Wiktionary:Tea room/2022/September

Usage notes at sheik

It says: "The use for a religious leader is colloquial as a means of respect. There is no official title." I don't quite understand this. Could it be made more clear and helpful? Equinox ◑ 02:10, 2 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I think it's trying to say that being Sheik So-and-so is not a formal office like being Cardinal Jones or Father/Reverend Smith (where you have to be ordained and can be defrocked) but an honorific anybody can use. I agree the current wording is unclear, but I'm not sure how to clarify it. - -sche (discuss) 02:28, 2 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Galician tiburón and tabeirón

These two words are listed as alternates of each other in the alternative forms section, but their definition doesn't at all utilize {{alternative form of}}. What's up with that? Is it because they represent different pronunciations as opposed to just being different spellings? MedK1 (talk) 20:57, 2 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@MedK1: Yes, in theory only one form should be the main form, but not all entries here respect that. When you find such instances, you can make one form the "main form" (usually the oldest / most complete, here tiburón), and then link to it with {{alternative form of}}.– Jberkel 08:09, 5 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Cobble (n)

I was contemplating the unsatisfactory discussions about the meaning of the noun 'cobble' (or even its verb form) and my mind runs to 'bble' suffixes that imply units in a state of decoherence, an aggregate of like components: stubble, rubble, rabble, kibble, pebble, nibble, babble, bubble, nubble...and shifting to an unvoiced consonant, stipple, scrapple, dapple, tipple (coal), apple, etc. Cobble in this sense might have indicated a surface regardless of the material, and a cobbled pavement of smooth stones, cobblestone, would have been a specific example of the form.

Just mulling things over but I aleady like this direction better than anything I've read anywhere. Lanquestrian (talk) 15:05, 3 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Several of these simply involve instances of -le where it happens to be preceded by /b/ or /p/. I don't see what's especially 'incoherent' about words like bubble or apple. Nicodene (talk) 23:11, 17 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Lucifer

Over the past 4 days someone editing from several Saudi Arabian IP addresses made a whole lot of changes to entries on this page, including something about Old English inheritance of this Christian term from Proto-West Germanic, which was utter hogwash. I reverted all of it, but I suspect that some of the worst nonsense may be due to confusion about language codes and templates. The usual sources I would consult for some of the languages in question don't cover proper nouns, so I have no way to tell what, if anything, might be salvageable (or at least plausible).

I would appreciate it if those who know something about medieval northwestern Europe would take a look. Pinging a few names that come to mind: @Hazarasp, Mahagaja, Mnemosientje, Leasnam, Nicodene. Thanks! Chuck Entz (talk) 03:46, 4 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Japanese 中国

As far I see in the Japanese 中国 entry, I don't see the significant difference between the etymology 1 and etymology 2 entries as it share the same etymology and pronunciation. Is it better to be merged as one etymology? Thanks. Xbypass (talk) 09:42, 4 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I think the parts have the same origin, but in the first etymology, they were already combined as the name of China, which was borrowed as a single term. In the second etymology the parts were borrowed individually, then combined in Japanese. Chuck Entz (talk) 01:33, 5 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

We've been doing this on other pages too .... see 草鞋 for an extreme example. Its possible that there is a good reason for this, though I wouldnt know .... if different modern pronunciations indicate subsequent reborrowings of the same compound, then I suppose we could consider them to be separate etymologies and maybe even separate words, but maybe there is a more technical reason why we split them up. —Soap— 13:32, 5 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Re: Japanese 草鞋, note that this spelling has seven distinct pronunciations, with differences in derivation, meaning, usage, etc. I don't think these can be merged easily without making a mess of an entry. As other examples of single spellings with multiple readings, see also 柄 and 生.
Re: Japanese 中国, it is much as Chuck describes -- one sense ("China") came into Japanese as an integral whole, borrowed in toto from Chinese. The other sense ("the Chūgoku region of Japan") may well be a coinage in Japanese based on the Middle Chinese components, deriving from the underlying spelling sense of "middle of the country", as mentioned here in the Nihon Kokugo Daijiten, in sense section [2]. Further down that same page at Kotobank, we have the Daijisen entry, which explicitly breaks out the two senses into two separate derivation sections. My local copies of Daijirin and Kōjien split things up similarly.

Cheers, ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 06:39, 6 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The alt form Terramare

I'm not sure about this one. The main entry terramare and its alt terramara are both frequently used countably (e.g. "two different terramares"), and I've updated them to show this. But this one is called a proper noun and has a capital letter! Equinox ◑ 23:49, 4 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Judging by Wikipedia's article, w:Terramare culture, it looks like the uppercase Terramare is the name for the ancient technology complex or culture that produced the lowercase terramares. Chuck Entz (talk) 00:43, 5 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Online source for Brazilian Portuguese pronunciation?

@Ungoliant MMDCCLXIV, Jberkel, Svjatysberega, Cpt.Guapo, Munmula, Koavf, Sarilho1 Do any of you happen to know of a good online source for Brazilian Portuguese pronunciation? The only one I've found is the Collins Portuguese-English dictionary, and I don't totally trust it. None of the major online monolingual Brazilian Portuguese dictionaries I know of (e.g. Michaelis, Aulete, Dicio) list pronunciations. For European Portuguese, Infopedia lists IPA pronunciations and Priberam has partial pronunciation info. In this case I was looking to verify the existing pronunciation for governo that lists the first vowel as both /o/ and /u/, and e.g. to know whether the version with /u/ is found in dictionaries or is just an informal Carioca pronunciation or something (Collins lists only /o/). Benwing2 (talk) 05:26, 5 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Russian ‘под’ meaning ‘used for’: accusative or instrumental?

At под (pod) it is claimed (without usage examples) that it can mean ‘used for’, taking the instrumental in this sense. However, at ru:под, the only section describing this and illustrating this sense seems to be:

указывает на предмет, для хранения, размещения, нахождения которого что-либо предназначено, используется

◆ Участок под строительство.

◆ Оставить участок под картофель.

◆ Отвести помещение под музей.

◆ Приспособить ящик под стол.

◆ Тумбочка под телевизор.

◆ Земля под хлеб.

◆ Готовый под посев.

◆ Маленькую комнату отвели под спальню.

◆ Участок решено отдать под строительство бассейна.

◆ Эта корзина под картошку.

If I am not mistaken these are all accusative, and moreover, in the section of en:под devoted to the accusative we find:

for, suitable as
уча́сток под строи́тельство ― učástok pod stroítelʹstvo ― land for construction

which matches the first example at ru:под. Am I right in thinking the sense under the instrumental is an error and should be scrapped? And might we perhaps copy a few of the other usage examples from ru:под? PJTraill (talk) 21:09, 5 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@PJTraill:: Yes. As it does not have any example to make sense out of it for me as a native speaker, and contradicts that other gloss. Fay Freak (talk) 21:18, 5 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Fay Freak: Thanks for the confirmation; I have edited the page as I suggested, but commented out two usage examples whose translation (from DeepL) I was unsure about. PJTraill (talk) 21:56, 5 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

鯵#Japanese

@Eirikr: This entry lists two pronunciations, [a̠ʑi] and [ɾ]. Is the second one, with no vowels, correct? - -sche (discuss) 23:27, 5 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

If you look at the talk page of the person who added that, you'll see a post from me titled "Huh?". My guess is they thought they were supplying some kind of technical parameter, though there might be misreading of references involved. The likelihood of actual correct content is very low... Chuck Entz (talk) 01:46, 6 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

As Chuck notes, the second one is a typo at best. This mistaken pronunciation shows up in this edit from 2020-02-25 by Dingo1234555 (talk • contribs). This particular entry was not on my watchlist, and thus I haven't seen this before.

I'll see about reworking the entry tomorrow (it is late here and I should probably get some sleep ;) ). ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 06:30, 6 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

A bit late, but I've finally cleaned up the entry. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 18:39, 12 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Salar alphabet

People whose native language is Salar and trying to make a standart written language do not use the letter x, considering it unnecessary. Because the letters k and q are read like x if they are at the end of the syllable or at middle of the word. In other words, when I write oqa, it will be read as oxa, since there is no other word for oqa due to phonology. Or when I type damaq it won't be confused with another word due to phonology. Likewise ehmek is the same. Already as q/k when the sound starts at the beginning of a syllable, such as başqa, qara. Considering that the Salars also do not use this letter, I am in favor of writing the sounds x as q and k. BurakD53 (talk) 18:07, 6 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Secondly, Ma Wei (2014) writes both IPA /q/ and /qʰ/ with q, while Lin Lianyun writes IPA /q/ with g and /qʰ/ with q. Ma Wei gave the letter g only for IPA /k/, and there are no Turkic words with the letter g containing back vowels in this way. That's why I think the /q/ sound should be written with the letter g. It will not be confused with /k/ because that sound is only used in front vowels. BurakD53 (talk) 18:07, 6 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Allahverdi Verdizade, @Thadh What do you guys think? BurakD53 (talk) 18:07, 6 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@BurakD53: Is there any literature already written in the language? I think we should generally stick to orthographies actually in use within the community instead of going by scientific writing systems. Time is another important factor: Are the Salar speakers moving towards omitting <x> since this year, or has this been proposed for the last decennium? In the former case I would wait with implimenting any unused, new orthography, in the latter case I would definitely switch to the newer writing system. Thadh (talk) 18:30, 6 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

There are, but there is no an exact one. Everybody use different alphabet even in academia. But people mostly i chatted via WeChat write gölik (cow) instead of gölix(but pronunciation is gölix of course). There is a video on [www.youtube.com/flTNalVRLwk|YouTube] but i think it has mistakes and it is not academic. For example; academics describe it oxuş but it writes oğuş. k doesn't turn into ğ in Oghuz including the Salar. If so, why do researchers write that it's oxu-/oxa- and oxuş. BurakD53 (talk) 18:52, 6 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

the card game Demon / demon

Is it played in the US, the UK, or both? Demon says "(card games) A type of solitaire card game in the United States", but demon says "(UK, card games) A form of patience (known as Canfield in the US)." (Are they really two different forms of solitaire/patience distinguished by capitalization? Seems unlikely.) - -sche (discuss) 19:09, 6 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Eigentum Usage note

There's what looks to be a helpful usage note on Eigentum, but the phrasing of it is not clear and I can't quite make sense of it. I'm tempted to correct it, but I worry that would generate mistakes, since the usage is clearly complex and technical. Can anyone clarify? Here's what it says at the moment:

Eigentum is:

(uncountable) the right of one to in general do as he will with a corporeal object and exclude others from it

(countable) such an object

Usage note: Common translations of the term are ownership and property, however it is important to note that the restricted usage does not allow for it to be used with the same objects as these terms are in English and an equivalent usage is barely even idiomatic colloquially. The meaning range of these terms is that of Inhaberschaft and Vermögen respectively. Property law practically translates as Sachenrecht but the latter has a more limited compass, concerning the rights towards corporeal objects (Sache), and in that context Eigentum is the most archetypical right.

Though the understanding of the occurrence of the term in Art. 14 GG is effectively equal to that of Vermögen, the legal usage nonetheless is narrowed down to this specific civil law meaning, and it is but in the field of business administration, perhaps under influence of English-language publications and disregard to native tradition, that every legal attribution (Zuordnung) can be Eigentum. But terms like geistiges Eigentum (“intellectual property”), perfectly legal terminology in English as property more broadly refers to various attributions of rights, are strictly translationese and a misnomer and do not occur in the internal legal systems of the German-speaking countries (but as a comparative law and international law term).

Furius (talk) 21:34, 6 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

You may find Talk:negligence per se illuminating. - -sche (discuss) 21:56, 6 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Furius: I might have added that it is literally the definition in § 903 S. 1 BGB, ”Sache” being a corporeal object standing in § 90 BGB, but the terminology has not been newly introduced with the German Civil Code so applies to other (neighbouring and previous) legal systems.

I should have added something about the hypernym dingliches Recht, as I imagine that my formulation that Eigentum is ”the most archetypical right” makes up a large part of what is not clear to you; the other part being the lack of examples of how Vermögen and property are broader; see about this w:de:Property law (England und Wales), and note my entry Gegenstand. I tried not to make it even longer by being more specific or adding examples.

We should make use of the space we have though to compete with print dictionaries that in listing translations fail to demarcate, precisely outlining the dogmatic basis, why or when a translation between two languages can or must be with a different term than in another context.

This is one of these terms where one must be thus careful, for excellent translation; if for instance in English we read something about brand owners, it is very wrong to translate it as Markeneigentümer—which exists, but -sche will note that it is not legal literature, which uses Markeninhaber; while conversely Eigentümer, when it is applied in legal writing (only with the described restricted meaning), in lack of a specific term in English technically translates with a hypernym by putting it as owner. If in legal writing you read Eigentümer, Besitzer, Inhaber, it always is a specific statement within their dogmatics, while in the general press it is probably not. So I have answered why all translates as “owner” but why they are different—they are not synonyms. Fay Freak (talk) 10:02, 7 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Ok, this makes it clearer, but there are still some bits that I don't understand:

Why is the translation of "property law" mentioned?
What does "most archetypal right" mean?
When it says "the understanding of the occurrence of the term", whose understanding is it referring to?
What is a "legal attribution"?
Is there a reliable source for the claim that the usage in business administration is due to English publications and disregard of German tradition or is this personal speculation? (I'd be inclined to cut this anyway as the reason for the difference is not really important in a "usage note")
By "perfectly legal terminology" do you mean "terminology that is permitted by law" or "normal terminology in a legal context"?

It would be splendid if you could provide secondary citations for these assertions. Furius (talk) 11:47, 7 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Furius: 1.&2. As Eigentum and property may be encountered as mutual translations, but technically it is only the right to do anything with a corporeal object, but the law concerning corporeal objects is called Sachenrecht, while “property law” is broader. You should read that passage together with the definition in the entry.

3. Any understanding in practice, as the Federal Constitutional Court has broadened the constitutional right of Art. 14 GG thus far; actually it is even more than that, since the basic rights concern what positions government is allowed to take from a private individual. For example, if a neighbour actions against the Building permit of his neighbour, he may be in the right by reason that due to the particular situation of his land plot giving him a favourable view he is situationsberechtigt and thus the authority issuing his neighbour the building permit was not allowed to do so, pursuant to this constitutional right of the neighbour. But whether “negative” or “ideal” immissions violate the private-law Eigentum is disputed and usually denied. In any case we have a different understanding here of a private-law Eigentum against everyone and a basic right against government of the same name, also of a different place in the hierarchy of norms, by a different legislator.

4. Any subjective right or legal position or whatever laymen mean with their inexact language, it is vague and I don't have an overview what non-jurists think when using their terms, they just give it a shot, so I try to describe it more vaguely.

5. It does not claim, it states the possibility (perhaps). Though for fact this happen as translationese, in business unacquaintedness with legal distinctions must play a role, too. How do you otherwise explain it? Nobody would make this mistake even under foreign influence if acquainted, it is just the question how far it would be natural in non-legal to employ the terms more correctly than they are under foreign influence which we can only hypothetically subtract (as the economics students really read a lot of English stuff and whole systems are translated, while the jurists have all from a native tradition). But I am reformulating this to leave less questions in that direction and give more to the actual points.

6. The law does not prescribe particular terms so the answer can only be the latter, but there is no complete dichotomy either, since if law is the subject of the science then the law does not permit is not to use its terminology.

I have edited the usage note to make the points more comprehensible, Furius, still questions? I am not going to give you an apparatus on in rem rights and the public-law rights concerned. Any textbook bearing Sachenrecht in its name and any legal commentary on the German Basic Law will bring you further. Fay Freak (talk) 22:36, 7 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Ok, the phrasing of the note remains a little obscure, but thanks to your efforts here, I think I understand well enough to have a crack at dealing with that tomorrow. Furius (talk) 23:33, 7 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

condescending, patronizing and recursion

Reported by pgimeno in irc (irc://irc.libera.chat/wiktionary), the definitions of condescending and patronizing, and possibly further conjugations, are recursive. This was brought up in 2010 at Talk:condescending#Recursive Definition, but possibly never addressed? - Amgine/^t·e 21:14, 7 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

progress

I note that we currently claim a plural form "progresses" at the main entry, but there is no noun sense at "progresses". Could someone take a look at this? Cheers. ---> Tooironic (talk) 21:56, 7 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Added. Overlordnat1 (talk) 22:29, 7 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for that. But it would seem the plural form is rare or proscribed, right? I note that the OED only includes the "mass noun" senses. ---> Tooironic (talk) 06:22, 11 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

toucher

In the Dickens citation, "as near as a toucher" probably doesn't mean "as near as a person who touches". Which sense should it really be under? The bowls ball/jack thing, I suspect. Equinox ◑ 22:25, 7 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

It's not unique to Dickens. This book of similes and this book on Leeds English provide other examples of this expression being used.

{{R:Dictionary of Modern Slang}} provides the explanation that it originated as a phrase used by jarveys: [1], but I don't know how reliable that is.
{{R:EDD}} glosses this sense as "A little; a jot; a close hit or miss.", and treats it as distinct from the bowls sense: [2].
According to this other dictionary, there's also a phrase "a near toucher", which means "a close shave".

Extra note: I don't know how much this helps, but it's possible that "as near as a snapper" was also used similarly; there aren't many search results though. 98.170.164.88 22:42, 7 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Orenthal

A male given name. But apparently nobody has this name except for O. J. Simpson...? Equinox ◑ 15:54, 8 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

He's not literally the only one, but it is pretty rare. On Wikipedia/Wikidata there's also Orenthal O'Neal and Orenthal Tucker. 98.170.164.88 03:03, 9 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

“Paucal” = “паукальный” = “множественный”?

I presume that the Russian translation of paucal as паука́льный (paukálʹnyj) is actually correct, but ru:паукальный makes me slightly doubtful, as it defines it as мно́жественный (mnóžestvennyj), which seems to lack the meaning of “few”, being defined as «имеющийся в большом количестве, проявляющийся в различных формах, видах». Is one of these incorrect, and if so, is someone available to fix it? I am sorry not to ask this at ru:Викисловарь:Лингвистические и лексикографические вопросы; I considered it, but felt my Russian was not really up to it. PJTraill (talk) 21:44, 9 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

P.S. ~~паука́льный (paukálʹnyj)~~ мно́жественный (mnóžestvennyj) is given for the noun, while no Russian translation is given for the adjective. PJTraill (talk) 21:49, 9 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

This term is a translation of the adjective (the noun would be translated as "паука́льное число́", an SOP phrase). ru.wikt is incorrect with its definition, it definitely means "paucal", not "plural". Thadh (talk) 00:37, 10 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Synonyms of steal a glance

dialectal: glime

The word glime seems to have mainly been used in the Isle of Man and Scotland according to various hits on Google Books though Wright’s dialect dictionary has it listed, with various spellings, as also used in most of Northern England[3]. A OneLook dictionary search has this word listed in both Collins and Merriam-Webster and provides example sentences at the bottom and one of them even depicts gypsies in Wales using the word. If we create this entry it perhaps should be marked as obsolete as well as dialect though. Another sense, meaning ‘the mucus of horses or cattle’ seems to be a dictionary-only term.

There are several uses of glime to mean something like mate/pal/homie in AAVE to be found by searching for song lyrics at genius.com and some instances where it seems to be used as a verb, perhaps meaning ‘be stylish’ such as the following [4]. Urban Dictionary lists style as well as homie as a meaning, which might explain this, but that’s obviously an unreliable source.

Also one dictionary defines glime as a specialist hydrological term for a type of ice[5]. Overlordnat1 (talk) 08:46, 10 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Overlordnat1: Sounds like you've got a decent amount of evidence put together for various senses. I would encourage to you move forward and create the entry with supporting quotations. Let me know if you'd like someone to team up with you and work on it. ,—The Editor's Apprentice (talk) 05:42, 14 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

mot du règne

Carolian (talk • subpages • history • edit • watch)

For reference, I have collected a few quotations over the past couple of centuries at w:User talk:Drmies#Writers' tip. It is well attested, there being much more than those few, that I've selected, to be had. It seems appropriate that Wiktionary give it an entry in short order, and beat the paper dictionaries to the punch. Neither Merriam-Webster nor Cambridge Dictionaries on-line had it when I checked earlier today. Uncle G (talk) 10:47, 10 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for bringing that to my attention. We could certainly do with an entry entitled Carolian but I don’t think the claim on your Wikipedia talk page that the Guardian is using an Americanism by transcribing Truss’s speech with the word Carolean rather than Carolian is entirely accurate as I can find examples of American books which use Carolian on GoogleBooks. There is also the claim on Wikipedia that alumni of Saint Charles Preparatory School in Iowa are called Carolians and I can find even find one British hit[6] and one American hit[[7] where Carolian is a synonym for Carolingian. I’ll have to try searching for Carolean in depth next to see what I can find. I just added another definition to Carolinian that I came across while researching this (meaning someone from the Caroline Islands). Overlordnat1 (talk) 23:35, 10 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
- The only person to claim an Americanism is you. I wrote no such thing. I did write "antiques dealers", but that is very clearly not the same as "Americans".
  Merriam-Webster has Carolean as a variant of Caroline, as does Chambers and other dictionaries. Ironically, whilst Carolean is easy to find in dictionaries (mostly under Caroline as a variant, sometimes marked rare, and not as its own headword, however), Carolian is a lot easier, in contrast, to find than Carolean when it comes to actual running prose. It is not just referring to an English king, moreover, as saints, Swedish kings, and various eponymous universities and schools can also be found as referents.
  There are many occurrences locatable with Google Books starting from the 21st century (e.g. a Sherlock Holmes fan-fiction story, Mistress Islet and the General's Son, by Lucy Sussex published in 2021) going back to the 19th century; from Henry Barton Baker in 1899 through Carl Aaron Swensson's Again in Sweden in 1898 and John George Cochrane in 1835 back to a letter to the editor in The Satirist in 1808. It is surprising that no mainstream dictionary has this by now, and that Wiktionary gets to be first.
  And I had already included a quotation from that school using "Carolian Community" in a sentence.
  Uncle G (talk) 11:47, 11 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  - On your Wikipedia talk page you state one can always trust the Guardian to mis-spell and later state that the spelling Carolean is used outwith the United Kingdom, so you are very clearly insinuating that it is an Americanism without actually stating it, there can be no other conclusion. I’m very aware that Carolian can have the same meaning as Carolean, in that it can refer to any king or saint called Charles and I’m very much at a loss as to why you wrongly think that isn’t my position. Whilst I have the skin of a rhino and so couldn’t give a monkeys about your opinion of me, in the interests of honesty and decency perhaps you’d like to retract your foolish remarks as they amount to an attack on my character and a thoroughly unsupportable one at that. Overlordnat1 (talk) 16:24, 11 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Carolian is not recognised by the Oxford English Dictionary which just has Carolean, following Jacobean. There is no simple pattern for this as the previous age was usually "Elizabethan" though the OED has some archaic examples of "Elizabethean" and "Elizabethian". Andrew Davidson (talk) 14:47, 11 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

OK, I created an entry for Carolian, defining it as an alternative of Carolean. Noticing that we had the same set of English/British-Charles-related meanings repeated at Carolean and Caroline (split onto two lines at Carolean and grouped on one line at Caroline), but only defined one sense of Carolean as a synonym of Caroline, I switched that to define Caroline as a synonym of Carolean. (Comparing the relative commonness of the two is impossible because of the unrelated name Caroline.) - -sche (discuss) 16:16, 11 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Ukrainian for indeclinable

The Ukrainian abbreviation "невідм." - is this from the adjective невідмі́нюваний (i.e. невідмінюване слово), and if so does that literally mean "not declined" rather than "indeclinable/not declinable"?

https://uk.wiktionary.org/wiki/%D0%BD%D0%B5%D0%B2%D1%96%D0%B4%D0%BC%D1%96%D0%BD%D1%8E%D0%B2%D0%B0%D0%BD%D0%B8%D0%B9

(I note that the past passive participle of the verb відмінювати (to decline/conjugate) is відмі́нюваний.)

https://uk.wiktionary.org/wiki/%D0%B2%D1%96%D0%B4%D0%BC%D1%96%D0%BD%D1%8E%D0%B2%D0%B0%D1%82%D0%B8

Or am I looking at it from the wrong angle? Although I have seen the phrase "невідмінюване слово" in full, perhaps "невідм." is still usually an abreviation for another word?

DaveyLiverpool (talk) 13:31, 10 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

"невідм." is indeed an abbreviation of невідмі́нюваний (nevidmínjuvanyj). I think it can be translated both as "undeclined" and as "indeclinable"/"undeclinable", because it seems that past passive participles of imperfective verbs can sometimes carry a sense of "-able", e.g. передба́чуваний (peredbáčuvanyj, “foreseeable, predictable”), past passive participle of передба́чувати impf (peredbáčuvaty), whence also непередба́чуваний (neperedbáčuvanyj, “unforeseeable, unpredictable”). See also непоє́днуваний (nepojédnuvanyj, “incompatible”), from поє́днувати impf (pojédnuvaty). Voltaigne (talk) 15:30, 12 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Brilliant. Thanks for providing such clear examples and directly noting the imperfective angle - that all makes sense. I will keep an eye out for variations on this theme.

DaveyLiverpool (talk) 18:10, 12 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

bab (audio file)

Is the English word bab a single syllable? because the current audio file sounds like two syllables to me. --173.67.42.107 19:01, 10 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

It sounds to me like a single syllable with a weird release on the final consonant. Chuck Entz (talk) 19:08, 10 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

It sounds fine to me as a native British English speaker (southern, northern or otherwise). The breathy release at the end sounds perfectly natural rather than weird - although I appreciate that a more clipped ending might make it more obvious to non-natives that such a release is not necessary. DaveyLiverpool (talk) 01:01, 11 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, it sounds like one-syllable, but I can see how the breathy release might sound like a schwa (second syllable). The file at lab is similar and if I didn't know better I might take it to be lamb! (Tab, by contrast, has a very clear final consonant.) As always, the best solution is to record a better clip so we can use that instead... - -sche (discuss) 05:19, 11 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

That audio was recorded by Wonderfool, and thus should probably be reverted, like all Wonderfool's edits since the beginning of time. Almostonurmind (talk) 22:23, 11 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

mean girl

Is this noun phrase a simple sum of parts, or is there more to it than that? See Wikipedia, or various books, articles, and social media posts discussing the phenomenon (e.g., [8], [9]). Equinox has opined on WT:REE that it is SOP, but I'm not sure. I think it can be interpreted literally, but in recent times it may refer to a more specific stereotype (perhaps influenced by the movie Mean Girls, although I don't know whether the phrase or the movie title came first). It's probably a similar case to farmer's daughter which was debated recently. 98.170.164.88 21:06, 10 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I would say it's not SOP - there's a particular quality to it of the "popular crowd", and I'm pretty sure it pre-dates the movie (i.e. I'm saying the film played into a stereotype that viewers would have already known). Theknightwho (talk) 21:32, 10 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

It looks like it would be COALMINEable anyway: Citations:meangirl. (The form with a space is much more common, though.) 98.170.164.88 21:52, 10 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I would say that it's an SOP term that has lexicalized to a degree. Vininn126 (talk) 21:56, 10 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with the aforewritten statement. A mean girl is "a girl who exhibits anti-social behaviour (relational aggression), and is overly consumed by jealousy, personal appearance, social status, and group belonging". It's in a grey area between blue+jay and bluejay, getting closer and closer to the latter as time goes by. A 'mean girl' is not just any girl that's "mean". It has morphed into a special distinction for a certain type of girl, whether she's actually mean or not. A good parallel is rich kid. Leasnam (talk) 03:41, 11 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I think this is one of those cases where the existence of the unspaced form reflects and accords with the term having become idiomatic and lexicalized to some extent. The film surely helped popularize the term and meaning. It seems like there's (sometimes) a difference even in speech between saying someone is a "mean girl" in the same way and cadence you'd say she was a "lean girl" or a "muscular girl" or a "smart girl", and saying someone is a "mean girl". - -sche (discuss) 16:28, 11 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with that - when I'm saying a girl that's mean, I emphasize the noun. As a noun phrase, mean girl has the stress on the adjective. Vininn126 (talk) 16:30, 11 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah! And the idiomatic sense is more tightly bound, not allowing a pause (the "in between" test). Girls who are mean and American can be "mean American girls", but in the idiomatic sense the order has to be "American mean girls"; there's a difference between what this cite of "mean black girls" means (not idiomatic) and the 2018 cite listing examples of African American mean girls. - -sche (discuss) 17:04, 11 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

pronunciation of concave, convex

We claim both words are stressed on the first syllable, and that is the only pronunciation given. In isolation, I say both of these words with stress on the second syllable. Anyone agree with me? convex even has a note indicating that the stress on the second syllable is archaic, but that is surely wrong. FWIW the Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary gives only one American pronunciation /kɑːnˈkeɪv/ and /ˈkɑːnveks/, while the Oxford Advanced American Dictionary gives /kɑnˈvɛks/, /ˈkɑnvɛks/ in that order. (None of these pronunciations match mine, which has a schwa in the first syllable in both words, except in phrases like convex optimization where the stress moves onto the first syllable.) Benwing2 (talk) 01:57, 11 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Merriam-Webster and Dictionary.com agree the stress can be on either syllable as long as the first vowel is a 'full' /ɑ/~/ɒ/, and I can find ample examples on YouTube and Youglish. I can't find examples of the first syllable being reduced to a schwa, but it seems plausible and Longman agrees it exists (concave, convex). - -sche (discuss) 18:41, 11 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@-sche Thanks. I didn't realize Longman is online. I take it the dollar sign separates British pronunciation from American pronunciation? Benwing2 (talk) 18:56, 11 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, British on the left, American on the right (like the roads, I am amused to notice). - -sche (discuss) 20:03, 11 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

act

Should we have a separate sense for "sex" in the "act"? It's almost always preceded with the definite article, and it seems to have spread to other languages (i.e. Polish akt). Vininn126 (talk) 14:48, 11 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

On the one hand, just about anything in English can become a euphemism for sex. On the other, you have humorous titles like PDQ Bach's "Hansel and Gretel and Ted and Alice: An Opera in One Unnatural Act" that play on this implied meaning. Chuck Entz (talk) 15:25, 11 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I was unaware of that one. I also feel that this one is more prevalent than other euphemisms? Or maybe that's just me. Also compare "doing the deed". Vininn126 (talk) 15:31, 11 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

To me use to mean sex act or sexual intercourse seems clear only when it follows forms of do or perform or is used in the vicinity of something like as the actress said to the bishop/as the bishop said to the actress or is that what the kids call it nowadays?. Otherwise it seems to depend on deixis. DCDuring (talk) 16:01, 11 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

My gut reaction was to maybe have this as a subsense, but I notice no other dictionary I looked at (Cambridge, Collins, Dictionary.com, Merriam-Webster, Oxford Learner's, even the Partridge slang dictionary) has such a sense; Cambridge has a usex about "the sexual act" as one of their usexes for their generic "something you do" sense. The fact that it can sometimes mean sex specifically even without any adjective like sexual seems suggestive of it acquiring "sex" as a meaning, but the fact that it still usually relies on other context clues as DCDuring says (or else it is ambiguous), and the fact that many other words can rely on the same context clues to convey "sex", as Chuck says, puts it in a real grey area. - -sche (discuss) 16:11, 11 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

It does seem to appear mostly in certain collocations. Vininn126 (talk) 16:12, 11 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

(in response to the polish comparison) German Akt has nudity but probably no intercourse. This might be enough for puritans to connote sex? Or it already did (if so, I'd compare à gogo). I don't know its origin. Opus serves for reference. actor (as of the actress and bishop, or a foreground dancer, show girl) is a less likely angle. But it also simply rhymes with nackt. After all, being caught in the act can imply in the nude too. A bit of a painter myself I'd rather frame it as Bewegungstudie, which is actually in line with the entry.

Module:zh/data/ltc-pron/推 edit request

In "初脂三合平叉隹", the initial 初 should be changed to 昌. The expected Mandarin reflex in 推 should be chuī.

See https://ytenx.org/kyonh/sieux/179/ 126.58.91.231 18:11, 11 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Spec ops

Can I make entries for spec op and spec ops? Drapetomanic (talk) 00:37, 12 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, please do! Almostonurmind (talk) 10:46, 12 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

native bread

This is a rather peculiar fungus, Laccocephalum mylittae, which forms a subterranean structure up to a foot across that was eaten by the indigenous people of Australia. It's been known as native bread, blackfellow's bread, and stonemaker. It's coincidentally also known in Asia as 雷丸 (léiwán) in Chinese. It's been used in traditional Chinese medicine to kill internal parasites, which has led to some references in English under the Japanese romanization raigan.

As happens all too often with fungi, it was described several times under different taxonomic names: Omphalia lapidescens, Mylitta lapidescens,Mylitta australis, and Polyporus mylittae, among others. Oddly enough, the name mylittae came about because no one knew that the underground structure and the fruiting body were the same organism (in those days fungi were only identifiable by their reproductive structures). They therefore assumed that the latter was a parasite on the former and followed the practice of giving the "parasite" a specific epithet consisting of the name of the "host" in the genitive- so the species is named after itself.

Anyway, the reason I brought this here is the matter of which name to use as the lemma. Over the course of its history, the form blackfellow's bread has been the most common term used in books. In recent years, however, the offensive racist nature of the term blackfellow is in the process of making that term obsolete, with native bread taking its place, for the most part. @Peppermintpatty111, who created both entries (presumably from redlinks at bread) has decided to make blackfellow's bread the main entry, and native bread the stubified synonym.

I would rather not have an offensive, racist term as the main entry, especially since it's headed toward becoming obsolete. That said, I don't want to be prescriptivist, and I don't want to get into an edit war over this. I should mention, by the way, that this is a hidden underground fungus, so even most Australians have probably never heard of it. The relative frequency of the two terms is very little vs. almost nothing.

What does everybody think? Pinging some Australians that I can think of off the top of my head @This, that and the other, Tooironic, Sonofcawdrey, and @DCDuring, Eirikr while I'm at it. I apologize for the length. Chuck Entz (talk) 02:43, 12 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Hmm. I don't think it's prescriptivist to describe that usage may be proscribed in various contexts, and to explain the hows and whys of that.

In terms of where to put the lemma, I can only speak in generalities, as I know very little about mycology and not much about Australian stylistic and terminological norms. That said, if we don't have enough data available on usage frequency to do any meaningful comparison between the two forms, and if one form is discussed in any of the available literature as either preferred or disliked, then presumably we would do best to follow suit and locate our lemma entry at the relevant form. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 03:28, 12 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed. ---> Tooironic (talk) 03:36, 12 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I'd never heard of this fungus before, but from what I can tell, the blackfellow's bread form looks to be the historically most common form, but in modern texts it is avoided. I'd rather lemmatise at native bread, which was in use as early as 1925. This book describes the fungus' name as having been "more recently revised", which is probably just a presumption.

Tangentially, I wonder if we should move the lemma blackfellow to blackfella, or possibly even separate the lemmas. Blackfella is a totally reclaimed term. This, that and the other (talk) 06:06, 12 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, for the reasons stated above - the term "blackfellow" when used by non-Indigenous people is offensive these days. The Australian National Dictionary lemmatises at "native bread". The Macquarie Dict, meanwhile, is a bit behind the times in this respect: I will suggest the change to them as well.

Tangentially, we could separate blackfellow and blackfella as suggested, or at least add some usage notes and labels to clarify the differences ... blackfellow obsolescent and now considered racist, and blackfella being acceptable in Aboriginal English. - Sonofcawdrey (talk) 08:32, 12 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

This isn't complicated and has little need of specialized knowledge of mycology, which is scarce here. Each attestable term merits a lemma entry. The most common one should be the target of {{synonym of}} templates from the other attestable ones. I hope the currently most common one is not an offensive one. Offensive synonyms should be so labeled. If no non-offensive name is attestable, then we can show the candidate non-offensive terms in a usage note. DCDuring (talk) 14:12, 12 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

21st century use (barely) favors native bread. I have made changes in accordance with what I suggested above. DCDuring (talk) 14:32, 12 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

basisdemocraat

Anyone have any idea what this is referring to? I can only find the "basic democracies" of 1950s Pakistan. This, that and the other (talk) 06:17, 12 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

RfV it. DCDuring (talk) 14:33, 12 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

WT:RFVN#basisdemocraat. This, that and the other (talk) 09:51, 14 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

It's presumably meant to denote an adherent to or practitioner of basisdemocratie (grassroots democracy). So, again presumably, a "grassroots democrat" (which is not an English term that I recognize, except when the d is capitalized in the US context, which wouldn't be appropriate here). See also these examples on Glosbe. Voltaigne (talk) 15:07, 12 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

German w:de:Basisdemokratie (and the Dutch without a doubt means the same) is indeed "grassroots democracy" or "direct democracy". Thus a form of democracy with strong non-party political organisations, frequent plebiscites, democratic processes in companies, schools, neighbourhoods, and things like that. 88.65.40.59 08:29, 13 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Polysynthetic languages and CFI

Where do we draw the line for inclusion of words in polysynthetic languages that can squish a lot of information into one word? I can see why Narragansett cummanohamoùsh (“I will buy from you”) may be pushing it, but what about nowéewo (“my wife”), cowéewo (“your wife”), etc.? We have stuff like Hebrew דְּבָרְךָ (d'var'chá, “thy word”), a possessive form of דָּבָר (davár, “word”), so I assume these may be fair game. What about adjective + noun compounds? What if either the adjective or the noun is not attested on its own, but can be inferred? 98.170.164.88 07:40, 12 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

This is also an issue for agglutinative languages. Vininn126 (talk) 07:54, 12 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Especially when the line of when something has lexicalised is not clear - which is often. Theknightwho (talk) 14:14, 12 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

If it's a word, why wouldn't we include it?

Serious question.

If I, as a reader of some text, encounter the string cummanohamoùsh and have no knowledge of Narragansett, it'd sure be nice to be able to come to Wiktionary and find that.

Lexicalization for inflected words in polysynthetic or agglutinative languages should only matter when it comes to where to lemmatize. It should not matter for purposes of determining whether an entry for an inflected word should exist. (I intend to explicitly exclude cases of clear sum-of-parts terms, such as the compound nouns that occur in German, like the term Fußboden schleif maschinen verleih (“floorboard sanding machine rental”) that has been doing the meme rounds as an argument for why German Scrabble might be problematic.)

By way of example, a valid and not-out-on-the-ridiculous-fringe Japanese conjugated form would be させられたくなかった (saseraretakunakatta, “did not want to be made to do something”). This derives from core verb する (suru, “to do”) in entirely predictable and regular ways -- iff you happen to know Japanese verb conjugations. If you don't know Japanese verb conjugations, there's absolutely no reason to expect you to know how this word breaks down.

Likewise for Narragansett cummanohamoùsh (“I will buy from you”). Or Hungarian házaitokból (“out of y'all's houses”, from ház (“house”)), or Maori whakamaharatanga (“remembrance; memorial”, from mahara (“to consider; to remember”)), or Latin honōrificābilitūdinitātibus (“from the state of honorificability”, ultimately from honor), etc. etc.

Heck, even for English, we have entries for predictable conjugated or compounded forms, such as eats or couldn't've. It's just that these aren't the full lemma entries.

So for polysynthetic and agglutinative languages, I'd argue that, at the bare minimum, the lemma entry itself should include tables showing at least the most commonly expected inflected forms, and should an editor create an entry for an inflected form, that should be allowed, so long as that inflected-form entry is your basic stub entry that just briefly explains what the inflected form is, and points the reader to the relevant lemma entries. We've tried to do this for Japanese entries, and I see that the Hungarian editors have been good about including such tables for those terms as well. (Something I greatly appreciate, as a learner of that language.)

That's my 2p, at any rate. :) ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 17:38, 12 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the input. I get the point about such words being hard to decompose, and providing value to readers is of course a good justification for anything. I just wonder whether entering all (attested) formations into a dictionary is the best way to go about that; maybe some kind of automated grammatical decomposition tool would be more fitting (although I don't know how we'd integrate that).

Considering the specific language I'm working on ATM is extinct and has a very limited corpus anyway, I think that bolsters the case for inclusion, since it's not like there are endless possible words to add. I think I'll prioritize the more lemma-like words first, though. 98.170.164.88 18:03, 13 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think we should go by the motto "whatever's written in one word is includable": We don't include words including a clitic either, or whole sentences in languages that don't have spaces, and that's for a reason. If you don't know what "cummanohamoùsh" means, you should decompose it into morphemes (which should be included in the dictionary). Thadh (talk) 20:40, 13 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

"We don't include words including a clitic either": Italian daglielo, etc.? 98.170.164.88 21:17, 13 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

That entry really shouldn't exist. It's predictably dà + glielo. You can bring up any such cases on Wiktionary:Requests for deletion/Non-English.

Nicodene (talk) 11:39, 17 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Re: "we don't include words including a clitic", I was under the impression that things in English like contracted -n't or -'ve or possessive -'s are classed as clitics, and we do have entries like don't or would've or y'all's.

Re: "you should decompose it into morphemes", you're assuming that the reader understands what morphemes are, and how to decompose the particular word. That was my point above about Japanese させられたくなかった (saseraretakunakatta, “did not want to be made to do”) -- if you don't understand Japanese conjugation (i.e. what the morphemes are), you can't decompose this. Heck, not a single one of the morae in the lemma term する (suru, “to do”) is included in this derived form させられたくなかった (saseraretakunakatta). For Narragansett cummanohamoùsh, since I don't have even the foggiest notion of what the relevant Narragansett morphemes are, the best I could do is a trial-and-error breakdown -- a process which is tedious, frustrating, and sure to dissuade most readers from bothering. And if Narragansett verb conjugations include any mechanisms similar to Japanese (whereby the morphemes in derived forms might not overlap with the morphemes in lemma forms), any attempt at successful decomposition would require foreknowledge of the target language. I cannot agree that this should be our recommended and default approach to handling terms in polysynthetic and agglutinative languages. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 23:31, 13 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I've noticed large variation in how languages handle these, mostly dependent on language editor preferences. Turkish seems to be at the most conservative end, and Swahili probably at the most inclusionary end (though I have mostly based that on the massive verb conjugation template). Theknightwho (talk) 00:41, 14 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

-n't is a case apart, because most words cannot use this suffix/clitic/whatever you want to call it.

-'ve really shouldn't be used: I've, my two horses've, this is endlessly productive, although not used as much as -'s (< has). Same goes for -'d, -'ll, and -'s (< is).

Possessive -'s shouldn't be included in my opinion either, for the same reason: the horse's, the child's; the only rule you need to know for these is how -'s vs -' works, which we have an entry for.

Now, I know that verb conjugation is not the same as combining nouns and verbs using clitics, but we need to make a decision on when to draw the line between just languages that are very regular (like Komi, which only has two conjugation paradigms, but only has what? 60 forms per verb) and languages that include so many productive affixes and clitics that you can easily come up with hundreds of thousands of words that would only be considered conjugations of one base verb. The former is manageable - and even there I for one don't usually include form entries, mainly because I feel like my time could be used for more useful stuff - but the latter isn't. Thadh (talk) 12:47, 17 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I'm generally in favour of allowing this stuff, for the reasons Eirikr gives; for example Talk:xłp̓x̣ʷłtłpłłskʷc̓. However, we've deleted forms containing some universally applicable suffixes, e.g. Tzotzil words with -e, Latin words with -que, and an analogous Hebrew thing, because you can in theory learn that any time you see foobare you need to look it up without -e. And we deleted various Turkish forms.
For elaborate sections of an inflection paradigm that are rarely attested, if they're rare enough that we don't list them in the inflection tables, it'd probably make sense to create individual ones only when attested and not mass-generate them like we do for English third-person verb forms. For Latin, our inflection tables don't list all the verb forms, though when people point out prominent omissions (e.g. forms from the Vulgate) I create entries. BTW, I've raised the question before of what the cutoff for English clitics is: sure, s'good to have he'd, he'd's fine, but do we want man'd? his'd? You can stick clitics on anything, and those are attested (google books:"the man'd do", "like his'd do")... we seem to de facto not include things like man'd, in English... - -sche (discuss) 02:24, 14 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Morphemes only attested in larger constructions

How can I handle words that are only attested in inflected forms? For example, should nullóquaso (“my pupil/ward”) be a lemma, or should it be a non-lemma form with the lemma being a reconstruction (which would probably be *-ulloquaso or *-loquaso, but I'd be guessing). I haven't gotten around to any verbs yet, but I imagine this problem will occur there, since the stems are not really used on their own. 98.170.164.88 00:23, 15 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

"Located" and "situated" as adjectives

I noticed that "situated" has an adjective entry, while "located" does not. Regarding the usage in sentences like "Sekondi is located in Ghana" or "The National Museum is situated in Accra", some sources call these passive verbs, but others call them adjectives, often more specifically "adjectival passives".[10] (The argument for their being adjectives can be seen in "Sekondi remains located in Ghana" per Huddleston & Pullum The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language p. 1437.) If these are not adjectives, then should the verb entry at "locate" be edited to note this almost exclusively passive usage like the "situate" entry does with "Most commonly used adjectivally in past participle..." or is the a better approach? If they are adjectives, then should that line be excised from the "situate" entry? And is there a favoured way to cross link "locate" with "located" that notes this unusual usage? Thanks. AjaxSmack (talk) 03:58, 13 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

To me, they seem like verb forms, but I notice other dictionaries have the same split as us, situated as an adjective but located as a verb form of locate, which makes me wonder if maybe situated predates situate(??), or shows other signs of adjectivity. I am intrigued that CGEL takes "...remains..." to indicate adjectivity. In he's dancing a waltz or he's dancing in that room, surely dancing is a verb, and remains(!) one if he google books:"remains dancing"! (And in "the substance is hydrogen", "the substance remains hydrogen", hydrogen is a noun, I don't see why "remains" would indicate adjectivity.) - -sche (discuss) 02:37, 14 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I don't see 'situated'/'located' as any more adjectival than 'found'. Going through all the ten tests listed on Wiktionary:English adjectives:

Modification by adverbs very/too: "very located", "too located". ❌
Comparative and superlative forms: "more located", "most located". ❌
Use after forms of "become": "became located". 🤷, leaning. ❌
Usage can be found, but doesn't sound right to me. I prefer "came to be located", which has 189 times as many Google hits.
Use in attributive position: "the located house". ❌
❌ as a bare adjective. With a modifier ✅, e.g. "the centrally located house". Technically, "the located house" could be used to refer to a house that has been located during a search operation, but that's even more obviously the past participle, and is not the sense we're discussing.
Use in predicative position: "the house is located". ❌
❌ as a bare adjective. With a modifier ✅, e.g. "the house is located near the park". Similar caveat as above applies.
Use with an implied noun: "the located". ❌
Requirement for a predicand (irrelevant, it's obviously not a preposition)
Base for formation of adverbs with -ly: "locatedly". ❌
Existence as an adjective predating use as a noun, etc. ❌
It's presumably derived from the verb locate.
Distinct meaning. 🤷, leaning ❌
It seems to me that the past participle of verb sense 3 fits, but maybe this point is debatable.

98.170.164.88 03:50, 14 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

It wasn't hard to find usage of become located:

1805 February 24, Francis Asbury, quoting Ira Ellis, The Journal of the Rev. Francis Asbury, Bishop of the, published 1821, page 160:
I then changed my state in life, and became located; and so continue to this day. Brunswick, Virginia
1885, Platte County Historical and Genealogical Society, History of Clay and Platte Counties, Missouri, page 1003:
For the most part, descendants of the early settlers of Pennsylvania, in whatever State they may have become located, are recognized as farmers of no inconsiderable influence and prominence
1921, Electrical Engineering, volume 40, numbers 7-12, page 930:
H. P. SPARKES, formerly with the Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing Company, E. Pittsburgh, has become located in the meter department of the West Penn Power Company, Pittsburgh
2005, D.R. Khanna, Biology of Birds, page 235:
While these changes are in progress, the rim of the optic cup becomes smaller by converging centrally toward the lens, which now becomes located within the diminishing aperture of the optic cup.
2015, Personal Property Securities Act:
(i) the end of 56 days after the day the collateral becomes located in Australia; (ii) the end of 5 business days after the day the secured party has actual knowledge that the collateral has become located in Australia.
2017, Janina Wellmann, The Form of Becoming: Embryology and the Epistemology of Rhythm, 1760–1830:
The order of rhythm here is both analysis and synthesis; it constitutes one developmental stage in relation to the series of changes and vice versa, and the successive formation of the embryo becomes located in the interreference of the pictures.
2017, Simon Cushing, Heaven and Philosophy, page 96:
Criterion (2) and criterion (4) seem to place some interesting restrictions on the kind of thing heaven could be—it must be something that isn't located but can become located.

DCDuring (talk) 13:52, 14 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

One can even find uses of very located:

2009, Pradeep Jeganathan, “Afterword”, in Catherine Brun, Tariq Jazeel, editors, Spatialising Politics: Culture and Geography in Postcolonial Sri Lanka, page 228:
It is both an attempt to rethink the 'state' and its distribution, and also to argue in very located ways with the claims of a certain strand of Tamil nationalism
2009, C. Randy Gallistel, quoting Marc D. Hauser, “The Foundational Abstractions: Discussion”, in Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini, Juan Uriagereka, Pello Salaburu, editors, Of Minds and Language: A Dialogue with Noam Chomsky in the Basque Country, page 69:
So in the case of the jays, it seems to be very, very located to the context of cache recovery.
2010, Alexandre Schwob, Kristine de Valck, “Better Understanding of the Self in Daily Contingencies”, in Russell W. Belk, editor, Research in Consumer Behavior, page 303:
Gatherings are indeed made primarily on the basis of very located appraisals of things or artifacts

Online Ety. Dict. has situate in use from early 15th C.

There are other verbs besides become which indicate adjectivity. They include many of the verbs that appear in inclusive lists of copulas, such as verbs of sensing and appearance (eg, sound, seem). I don't feel as comfortable with them, but obviously CGEL (2002) does. DCDuring (talk) 12:31, 14 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The uses with very are more persuasive to me of this recently having become an adjective than the uses with become, which are entirely unpersuasive because AFAICT it is routine to use verb forms (or, as I did earlier in this sentence, nouns) after become. Several examples are IMO clearly verbal and not adjectival: all the "becomes located in/within" cites seem directly comparable to the engineer force [...] google books:"becomes tied down in" battle assignments along rivers, or google books:"becomes caught up in", or google books:"becomes caught in". We may need to update the English adjectives page to reflect that "become" is not a conclusive test. - -sche (discuss) 17:23, 14 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

You would presumably then reject use after "sense" copulas (s.l.) (seem, appear, feel, consider, etc) and other "state" copulas (s.l.) (remain) as evidence. I am not inclined to reject my reading of CGEL (2002), which seems to say that these are valid participle-adjective discriminating tests. DCDuring (talk) 18:54, 14 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

* (asterisk) as Italian gender-neutral neologism

We have the German Gendersternchen (little gender star) used by some activists to avoid masculine/feminine forms. I have learned that there is a similar trick in Italian, as mentioned here for example: [11]. So we should probably document this. Anyone? Anyone? @SemperBlotto Bueller? Equinox ◑ 05:58, 13 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Assuming it's attested, yes, I suppose it's as simple as documenting it at *#Italian a la *#German... although cf the discussion of x, maybe some would argue it should be split among -*, -*-, etc... - -sche (discuss) 03:01, 14 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

vandalism

Hello. In the entry for the word "fervor" in the English language, the definitions ostensibly are nonsensical and antonymous to the word's true literal denotations. I presume that it is vandalized. Please fix them. Thank you.

A Mediocre Lifetime Student (talk) 00:23, 14 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Fixed. Theknightwho (talk) 00:33, 14 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Neutral usage of "period"

The way I, as a US English native, generally understand the interjection periodis somewhat aggressive or emphatic, which is reflected in our current entry. Today I heard an exchange between two people hurriedly making plans which was ended by one of them saying "alright, period" apparently in the sense of "cool/sounds good, that should work out as a planned and doesn't need further planning". Since the usage was more neutral or positive, it initially caught me off guard. Does this match with other's experiences? If so, is a new sense line warranted for period or should the entry just be rewritten to reflect a broader tone of usage? Take care. —The Editor's Apprentice (talk) 05:56, 14 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

If they were young, it's possible they were using periodt. 98.170.164.88 05:59, 14 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I see, interesting. I wonder about degree that periodt is the canonical spelling, and if it strongly canonical, what the best way to link to it from the entry for period would so that users can easily find each from the other. —The Editor's Apprentice (talk) 07:01, 14 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Additionally, since there is overlap in usage and a dialect continuum I wonder about how one goes about attesting them separately, if such in possible. —The Editor's Apprentice (talk) 07:08, 14 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Periodt doesn't strike me as capturing "neutral" use, it's still very emphatic (arguably more emphatic, hence the intensified spelling). If neutral use exists, it's not reflected in our current entry for periodt any better than in our entry for period. - -sche (discuss) 07:42, 14 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I see what your saying. I guess what I meant when I said "neutral" was "not necessarily negative or positive" in contrast to what I'm used, which is negative, particularly somewhat aggressive or argumentative. I agree that the word's function in all cases is emphasis. I decided to go through the Corpus of Regional African American Language, and having done so, I think I have a better sense of things. I see how the usage differs between Standard US White English and African American English (AAE) and am not worried about attesting them separately anymore. A use by a speaker born in 1917 (line 133), for example, seems clearly in the AAE usage. I guess the main thing that I see left to decide is if the entry should stay at periodt. —The Editor's Apprentice (talk) 08:15, 14 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

(@AG202, if you don't mind, can I get your two cents on how dominant periodt is as a spelling and whether the main entry should be there?) —The Editor's Apprentice (talk) 22:59, 14 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I have seen this on social media lately, always with the traditional spelling, and it can be anywhere in the sentence, not just at the end. Can't really help pin down the meaning, though, as it would be awkward of me to interrupt a conversation just to ask that ..... it may be that it has become little more than a general purpose emphasis marker, since it seems it can be used in just about any context. —Soap— 19:00, 18 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@WordyAndNerdy Starting a discussion about using the "Internet slang" label for periodt in response to your recent edit here since it ties into the other discussion in this section. I agree with you that periodt, with that spelling, is almost solely attested on the internet, with the only non-internet records I can access being on Issuu and Google Books. Issuu records are mostly post-2018, when Google Trends records the term blowing up. Google Books' records similarly seem to all be post-2018, as far as I can tell.

The reason the term blew up is key. The increased prominence of periodt was driven by the duo City Girls[12][13][14][15][16], which released their debut album called "Period" on May 11, 2018 (see Wikipedia and Twitter) which also featured a track called "Period (We Live)". Furthermore, on August 2018 they released a remix of Drake's "In My Feelings"[17] which brought them further fame. Of note, the duo ends the word period with a voiceless [t], as can be more clearly heard in City Girls' "Act Up" around the 1:14 mark. There is also a documentary about them on YouTube, Point Blank Period as well as a series about the duo if you want to compare their non-rapping pronunciations (I personally couldn't find a direct comparison, but didn't listen to too much).

In contrast to the post-City Girls boom, periodt is attested on internet, in particular on Twitter, since October 2009 (see the entry), roughly around the time the website took off in popularity[18]. In my research work, when a term is first attested near the beginning of a corpus (if you can consider Twitter a corpus--I do--and 2008/2009 its full-throated beginning) that implies to me that the term very likely predates that corpus, in this case Twitter.

Twitter also has records of a number of people pre-City Girls talking about how periodt represents a common or peculiar pronunciation for them[19][20][21]. Others proscribe the pronunciation though or considered it fake[22][23][24]. This suggests to me that is regional, the area of which I leave for someone else to establish.

Lastly, I find evidence on Twitter of periodt having a different, particularly stronger meaning, than period, including explicit differentiation[25]. I think this distinction survives in the usage of post-City Girls users. The question is then, is periodt's apparently stronger usage enough to warrant its own full entry or just an alternative form entry with usage notes? I'm interested in your further thoughts (as well as others' thoughts!). Take care. —The Editor's Apprentice (talk) 07:48, 19 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Just realized the spelling periot also exists and can be traced back slightly farther[26]. —The Editor's Apprentice (talk) 08:25, 19 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I’m sure many Scottish people would pronounce this word in a way that could be represented as periot or periodt, though they would never use this word to mean full stop or end of. Listen to this song in broad Doric Scots Ah’m e chiel (sae dinna fash) around the 0:34 mark where TheChielMeister says “I was angert mun, I was reet woot” for “I was angered man, I was reid-wuid” (where reid-wuid means ‘red wild’, a Scottish word meaning angry[27]). Overlordnat1 (talk) 09:07, 19 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Phonetic spellings of regional pronunciations don't really exist in a practical sense until they are set down in writing. Transcriptions of speech generally adhere to standard spellings because of how easy it is for eye dialect renderings to become a form of insensitive caricacature. So, while pre-2009 instances of period being pronounced with a "t" undoubtedly exist in film, television, etc., rendering it as periodt in text would be more of an artefact of individual interpretation than grammatical prescription. I think that, for all practical purposes, we can treat periodt as having emerged as a discrete word on Twitter circa 2009. Unless it can be attested at an earlier date or in a print medium. This one's somewhat out of my wheelhouse but the deep dive was appreciated. WordyAndNerdy (talk) 19:16, 19 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Two different kinds of utensils called "dough scraper"

The page for the English word dough scraper currently has one definition and an accompanying image depicting a certain kitchen utensil. Is this the only kind of "dough scraper"? Take instead the image to the right. Are both of these in fact called "dough scrapers" in English? Both the one in red and the one with the white handle? Does anybody know of what any reliable sources have to say? The corresponding page on the English-language Wikipedia isn't much help in that regard. Gabbe (talk) 18:59, 14 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I would call the left-hand one a "rubber scraper" or a "rubber spatula". I've been using them since I was a child in the '60s and I've never heard them called "dough scrapers". The right-hand one is the real dough scraper. Chuck Entz (talk) 04:09, 15 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I have no intuitive feeling for either term, as I'm not a native speaker, but Google Images does overwhelmingly agree with you. Nicodene (talk) 11:19, 17 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I've never heard the term "dough scraper". For me, the red one is a "spatula" and the one on the right would probably just be a "scraper" if I had to name it, though I've never used a kitchen implement quite like the one pictured. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 20:29, 19 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I think, and Google Images suggests, either one can be considered a type of dough scraper, but the first one is often more specifically designated a rubber spatula, silicon spatula, dough spatula, batter spatula, baking spatula, flexible spatula, batter scraper, etc. It seems like either type can (infrequently?) be referred to as a flexible scraper, although this also refers to a similar tool used for other kinds of work and not cooking. I tried to tweak the definition to handle that dough scrapers, especially the type on the right, are often used to scrape dough off a working surface, not just out of a bowl; certainly the entry was wrong to be written and illustrated as if only the flexiible-spatula-type scraper was a dough scraper! Maybe we should split it into two senses, one for the "traditional" dough scraper used to scrape dough off a surface, and one for when the flexible spatula for scraping batter out of a bowl is called a dough scraper...? Not sure. - -sche (discuss) 01:13, 20 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I'd vote for multiple (2 or more) images; one definition. DCDuring (talk) 17:24, 20 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

boucle, bouclé

Which of these is the correct spelling in English? It's spelled with the accent in Wikipedia, but the pronunciation guide says that apparently the final letter is silent, suggesting an unaccented spelling. We have a bit of a problem in the Finnish Wiktionary with this word. Mölli-Möllerö (talk) 14:47, 15 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Mölli-Möllerö: My copy of The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language has bou·clé as the main spelling with bou·cle as an alternative. It lists the pronunciation as enPR: bo͞o-klāʹ. Gabbe (talk) 15:01, 15 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Bouclé seems to be prescriptively the correct one, but boucle has plenty of mainstream usage. Chuck Entz (talk) 15:05, 15 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, I've edited the pages accordingly. Mölli-Möllerö (talk) 18:18, 15 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Which pronunciation guide lists the English word as having a silent e? Perhaps they confused it with the French noun boucle, which is indeed pronounced /bukl/, unlike the adjective bouclé /bukle/. Nicodene (talk) 11:26, 17 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Illustrate назад taking accusative?

назад and ru:назад say that as a preposition назад takes the accusative, but our usage example “Пять мину́т наза́д” does not show this and the Russian example “Десять лет (тому) назад” seems to show it taking a dative (тому). As a beginner I ask: Does it really take the accusative? Can we give a usage example for that? Why is (тому) in the dative? Is a Usage Note in order? PJTraill (talk) 16:29, 15 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Because the noun phrases containing numbers as a whole are in the accusative. It's also a postposition technically speaking. тому is similar in that it is a postposition taking the accusative, it just so happens to be formed in the dative, but that doesn't mean it takes the dative as argument, that's just a word building technique. Vininn126 (talk) 17:17, 15 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

In both of your examples, the words for numbers (пять, десять) are in the accusative. They are accompanied by the word for 'minutes' in the genitive plural, yes, but that is only because whenever the quantity of X is from five to ten, it is expressed by [number] + [X in the genitive plural]. Only the word for [number] can take different cases, depending on the sentence, while the word for [X] always remains in the genitive plural. Compare the following examples:

Я купил шесть книг - 'I've bought six [accusative] books [genitive plural]'
В чем смысл этих шести книг? - 'What is the point of these six [genitive] books [genitive plural]?'

Note how only the word for 'six' changes, not the word for 'books'.

Десять лет тому назад translates fairly literally as 'ten [accusative] years before that [dative]'. Десять can be thought of as answering 'how many (years) before?' and тому as answering 'before what'? It may be worth adding a note about it. Nicodene (talk) 11:04, 17 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

inadequation

Our entry for inadequation copied Webster's 1913 definition and is classed as obsolete. Searching for this, there are loads of modern-day uses. I'm not sure the meaning is the same or if there's a distinct meaning. Almostonurmind (talk) 11:18, 17 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

be anything to go by

Is this entryworthy? P U C – 15:09, 17 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

"...if that's anything to go by." is definitely a fairly common British phrase/qualifier, but I am not sure how you would structure it as an entry. It can have a neutral, dismissive or sarcastic meaning.

e.g. "Well, I eat them and I have never had any adverse reaction, if that's anything to go by."(just a neutral statement) or "Well, I once ate one and I didn't die, if that's anything to go by."(dismissive, perhaps with a touch of irony/sarcasm) or "Yeah, well, Cyberdine Industries say that it is perfectly safe, if that's anything to go by."(totally sarcastic)DaveyLiverpool (talk) 18:44, 17 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

If you need something to go by in making and entry for this consider whether be is necessary and then compare entries starting with be or entries containing anything in the title (using intitle:/ anything / in search) and then trying the search with something instead. DCDuring (talk) 17:24, 18 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Also, look at Category:English negative polarity items. DCDuring (talk) 17:29, 18 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

to faze vs to phase

I'm 76 and until recently I only saw the spelling 'faze'. Within, oh, say the last 5-10 years, virtually all of the occurrences I have seen, even in non-casual settings, have been 'phase'. Do the young folks these days hear 'faze' but think 'phaser' and 'light saber" perhaps? BTW, where does 'to faze' come from? Wiktionary does not offer an etymology. Wr76deever (talk) 19:14, 17 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

faze has a fairly comprehensive etymology for you, sir Almostonurmind (talk) 20:25, 17 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

contaminations and conflations

Should we have a glossary entry for these that we can link to in etymology sections? I suppose we could even make a template, but I am unsure we'd need categories. It could be useful for tracking irregular sound changes. Vininn126 (talk) 21:17, 17 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Spelling of desinfectante vs. desinfetante etc. in Portuguese

@Sarilho1 Can you help me sort out the spelling differences of this class of words? Priberam says of desinfectante:

Dupla grafia pelo Acordo Ortográfico de 1990: desinfetante ou desinfectante.

• Grafia no Brasil: desinfetante.

Wiktionary's entries for desinfectante and desinfetante claim that both are possible spellings for Portugal, but Brazil uses desinfectante, which disagrees with the above claim of Priberam and appears wrong in any case. Meanwhile for infecção vs. infeção, Wiktionary makes a similar claim as with desinfectante, stating that both spellings are possible for Portugal but Brazil uses infecção. In this case I think our claim is correct; Infopédia says infecção is Brazilian. This is all rather confusing to me. Does "dupla grafia" in general mean both are possible for Portugal, or does it just mean both are allowed for the combination of Portugal+Brazil without making claims as to which one is used where? I found the original text of the accord in the Wayback Machine but it just seems to say in this case that the spelling should reflect the pronunciation without listing the individual words in question. Benwing2 (talk) 01:22, 18 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I should add, Infopédia disagrees with Priberam about the ct vs. t and cç vs. ç spellings in these words, saying things like "a nova grafia é desinfetante" when you look up desinfectante (which redirects to desinfetante), and listing only pronunciations with /k/. Priberam meanwhile lemmatizes at desinfectante and has a pronunciation note "|èt| ou |èct|". Benwing2 (talk) 01:28, 18 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, @Benwing2. The actual language of the AO1990 states that:

c) Conservam-se ou eliminam-se [as consoantes mudas] facultativamente, quando se proferem numa pronúncia culta, quer geral, quer restritamente, ou então quando oscilam entre a prolação e o emudecimento: aspecto e aspeto, cacto e cato, caracteres e carateres, dicção e dição; facto e fato, sector e setor, ceptro e cetro, concepção e conceção, corrupto e corruto, recepção e receção;

Priberam and Infopédia in general choose to indicate as the main entry the EP spelling, only leaving a note for the BP one (for instance, "facto" is listed as the correct EP option, while "fato" is given as the BP one). I think we can assume that when both options are given as "dupla grafia", they correspond to cases where both pronunciations occur in Portugal, even if only regionally (e.g.: both dictionaries agree with the spelling espectador and espetador). As for desinfetante being presented as the BP spelling in Priberam, I think it's only a mistake in their part. I think it's safer to chiefly look into Portuguese dictionaries for EP spellings and Brazilian for BP spellings and consider the cases where there's disagreement as a disagreement or lack of register of the occurrence of the both option in Portugal itself. - Sarilho1 (talk) 10:04, 20 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Sarilho1 I think Priberam's claim about desinfetante being Brazilian is correct and we are wrong. Michaelis lemmatizes under desinfetante, Collins (which does Brazilian Portuguese) does too, and even Google Translate (which has Brazilian Portuguese audio), when you put in desinfectante, it redirects you to desinfetante. It's easy to find actual uses of desinfetante in Brazilian websites. Benwing2 (talk) 08:03, 24 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Reconstruction:Proto-Germanic/ramō

this should be quick. i wasnt really sure where to post so i picked here. Basically I just want to make sure that this really is ramō and not ramô. The pronunciation assigns it an overlong vowel, which I thought only belonged to the circumflexed vowels, and the German reflex is Rahmen, which suggests that it contains the suffix -mô, as with words like Daumen, Samen, etc. I can see how the German reflex might just be due to analogy and therefore the reconstruction of ramō would be correct, but do we have a template error in that final long vowels are being read as if they were overlong? The inflection paradigm is automatically generated, so that doesn't tell us anything. Thanks, —Soap— 06:47, 18 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I see now that someone put in the pronunciation manually, and so it is obviously not a template error, but my question remains, because I assume anyone who took the time to manually enter a pronunciation must have done so in the belief that the automatically generated pronunciation would be wrong. —Soap— 11:48, 18 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The reconstruction is correct as to the long -ō feminine ending. I've corrected the pronunciation. Leasnam (talk) 02:47, 19 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

-ese as /is/

Merriam-Webster and Dictionary.com give /s/ as an alternative to /z/ for the last consonant of every -ese word I checked: Japanese, journalese, legalese, Maltese, Portuguese. Viennese, Vietnamese (MW even has audio of some of these) ... we don't acknowledge /s/ as a variant on any of these entries. Should we? How common is it? - -sche (discuss) 07:45, 18 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

As a native Canadian English speaker /s/ sounds strange to me in each of those examples. - excarnateSojourner (talk | contrib) 08:42, 18 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

As a native British English speaker, I have never heard the /-is/ pronunciations of any of those -ese words, and they sound like mistakes. TTWIDEE (talk) 16:11, 18 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Collins lists both /z/ and /s/ as American pronunciations of e.g. Chinese (with audio) and Viennese, but lists only /z/ as far as British pronunciations go. Cambridge seems to only list /z/ (for both American and British); Longman too doesn't mention /s/ in any of the words I checked (Chinese, journalese, legalese, Viennese, Vietnamese). The old American Century Dictionary lists the pronunciation with /s/ first, even before the pronunciation with /z/ (words I checked: Viennese, Portuguese, Annamese), but the 1933 OED lists only /z/ (journalese, Viennese). So maybe it's an older / less-common American pronunciation? - -sche (discuss) 18:18, 18 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

For me, Portuguese is an exception. All the others end in a /z/, but this one ends in an /s/- I'm not sure why. It may just be random chance as to where I first heard it. I'm sure I've heard it many times with a /z/ without noticing- it doesn't sound particularly wrong- but when I say it, it has an /s/. Chuck Entz (talk) 19:47, 18 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@-sche, Chuck Entz It must be an archaic American pronunciation if it exists at all; as an American English speaker I have never ever heard it. As for Portuguese with /s/, maybe you're influenced by "Portuguese Love" by Teena Marie, who for some reason says "Portugee-say Love"? Benwing2 (talk) 00:52, 21 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

There’s also the American pronunciation of expertise with an ‘s’ rather than a ‘z’ at the end. We have this pronunciation listed at our entry but it’s a similar phenomenon (it’s a pronunciation I just heard Aaron Paul/Jesse Pinkman use around 4 mins into S4E13 of Breaking Bad). Overlordnat1 (talk) 12:17, 24 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Not sure I agree here; intuitively the -ise of expertise is totally unrelated to -ese. /s/ in expertise sounds OK to my American ears (but not what I would say) whereas /s/ in Portuguese/Japanese/etc. sounds very strange. Benwing2 (talk) 05:09, 26 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

What about the pronunciation of the final consonant of blouse and vase, which exhibit the same UK/US divide? There seems to be a phenomenon whereby, at least for certain words said by certain speakers, the -se ending is pronounced as a different consonant in the two countries. Overlordnat1 (talk) 14:15, 30 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

treble

I'm pretty sure no-one in Australia ever uses this word to mean "triple" anymore, whether as an adjective, noun or verb. Is this usage restricted to one region (UK perhaps?) or is it just an Australian thing? This, that and the other (talk) 13:11, 18 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I found some research papers and news articles using the phrase has trebled .... e.g. "Doctors' early retirement has trebled since 2008", and that paper goes on to say "The number of doctors taking early retirement from the NHS has more than trebled over the past 13 years" in the lede paragraph so it wasn't just a one-off usage. That paper was published in the UK, and interestingly enough it does seem to be more common in the UK just based on a quick search of that one phrase, but there are some usages from other English speaking countries.

Searching for the adjective and noun will be a much more difficult endeavor since we can't just pad it with words and affixes, and searching for a plural form "trebles" isn't going to help us either. —Soap— 13:35, 18 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

It's old-fashioned in the UK as well. I think we can probably just stick "dated" on it. Theknightwho (talk) 03:12, 20 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

OK, done. This, that and the other (talk) 09:03, 20 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

It's still quite common in football (soccer) commentary in the UK. I've never heard a commentator say, for example, "Liverpool could win the triple this season", it's always "treble" BbBrock (talk) 21:28, 21 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Contradiction about voilà

The entry for "voilà" contradicts itself about whether it can be used as an interjection in French. The English section states that English only uses "voilà" as an interjection, and the translation table says that the French translation of the English word "voilà" is "voilà", indicating that "voilà" can be used as an interjection in French. However, the French section of the entry states that French only uses "voilà" as a verb and not as an interjection (which would indicate that "voilà" is somewhat of a false friend). Which one is it? TTWIDEE (talk) 16:03, 18 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

It can be used as an interjection in French, in my experience of Canadian French, though it's possible that the interjection represents an anglicism. It seems more likely to me, however, that the English usage as an interjection reflects the French, rather than vice versa. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 22:13, 18 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

In French, it's a verb acting as an interjection if no subject (object?) is provided. It's like, say, English having the verb "take", while Southern Yukaghir has ма, an interjection corresponding to the English imperative. Were we a Southern Yukaghir dictionary, the translation equivalent of this interjection would be an English verb. Thadh (talk) 22:26, 18 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The line between an imperative sentence and an interjection is a bit fuzzy, anyway: "Stop doing that!" / "Stop that!" / "Stop it!" / "Stop!" Chuck Entz (talk) 23:03, 18 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Imperatives are kind of interjections anyway, they just so happen to be from a verb... Vininn126 (talk) 23:28, 18 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

perogen, pierogen

These words occur in English as plurals for the pierogi dumpling, but there are so many spellings for the singular form that I don't know which plural belongs with which singular. I've created them as plural-only entries; maybe someone can do better. Equinox ◑ 16:47, 19 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Like you, I can't find either of these being used alongside any singular form, not any of the singulars we list at pierogi (which makes sense, these are names for the dish in Yiddish, not inflected forms of the Polish- and Russian-derived forms listed at pierogi) nor other possible singulars like *pieroge, *peroge, *perog, etc. Although they're countable ("15 pierogen"), they don't seem to have attested singulars. The same is true for some other uncommon dish names, like kielke. - -sche (discuss) 15:44, 20 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

gaffer

"(in Maritime regions) The baby in the house." Does that mean {{lb|en|The Maritimes}}, or just any maritime regions? - -sche (discuss) 07:10, 21 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I think it refers to the Canadian Maritimes. Checking search results for "little gaffer" on archive.org yields a much higher than normal proportion of hits published in Canada or by Canadian authors. OTOH, I'm not seeing a close connection to the Maritimes specifically. In the first fifteen hits I see results from Saskatchewan, Ontario, Alberta, etc., but only one from the Maritimes, and even that one is a syndicated newspaper column that could have originated elsewhere. (For further evidence, the IP that originally added this, Special:Contributions/71.7.168.25, currently geolocates to Halifax.) 70.172.194.25 21:47, 21 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I can find evidence on GoogleBooks that a gaffer can be a gaff-rigged boat([28],[29] and [30] and [31]) and that a gaffer can also refer to a sailor who hunts large fish with a gaff, so in other words it’s a synonym for a whaler([32] and [33]) but not that it means sailor generally. There seems to be a contrast in formality between gaffer being an informal term for any boss and it being the FORMAL term for a chief electrical technician or glass blower([34],[35],[36] and the following which claims he has a ‘servitor, footmaker and a boy’ all working under him[37]) but NOT an apprentice glass blower, so defining it to simply mean any glass blower seems wrong and we should mention in the etymology that the meaning of chief electrical technician is at the very least influenced by the colloquial sense of any chief/boss, even if we do claim the term primarily comes from gaff=hook. There are also (one-off?) uses of the word to mean ‘one who makes gaffes’[38] and an alteration of the derogatory term kaffir(black person)[39]. Overlordnat1 (talk) 08:34, 22 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Note that -sche has already changed "in Maritime regions" to "Canada" (in case my later addition on the page made it less obvious).DaveyLiverpool (talk) 09:14, 22 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The ones that aren't derived from gaff or gaffe or kaffir all seem to be derived from something referring to an old[er] man- not exactly a baby. Chuck Entz (talk) 10:40, 22 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

If you search specifically for "little gaffer" (which is how it was originally added to the entry), you find hits related to children. See the search results I linked above. A few are about boats admittedly, but not the majority. 70.172.194.25 14:01, 22 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Sounds very similar to the way fellow gets used. Theknightwho (talk) 14:40, 22 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

va banque

Per talk page: what does "hit the bank" even mean? That's not real English, is it? Equinox ◑ 17:51, 21 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Not for me. Sounds like a non-native speaker tried to render it in English and failed. It seems to mean "to go all in" in a gambling sense. See va banque. I suspect this may even be a pseudo-Gallicism; the grammar is strange for French. User:PUC can maybe comment. Benwing2 (talk) 00:39, 23 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I'm pretty sure I've heard the phrase, but it's not part of my idiolect and it's been a while since I've come across it, so I can't recall the context. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 01:51, 23 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I've just created a new section about the French origin below (before I saw this section) - Wiktionary:Tea_room/2022/September#va_banque#French. Anatoli T. ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 07:49, 23 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Interestingly, many of the hits I can find are e.g. English books quoting Germans, or Russians, or other things "twice removed" from running French. The French hits I spotted where it looks idiomatic are in turn also quoting or translating Germans! Anyway, it does seem to exist in English; it's usually italicized, but if it's not valid French then the hits must be English despite the italics... - -sche (discuss) 20:13, 23 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I can find an English book from 1793 mentioning "Va la banque; or Va banque" as (French) phrases in a (French) game, "meaning that he will go all the money on the banque or table, or abide the event of winning or losing as much." I can find uses of "va banque" in German texts, as a term of this or another game, by the 1780s. I can find the longer form va la banque in one French text from 1776 (reprinted again in 1786), but not in more recent French texts. Interesting if a rare, possibly game-specific phrase that fell out of use in French(?) has lived on in so many other languages. (See Citations:va banque, Citations:va la banque.) - -sche (discuss) 21:47, 23 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

va banque#French

Moved from Talk:va_banque

Is there any source for the existence of this phrase in French? French Wiktionary doesn't have it, neither do Larousse, Robert and CNRTL, and as a French speaker it sounds as weird to me as some of the entries in Category:English pseudo-loans from French. Mutichou (talk) 13:06, 21 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@PUC: Is it an older French expression? Anatoli T. ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 07:45, 23 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Please note there is a section WT:RFT#va_banque about the English term above. --Anatoli T. ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 08:00, 23 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Atitarev, Benwing2, Mutichou: Never heard or seen this, doesn't sound right/grammatical to me either. P U C – 15:18, 23 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

We should honestly probably RFV the supposed descendants as well. Vininn126 (talk) 16:03, 23 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Russian, Polish are quite valid. There is even a famous Polish 1981 movie called so (vabank). Apparently, it’s a card term, also had some historical meaning in Germany as well. Just not clear about the French usage, if it exists at all. Seems like a pseudo-French. I am on the wrong side of the night now. Will probably check more later. Anatoli T. ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 17:03, 23 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

It is probably modelled after French va-tout which is a card term. Nevertheless, the French entry should be deleted as it isn't grammatically correct, and mark the “borrowings” as pseudo-French. — Fenakhay ^{(حيطي · مساهماتي)} 19:50, 23 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

give me a break

This currently redirects to give someone a break however it should have its own entry. It is commonly used as an interjection for disapproval. "The team is doing good? Give me a break!" 172.58.171.194 13:05, 22 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

"Give me a break" in the use you refer to is definition 2 of give someone a break. Like many similar English predicates and English intransitive verbs, it can be used in the imperative. Why should we have to have any entry for such a feature of grammar? DCDuring (talk) 19:44, 22 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I think a usage note might suffice to indicate that sense 2 is frequently used in the imperative "give me a break!" typically with sarcastic overtones. Benwing2 (talk) 00:34, 23 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Öbaut

This slang Finnish word has an entry in the Finnish Wiktionary but not in the English one. Asking around Finnish friends, it is in common use as a Finnish spelling of "about". Does it deserve its own English entry? BbBrock (talk) 20:58, 21 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@BbBrock: Please use WT:RE:fi. Equinox ◑ 21:33, 21 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, I have done so. BbBrock (talk) 12:45, 22 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

NURSE vowel vs stressed schwa in turfy

I thought words like nurse, term, and turf were conventionally analysed as having /ɝ/ in rhotic/US English and /ɜː/ in non-rhotic/UK English, but recently, different editors in Wiktionary and Wikipedia changed some words like turf to use /ɚ/. Admittedly, the distinction seems academic, but this would mean words like turfy have a stressed schwa, which I thought English was conventionally analysed as not having (outside dialects like NZ). But this diff on WP claims the OED does give a schwa for both the US and UK(!) pronunciation of the homophone TERF, whereas Cambridge, Collins, and Dictionary.com give the traditional notation of /ɝ/~/ɜr/ for turf. (Merriam-Webster lists both nurse and turf with a schwa.) How should we notate this vowel? - -sche (discuss) 19:58, 22 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

This probably has the answer you're looking for. Vininn126 (talk) 21:30, 22 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

So /tʌ˞fi/? Let's not! 😂 (I think we should stick to the conventional notation with /ɝ/, personally, but if not then we should consistently switch, not just on a few entries.) - -sche (discuss) 21:54, 22 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

That is not what he's saying! It's more that schwa and those mid vowels are merging. So the rhotic schwa does really fit. Vininn126 (talk) 21:59, 22 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Geoff Lindsey's Current British English dictionary provides all of those with /әː/. That the sound in question is in fact a schwa is supported by the vowel charts cited on our Wikipedia pages for both Received Pronunciation and General American. As 'revolutionary' as a stressed ⟨/әː/⟩ or ⟨/ә˞/⟩ may seem, it appears to be descriptively accurate. Nicodene (talk) 22:40, 22 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

FWIW I have commonly seen /ɜː/ for British English but /ɚ/ for American English. In my speech (and I suspect in the speech of most Americans) there is no obvious difference between the two vowels of the word murder, whereas they are clearly different for British speakers. I should also add, for a few years now I've thought of implementing a pronunciation module for English that uses some sort of respelling that's fairly close to the actual spelling (as much as that is possible in a language with as irregular a spelling system as English), so it abstracts away somewhat the actual IPA pronunciation. In a system like that, you could switch from /ɜː/ to /әː/ in the module itself rather than having to modify thousands of pages, and it would enforce some consistency in the generated pronunciations, which currently is totally lacking. Benwing2 (talk) 00:30, 23 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

According to which source are the qualities of the vowels in murder clearly different in RP? That does not match my perception or the aforementioned vowel charts. Nicodene (talk) 00:50, 23 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I would say that many RP speakers would use the same vowel for both syllables of murder, namely the CUT vowel, but simply lengthen the first syllable. Geoff Lindsey has posted two excellent videos on STRUT vs. SCHWA on YouTube recently but the only problem is he seems to be pronouncing the schwa vowel slightly differently each time he says it, to my ears. The fact that he refers to a ‘Northern English 2’ dialect and claims that this encompasses Midlands dialects means that he seems to be using the word ‘schwa’ to refer to what I think of as a ‘Birmingham u’, a vowel that’s half-way between the STRUT and PUT vowels. Another way of describing it would be to say that it seems to refer to the same vowel used even in stressed positions in the following accents: broad West Country (as sung by the Wurzels), in the speech of many African Americans (like 50 cent in the song ‘In da club’), and in the speech of many Southern US and most Western Irish speakers. It sounds to me that many South East Walian people use the STRUT vowel consistently and never a schwa, like many Americans. Would I be right in saying that Cerys Matthews is singing the word other with the STRUT vowel for both syllables here?:- 1:01 into ‘The Ballad of Tom Jones - Space ft. Cerys Matthews(I’m not sure if you’ll be able to get the YT link to work but it can easily be searched for - please improve the link if necessary and possible)--Overlordnat1 (talk) 02:21, 23 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

OK, if we want to change this, can we change it consistently? But maybe we should leave the traditional NURSE vowel indicated until we can get a pronunciation module together (I enthusiastically support the idea of one!), because then — even though there are lots of exceptional cases that would probably have to allow for adding extra values manually, like the many pronunciations of eschew — we could add systematic variations like sound mergers automatically. Even if the module took the currently-provided IPA pronunciations as its input, it could usefully know "whenever there's /ɔ/, add {{a|cot-caught}} {{IPA|en|/ɑ/}}", and we could provide finer historical data, e.g. inputting and showing the historical NURSE and STRUT vowels as older pronunciations alongside showing the modern merger to schwa. It could also automatically add enPR; I sometimes see people who don't know one system or the other add the same pronunciation in enPR on a different line from the IPA or vice versa as if they are two different pronunciations, which is not ideal. - -sche (discuss) 18:06, 23 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@-sche Yup, these sorts of things are precisely what I had in mind. It may be a little while, however, before I get to this, as I'm currently working on updating the Portuguese pronunciation module and rewriting the Portuguese conjugation module. Benwing2 (talk) 04:58, 26 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

傷寒病

Is this diff correct? I guess I'm applying 2022 dictionaries to a 1956 quote, so it feels dangerous. What would people have said in 1956? --Geographyinitiative (talk) 16:02, 23 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

dirty old man definition is inaccurate and possibly even ageist

Some rollbackers insist to revert an edit that fixes an unfair and incorrect element that include "middle-aged" as the "old" described by the definition of "dirty old man", and this led to an easily avoidable edit war that ended with the block of the page still intact and incorrect. Middle-aged men are not included in the category of old people, elderly do, middle-aged are not included in that category and are not to be considered old, if someone calls the old it is totally relative per individual and situation but certainly it's not objective, they simply are not old objectively, and it is also ageist to leave that incorrect element intact in the page with the definition, elderly are old, not middle-aged, period. And I ask for its removal from the page because it is simply wrong and insulting. 94.36.24.4 21:36, 23 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I reverted this because you turned a gloss into a non-gloss definition without even noticing it. P U C – 21:51, 23 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

To clarify, since I'm guessing 94.36 doesn't know what that means, a gloss definition for the word house would be "a structure for people to live in"; a non-gloss definition for house would be "a five-letter word meaning a structure for people to live in". The word house may be a five-letter word, but a house is not a word; a house is just the structure itself. We tend to avoid non-gloss definitions when possible, and when we do use them we italicize them. All of this is explained better at Template:non-gloss definition. In this particular case, the term already had the label (derogatory), so stating that it is an insult is redundant to top it off. 70.172.194.25 21:58, 23 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

We're a descriptivist dictionary, not a prescriptivist one. If people use the term "dirty old man" to refer to middle-aged men and not just elderly men, then our definition should encompass that. Whether or not it is right to call a middle-aged person "old" is not a question within our purview.

If you are disputing the idea that people even use this term to refer to middle-aged men, we have a process for that. It's called WT:RFV. But I suspect that this usage does exist, whether you like it or not. 70.172.194.25 22:04, 23 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I believe that middle-aged individuals would be included within 'dirty old man'. I tried to find an example of a 40ish person being called dirty old man, but the best I have found so far is But, in this country dirty old men are frowned upon. The question is: are dirty young men frowned upon as well? . --Geographyinitiative (talk) 00:50, 24 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

To me this phrase implies a man who is specifically interested in meeting someone much younger than himself. The dirty is as important as the old ..... a corresponding term for younger men might exist if such behavior was more common among younger age groups, but it is not. So I don't think it's ageist in and of itself. However, the definition might span the spectrum from whatI'm saying to a more literal use, where someone is perceived as out of place simply because they are much older than the other people around them, whatever their intentions. —Soap— 13:35, 24 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The definition of middle-aged states clearly not old nor young, so it doesn't belong to the dirty old man category and it is inappropriate and incorrect, if not even insulting. 151.44.36.118 18:37, 25 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Your argument makes no sense. A dirty old man doesn't have to be an old man, in the way that "once in a blue moon" doesn't have to involve an actual physical moon in space that is blue-coloured. It's just a phrase with its own meaning. Equinox ◑ 18:39, 25 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Could we change "usually middle-aged or elderly" to "usually old"; would that resolve this? But it's just "usually", it doesn't necessarily have to be old, as Equinox says. But it probably wouldn't be used of e.g. a 21-year-old acting lecherous to another 21-year-old: is there, like Soap suggests, a second element we should add, that the man is acting in a "lecherous or lewd manner, especially towards people his age or younger"? I considered just "..., especially towards younger women" but I think gay men can also be dirty old men, and also an old man being lecherous to people his own age could still be a dirty old man, no? - -sche (discuss) 00:28, 26 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Let's check the WT:LEMMINGs. When I was 25 I dated a 17yo girl which would probably get me in all kinds of Twitter trouble now, but we liked each other a lot. Was I dirty (surely), was I old (no, only older)... I guess the point here is relativity. Same way "OK boomer" may get thrown at Gen-Xers. Ha! Equinox ◑ 02:22, 26 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

quae erant demonstranda

We state it is a noun (whereas the singular is a “Phrase”) but it does not seem one. It was changed from “Phrase” by @Rua in 2013. J3133 (talk) 09:44, 25 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

My initial inclination would be to just change it back to "phrase"; the Latin is listed as a phrase. I wonder if the issue is that it's considered awkward for things other than nouns to have plurals. But it does sometimes happen; we list manqués as the (adjective) plural of manqué. (Compare also subaudi vs subaudite.) - -sche (discuss) 00:33, 26 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@-sche: Also notate bene (listed as the plural of the phrase nota bene). Other examples: emerita, emeritae, emeriti, extraordinaires, Québécoise. These are “adjective forms”; thus, should manqués also be an “adjective form” or should all be “adjectives”? J3133 (talk) 05:10, 26 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I think they should all be adjective forms. Probably the issue is that these are edge-case exceptions to the rule that English adjectives don't inflect into "adjective forms" for plurality, so someone may have considered it more parsimonious to view manqué and manqués both as adjectives than to posit the existence of English adjective (plural) forms. But I wonder if we should go even further in the other direction and reduce at least some of the POS sections of subaudite to just "plural of subaudi"... - -sche (discuss) 19:15, 26 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

mobilization

What's the difference between sense 2 ("The marshalling of troops and national resources in preparation for war") and sense 3 ("The process by which the armed forces of a nation are brought to a state of readiness for a conflict")? P U C – 17:23, 25 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The two senses go back to 2006, so I suspect it's "people used to enter different wordings of the definition on different lines as if they were different definitions" (something people still do on Urban Dictionary). Interestingly, other dictionaries are less comprehensive than us and also vary in which subset of our senses they cover; MW has only two senses, for the act of mobilization or the state of being mobilized (the latter of which we may be lacking); Dictionary.com has two senses for military vs non-military mobilization (like mobilization of a nation's resources to fight disease or climate change). Anyway, I'm going to merge these. - -sche (discuss) 00:20, 26 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@-sche: Thank you. I usually don't feel confident merging senses myself as I always fear there might be some subtlety I might be missing, but unwarranted sense splits seem to be a regular occurrence here. That's pretty irritating, as it makes adding translations harder... P U C – 18:20, 27 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

maternal half-uncle, maternal half aunt

One has a hyphen; the other has not. Cleanup job for anyone who's bored. (Not you, WF. Get out.) Equinox ◑ 23:04, 25 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Give them a finger

There's seemingly no entry for "(you) give them/'em a finger (and they want/take your whole hand/arm)". What should the title for an entry for this be? — Alexis Jazz (talk) 01:46, 26 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I've never heard of it, but clearly a variant of give them an inch and they'll take a mile. Equinox ◑ 02:20, 26 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Equinox, never? If other native speakers don't know it either this variant might originate from the Dutch saying "Je geeft ze een vinger en ze nemen je hele hand". (which is literally the same) @Lingo Bingo Dingo, what do you think? — Alexis Jazz (talk) 17:34, 26 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

FWIW, German says this too (gib jemandem den kleinen Finger, und er nimmt die ganze Hand, or reich ...), as does French (on lui en donne long comme le doigt, il en prend long comme le bras), Azerbaijani (barmaǧını ver, qolunu sümürüb aparsın / ... aparacaq, "give him a finger and he will bite your arm") and Russian (дай ему палец, он всю руку откусит, "give him a finger, he'll bite off the whole hand"). So it's probably borrowed from a variety of sources, unless it's so general that we figure it probably just also exists in (native) English (but I too have never heard it in English, only in German). For example, in Noufel Bouzeboudja's 2015 A Pebble In The River (page 80), context suggests it's French: "Give him a finger, he takes the whole arm. This is what you are doing with this boy." "Monsieur knows their proverbs!" Whereas, Henry William Fischer's 1914 The Secret History of the Court of Berlin has someone say "If you once give him a finger, he wants the whole arm." about the Kaiser, albeit in the context of him literally holding a person's little finger while kissing his way up their arm. - -sche (discuss) 18:58, 26 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Alexis Jazz I've also never heard it (native US English speaker). Nosferattus (talk) 15:44, 30 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Hmm...give them an inch and they'll take a mile doesn't only refer to them, so should it be moved to give someone an inch and they'll take a mile in keeping with our usual use of "someone" as the placeholder? Then this finger/hand/arm phrase would also belong at a give someone... title. Wherever we put it, we'll need redirects from the many variations: "You give them your hand and they take your whole arm" vs you give them a finger and they either take or bite either a hand or an arm... I can even find the hybrid give them an inch, google books:"they take your whole arm"... - -sche (discuss) 18:58, 26 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

λειφω

The word given has a definition completely in Greek, which needs to be fixed, and admittedly the word itself doesn't look like Modern Greek (eg. containing reduplication and the augment, despite Modern Greek completely losing the augment), despite the transcription being in Modern Greek, and it, itself being under the (Modern) Greek header rather than Ancient Greek. I also can't find it in the online Triantafyllidis Dictionary, so any confirmation from Greek speakers etc. of its current use in Modern Greek. Admittedly I am not much of an expert in Greek, so any help regarding this would be gladly taken. -- Qwed117 (talk) 19:08, 26 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

murumuru butter, shea butter; cashew butter, almond butter

We have entries for some cosmetic butters like shea butter, but not others like murumuru butter; we have some food butters like almond butter, but not others like cashew butter. Are these generally idiomatic (we should add the missing ones), generally SOP (we should RFD at least some of the existing ones), or is there some difference in the idiomaticity of shea butter vs murumuru butter ("a whitish-yellowish substance extracted from the seeds of the murumuru palm, used in lotions and moisturizers, conditioners, body butter, and lip balms")?
Butter previously only covered plant butters to the extent that they were food, but I just added a sense for cosmetic butters; please revise it as needed. - -sche (discuss) 21:29, 26 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know the answer, but you mentioned (without linking) body butter: I think in a modern cosmetic sense, "butter" means something like "a greasy ointment". Equinox ◑ 21:31, 26 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

There seem to be close to a hundred terms headed by butter covered by one or more OneLook dictionaries, most abundantly cocoa butter, peanut butter, apple butter, drawn butter, shea butter, witches' butter, brown butter, clarified butter, garlic butter, nut butter, snail butter, yak butter, lemon butter, and lobster butter, but also such terms as whey butter, tanning butter, plugra butter. See “* butter”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.. DCDuring (talk) 21:52, 26 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Some of those, like witches' butter, are of course unguessable (idiomatic). But should we have ones like yak butter that are just "butter from X"? (We have some already...) - -sche (discuss) 22:54, 26 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe it all is idiomatic by reason that what it is will depend on the plant. They will have peculiar definitions, perhaps even regulated by food legislation. Like boot cut, straight fit, regular fit and so on are arts of jeans by themselves. The same issue arises with milk replacements: oat milk, peanut milk, almond milk. Is an almond milk merely a milk wherein one has put almonds or what more constitutes it, typically, especially in contradistinction to other products called milk? You see.

Then you also should consider whether you already include other products from the same organism, to include consistently; I have added most of what is made from the coconut, which in particular has a setting in tropical languages that Europeans and North Americans can’t expect so I prefer not to be prejudiced against a smorgasbord of entries. Fay Freak (talk) 18:46, 29 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I'd be most suspicious of the idiomaticity of the [MAMMAL] butter terms, which don't seem to differ vastly in terms of consistency, color, and use (broadly considered). I don't know about differences in flavor or in what form they are sold.

Perhaps some of the terms of the form PP butter might also be suspect, eg, clarified butter, drawn butter, cultured butter, fried butter, deep-fried butter, kneaded butter, melted butter, processed butter (=process butter), renovated butter, salted butter, unsalted butter (=sweet butter), whipped butter. Looking at the OneLook definitions, most seem to have at least somewhat unexpected meanings. I'd not add kneaded butter and melted butter without more supporting info.

The plant butters seem to differ greatly in terms of use, probably because plants are such varied chemical factories, so their meanings are hard to anticipate. DCDuring (talk) 22:08, 29 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The chemical and mineral butters seem clearly non-SoP, eg, mountain butter, antimony butter, rock butter

Similarly for the sauces, etc, made in kitchens, eg, black butter, brown butter, brandy butter. DCDuring (talk) 22:28, 29 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

sabotage

Again, what's the difference between sense 1 and sense 2? P U C – 18:11, 27 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

¿“Again”? If you have previously raised this, I could not find it by searching the Tea Room archives for “sabotage”.
The current situation does seem unsatisfactory. As I read it there are differences: the DoD (second) definition is a bit of a mess, seems more like a checklist of examples, covers those forms of sabotage that interest the military, and

refers only to national defence and national resources,
lists the intended effects rather than just specifying the more general “weakening”,
lists the resources targeted, which are implicit in the first definition,

though the methods may not quite agree (both: destroy; first: subvert, obstruct, disrupt; DoD: injure, also attempt — but surely a failed attempt is not really sabotage!). However, for me, even the first definition feels a bit too specific, unless the noun (unlike the verb) really is restricted to actions against an enemy rather than any opponent. It is not immediately clear that destruction of machinery in a factory is covered. It is also notable that the two groups of translations both apply to aspects of the first definition. Could it be that usage in the (US) military differs from that elsewhere? The DoD definition was added in Revision as of 2007-01-08T13:03:46 by User:CORNELIUSSEON, who no longer seems active (and whose user page mentions his “areas of expertese”). PJTraill (talk) 15:58, 29 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I have just spotted that you were referring to your section above on a similar problem at mobilization. PJTraill (talk) 16:05, 29 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

They are the same definition. Sense 2 is just inanely detailed and should be deleted. Nosferattus (talk) 15:39, 30 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Yep, the problem this time is that a user (CORNELIUSSEON) used to copy or paraphrase US military manual definitions of terms and add them as separate definitions even when they...weren't. - -sche (discuss) 18:36, 30 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

renminbi vs. yuan

As I interpret the Wikipedia discussion of Renminbi (having been redirected there from Chinese yuan), Renminbi means "People's Currency"; and the article has a hatnote saying "For the unit of currency, see Yuan (currency)". Thus it appears that yuan is countable, whereas renminbi is not countable. At present, the Wiktionary entries for these two terms do not indicate countability, and in fact both entries (in lowercase) give the other as a synonym. If there is an important distinction between the two terms they are not actually synonymous. Or is Wikipedia's apparent distinction between them misleading? I don't know the answer, and had hoped to find it here.

As a separate issue, I being a frequent user of Wikipedia accustomed to search in lowercase and taken to entries in uppercase, but rarely using Wiktionary which distinguishes between letter cases — and disregarding other spellings with diacritics — I find that "Yuan" addresses English usage only, while "Renminbi" addresses German usage only. I find this rather strange; of course German requires capitalization of nouns (such as "Yuan"), while various English sources tend to use either form without distinction, but primarily in lowercase. Milkunderwood (talk) 21:23, 27 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

yuan#English does indicate countability. On that entry, renminbi is listed under See also, not Synonyms. yuan can be used synonymously with renminbi in expressions such as "The yuan/renminbi fell against the dollar". Yuan#German (the German word for the currency unit) just hasn't been created yet. Voltaigne (talk) Voltaigne (talk) 21:41, 27 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Yuan#German is there now. Voltaigne (talk) 21:56, 27 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks very much for your very quick and helpful responses. Milkunderwood (talk) 22:33, 27 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

neurodiversity

Is this really a euphemism? Seems unlikely. ---> Tooironic (talk) 05:11, 28 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Looking at the edit history, I see the category is the work of an IP adding it, being reverted, and adding it again. I'm inclined to agree it's not a euphemism: what would it be a euphemism for, what would the 'non-euphemistic' term be? - -sche (discuss) 06:06, 28 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

One could say that it is a euphemism for mental illness among humans. That would be in parallel to other noxious views of analogs. It would be nice not to have to have the euphemism label. Fortunately, there is not much evidence supporting such a label. That could change. DCDuring (talk) 12:20, 28 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

It is not an euphemism primarily but just poor command of language with regard to difficult words: The expected term is neurodivergence, but since diversity is now so often talked about we have neurodiversity, if even it be more commonly wrong than not. The very example we quote as the first proves that: that author, for his oratory performance, really needed the parallelism to “biodiversity” – why not sneak in aught a wee arbitrary? Fay Freak (talk) 18:20, 29 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

посылка = sumption?

посылка (posylka) is said to mean sumption, which I gather means “a taking” or “the major premise of a syllogism”, but I do not see in ru:посылка that either of those senses is a good fit: the first does not fit at all, and the second seems too specific.Does it really have this exact meaning, or would it make more sense to give assumption instead? sumption seems unhelpfully obscure, and if it is accurate, then “major premise” would be more helpful. PJTraill (talk) 14:34, 29 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Apparently the gloss thinks the word as the vn. of посыла́ться, more commonly now ссыла́ться (ssylátʹsja). Fay Freak (talk) 18:06, 29 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

gendertrash

Is there any evidence of actual use as derogatory? Would more-or-less self-deprecating use, such as the cites in the entry, count? DCDuring (talk) 17:24, 29 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe we could change the label to something like "chiefly self-deprecating"? (Or "chiefly LGBT"?) - -sche (discuss) 21:14, 5 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

We have Category:English self-deprecatory terms. Binarystep (talk) 07:10, 8 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

silla de la reina

I'm sure there is a special term for this in English. In my household we called it something like "carrying the emperor". GreyishWorm (talk) 20:15, 29 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

One name is four-handed seat. DCDuring (talk) 14:42, 30 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

rational decision making

Is this SoP? I'm sure I've heard the phrase outside of economics. Equinox ◑ 01:17, 30 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

SoP or encyclopedic or both. Only one OneLook reference (a business glossary) has it, but with a tendentious definition. DCDuring (talk) 14:27, 30 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

unsatisfying and unsatisfactory

Could someone (preferably a native speaker) elaborate on the difference between these two words? P U C – 22:01, 30 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

It seems to me (a native speaker) that the difference is as follows:

unsatisfying means failing to provide some kind of sensory, emotional or aesthetic gratification.
unsatisfactory means failing to meet some minimum criterion or standard of quality.

As exemplified by the difference between a satisfying meal and a satisfactory meal.

The quality of education provided by a school could be graded by regulators as unsatisfactory, but never unsatisfying. Voltaigne (talk) 23:46, 30 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I found your explanation satisfactory, but not satisfying. More examples might help. DCDuring (talk) 02:06, 1 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Unsatisfying means “not satisfying” and unsatisfactory means “not satisfactory”. To know the difference between satisfying and satisfactory is to understand the difference between the un- versions. While the usage is not always as clearly separate as black and white, the Usage notes at satisfactory give essentially the same answer as Voltaigne. For illustrative examples of use, see the quotations for sense 1 of either term. --Lambiam 16:50, 5 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

uterine

"born of the same mother but of a different father": is there a counterpart to this, meaning "born of the same father but of a different mother"? P U C – 22:54, 30 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

agnate sibling (=paternal half-sibling). Agnate in general means "Related to someone by male connections or on the paternal side of the family". Voltaigne (talk) 23:52, 30 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]