a time measurement system. This, that and the other (talk) 03:28, 10 June 2022 (UTC)

Greyfriars

I was lazy and, fixing the formatting of an entry, assumed any aspect of Oxford notable enough for inclusion here must be one of the colleges. Not so!

Apparently Greyfriars is just a former residence private hall. Do individual halls at universities (even admittedly prestigious ones) actually merit separate inclusion here? What's the prestige criteria? How far down the US News list does eligibility go? How many buildings at Tokyo U and Peking U should be separately included? All of them? or does the OED or CED grandfather the British ones in special? — LlywelynII 11:15, 8 June 2022 (UTC)

The only other permanent private hall we have an entry for is apparently a partial entry that handles that "Regent's Park" can mean Regent's Park College, although that doesn't get a separate entry here yet on its own. — LlywelynII 12:30, 8 June 2022 (UTC)

Greyfriars, Oxford is a former permanent private hall of Oxford University - something very different to a residence hall. These operate in a similar fashion to Oxbridge colleges, but are generally a lot smaller, and can often have quirky aspects to them (such as explicit religious affiliation), and in several cases they also have a combined function as something else. They're quite clearly notable, having extensive WP pages, and in the case of Greyfriars it's also a friary - something that didn't change when it stopped being a PPH.

However, what's relevant to Wiktionary is whether terms are lexical. The reason why it makes sense for Greyfriars, Regent's Park, Blackfriars and St Benet's to have entries is because they're ambiguous (which is true whether or not we have other senses listed). The terms "Regent's Park College" and "St Benet's Hall" are not lexical, and should not have entries.

Theknightwho (talk) 12:50, 8 June 2022 (UTC)

When I went to UCLA in the late '80s, everyone knew that the departments in STEM subjects were on the south end of the campus, and those in the humanities were on the north end, so one could refer to linguists and historians as "north campus" people and chemists or engineers as "south campus". I'm sure there are similar patterns in universities all over the planet. The different buildings at Oxford have a long history and the university has had a major influence on any number of fields of knowledge, but they're still a matter of local knowledge. We have to be very careful about inclusion of local knowledge, because a lot of it is attestable via newspapers and various public records and there's just too much of it. Chuck Entz (talk) 14:20, 8 June 2022 (UTC)

I genuinely don't see the issue with it, but I appreciate it's just a matter of opinion. These things can spread surprisingly far, though, and you never know when something might come in handy for an etymology. Theknightwho (talk) 14:52, 8 June 2022 (UTC)

partouzard = orgygoer

Is there an English equivalent? I'd hoped at least one of orgymaker or orgygoer or orgier or orgydoer to be an actual word Zumbacool (talk) 00:43, 9 June 2022 (UTC)

orgiast is the word you’re looking for. Overlordnat1 (talk) 01:01, 9 June 2022 (UTC)

Dammit, that was too easy. I feel dumb... Zumbacool (talk) 01:05, 9 June 2022 (UTC)

Quite clearly the term is organist, though admittedly that can be a solo activity. Theknightwho (talk) 01:35, 9 June 2022 (UTC)

Pronunciation of puce

Every printed dictionary I have on hand and some ten results from a quick Google search unanimously show the pronunciation as /pjuːs/, not yodless /puːs/ as is currently listed. Is the latter some accepted regional pronunciation at odds with English orthography, or is this simply an error? I'm leaning strongly towards it being erroneous, but the audio file is giving me pause. Wiljahelmaz (talk) 22:54, 10 June 2022 (UTC)

Only one of the 10 examples to be found on YouGlish is yodless. Despite YouGlish tagging the speaker as American they’re clearly Australian ([25] - see hit 8 out of 10). I would always say it with the yod, and I don’t think I’ve ever heard it without, but perhaps in an extreme West Country, East Anglian or Welsh accent the yod might be dropped. Some people might be influenced to an extreme degree by the pronunciation of the French original like Americans are by the pronunciation of the originally Spanish word puma (despite what it says at our entry, it is highly unorthodox for people to say puma without a yod in Britain - I’m not sure how often Americans say it with a yod but I suspect the opposite is true in America). Actually YouGlish proves my suspicions right again, I can only find three exceptions, the British supermodel Cara Delevigne saying ‘puma’ without a yod, the Texan author Joe Galloway saying puma with a yod and one Australian using a yod and the other not on a podcast (the ‘What’s your message?’ podcast). (Overlordnat1 (talk) 00:33, 11 June 2022 (UTC)

Wrong. OED only has it with /j/. Don't trust the audio as that's by Wonderfool. Equinox ◑ 01:34, 11 June 2022 (UTC)

• Thanks for pointing out the error, E-dawg Zumbacool (talk) 16:59, 11 June 2022 (UTC)

In which case you’re clearly right to remove the audio as the only other instance I can find of it being pronounced this way is one Australian on YouTube. It’s occurred to me that Cara Delevigne and the Australian who say Puma without a yod might only be doing so to reflect the German pronunciation of the originally German brand, they’d probably pronounce puma (the big cat) with a yod. We should probably split the pronunciation for puma into two; without a yod for America (and Canada?) and with a yod for everywhere else. Overlordnat1 (talk) 01:49, 11 June 2022 (UTC)

Proto-Slavic *vòlxъ pronunciation

Let ask an academician /etymologist/linguist/. Which would be the most likely scenario for, say *vòlxъ m? Would they pronounce, "ò" like in Russian волох IPA(key): [vɐˈɫox] with an "a" ? Or with an "o" as in Ukranian and/or in some other Slavic language, if I am not mistaken

2) Did they drop "l" as it looks like the case in Polish? Example: [ Vwoh] [pol ] Włoch POLISH > an ITALIAN vocative Włochu = Vwohfu IPA(key): /vwɔx/.

Is there such thing as comparative evidence on phonology/pronunciation of a reconstructed language? Flāvidus (talk) 02:34, 11 June 2022 (UTC)

@Flāvidus: I wouldn't even bother so much to find it out. akanye is a feature of the standard and modern Russian (and Belarusian) but there are dialects, which were much more prominent in the past. First signs of akanye appeared around the 14th century, according to some sources but it's nowhere near the common and the only pronunciation and applied only to Russian with 100% certainty.

As for your other question (e.g. "olo"/"oro" vs "la"/"ra", etc. in East Slavic languages), this feature is called полногла́сие (polnoglásije, “pleophony, polnoglasie”) and there are too many examples where East Slavic terms have more vowels than any other cognates in other Slavic languages and the Proto-Slavic itself. Anatoli T. ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 07:29, 11 June 2022 (UTC)

Polish underwent a lot of metathesis with liquids and vowels, whereas more Eastern Slavic languages added a vowel, as Anatoli already mentioned. It is written with an o because it was most likely spoken with an o, with a falling tone at that. Wikipedia has some great articles on Proto Slavic phonology as well as sound changes from Proto Slavic to modern Slavic languages. Vininn126 (talk) 12:32, 11 June 2022 (UTC)

I would add that *vòlxъ is more or less an etymological fiction. At the time of Proto-Slavic (c. 500 AD), this term would have been pronounced more like *valxu. The sound changes /a/ -> /o/ and /u/ -> /ъ/ date to the Common Slavic period that, strictly speaking, post-dates Proto-Slavic. The reason why *vòlxъ is reconstructed is because all Slavic languages underwent these two sound changes (and several others during the Common Slavic period), but by that point, some dialectal changes had already happened, e.g. the change of /al/ into either /laː/, /la/ (→ /lo/) or /ala/ (→ /olo/). The existence of /a/ not /o/, for example, in Proto-Slavic is known for certain by transliterations of contemporary Slavic names into Greek. Benwing2 (talk) 00:13, 13 June 2022 (UTC)

Notably Polish has many more cases of "o" where the majority of Slavic languages (excluding East Slavic polnoglasie) have "a", as in *golva - Polish głowa, Czech hlava, Bulgarian глава́ (glavá). --Anatoli T. ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 02:58, 16 June 2022 (UTC)

5K

It's been proposed to me that 5K be set as Word of the Day when we reach the 5,000th WOTD. However, I'd like to check if editors feel it is sum-of-parts. — Sgconlaw (talk) 13:04, 11 June 2022 (UTC)

It isn't a sum of parts. It's a product!

It's missing a unit, too. So it seems to be even less than a sum of parts. In the defined context it seems to be a recurrent proper name, and not fictional either, so maybe that needs an update. ApisAzuli (talk) 11:10, 14 June 2022 (UTC)

It doesn't require a unit, because K is an abbreviation for kilometre(s). Thus it seems SoP to me because it's 5 + K (kilometres). Not sure why you think it should be a "proper name" (do you mean proper noun?), though. — Sgconlaw (talk) 13:52, 14 June 2022 (UTC)

See proper name, there is no real difference.

Don't worry, I am wondering about proper nouns for a while now because of the entirely arbitrary capitalization. If Winter is the personification of winter, if that's how you choose to split the difference, then 5K is the baby reincarnation of the Marathon myth, where Μαραθών itself is a typical proper noun. So this is just my gut feeling as someone who doesn't run on a weekly basis. Someone else might think of it as a distance, in which case '5000 meter' surely is SoP.

But, why does K stand for kilometer, where did you take that idea from? It usually stands for kg because that's a standard unit, and then it is /ki:/, in contrast to the 5k audio. ApisAzuli (talk) 05:11, 15 June 2022 (UTC)

@ApisAzuli: er, because 5K means a 5,000-meter (5-kilometre) race? Obviously K doesn’t refer to kilogram or any other unit in this context. — Sgconlaw (talk) 06:16, 15 June 2022 (UTC)

I'm not sure how the road race part is obvious from the name. You're assuming a lot of contextual knowledge here. Theknightwho (talk) 06:55, 15 June 2022 (UTC)

@Theknightwho: that’s a good point, that the fact it is a race is not obvious from the name (though the distance is, in my view). But then that fact should just be captured in the definition of K. It doesn’t seem like there in anything particularly significant about 5K; you could have 1K, 2K, 10K, and so on. — Sgconlaw (talk) 07:11, 15 June 2022 (UTC)

Beyond that, there's a difference between the 5K, the 5000 metres and (yes, really) the 5,000km race. Theknightwho (talk) 07:15, 15 June 2022 (UTC)

@Sgconlaw Just spotted your edit. I don’t think it make sense to have that under K, because that gets used more widely to just mean “kilometre” (which I agree should be an sense of that, as it’s widely used informally). If someone said “I’m doing a 7K on Saturday” I would not immediately assume they meant a run, as it’s nonstandard, so I’d probably ask for clarification: for all I know it could be standard in some other sport I’m less familiar with. Only 5K and 10K carry the immediate connotation. Theknightwho (talk) 12:40, 15 June 2022 (UTC)

Unless we want to unleash a mini-onslaught of SoP entries and be compelled to educate newbies about CFI, I think we should not make it a WOTD. I do agree with the arguments for including it. DCDuring (talk) 13:34, 15 June 2022 (UTC)

@ApisAzuli, DCDuring, Theknightwho: OK, I don't think we'll feature it as WOTD. Will leave the possible SoP issue to be sorted out another day. — Sgconlaw (talk) 15:33, 15 June 2022 (UTC)

devil (nautical)

From the entry “Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea” in Scholastic Dictionary of Idioms:

In the early 17th century the heavy plank fastened to the side of a vessel as a support for guns was called the devil. Sometimes a sailor had to go out onto this plank to do repairs to the boat. In heavy seas he would be in great danger of falling overboard and drowning because he was between “the devil and the deep blue sea”.

I have struggled to verify this sailor's speak sense, which is not mentioned on the Wiktionary entry for devil, nor is there any etymology listed on between the devil and the deep blue sea. All I have found are some online posts by laypeople which refer to the aforementioned etymology of the idiom, with lots of variation in how it's described. But these people also seem to be confused about the nautical meaning of devil. More problematic is that the description cited above seems to refer to the gunwale, and this is not something sailors would have stood upon like a plank during ship maintenance—but even if they did, they wouldn't be between it and the sea, so the book's etymology doesn't make sense under scrutiny. Perhaps devil was indeed a synonym of gunwale, and sailors hung from it, or climbed alongside the boat underneath it? But that doesn't seem right either. I suspect that there was a real nautical term devil, but that authors not familiar with it butchered its definition as the etymology was handed down over generations. Needless to say I am not familiar with nautical speak, let alone 17th-century jargon, so I would appreciate any help in researching this. — 69.120.66.131 21:27, 11 June 2022 (UTC)

The OED has a similar (but non-identical?) sense: "13. Nautical. Any of various seams in the planking of a wooden ship, esp. either of the long seams running along the keel, which are considered difficult to caulk. Now historical and rare." They go on to say that it is sometimes suggested as the origin of the phrase "the devil to pay and no pitch hot". They give four citations but they are all mentions, not uses, taken from other dictionaries and reference books. Equinox ◑ 01:17, 12 June 2022 (UTC)

OED (1897) provides the definition "The seam which margins the waterways on a ship's hull", citing Smyth (entry "DEVIL TO PAY [...]"). This is followed by an alternative definition, which may or may not be equivalent, "a seam between the garboard-strake and the keel", citing Funk & Wagnalls.

I'm not sure this is the right sense for "between the devil and the deep blue sea", but it seems superficially plausible. (Wrote this comment before noticing the other one was posted.) 98.170.164.88 01:17, 12 June 2022 (UTC)

Did this perhaps refer to a dowel (cp. Ger. Dübel, vs. regional Deibel (“devil”)), as planks are bound to be joined by some sort of pegs? Also, if this is on the front of the sheep, "between" may applay in the horizontal plane as the ship plunges forward into the waves, I guess. ApisAzuli (talk) 07:10, 19 June 2022 (UTC)

• I'm more familiar with the sense of devil in regards to the long edge of abutting shipboard planks, as in the devil to pay (i.e. "pay out, lay out" in reference to the strands of oakum used for caulking) and no pitch hot (where the pine pitch had to be heated to liquefy, and this was then used as waterproof resin applied to the oakum).

I am intrigued by @ApisAzuli's suggestion of a possible derivation from German Dübel (“dowel”) / Deibel (“devil”), perhaps also or instead Dutch deuvel (“dowel”) which is even closer phonologically to English devil. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 00:34, 23 June 2022 (UTC)

spitting image

Same source as the above. Is there any reason to suppose an old meaning “likeness” for the word spit? And which etymology would that sense belong to? (Apologies if this is better suited for the etymology scriptorium, but I think it should be kept with the above.) — 69.120.66.131 21:41, 11 June 2022 (UTC)

This sense definitely exists. There's already a relevant sense on spit: "A person who exactly resembles someone else (usually in set phrases; see spitting image)", supported with quotations. It's also in a bunch of other dictionaries. Some early examples: 1805, 1818, 1824. I did not search very hard for earlier examples.

We currently group this sense of spit together with the saliva sense. However, the Scholastic Dictionary entry you referenced (first ed., second ed.) adds something about possible relation to the word spirit. I don't know if this is supported. 98.170.164.88 22:07, 11 June 2022 (UTC)

I somehow missed it. Thank you. — 69.120.66.131 22:09, 11 June 2022 (UTC)

The "spit and image" > "spitting image" idea is well-attested and supported by other etymological dictionaries (example). 98.170.164.88 22:11, 11 June 2022 (UTC)

This has to be from t-glotallized from speculum, equivalent to Spiegelbild, cp. spy, spähen, bespitzeln. Last time I have checked nobody knew that, but I doubt that I am the first one to recognize. As for spirit, see likewise spectre. ApisAzuli (talk) 11:41, 14 June 2022 (UTC)

Help with citing the Commentarii notarum tironianarum (1893)

I was recently working on a page for Latin nucunculus, a word that is attested only in a table of Tironian notes (Latin shorthand). The standard reference work for these notes seems to be Commentarii notarum tironianarum cum prolegomenis adnotationibus criticis et exegeticis notarumque indice alphabetico, (1893), edited by Wilhelm Schmitz, a work that has entered the public domain in the United States and is available to read online on the Internet Archive. However, it is indexed not with ordinary page numbers, but with some system involving multiple numbers and abbreviations that I'm not too sure of. I tried to reference it the best I could, using the preexisting entry for maculentus, which also cites this source, as a model, but I'd appreciate any advice on understanding the proper format for citing this reference.

Because there is little lexical information that can be provided about this word, I'd like to add a picture of the Tironian note to this entry. Perhaps a scan of a manuscript would be best, but to start with, I was considering adding just the relevant portion of the scan of Schmitz 1893. However, I wasn't sure about the copyright status of the scan itself, as opposed to the original text it reproduces. Is it safe to assume the scan is also public domain in the United States? Urszag (talk) 01:10, 12 June 2022 (UTC)

The citation formatting currently present on nucunculus seems perfectly fine to me.

I believe most scans of public domain content should be in the public domain, per discussion here. 98.170.164.88 01:28, 12 June 2022 (UTC)

blush

Is this sense wrong somehow? "Blushing a beet red" doesn't feel very transitive, as blushing is not something being done to the red. It's more adverbial.

1. (transitive) To change skin color in the face (to a particular shade).

   When he saw it, he blushed a beet red.

   I wasn't surprised, but it was embarrassing enough that I blushed a little pink.

Equinox ◑ 01:14, 12 June 2022 (UTC)

This seems grammatically comparable to sense 5 of appear. On that entry, (intransitive, copulative) is used. Based on the definition of copular verb, it seems like the category that might fit the verb blush in this instance, but IANAG (I am not a grammarian). 98.170.164.88 01:53, 12 June 2022 (UTC)

This is an inchoative verb, like become or turn. It's not transitive because it takes a complement, not an object. It's also a copula. Syntactically, there's not much difference between "he blushed beet red", "he turned beet red" and "he was beet red"- they don't describe actions, they describe states or changes in states. Chuck Entz (talk) 03:08, 12 June 2022 (UTC)

Holocash, holocash

Oddly, these two entries have different definitions (and at least some of the citations appear to back them up). But I suppose really either could be an alt form of the other...? Equinox ◑ 02:22, 12 June 2022 (UTC)

This is one of those words (I know there are others that have come up, but I can't think of them offhand, maybe y]ou or someone else can) where, because people mostly use it to gesture pejoratively and uncarefully at some supposed link between two ideas ("Holocaust, cash! Jews are money-grubbing, amirite?!"), it's hard to write a definition that pins down a "meaning". That said, the gloss in holocash and the second half of the definition in Holocash were similar enough that I merged them. - -sche (discuss) 22:15, 12 June 2022 (UTC)

bruck

Does the adjectival sense need to be marked somehow? Perhaps as "slang" or "dialect"? Tharthan (talk) 05:14, 12 June 2022 (UTC)

Probably (MLE). 98.170.164.88 05:15, 12 June 2022 (UTC)

 Done Equinox ◑ 05:16, 12 June 2022 (UTC)

It was already near the header of the verb. Besides the etymology makes its current distribution kind of bait. This is like some one being confused by Latin birra (“beer”) not marked according to epoch in spite of it already telling that it is borrowed from Italian – didn’t really know the details of its being spread across Medieval Latin, Renaissance Latin, or only New Latin to be loud about it, likewise I was not sure if perhaps bruck perhaps transpired earlier into British English or also some other Carribean islands, as the oldest quotes appeared to predate the emergence of MLE. Fay Freak (talk) 21:08, 23 June 2022 (UTC)

Wrights dialect dictionary [26] lists bruck as a Scottish and Irish word and claims that it can not only mean broke but rubbish or scraps of food in Scotland (from the idea that unwanted stuff is broken) and it can mean ‘brook’ there too and there are some writings on GoogleBooks in broad Orcadian or Shetlandic Scots that seems to bear this out. The earliest hit I can find for bruck meaning broke is a depiction of an Irishman from Clonmel using the word in 1829 [27] and interesting is this hit, which seems to be written in broad West Country dialect but apparently is written in a broad Doncastrian dialect from 1853 [28], so it must have been said in at least some parts of England back then. Glancing through some other hits it seems that it may have been used in the West Country and Appalachia too but I’ll have to investigate further. The use of bruck, brack and several variants in Scots is analysed extensively at the DSL [29]. It’s certainly rare to hear bruck or brack for broke outside of the West Indies and MLE but IIRC the form brack was used in a Ken Loach film about neds (possibly in the line “Ah brak ra windaes en ra weans ‘ame” meaning “I broke the windows in the childrens’ home”) near Glasgow and we list it as exclusively Doric Overlordnat1 (talk) 00:32, 24 June 2022 (UTC)

Italian imperatives of third-person-only verbs?

(Notifying GianWiki, SemperBlotto, Ultimateria, Jberkel, Imetsia, Sartma): A question for native Italian speakers: do third-person imperatives exist for third-person-only verbs like accadere, piovere, bisognare, volerci, etc., i.e. verbs that exist only in the 3rd-person singular and plural? I'm pretty sure the answer is no; it seems to me that third-person imperatives are used specifically as polite second-person imperatives (with Lei/Loro), which don't make sense with such verbs. However, several existing/old verb conjugation tables for these verbs do contain third-person imperatives, and several existing non-lemma forms of these verbs claim to be third-person imperatives (e.g. accada, accadano). I ask because my new conjugation module Module:it-verb does not generate them, and I want to make sure this is correct. Benwing2 (talk) 00:20, 13 June 2022 (UTC)

According to the way I studied the language, only second-person forms are actual imperative forms. The remaining ones use the forms of the subjunctive, in the so-called congiuntivo esortativo (“exhortatory subjunctive”). I suppose that, if you regard those forms as imperatives, impersonal verbs have them as well (e.g. (che) piova! (“let it rain!; may it rain!”)) — GianWiki (talk) 06:43, 13 June 2022 (UTC)

Imperative forms only exist for the second person. "Third person imperatives" (between quotation marks because it is a completely alien concept in Italian; no Italian native speaker would ever consider it an imperative), as @GianWiki explained, are rendered by che + subjunctive.

As for accadere, piovere and bisognare, I really wouldn't say that they only exist in the third person. They are mainly used in the third person, but if you wanted to use them in any other person, you could. If you're writing an ode to rain, you could very well say things like "acqua celeste, che piovi sulla terra" (litt.: "oh heavenly water, that rain on the earth"), "Giovanni, ma cosa stai facendo?" "Accado" ("Giovanni, what are you doing there?" "I'm happening"). Is it unusual? Sure. Impossible, not at all. The Italian dictionary Zingarelli has no problem giving the full declensions of these verbs. I think we should do the same. Sartma (talk) 08:55, 13 June 2022 (UTC)

@Benwing2 With "lei/loro" we use the pure subjunctive to express a polite request. That's not an imperative, though. It also isn't a 3rd person (it is etymologically, that's why the verb form is the same, but meaning wise it's a 2nd person and it should be given along other 2nd person forms). Sartma (talk) 13:54, 13 June 2022 (UTC)

@Sartma Thanks. If you want to include non-third-person forms of these verbs (compare also annottare and impersonal-only verbs like piovigginare), then I will see about doing so and marking them as rare. BTW is Zingarelli online anywhere? I don't seem to be able to find it. Benwing2 (talk) 01:18, 14 June 2022 (UTC)

@Benwing2: annottare and piovigginare only have the third person, so they're good the way they are (Zingarelli confirmed that too). But piovere, accadere and bisognare have all forms. To be honest, I don't really know if there is a rule to decide which verbs only have the third person and which can be used in all forms... I guess a good dictionary would tell you? I'm also not sure that it makes sense to mark them as "rare" (unless "rarity of use" something we regularly mark on Wiktionary lemmas...?) I even found a book titled "Io accado".

Unluckily Zingarelli is not available for free. I use it for work so I have my own digital copy that gives declension tables for all verbs. Sartma (talk) 09:44, 14 June 2022 (UTC)

transliterator

Hey, I'm reading transliterator and I can't figure out what this is. If I were a person unfamiliar with this term (I am), I would be lost (I am). Is this a job or a software or what? If it is a job, are there famous transliterators from history? I would appreciate an example sentence or similar where someone noted for their transliterator skills is mentioned. Unfamiliar with this line of work. --Geographyinitiative (talk) 20:37, 13 June 2022 (UTC)

It's an agent noun. The definition's a bit substandard, because it doesn't need to be a person. Agent nouns sometimes get used as professions, and sometimes those are perceived as more formal. For example, someone can be an actor (as an agent noun) without being an actor (the profession).

I'd suggest we just change it to "One who transliterates", because that also covers things like software etc. Theknightwho (talk) 23:08, 13 June 2022 (UTC)

@Theknightwho: actually, "one who transliterates" doesn't suggest to me anything other than a human person. If you want a definition that also includes software, I think it would have to be something like "A person who, or thing which, transliterates." — Sgconlaw (talk) 13:45, 14 June 2022 (UTC)

"That which transliterates"? Though I'm pretty sure it's a standard use of one (pronoun sense 4). Theknightwho (talk) 13:50, 14 June 2022 (UTC)

@Theknightwho: It should be “one who or that which transliterates”, to include both people and things (e.g., see this search). J3133 (talk) 13:52, 14 June 2022 (UTC)

Gloriously cumbersome. Theknightwho (talk) 13:56, 14 June 2022 (UTC)

We use it on many pages and I doubt you would find a better solution. J3133 (talk) 14:01, 14 June 2022 (UTC)

one pronoun sense 4 covers this and it's used in a vast number of Latin entries, but okay matey. Theknightwho (talk) 14:18, 14 June 2022 (UTC)

@Theknightwho: As Sgconlaw has stated above, one does not suggest anything other than a human person to most, and I agree. Were that not the case, as many as have added “one who or that which” would not. J3133 (talk) 14:21, 14 June 2022 (UTC)

The problem here isn't the first pronoun, but the second: who specifies a person. You can't say "the one who" about a thing without anthropomorphizing it. How about "someone or something that transliterates"? Chuck Entz (talk) 14:58, 14 June 2022 (UTC)

This feels much more natural, and I'd prefer this as the standard wording. Theknightwho (talk) 05:09, 16 June 2022 (UTC)

Yes, that sounds good! — Sgconlaw (talk) 05:27, 16 June 2022 (UTC)

Italian odiare: tu odi, tu odii, ...? che io odi, che io odii, ...?

(Notifying GianWiki, SemperBlotto, Ultimateria, Jberkel, Imetsia, Sartma): Hi. I'm confused a verb like odiare. Hoepli [30], which is generally trustworthy, says "tu òdii o tu òdi" and similarly it says that the singular present subjunctive is "òdii o òdi". Treccani [31] doesn't say; it just says "òdio etc." DiPI [32] has a subentry that appears to refer to odii but I'm having a hard time interpreting what it says. Olivetti [33] has only odii but I'm somewhat skeptical of this dictionary's reliability. The "Dizionario di Orthografia e Pronuncia" (DOP) would probably shed a lot of light but it seems to no longer exist online (or did it move? If so does anyone know its new location?).

I was under the impression that verbs in -iare with stressed i take -ii, e.g. inviare: io invìo, tu invìi, etc., but that verbs with unstressed i take just -i in the second person singular and the singular present subjunctive. Am I wrong here or is odiare an exception in having tu òdii? Are these forms with -ii archaic or otherwise stylistically differentiated from forms in -i? Are forms in -ii available for every verb in -iare, e.g. studiare, mangiare, lasciare, invecchiare, scoppiare, abbaiare, abbracciare, abbreviare, lanciare, baciare, tagliare, cambiare, variare, etc.? Or maybe only those verbs in -iare where the /i/ is actually pronounced? Or maybe only a small or large subset? Thanks for any help you can give and any light you can shed. Benwing2 (talk) 07:02, 14 June 2022 (UTC)

As far as I know, odiare → tu odi. I've seen forms like odii chiefly used as plural forms of odio (noun) (even though the correct form is odi, or better yet odî), or even archaic spellings like odj. — GianWiki (talk) 07:22, 14 June 2022 (UTC)

@Benwing2: Zingarelli gives òdi as the usual form, and òdii next to it, marked as literary (both for present and conjunctive forms). I don't remember ever reading odii as a verbal form (or if I did, I might just not have noticed that it was spelt with two I's...), but I would definitely never write it with two I's. Sartma (talk) 11:36, 14 June 2022 (UTC)

@Benwing2: Oh, I forgot to reply to the second part of your question. I checked the inflections of all the verbs you listed and only variare has an alternative form varii, marked as rare, next to the usual vari. I don't think there is a rule here, it must be a question of "we found these forms in the corpus of Italian literature we examined, so we need to indicate that they exist". They are definitely not spellings taught in Italian schools. I guess we can add them as alternative forms, just to recognise their existence, but I wouldn't personally do so in a declension table. Sartma (talk) 11:52, 14 June 2022 (UTC)

@GianWiki, Sartma Thanks. I won't include them in the conjugation table but maybe add a usage note about these forms. Benwing2 (talk) 00:43, 15 June 2022 (UTC)

Missing sense of tongue (verb) or noun tonguing?

In the song Wellerman there is the line "One day when the tonguin' is done we'll take our leave and go." Is this synonymous with or related our nautical sense listed as a noun definition of tongue, or is it something else? Acolyte of Ice (talk) 09:52, 14 June 2022 (UTC)

Were the boards that made up the hulls of sailing ships joined by tongue and groove? DCDuring (talk) 15:16, 14 June 2022 (UTC)

• 2010, John F. MacArthur, Called to Lead: 26 Leadership Lessons from the from the Life of the Apostle Paul, page 29:

  The hulls of ships in those days were assembled with tongue-and-groove construction and sealed with pitch.

I didn't find anything for the last millennium, when they may have used shiplap instead. DCDuring (talk) 15:30, 14 June 2022 (UTC)

See “tongue”, in The Century Dictionary […], New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911, →OCLC. and “tonguing and grooving”, in The Century Dictionary […], New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911, →OCLC.. DCDuring (talk) 15:35, 14 June 2022 (UTC)

Synonyms

I would suggest that if two words refer to the same thing but if both are non-generic terms for it (that is if both belong to different registers), then they should not be stated as synonyms of each other. If one of them is the common term for it, I think only then a synonym of different register can be added. Refer to this entry. In this case, one word is a common slang/vulgar word, and other is a nonstandard/regional term. ·~ dictátor·mundꟾ 11:43, 14 June 2022 (UTC)

Qualifiers are your friend for this. Theknightwho (talk) 13:52, 14 June 2022 (UTC)

Sure, but this should apply only when one of the words is a common term. But if both are non-generic terms, then even using qualifiers, it’s really misleading and looks bad. ·~ dictátor·mundꟾ 15:45, 14 June 2022 (UTC)

Sure - I agree with that. Theknightwho (talk) 17:16, 14 June 2022 (UTC)

@Inqilābī I generally agree with you and suggest you take this to the Beer Parlour. In general we need to be careful with synonyms of different registers, particularly when one of the registers is offensive, vulgar or derogatory. Benwing2 (talk) 00:56, 15 June 2022 (UTC)

Can you give an example where qualifiers won’t do?  --Lambiam 09:20, 15 June 2022 (UTC)

Qualifier won't do in any case, see Template:qualifier:

• To identify the sense to which a usage note, synonym, or other -onym applies, use {{sense}} instead.

Anyway it sounds like a slippery slope. NB: Wilhelm Schmidt et al., real synonymy does not exist ... -- "(es gibt eben keine echte Synonymie, wohl in keinem sprachlichen Bereich)." (Geschichte der Deutschen Sprache, vol. 1. Hirzel, 2020. cf. pg. 7). ApisAzuli (talk) 15:00, 18 June 2022 (UTC)

based

In the "verb" section, the verb used is exclusively "to be", all the uses of "based" are adjectival.

The entry for the adjective sense of (internet slang, originally 4chan) praiseworthy; admirable feels less than ideal at the moment for a couple of reasons:

• We don't mention the association that the term has with the alt-right. I notice that that sense was deleted back in 2019 on the basis that it could be folded into the general sense, but I'm not sure that that's entirely accurate. At least for a while, the term was certainly used as a dog whistle, even if it's become more widespread.
• We currently give the usage example "based and redpilled". Frankly, I don't think we should be repeating highly politicised slogans just because they happen to be common collocations, particularly when:
  • There is nothing that indicates the actual implications of that slogan.
  • The entry at red pill also doesn't do a particularly good job of signposting this either (e.g. no usage note in the verb section), and implies that it is far more benign than it really is.

At best the combingation is misleading.

Theknightwho (talk) 02:12, 15 June 2022 (UTC)

I agree, we should add a qualifier (alt-right slogan) and/or "translation" to it. Or perhaps re-add it as a cite? At least there will be some surrounding context. – Jberkel 08:02, 15 June 2022 (UTC)

Wasn't this discussed before? Wiktionary:Tea_room/2021/March#based_and_unbased. I don't think this deserves too much attention, because it is a moving target. ApisAzuli (talk) 08:50, 15 June 2022 (UTC)

I am of course not opposed to factually accurate qualifiers; my sole concern was that I didn't want to remove correct information (the fact that "based and redpilled" is a collocation is undeniable) from that page.

As to the qualifiers: I actually, by and large, agree with the label (Internet slang, originally 4chan) given in based. It appears to me that based has found wide-spread adoption in non-right-wing (i.e. either left-wing or apolitical) circles (leftypol, ContraPoints, this deleted meme) and based and redpilled too though to a (much?) lesser degree. I think we could do with a usage notes section that explains the transition from it being far right lingo to an (innocuous?) main stream Internet word (which is where we are at today from what I can tell). Pinging also @WordyAndNerdy who has proven to be well-versed in online political discourse. — Fytcha〈 T | L | C 〉 10:46, 15 June 2022 (UTC)

I discern three possible senses that could fit under Etymology 2. The first – "not caring what others think" – seems to be the source of the other two. The alt-right sense seems to have emerged on 4chan around 2014 with Gamergate. As a prominent example, Christina Hoff Summers, a libertarian feminist, was dubbed "Based Mom" after she aligned with Gamergate. I would probably define this sense more narrowly: "admirable for rejecting liberalism or left-wing values." It's somewhat synonymous with the later coinage unwoke, but I think the concept of praiseworthiness is baked into its meaning. The third sense I would suggest is a more generalized "admirable or praiseworthy" one. This seems to have grown out of ironic use or reclamation within progressive spaces. WordyAndNerdy (talk) 11:39, 15 June 2022 (UTC)

To add to Wordy's comments about people who had the name attached to them: there was also "Based Stickman" (Kyle Chapman) who became famous for hitting an anti-fascist protester with a stick (or so I gather from very cursory Web searches). Equinox ◑ 21:55, 16 July 2022 (UTC)

• Just a comment: The "alt-right" tag seems inaccurate. It is commonly used among socialists/communists online as well. ---> Tooironic (talk) 03:03, 16 June 2022 (UTC)

  Yes, but they in any case have appropriated it from DR memers. ᛙᛆᚱᛐᛁᚿᛌᛆᛌ ᛭ Proto-Norsing ᛭ Ask me anything 12:36, 16 June 2022 (UTC)

  Possibly not directly from the alt-right, but rather from its general usage –Jiaminglimjm (talk) 11:12, 16 July 2022 (UTC)

• I've always thought of this word as a 4chan (later spread elsewhere) synonym for "awesome". Usage by political edgelords != political word? —Fish bowl (talk) 22:37, 16 June 2022 (UTC)
• I use this word. The only popular usage I come across is when it's used to praise someone or show agreement with them. I think this is what the word is notable for. I wasn't aware of this being "alt-right" stuff Python Drink (talk) 23:10, 13 July 2022 (UTC)

This is a fine and amusing word that I happily use (but not in liberal company; same reason you might be scared to say "blind drunk" or "went totally crazy"). Most people I know who use this word are the "dirtbag left", who might not be your best friends but certainly aren't the alt-right. Equinox ◑ 11:38, 16 July 2022 (UTC)

"based" is without doubt of DR/4chan origin. I know because I've seen its rise over the last few years and that is where it started. The left simply took it for themselves in order to insult right wingers, in order to say things like "the allies were based chud", when by the earlier users the Allies would definitely NOT be designated as "based". It then began to be adopted by apolitical people. ᛙᛆᚱᛐᛁᚿᛌᛆᛌ ᛭ Proto-Norsing ᛭ Ask me anything 21:51, 16 July 2022 (UTC)

That's lovely but it means nothing whatsoever unless you have sources and proof. Equinox ◑ 21:53, 16 July 2022 (UTC)

The origin is, as our etymology states, cocaine addiction, then reclaimed by rappers (first Lil B) to mean “carrying yourself with swagger”. Reference: Dictionary.com. J3133 (talk) 08:09, 17 July 2022 (UTC)

It seems that there are 2 words, one older derived from freebase, and a later one. I've moved the sense being discussed here to a new Etymology 3, adding that the previous senses may have crossed over to the new formation. Please advise if this doesn't look quite right. Leasnam (talk) 03:12, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

I said above that i was surprised that it comes from cocaine too, but that is where all the evidence points. Any supposed third etymology is a folk etymology. —Soap— 13:05, 10 March 2023 (UTC)

When I first saw "based" in its recent slang use, and the way users described its meaning, I immediately associated it as an inversion of debased - 1. lowered in quality, character, or value; 2. lowered in rank, dignity, or significance.

Ref: Dictionary.com

This is similar to other slang/colloquial use based on breaking down the meaning of words often originally composed from underutilized or obsolete roots, popularized most visibly in American media such as the 1999 movie 10 Things I Hate About You (overwhelmed and underwhelmed imply the existence of "whelmed") Ref: Merriam-Webster.com, and several instances in the 2010 animated series Young Justice via character Dick Grayson's "unwords" (e.g., disaster implies the existence of "aster") Ref: Young Justice Wiki, which reflect real-world reasoning, creativity, and puns created by people, especially young people, when contemplating and using language.

With this in mind, as the implied opposite of "debased", "based" would mean 1. elevated in quality, character, or value; 2. elevated in rank, dignity, or significance. This correlates with user-described understandings of the slang term. ScullyRaptor (talk) 15:22, 10 September 2024 (UTC)

Another good thing to add here is the correlation to AAVE and how it connects to appropriation of it; maybe adding a source to the 4chan origin of the word! Cvni81 (talk) 15:11, 13 September 2023 (UTC)

• I wrote the following Jargon File-style definition for this word on an impulse the other week:

based: adj. (neologism, zoomer slang)

1. An expression of irreverent approval of conduct or speech considered taboo or offensive, especially when expressed earnestly or unapologetically. Compare cringe. Terry Davis was based.

2. By extension, any controversial, polarising, or inflammatory opinion or political rhetoric, often right-wing in nature. Based and red-pilled.

3. (obsolete; mostly co-opted by senses 1 & 2) Objective and honest in expression or demeanour, especially in relation to one's principles.

I was about to add it to Wiktionary, but this discussion has left me uncertain as to the accuracy of sense 3's notes on relevance. In any case, I'll leave the prospective definition here in case it's of use to anybody. — Alhadis (talk) 03:05, 20 August 2024 (UTC)

want to...

I'm rereading Pride and Prejudice (1813), and I have come across a sentence in which Elizabeth says, "Last Christmas you were afraid of his marrying me, because it would be imprudent; and now, because he is trying to get a girl with only ten thousand pounds, you want to find out that he is mercenary." (Chapter Twenty-weven) As I understand it, Elizabeth is teasing her aunt, Mrs Gardiner, who wishes to see "him" (Wickham) in a good light. I understand this sentence to mean "Wickham has gone after Miss King instead of me because she has come into a fortune, but you don't blame him, because her fortune is only ten thousand pounds". In other words, the words "you want to find out that he is mercenary" actually means "you lack the ability to see him as mercenary". That of course is very different to the meaning of "you want to ..." today. I think "want" was not used to mean "wish" back then. Am I right in my interpretation? Can we add this meaning to the article? Eric Kvaalen (talk) 16:07, 15 June 2022 (UTC)

@Eric Kvaalen: I read Pride and Prejudice a very long time ago so I don’t recall the context of the quotation, but just looking at it in isolation it seems to be a straightforward use of want to mean “to desire or wish for (something)”. Elizabeth is insinuating that her aunt is prejudiced against Wickham; she is constantly trying to find fault with him, and so she wants (desires, wishes) to find out that he is pursuing Miss King only for her money. — Sgconlaw (talk) 16:38, 15 June 2022 (UTC)

@Sgconlaw: Well, I think it's the opposite! Take a look: Pride and Prejudice Eric Kvaalen (talk) 17:28, 15 June 2022 (UTC)

@Eric Kvaalen: I have read the relevant page, and my opinion remains unchanged.

“But my dear Elizabeth,” she added, “what sort of girl is Miss King? I should be sorry to think our friend mercenary.”

“Pray, my dear aunt, what is the difference in matrimonial affairs, between the mercenary and the prudent motive? Where does discretion end, and avarice begin? Last Christmas you were afraid of his marrying me, because it would be imprudent; and now, because he is trying to get a girl with only ten thousand pounds, you want to find out that he is mercenary.”

— Sgconlaw (talk) 18:40, 15 June 2022 (UTC)

@Eric Kvaalen I think the confusion here is coming from the word "only". It doesn't mean that Miss King's fortune is "only ten thousand pounds" (i.e. small) - it means that Miss King is "a girl with only ten thousand pounds" (i.e. that's the only thing she has going for her, from Wickham's perspective). Theknightwho (talk) 02:43, 16 June 2022 (UTC)

MW 1913 has "To feel need of; to wish or long for; to desire; to crave." Webster 1828 has a similar definition. DCDuring (talk) 18:32, 15 June 2022 (UTC)

I suppose you folks are right. Now that I've found a PDF of it, I checked and found that there are about a dozen other places where "want to" is used and the ones I checked do mean "desire to'. I find the passage in question difficult to understand. Mrs Gardiner does seem to desire to think well of Wickham. She says later, "I should be sorry, you know, to think ill of a young man who has lived so long in Derbyshire".

Apparently "want to" did mean "desire to" in 1813. But in 1611 the King James Bible never used the word "want" to meant "desire". There are many places where the Greek has the verb meaning to desire or wish, but the KJV always uses "will", "would", "desire", or something similar. For instance, the "Golden Rule" in Matthew 7:12 says, "all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them". People think it means "what you would have them do unto you", like a conditional, but it really means "what you want them to do unto you".

While we're at it, can someone explain to me why Elizabeth says, near the end of Chapter 29, "I am not one and twenty"?

Eric Kvaalen (talk) 08:38, 16 June 2022 (UTC)

@Eric Kvaalen: Elizabeth is saying, "I am not yet 21 years old." — Sgconlaw (talk) 13:12, 16 June 2022 (UTC)

@Sgconlaw: Well, I don't really understand why she says that. She would then be agreeing with Lady de Burgh that she is not more than 20. I don't see the point of it. Maybe it's just a way of saying "Yes, I am 20." A bit earlier she says her youngest sister "is not sixteen", which I suppose is just saying she's 15. Like when we say "She's going on 16" or "I'm going on 21". (By the way, four daughters between the ages of 15 and 20 seems a lot!) Eric Kvaalen (talk) 15:49, 17 June 2022 (UTC)

@Eric Kvaalen "I should be sorry" is an affectation. It would have been socially unacceptable for her to openly express desire that Wickham is bad (or to make a direct accusation), so instead what she's doing is expressing regret (which is socially acceptable) as a way to draw attention to a concern that other people didn't actually have in the first place. It's a good example of the very thing the novel is named for, in fact. Theknightwho (talk) 13:07, 16 June 2022 (UTC)

Just to add: the second time she says she's sorry, she's being intentionally ambiguous. What Mrs Gardiner is actually doing is expressing regret that Derbyshire's reputation might be damaged by someone like that having lived there so long (another example of pride and prejudice in tandem). Again, it might need a bit of attuning to, because it's another common sleight of hand in the UK (even if people wouldn't use that precise phrasing these days). Theknightwho (talk) 13:14, 16 June 2022 (UTC)

(Another addendum) - remember that Mrs Gardiner is ultimately trying to comfort Elizabeth here (essentially "you didn't want him anyway"), with a bit of "I told you so" thrown in. Elizabeth's using irony (sense 3) as a retort to the second bit, but she's being somewhat good-humoured about it because she recognises the good intentions. It's a miscalculated move on Mrs Gardiner's part, though, which is why the conversation goes downhill. Mrs Gardiner has no incentive to think good things of Wickham, in any event. Theknightwho (talk) 13:28, 16 June 2022 (UTC)

Well, maybe. Thanks. Eric Kvaalen (talk) 15:49, 17 June 2022 (UTC)

quality of -ei in Italian 1sg conditional, e.g. vorrei, sarei

(Notifying GianWiki, SemperBlotto, Ultimateria, Jberkel, Imetsia, Sartma): Hi. User:GianWiki posted on my talk page about the conditional ending -ei; he believes it is -èi whereas I currently have -éi in {{it-conj}}. The current pronunciations of vorrei and sarei disagree; the former has vorréi but the later sarèi. My -éi is based on DiPI, see [34], which has -éi for the passato remoto ending, and I would assume that the conditional is in origin the same ending. However, I am not completely sure, and DOP appears to be no longer online; that is a good source for "traditional" pronunciations. Can a native Italian speaker comment? Also it would be great it someone could review the accents I put in pages like amare and insistere that use the new {{it-conj}}. Benwing2 (talk) 02:02, 16 June 2022 (UTC)

OK, Hoepli agrees that it is -èi. I changed the module accordingly. Another question though ... I know that the verb form dà of dare (3rd singular present indicative, 2nd singular imperative) has a written accent on it in normal usage, and dò of dare (1st singular present indicative) can, although do without a written accent is more common. What about sdarsi? Do the forms sdo and/or sda have a written accent? I am guessing the answer is no, and that's what my module implements, but I'm not sure. I know that ridò and ridà of ridare do have a written accent, but that's expected because the forms are multisyllabic with final stress. Same question concerns the imperative dì of dire; what about sdire, does the imperative sdi have a written accent? (For that matter, does sdi exist at all? sdire itself is archaic so this may not be easy to answer.) Benwing2 (talk) 06:20, 16 June 2022 (UTC)

Treccani lists the second-person singular imperative form of dire as di’ (with an apostrophe), with dì as a secondary choice (which can also lead to confusion with the noun dì (“day”)). Di’ is likely the best choice. — GianWiki (talk) 07:37, 16 June 2022 (UTC)

One final question, about forms like 1st singular fò of fare, and similarly rifò of rifare, (sod)disfò of disfare/soddisfare, liquefò of liquefare, stupefò of stupefare, etc. Hoepli [35] says fàccio or fò are equally good and Treccani [36] actually lists fò before fàccio, but I gather fò is literary, archaic or regional, so I marked it as such in the conjugation table of all these verbs. Is this correct or are there additional nuances? I know for example that disfare has a common form dìsfo (note the position of the accent) and similarly soddisfare has soddìsfo, and that these forms aren't archaic; and liquefare has forms like lìquefo that are common but proscribed, so there are definitely some subtleties. Benwing2 (talk) 07:12, 16 June 2022 (UTC)

@Benwing2: you're right. fo is indeed literary or regional (Tuscan). Zingarelli gives it as "rare" and spells it without accent. Definitely not standard Italian. I wouldn't say it's archaic, since you still hear it from people speaking regional Italian (mainly in Tuscany), but it's clear to everyone that it's literary/not standard.

As for the 1st singular indicative of the other verbs you mentioned:

• rifare: rifàccio, but Zingarelli also gives rifò (I consider the second regional, though)
• disfare: dìsfo, but Zingarelli also gives disfàccio (wich I would never, ever say, it sounds a bit ignorant, like you don't know it's dìsfo) and disfò (wich I would also never say, since it sounds like a 3rd person past, like lui disfò - even though apparently the correct form would be lui disféce)
• soddisfare: soddìsfo, but Zingarelli also gives soddisfàccio (that I never heard and also would never use) and soddisfò as "rare".
• liquefare: I say liquefàccio. But Zingarelli says: lìquefo, or, more correct but less widespread, liquefàccio. I would consider lìquefo to be wrong (sounds quite ignorant to me), but if Zingarelli gives it as the most widespread, I guess we can do the same... sigh.
• stupefare: I never use this verb in the first person, it's not generally something people "do". Zingarelli gives stupefàccio and stupefò.

Sartma (talk) 09:42, 16 June 2022 (UTC)

@Benwing2: Zingarelli gives dò as "rare". I wouldn't even put it in inflection tables. In contemporary Italian it's spelt "do". The accent is not needed because it can't really be confused with any other word. The only reason dà is spelt with the accent is to clearly differentiate it from the preposition da (even though it's a bit silly, but that's a story for another day). I never heard sdarsi before. Zingarelli gives it as "Tuscan" in its first meaning of "to stop applying yourself to something", and "rare" in its second meaning of "to do something profusely". It says that it's conjugated like dare, but then in the inflection table it puts accents for everything so one can't really know. I wouldn't personally put an accent, since neither "sdo" nor "sda" can be confused with anything and are one syllable words ("can it be confused with something else?" is the main reason in Italian to write the accent on words that wouldn't normally need it).

As for the imperative of dire, the modern form is only di'. Zingarelli give dì as "disusato" (no more used). I wouldn't put it in inflection tables, maybe just a note saying that you might find it written like that in some old book (but then again, you find any sort of oddities in old books, so I'm not really sure where to draw a line). Of sdire, Zingarelli gives it as "archaic" and doesn't even give the conjugation table, lol. I never heard that verb, we only use disdire these days. I don't know what the imperative would be, to be honest. If it's like disdire it would be sdici, not sdi. I think you can just give it a pass on adding the inflection table for this one. It's not modern Italian anyway... Sartma (talk) 08:49, 16 June 2022 (UTC)

@Benwing2: Oh, just noticed that we have sdici on Wiktionary already. Sartma (talk) 08:50, 16 June 2022 (UTC)

@Benwing2: I forgot one thing about imperatives: the imperative of dare in modern Italian is either dai or da' (with the apostrophe indicating that the -i has dropped). The same is true for fare (fai or fa'), andare (vai or va'), stare (stai or sta'). Forms with the accent like dà are given as "not used anymore" by Zingarelli. I wouldn't put them in inflection tables. Sartma (talk) 09:57, 16 June 2022 (UTC)

@Benwing2: I noticed that at the moment under dare we give dà' as imperative. That's definitely wrong. There should be no accent on the a of da'. Sartma (talk) 10:02, 16 June 2022 (UTC)

@Benwing2: I found a whole paragraph in Zingarelli on when to write the accent on words. It clearly says that it's wrong to write the imperatives of fare, andare, dare, dire and stare with an accent, but they have to be written with the apostrophe, since it's a case of truncation, exactly the same as mo' for modo, po' for poco, ca' for casa, etc. Sartma (talk) 10:16, 16 June 2022 (UTC)

@Benwing2: I checked the accents on amare and insistere. They look alright to me. The only thing that I find a bit strange is the two versions for the 3rd person of the conditional, one with -èbbe(ro) and one in -ébbe(ro). The second one is clearly regional. I'm not sure it should be there... Sartma (talk) 12:12, 16 June 2022 (UTC)

@Sartma Thank you very much for your detailed comments. I'm in the process of incorporating them into the conjugation tables. Some comments:

1. -ébbe(ro) comes from DiPI, which lists -èbbero, -ébbero here: [37] and also in the pronunciation for ebbero itself: [38] DiPI uses various symbols, and if you hover over the "Varianti di pronuncia", it says the first pronunciation is la più consigliabile and pronunciations after a comma are abbastanza consigliabile. Generally DiPI seems reliable, and the pronunciation with high-mid /e/ agrees with the audio pronunciation given for vorrebbero here: [39] That said, if this is a regional pronunciation, I can mark it as such in the table or leave it out.
2. The indication dà' is not to be taken to indicate that the accent should be written; the convention I've used is that I mark the stressed syllable in all words, even monosyllabic words (since the accent may be necessary to convey the quality of e and o), and in monosyllabic words, there's a footnote if the accent is written in normal text, indicating this. You can see an example of this in the table for dare, where the 1sg present indicative has dò twice, where the first one links to do and the second one to dò, and the second one has footnotes "Less common" and "With written accent on monosyllabic verb". Granted, this may be confusing, and there may be a better way; for example, Treccani under fare [40] writes "(pres. fo 〈fò〉 [radd. sint.] o fàccio, fai [ant. faci], fa [radd. sint.; ant. e poet. face], facciamo, fate, fanno; ..."). Possibly some indication for monosyllabic words like fo〈fò〉would be best. I am also thinking of changing the indication of syntactic gemination to use a following superscripted asterisk with an explanatory tooltip; this is already being used in the pronunciation section, see do for an example.
3. As for stupefare, that was intended to stand in for all the remaining compounds of fare. Apparently that is not a good example. There are several others: contraffare, ricontraffare, sopraffare, strafare, prefare, sfare, artefare, putrefare, torrefare, tumefare, assuefare, riassuefare, mansuefare, dissuefare, rarefare, tepefare, satisfare (obsolete, not sure if you can comment on it), benefare (obsolete), perfare (obsolete), misfare (obsolete). Maybe you can comment on (some of) these.

Benwing2 (talk) 01:24, 18 June 2022 (UTC)

@Sartma One more question ... Hoepli [41] says the future of effigiare is either effigerò or effigierò. I would expect only the former. Is there a rule for this, or is this just based on the spelling effigie? svaligiare doesn't seem to have *svaligierò as a possibility. Benwing2 (talk) 19:00, 19 June 2022 (UTC)

@Benwing2: Zingarelli only gives effigerò, and that's the only one I would write. Italian Wikipedia] (see: Etimologia - Alcuni verbi in -[c;g]iare) does talk about verbs like effigiare, but says that the etymological form (that keeps the original i of the Latin verb) is "extremely rare, antiquated and Latinising, therefore nowadays easily mistaken for grammatically incorrect and better avoided in formal writings". I would give it as an alternative spelling, maybe marked as "etymological", but not in inflection tables. Sartma (talk) 21:50, 19 June 2022 (UTC)

@Sartma Hi. I wonder if you missed my preceding comments (just above where i say "One more question ...") in response to your detailed comments above? Could you take a look when you have a chance? Also, under dolere there are currently two conjugations. The first looks fairly correct but the second one (which claims to be "literary") looks copied from volere with v -> d; e.g. present indicative doglio, duoi, duole, dogliamo, dolete, dogliono, past historic dolli, doleste, dolle, .... Do these unusual forms like duoi, dolli, dogliono exist at all or is this just garbage? I can't verify these forms either in Hoepli or Treccani. BTW what I've taken to doing for common verbs with archaic/literary/rare/regional/etc. forms is to include two conjugation tables, a "normal" one that just lists the modern forms and a second one listing all the rare/archaic/etc. forms. You can see an example of this under essere. Benwing2 (talk) 04:17, 22 June 2022 (UTC)

@Benwing2: Hi! Sorry, I did see your last question, I just haven't had time to get round it yet (got busy with work...). I added a couple imperative forms to dolere and deleted the second conjugation. I've never heard of it and can't really find any reference online either (Zingarelli doesn't have it either).

I guess the double table would work? I'm not super sure about the "regional" forms, though... mainly because... where do you draw a line? Meaning: when does it stop being Italian and becoming something else? I find it difficult to say that forms like sémo and èramo are Italian... They're quite clearly dialectal (Roman? We say sémo/jèrimo in Venetian, and I'd never accept that as Italian, not even regional). "Regional Italian" is still Italian, which means that verbal forms should be the same as the standard language (expressions, idioms, nouns might be different, but not verb forms...)... On the other hand, forms like the present participle essente are pretty much never used (given as "rare" by Zingarelli, they are those forms that if you catch yourself saying you wonder whether you just made it up or if it's ok to use...), so shouldn't they only be in the second table? But then again, what does "rare" mean anyway when we're talking about an actual verbal form and not an alternative?

I guess I'd prefer a list of "alternative forms" with their {{q}} specifying what they are, instead of a full table, but I don't know really... I guess I'm not really helping, lol... Sartma (talk) 16:34, 22 June 2022 (UTC)

@Sartma Thanks for your response. I agree that drawing a line is hard. The forms I've included come from a combination of the forms listed by Hoepli and Treccani, along with their notes; I figure these forms are "Italian" since these two dictionaries are generally reliable. I would use Zingarelli as well if I had access to it. The idea of the two tables is to segregate all the forms that aren't part of the modern standard language while still making note of them.

As for essente, I got rid of it from the main table for essere; now, the table says there is no present participle for essere. BTW the data for all the built-in verbs that the module knows about is now in Module:it-verb/builtin. I'm in the process of documenting how the {{it-conj}}/{{it-verb}} specs work, and the same format is used for the built-in verbs. Benwing2 (talk) 04:29, 23 June 2022 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ @Sartma Sorry to ping you again. I was thinking about your comment about -èbbero vs. -ébbero. If you look up ebbero in DiPI [42], you see ˈɛbbero, ˈe- [T ɛ, UMLR e] which indicates that DiPI thinks ébbero is "acceptable" and "rather advisable" [abbastanza consigliabile] compared with èbbero but also specifies that èbbero is used in Tuscany (T) while ébbero is used in Umbria, Marche, Lazio and Roma (UMLR). I have been taking the comma as indicating acceptable pronunciations that should be listed after the primary one, but maybe I shouldn't. DiPI also says this about all the indications:

Caratteristica unica del DiPI è quella di fornire tutte le possibili varianti di pronuncia che rientrino nella pronuncia «neutra», vale a dire quella usata dai «professionisti della voce», cioè attori, doppiatori, presentatori e annunciatori.

La prima (o, talora, unica) pronuncia indicata è quella definita «moderna», la piú consigliabile oggi, ma è sempre indicata (dopo « . ») l'eventuale pronuncia «tradizionale», quella piú consigliata in passato. Vengono fornite anche la pronuncia «accettabile» (dopo « , »), leggermente meno consigliabile (ma ugualmente utilizzabile) e quella «tollerata» (dopo « ; »), che è, però, meno consigliabile, soprattutto per un uso professionale della voce.

Si forniscono anche indicazioni per i tipi di pronuncia «trascurata» (dopo « ↓ »), da evitare in quanto segno d'ignoranza, nonché quella «intenzionale» (dopo « ↑ »), cioè l'opposto della precedente, che si può voler usare proprio per dare «sfoggio» di cultura; infine, c'è anche la pronuncia «aulica» (dopo « ↕ »), propria di certi testi letterari o arcaici.

Do you think it's generally the case that "Tuscan" forms are standard while all the rest are regional? Some other similar examples: for siede ˈsjɛde, -je- [TR ɛ, UML e] [43]; for seggo ˈsɛɡɡo, -e- [T ɛ, ULR e/ɛ, M e] [44]; for partecipo parˈteʧipo, -ɛ- (no region-specific info) [45]; for medesimo meˈdezimo, -ɛz-; -es- [TML e/ɛ, U ɛ/e, R e] (here, things after the semicolon are "less advisable") [46]. Thanks for any input. Benwing2 (talk) 18:17, 25 June 2022 (UTC)

@Benwing2: Sorry, I missed this! Traditional Tuscan pronunciation is generally considered "the correct one" by dictionaries, especially when it comes to open/closed vowels. Modern pronunciation, on the other end, tends to be based on a more northern pronunciation. That's why DiPI gives /'kaza/ (northern pronunciation) as "modern pronunciation" of casa, and /'kasa/ (Tuscan) as "traditional".

If it was up to me, I would only give the "modern" pronunciation + a general "alternative pronunciations" (traditional + regional), grouped together without further classifications (giving a pronunciation as "traditional" would be prescriptive anyway, so against WT:NPOV, and distinguishing by region could only be approximate, since in the next town people already open or close vowels in a different way, it would be impossible to register all of them precisely by place/region)... Sartma (talk) 14:33, 5 July 2022 (UTC)

faceless metaphorical senses

2. Having or revealing no individual identity or character; anonymous. 3. Having or revealing no individuality, personality or distinctive characteristics.

How are these really different? The "corporation" usex was under sense 2, but I moved it under sense 3, because a corporation isn't anonymous (every large corp has got a name), it's merely lacking personality. Should we merge? Equinox ◑ 05:18, 17 June 2022 (UTC)

In one view, it's a value judgement about intrinsic properties, in another view it's extrinsic and by definition not tangible to introspection. As that's a marked charactetistic, it differs to the effect that the other definition cannot apply. One of the definitions has premise and consequence reversed, "anonymous" being a qualified premise. I'd agree to doubt that the distinction is lexical as it amounts to circular reasoning, unless there are lexical collocations to prove the point.

As regards faceless #€@% corporations, this seems to be a conceptual blend with the frequent head- metaphores (cp. Capitan) which may be quite diverse and indeed semanticly bleached. Eg. to lose face one had to have become faced(?) in the first place. ApisAzuli (talk) 12:30, 19 June 2022 (UTC)

меньше: confused and confusing?

меньше (menʹše) has two Adverb sections and one Adjective section. Russian Wiktionary simply says that is both, being the comparative of the adverb мало (malo) and the adjective малый (malyj). Here, however, we have an second adverb section, defining it as “under, below”, without specifying the sense, so that one could easily take it to mean “spatially below” (a sense ru.wiktionary does not mention). Is this a mistake, and should we simply scrap the second adverb section? The second adverb section was introduced in this edit on 2019-02-03 by @Benwing2, who normally seems highly reliable, but maybe this was a slip. PJTraill (talk) 09:44, 17 June 2022 (UTC)

@PJTraill I took a look at the history. The "under, below" text was there from almost the very beginning but as a synonym of "less than". Somehow in the process of editing this I gradually separated this sense from the "less than" sense, probably out of confusion. I think we should remove it and I'll do so. Benwing2 (talk) 00:39, 18 June 2022 (UTC)

tokus

I think that toches is the wrong primary spelling. When I starting writing this I thought tokus should be the primary spelling, but now I think there's an argument to be made for tuchus too. In any case, I didn't make any big changes myself because I'm brand new here and I'd be overturning existing consensus.

Assorted evidence:

• Merriam-Webster has tokus but not toches.
• Collins has tokus, tuchis, and tochis but not toches.
• Google books was inconclusive. It has more results for toches than tokus, but I didn't see anything relevant from either search when I glanced at the first couple of pages of results. (Most results for the former that I looked at were either a misspelling of touches or referring to the Louisiana city of Natchitoches. For the latter, almost all of them used it as a name, many in the context of the Ohio court case Railway v. Tokus)
• When searched the OED (using their "quick search" option, not the advanced search of their corpus), tokus redirected me to tuchus whereas tochis just said "no dictionary entries found".
• In light of the OED result, I searched Merriam-Webster and Collins for tuchus. Collins doesn't have a page but MW does, and it's better fleshed out than their tokus page to boot.

Anyway, I'm not sure what to make of all this and I'm brand new here, so I was hoping some more experienced editors could sort this out. Thanks, WallAdhesion (talk) 18:52, 17 June 2022 (UTC)

Thank you for spending time doing the digging. We are probably going to support any spelling that has got a serious weight of usage (clearly we can't exist just by copying what other dictionaries say). There is something to be said regarding which entry should be the "main" one (hopefully the most common) that we redirect others to. We usually support forms that have got plausible citations (see WT:RFV): if they all look dodgy or possibly erroneous (e.g. we can only ever find foreign-looking author names) then we might drop it, or at least call it rare or non-standard. Equinox ◑ 19:04, 17 June 2022 (UTC)

@WallAdhesion, Equinox I have never seen the spelling tokus. The spelling toches seems influenced by the original Yiddish spelling, which is logical, but my pronunciation is /ˈtʊxəs/ and I have never heard the primary pronunciation /ˈtɒxəs/ that we give. So I think it should be under tuchus. Benwing2 (talk) 00:44, 18 June 2022 (UTC)

@Benwing2 I think I'm also convinced it should be under tuchus.

A Google Ngram suggests that "tuchus" is the most popular lately. And when I spot-checked the first 20 recent Google Book results for "tuchus", about half were legit (most of the rest being Yiddish inside of otherwise English books). For "toches" I saw one out of twenty that looked like this usage, with the rest mostly Yiddish or Natchitoches, Louisiana. For "tokus" I think four of the first twenty I looked at were right. So the true number of each ("toches" and "tokus") seems like a smaller percentage of a smaller total.

While I'm typing about Google Book results, I'll add that when I looked at 19th century results for "toches" I saw a bunch of Natchitoches, what looked like French, and some failed OCR of the word inches, but nothing remotely relevant. So I think we can discount the older dominance of "toches" in the Ngram as noise.

@Equinox hopefully that qualifies as sufficient non-dictionary evidence. (Sufficient regarding which form is the main one, anyway — I wasn't even thinking about which alternate spellings we should support. That sounds like a whole can of worms I don't want to open.) WallAdhesion (talk) 02:02, 18 June 2022 (UTC)

 Done This, that and the other (talk) 11:59, 24 June 2022 (UTC)

white privilege

Better? I'm not convinced. [47] Equinox ◑ 19:10, 17 June 2022 (UTC)

Wikipedia's first sentence seems pretty good:

White privilege, or white skin privilege, is the societal privilege that benefits white people over non-white people in some societies, particularly if they are otherwise under the same social, political, or economic circumstances.

Benwing2 (talk) 00:47, 18 June 2022 (UTC)

(PS Sorry if I introduced any problematic wording there [48]; I was merely trying to restate the definition after I consulted the English Wikipedia article. I am not an expert on this subject.) --Geographyinitiative (talk) 00:54, 18 June 2022 (UTC)

That sounds like an academic definition. The normal-use definition seems more SoP to me. DCDuring (talk) 01:42, 18 June 2022 (UTC)

SoP? As in, “How come your privilege is whiter than mine?”? Academic or not, I don’t think “collective” should be part of the definition – the insidious aspect of white privilege is that when it manifests concretely, it is mostly inconspicuously, one person at a time. What about “A societal relative advantage that may benefit white-skinned persons”? I think that should suffice; the page refers upfront to the Wikipedia article. (The addition of “may” acknowledges that the presumed advantage may fail to materialize for a given individual. And “relative” underlines that this is in comparison to people of colour.)  --Lambiam 12:20, 18 June 2022 (UTC)

I've removed the part about the reason, I don't think it's all too material to the definition, though interesting if anyone feels it should be added back. Leasnam (talk) 22:05, 20 June 2022 (UTC)

The definition now (after several edits) is better than the "In critical race theory, a way of conceptualizing..." definition. Dropping the reference to "colonial history" also seems like an improvement, IMO, although I'd revise "as contrasted against the advantages (or lack thereof) of non-whites of the same society" (which reads like saying non-white people have their own different, potentially separate-but-equal privileges/advantages) to something like just "relative to non-white people" or something. We certainly shouldn't reduce the definition all the way down to something uninformatively SOP like "A societal relative advantage that may benefit white-skinned persons" (where the "may" is also a weasel word). - -sche (discuss) 22:06, 21 June 2022 (UTC)

What is a "cork mould"?

From corking pin: A large pin used to attach a woman's headdress to a cork mould.

- What exactly is this "cork mould"? Some framework, make of cork, to maintain an elaborately-shaped headdress? Maybe some additional explanatory sentence is needed, because it's so unclear. --CopperKettle (talk) 04:31, 18 June 2022 (UTC)

Mould might be mold#English:_top_of_the_head. DCDuring (talk) 04:46, 18 June 2022 (UTC)

This video shows a hat mold in use. DCDuring (talk) 05:06, 18 June 2022 (UTC)

Thank you! So it's the mould represending a person's head, and is made of cork. A head-shaped cork mould used by hatmakers to fit a hat on it. Maybe the definition should be somehow edited to make it clearer. --CopperKettle (talk) 05:36, 18 June 2022 (UTC)

Or add a lemma for “cork mould”, as this specific form may be hard to infer from the words “cork” and “mould”. PJTraill (talk) 12:23, 18 June 2022 (UTC)

I don't think it would be a good lemma. I don't know what these things were made of in the past, but the type that are available for sale and use in wig-making and display now consist of granular cork tightly wrapped in canvas. Hat blocks used in millinery are/were made of hardwood. I saw mention of the use of balsawood. But we are clearly deficient in our coverage of millinery vocabulary, as of the vocabulary of many crafts and engineering fields. DCDuring (talk) 14:01, 18 June 2022 (UTC)

Natal robin

I am interested in this bird. Can anyone share information. I will share my information with you.

Thank you for reading — This unsigned comment was added by Malauluck (talk • contribs).

red-capped robin-chat or Natal robin (Cossypha natalensis). DCDuring (talk) 17:41, 19 June 2022 (UTC)

ඞ

Could we add a translingual meaning to this explaining that it is used on the Internet to depict an Among Us crewmate? I'm sure lots of citations could be found from Twitter and the like. (Unfortunately, Citations:ඞ is protected so I am prevented from adding them myself.) 98.170.164.88 01:44, 21 June 2022 (UTC)

I don't see any issue with adding this. Theknightwho (talk) 21:24, 27 June 2022 (UTC)

@Theknightwho There's even precedent for adding "memey" senses for letters that have been reinterpreted in online use, e.g. ツ. The only problem is that the entry and citation page are both protected so I don't know how to proceed. 98.170.164.88 04:24, 20 July 2022 (UTC)

Creating an account ;-) If you like, you could make a note of those you want to add, and I can edit the pages? Theknightwho (talk) 13:14, 20 July 2022 (UTC)

Shouldn't Category:en:Neo-Nazism be a subcat of Category:en:Nazism?

A little while back, I added the then-newly-created Category:en:Neo-Nazism to Category:en:Nazism. The creator of the former category then reverted me, saying that (and I quote) "[t]hey're separate on purpose". However, as Neo-Nazism is a subset of Nazism, doesn't Category:en:Neo-Nazism need to be a subcategory of Category:en:Nazism? Whoop whoop pull up ^{Bitching Betty ⚧️ Averted crashes} 01:52, 21 June 2022 (UTC)

The general feeling around the creation of this was that it was sensible to separate Nazism (i.e. the historical ideology) from neo-Nazism. They're pretty different, though obviously both belong under the label fascism. Theknightwho (talk) 02:01, 21 June 2022 (UTC)

For comparison, on the English Wikipedia, "Neo-Nazism" is indeed a subcategory of "Nazism". 98.170.164.88 02:51, 21 June 2022 (UTC)

I'm not seeing evidence of the 'general feeling' Theknightwho mentions; in Wiktionary:Tea_room/2022/February#CAT:Neo-Nazism I discern no consensus for having the separate category at all, and noted several problems, including that it's not possible to clearly or cleanly separate these concepts because some people and words continued being or being used by (respectively) Nazis both before and after the war. (I ignored there some sophistry from our resident Nazi editor about whether Nazism had its own terminology, because it's trivial to see that some terms are indeed primarily used by Nazis.) To the extent anyone is trying to maintain "neo-Nazism" as a segregated category, it should of course be under the general "Nazism" category. - -sche (discuss) 21:52, 21 June 2022 (UTC)

@-sche We run into similar difficulties when it comes to Category:White supremacist ideology, Category:Alt-right, Category:Fascism and so on. Neo-Nazism is a distinctive phenomenon from Nazism, and one which therefore has its own quite distinctive jargon, so I do think there is value in separating Nazi Party terminology from that which has only been used by Neo-Nazis (though obviously there is overlap). This distinction may be more apparent in English, with the former generally being German borrowings (e.g. Gestapo, Lebensraum) and the latter generally slang or coded language (e.g. Holo-hoax, Fourteen Words).

However, on reflection, I think that can still be achieved by subcategorising Neo-Nazism within Nazism. Terms can be labelled (historical) or (obsolete) if any kind of clarificaion on usage is necessary. This also has the dual advantage of not indulging the bad faith crap that gave rise to this discussion, too. Theknightwho (talk) 00:59, 22 June 2022 (UTC)

Neo-Nazis aren't Nazis, so obviously no. Also neo-romantics aren't Romantics and neo-druidism isn't druidism, etc. I imagine in a lot of cases one could replace "neo-" with "pseudo-"! Equinox ◑ 22:53, 21 June 2022 (UTC)

venomous

Defined as "powerful", with a sports quote (all possibly added by WF; I didn't check but he's added such things before). Is that the best way to be defining the word in that example? Are there more examples where it means "powerful"? Otherwise, it seems possible to view it as ~"spiteful". - -sche (discuss) 21:38, 21 June 2022 (UTC)

A better gloss is probably "difficult". It does seem to be in sports usage, specifically in relation to shots. Theknightwho (talk) 01:10, 22 June 2022 (UTC)

To me it is a synonym of wicked, as in He throws a wicked curveball.

MWOnline has, for wicked: "going beyond reasonable or predictable limits : of exceptional quality or degree", with a usex: throws a wicked fastball

MW has six senses of wicked to our two, including one "vicious", which most dictionaries have as a synonym or definition of venomous. Other words used to characterize shots, pitches, moves, fakes include evil, tricky, nasty. DCDuring (talk) 02:43, 22 June 2022 (UTC)

buxom

Someone reverted the page buxom all the way back to a 2019 revision, and then made some changes of their own. From the diff of before vs. after I don't understand their intention. Anyone want to take a closer look? Looks like some valid translations got removed at least. 98.170.164.88 07:48, 22 June 2022 (UTC)

Re-reverted. Apparently they reverted to a version from before language code parameters were added to some of the templates, which caused module errors. I had added back the language codes to fix the module errors without thinking about why the codes went missing in the first place- but then I saw this. Chuck Entz (talk) 08:15, 22 June 2022 (UTC)

Our entry was essentially a copyvio of OED, so I tried to clean it up a bit. The RFC tag is still there, as it could use a final polish and perhaps merger of a couple of senses. This, that and the other (talk) 11:52, 24 June 2022 (UTC)

ба (Ukrainian interjection missing)

ба has an article in the Ukrainian Wiktionary, but not the English one. I can vouch for its veracity, and the article is quite extensive. (There's also a number of other languages in the Russian Wiktionary, you may take a look, too.) Adûnâi (talk) 18:37, 22 June 2022 (UTC)

-ιανός ending is invented, has no attestation in standard sources

Wiktionary seems to be the only dictionary that suggests that -ιανός is a dimunitive suffix. It provides only χριστιανός as an example.

Smyth's Greek Grammar doesn't list it as a dimunitive suffix (section 852). Thayer's lexicon, Strong's lexicon, and Liddel and Scott's lexicons all do not mention this.

I suspect this is parroting some invented "fact" from some sermon somewhere. Jemfinch (talk) 19:24, 22 June 2022 (UTC)

You seem to think -ιανός (-ianós) is talking about an Ancient Greek suffix, but it's not. It's talking about a Modern Greek suffix. — SURJECTION ^{/ T / C / L /} 19:49, 22 June 2022 (UTC)

The Modern Greek suffix is likely derived from Latin -anus, -ianus. Compare the etymology of English Christian. 98.170.164.88 19:51, 22 June 2022 (UTC)

If this is an actual diminutive suffix in modern Greek, it still seems like the entry badly needs to be edited with further examples, since the semantic relationship between a word meaning "Christian" and a word meaning "Christ" doesn't constitute a prototypical example of a diminutive, and there is nothing currently in the entry to support the note saying bases used with this suffix are "chiefly neuter". (Looks like the entry for χριστιανή (christianí) also needs to be cleaned up: is it the feminine form of χριστιανός (christianós) or a separate word?)--Urszag (talk) 20:31, 22 June 2022 (UTC)

Looking into this further, the only two entries presently categorized under the suffix -ιανός (-ianós) are χριστιανός (christianós) and the related χριστιανή (christianí). But it seems possible that the former is just directly inherited from Ancient Greek Χρῑστῐᾱνός (Khrīstiānós) instead of being a novel formation in Modern Greek. 98.170.164.88 03:45, 23 June 2022 (UTC)

The Greek Wiktionary defines this as a suffix that forms demonyms. A Καλαματιανός (Kalamatianós) is someone from Kalamata.  --Lambiam 20:26, 23 June 2022 (UTC)

This is consistent with the derivation via Latin's -ianus ending, which forms (micro)demonyms from proper names. Still doesn't support the diminutive claim. — This unsigned comment was added by Jemfinch (talk • contribs) at 04:19, 24 June 2022 (UTC).

And I do not consider χριστιανός as supporting this either (even if implausibly analyzed as a Modern Greek formation, Χριστός +‎ -ιανός, Christian does not mean “little Christ”), so right now we have zero support for this sense.  --Lambiam 17:21, 24 June 2022 (UTC)

@Jemfinch, Urszag, Lambiam, I updated the lemma -ιανός (-ianós), +ref. No, it is not diminutive. Hellenistic Koine from Latin. Various meanings, chiefly denotes a characteristic property. Thank you ‑‑Sarri.greek ^♫ I 19:29, 27 June 2022 (UTC)

Diabolo

Cp. DWDS.de for imagery. Lexico and Collins know at least the "two-headed top" type of playing instrument used in juggling.

• Is hourglass shaped an appropriate description?

• Is hourglass shaped SoP? Feels lexical to me. Wouldn't say "hourglass form" for example.

• Is the sense of ammunition of the same shape used with peashooters also understood, or what would you call it?

• Is that di- "two" and bolos, cf. balistic, or maybe balanced? ApisAzuli (talk) 04:51, 23 June 2022 (UTC)

The name of the toy should be written diabolo. Sorry, I did not see this was meant to be German. Given the earlier names devil on two sticks and French Diable (in Philippart’s 1905 patent – see Diabolo § Spread to the West at Wikipedia), it is just a fanciful alteration of diablo, ultimately from Ancient Greek διάβολος (diábolos, “adversary”), from the verb διαβάλλω (diabállō), from δια- (dia-, “through”) +‎ βάλλω (bállō, “I throw”), which is cognate to the prefix δι- (di-, “having two”), but not the same. <X>-shaped means “having the shape of an <X>”.  --Lambiam 18:01, 23 June 2022 (UTC)

But it is also two bowls, the playing instrument. Whereas the ammunition (chiefly German "Diabolo" I presume for now) is solid, we still have shell akin to Schale (“bowl”), at least indirectly if the PIE roots are correct. That alone doesn't have a leg to stand on, of course. ApisAzuli (talk)\

die Post geht ab

(Notifying Matthias Buchmeier, -sche, Jberkel, Mahagaja, Fay Freak): How can this be properly lemmatized? die Post abgehen is wrong because there Post is the object, not subject. Can subject+verb even be lemmatized? — Fytcha〈 T | L | C 〉 19:55, 23 June 2022 (UTC)

@Fytcha: I'd say die Post geht ab is the lemma. When the idiom contains the subject of the verb, we lemmatize the whole expression, e.g. der Appetit kommt beim Essen, die Würfel sind gefallen, ein Esel schimpft den anderen Langohr, or even simply es gibt. —Mahāgaja · talk 20:08, 23 June 2022 (UTC)

Should we list (attestable) conjugated forms (der Appetit war beim Essen gekommen^[49]; der Appetit wird beim Essen kommen^[50])?  --Lambiam 20:42, 23 June 2022 (UTC)

In die Post abgehen there is no object since it is not a sentence, so no syntactic categorizations apply. Auf Wiktionary geht die Post ab. Ich lache, weil auf Wiktionary die Post abgeht, und auf Wikipedia bisher weniger die Post abgegangen ist. (not an object). die Post abgehen is correct since it employs the citation form of the verb—it is not an idiom as the examples of Mahāgaja: die Würfel sind gefallen is lemmatized at the perfect because it is defective by means of fixed tense and finiteness, similar to Serbo-Croatian vèlīm, though one can modify it into future perfect or past perfect and build it into sentences, while der Appetit kommt beim Essen and ein Esel schimpft den anderen Langohr are unchangeable as complete sentences. Fay Freak (talk) 20:56, 23 June 2022 (UTC)

@Mahagaja: I see, this seems to be the precedent.

@Lambiam: I'd say so but, one, {{de-conj}} doesn't support that from what I know and, two, the question remains whether they should be non-lemma entries or just hard redirects.

@Fay Freak: You are right that syntactic categorizations don't apply. The sense in which I meant it was that in every instantiation of this idiom (idiom here as an abstractum), die Post necessarily has to fill the subject slot of abgehen. I take it you prefer creating it at die Post abgehen? — Fytcha〈 T | L | C 〉 16:19, 24 June 2022 (UTC)

Just like gekommen is not a hard redirect to kommen, so should der Appetit war beim Essen gekommen not be a hard redirect to der Appetit kommt beim Essen. It can be listed with the PoS “Phrase”, defined as “indicative pluperfect of der Appetit kommt beim Essen”.  --Lambiam 17:05, 24 June 2022 (UTC)

I think we shouldn't lemmatize subject + infinitive in German. It sounds bad to my ears and goes against my native Sprachgefühl because German has subject agreement. As @Fytcha hinted above, in the phrase **die Post abgehen, die Post feels like an object even though abgehen is not transitive. Take the similar idiom hier tanzt der Bär: if we lemmatized it as **der Bär tanzen, I would perceive it as someone trying to say den "Bär" tanzen ("do the 'bear'" – an imaginary dance called "Bär") with the wrong article. –Austronesier (talk) 17:12, 24 June 2022 (UTC)

I'd prefer present tense die Post geht ab etc. as default, unless in cases like die Würfel sind gefallen in which case the perfect tense form is most commonly used. –Austronesier (talk) 17:21, 24 June 2022 (UTC)

Naja, if we nominalize it, you see that this shape die Post abgehen does not sound that strange, disregarding that it is not written like this: »Ich schreibe diese Zeilen zum Die-Post-Abgehen.« (My next rap … Not sure by heart about the spellings of such complex nominalizations however, which are somewhat avoided but nonetheless happen, perhaps also Diepostabgehen like Inzahlungnahme.) Regard also Merkels Fachkraft, @Austronesier, I recognize a systematic slant towards citations forms in me. Fay Freak (talk) 18:31, 24 June 2022 (UTC)

? Not that strange? What do you think of der Appetit beim Essen kommen?  --Lambiam 19:08, 24 June 2022 (UTC)

You what, mate? ApisAzuli (talk) 12:37, 27 June 2022 (UTC)

I mean, call me old fashioned but me thinks citation forms should be well citable. ApisAzuli (talk) 12:50, 1 July 2022 (UTC)

здоро́во and здорово́

I have just undone the edit by User:A1 wiki B3 (2019-03-14T16:19:20, in which they removed the heading for the stress здорово́), to agree with the page здоровый, but I notice that ru:здоровый does not give these alternate stress patterns for the senses “big, strong”. If our здоровый is right, ru:здоровый ought to be changed, and the sequence of edits by that user (and perhaps others by them) should be reviewed. If not, then several things should be changed here. Who knows enough to deal with this? PJTraill (talk) 12:22, 24 June 2022 (UTC)

To be honest, I have never heard здорово́, but it's possible I just haven't heard it used in this specific form (short neuter isn't a very common inflection anyway).

Anyway, as always, sorry for the mass ping: (Notifying Atitarev, Benwing2, Cinemantique, Useigor, Guldrelokk, Fay Freak, Tetromino, PUC, Brutal Russian): . Thadh (talk) 12:30, 24 June 2022 (UTC)

@Thadh, PJTrail, A1 wiki B3: I have never heard "здорово́" myself. It's neither standard or common. I would exclude it, until the existence is confirmed. There are very few Google hits but there are not solid. --Anatoli T. ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 00:16, 25 June 2022 (UTC)

@Thadh, PJTraill, A1 wiki B3, Atitarev The edits to здоровый look suspiciously like mine, and I looked up in Zaliznyak to see what it says there. It does mention здорова́, здорово́, здоровы́ with the meaning "сильный, большой" but labels it as "простореч.", which I seem to have missed before. That would explain why people don't think it's standard (because it's not ...). Benwing2 (talk) 02:51, 25 June 2022 (UTC)

BTW ruwikt mentions these forms and says they are colloquial in the "strong, big" meaning. Benwing2 (talk) 02:55, 25 June 2022 (UTC)

@Benwing2: Since Zaliznyak has it, we should include it. Thanks! --Anatoli T. ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 05:46, 25 June 2022 (UTC)

I see these forms now at ru:здоровый, sorry I missed them before (they are not in the table and I did not look hard enough elsewhere); thanks for everybody’s attentions. PJTraill (talk) 22:51, 25 June 2022 (UTC)

Page забирать: воро́нках from воро́нка “funnel” or вороно́к “house martin / black horse / Black Maria”

On забирать, in an example воро́нках is explained as the instrumental plural of воро́нка “funnel”, but it seems clear that it should be of вороно́к “house martin / black horse / Black Maria”. If I do not hear to the contrary I may change this myself, but I thought I should first give the better informed a chance to warn me off! PJTraill (talk) 21:47, 24 June 2022 (UTC)

@Atitarev, a native speaker who created the entry at Russian забирать (zabiratʹ) in 2013 with this already included. Chuck Entz (talk) 23:35, 24 June 2022 (UTC)

@PJTraill, Chuck Entz: Thank you for bringing this up. To me regret, the stress and the link was wrong and I am sorry the error was there for so long. Fixed it now. @PJTrail is right, the lemma is at вороно́к (voronók), not воро́нка (vorónka) and it's not "funnel". --Anatoli T. ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 00:23, 25 June 2022 (UTC)

etwas an den Tag legen etc.

Shouldn't this just be an den Tag legen? Etwas is not part of the phrase, but just a placeholder for the grammatical object. There's quite a lot of similar lemmas:[51]. Whether we translate etwas für bare Münze nehmen as "to take something at face value", or für bare Münze nehmen as "to take at face value", it doesn't make much of a difference, but since both German and English have the same logical argument as object, having "etwas" here is just as useless as in etwas essen "to eat something". –Austronesier (talk) 19:06, 25 June 2022 (UTC)

These should be moved if they have etwas at the start or end of the title. Moreover, this particular one should potentially even be reduced to an den Tag as there are +legen, +kommen, +bringen and potentially more that don't come to mind right now, though I'm personally not opposed to including these super common (and restricted) collocations as full articles. — Fytcha〈 T | L | C 〉 22:51, 25 June 2022 (UTC)

Yes, this is one in a long list of senseless lemmatizations copied from de.Wiktionary, as said on Talk:jemanden hellhörig machen. Fay Freak (talk) 00:08, 26 June 2022 (UTC)

"...if they have etwas at the start or end of the title": others could be trimmed down to the core too, e.g. sich einen Reim auf etwas machen → einen Reim machen, parallel to erinnern (not **sich an etwas erinnern). So anything that's not part of the actual phrase but just a placeholder for arguments and adjuncts governed by the phrase should be move out of the lemma and, if helpful, moved to the label or the gloss, e.g. einen Reim machen (reflexive) ... [+ auf (object)].

And agree, an den Tag is the actual lemma for etwas an den Tag legen; the verbs that most commonly combine with this phrase in the given sense can be listed in the gloss. –Austronesier (talk) 08:57, 26 June 2022 (UTC)

This is probably best solved by means of policy so that we don't have to start a discussion around every single one of these. What do you think about adding a sentence along the lines of "Lemma forms may not contain words that are placeholders for grammatical arguments (in English commonly oneself, something, someone etc.)." to WT:Lemmas and making that page binding policy? However, an exception has to be added to that clause because I don't think there's any better way to lemmatize e.g. zu sich kommen despite it containing a placeholder. See also intitle:"oneself", intitle:"something", intitle:"someone" which is what informed the "at the start or end of the title" part of my previous comment: unlike in the case of see something, I can kind of see why somebody would want to use give something a shot as the lemma. M-W has it at give a shot with a "(something)" being displayed in the title for comparison. — Fytcha〈 T | L | C 〉 11:13, 26 June 2022 (UTC)

What is a blade?

We define the primary meaning of blade as: “The sharp cutting edge of a knife, chisel, or other tool, a razor blade/sword.” Oxford Dictionaries has a similar definition, except that there the edge is flat, not sharp.^[52] I think this is wrong. A blade has a cutting edge;^[53][54] it is more than its edge. (Also, a dull blade does not have a sharp cutting edge.) And I do not quite get the function of the last part: “a razor blade/sword”. (It used to be just ”a razor blade”, which I understand but is circular; perhaps there should be a separate sense “Short for razor blade.”. And blade can be used metonymically as a pars pro toto for a sword, but also for a knife; we list this separately as a poetic sense, but it can also be prozaic urban slang.^[55])  --Lambiam 10:32, 26 June 2022 (UTC)

Indeed, defining it as the edge is wrong. (If blade meant edge, it would make little sense to say a blade could have one edge or two.) I reworded it to something better but still basic; it could probably be improved further. - -sche (discuss) 08:21, 28 June 2022 (UTC)

I'd take razor blade as the prototype and go from there. It's so thin you don't see the edge (mind your folklore), and it's functionally similar to the cutting end of a knife.

Just for reference, Blatt might have similar senses, but may also be the wing of a door (ie. the door in common parlance). The sense of sword might actually relate to Frankish brand though as in Schlüsselbart, no? ApisAzuli (talk) 12:45, 27 June 2022 (UTC)

Is "razor blade" really a separate sense? I could see adding subsenses for all the things that have different translations — a sword-blade vs a razor-blade vs a skate blade, an oar-blade vs a hockey-stick's blade, etc — but is there anything special about a razor's blade that makes "razor blade" a separate sense from "The (typically sharp-edged) part of a [...] razor, or other tool with which it cuts"? - -sche (discuss) 18:12, 28 June 2022 (UTC)

The blade of a sword is part of the sword. To drop the blade of a sword you need to drop the sword. You can drop a razor blade without dropping the razor. A razor blade is (IMO) just as much part of the razor as a gun cartridge is part of the gun. A gun that takes cartridges won’t work without one, but it is still a gun.  --Lambiam 23:27, 29 June 2022 (UTC)

Hmm, that's a point, but a detachable part is still a "part of a [...] razor, or other tool with which it cuts", it's only detachable on some razors (not disposable ones with built-in blades), and conversely it is also possible to have a sword blade alone without or separate from the rest of the sword ([56]), a skate blade separate from a skate (and the skate seems to remain a skate, when people say a google:skate is "missing its blade"), etc. Hmm. What do you think of making "razor blade" a subsense of the first sense? We could also add subsenses for other kinds of blades (under sense 1 or what is currently sense 3, as appropriate); certainly, the translations seem to often differ. - -sche (discuss) 14:56, 30 June 2022 (UTC)

Handle and blade can me made from one piece more expensively, thus only relevant in the edge case. The analogy with card should be most insightful. Where many etymologies like knive are uncertain, the allophony with intervocalic b is remarkable

Is this prosaic: "Don't push me cuz I'm close to the edge"? ApisAzuli (talk) 20:18, 30 June 2022 (UTC)

involution

Why are there verb definitions here for a noun? — SURJECTION ^{/ T / C / L /} 20:13, 26 June 2022 (UTC)

Because not every editor is equally competent in English. See also 內卷／内卷 (nèijuǎn).  --Lambiam 22:05, 26 June 2022 (UTC)

If I had the courage, I would actually go so far as to send the verb senses to WT:RFV. As far as I know, the senses only exist in Chinese and not English. --ItMarki (talk) 14:41, 27 June 2022 (UTC)

• I reworded the bottom two senses, which had been worded as verbal meanings, to instead be nominal. If these senses are in fact not present at all in the English, and instead are only found in the Chinese 內卷／内卷 (nèijuǎn), please do send to RFV or otherwise edit as appropriate. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 08:17, 29 June 2022 (UTC)

subdifferential, subderivative

The former article claims to be a synonym of the latter (in the second sense), however Wikipedia draws quite a clear line: a subderivative of a convex function in a point is described as any value inclusively between the left and the right limit of the difference quotient, whereas the subdifferential is described to be the set of all subderivatives. Is this distinction also reflected by the literature? Pinging @DTLHS as the creator. — Fytcha〈 T | L | C 〉 23:35, 26 June 2022 (UTC)

The definition of subdifferential in the Encyclopedia of Mathematics^[57] is equivalent to our definition but does not use the term “subderivative” (also not found in other entries). The term subderivative appears variously in the literature as a one-sided limit,^[58][59][60] and as defined on Wikipedia.^[61][62]  --Lambiam 12:59, 27 June 2022 (UTC)

Swedish inhale sound meaning "yes"

As described here: [63]. How do we document this? Does it have a spelling? Equinox ◑ 19:36, 27 June 2022 (UTC)

The technical term in Swedish is "Inandnings-jo". That page lists some approximate spellings ("schu", "schoo", "schwwp", "schvuu", "schuu", "schuup", "schoup") Voltaigne (talk) 23:12, 27 June 2022 (UTC)

Sounds like a good FEOTD or FSOTD candidate, even if it doesn't qualify for FWOTD. DCDuring (talk) 23:20, 27 June 2022 (UTC)

What are you on about? It's an ingressive realization of regular words, the ingressive manner associated with "yes" in other languages as well.

"The main function of inhaled speech can be paralinguistic, showing agreement with a statement and encouraging a speaker to continue, but in northern Sweden, "Yes" can be replaced with an inhalation alone.[9]" (Ingressive sound, note that "This article has multiple issues").

I did not know that, but see it like this: "no" can be accompanied by a slap on the wrist, that may as well stand alone. ApisAzuli (talk) 00:15, 28 June 2022 (UTC)

I gather that the "canonical" spelling/word is still ja (that's the word that's being said, it's just being said ingressively in some cases rather than egressively) or jo, and the other spellings would be {{pronunciation spelling of}}s. IMO we would ideally have audio and a note about this at ja (and have entries for any of the attestable pronunciation spellings). - -sche (discuss) 14:35, 30 June 2022 (UTC)

The word being said is jo, not ja, from what I've read. IPA (I believe it's possible) and audio would be good. Theknightwho (talk) 15:22, 30 June 2022 (UTC)

Something like IPA^(key): [↗︎ɸ↓p] would work I think? Theknightwho (talk) 16:09, 30 June 2022 (UTC)

Isn't it [↗︎ʃ↓p̚]? Thadh (talk) 16:54, 30 June 2022 (UTC)

Hmmm, I think that's too far back in the mouth, and doesn't sound right when I try it. I find an ingressive bilabial fricative the most natural way to make the noise, though it does involve pursing my lips very close to the teeth. Maybe [↗︎ʋ̥↓p̚] is more accurate. Theknightwho (talk) 21:17, 30 June 2022 (UTC)

twyhyndman

206.80.132.22 (who has only edited that page) added a definition on 13 June (# {{ A free Welchman living in England during the reign of the Ango-Saxons|en}}), which contains misspellings and has wrong formatting, which I would fix but I do not know whether this definition is correct (the related terms sixhyndman and twelfhyndman, also created by me, do not have definitions). J3133 (talk) 06:25, 29 June 2022 (UTC)

These terms seem to be nothing more than classifications of men by the amount of their wergelds: a twyhyndman is worth two hundred shillings, a sixhyndman is worth six hundred shillings, and a twelfhyndman is worth twelve hundred. "Y" is what you get when you apply i-umlaut to "u", which perhaps explains why those aren't -hund-, but that doesn't the "y" in "twy", which is from twa. Chuck Entz (talk) 07:58, 29 June 2022 (UTC)

This would seem to be twi-, which had a variant twy-, so twyhynde would be equivalent to *twihundijaz (not that such a form should be reconstructed, as this word is only found in Old English AFAIK. Hazarasp (parlement · werkis) 17:15, 13 July 2022 (UTC)

@Hazarasp: You kept the definition that was added, but according to @Chuck Entz it does not seem to be correct. J3133 (talk) 05:09, 14 July 2022 (UTC)

This should be fixed now (apparently a wealh who owned land was one of the kinds of people worth two hundred shillings in wergeld. In case anyone's wondering, non-land-owning Welshmen were worth one hundred shillings, but the corresponding term *ānhynde is not attested). Hazarasp (parlement · werkis) 06:55, 14 July 2022 (UTC)

deidentify vs. anonymize

IP 91.230.225.113 has just added some notes on the difference, but has dropped them into the middle of the entry, stating that the entry is wrong! It would be nice if this material could be incorporated properly. Equinox ◑ 11:51, 29 June 2022 (UTC)

I think it's apparent IP isn't going to clean it up. I'd say it's fairly safe we could RFV... that somehow asking for cites, otherwise remove it. Vininn126 (talk) 08:39, 30 June 2022 (UTC)

I don't know that RFV would help much; it's easy to find uses of the word that speak of "deidentifying or anonymizing" data. The complaint, as I understand it, is over whether there is a subtle technical difference in how recoverable the identities are, but I think the IP is prescribing an ideal distinction which real-world examples fall short of; anonymization (or, a process which people use the words "anonymize" and "anonymization" to denote) may also be done imperfectly or even (intentionally) only nominally, in such a way that identities can be recovered. - -sche (discuss) 14:20, 30 June 2022 (UTC)

loaf and unloaf as verbs

I saw this here recently and have been wondering if these terms can be attested. Acolyte of Ice (talk) 12:55, 29 June 2022 (UTC)

Context, since videos often get deleted: the title is "Cat Loafs And Unloafs Whilst Purring", the description says "Tango loafs waiting for his food then jumps up as soon as he sees his food", and it's a video of a catloaf. Equinox ◑ 13:01, 29 June 2022 (UTC)

To RfV. DCDuring (talk) 18:48, 11 January 2024 (UTC)

Names of national anthems

See User talk:110.150.126.245#Anthems. This user started adding various national anthem titles on the grounds that we already had some! Should we have any of them? We wouldn't usually include song titles. We do have a few book titles (Snow White etc.) which I also disagree with... Anyway, thoughts on anthems specifically? Equinox ◑ 00:56, 30 June 2022 (UTC)

I don't think we should have ones that aren't words, like Advance Australia Fair (which the user readded despite previous deletions) or Poland is Not Yet Lost. Single-word ones like Deutschlandlied (which I created) or Hatikvah (which you did) feel more includable. I would delete the 'a fairy tale...' sense of Snow White, too, and let the sense for the character house the info about her getting poisoned and living with dwarfs... - -sche (discuss) 14:28, 30 June 2022 (UTC)

Переносный: quote from Tolstoy not in Wikipedia

At переносный (perenosnyj) I added the sense “bearable” and a supporting quote from Tolstoy from ru:переносный, but now I see that the work quoted, «Христианское учение» is not mentioned in the Russian Wikipedia article. Can anyone help verify this reference? (I left the quote in the page, as it seemed much more likely to be a confusion than a fiction.) PJTraill (talk) 14:26, 30 June 2022 (UTC)

It is listed on Wikipedia in the section Leo Tolstoy bibliography § Untranslated; the year is given though as 1898, not 1896. This page writes that the treatise was published in 1896. The full text can be found here (where the year is given as 1895), and the quotation in snippet view on Google books here, here, and here.  --Lambiam 17:47, 30 June 2022 (UTC)

Thanks, not sure why I missed that on Wikipedia, though I looked for it on Russian Wikipedia, where I could not find it by looking for “Христиан”; I thought perhaps it was a part of something else. Anyway, the main thing is that it is clearly genuine — but is “The Grate Sin” in that same section (“Untranslated”) the typo it appears to be? PJTraill (talk) 21:33, 30 June 2022 (UTC)

length of iota in ἰθύς

The page for ἰθύς doesn't mark the iota as long or short and has a comment <!-- length of iota unknown -->; however, of the dictionaries it links to, Liddell & Scott, Bailly, and Cunliffe (I checked the Internet Archive's version, since your link requires a login) say that the iota is long (Edit: so does Brill's Etymological Dictionary of Greek). (Autenrieth's Homeric dictionary doesn't give a vowel quantity, even in a version without the typo in Perseus's version of it.) I looked up a few occurrences of the word in epic poetry and found only occurrences where the meter seems to require it to have a long iota, e.g. Iliad 24.471 "ἵππους ἡμιόνους τε· γέρων δ’ ἰθὺς κίεν οἴκου" (where the meter, if I am reading it right, is --|-uu|-uu|--|-uu|-- in the notation used at w:Dactylic hexameter) and Argonautica 1.1032 "ἀλλὰ μιν Αἰσονίδης τετραμμένον ἰθὺς ἑοῖο" (-uu|-uu|--|-uu|-uu|-u) and 2.100 "ἰθὺς ἀνασχόμενοι Πολυδεύκεος ἀντιάασκον" (-uu|-uu|-uu|-uu|-uu|-u). Is this sufficient to mark the iota as long? If not, what additional evidence would be required, or what contrary evidence prompted the original uncertainty? - LaetusStudiis (talk) 19:17, 30 June 2022 (UTC)

Russian на: 2nd neologism with prepositional well-attested?

In на (na) we have these senses:

• (neologism) being dominated by a certain emotional state
• (neologism) accomplishing something while being dominated by a certain emotional state and primarily because of it

  ...

  Понима́ете ли, сын мой ваш но́вый телеви́зор вы́кинул в окно́ (из окна́) не специа́льно… про́сто он был на эмо́циях по́сле того́, как заста́л её, а те́лик — он про́сто пе́рвое, что ему́ подверну́лось.

  You see, my son threw your new TV set out of the window unintentionally… it's just that he had such an outburst of emotions after having caught her, that he had had to do something, and the first thing that crossed his mind was your new TV set.

Russian Wiktionary does not distinguish the latter sense, which was added, with usage examples in this edit by User:Arzet Ro with the comment “I’ve spent 5 hours doing this”. It sounds a little artificial to me — is this an accepted and significantly different sense? I also feel that the definition and translation could be a little more idiomatic, maybe something like “You see, my son didn’t really mean to throw your new TV out of the window … it’s just that when he caught her cheating on him” (is that meant?) “he was in such a state (emotionally), that he had had to let off steam, and your TV was simply the first thing that came to hand.” But it seems an awful lot for “на эмо́циях” to mean! PJTraill (talk) 21:21, 30 June 2022 (UTC)