the link should go to the Latin but it goes to the Romanian word without the macron, I'm new to wikipedia and I don't know how to edit this but maybe someone here does Umineque (talk) 02:11, 1 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not sure what you mean. The link on the page tetigere goes to tango#Latin which is technically the correct anchor for Latin. I have noticed that for some reason, Wiktionary anchor links don't work correctly when I use browsers other than Chrome, such as Firefox or Safari (I end up seeing the Sambali or Serbo-Croatian entries), but that's not an issue that can be fixed by changing the link.--Urszag (talk) 02:48, 1 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I believe what happens is that the browser loads the page, and initially all the tables are open and visible, and you get taken to the Latin section ... all slightly quicker than the javascript that collapses the tables. Once it has a chance to run and collapse the tables, the page "jumps". - -sche(discuss)20:13, 1 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Ah yes, now that you mention it, I can see that it does actually go to the right place for a moment before the page finishes loading and collapses the tables.--Urszag (talk) 20:22, 1 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I noted that the English entry for page-turner describes it as an engrossing book, which is certainly accurate. But isn't it also the term used for a person who turns pages for a soloist at a concert? If "page-turner" is not the appropriate word for the person with their left hand on the sheet music in this image, what are they instead called? Gabbe (talk) 07:49, 1 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The Finnish verb olla 'to be' is irregular and it should be removed from the "Finnish juoda-type verbs" category, as should olla eri mieltä, olla että, olla lätkässä, olla olemassa, olla samaa mieltä, and olla yötä. I cannot find the correct modules/templates where I could change this myself. Can someone else do it? (It's more essential to remove it from the juoda-type verbs category than the tulla-type, as the conjugation is somewhat similar to that of tulla, but not at all similar to that of juoda). Mölli-Möllerö (talk) 21:52, 1 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Two of the definitions at [[orange pill]] use urbanism and urbanist in ways that don't fit our definitions at those entries. The 'urbanism/urbanist' definitions at [[orange pill]] are underattested, not having any attestation that unambiguously supports the definitions given IMHO.
Are we missing the suitable definitions at [[urbanism]]/[[urbanist]]?
Is the real problem the lack of attestation of the definitions at [[orange pill]]?
@DCDuring The urbanism "orange pill" is a reference to the YouTuber Not Just Bikes (see [2], although fans were using the term earlier) who is very outspoken in his support of dense pedestrian/bike-friendly urban areas. I intentionally didn't add this sense since it didn't seem to be used outside of his fanbase, but maybe it could pass RFV now. The sense of urbanism being used here is: "Support or advocacy for dense and walkable urban areas as opposed to suburban sprawl." Ioaxxere (talk) 19:43, 3 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the partial clarification. Is there a relevant urbanism manifesto?
If a word isn't worth defining, it certainly isn't worth having in the definiens of any entry here. The orange-pill definitions send a user to definitions of urbanist ("A person who studies cities and their growth"; "An urban planner") and urbanism ("The study of cities"; "The culture or way of life of people who live in cities"; "Urbanization"; "Urban planning"). None of these shed much light of the orange pill entry. DCDuring (talk) 23:49, 3 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
This is for Etymology 1 only. It's clear that this should have a neuter gender, as Old English, OHG, and Old Norse all agree. We do show an alternative form *būrą but is anything stopping us from moving it ? Leasnam (talk) 19:27, 5 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
It is a statement from which one can draw wisdom, but that doesn't make it a proverb. It would require an extension of Wiktionary's inclusion policies. Many seem to be skeptical about true proverbs. DCDuring (talk) 15:59, 6 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks, I won't add it. Just curious, could it have been a proverb if it would have had a different form, for example "shorter letters take longer to write"? — Alexis Jazz (talk) 22:20, 6 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Evidence to establish something as a proverb for Wiktionary, it should be called a proverb in books of proverbs, it should be attestable, and more or less conform to Wolfgang Mieder's definition: "A proverb is a short, generally known sentence of the folk which contains wisdom, truth, morals, and traditional views in a metaphorical, fixed, and memorizable form and which is handed down from generation to generation".
The sentence in question is not "of the folk", often attributed to Mark Twain or other 19th century wit. It doesn't seem traditional to me. It is almost anti-traditional, inverting the convention of output being proportional to (or at least a monotonic increasing function of) input. DCDuring (talk) 00:06, 7 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Wiktionary states perhaps "Modifies a verb, indicating a lack of certainty. "
but here is a quote,
"The universe [...] is composed of an indefinite, perhaps infinite number of hexagonal galleries."
By my understanding of modern grammar, perhaps here is modifying the adjective "infinite" , as far as i can see Webclouddat (talk) 03:44, 5 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The same issue plagues the definitions of some other adverbs. We only define possibly as (1) modifying a clause or predicate, or (2) a verb; neither applies in the collocation a possibly fatal complication. And for maybe we have “Modifies a verb, indicating a lack of certainty”, which does not work for maybe final results or a maybe impossible task. --Lambiam14:46, 6 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Not a good use of a non-gloss-type definition, possibly being an excellent gloss for current usage. Maybe doesn't work well for me modifying an adjective or adverb.
I think the presumption should be that adverbs can modify any of verbs (clauses), adjectives, or adverbs.
In looking for examples, perhaps seemed to me to work better when modifying a verb (clause) than an adjective or adverb. Might this be worth a usage note? DCDuring (talk) 16:28, 6 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The way I analyze this is that the adverb modifying a verb derives from a form in which the adverb originally modified a predicate:
The witness was perhaps credible (perhaps modifies was credible)
→ a perhaps credible witness.
The transformation that makes perhaps seemingly modify an adjective is on the surface level the same as in
The solution is blindingly obvious (blindingly modifies obvious)
→ a blindingly obvious solution.
For the adverb (seemingly) modifying an adverb, the situation is even simpler:
He was seriously wounded; he was perhaps fatally wounded (perhaps modifies was fatally wounded)
→ He was seriously wounded, perhaps fatally.
I can't think of a reasonable way to put this in a usage note. This analysis seems to work for other adverbs as well (a definitely sufficient amount; a hopefully satisfactory answer; a suddenly bright star; ...). --Lambiam00:30, 7 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
IOW, it's a feature of diachronic syntax, not really lexical? I could buy that. I think that, in conventional English grammar, copulas are considered not modifiable by adverbs, but entire clauses with copulas are modifiable by ("sentence") adverbs. DCDuring (talk) 14:47, 7 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
This search finds 74 entries using the expression "a general term for" ("AGTF"), usually in the definition. Among other things it makes the definition nonsubsitutable, introducing a "type" or "category" error. It would seem that AGTF can almost always be replaced by "Any", but usually other alterations are needed.
I also see "type" errors regularly in entries for taxonomic names (Proper nouns referring to taxonomic groups) defined as common nouns in English and most other languages and vice versa. I have been amending those without restraint.
If we had a style guide [that we took seriously], we could at least point users to that when they make this kind of error. Also, a style guide [that we took seriously] could be used to give contributors explicit license to edit non-conforming entries such as (most of) these. On what basis can a contributor reword these definitions without some one-entry-at-a-time process? Is it just a matter of being BOLD? DCDuring (talk) 02:27, 7 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
And I edited 'Style guide' and started 'English definitions', but forgot about them, as they are never referred to. They seem like dead letters. I suppose they may be useful for venting about this kind of complaint, without having any effect on contributor behavior. DCDuring (talk) 00:44, 8 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I'd like to start expanding the Omotic entries on Wiktionary, but I'm not sure if I'm allowed to use my own reconstructions of Proto-Omotic and Proto-North Omotic. Saph668 (talk) 12:30, 7 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Yes. Everything hinges on how straightforward the reconstruction is. I think for Afroasiatic branches in particular this is necessary. As there aren’t reliable as well as comprehensive reference works ultimately one won’t rely on them and either do the needful or leave dark figures. Then at least your materials and contacts shall infer entries, which is the same methods otherwise published research has to apply and you have to understand to assess it for our purposes as we don’t uncritically copy everything published somewhere with a star either, corresponding all with notion that Wiktionary is a secondary source.
Surely the expectations of people towards literature use are different depending on what is around! Proto-Indo European reconstructions have become advanced enough that unsourced pages for it and some of its branches are frowned upon, and at the same time the discrepancies are in so far as the claimed terms are in danger of being vagary and speculative: Whereas deffo every occasional Proto-Slavic editor somewhen added his own collations without much looking because in that language we see much nigh. You need these pages anyway to interlink the entries for the languages within the family, isn’t it? Reconstruction pages are also: a convenient index. Be convenient. The more you work on individual languages in the mainspace the less it will even be personal, it will be out of necessity, ex officio. Fay Freak (talk) 13:11, 7 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
There is no prohibition that I’m aware off, but I’m inclined to advise against doing so. The issue is that we have no way of verifying the plausibility of such reconstructions. At the moment we only have the Proto-Omotic entry *kʰaiddzí; we do not even have entries for Bender’s reconstructions. It should not be hard to get scholarly sound reconstruction work published, which gives experts the opportunity to scrutinize the results. --Lambiam16:58, 7 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The issue there may be the same. Somebody publishes and … nothing happens, attention has not lead to voiced comments. Because who would be the audience? I do advise against starting with Proto-something entries without even pushing any something family entries though; I suppose that due to the low digital accessibility of the materials the descendants cannot easily be verified either if there are Proto-Omotic entries so it will make sense if Saph668 creates reference templates and sources the descendants on their dedicated pages. The legitimacy of all depends on where and how one starts of course. So I didn’t want to make a demotivating suggestion but more likely gratifying ones. Fay Freak (talk) 17:10, 7 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Note that, while Wiktionary is a secondary source, the essay states that with respect to etymologies we are more like Wikipedia:
“Verification on Wikipedia asks ‘can we find a reliable source that says it is the case?’. This is also true for certain aspects of Wiktionary, such as for etymologies and pronunciation.”
If Saph668’s reconstruction efforts meet scholarly standards so that the work can be published in a peer-reviewed journal, we’ll all be very happy if they add the material here. --Lambiam20:04, 7 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
If you want, most of the content I'll be adding will be found in my sandbox. You can check there; though I only have the numerals there so far. Saph668 (talk) 20:12, 7 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@Saph668: By stealing my code from Arabic reference templates, replacing the bibliographic information. Basic journal piece: {{R:arc:Fraenkel:1894}} Basic book: {{R:phn:Lipinski:2004}}. More complicated ones like {{R:fa:Blochmann}} or {{R:fa:Vullers}} can switch volumes. But you start it with the light ones and get more used to making reference templates over time, I have become quick in making new reference templates after initial inhibitions of sloth of course. Also you do bodybuilding to be less lazy and create templates during the set rests. Fay Freak (talk) 04:47, 8 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Not an expert but looking at usage I don't think so, it seems like parostosis (para- + ostosis) is an uncommon term for abnormal bone development and periostosis (periosteum + -osis) is inflammation of the periosteum, the membrane around the bones. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 22:13, 14 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
One of the senses of Bulgarian воал(voal) (French voile, English veil) is "thin layer over a photographic negative, which reduces the contrast of the image". Is there an English word for that?
We have it under fog#Verb. This exemplifies one of the problems with having a noun section for ing-forms of English verbs. We have accustomed users, even ourselves, to not bother using the link to a lemma from a form of definition to find what they need. If users won't follow that kind of link, we need to basically duplicate, with rewording, the definitions in the base form of the verb. DCDuring (talk) 17:15, 10 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
No, it's nothing like as clean as that - there is general agreement that Baltic is at least a valid paraphyletic grouping. What do you mean by 'North Omotic'? Does it include Mao and Dizoid languages? There are even doubts about the validity of Omotic, and some of Bender's work on Omotic morphology left me with the sinking feeling that there was a cline of Afrasianity within 'Omotic'. --RichardW57m (talk) 10:50, 16 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Gonga, Ometo, Bench, and Yemsa/Janjero are what would be included (see Blažek 2008 in In Hot Pursuit of Language in Prehistory). And while you do have somewhat of a point that Omotic is doubtful morphologically, at least regular sound correspondences can be established, unlike Afroasiatic. Saph668 (talk) 12:08, 16 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
And Proto-Omotic does seem to have a larger reconstructible vocabulary than Proto-Afroasiatic (35 items)!
I suggest you take the request to WT:BP to add both the group and its proto-language, along with a definition, giving what it definitely includes and what it definitely didn't. Do mention that it includes the Gonga and Ometo families. Possibly 'Proto-Ta-Ne Omotic' would be a better name, as 'North Omotic' currently seems horribly ambiguous, and Gonga-Gimojan is a totally obscure mouthful. --RichardW57m (talk) 10:49, 17 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
ontogenesis is defined as "The generation and development of an individual organism by the characteristic process of ontogeny associated with its species"; but ontogeny is merely defined as "ontogenesis". So it's circular. Equinox◑10:30, 10 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks. I merged the t-boxes. There may be some distinction here between the words, and we could pull them back apart later if there is, but even the old ontogeny page had entries like ontogenezis in the t-box, so I suspect the difference is insignificant. —Soap—22:21, 10 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I think the usage note is unclear, at least for beginners.
1.) It says "何 is usually read as なに, but before だ, で, の, it is read as なん" Just making sure, is this referring to the first character of the following word? (So, any word which begins with だ, で, or の, regardless of what that word is?) Or is it talking only about those three words specifically? (The verb da, the particle de, and the particle no?)
2.) It also says "When followed by で, both readings are possible, albeit with different meanings." I don't quite understand what this means. I do see that there's a separate word 何で / なんで which has a different meaning. So, nani de would mean "what" (nani followed by particle de), while nande would mean "why"? Is that all it's saying? 2601:49:8400:26B:351C:3CE7:7DB0:E8E15:14, 10 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
What youre saying makes sense to me. The three words だ, で, の take the shorter pronunciation, and there is a minimal pair of nani de vs nande. Im surprised others havent commented here because this looks easy enough. I dont know Japanese .... not even entry-level .... so I am mostly posting to attract more attention to this thread, but again, what youre saying looks correct to me. —Soap—13:42, 16 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
We have this labelled "obsolete", whereas (Collins and Merriam-Webster have it as dialectal (England) instead. Are any of our editors from England familiar with it in modern times, or is it indeed obsolete? - -sche(discuss)19:41, 10 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I don't understand the following usage note in the entry cousin: "In the southern US, the relation is considered the number of links between two people of common ancestry to the common aunt or uncle." Someone please enlighten me. Thanks. — Sgconlaw (talk) 21:48, 10 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I think it's a continuation of the bullet point that precedes it. Beyond that, I'm not entirely sure what it means and don't care to expend the brain power figuring it out. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 01:36, 11 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I take it to be claiming that in the southern US, either the "first/second/third cousin" part or the "once/twice/thrice removed" part is determined by counting "the number of links between two people of common ancestry to the common aunt or uncle", and that this is different from how other people employ those terms (if it's not different, then specifying "In the southern US, ..." is weird). However, I have not found evidence that southerners actually consistently employ the terms differently than anyone else. - -sche(discuss)19:31, 11 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I've removed the unclear usage note for now. It can be reinstated if someone can figure out exactly what it means, and whether it is accurate. — Sgconlaw (talk) 21:29, 14 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
If I understand and remember correctly, in "your nth cousin, Bob", n refers to the degree. Suppose "Bill" is the most recent common ancestor of you and Bob, and x, y are the number of generations (starting with your respective parents) from Bob to Bill and you to Bill, respectively. The degree is min(x,y), and removal is calculated as max(x,y)-min(x,y). So in other words, degree and removal are the distance to the most recent common ancestor (from whomever is closest), and how many generations you and Bob are "separated" by. I could be wrong or there may be multiple conventions but I believe this is how it works. A cursory search did not yield especially helpful results. AP295 (talk) 05:30, 23 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Does this term really mean "raven" (in the sense that saying "I fed some ralphs today" would make sense in some parts of the UK some time ago?) From what I have been able to gather, "ralphs" was never used to refer to ravens (although there could be something). Instead, it was a common name to refer to ravens a long time ago, possibly starting with James Montgomery's 1797 poem Prison Amusements (From the tremendous beak of Ralph; / A raven grim, in black and blue). I am not sure how this should be recorded. CitationsFreak (talk) 22:11, 10 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
If nothing else, you could add a sense at Ralph along the same lines as the dog-name senses at Rover and Fido. Here is one place that explicitly comments on ravens being named Ralph, and this one mentions Ralph the raven among nicknames contributed by readers. And here is a raven named Ralph in 1782. The choice of names no doubt has something to do with euphony: If you think about it, the two words have similar sounds: they both start with "R" and the only phonemic difference between the "ph" and the "v" is voicing. Chuck Entz (talk) 03:35, 11 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
And Ralph used to be commonly pronounced /ɹeɪf/, which is sometimes now spelled Rafe, so it makes even more sense. In fact I was wondering if the original setup with this as a common noun was actually correct, but that it was first spelled rafe, of which ralph would be a fanciful respelling. But we dont have cites for rafe as a variant of raven, and neither do we have evidence of OE hræfn ever lacking an /n/, so i'll put this on the list of things to research if i ever get very bored, since it doesnt look very likely. Best regards, —Soap—08:16, 11 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
There's a specific, relatively recent sense of danger as a personal (and quite strong) insult in British slang. The problem is it's hard to pin down a definition. I've seen it used
to imply someone is a pervert (for example "Why you pretending to be a bird to chat to blokes online you absolute Danger")
to imply that someone is stupid or mentally disturbed (for example: "Again nothing about this on/in the evil corrupt rightwing controlled TV news, everyone should find their silence and power scary." "It was live on ITV you absolute danger.")
just as a general insult (for example "ONLY JOKING YOU FUCKING DANGER.").
I assume it must be a shortening of "danger to society" or a similar phrase, but can anyone shed any more light (and maybe know where to find some better citations)? Smurrayinchester (talk) 12:22, 12 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
This would be dark adjective #7 "Conducive to hopelessness; depressing or bleak." or #9 "Extremely sad, depressing, or somber, typically due to, or marked by, a tragic or undesirable event." Then the noun sense at days: "A particular time or period of vague extent." Equinox◑15:27, 12 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
This strikes me as a bit too literal and vaguely SOP. From the Google hits, it seems to instead mean a trope or type of fictional (gaming?) character. I'm also not so sure this is limited by gender or even species. Can someone more familiar with the genres in question fix this up? Chuck Entz (talk) 05:43, 13 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I reverted an IP who broke things by trying to make this into a verb entry the wrong way- but this sure looks like a verb form, not a noun. Can someone create the necessary verb entry?
I should add that the IP who created this was blocked for creating tons of dumb entries like this- though they were more notorious for their Chimpmania-sourced derogatory crud. Chuck Entz (talk) 06:56, 13 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Consider the definition from the fifth edition of the American Heritage dictionary:
An agreement to perform together an illegal, wrongful, or subversive act.
This is much clearer than wikitionary's current top definition,
The act of two or more persons, called conspirators, working secretly to obtain some goal, usually understood with negative connotations.
A conspiracy is an agreement or an arrangement, not per se an act. This is also consistent with the legal definition of conspiracy, e.g. "Conspiracy is an agreement between two or more people to commit an illegal act, along with an intent to achieve the agreement's goal." from https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/conspiracy. I also have caution about defining a non-idiomatic word in terms of its connotations. I'd like to simply use the definition from the American Heritage dictionary, but it wasn't clear to me from reading Wikitionary's copyright guidelines whether or not this is permitted. At any rate it should probably be changed to something to that effect. AP295 (talk) 15:26, 13 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The first definition in eighth edition of The Concise Oxford Dictionary reads a secret plan to commit a crime or do harm, often for political ends; a plot. Again, it's described as a plot not an act in and of itself. The nominalized verb form The act of conspiring appears only as the second definition. AP295 (talk) 16:12, 13 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I can conspire with my sister to hide the car keys from my father, to have a surprise party, etc. I think secret agreement is the primary definition [, but apparently that's wrong]. Illegality or immorality are frequent concomitants. The public charge of "conspiracy" can be made when there is neither secrecy (but, eg, specialized language keeps many outsiders ignorant of insider actions, etc) nor agreement among the purported conspirators. In this kind of usage, the speaker is exploiting the legal sense in which conspiracy is a crime to derogate something that may not be wrong or criminal, let alone provably criminal. DCDuring (talk) 18:36, 13 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Our entry shows 2 etymologies; if I'm seeing it correctly, the second derives from the first one. Can't we put everything under one ? Leasnam (talk) 02:58, 15 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Looks SOP to me and I would definitely not consider those altforms. You can swap out the components freely e.g. "performs well under pressure", "behaves well under pressure", "... poorly under pressure", "... under stress", "... in a high-pressure environment" and so forth. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 11:56, 15 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
As in to take from the premises and consume elsewhere, such as "two coffes to take away, please".
I am struggling to find the correct english sense and translation table entry to put the Bulgarian equivalent "за вкъщи", can someone point me in the right direction please.
@Chernorizets, @Kiril kovachev could you help me with creatin an entry for this? While "to take away" seems like a verb, what POS would "за вкъщи" be?
Thanks
SimonWikt (talk) 16:11, 15 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@SimonWikt I think "за вкъщи" would be an adverb. What is our English page for "to take away", anyway? I can't find a sense for this particular food-takeaway type meaning in the entries for "take away" or "take out". Kiril kovachev (talk・contribs) 16:16, 15 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@Kiril kovachev in the US, another equivalent translation would be "for takeout" or "to go". In fact to go is a good one for being a common idiomatic expression. What's interesting is that it's described as an adjective, which IMO is a valid way to look at. In "храна за вкъщи", the "за вкъщи" modifies "храна", rather than answering a more typical adverb question like "how". Chernorizets (talk) 21:08, 15 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
If you'd like, feel free to change it, but to me it seems like the phrase modifies the action itself, e.g. Взех яденето за вкъщи, in which case you couldn't substitute any other adjective in there, but you could substitute an adverb. For what my opinion's worth, I find it quite hard to intuit what's meant to be an adverb, especially because in school we were taught they were "words ending in -ly"... It surprised me that words like "today" are meant to be adverbs, because they seem to have nothing in common with the usual adverb. I don't know in this case what "за вкъщи" definitively is, but that above was just my reasoning. @ChernorizetsKiril kovachev (talk・contribs) 21:21, 15 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
That entry was created before we decided to omit one-off nonce words from Wiktionary (even biggies like Shakespeare); however, this particular thunderword does have okayish citations, going beyond direct quotations of Joyce's passage. Equinox◑18:38, 15 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The quotations look fine to me. Not sure if @Akaibu1 maybe meant the references at the bottom: those are just there to support the etymology so it makes sense they're specifically about Joyce. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 10:41, 16 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Words in Requested Entries violate the rules of entry creation
I recently created a new entry just for it to be requested for deletion. If somebody is going to straight-up delete entries for words similar to mine, why are those words allowed to be on Requested Entries in the first place? Newbies like me are going to visit those site and decide to spend time creating a whole entry just to be deleted. Mods have the time to read an entry and decide whether to delete it, but not to check if the words in Requested Entries fall within the rules of entry creation? Duchuyfootball (talk) 13:38, 16 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Not all Requested Entries are suitable for Wiktionary. People can suggest anything there. All new entries must meet WT:CFI conditions, regardless of where you found the word. Equinox◑13:43, 16 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The given example is the pit of the stomach, but when else can a pit be the bottom part? Should we move this to "pit of the/one's stomach"? Equinox◑20:05, 16 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The pit of despair? Though with expressions like that it really comes down to how each individual person imagines it. To me a pit is any hole deeper than it is wide and impossible to climb out from unassisted. If someone is in a pit, they're stuck at the bottom. Thus, in my mind, being in the pit of despair means being at the lowest possible point, such that even what is above me is still despair. And I didnt just create this mental imagery on the spot just to make a point .... Im a visual thinker and this is how my mind works. But I also know that other people may have any of many other completely different interpretations of the phrase, so unless we find other literal examples I agree it's just an opinion. —Soap—20:53, 16 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
We have pit of the stomach already though it should probably say something about the extended use to refer to where negative emotions are felt. The OED files it under the sense meaning a small hole or depression (our sense 10), alongside "pit of the chin" as an obsolete term for the depression between the chin and the lower lip. Anatomically the pit of the stomach is, apparently, the depression just below the sternum. "Bottom part of something" is probably just a misinterpretation of the phrase. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 21:40, 16 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
2.) I'm wondering if this etymology is correct. My gut feeling is that it's not. I would think that somebody probably just mixed up the phrase "now that you mention it" with the semantically-similar phrase "come to think of it" and ended up with "come to mention it". I have no proof of this though.
Now (that) you come to mention it definitely exists, despite the fact that we don't currently have an entry for it there are many hits online. It seems likely to me that come to mention it is short for the longer phrase, both of which are very familiar to me. As far as the issue of regionality goes, most hits for these phrases are British. I also found several websites claiming that NYCTMI is used as an abbreviation of the longer phrase, though there seem to be very few actual uses of this abbreviation as most hits are mentions not uses. --Overlordnat1 (talk) 09:32, 17 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
"Come to mention it" is definitely an ellipsis of some sort, but a lot of uses are not actually responding to what another person is saying as the entry suggests. The first published example I can find, e.g., is from Robert Service in 1979: "To have done so would have supplied Trotski (and Shlyapnikov, come to mention it) with an even broader forum..." It can equally be an ellipsis of "Now (that) I come to mention it", which is also well-attested. Attestation for "now (that) you come to mention it" goes back to the 19th century and at Newspapers.com I can see both US and UK examples, including in eye dialect in a 1965 North Carolina cartoon strip, so I don't think it's a regionalism. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 10:00, 17 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I think not—and this is easily disproven by the fact that their normative plurals are, for example mothers-in-law", ladies-in-waiting", brides-to-be. If they were suffixes, the plural morpheme would be attached to the suffix, such as in memberships (i.e. member + -ship, then the plural morpheme is affixed).
In §2.5, Compound Types, of Ch. 2, Delimitating the Compound Concept, of Part I, Theoretical Background of her 2018 book, English compounds and their spelling, Christina Sanchez-Stockhammer classifies such compounds as "phrase compounds". She writes of them:
"The status of phrase compounds is frequently disputed in the literature (e.g. by Meibauer 2003:185; Adams 2001:3; Plag 2003:136), because they are supposedly not formed according to the usual rules of word formation and rather similar to conversion (Quirk et al. 1985:1563, 1569). However, other accounts (e.g. Bauer 1983:206-207) do recognise them as a type of compound.
[...]
Since phrase compounds in general do not contradict the compound definition adopted here (cf. 2.6), and since some phrase compounds cannot be syntactic due to their ill-formedness (cf. the missing article in a pain-in-(the) stomach gesture; Bauer 1983: 207), phrase compounds are also recognised as a subcategory of compounds in the present study."[1]
Also, see within for several other references on the topic.
"notate as someone who passed [something]". Although that's a different sense of tekenen I'm guessing, looking at the examples you gave above. Thadh (talk) 14:38, 17 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I believe so, in the sense that you'd "tekenen someone else geslaagd", not yourself as is the case with "tekenen aanwezig". PUC – 16:48, 17 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I am inclined to analyze this as a punctuationally challenged variant of "aanwezig" tekenen, literally “making a mark on an attendance sheet indicating one’s presence”. The quoted one-word phrase is the object of the verb, like "present" in to respond "present".[3] --Lambiam23:54, 17 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
It must indeed be the origin of the turn; similarly, répondre présent likely comes from répondre « présent ». The question is whether these have been used often enough to start being perceived as single units. I believe it is the case for répondre présent (note that présent tends to stay invariable regardless of the sex of the subject, which imo is a sign of lexicalization); compare also cry wolf, say goodbye, crier famine. PUC – 11:02, 18 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Hello everyone, I don't believe this word is (anymore) constrained to video-game contexts. It's absolutely used in everyday situations, and describes any individual's personal insufficiencies at some task, not specifically any gaming-relevant skill. I don't know if the term was originally only used for gaming, but can we change the label to "originally video games" instead? Kiril kovachev (talk・contribs) 21:43, 17 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@Ioaxxere You're probably right, I can't totally deny the people around me I hear saying it don't play video games, but by all means I don't think it's a term restricted to gamers. It's a mainstream word as a result of meme culture, if anything. It seems many articles around do posit the gaming angle of the word, but in my personal experience it isn't necessarily like that anymore - but if you believe we should keep the label, then I guess there's no issue. I'd also refer you to this article, [4], where you can see some documentation of the word expanding outside of gaming circles. Also refer to [5], [6] if you want. For this reason I didn't want to remove the label anyway, just qualify that the current usage is not only in that sphere. Kiril kovachev (talk・contribs) 23:58, 17 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I don’t quite understand how this merits its own entry in the first place. It strikes me as just a compound of words, like thousands of other possible compounds common in vernacular English employing the words "issue" or "problem" for similar effect.
Using the example sentence provided in the entry in question as a template, for example, we could have:
Sounds like a money issue lol
Sounds like a money problem lol
Sounds like a skill problem lol
Sounds like a talent issue lol
Sounds like a talent problem lol
Sounds like a "you" issue lol
Sounds like a "you" problem lol
Sounds like a microphone issue lol
Sounds like a microphone problem lol
Sounds like a financial issue lol
Sounds like a financial problem lol
Sounds like a lady issue lol
Sounds like a lady problem lol
...
+ thousands more...
Surely at least several of those are extremely common and well-attested, and it’s exceedingly doubtful that they all merit entries.
If anything it seems like there may be a case for more generalized "noun + issue" and "noun + problem" entries (or "-issue" and "-problem" entries), having the definition of "a lack in ____, often used as an insult", or something similar. One might argue these shouldn’t exist as entries, because they merely represent a way the English language is used rather than representing semantically unique forms in their own right, but if you think about it, there aren’t a lot of other words with which one can form these kinds of compounds—the pattern is kind of idiomatic and limited to this usage of describing a kind of general lack of something, possibly used as an insult. One can’t just express this with any combination of two nouns and make sense/stay grammatical.
"A knife used by North American Indians in scalping." Well, obviously it could be used by anyone, so it's really just "a knife used for scalping", which is SoP. Unless it is a specific type of knife, in which case a proper definition should be given, describing the shape. Anyone know? Equinox◑10:24, 18 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Apparently (judging from various sites including the ref cited here) the terms "scalper knife" and "scalping knife" have been used for loosely defined categories of knives, especially in the past,[1] but any notion that scalping was usually or often done with a purpose-built knife is mistaken,[1] and it's tenuous to argue that the usage isn't inherently tinged with racism [à la "oh those crazy old injuns [sic], either they're noble savages or they're rampaging scalp collectors"]. If Wiktionary is going to keep the entry, then it should get across those facts, in some way, between the definition line and any potential usage note. Quercus solaris (talk) 22:27, 18 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Going by a general search result, it seems to occur most commonly as a (rather unappealing) selling point for antique knives, i.e. a knife allegedly used to scalp someone at some point in its career. Since it's improbable the term refers to a knife made just for the purpose, the entry should probably just be deleted rather than qualified with the imputation of racism. The reference is also commercial. The knives therein just look like ordinary skinning knives. AP295 (talk) 05:05, 23 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
As this is a descriptive dictionary the main issue is whether the term has on or more attestable definitions that are not SoP. That the name is a misnomer, ie, not really used for scalping, suggests that the term is not SoP. DCDuring (talk) 03:45, 24 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Or it could just be misuse of a word by the seller. People habitually sell fake Rolex watches as "Rolexes" but that is not enough for us to add a "fake Rolex" sense at "Rolex". Equinox◑09:02, 24 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Granted, but then "toothwort" is a specific thing, making it lexically significant, whereas "scalping knife" here is just any knife that (putatively) was used for scalping.
↑ 1.01.1Crazy Crow Trading Post LLC. Classic Early America Roach Bellys & Scalpers: Authentic Reproductions of 18th & 19th Century American Frontier Knives. Accessed November 18, 2023. https://www.crazycrow.com/roach-bellys
This now has audio and IPA, but it begins with an /s/ sound, not what you'd expect from sh spelling. However, there are alt forms spelled with s, like salwar kameez. Anyone fancy tidying things up? Equinox◑05:03, 19 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The Hebrew term for aurora borealis is either זוהרצפוניm sg(zohár tsfoní) (i.e. the simple noun זוהרm sg(zohár) + the adjective צפוניm sg(tsfoní)—not in a סמיכות(smikhút) construction) or אורות הצפוןm pl(orót hatsafón) (i.e. the irregular plural construct of the masculine noun אור(or) in a סמיכות(smikhút) construction with the noun צפוןm sg(tsafón)), but it’s never referred to as "זוהר הצפון" (i.e. with זוהרm sg(zohár) in a סמיכות(smikhút) construction with צפוןm sg(tsafón)). Likewise, the term for aurora australis is not the unattested "זוהר הדרום", but rather זוהרדרומי(zohár dromí) or אורות הדרום(orót hadaróm).
Therefore I either recommend the entry "זוהר הצפון" for deletion, since the major term in Hebrew for aurora borealis, זוהרצפוניm sg(zohár tsfoní), is really just two words, a noun with an adjective modifying it, or it should be moved to the currently nonexistent אורות הצפוןm pl(orót hatsafón), which as a סמיכות(smikhút) construction could merit its own entry.
Likewise, I recommend the same treatment for the also unattested entry "זוהר הדרום", the actual forms of which are either זוהרדרומיm sg(zohár dromí) or אורות הדרוםm pl(orót hadaróm).
I am posting here instead of making these changes myself because I wanted to see if anyone else had an opinion on the matter or could show evidence of attestation for the two of "זוהר הצפון" and "זוהר הדרום" before I made any edits on this topic.
Side note: both entries seem to have been created by a user who does not list Hebrew as a language in their userboxes (why does it seem that this is often the case with entries like this…).
nosedove should only be the simple past, not the past participle. I can't get the template to work. The help page seems to disagree with how it actually works when used. Equinox◑12:03, 19 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
There is now a module error on this page because T:sa-decl-noun-f cannot automatically identify the root of this word as a feminine noun. I have noticed that other feminine nouns usually end in -ā instead of -a, but I don't know anything about Sanskrit, so I have decided to bring it up here. Is the feminine sense supposed to be attributed to a noun ending in -ā instad? --kc_kennylau (talk) 21:31, 19 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Gang, I'm familiar with sense 13 when addressing a (real or perceived) group (e.g. someone posting a video online addressing anyone who may be watching, assuming it's more than one person). Should I change someone to a group or can a single person be addressed this way? The sense in question is "(African-American Vernacular, used in the vocative) A term of address for someone, particularly when cautioning them or offering advice." - -sche(discuss)00:01, 20 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The figurative sense formerly read as "The progression from puberty to menopause during which a woman can bear children." I think that def was bad and not substitutable (see also Talk:biological clock), so I have attempted to rewrite it: "A notional clock to which people should pay attention, lest menopause or andropause kicks in and it is too late for them to have children". I think the new def is an improvement on the old one, but I'm not entirely satisfied with the wording ("pay attention" is a bit vague, and I feel there's a register mismatch between lest, which sounds rather formal, and kick in, which sounds rather more informal...). Suggestions or new rewrites are welcome. PUC – 22:06, 20 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
In fact it can assume both meanings within the same sentence, e.g. "Hospes necavit hospitem captum manu" ("a host killed a guest that he captured with his own hand", Plautus Mostellaria 2.2.48). Greek ξένος(xénos) has the same guest/host polysemy although afaik to a lesser extent. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 11:30, 21 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
But Plautus was engaged in word play around which meaning applied to the subject and which to the object. Also, to which verb does manu apply? DCDuring (talk) 15:34, 21 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The general sense of this word is "under". Nevertheless, I encounter words with this prefix that seem to carry the sense of "going up from below", such as succedo (go up from below => succeed?), subvolo (fly up from below); all of this instead of "to go under" or "to fly under". Can this be a new sense, and if so, why is it not recorded in the "sub-" page? I see that a definition states that "Attached to verbs, may denote the position or direction of an action", but this "direction" should, logically, be "downwards" rather than the contrary. Duchuyfootball (talk) 13:34, 21 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
It's supposedly cognate with English up, having added an /s/ for unclear reasons. I think I've seen the original PIE root, Reconstruction:Proto-Indo-European/upó, glossed as "up from below" somewhere. We just give "under, below", but it wouldnt surprise me if it originally had carried a motion-based sense too. Still, cant confirm because I dont remember where I'd seen that other reconstruction. —Soap—05:44, 22 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Perhaps also important is that hyper- and super- are generally assumed to be cognate to hypo- and sub-, and that there is no evidence of a negative morpheme in any of them, suggesting that perhaps the original meaning was more complex and that "up from below" is a good choice for what it might have been. But this means that the original PIE morpheme might have been simpler, and that even upó is a derived form. We dont have a page for the purported root *h₃ewp- yet. —Soap—06:13, 22 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
This is pure speculation, but it seems possible the "h" in the purported root actually represented more of a related, fricative sound, something like /χ/, /x/, or /ç/, (/xʷ/ has also been suggested for /h₃/, as well as /ɣʷ/ see below), or even /ɧ/, /ʃ/ or just /s/, because debuccalization of this nature is attested (see: "Proto-Greek" in this section), for example in the early development of Greek, with the change of /s/ (or related fricative) to /h/ as seen in the Greek prefixes hypo- and hyper-—compare also Greek ἑπτά (or hepta-) vs. Latin septum. The entry here for hupó actually even says "with regular rough breathing ῾ (h) before initial υ (u)", and because "rough breathing" can be realized according to a spectrum of "roughness", from /h/ to more fricative sounds like those listed above, and because debuccalization of /s/ to /h/ is known to have taken place in Proto-Greek, it seems possible that all these words originate from a root that had a more fricative initial sound that was (partially) lost in Greek but retained or hardened in Latin as /s/.
As for the complete lack of initial /s/ or /h/ in the Germanic *upp/*ub, see the table section titled "Loss of laryngeals" here. See also w:Cowgill's_law#Cowgill.27s_law_in_Germanic and w:Laryngeal_theory#Pronunciation regarding the possible origin of PIE /h₃/ as a voiced labiovelar fricative, and a general discussion of laryngeals (of which /h₃/ is one) in PIE.
The gloss "up from below" appears on many popular etymology/dictionary websites (e.g. etymonline.com and dictionary.com, although their sources are not cited).
The sense "up from below" is retained in several English words of ultimate Latin origin, such as soufflé and insufflate (both by way of sufflāre), souvenir (by way of French, ultimately from Latin subvenīre, in the sense of "a remembrance welling up from the depths of the mind/memory"), and suffuse (from suffundere—e.g. in "Her cheeks were suffused with a rosy glow", the sense is of a light filtering outward and upward from below the skin). And of course there is surge, from Latin surgere, which is sub- + regere, with the definite sense of "coming up from below".
So I would say that sub-most definitely carries this sense, and that furthermore, it may be the more original sense. Or perhaps it was more of a sense of "up to a limit [from below]" than just "below".
I am not an Icelandic speaker, but I am very familiar with IPA notation, and the sound /c/ shown in the entry’s phonetic transcription is the voiceless palatal plosive, i.e. the "kya/kja" sound—not a hard "c" (IPA /k/)—which is what I have to assume you are confusing it with, because I can hear it quite clearly in the audio provided under the Icelandic heading in the entry.
I noticed that the middle quotation, "Or phylacteries on skulls unyielding, While our river of days flows dark With a yeartide of days, a yeartide of nights Unhallowed, unhallowed?" really seems unlike what the American Jewish Congress would publish in a book called Judaism. It sounds like a lich griping.
It would be great if someone could verify the quotation and changes if necessary. Sorry that real life is keeping me from remembering how to do more than post this here. Geekdiva (talk) 06:04, 22 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
This gave me a good laugh.
However, I did find and verify the quote via Google Books, and added a link to the quote on the entry for other future unbelievers.
And the reason it sounds lichy to people today is because certain people who created the modern idea of liches as fantasy creatures decided to use terms from Judaism for their dastardly paraphernalia, possibly for antisemitic reasons. - -sche(discuss)20:06, 23 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
(The Turkish pezo was just deleted by a newly created user. I assume it will soon be restored.) There is a discrepancy in the inflection: the head word has {tr-noun|yu|lar}, which gives accusative pezoyu, which looks right to me (with only a small knowledge of Turkish). The declension itself uses {tr-infl-noun-c|o|poss=1|pred=1}, which gives pezou, which looks very un-Turkish to me.
-- 2A04:4A43:976F:FE38:54B:A32:5D94:246809:49, 22 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The practice is to indicate transitivity by including the object of the verb in parentheses; for example, “to spread (something), especially in a destructive manner”. — Sgconlaw (talk) 13:19, 22 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Anyone want to help cite this entry? It started small but every Tom, Dick and Harry has added their local school (mostly from India) and I doubt many are attestable. Citations would help us work out what needs weeding. Equinox◑21:46, 22 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Well, I've RFVed the ones where a Google Books search for Xavierite plus the city/place name turns up no hits at all. Some of the others may also be unattestable. - -sche(discuss)23:17, 22 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I ventured boldly to delistcruft it and point instead to the list of so-named schools on WP. Revertible if objections. 01:27, 23 November 2023 (UTC)
There is no "to can" in English with this sense. (There is with the sense "to put something in cans".) The modal verb "can" is defective and lacks an infinitive. Where an infinitive is needed, it is replaced with another phrase, such as "to be able" or "to be allowed". You're right though, that there is a doubling up of meanings, like "able to be able", but this is very common. Look at the etymology of above and note that, often, just "above" doesn't seem strong enough in some contexts, so people say "up above", adding even more "aboveness". 120.22.137.16103:58, 26 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Here is the collection of sources I have been able to find.
SAOB describe it as (translated):
"tjälknöl Especially (in former technical language), concerning the gravel bed at the railway embankment: soil lump/bump consisting of frost. Compare with frostknöl" — tjälknöl in Svenska Akademiens ordbok (SAOB)
frostknöl(In technical language) soil lump/bump formed by frost; especially technical term for such a lump/bump in the gravel bed on the railway embankment. – "The ballast (i.e., the gravel bed) should allow easy water permeation to prevent the formation of the so-called frostknölar".'— frostknöl in Svenska Akademiens ordbok (SAOB)
A Swedish–German dictionary translate it to Frostbeule. — [7] in Carl Auerbach, Svensk-tysk ordbok (1928)
As well as some contexts from quotations under tjälknöl.
I am not very knowledgeable about the Celtic languages, but it seems like the first word, croiccenn, which is defined, among a few other things, as "skin, hide", could be related to the PIE root *(s)koro- (meaning "leather"), just as the very similar (and probably related, although from a different intermediate Proto-Celtic root) word curach, which is a ancient and traditional type of Irish boat that is constructed from stretching skins/hides over a wickerwork form, is—indeed, the fact that the boat is made out of stretched hides is its defining characteristic. See also: the (legendary?) voyage of St. Brendan the Navigator, who is described as having built such a boat and sailed it across the Atlantic Ocean in the 6th century, as well as the 1978 book by experimental archaeologist Tim Severin, The Brendan Voyage, about the author’s construction of a curach and his attempt to recreate St. Brendan’s transatlantic voyage therein.
Essentially I am just wondering if someone more knowledgeable had any additional sources about this that would confirm it, in order to possibly include it in the etymology for croiccenn, which currently does some hand-waving about a mystery "substrate" language and then offers a comparison with Proto-Germanic *hrugjaz (meaning "ridge, back, spine") (which seems doubtful?). The etymologies are cited, and I checked the references—the substrate claim is made in the first source, although it isn’t very helpful and appears to be speculation on the part of the original author anyway, and the second book is from 1911—perhaps there are more recent sources available?
It just strikes me as sort of unlikely that the two words are not related in some way, given their meanings, even if one has to go all the way back to a PIE root.
I'm familiar with the second source; I wouldn't assign much weight to MacBain in any position of controversy, especially when it comes to Irish, German, or Norse. He was a native Scottish Gaelic speaker, and while his work can be helpful as a base for further research, I've found numerous problems with his translations and etymologies before, and would recommend always finding another opinion when possible.
Unfortunately, there are limited other resources available. Cameron's Gaelic Names of Plants is unlikely to help in general context, but it's the one I'm most familiar with. It mentions curachd twice with a meaning of "hood" in Scottish Gaelic, which at first looked a bit promising; Dwelly and Am Faclair Beag spell that word as currac and more properly translate it into modern English to "cap", whereas curachd means "act of sowing" (planting seed), a derivative of the verb cuir, "to put in or on". MacBain spells it as currachd and claims it comes from English kerchief. I have... significant doubts about that. I'd wager it's not unlikely it also comes from cuir with the suffix -ach, literally meaning "a thing that is put (on)".
Regardless, these terms seem to have no semantic connection to leather, hide, or boats; and I see little reason to believe that cuir is etymologically related to craiceann/croiccenn or to curach.
This provides further evidence that, like the Latin-derived English words escape and capture, it's entirely plausible the two words may have no real connection and are just superficially similar. Qwertygiy (talk) 20:57, 25 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Ingush isn't yet among requested entries pages. Information on requested pages reads "If the page for the language does not exist yet, you can either create it yourself or put up a request for it at Wiktionary:Tea room.Can I or can we create the page? Flāvidus (talk) 17:12, 23 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@Andrew Sheedy The usage notes say "In the singular, the adjective is usually left unchanged when it is not preceded by an article or determiner (see example sentence above). Otherwise it is declined like a normal adjective: das viele Geld." They also say "In the plural, the adjective is usually declined even without a preceding article or determiner: viele Kinder." But there is no table to show these declensions. —Granger (talk·contribs) 15:24, 30 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
There's an auto-generated one at de:Flexion:viel, using a general-purpose template for adjectives. The problem resulting from "viel" not being a typical adjective is that quite a few of the listed forms make no real sense in context and therefore don't really exist in practical usage. I think.
We've gotten feedback - Wiktionary:Feedback#א״י - claiming that this abbreviation doesn't mean Israel, but instead means "an island" or "a country". I don't know Hebrew, so I can't respond, but what I can see is that the Hebrew entry doesn't list any references or provide any quotes for the meaning given. Could anyone please update the entry with references and/or quotes? IMO that's the best way to address the feedback.
There are a great deal of senses that seem to have unnecessarily trivial differences from each other -- e.g. sense 17 is:
- "Information obtained by a detective or police officer that allows him or her to discover further details about a crime or incident."
whereas sense 19 is:
- "Information obtained by a news reporter about an issue or subject that allows him or her to discover more details."
There's also various senses relating to taking the first action in specific games or sports, to having the primary role in a group, and of musical cues. It's a versatile word, but I find it exceedingly hard to justify 29 independent senses for this noun section alone. Qwertygiy (talk) 15:28, 25 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
It should be easy and non-controversial (IMHO) to make changes such as consolidating defs. 17 and 19 above to something like:
I tripped over this phrasing in a comic book just now:
We used to speculate that perhaps that charm was a form of hypnosis. Another power. That, somehow, he had us all under a spell, and maybe he did. But if that were so, we were complicit.
It sounds wrong, but I'm having trouble pinning down the problem. Honestly, the quotation at were#Verb (sense 3), which uses it as a past subjunctive, sounds strange to me too, I'd surely have used "would have been out of contention had it not been" instead of "would have been out of contention were it not" there, so maybe it's just a case of unfamiliarity. Unless my example calls for an irrealis mood other than a subjunctive in the first place?
I'd have liked to compare the examples at were with the ones at was, but according to the entry, that form doesn't have a subjunctive sense. Which would mean that the common practice of treating "was" and "were" as essentially interchangeable in examples like these (based on the non-past ones at were),
- "I wish that it was Sunday",
- "I wish that I was with you",
- "If it was simply...",
- "If father was a king,...",
technically change the mood from subjunctive to non-subjunctive, yes? The top reply to the StackExchange question linked from was#Further reading portrays this as an area of active research, so there likely are few definite answers to be had here, but any additional light shed would be welcome! :)
My own observation and understanding is that the subjunctive is dying out in English in general, has already died out in some dialects, and exists only in certain restricted contexts in other cases (whether on the level of dialect or idiolect). To me, the quote sounds perfectly correct, but the "we were" part sounds a bit dated. I would expect (and personally use) something like "But if that were so, we would have been complicit". The example you cite from our entry sounds perfectly correct to me and I could see myself using it. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 20:10, 27 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Do you have the same "sounds a bit dated" reaction to "But if that was so, we were complicit"? If not, we're likely picking up on the same thing: there's a mismatch between the if-clause and the then-clause.
If the sky is blue, then I get a tan.
*If the sky is blue, then I would get a tan.
*If the sky were green, then I get a headache.
If the sky were green, then I would get a headache.
The first and last lines both say "if A then B", but the first line also implies that A may or may not be true, and the last line that A is never true, but that we can imagine A being true. Factual versus counterfactual conditional, or whatever the jargon may be.
The grammar gets somewhat less transparent when it's shifted to past tense, which explains some of my confusion, I expect.
For me, it's not about "so", it's actually that I originally parsed both clauses as being in the subjunctive. If "we were complicit" is in the indicative, it seems completely normal to me. I think the first clause, which is clearly subjunctive, primed me to read the second clause in the same mood, absent any further context. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 23:59, 27 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
<<But if that were so, we were complicit.>> sounds perfectly fine to me. I would say this in normal everyday speech. As far as the use of the subjunctive is concerned, it's now only noticeable in the past tense of to be (was vs. were). "I wish that it was Sunday" sounds very wrong to me, and it's jarring to my ears. I would pick up on this usage immediately. I usually expect to hear it when the speaker is Southern British or Australian/NZ, but from a North American speaker I consider it incorrect. Subjunctive in the present tense can still pass as correct, e.g. <<If the sky be blue, then I wouldwill get a tan.>> though it sounds poetic. If my Uni professor marked it incorrect I would have to educate them ;) Leasnam (talk) 05:04, 28 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Could you clarify which combination(s) of tenses you might use the sentence for? Like, "But if that were so now/then, we were complicit now/then"?
I hear both British and American people say ‘was’ instead of ‘were’ all the time, are you sure that this phenomenon is more prevalent in Britain than America though? Here’s a famous example of such an American use of ‘was’ in the song ‘Homeward Bound’ by Simon and Garfunkel[8]Overlordnat1 (talk) 09:47, 28 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Of course you can hear both in both places, but were for the first and third singular subjunctive is the historically long-standing usage and is always considered "correct" in North America where it seems to have been incorrectly hyper-corrected in the UK (perhaps due to Northern dialects using were in both subjunctive and indicative cases in the singular) and now seems to be unknown as the correct usage in Britain, at least by some, especially younger speakers. In this example at 2:00 here [[9]] a Mancunian speaker calls out the video title "If Hogwarts were an Inner-City School" as "bad grammar" and then proceeds to correct it to "If Hogwarts was an Inner-City School", which technically is incorrect. Of course the title was written by an American. When I was in primary school, we were taught that "If I were.." and "I wish I were..." were correct. But notwithstanding, I already spoke this way automatically because everyone around me as a child used this, so it feels natural to me. I don't have to consciously think about it, in the same way "I am" feels right and "I is" doesn't. In the UK, do they teach "If I was..." and "I wish I was..." in school ? Leasnam (talk) 14:24, 28 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I was taught ‘If I were’ and ‘I wish I were’ at school but I can’t speak for everyone and people do have a tendency to speak in ways that teachers don’t like. It would be interesting to see a properly scientific analysis of the distribution of both forms. Overlordnat1 (talk) 16:39, 28 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I remember talking about this on a language board. Most of the participants said they used both, depending on context, and there was some agreement that the choice is at least influenced by nuances of factuality or counterfactuality. I don't remember anyone mentioning regional patterns, and didn't notice any, but that may mean very little.
To me, what is a bit dated in "But if that were so, we were complicit" is the apparent use of the subjunctive in the apodosis. But if it is the indicative, the unusualness is that the conclusion is so strongly stated; usually the conclusion is past predictive*, i.e. 'we would be complicit' or 'we would have been complicit'. (The choice here depends on how long complicity would last.) In practical terms, the salient mark of irreality is the past tense; the subjunctive merely reinforces it.
Idiolect: Standard southern English, roughly with a midlands substrate, possibly with a rejected element of London speech. Attempts to beat a southern northern accent into me failed.
Or whatever you call the forms with modal marker 'will'/'would'.
I cannot help but to interpret the second half as indicative, with the whole <<But if that were so, we were complicit>> basically coming to mean "Even so/In any event, we were (still/nevertheless) complicit". "would have been complicit (anyway)" works as well, but I would more likely say it as it is written. Leasnam (talk) 15:37, 28 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
That's how I read it as well, and if I'd written it, something like "pushing against an open door" might have made its way into it.
My 2c. Having been TEFL for several years in Spain, I can confirm that all the textbooks we used indicated was/were as completely interchangeable in subjunctive clauses. Usex such as "If I were/was in Paris, I would visit the Louvre." would be typical for a 2nd conditional, for instance. -- ALGRIF talk20:39, 28 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The given pronunciation for the word aceric seems dubious to me. First, I find the initial /æ-/ unlikely as I would expect most speakers to reduce this. (If this is the true pronunciation, then it should be transcribes as /æs-/ as /æ/ is a checked vowel.) Second, I would expect the stressed syllable to have /-ˈɛɹ-/ rather than /-ˈɜɹ-/. The Wikipedia page on English orthography lists /ɛr/ as a minor value of ⟨er⟩ and /ɜːr/ as an exception to the rule. I've looked on YouGlish, YouTube, and Google and can't find any human speakers pronounce the word. (I also find few uses of the word outside of dictionary-only contexts which may be cause to check if it passes CFI.) The way I would expect the word to be pronounced just by looking at its spelling is /əˈsɛɹɪk/. Donopi (talk) 01:45, 28 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I suspect that /eɪˈsɛɹɪk/ is another possible pronunciation, if this word exists. /ˈeɪsə(ɹ)/ is the only pronunciation I've heard for Acer after all (though, like satanic/Satanic, two pronunciations may be possible). The version with /æ/ does seem dubious though. --Overlordnat1 (talk) 09:55, 28 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
English pronunciation for the joky French "the" sense is given as /le/, but that is not the French pronunciation. I would just pronounce it in English as I do in French. Do others not? Equinox◑14:15, 28 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I think it depends on the speaker's exposure to French. I note the audio file pronunciation is /li/, which is even more bizarre to me. I think I've /lə/ and /le/, but usually the former (though I don't hear either very often and this isn't really a natural part of my idiolect, so I can't be sure). Andrew Sheedy (talk) 15:44, 28 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Come to think of it, I think the /le/ or /leɪ/ pronunciation is probably a predominantly American pronunciation, influenced by the American exposure to Spanish. So it may well be a reading pronunciation, following Spanish phonetics. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 16:07, 28 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
In Looney Tunes, with the exception of the name Pepe Le Pew, it's generally pronounced /leɪ/ as in here [[10]] at 0:50 (un[e] polecat, le yipe) and 1:36 (le mew, le mew) Leasnam (talk) 22:46, 30 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I pronounce this le as an approximation of the French, and that's how my family and friends treated le Car in the 1980s (in AmE). So definitely the Frenchy pron should be shown in the Pron section there. Whether it should be first-listed or second-listed is a fair question. Perhaps just flip a coin until Wiktionary might encounter any science that has been done on the relative prevalences. Quercus solaris (talk) 22:24, 28 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I have heard this pronounced the French way (/lə/), /leɪ/ (to use the conventional English notation, as we should probably be doing even though the sound may be identical to /le/), or rarely like /li/. I'd like some evidence of /lʊ/. On Youglish I can also find miscellaneous hesitant and stumbling pronunciations by people who don't know how to say it and guessed various other vowels like /lɑ/, which don't seem noteworthy. - -sche(discuss)05:05, 29 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Regarding "I'd like some evidence of /lʊ/" — yes, I start to laugh when I analyze it — I should have transcribed it as /lø/ — whereas /lʊ/ is one way that an AmE speaker can approximate /lø/. As for the French sound, transcriptions of it as either /lə/ or /lø/ (depending on accent, variety, and circumstance) can be found in many a google result. Quercus solaris (talk) 05:56, 29 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
"This word, when used in this particular sense, is often rendered as Re: (with a colon and a capital R). It is not an abbreviation."
Two things:
First, does this word ever occur without a capital 'R'? If not then wouldn't it make more sense to move this sense to the Re page (and fix the redirects)? Also, how do we know it's a loan from Latin? I've just heard that it's an abbreviation for "regarding". (Because you put it before the subject line of a business letter in order to briefly explain what the letter is about.)
Second, I would argue that this is not what "Re:" means in e-mail contexts. In letters (as alluded to in sense 1), the purpose is to make the subject line stand out and to indicate that it is, in fact, the subject line rather than some random sentence. But in e-mails, the subject line is already separate from the body, and, in e-mails, "Re:" is generally used in order to tag the message as a reply message. ("Re:" is usually not used in the initial message in the way you'd use it in a letter, because the recipient might think it's a reply message and have no idea what you're replying to.) While these two usages do have some things in common, the e-mail sense is arguably something different and apparently has its own etymology (it looks to be an abbreviation of "reply", in the same way that "Fwd:" is an abbreviation of "forward"). 2601:49:8400:26B:FD4B:3888:FCD6:501015:50, 28 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I do see this without a capital R, mainly in informal contexts (usually it would be capitalized simply because it's typically at the beginning of a sentence). I do think you have a point about emails. Microsoft Outlook, for instance, automatically adds "Re:" to the subject line for replies, which does suggest that it's short for "reply." I would hesitate to say that it's a different etymology, however. It seems more likely to me that it's a reanalysis of the original usage, especially since "Re:" would probably have been used predominantly in replies to another letter (as an indication that it was in response to the previous letter). Andrew Sheedy (talk) 16:12, 28 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
We should deleteRe: and re: because the colon is not part of the word: it's just punctuation. Other typical e-mail or newsgroup subject lines might read "Fwd: a message that may interest you", or "New topic (was: Old topic)". Equinox◑18:35, 28 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I suspect that early usage was a shortened version of in re(“in the matter of, with regard to”). At any rate, OED confirms that it derives from Latinrē, the ablative of rēs, and that in later use it has been reanalyzed as an abbreviation of regarding. It also seems clear that even more recent usage in e-mails treats it as an abbreviation of reply. I agree with @Equinox that we should not have Re: and re: as the colon is just appended punctuation. — Sgconlaw (talk) 18:52, 28 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Agree. I addressed these points in an edit there, because in my view there is no value to users in avoiding addressing these points merely to be shorter. Quercus solaris (talk) 22:11, 28 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Brazilian Portuguese pronunciation of outrem and ou
Should all the words starting with <ou> have their pronunciation written as /o(w)/ in Brazilian Portuguese, considering the phoneme /w/ as optional in all circumstances? Especially about the word outrem, which is very formal and/or literary. I don't think anyone would pronounce it as /ˈo.tɾẽj̃/. The same happens with the word ouço — even in informal situations, I've never seen anyone pronounce it as /ˈo.su/. I also believe that the pronunciation of the conjunction ou as /o/ is rather regional and maybe also informal. However, words like ouro and outro are very commonly pronounced /ˈo.ɾu/ and /ˈo.tɾu/. [Please keep in mind that I'm from São Paulo, so I can't speak for every part of Brazil.] OweOwnAwe (talk) 18:50, 28 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I'm from northern Paraná and I can agree with everything here... except with "ou as /o/ being regional". It's probably informal, but I'd think it's very common, especially in "Ou ... ou ..." sentences. I think there are quite a few traits in our speech that might be avoided in really formal contexts, like, "nós" might be often (pretty much always?) pronounced "nóis", but it'd be really hard to catch a priest saying "vóis" for instance...
I don't think it's a problem with the module, though, but rather, a word-specific thing based on how common a word is among a few other factors. If one said "ouço" as /ˈo.su/, that'd sound a lot like "osso", so it makes sense that people avoid doing that. ...It doesn't sound all that bad to my ears though; I'm pretty sure I've heard it before by less fortunate people.
I guess it'd be nice to have a way to type something and make it show up as /ow/ instead of /o(w)/, but all of them seem sort of possible to me? Even if they're not exactly the most common pronunciation out there. Like, I don't think I'd ever say /ˈʁo.bu/ for "roubo" (the noun), and yet I don't think it'd strike me as foreign or something if somebody did. MedK1 (talk) 16:10, 9 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Having heard Mr.Gove use this expression (daft laddie question) in the Covid 19 committee enquiry, I wonder if it it could be an entry in Wkt? I'm in two minds about this, as this is the first time I've heard it used, and there is not much evidence that I can find that would confirm its "usage" value. -- ALGRIF talk20:25, 28 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Looking it up quickly on Google Books, I find that a "daft laddie question" was used as early as 2010, while "daft laddie" used as 1899. The two-word term is a Scottish way of saying "stupid person" and the three-word means a question that a daft laddie might ask.CitationsFreak (talk) 21:40, 28 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The term "tautological" comes up in a couple of dozen usage notes and the like. In most cases, it's used the way I'd use it and the way it's described at tautology. For example, "roadway", "thirsty for a drink", place names like "Bergerden" and "Meerven". Semantic repetition, basically.
In some entries, it's used instead to describe "empty" words - words that don't really mean anything and don't really need to be there. For example, "immeasurable", "so" in "moreso", "a" and "of" in "a myriad of". Most of these were added by the same long-inactive contributor. I'm tempted to replace them with something like "superfluous".
What makes me hesitate slightly is that sense 2 of tautological does mention "word[y]" and "circumlocutionary", supporting a somewhat broader usage. Then again, those too seem like poor descriptions of the examples in question, no?
We imported a definition of glover's suture from Webster's 1913 dictionary A kind of stitch used in sewing up wounds, in which the thread is drawn alternately through each side from within outward.. The term has since become archaic. What would it be called today? Perhaps this diagram can help solve the mystery. Seoovslfmo (talk) 18:45, 29 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
https://onelook.com/?w=glovers+suture -> https://medical-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/glovers+suture suggests "locking suture" as a synonym, and "locking stitch" is mentioned in w:Surgical suture#Techniques, which suggests it's current usage. Unfortunately, none of the accompanying definitions sound much like the Webster one you quote, so they may not really refer to the same thing. Stands to reason that glovers didn't limit themselves to a single stitch, after all. (Or, they do refer to the same thing, and I just don't know enough about stitching to recognize that, which I'd not rule out.)
The entry for the word Maori claims that the plural form Maoris "is now often considered [...] derogatory in New Zealand English". Some sources, like the OED, do describe Maoris as "nonstandard", but this is not the same as "derogatory". Do any sources support the claim that Maoris is a pejorative term and not simply a plural form that is falling out of favour in New Zealand English? Zacwill (talk) 21:45, 29 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I can see some evidence that it's disapproved of, but it's not clear to me that it's derogatory. There's certainly a push against it from some quarters, though the author of that partiuclar link doesn't seem to understand that 's isn't related to the plural (which makes their argument that you shouldn't use that either totally unpersuasive). Theknightwho (talk) 22:35, 29 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
This is a good example of a term that that has negative connotations, but isn't pejorative. It demonstrates ignorance of and/or insensitivity to the Maori language and culture, but doesn't directly say anything bad about them. I'm sure some people say it that way because they know it will annoy people who care about the distinction, but that doesn't make it pejorative. That would be like using the wrong pronouns when referring to an LGBT person: it's not lexically pejorative even if it can have the same effect in practice. Chuck Entz (talk) 23:14, 1 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
One would have to be a real uptight jackass to take offense because someone didn't know the correct plural form of any given word. Likewise with the pronoun issue. Sure, if anyone wants to be called a he or a she, him/her then fine, I'll oblige. But nobody can rightfully get into a huff because of an innocent mistake. And in the cases where it's not an innocent mistake and people know what they're supposed to be saying, then it's clearly intended as pejorative/derogatory. This is exactly why the context label "offensive" should be avoided in the majority of cases. If it doesn't seem right to call it derogatory or pejorative or vulgar, then in most cases "offensive" probably shouldn't be used either. Even before 'intersectional' oddness like the acronym "LGBTQ" was forced into the public's lexicon, it was still offensive to call a man a woman or vice versa, but no dictionary would have had either "offensive" or "derogatory" by the words "he","she", etc. AP295 (talk) 22:55, 9 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
So to be clear, it should be called "dated" if that's in fact the case, but not "offensive". If it's so commonly used in a pejorative sense, then "derogatory" or "pejorative" should be added, but that doesn't seem the case from what I'm reading here. And I really doubt that many people are so petty as to use an incorrect pluralization as an insult, or to take it as an insult. That would be asinine both ways. AP295 (talk) 23:15, 9 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Plenty of words currently considered outright slurs fail to rise to the bar of "directly say[ing] anything bad about" their targets; their ability to offend is simply due to their having typically been meant and taken as offensive in past usage. Connotation versus denotation may not be a worthwhile distinction when it comes to labels like derogatory and pejorative.
Awesome. We're sexier than those Wikipedia prudes! If anything, Wiktionary should focus more on sexual content. Let's start a vote about it! Seoovslfmo (talk) 23:06, 29 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
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Done. I moved it. It was obviously needed. Leasnam (talk) 19:38, 5 November 2023 (UTC)
