Wiktionary:Tea room/2024/January

First (plus an actual edit request)

Hi! I was directed here from the Discord as a place to post edit requests. Would an editor with permission to edit locked articles please take a look at my request over at Talk:Obama phone#Edit request? Thanks. Kindest regards and happy (late by now) New Year, LunaEatsTuna (talk) 19:18, 1 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Done Fay Freak (talk) 19:31, 1 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Can someone make a article/page for "quadratization"?

I saw the word in one of the archives of the English request words. And it has something to relate to mathematics, and there are a lot of books with this word. TheguyinterestedinstuffIG (talk) 23:58, 2 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Done --Lambiam 15:11, 10 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

inquire of

Is this idiomatic? It seems like it's just inquire (“ask”) + of, in one cite you inquire of the governor how many bonds he signed, but you can equally google books:"ask of him how" (many he wants, etc), and we don't have an entry for ask of... - -sche (discuss) 01:45, 3 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, the old Is-it-really-a-phrasal-verb-and-what's-a-real-phrasal-verb-anyway? problem. It doesn't seem to be a fixed idiom to me. Grammar should govern and grammatically this seems obviously VERB + PP. Some contributors seem to believe that the patient/theme relationship (which seems more semantic than syntactic to me) trumps the grammar of prepositional phrases. The WP articles w:Patient (grammar) illustrates the conflict/confusion: the title saying "grammar", but the text saying "The patient is a semantic property". In contrast w:Thematic relation prefers "semantic role" for theme and patient, but hedges. One would seem to have to take sides in the disagreements over the w:Syntax-semantics interface. My inclination has been toward syntax, but lots of contributors take the semantics side. DCDuring (talk) 16:40, 3 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Redirect to inquire. P U C – 11:02, 28 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Meanings of 重

Hello, Is Chinese 重 (zhòng) means "hard", "difficult", "rough", "roughly", "firmly", "hardly", "harshly", "severely", "vigorously" other than "heavy", "serious", "severe"? Please Yuliadhi (talk) 05:54, 3 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Check your talk page. -- Ywhy (talk) 16:00, 5 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

cum

No, not that sense... The conjunction and preposition are the same thing. We should merge them, but into which??? Fond of sanddunes (talk) 10:40, 3 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Interesting; Merriam-Webster has it only as a conjunction, whereas the OED, Dictionary.com, Cambridge and Collins have it only as a preposition. I can see arguments for either, but the fact that it means "with" and we have both with and the relevant sense of Latin cum as a preposition sways things towards that. - -sche (discuss) 17:39, 3 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Interesting, that cum being swapped between the parts of speech. Fond of sanddunes (talk) 18:15, 3 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for cleaning up the cum, anyway, Dashy! Fond of sanddunes (talk) 18:16, 3 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

This thread didn't snowball like you hoped. Equinox ◑ 23:53, 6 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

*Groan* No, not that kind of groan … — Sgconlaw (talk) 19:31, 7 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

aether

Someone added an "Alternative Pronunciation" header with the pronunciations (UK) /ˈeː.ðə/ and (US) /ˈeɪ.θɚ/. Anyone heard these? I sure haven't. This, that and the other (talk) 09:08, 4 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It seems quite likely to me that "[ˈeɪ.θɚ]" is used as a spelling pronunciation by some speakers.--Urszag (talk) 10:09, 4 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

i have heard /eː.θə/ quite a bit probably more so than iː.θə but I've never heard iː.ðə. by the way I'm from the west of Scotland Helpmeinuse? (talk) 15:58, 7 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

تمر

The etymology section of this lemma is currently difficult to understand. I wanted to do a rewrite, but I honestly can't make heads or tails of it. Maybe the original author @Fay Freak could help out? A first step may be to break up the one run-on sentence into two or three free-standing sentences. AntiquatedMan (talk) 13:58, 4 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@AntiquatedMan: You’ve caught me at the right time, or wakeness. I’v reformulated the reasonings in a fashion anyone needs to understand. Fay Freak (talk) 01:58, 5 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you very much. I find the current version much improved! AntiquatedMan (talk) 06:51, 5 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Pronunciation of Portuguese -i ending demonyms.

The pronunciation of words such as bengali (“Bengali”) and catari (“Qatari”) in Portuguese seems a bit difficult to figure out. According to the rules of Portuguese orthography, these words should be pronounced with the stress on the last syllable (/bẽ.ɡaˈli/ and /ka.taˈɾi/, respectively). However, since they are originally foreign words (some dictionaries say that catari is a borrowing from English Qatari), they are often pronounced /bẽˈɡa.li/ and /kaˈta.ɾi/, as if they were written bengáli and catári. Should these be alternative forms? The dictionary Infopédia treats bengali[1] as an oxytone, but catari[2] as a paroxytone. OweOwnAwe (talk) 16:27, 4 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

In the pronunciation sections you are free, in spellings only if actually written that way. Making up a spelling is only allowed if the word is otherwise not reliably written at all. I’ve put them into searches and obtain only few hits in badly edited sources, so they are but misspellings. Fay Freak (talk) 02:04, 5 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Does anyone know the variety of English for "accordyng"?

It was on the 2023 request page. And searching the word up, looking at it was probably somewhat common usage. TheguyinterestedinstuffIG (talk) 22:37, 6 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Done I have created accordyng. (Not really a "variety" of the language, which suggests that it's used by a particular group, country, etc., like Jamaican English, or Cockney rhyming slang. Just a very old form.) Equinox ◑ 22:51, 6 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

self-naughting

Is "naught" a verb, generally? I came across self-naughting today (and created it here). It's hard to find cases of "naughts himself" etc. Equinox ◑ 23:52, 6 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Requesting 「格好いい」 as a Japanese translation of the adjective "cool" in the senses "colloquial: being considered as 'popular' by others" and "colloquial: in fashion"

「格好いい」 ("kakko ii") is widely used in situations where an English speaker might say that something is "cool"; it does not always have its literal meaning of "good-looking". In fact, the translation "cool" is already used several times on that phrase's citations page. However, as an IP editor, I cannot make the edit to the protected entry for "cool" to add this translation. Could someone with sufficient privileges add it? 166.181.80.136 02:25, 7 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

As an aside, the widget for adding translations directly from the page itself fails badly on protected pages: it hangs forever trying to save the edits with no explanatory error message. 166.181.80.136 02:28, 7 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Looks like it's been added in the meantime. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 00:33, 25 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

what the heck is a "stong"?

I was playing wordle when I randomly entered "stong" (I was getting desperate). To my surprise, it was a real word in the wordle database and it went through. I looked it up on Wiktionary, and the entry says that it is a historical word for a quarter acre. The entry has no references or citations, and when I search for the word on other online dictionaries, nothing comes up. Can anyone find a source which attests this word and the meaning which is described in the wiktionary entry? How come other dictionaries don't have an entry for it, and why is it on Wordle at all? StandardUser2 (talk) 06:08, 7 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

See stong. Wordle is a commercial video game and we have no control over it. People come here and complain sometimes but it's usually about Scrabble, a better and more important game. Equinox ◑ 06:14, 7 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

If you think we made up the word and it doesn't exist, please use the WT:RFV process, which will force us to find textual uses to prove that it is real. We do this regularly. Thanks, and sorry that you sucked at Wordle. Equinox ◑ 06:15, 7 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Because it is a local term. OED has it under stang, one quotation 1652 stonge, however more quotes for stong in the “pole or stake” senses of stang. I find the variant stong for the measure apparently in the early 13th c., which however we would enter as “Middle English”. Fay Freak (talk) 07:03, 7 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

This clears things up. The entry got edited now and it has a lot more information. Looks like complaining about wordle worked. Thanks! StandardUser2 (talk) 17:01, 7 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

koringkriek

Currently defined as "(South Africa) A grasshopper", by SemperBlotto, who took 2 seconds to check and then went back to see what was on PLOSONE today. I think this is not in fact a generic S.Afr. term for a grasshopper: it might be the "armoured bush cricket", it might be Hetrodes pupus, it might be Acanthoplus discoidalis and I am having trouble working it out. (Why are there no S.Afr. Wiktionary users, by the way? Where are they all?) @DCDuring @Chuck Entz Equinox ◑ 07:01, 7 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

From what I can see on Google Books, it refers to insects in the subfamily Hetrodinae of the family Tettigoniidae. We call other members of that family katydids in the US, but elsewhere they're all called bush crickets. They might be called grasshoppers in the loosest sense of the word, but that's a bit of a stretch. They're not what most of us know as grasshoppers, any more than crickets are. They're really not crickets or grasshoppers, but separate from both. Although they're capable of crop-devouring hordes like locusts are known for, they're not locusts, either- those actually are grasshoppers.

To sum things up: you might possibly get away with calling them one type of grasshopper, but you would never call any other kind of grasshopper (including the ones everyone thinks of when you mention "grasshoppers") by this name. Of course, I don't speak Afrikaans or South African English, so there might be some usage that doesn't match what the reference books say, but that's definitely what the reference books say. Chuck Entz (talk) 08:11, 7 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Etymologically it is a wheat + cricket, if our Afrikaans entries are to be credited.

Commons has four images of two species of genus Acanthoplus: Hetrodinae that have koringkriek in the image names. WP has koringkriek as a redirect to w:Acanthoplus discoidalis and refers to it on w:Ensifera, as a name for some Tettigoniidae. SANBI (South African National Biodiversity Institute) has an "Animal of the Week" entry for armoured bush cricket, with other common names armoured ground cricket, armoured katydid, corn cricket (Eng.); koringkriek (Afr)". As Chuck summarized, Google Books contains usage of the word being applied to Hetrodes pupus: Hetrodinae, subfamily Hetrodinae, horned ground cricket, Eugastes sp. [syn. of Eugaster: Hetrodinae?], etc. I'm still not sure of the best definition: "A. discoidalis (armoured bush cricket)" or "Any member of subfamily Hetrodinae". It is not clear that all members of subfamily Hetrodinae bear the name koringkriek, but more than one tribe therein has species that do. DCDuring (talk) 15:18, 7 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Done, but without citations. The easiest to cite is the subsense "armoured bush cricket (Acanthoplus discoidalis)". The other subsense and the including sense depend on weak inference. It would be much better if we actually had a cited Afrikaans L2. DCDuring (talk) 16:22, 7 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Pronunciation of German-Swedish names

There is a Baltic noble family, the Samson-Himmelstierna/Himmelstjerna family, and I wondered if someone knows how to pronounce the Himmelstierna part. Looking at stjärna#Swedish, there are multiple ways to say the name. The Russian and Latvian versions suggest a 'sh'-sound, but comparing Oxenstierna in Swedish confuses me even more - I had always thought it was closer to 'x' than 'ʃ'. Not to mention how German-speaking family members would actually pronounce their own name. Any thoughts? 2001:1C02:1990:A900:BC2A:569F:1A67:8118 11:14, 7 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

gay Derived terms

dun CitationsFreak (talk) 05:11, 8 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Part of speech of comigo

Wiktionary includes different and seemingly contradictory classifications for Portuguese comigo and its related forms. As far as I know, comigo is traditionally considered a pronoun. Wiktionary, on the other hand, classifies it as an adverb. However, the following definition is given: prepositional form with com of eu: with me. The Portuguese personal pronouns template also includes comigo as a prepositional [form] with com. Additionally, the Usage notes section of conosco mentions it as a contraction in passing.

Usually I would have just edited these pages to classify these words as pronouns, as that is the traditional view. However, if we take a closer look at it, things start falling apart. Taking Wiktionary's definition into consideration, I assume that if comigo is a pronoun, then it's declined in the prepositional case? Traditional grammar doesn't go into this much detail, however, simply saying it's a pronoun. However, I don't believe that classifying comigo as a pronoun is correct, let alone as being declined in the prepositional case. If that were the case, then we would have to classify com ele as a pronoun, which doesn't make sense. Comigo shouldn't be considered an adverb either as there are different forms associated with different grammatical persons; additionally, it would imply consigo is a reflexive adverb, which is nonsense (for describing Portuguese).

I believe the correct classification, contrary to tradition, would be that comigo is a contraction, akin to dele. While that doesn't sound controversial, it's not clear what the contracted pronoun is. In my opinion the pronouns that contract with com are clearly migo, tigo, nosco, vosco, and sigo, which are supposedly suppletive forms of the respective pronouns surfacing in a position after com. This, however, sounds too theoretical (we could even go further and postulate contractions of the prepositional forms with /ko/, e.g. nos + /ko/ => nosco), which may not be appropriate for Wiktionary. Should we go against most dictionaries and give this definition for comigo? Alternatively, we could say each of those forms is a contraction of com and the respective nominative pronoun (eu, etc.)? I think this would be more appropriate, even though it would be less clear. Choclei (talk) 19:46, 7 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It definitely is consistent to treat it along the same lines as French du or Italian della, but the label 'contraction' is not ideal for this purpose and borders on ludicrous when applied to 'comigo': it's longer than the words it is allegedly 'contracted' from. I do prefer com + eu out of the options you listed.--Urszag (talk) 23:27, 7 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Another option is com + mim. This isn't entirely wrong and it makes sense since mim is the form the pronoun takes with prepositions (e.g. para mim), not eu. It's not perfect, as it doesn't explain -migo/-go, but I think it's acceptable if we consider that Wikipedia defines nas as a contraction of em and as but doesn't explain where the N comes from (which is similar to French du, as you mentioned). Com + eu is less descriptive, but at least it implies -migo is like any other form of eu, such as me (accusative/dative case). Choclei (talk) 16:13, 8 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

This isn't specific to Portuguese; the same applies to the various Romance cognates. They may as well be classed as comitative pronouns.

If you would like to separate out the com-, you can describe contigo for instance as a univerbation (not at all a contraction) of the former with the archaic tigo, and likewise for all the others. Nicodene (talk) 01:58, 20 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Nicodene: They may as well be classed as comitative pronouns.

I don't think they should. For one comigo isn't exclusively used to mean accompaniment (e.g. "Ele fez isso comigo" means "He did this to me" as well as "He did this (together) with me"). Additionally, as I mentioned in my original post, this would mean that com ele is a pronoun, which to me is not reasonable.

I'm fine with describing it as a univerbation instead of a contraction, but while mentioning tigo is okay for the etymology, I don't think it's appropriate for the definition. Maybe the definition could simply be "1. with me", with the section for the part of speech as "Univerbation"? I'm not too keen on this to be honest, as readers would expect the definition to explain what words contigo is a univerbation of (similarly to the classification and definition of do). Choclei (talk) 17:42, 21 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Com ele is two independent words, in a synchronically analysable combination; contigo and the rest are not. Pronouns can have usages beyond their titular one - the English accusative is for instance also used disjunctively (‘What, me, worry?’). Nicodene (talk) 18:08, 21 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Comigo, contigo, etc. are similar to contractions, such as pelas. A similar analysis is desirable in my opinion. Besides the fact that there's a parallel between comigo and com ele and that the morpheme com is literally attached to all contracted forms (comigo, contigo, conosco/connosco, convosco, consigo), conosco/connosco doesn't allow words to adjoin to it: conosco; *com nós; *conosco dois; com nós dois (the same is true for convosco). Conosco and the rest are essentially morphologically one word but behave as two words, just like pelas, dele, etc.

The only complication is that migo, tigo, etc. are not themselves words, but that's more of a problem with how Wiktionary describes them than an argument for comigo, etc. as pronouns or against them as contractions/whatever. Choclei (talk) 20:47, 21 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

(Swedish) Correct part of speech template

~~What is the correct POS template for tro't?~~ --Christoffre (talk)\ Christoffre (talk) 23:01, 7 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I managed to find it. --Christoffre (talk) 23:47, 7 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Cartoon illustrations by User:T.love37

User:T.love37 has been adding a couple of cartoon illustrations (which they claim are their own work), namely to assiduous and sangfroid. When other users have reverted them, they have simply later added them back. Are these illustrations really helpful, though? — SURJECTION ^{/ T / C / L /} 07:13, 8 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

If they're really your work, T.love37, then I say nice cartoons, and I appreciate your effort to illustrate words... However, I don't think the image at assiduous improves the entry, because it's too readily interpretable as other things (e.g. "overworked"!). The image at sangfroid could likewise be "oblivious" or "indifferent"; on a balance, these images might be better suited to Wikipedia. :) I feel similarly about the cartoon at ornery btw, which I would sooner interpret as the stronger words "angry" or "abusive". - -sche (discuss) 07:55, 8 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I don’t pass the reading the mind in the eyes test so it does not occur to me to read the images in the manner @-sche suggests, hence I take them as helpful in conjunction with the definition. I generally don’t see demeanour as unambiguous in its causation, explanation has to be inferred from the circumstance always, and the non-verbal has a more supportive role than essential role commonly comprehended by immediate intuition. Fay Freak (talk) 08:28, 8 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

assiduous doesn't mean 'frantically juggling multiple tasks as if possessing multiple arms', which is the most striking message conveyed by the cartoon on that entry. IMO it detracts from the definition instead of usefully supplementing it. Voltaigne (talk) 17:14, 8 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It’s supposed to be a time lapse, because, obviously, nobody has multiple arms, so one can’t juggle multiple tasks as if one had. It’s telling that people think such an image could detract, in addition to being wrong. There is copious research regarding face processing, indicating that allists tend to not occupy themselves with non-social juxtaposed with social stimuli, resulting here in preconceiving the message of the whole entry after the image of a damsel in distress when the most reasonable option would be to conceive the term’s meaning from the definition glosses first, thereafter engaging a harmonic interpretation of the image, which after all was not only chosen, but even drawn after the entry, as may now be part of our expectation.

If Wiktionary should be run like an online shop, as I have envisioned but not dared to propose, then of course like an adman we would succumb to the typical weaknesses of eventual readers and not appeal to reason. I am reluctant, however, to make requirements that demotivate people in pursuing arts, so I ask @T.love37 whether they also pursue a less cartoonish, and hence contextually exaggerated, style, that better befits thus serious a publication as our dictionary. It may be however that we lexicographic drudges are all ill-humoured and people who edit less but read Wiktionary more, for their enjoyment, also have more fun in it with such pictures. Fay Freak (talk) 18:23, 8 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Those are very nice cartoons. Is this from a word-a-day calendar? They remind me a bit of the WikiWorld cartoons we had in the mid-2000s. I would love to have illustrations like these on our pages, but the culture of Wiktionary and Wikipedia alike seems to have moved somewhat away from that sort of thing .... if we posted your images on Wikipedia, I wouldnt be surprised if someone there said "those cartoons are great, but I think they're better suited for Wiktionary". One of the very few Wiktionary entries that still has a cartoon illustration on it is five-second rule, which I think is also excellent artwork. —Soap— 19:11, 12 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I welcome images that are not subject to serious ambiguity of interpretation, such as the painting at pandiculation. But I fear that many entries, especially those associated with states only indirectly observable, eg, emotional and intentional states, would be very difficult to illustrate appropriately. None of the cartoons mentioned seem to unambiguously support any of the definitions of the terms in the entries. DCDuring (talk) 22:32, 12 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Streetcar etymology + historical meaning

The etymology for streetcar simply states "street + car". I thought it was weird, since cars already go on streets. On the Wikipedia page for tram they describe that streetcar used to mean "horsecar". Sure enough, horsecars are essentially trams powered by horses and not engines or electricity. Surely it would be more accurate to add the historical meaning of streetcar (horsecar) to the definitions as well as improve the etymology by mentioning this. A friend also suggested that streetcars are more akin to railcars, and so the etymology would be street + railcar instead. Couldn't find much from other dictionaries, OED also lists street + car so not sure how exactly to proceed from here, but I feel like I've got some good leads. StandardUser2 (talk) 05:53, 9 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Tram on Wikipedia.Wikipedia provides background for the research. For this kind of investigation of sense evolution, the best course of action is to find citations that illustrate specific usage. Knowing whether horsecar was ever used for cars that ran on rails and when it was so used would help. Identifying synonyms for streetcar (and alternate forms like street car and street-car) and similar transport vehicles and the dates of their usage would help. Indeed some knowledge of the sense evolution of car would help.

Some attributes of the various means of transport related to this are:

Use of rails (wooden, metal, none)

Source of motive power (horse, steam, internal combustion engine, electricity, cable, other)

Right of way (street (ie, shared), separate)

To which combination of attributes was the term streetcar applied and when?

For example: "Electric streetcar (syn. trolley), running on rails embedded in street paving" is what streetcar means in my idiolect. This form still existed in New York in my youth. Another system from that time was the trolley bus: no rails, street, electric. In modern times in the US we have light rail (rails, separate right of way, electric). DCDuring (talk) 15:17, 9 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The first streetcars where horse-drawn and therefore also referred to as horsecars, which is different from saying that streetcar originally meant “horsecar”. The first aeroplanes that did actually fly were biplanes, but also then aeroplane did not mean “biplane”. According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, the earliest attestation of horse-car is from 1863,^[3] whereas streetcar is from 1859.^[4] If this is correct, streetcar cannot be from street +‎ (horse-)car. --Lambiam 14:17, 10 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Very simply: there originally was no such thing as a motor-driven vehicle. Any "car" would be pulled by either animals or people. Even when the steam engine was invented, it was too bulky, loud, and expensive to be used except in trains. The development of electric power distribution that made electric engines practical was also fairly late. Yes, streetcars were originally drawn by horses- but so were all the other kinds of cars. Chuck Entz (talk) 14:51, 10 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Similarly — another way of answering the OP question: Keep in mind that before motor cars became the default notion of what the polysemic term car means, it was reasonable to specify the sense via an explicit qualifier, whether collocational or compoundable (the difference is not as important or rigid etically as most people misapprehend it to be emically). Occasionally in natural language there is an established term that is excusably pleonastic. It is idiomatic and not wrong, and one can detect its internal logic. In an era of railroads, it was reasonable to emphasize that a streetcar's flavor of rails are the kind that are right out there in the street (along with everyone else — pedestrians, wagons, carriages, and later, motor cars). Among the most pleonastic ones, the degree of exactly how much silliness each one seems to have varies among instances. Examples include time clock, space heater, and streetcar. Every one of them has a respectable logic; for example, one of the senses of the word time is "time worked" as in "billable hours" (I still need to record my time for last week), and although all clocks measure time (except in parametrically exceptional senses of the word clock, such as its informal sense as "odometer"), ones that specialize in measuring and recording worked time are called time clocks for effortless clarity in natural language. Quercus solaris (talk) 23:46, 9 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I'm aware car didn't used to mean automobile cars, but that also doesn't change that cars still typically go on streets. And I understand some compounds are pleonastic, which I why I mentioned, like you, that the original meaning of streetcar would be "street + railcar". I just felt the entry was a bit incomplete given the evolution of the word car and transportation as a whole. StandardUser2 (talk) 16:10, 10 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think that one can address question of the evolutionary history of a term, eg, car and its derivative compounds, without understanding when each compound, eg, streetcar came into use. What did car mean at the time, and what kinds of cars existed at the time. Was the idea of streetcar an urban vehicle or one that operated on paved streets with sidewalks in contrast to rural or suburban roads or those without sidewalks? Was it applied to carts pulled by horses? Did it only apply to 'common carriers' of passengers? And we are mostly talking about US (Canada?) usage as in the UK they are called trams, at least at present. DCDuring (talk) 21:56, 10 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, I see (regarding "I'm aware" above). I will add a small bit to streetcar#Etymology that gives the user enough info not to leave them hanging but also is not encyclopedic (that's the tightrope that good Wiktionary content has to walk). (Updated my comment: before motorcars became the usual kind of car, the word 'car' did not imply 'street use' [specifically] to any especial degree. This is why old miners and railroaders, pre-1920, usually spoke of cars, not mine cars or rail cars — the specification was superfluous in their time and place.) Quercus solaris (talk) 21:43, 10 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Our etymologies rarely do well on sense development and mostly ignore it. DCDuring (talk) 22:20, 10 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Certainly an interesting topic (the general case). I sketched a few themes that I see, below. I realize that everyone else may skip my comments that follow (understandable), but it's interesting to me to recapitulate them: (1) For many terms such as the example in this talk thread, certainly it would be nice to improve further. (2) Admittedly the difference between a general dictionary and an etymological dictionary is relevant: Wiktionary can't become the latter without becoming not the former; but that ideal degree of "just enough and not inadequate" is the sweet spot to aim for. (2a) Admittedly I am but a layperson regarding etymology, but an interested layperson rather than an "aggressively uninterested" one, which is how most of my fellow laypersons seem to me. They're interested in gotchas and in winning bar bets or trivia games, but not in being roundly educated or circumspect in each moment, it seems to me. (3) For thousands of ISV terms built of combining forms, the surface analysis is admittedly all most people really need, and perhaps anything more than that is counterproductive for their normal use cases. Granted that occasional exceptions are worth a line or two added to the Etymology section's content. (4) I have endeavored to calibrate myself on these points over the years, as I didn't always have them in hand as well as I do now. Quercus solaris (talk) 23:09, 10 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

walk on eggshells

Why two senses? P U C – 10:40, 9 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It seems to hinge on overly vs. justification for the behavior. Rewording to not make that difference part of the definition seems wise. Usage examples could possibly illustrate the evaluative difference. Or we could decide that more of our users need to know about such a distinction than are confused by the similarity of the definitions. DCDuring (talk) 14:52, 9 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I don't see a difference in the meaning per se. Whether an eggshell walker's caution is justifiably appropriate or over the top is IMO irrelevant to the meaning of the term. --Lambiam 14:41, 10 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Lambiam: What do you think of our two senses at take one's time? That entry suffers from the same problem imo. P U C – 18:51, 11 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Collins and MWOnline, the only two other OneLook references that cover this, don't make this kind of distinction for take one's time. We could include usage examples (with sufficient context) to illustrate the evaluative possibilities. DCDuring (talk) 18:59, 11 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Collins and MWOnline don't make the distinction for walk on eggshells, but at least on of McGraw-Hill's idioms dictionaries does. DCDuring (talk) 19:04, 11 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

When asking someone to do something for me, I can add, take your time; there’s no hurry. In doing so, I do not mean to imply that they should go about it slowly and carefully, but merely that they can do it at their own, unhurried pace. This sense covers (IMO) also the case where an impatient person waiting for a task to finish gets annoyed. --Lambiam 19:09, 11 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

(Polish) The "pisać" article - uncertainty over a citation meaning?

I noticed that one of the meanings of it is left without a meaning and I don't quite understand why.

(Middle Polish) The meaning of this term is uncertain.

Given my moderate understanding of Latin (and very low, though sufficient understanding of Germanic languages), it looks clear to me that it means "write"? It's proven in two bullet points there:

1564, J. Mączyński, ^[10], page 174b:
ipse scribit, On ſam piſze.
1564, J. Mączyński, ^[11], page 374a:
Scribo, Piſzę.
1579, A. Calagius, ^[12], page 426a:
Schreiben. Piſáć. Scribere.
1588, A. Calepinus, ^[13], page 957a:
Scriptito – Vſtawnię piſzę

"schreiben" means "write" in German, so it checks out with "pisać".

"scribit" means "pisze" (3rd person sing pres ind) in Latin -> Polish.

"scribo" means "piszę" (1st person sing pres ind).

"scribere" is the infinitive form, which is "pisać" in Polish. You get the drill.

So I'm not sure where the possible uncertainty comes from? I don't see any discrepancies or anything.

It might also be possible that nobody took a closer look at this translation/these citations and it was just left unfinished, but I thought I'd post here to ask about it. (if this is the place to ask, I'm not sure. Should I create a discussion page on that article?) 82calamities (talk) 14:33, 9 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@82calamities Confer the entry given at SXVI in the Further reading section. There is an issue with Mączyński's work in that he very often would imply a separate meaning very similar the original, standard definition he gave, making it unclear what he meant by distinguishing the two senses, if that makes sense. Vininn126 (talk) 14:40, 9 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

hitchhiking slug

From the slug page:

Do

14. (regional) A stranger picked up as a passenger to enable legal use of high occupancy vehicle lanes

and

15. (US, slang, District of Columbia) A hitchhiking commuter

refer to the same thing? Maybe 14 is a type of 15?

(Tangentially, is a hitchhiker a stranger by definition? Is it hitchhiking to get a ride from someone you know but weren't expecting to see?)

173.67.42.107 19:25, 10 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I agree about the tangential point (my answer is, "yes, it is still hitchhiking"). Therefore sense 14 would better be worded as "A pedestrian (usually a stranger) picked up […] . Quercus solaris (talk) 02:35, 11 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Honestly not trying to make trouble... but does pedestrian mean (or imply) the person intends to walk, unlike a hitchhiker who hopes/expects to get a ride? (Also, are joggers and runners considered pedestrians?)

--173.67.42.107 12:52, 13 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

is it 'unexpected' that people pronounce 'bugger', 'dagger' with a hard g?

We have a whole subsection of 'Appendix:English words where G is pronounced exceptionally § Hard "g" where soft "g" expected' for the apparently "exceptional" and "unexpected" pronunciation of such words with a hard /g/. But AFAICT that is in fact the expected, unexceptional pronunciation: gg words having soft "g" is rather the exception (we list just four), as the "hard gg" section even admits. I propose to remove the "hard gg" section because that isn't an "exceptional" pronunciation. - -sche (discuss) 00:59, 11 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

IMO, all the same subsets of words should still be listed on the page, but the wording of the heads and explanations needs improving. For example, this H3 is not logically subordinate to this H2, so that (subordination) should be changed. The point that they're after regarding -gge- is (a) that it usually doesn't follow the baseline soft g rule (i.e., g + e/i/y), but (b) "not expected" is the wrong phrasing for describing that fact, because (as you and I both sense intuitively) it's not always (and probably, usually not) true that point "a" is "unexpected" in the mind of a typical English speaker. That's because the baseline soft g rule is not the sole factor at work in determining what surprises us (or not). "Familiarly encountered patterns among known instances" is an equally relevant factor. The page should instead simply say something like "does not follow the baseline rule" rather than "is unexpected". Quercus solaris (talk) 02:32, 11 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

is it 'unexpected' for dgC to use a soft g?

Relatedly, we list of a bunch of -dgC- words as "unexpectedly" having soft g "where hard g is expected", but is hard g actually expected in that environment? (No.) Is there a single -dgC- word which uses hard g? I am inclined to reduce this section, too, to a one-sentence note that -dgC- expectably uses soft g. Or am I missing something? - -sche (discuss) 01:04, 11 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I agree, "unexpectedly" is the wrong way to phrase it. Something more like "usually doesn't follow the baseline soft g rule (i.e., g + e/i/y)" instead. Maybe others wouldn't put it in those words, but something better than "unexpected" is needed. Quercus solaris (talk) 02:32, 11 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks; changing "expected" helps. I have edited the page even further, because I don't see a reason to posit just two rules ("soft "g" occurs when "g" comes before the letters "e", "i" or "y"" and "hard "g" occurs elsewhere") and not also record that "gg is hard", and perhaps that "g between two other consonants (-dgC-) is soft". Those seem to be even more often correct that the first two rules, so I think we can just state those rules and name the tiny handful of exceptions rather than naming all the examples where the rules are correct. - -sche (discuss) 00:29, 12 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

As a notable example, the soft g of Doge Coin was entirely unexpected to me. Because the base dog and diminutive doggy Old English docga are obviously hard, doge appears as an intentional misspelling rather than eye-dialect of the "can haz cheezburger" kind. However, it only proves your point. 2A00:20:6080:3084:E85B:8F26:C2D4:C60E 13:56, 12 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Edgar, at least. Nicodene (talk) 02:03, 20 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Edgar is -dgV-, no? I'm saying I don't think there are any cases where there's a Consonant on either side of a g and yet it's still hard. - -sche (discuss) 04:47, 20 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

g value

Not sure about this. Uncountable or a proper noun? There are so many red links too, which is usually a red flag. Pious Eterino (talk) 12:06, 11 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It looks to me like an ordinary countable noun, like its synonym g factor:

g factor on Wikipedia.Wikipedia discusses several different g factors/values, each for a different category of sub-atomic particles. DCDuring (talk) 14:52, 12 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

chemistry

Are perhaps borofluoride, fluoborate, fluoboride and tetrafluoroborate the same? Fond of sanddunes (talk) 22:32, 11 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It seems to me that they are, but I'm no chemical nomenclature maven. I suspect that the names that bear {{Webster 1913}} are obsolete/archaic/dated. DCDuring (talk) 15:10, 12 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

So I got these rubber pad things for opening bottle caps, and I think they're called "jar opener".

Variations: Rubber jar opener. Are these the offical names? Are these common? Should it have an entry for itself? Heyandwhoa (talk) 01:18, 12 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

If a "rubber jar opener" is a jar opener made of rubber, then don't add that: it is sum of parts, like "steel hammer" or "glass statuette". Equinox ◑ 06:08, 12 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

They are also called jar grippers, which is not SoP IMHO, as it meets the misnomer test: A jar gripper does not itself grip a jar; it merely assists a human in gripping a jar.

I think jar opener also meets the misnomer test for an entry. A jar opener is a device that merely assists a human in opening a jar. Even an electric one requires a human to position the jar and remove the jar's lid. If we had such an entries, then images of some of varied shapes ("gripper") and devices ("opener") could have as captions the various SoP (or near-SoP) terms used. These would serve as a targets for failed searches for entries using the various SoP terms. DCDuring (talk) 15:42, 12 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Wiktionary's first definition of jar opener is Any device that assists in opening jars. While the device page does say the term can refer to Any piece of equipment made for a particular purpose, it also suggests the connotation is especially a mechanical or electrical one--in other words, a more complex instrument than a sheet of rubber. Rubber jar opener may not warrant its own page, but could the jar opener entry use a term other than device to clarify the inclusion of the rubber ones? Maybe Any physical object that assists in opening jars?

Is a rubber jar opener also known as a grippie?

(Off topic: Would "Is a rubber jar opener AKA a grippie?" be understood and/or grammatically incorrect? AKA literally means also known as, but the substitution here just sounds iffy. Maybe a Usage Note type situation...)

--173.67.42.107 12:31, 13 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

ky, kye

These are words meaning "cow". We don't give a plural for either. We do have kine, which we say is the plural of cow! Something seems wrong here. Equinox ◑ 06:10, 12 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Am I missing something? Looks like "ky", "kye" and "kine" are all defined as plurals.--Urszag (talk) 07:26, 12 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, strange. I suppose I misread it in a hurry. I assumed one ky(e), two kine. Equinox ◑ 00:20, 13 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Pastore della Lessinia e del Lagorai

Doubts about the plural, it being Italian and all Denazz (talk) 08:57, 12 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Erramu or erramua?

One translation at bay (herb) is Basque erramua. Euskaltzaindiaren Hiztegia lemmatizes under erramu and I can just about tell that -a is clitic marker of definiteness (absolutive singular). WT:AEU does not declare a citation form though it looks like indefinite is used. I don't understand if these should be different lemmas. In addition, I hardly know Basque or Spanish and online translation is highly confusing, and highly entertaining from a speculative etymology vantage point.

The word is used in translation of Palm Sunday and may be used as shorthand. It seems to be homonym to a variant of arraun (“oar”), which is said to be from Celtic, compare Old Irish rámae. Spanish and Portuguese Domingo de Ramos (“Palm Sunday”) cf. ramo (“bouquet; bough; branch”) may very well be the origin of Basque erramu igande, eguna (and again, the translation box suggests igandea). Anyway, it is unlikely that "laurel" shares in the etymology, unless supported by Romance evidence unknown to me.

The gender isn't indicated either. I guess it's safe to assume based on haritz (“oak”) that it is inanimate. 2A00:20:6080:3084:E85B:8F26:C2D4:C60E 13:45, 12 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The form erramu is exactly what would be expected for a borrowing from Latin ramum before it became Spanish ramo. (Basque has never tolerated initial /r/.) The ending -a is the article/specifier and shouldn't be in a translation table (though Basques themselves do often use this suffixed form as the citation form). I'm going to change that now. --Hiztegilari (talk) 14:18, 12 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Latin Bathuel

I'm not really qualified to fix this, but there is something wrong here. The Bathuel page gives Bethuel, not Bathuel. I am guessing that Bethuel is a variant spelling of Bathuel, but it isn't listed as such and just seems to be taking the place of Bathuel's entry. And there is no Latin entry at Bethuel. Also, can somebody confirm the macrons? I think it should be a short u (in the "Bathuel" spelling, anyway). 2601:49:8400:26B:94D5:A296:5EC1:E060 14:00, 12 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Both spellings might be correct. Google Books has hits such as this, which i turned up by searching for Bathuelis expositio (if there is some more direct way to just get Latin results, I dont know it). The Bathuelis hits seem to be mostly clones of each other, but that may be an artifact of the query string I used. Bathuelis Bathuel as a query string also turns up Latin hits. A few may be scan errors, but all of the ones I checked did appear to have an a spelling and it's unlikely the scan error would happen twice. —Soap— 19:03, 12 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you. "Bathuel" is how the Vulgate spells it too.

Still, I don't know what the procedure is for determining which spelling is the "main entry" or if it's just sort of arbitrary, but there needs to be two separate entries because the way it's set up now is definitely a mistake. I'll leave it to somebody else to deal with though.

Now in case anyone is wondering about the macron, the reason I think it should be a short 'u' (on the "Bathuel" spelling) is because accented liturgical texts place the accent mark on the 'a':

e.g. https://books.google.com/books?id=gQGJ8mvgsMIC&pg=PA496&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjKzMPNndqDAxVShIkEHXe-AksQ6AF6BAgGEAI#v=onepage&q=%22b%C3%A1thuel%22&f=false

and https://books.google.com/books?id=QbZUpvCw2JcC&pg=RA1-PA487&dq=%22b%C3%A1thuel%22&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjKzMPNndqDAxVShIkEHXe-AksQ6AF6BAgLEAI#v=onepage&q=%22b%C3%A1thuel%22&f=false

I could be mistaken but I think this can only happen when the penultimate syllable has a short vowel. So it would need to be Bathuēl (or maybe Bāthuēl), not Bathūēl. 2601:49:8400:26B:287D:8D45:59D1:C427 11:27, 13 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Err, is this a word? I don't really get this "word"?

hshs. Heyandwhoa (talk) 22:36, 12 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Heyandwhoa Interjections can sometimes resemble sounds more than words - especially when they're onomatopoeic. Compare English tsk or hmph which are equivalent examples in English where an interjection later grew to become a verb meaning "to make that sound". Theknightwho (talk) 22:46, 12 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I'll add that Japanese has a lot of onomatopoeias to begin with, and they can often be used as する verbs. The only thing I find strange is the fact that it doesn't have any vowels (even though the furigana indicates otherwise), but it's Internet slang so I guess anything goes. 2601:49:8400:26B:287D:8D45:59D1:C427 11:38, 13 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

睘

https://moji.or.jp/mojikibansearch/info?MJ文字図形名=MJ018237 — This unsigned comment was added by 2600:8807:5651:7a00:443b:caf9:864f:4aa1 (talk).

@anon, see Wiktionary:Requests_for_verification/CJK#睘 -- basically, this kanji is apparently not really used in Japanese. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 00:28, 25 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

/ðæŋks/ for your attention.

We give alternative US pronunciations /ðæŋk/ and /ðæŋks/ for thank and thanks. No dictionary that I looked this up in recognizes this voiced pronunciation. Is this an existing pronunciation (not counting that of inebriated speechifiers)? @Soap, --Lambiam 11:15, 13 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It's definitely used by some speakers. I believe the person who runs the YouTube channel polymathy uses this pronunciation. Vininn126 (talk) 11:18, 13 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Inasmuch as the speaker on that channel does not use a standard [θ], I hear more a voiceless dental [t̪], possibly aspirated to [t̪ʰ], than a voiced [ð]. --Lambiam 11:56, 13 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Even Googling "voicing th in thanks" pulls up plenty of hits. Regional, but real. Vininn126 (talk) 11:58, 13 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It's been around since at least the mid-2000s when someone remarked on it to me. I've even heard it in Thanksgiving. I don't consume much mass media, so I can't comment much on dialects other than my own. As to why this is happening, if I remember right, the same person who brought this up to me back then said that it's because the word thanks often appears on its own, either as a whole sentence or as a clause, and it behaves in many ways like a function word, not a content word, so we're giving it the "grammatical /ð/" of words like this ~ then ~ those. Since thanks is the most common word in the family, the pronunciation thus arose there and then spread to the content words thank and Thanksgiving. Alternatively, it could be voicing due to lax pronunciation, though I prefer the first explanation since thanks is usually stressed. —Soap— 11:51, 13 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Not entirely on point, but this is my normal realisation of thank and thanks as a BrEng speaker, so I find it a bit weird that we only give [θæŋk] for RP. I've updated the entry to reflect this, as I know it's not just me. Theknightwho (talk) 17:52, 13 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

How interesting...I don't believe I've ever encountered this pronunciation before. Other than in BrEng, where else can it be found ? Leasnam (talk) 22:52, 15 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

well, i noticed i didnt mention that i live in the United States, so i'll just add that now to clear it up. So at least Britain and the United States, and that might imply it's widespread elsewhere too even if it's a modern phenomenon. —Soap— 12:10, 21 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Hmm, very interesting -- I can't say that I've ever encountered that, but then again I might be hearing it and just not be recognizing that the speaker is voicing the initial consonant. I'll pay closer attention, see if I notice anything. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 00:30, 25 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The only person I ever heard saying ‘thanks’ as ‘dhanks’ was the American political commenter Jackson Hinkle at the end of every one of his videos (before he got banned from YouTube and Twitter, so you might have difficulty finding examples of him saying it now). Overlordnat1 (talk) 00:13, 30 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Completely not necessary, but I found another example. Vininn126 (talk) 11:29, 6 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Vininn126 You can even hear it on the BrEng audio for thank you. Theknightwho (talk) 12:45, 6 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

EN: polystyrene

I hope that the ugly structural formulæ currently given in polystyrene are aberrations. "RCH2CHphenylR" looks particularly bad, and is hard to parse (especially for novices). Needs fixing. —DIV (1.145.214.72 11:49, 13 January 2024 (UTC))[reply]

gotcha, I understand

Regarding gotcha, particularly this revert, i agree that was the wrong place to add the definition "I understand", but i also agree that term has that definition, which i don't see on the page. i'm unsure where to add it, though, because i'm not actually sure gotcha counts as a Contraction or an Interjection, which is what the page currently shows. It's almost a verb, almost a sentence, it's shorthand, it's slangy... Call it a phrase, like caveat emptor#Phrase?

--173.67.42.107 13:24, 13 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The revert was due to the edit making it look like all uses of the contraction meant "I understand", which would be wrong. Fixing it would have been difficult because the whole entry is unclear. The interjection overlaps with the contraction, and only the noun senses are truly independant of got + you. The contraction combines two words from a larger structure which don't have a direct grammatical relationship to each other, so there's no real part of speech. One can reconstruct an underlying form of "I got you" with the subject often omitted. Other subjects would also work ("he gotcha" "we gotcha", "they gotcha",etc.), but only the first-person subject is typically omitted. To really understand the contraction, you have to look at the definitions for get, one of which covers the sense you have in mind. Even then, "you" in this context refers to whatever meaning the other person is trying to convey, not the other person. It's the same as when you say "I'm not sure I understand you" in similar contexts. A lot of this has to do with context and pragmatics rather than anything lexical, so it's hard to really deal with it in a dictionary entry. Chuck Entz (talk) 17:42, 13 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I added something at gotcha#Interjection. DCDuring (talk) 18:53, 13 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Is "slam the door" an acceptable entry?

Is "slam the door" considered to be an idiomatic expression?

On the French Wiktionary, one user created fr:slam the door primarily because there's an equivalent idiomatic expression in French. I'm not sure it's idiomatic in English. Automatik (talk) 18:15, 13 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Automatik: If it just means to close a door hard, I don't think it is idiomatic in English. I'm not aware of any figurative sense of this term. — Sgconlaw (talk) 18:23, 13 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

“close the door”, in OneLook Dictionary Search. shows that MWOnline, alone among OneLook dictionaries, has an entry for close the door, but with the figurative sense "to be uncompromisingly obstructive". No OneLook dictionary has an entry for slam the door. "Slam the door" has the meaning of MWOnline's figurative sense of close the door (followed by on, to). I am skeptical of the entry-worthiness of any obvious metaphor like this, let alone the literal sense. Neither seems entry-worthy to me, but it's a close call. DCDuring (talk) 18:33, 13 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

See slam the door on, mesdames et messieurs Demonicallt (talk) 19:25, 13 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Wrong main form IMHO. DCDuring (talk) 02:39, 14 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

that Wiktionnaire project where they spammed our Beer Parlour every month with progress on a niche topic

What ever happened to that? BTW, I'm a big fan of Wiktionnaire! Demonicallt (talk) 19:24, 13 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I can try to fulfill that role- see below for details! --Geographyinitiative (talk) 20:53, 13 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It was LexiSession! Demonicallt (talk) 21:44, 13 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Subpostmistress

Should subpostmistress not be linked to subpostmaster and vice versa, as gendered versions of the same thing, noting also that the latter can be used in modern English as an ungendered term for people of both sexes? If so, how? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 19:59, 13 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

"Coordinate terms" would work (like on ballet master). Perhaps someone else has an even better idea. - -sche (discuss) 20:42, 13 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

New Taipei City as lemma instead of New Taipei

Support I believe that New Taipei City might should be the main entry, and New Taipei should be an alternative form. This is based on my previous research of the local city gov usage[5], official documents, Wikipedia's usage [6] and elite journalistic usage. However, I don't think this would logically mean that Tainan City needs to be the main entry instead of Tainan. A change for Tainan may or may not be correct, but I think it's clear to me that New Taipei is not the name- it's New Taipei City. I think the name 'New Taipei City' might have been constructed by an unstated analogy to New York City-- see the cites. What do you think? Thanks for any input. No need to rush. --Geographyinitiative (talk) 20:17, 13 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Hey Joggy. I think you're the only person here who cares about this stuff. Do what you think is best Demonicallt (talk) 14:27, 18 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

chuff

What would be a good way to document that chuff can be used as a substitute for an obscene word, most commonly fuck? I added this line just now, assigning it to Etymology 3 because that's what seemed to fit best given the meanings and the fact that we already have the chuff linked from there. The chuff is defined as a euphemism replacing any the fuck, which sounds good to me, but it's not just bound to that particular phrase. People say chuff off and I'm so chuffing mad as well, so it's a general-purpose substitute from what I gather. Should it get its own section, etymology 4? If so, what part of speech would it be? I'd prefer to avoid listing every single part of speech that fuck can appear in when it's clear that it's a cover-all substitute. Note: I believe this is a very British-specific word, as I've never heard it once in my life in America. —Soap— 20:35, 13 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Ideally, I would think we would indeed have POS sections for every POS it is attested in, especially since it inflects (chuff off, chuffing). Compare dang. A lot of other substitutes just start with ===Verb===, e.g. frack, so you could just list one part of speech and put the expectation onto other people, e.g. language learners, to "just know" that it also exists in other parts of speech, but it would not be incorrect if someone else actually added the other parts of speech. BTW the other day I heard an American use cuff (sic, not chuff) as a substitute for fuck but was not able to find any evidence of that being any widespread practice as opposed to a one-off substitution. - -sche (discuss) 20:48, 13 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

disaster sexualities: SOP?

I'm going through CAT:English citations of undefined terms, and some things look SOP. In particular, I'm inclined to move Citations:disaster bi, Citations:disaster bisexual, Citations:bisexual disaster, Citations:disaster gay, Citations:disaster lesbian et al to Citations:disaster, because (1) you can modify any sexuality (google:"disaster asexuals", etc), (2) you can place "disaster" before or after the sexuality (disaster bisexual, bisexual disaster), and (3) the meme is to contrast "disaster Xs" with "distinguished Xs", "dramatic Xs" and sometimes "functional Xs". This leads me to think any idiomatic content resides in disaster rather than every disaster X collocation being idiomatic. Agree / disagree? Courtesy ping @WordyAndNerdy. - -sche (discuss) 02:11, 14 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

If possible, the original formation should remain and be put as etymology in definition of this sense of disaster.

Actually, I believe a similar plurality would exist for the currently defined skateboarding trick. At least "disaster slide" appears to be citable, e.g. "... backside disaster slide revert", no full view. 2A00:20:B050:BE84:DE9E:C4A2:1C07:8589 04:27, 17 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

burial-place: SOP?

Going through CAT:English citations of undefined terms, I found Citations:burial-place—created as part of a mass creation of cites pages for terms in Dickens—for which no shortage of other cites could be added, but... is it SOP (in which case we don't need a cites page for it), or idiomatic (in which case let's create the obviously attested entry)? - -sche (discuss) 05:21, 14 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Here's my rule of thumb for detecting Wiktionary's prejudice against hyphenated words. If burialplace were a term, would it be within the limits of Wiktionary? I think burialplace is a term, probably meeting WT:ATTEST. Here are three cites I found after a less than fifteen second search process: [7], [8], [9]. Assuming that these three cites represent a bona fide word (not typos for burial place), now what? How does Wiktionary look at burial-place now? The purge of hyphenated words on the mainspace is not enough! I must delete Citations pages! --Geographyinitiative (talk) 12:12, 14 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Geographyinitiative solved it, also there is additional idiomaticity behind it, as I would chose it as the idiomatic translation of Grabstätte or Begräbnisstätte rather than gravesite. I don’t know which rule it was that we include a seemingly SOP term that is commonly synonymous to a more awkward one-word term—was it only an epistemological rule that such terms are probably idiomatic? Fay Freak (talk) 12:19, 14 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

IIRC, if burialplace were attested, then SoP alternative forms would be accepted. And the most common of the alternative forms would become the main entry. DCDuring (talk) 00:39, 15 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

There's something wrong here. I perhaps feel that what I see as the excesses in the application of the SOP policy on Wiktionary make documentation of English under a descriptivist theory harder than it ought to be. Now that I've made the entries for burialplace and burial-place, did that solve the original SOP problem? So you're telling me that if there's an alternative form without a space (burialplace), then the hyphenated form (burial-place) is now a legitimate English language word, too? (if I can find three qualifying cites) But that without that alternative form without a space (burialplace), that even the Citations page of the hyphenated form (burial-place) could have been deleted under SOP? What if burial-place were a legitimate English language word, but somehow burialplace weren't? No room to breathe, to even explore the possibility that this hyphenated word is an English language word by leaving the Citations page out there. Brah. Something is rotten in the State of Denmark. (I'll remind you that a legitimate word like Peiching was outright deleted in 2011 and I had to do your crazy three cites to revive the entry in 2023. Imagine what problems the misapplication of SOP is causing! Oh the humanity!) I write this post to put on the record that I question the academic validity of the present-day application of the SOP doctrine on Wiktionary. --Geographyinitiative (talk) 11:35, 16 January 2024 (UTC) (Modified)[reply]

A spelled-solid form is weak, but sufficient for our purposes, evidence of idiomaticity for terms that are semantically SoP, as burial-place is. DCDuring (talk) 23:08, 16 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

We need to have rules that can be consistently and objectively applied to prevent being over-run with spurious "terms". Sorry if you can't see that. DCDuring (talk) 23:10, 16 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

You're right, I apologize! I just have some idealistic and poorly thought out vision of the perfect descripvist dictionary. I have gone too far in my criticism. It's a great project! I can't imagine trying to run this place with crazy people like me in here. Apologies, and keep up the good work. --Geographyinitiative (talk) 11:24, 17 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

We're all pretty crazy AFAICT. DCDuring (talk) 14:07, 17 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

「格好いい」as a Japanese translation of "cool"

「格好いい」 really is a common way to say "cool" in Japanese; we have that usage already several times on its citations page, and it's even mentioned on "cool"'s talk page. Could it please be added as a translation by someone with permission to do so? (Sorry for double-posting, but my previous request has been up for a week and not received any responses, not even to deny the request.) 166.182.84.215 23:36, 14 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Jacboson

Is this a typo for Jacobson, or a genuine surname of its own? Equinox ◑ 00:28, 15 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

One for RFV, methinks. This, that and the other (talk) 09:35, 17 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

AFAICT it's just a typo. The etymology asserts it's from Swedish, but the Swedish surname is Jakobsson~Jacobsson, so there's no reason to expect -bo-, and of the hits for google books:"Jacboson",

Bell's Orofacial Pains uses Jacboson once and Jacobson multiple times, suggesting bo is a typo
ditto The Dark Side of Reform
The Global Agenda uses Jodi Jacboson once and Jodi Jacobson elsewhere
a 1978 Directory of Medical Facilities uses Jacboson Memorial Care Center but the actual facility is Jacobson...
Bilinear Control Processes mentions Gershwin and Jacboson but the bibliography cites Gershwin and Jacobson
it's similar Notions of Time in Deuterocanonical and Cognate Literature, and War Isn't the Only Hell, etc, etc...
likewise with the only two hits for Jacboson + Swedish
(Jakboson|Jakbosson) + (Swedish|Sverige) gets no hits

- -sche (discuss) 16:31, 17 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Andersdr

This appears to be a contracted form of Swedish Andersdotter (although it is not described as such on the entry). But is it a surname in its own right, or just a version of Andersdotter that used to appear on birth certificates and other official documents? A quick Google search mainly returns centuries-old entries in ancestry databases. Voltaigne (talk) 01:46, 15 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Is anyone gonna put a synonym section on restart,reload, and refresh?

Why is the synonym section not there? Heyandwhoa (talk) 03:19, 15 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Because nobody got round to it yet. Perhaps you could add them? Denazz (talk) 14:52, 15 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Plautdietsch Faks trick

Etymology is missing or incomplete. Requested it on the individual page. If you're knowledgeable about West Germanic – North Sea Germanic – German –Low German – East Low German – Low Prussian? – Plautdietsch, please add to it. Flāvidus (talk) 05:35, 15 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Done, please have a look. Next time, Etymology Scriptorium might be the preferred place to post these types of inquiries for quicker response Leasnam (talk) 23:31, 15 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Impressive, How did you connected the dots? Anyways, I appreciate it. Flāvidus (talk) 00:34, 17 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Since the word is derived from German Fickesfackes from fickfacken, I presumed German must have been the source. From there is was pretty easy going, one step at a time :) Leasnam (talk) 05:12, 17 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Declension of Bulgarian капучино

Hi, can someone help with the declension of Bulgarian капучино? Chitanka, PONS, Google and Deepl all seem to offer different plurals. Thanks SimonWikt (talk) 11:15, 15 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Because they differ. The word either stays the same in the plural, as is the norm in Ukrainian and Russian and the respective words for coffee (held as indeclinable but inflected nonetheless by speakers when authorities don’t watch), or капучино → капучина. What you entered is not wrong and more likely in the jovial colloquial. Fay Freak (talk) 14:46, 15 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@SimonWikt according to the Institute for Bulgarian Language, капучино has no plural in Bulgarian. You'd instead say things like "две чаши капучино" (two cups of cappuccino). Colloquially, people sometimes pluralize it, e.g. "капучинота" by appending the "-та" suffix typical for neuter nouns, but in the official grammar it's singular-only. Chernorizets (talk) 21:36, 15 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Base __ digits?

So when I was exploring the unicode characters, I've come across these 2 characters which are: A upside-down 2, and a upside-down 3. It said it was the base-12 digits for 10 & 11. So wondering what if we were doing it in base-(>12)? What would the digit for 12, 13, and so on? Heyandwhoa (talk) 23:08, 15 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

For base 16, we just use hexadecimal: ABCDEF. Im not aware offhand of any serious proposal to introduce separate characters for those digits since hex is so well-grounded in computer science already. —Soap— 23:39, 15 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

natice

A (Chicago-area?) Mexican food dish; see Citations:natice. Is there a more common spelling?? - -sche (discuss) 03:06, 16 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

ona (Garo) meaning?

ona#Garo defines the verb as to be short. Could someone familiar with Garo please clarify if this usage of short means not tall, or not polite, or without enough money, or short (length, such as millimeters), or short (length of time), or any other English meaning... or is it like English and all of those meanings can be correct depending on context? Thanks. --173.67.42.107 03:20, 16 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

This dictionary gives ona as a translation for low (adjective). That fits with the antonym listed in our entry, chua, which supposedly means "to be high". This, that and the other (talk) 09:24, 17 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The Hebrew word hamas

Per this [10] discussion on en-WP (and sourced article content), hamas is also a word in the Hebrew Bible, roughly "violence". I don't know Hebrew, if this word is used as such today, or how Wiktionary "thinks", but perhaps someone who knows these things will consider it. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 09:01, 16 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

We have an entry for חמס, but the standard transliteration is khamas. —Soap— 09:13, 16 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, that seems different, then. Thanks! Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 09:16, 16 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The other transliteration does exist though:[11]. But I'll take your word that khamas is standard. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 09:34, 16 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The words you might be thinking of: Arabic حَمَاس (ḥamās), which literally means something like "enthusiasm, zeal", but which is really an acronym of حَرَكَة اَلْمُقَاوَمَةِ الْإِسْلَامِيَّةِ (ḥarakat al-muqāwamati l-ʔislāmiyyati, “Islamic Resistance Movement”). This organization is known in Hebrew as חַמַאס (khamás) (apparently a transliteration of the Arabic), which is different from חָמַס (khamás, “violence, injustice”), but it seems to be pronounced the same. From what I can remember of Semitic linguistics, Arabic حَمَاس (ḥamās) and Hebrew חָמַס (“khamás”) aren't etymologically related- the resemblance seems to be a coincidence. Of course, I'm not an expert in any of this, so I could be wrong. Chuck Entz (talk) 10:02, 16 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

As for transliterations: there are different systems that have been used over the years, and I believe the main Wiktionary one was arrived at by discussion among the Hebrew contributors. There's also a scholarly transliteration that Wiktionary also uses. See WT:AHE (for Arabic, see WT:AAR). The consonants of both languages are a bit complicated and only partly overlap with those European languages and with each other, so it's best not to read to much into transliterations. Chuck Entz (talk) 10:16, 16 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

These things being so, would it be reasonable to add "Hebrew" for hamas/khamas at hamas, or to add חמס as a see also on that page? Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 10:22, 16 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

No, because English Hamas is capitalized, and we have the Hebrew and Arabic in their own scripts (see the links above). Adding "see also" links at the top of the page for other scripts would be a bit of work, but not at all unprecedented. Chuck Entz (talk) 10:36, 16 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Ok, so a page like hamas is for languages that actually use those letters/script? That's quite reasonable. And good point, if חמס is added as "see also", حماس should be too. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 10:52, 16 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Is there any word for the study of abacuses?

I'm not sure. Heyandwhoa (talk) 21:13, 16 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Nope Denazz (talk)#

Close: abacomancy. See def. 1 at abacus, DCDuring (talk) 00:03, 17 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Uh, ok. Heyandwhoa (talk) 00:07, 21 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

berm

Can we be more illustrative about it or add any abstractions that would allow less faint ideas of what this word signifies? Zoomers read this and don’t know what it is talking about, and translators cannot determine what they are supposed to translate.

The definitional part of this entry, save two added regional definitions, is unchanged since 2005 when SemperBlotto inexpensively copied it from some ancient dictionary. It is one of the really nasty figleaf backlog entries that hearkens back its era of content made available on the internet. No Google Books, Sci-Hub or Twitter and Blotto couldn’t even browse PLoS ONE, people were happy to finally dispose of their cheaply produced acid- and dust-ridden classics, as they have been dumped somewhere on the web, evaluation later. Fay Freak (talk) 11:35, 18 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

By illustrative you mean adding pictures? I agree that would be nice. To me the berm is the part of the beach where water never reaches, and therefore is flat. Some beaches dont have a berm. As for the other definitions, I dont use them but pictures would be nice for the street-related senses at least. —Soap— 05:15, 19 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

These defs are lousy, you're totally right about that. I had a go at improving them. Senses 1 and 7 may be talking about the same thing. The entry is in desperate need of pictures... This, that and the other (talk) 05:28, 19 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Fay Freak @Soap I added some pics. I would still like some evidence for sense 1. This, that and the other (talk) 05:46, 19 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@This, that and the other, Soap: Oh yeah, finally I have pictures in my head, in place of the gaping inanity that neither Wiktionary nor bilingual dictionaries could remedy; I have just learnt about the German word Berme (that not much into Central Germany should have a much lower hit rate in understanding tests than the English), which unlike DWDS is defined non-dyke-exclusively by de.Wiktionary but very well illustrated in combination with the definition using the term Böschung that can mean this and that and I wouldn’t associate with shores, while the English is so associated but bilinguals translate Böschungsabsatz or Wallabsatz—you see, I am a hillbilly very far from water and not visiting beach resorts. What Soap says is already helpful and better than what is in the mainspace; how relevant is the “towpath” part in the hitherto second definition? Is the presence of one necessary? And shouldn’t the definition say the order of things instead of saying the “bank or path” is “opposite”, which is quite multiaxial a term? Fay Freak (talk) 06:19, 19 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I played dumb and didn’t look up OED, but now that I did I have found myself asking whether they are stupid. 😳 They only have the fortification sense, according to them a “narrow” ledge, and then a non-definition with three quotes “spec. in Geology”. And then interestingly and contradicting @Soap’s flooding assumption, they have two quotes from Anglo-Egypt (1891, 1900) according to which it means a ledge “bordering either bank of the Nile and inundated when the river overflows”. Fay Freak (talk) 06:36, 19 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Well i suppose during a flood, even the berms will get washed over with water, so its not necessarily a contradiction. really just a google img search for "berm of a beach" will turn up lots of schoolbook diagrams that show it means the flat part where high tide doesnt normally reach, and that sometimes the beach simply doesnt have one (rocky coastlines in New England for example). —Soap— 07:10, 19 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

We could perhaps condense what is now a rather sprawling set of senses, I admit. This, that and the other (talk) 08:55, 19 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

When I think of a berm, it's a low barrier less than a foot tall and less than a foot wide along the side of a road that keeps cars from driving off the edge. It was easier for me to find a Google Maps view of a road that I remember having such a berm. Coincidentally, a surveyor has helpfully written "60 A[sphalt]C[oncrete] BERM" on the pavement in front of this one. Chuck Entz (talk) 07:56, 19 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Chuck Entz I guess that is our sense 9, which could use some more specificity in the way it is defined. What's the difference between this and a curb? This, that and the other (talk) 09:01, 19 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

So in Chuck Entz’s idiolect it is just a (type of) guardrail, Leitplanke?

Coincidentally I had the impression that سَاتِر (sātir) also had very specific size requirements, if anyhow abstractly defined—perhaps it should have multiple definitions but from contexts and with even less reference works and no native speakers of various regiolects I don’t aspire much. What you see in image searches is what I found to be named in English probably screen facade, when only corpora (from which I found the equation with berm and which may or may not give you some ideas of how others understand the word berm) hinted me a more general understanding ({{R:ar:Wehr-6-de}} didn’t have the Arabic), probably anyhow suggesting another term we should create, along with assumed synonyms “facade screening, decorative screening, or a tensile façade”. Fay Freak (talk) 17:58, 19 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

devil's own

Given as an adjective. Should it be a determiner? Equinox ◑ 13:29, 18 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

"devil's own" is not a determiner. If it were, you wouldn't use "the" before it. If not taken as an idiom, "the devil's own X" is syntactically structured as "{{{the devil}'s} {own {X}}}", where "the" is a determiner in the phrase "the devil", "own" is an attributive adjective in the phrase "own X", and "the devil's" is a determiner in the phrase "the devil's own X". (I'm not completely sure about the analysis of "own" as an ordinary attributive adjective, but in any case, it's clear "devil's own" without the preceding "the" is not a constituent.) If we consider the syntax to be the same for the idiomatic use, then it seems we ought to move this to "the devil's own", as suggested on the Talk page. However, there do seem to be occasional examples of it not being used with "the":

"Somehow these distortions add to the feeling of speed and it would be a devil's own job to recreate them with a modern camera." (Glenn, Black and White Photography Forum, Jul 30, 2023)
"A devil's own help to see his business done", "Death and the Ruffians", Leigh Hunt, Stories in verse, now first collected, 1855

--Urszag (talk) 23:55, 19 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The "the" argument settles it, thanks, I was wrong. Haha. But we could improve the entry. Equinox ◑ 02:47, 20 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

What word has the most variant/alternative spellings?

All I know is that tsuris and argh have a "bunch". Heyandwhoa (talk) 21:22, 19 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Old French iluec is a strong contender. Nicodene (talk) 02:08, 20 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Uh, I don't think any of them have any citations? Heyandwhoa (talk) 02:12, 20 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I think the criteria for citing extinct languages is different and more relaxed than what we use for living languages. They're all considered LDL's, which means only one cite is necessary, and that cite can be a dictionary. If I'm mistaken, it's at least what I remember being told when I asked a similar question about the many alternate spellings we list for many Middle English words. —Soap— 09:26, 20 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

See the second cited source. Nicodene (talk) 02:18, 20 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Fun question. I think someone keeps track of this... (things like "what is the longest word", which aren't very useful, but fun to know): who is it? We definitely have a page of "weird extreme things" like the longest, tallest, biggest, can someone help me out? Equinox ◑ 02:46, 20 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

WT:HOF? - -sche (discuss) 04:58, 20 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Allmost every Norwegian word has a bunch of dialectal forms, and half of them are usually not even listed. Just yesterday I found a Norwegian book in Rjukan about some church with totally bizzare spelling I've never seen. Tollef Salemann (talk) 07:12, 20 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

there is no Planet B -- coined in the 2000s?

I have a feeling that this was coined on a protest sign during the 1960s-70s, when ecological protests were all the rage [in America, at least]. Hard to find proof, since it's very likely to be all images, and pictures are very bad at being OCR-able. CitationsFreak (talk) 08:54, 20 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I'm sure similar slogans have been around for a long time .... here's a 1962 poster warning you that you are on your last pair of eyes. And just as fossils of extinct animals are most likely to be in the middle of the animals' time on Earth, finds like this are probably not the oldest examples of their kind. However, last pair of eyes and no Planet B are not really that close .... even if one could have led to the other. Google Books is unhelpful here. archive.org turns up a few hits from the 1900s, but it's possible they're all mislabeled, as the two that I clicked both showed obvious signs of being from the 21st century (one even mentioned a website). So it's possible that it really was coined in 2006. If we still have strong doubts but cannot find solid proof of earlier use, we could fall back on changing the wording to popularized by. —Soap— 09:24, 20 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I feel like searching up plain text is very unlikely to find matches. My instinct is to watch old footage/look at old photos of climate protestors until you see a sign reading that. But that would take ages. CitationsFreak (talk) 10:05, 20 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Again fixating on the coinage is not the right feeling. I can triangulate the spread of the term from Britain fashionwise, be it recycled only at that time. In spite of this phrase hardly found in plain text together with the brand, John Richmond is putting the slogan all over his sneaker models for years now, but probably to reminisce the scummy early 2000s when his blissful brand had its heyday; it is reported he got inspired by the current concerns to use the motto in 2018 which was right after the brand was bought by Arav Srl / Mena Marano (woman business owner), when the fabric qualities also greatly improved. Fay Freak (talk) 17:26, 26 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Can a shortcut be added to the English category for citations of undefined terms?

Like WT:RLC, WT:UETC or something? Heyandwhoa (talk) 00:26, 21 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

positive, negative, and neutral

This might be better suited for RFVE but these three words have circular definitions. Positive is defined as not negative nor neutral. But what is negative? Not positive nor neutral. But what is neutral? Not positive nor negative. It doesn't define any of them. Worse yet, the said senses for neutral and positive don't seem to have any quotations and the quotation for the said sense of negative seems dubious. A Westman talk stalk 01:55, 21 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Oof, good catch. Defining "neutral" as "neither positive nor negative" (whether that's its own definition all by itself, or part of another definition) seems reasonable enough to me, but defining "positive" as "Not negative or neutral" is a hilarious cop-out. MW has "indicating, relating to, or characterized by affirmation, addition, inclusion, or presence rather than negation, withholding, or absence", which is wordy but more ... well, positive (characterized by the presence of an actual definition, rather than only defining the word as the absence of that which is negative or neutral). - -sche (discuss) 02:53, 21 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

wanking in America

We have wank labelled as British-Irish-Australian-NZ, but it seems to be understood and not infrequently used in the US too these days, and on the talk page someone says it's used in Canada too. Is this at a point where we should change the label to "originally..." or "especially..."? - -sche (discuss) 02:47, 21 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Living in New York, I only heard it from speakers from the UK and Australia and travelers thereto, but things may have changed. DCDuring (talk) 03:49, 21 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I've never heard it in Canada. I think words like this are widely understood universally now, because of the internet, and I wouldn't be surprised if people started occasionally using them outside of their place of origin. If you label it, I would suggest going with chiefly, since that implies that it isn't generally used elsewhere. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 22:19, 22 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

As an American, wank off is by far more common. Also, was that title necessary? :p Vininn126 (talk) 22:24, 22 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

OK, I've changed it :p - -sche (discuss) 23:50, 22 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It still sounds especially non-American to me, as a younger speaker. It's understood, yeah, as most Briticisms are, but I don't think I've really heard Americans use it unironically. AG202 (talk) 22:52, 22 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I would wildly speculate that the verb "wank" meaning 'masturbate' has a place in the USA similar to "jab" for 'vaccination'. --Geographyinitiative (talk) 00:09, 23 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

As an AmE native speaker, I agree; especially now in the ubiquitous-internet era (even more than before), AmE speakers are typically familiar with many "chiefly British" usages aka Briticisms, but they won't necessarily bust them out unironically in just any old context. In that respect, just another typical example of code-switching's soft boundaries. One BrE usage that has crawled inside my brain and won't leave is saying "they have done" instead of "they have" and "I will do" instead of "I will". Sometimes my brain silently tacks on the extra bit even when I don't say it out loud because one mustn't in my time and place if one is not to break character. Lol, even saying "one" or "mustn't", let alone "one mustn't", is rather laughable from a good old fashioned US-centric monolingual AmE viewpoint — one oughtn't do, lol, because some monolingual AmE speakers seem to be weirdly fixated on noticing whether one's (i.e., your) usage is folksy enough ("careful there with the folkishness fetish, mein Failure," one might think to oneself) — but reading online and watching things like YouTube and BritBox-ish stuff expands one's mind in ways both elastic and nonelastic. Quercus solaris (talk) 03:36, 24 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

mar Zaghawa

Given IPA(key): /ɡaɾdɪ/
In the referenced Beria-English English-Beria Dictionary, it is [mar] n. star.
I couldn't find any other transliteration and IPA form for the language.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zaghawa_language phonology section doesn't look much to support this IPA.
External link Suleiman Osman: Phonology of Zaghawa Language in Sudan on Wikipedia is a "The required page could not be found".
Flāvidus (talk) 02:50, 21 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

strike twice

Citations:strike twice. Not sure what to do with this: lots of cites use the image of lightning striking twice in all kinds of phrases besides just one proverb... but where should we lemmatize that? "lightning strike twice" doesn't seem right, but I'm having trouble finding cites of "strike twice" being idiomatic with anything other than "lightning" (a bell striking twice is literal and SOP). - -sche (discuss) 05:42, 21 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I've always thought that lots of redirects solve the problem of non-intuitive lemma forms like lightning strike twice. Now we also have collocations (section of template) to bring up good entries for many forms of flexible expressions. We could have redirects going to the proverb instead.

This is an example of a recurring problem: well-established expressions that are clearly part of the lexicon (eg, a proverb like lightning never strikes twice in the same place) become a target for meaning-giving allusion from a variety of hard-to-lemmatize expressions, short forms (lightning never strikes twice), etc. If WT:Style guide had more useful content (or links) for such recurring problems maybe contributors would use it. At least we could refer people to it. We might need to be clear about what was policy and what were recommended practices, including multiple possibilities. DCDuring (talk) 16:15, 21 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Hmm, OK, I've managed to find enough cites of other things (fortune, inspiration) striking twice that I've tentatively created strike twice, but I'm still unsure about it because it does seem to bleed into literal/SOP usage as soon as it gets away from using "lightning" to figuratively stand in for other things. But arguably strike twice makes a more coherent redirect target than redirecting lightning struck twice (it positively/affirmatively did strike) to lightning doesn't strike twice. - -sche (discuss) 17:56, 21 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Isn't the broader usage etymologically/allusively derived from the "lightning" versions? Other dictionaries that cover the proverb or its extensions cover lightning never strikes twice or lightning [doesn't|does not]] strike twice (omitting in the same place) with figurative senses. Also it's fun to tell people on golf courses, lighthouses, mountain tops, etc that lightning never strikes twice in the same place. DCDuring (talk) 18:39, 21 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Cemetery cross

We give 22 senses for the noun cross, yet none seems to cover the sense of a cross used to mark a grave. --Lambiam 14:14, 22 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps generalizing def 6 "(Christianity) A modified representation of the crucifixion stake, worn as jewellery or displayed as a symbol of religious devotion."

I don't see that the jewelry sense needs it own definition. Also what is "crucifixion stake" supposed to mean? DCDuring (talk) 18:40, 22 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I guess maybe we call it a stake because there's no other convenient way to describe the Christian cross without using the word cross in the definition. —Soap— 14:20, 23 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

There is as much justification (ie, none) to call it a stick. A stake is a single pointed shaft. I have altered def. 6 by replacing "crucifixon stake" with "crucifix" and included crucifix, linked, in def. 4. DCDuring (talk) 16:03, 23 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I have edited def. 6 to be "Any representation of the crucifix, as in religious architecture, tombstones, or jewellery." DCDuring (talk) 16:17, 23 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I think some people believe that Christ was tied or nailed to a stake (without a horizontal crossbeam), or perhaps even impaled upon a stake rather than crucified. This might be why the wording ended up that way, or it could just be poor wording. I think the way you're re-worded it is pretty good, but I think it might be a little vague, as there's often a technical nuance between a "cross" and a "crucifix" at least as far as art and jewelry go. A "crucifix" is a cross that includes the corpus, whereas when people say "cross" they generally are referring to just the cross, without a corpus. (Speaking of which, the corpus page is missing a definition: "the representation of Jesus on the cross" cf.

Crucifix on Wikipedia.Wikipedia or "the figure of Christ on a crucifix"

Corpus on Wikipedia.Wikipedia ) Also I think a Christian "cross" is regarded more as a symbol, while a "crucifix" is an "image" (and for this reason I think historically the iconoclasts, and some Protestants today, are ok with crosses but not with crucifixes). Anyway I'm not going to change it, but I'd suggest something like:

(Christianity) Any representation of the crucifix (especially one without the corpus) used for devotional purposes, as in religious architecture, burial markers, jewelry, etc.
She was wearing a cross on her necklace.

(Of course, if we word it that way, someone should also update the corpus entry.) 2601:49:8400:26B:FC86:877D:38B8:358D 22:25, 23 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

There is an excellent chance that popular understanding is similarly vague, so we should not go too far to make sharp distinctions, especially if we would be hard-pressed to find citations that attest to the specific definitions. I also don't like to rely on wikilinks (eg, corpus) that make what could be a relatively simple definition one that takes normal users on a merry romp through multiple linked entries, with confusion possible at each one. DCDuring (talk) 02:50, 24 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

reggie

Requesting others' input on the pronunciation, as I'm not familiar with this word, and wonder if the original author may have copied the pronunciation section from the unrelated capitalized personal name Reggie, which really does have /dʒ/. Basically I'm skeptical because I'd expect a shortening of regular to have a hard /g/ sound regardless of its spelling. Thanks, —Soap— 14:19, 23 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

regex (regular expression) may be pronounced either way. Presumably the influence from words like vegetable where -ege- is not a hard /g/. Equinox ◑ 14:22, 23 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Good to know, thanks. And char can have /tʃ/. Still I would be surprised if this is the only valid pronunciation for reggie, and i still think the IP may have just copy-pasted the code without consciously noticing what it meant. —Soap— 14:30, 23 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

nogle

This was shown to me in a discussion off-site. The word nogle is the plural of nogen, but on the nogen page, we say

In spoken language, the plural most often has the form nogen.

And we also state on the nogle page that it is usually pronounced the same as nogen. So my question is, is there a better way to analyze this? Could we say that people tend to use the singular form in spoken communication? Or is there a well-established tradition of writing nogle and reading nogen, such that someone reading a sign with that word on it would consciously choose the -n pronunciation? Thanks, —Soap— 14:27, 23 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@User:Gamren Have you anything to say about it? We have similar stuff in Norwegian as well, but i'm not sure about Danish. Tollef Salemann (talk) 15:03, 23 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

My guess would be that the "any" and "some" senses ("der er nogle mennesker her" (there are some people here) versus "der er ikke nogen mennesker her" (there are not any people here)) are in the process of merging. As for why it is nogle that is pronounced as nogen, and not the other way around, I don't know, except maybe that nogle is more unwieldy in the mouth.__Gamren (talk) 16:56, 23 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

English upon - hyphenation

The hyphenation (which I'm guessing is the same thing as the syllable boundary) is listed as "up‧on". Is this correct, or should it be "u‧pon"? (The IPA spellings are /əˈpɒn/, /əˈpɑn/, and /əˈpɔn/, which looks to me like the syllable divide is between the 'u' and the 'pon', not the 'up' and the 'on'. But I could be wrong, as I'm not good with IPA and I don't know linguistics.) 2601:49:8400:26B:FC86:877D:38B8:358D 21:45, 23 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

There are at least two ways of hyphenating: according to syllables, and according to the etymology of the word. My personal preference is for the latter since it seems more logical. However, in both cases, it is considered poor practice to hyphenate in a way which leaves a single letter at the end or beginning of a line. Thus, upon should be hyphenated as "up‧on" or not at all, because it is poor practice to have u- at the end of a line. — Sgconlaw (talk) 22:01, 23 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I see, that makes sense. Thank you for the explanation! 2601:49:8400:26B:FC86:877D:38B8:358D 22:28, 23 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

strong-tie

What should be done here? Strong-tie is obviously the attributive form of strong tie, and we voted (for better or worse) not to have attributive forms, but when not attributive, "strong tie" is quite SOP, it's a tie that's strong. Maybe it's SOP even in attributive cites? Should we just delete Citations:strong-tie? - -sche (discuss) 22:47, 23 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

All four cites are "strong-tie phenomenon", so maybe that's a set phrase and should be the entry. Equinox ◑ 22:50, 23 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, that's just an effect of me searching for the same collocation that was already present; it's not limited to that, e.g. google books:"strong-tie effect", google books:"a strong-tie relation". 23:26, 23 January 2024 (UTC)

I'm sure that in any book strong ties would be defined. I suppose in academic sociology articles strong tie and weak tie might be understood, ie, part of the jargon/lexicon of sociology. In the sociological sense, there is only one relevant sense of tie and perhaps particular senses of strong and weak.

FWIW, "Strong-Tie" is a trademark of the Simpson Strong-Tie Company, a subsidiary of w:Simpson Manufacturing Company, but the lowercase form doesn't seem to be used for their products or imitators.

DCDuring (talk) 02:42, 24 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

If it refers to nothing more than a tie that is strong in some way, I’d say this is not worth an entry. — Sgconlaw (talk) 09:38, 24 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

This sense is immediately what came to my head when I saw the title of this section. This, that and the other (talk) 09:45, 25 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

That's the sociological sense bleeding out into other usage contexts, but still needing an explanation outside of sociology/organization studies. People like social workers and geriatricians must use this as well. DCDuring (talk) 13:31, 25 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

TLPA pronunciation

The pronunciation given under the English section is one that "Taiwanese speakers often use", but the pronunciation uses English stress patterns and lacks tones. Does someone know if this is likely a pronunciation used by bilgual speakers of Taiwanese languages, or if it has a common pronunciation as a loanword?

Furthermore, should it use IPA or Pinyin romanisation? And if it ought to use IPA, would it use the language code en, nan, or something else? I would greatly appreciate any answers! LapisCarrot (talk) 23:45, 23 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@LapisCarrot: This is an English entry, so it should be the pronunciation used by Taiwanese speakers when they're speaking English. As long as it's English, it won't have tones.

As for "pinyin": when you use the term without a qualifier, that's Hanyu Pinyin, a romanization system for Mandarin Chinese. There are other pinyins, but they're always qualified by the "dialect" (they're not really dialects, since monolingual Mandarin and Wu speakers, for instance would be completely unable to communicate with each other if they didn't use the same writing system). We generally use IPA, since it's designed to cover pronunciation of all human languages. In this case, though, you have to wonder whether TLPA itself would be a better fit.

As for "Taiwanese": that's ambiguous. It could mean any language spoken by people in Taiwan, or it could refer to a specific form of ~~Hakka~~ Hokkien spoken in Taiwan (And elsewhere- for instance, in the Philippines). Taiwanese Hakka has its own writing system, Pe̍h-ōe-jī, which was modified to create TLPA.

TLPA isn't just used for Chinese: it's also used for Formosan languages, which are Austronesian languages related to languages spoken from Madagascar to Polynesia and a great deal of southeast Asia- but not Chinese. The Austronesian language family originated on Taiwan, and the Formosan languages are still spoken by indigenous people there.

As you can see, nothing about your question is simple. The language situation in Taiwan is incredibly complex, as is the matter of Chinese language(s) and pinyin. I might as well ping @Justinrleung while I'm at it, in case I missed something. Chuck Entz (talk) 15:52, 25 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@LapisCarrot, Chuck Entz: TLPA is most commonly used for transcribing Taiwanese (as in Taiwanese Southern Min/Hokkien; Taiwanese almost never refers to Hakka), so when it says "Taiwanese speakers", I think it most likely refers specifically to Taiwanese Hokkien speakers. However, I cannot rule out the possibility that it could refer more generally to (English) speakers from Taiwan. At any rate, having <tʰ> in slashes is probably not a good thing to do if it is indeed used to transcribe this word in English. — justin(r)leung _{{ (t...) | c=› }} 16:03, 25 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Oops! I knew I would slip up on something. Of course I meant Hokkien. The part about Pe̍h-ōe-jī is also problematic, but it's more than I have time to fix right now. Chuck Entz (talk) 16:10, 25 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

reduplication

(Prompted by this.) Reduplication lists kitty-cat, honey bunny and slim jim as "examples of reduplication". But kitty and cat exist independent of kitty-cat, likewise honey and bunny, and Slim Jim was originally a name for a slim person like Negative Nancy and Debbie Downer are for downers (only later coming to denote a slender thing like a cigar, then sausage). People probably chose to pair the words because of the end- or stave-rhyme, but are they reduplications? I'm thinking "no" (isn't reduplication about duplication of part of a word?). Or if rhyming independent words is reduplication, aren't we missing a section for stave-rhyme like Slim Jim's cousin Debbie Downer?
Honey bunny and slim jim could go in Category:English rhyming compounds instead (as could kitty-cat if we allow stave-rhyme). - -sche (discuss) 20:22, 24 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

slider

Regarding sense 8: "(graphical user interface) A widget allowing the user to select a value or position on a sliding scale."

Aren't there physical sliders too, which inspired the GUI element? I recall devices that have them, such as synthesizers and controls used by audio technicians. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 00:51, 25 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Definitely. WP's coverage of them is at potentiometer. I added the sense at slider. Quercus solaris (talk) 02:54, 25 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Three etymologies for EN relegate, but all come from the same Latin word

There are supposedly three etymologies for EN relegate, but apparently all came directly from the same Latin word (relēgātus). OK, there are different years mentioned, but is that enough to justify the presentation as three separate etymologies? —DIV (1.145.234.33 07:51, 26 January 2024 (UTC))[reply]

It’s not even the same Latin word. It is syncretism. When English borrows the verb it actually borrows a lexeme we cite with four forms, relēgāre, relēgō, relēgāvī, relēgātum, with its whole paradigm. But for the final form in English only a certain of its forms is the basis for the English shape. The noun and adjective are a listeme different from the verb, with lemmatization in a Latin dictionary different from it, though admittedly themselves identified in Latin. Fay Freak (talk) 08:18, 26 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I have to admit that the discussion of syncretism and listemes went over my head (even though kindly linked). But if the etymologies are truly different, then why does the entry have almost verbatim the same text for each of the three purportedly different etymologies, namely either "from the Latin relēgātus" or "from the Classical Latin relēgātus"?

—DIV (1.145.41.30 07:07, 6 February 2024 (UTC))[reply]

They are three separate parts of speech (verb, noun and adjective) and so need separate part of speech headers in any case; the verb also needs a separate pronunciation from the noun and adjective. It's easiest to organize these under separate etymology headers.--Urszag (talk) 08:21, 26 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I am not convinced. See, for example, trip: noun, verb & adjective are all easily handled under Etymology 1. Etymology 2 also exists, but is reserved for a homonym with unrelated derivation. —DIV (1.145.41.30 07:59, 6 February 2024 (UTC))[reply]

Differing pronunciation can be handled under a single etymology, as in process: "(Canada, rarely US) enPR: prōʹsĕs, IPA^(key): /ˈpɹoʊsɛs/, /-əs/ (noun only, the verb is pronounced as in America)". attribute has a single etymology, containing both noun and verb, with differing pronunciation. Likewise pervert. Arguably there could also be a distinction indicated at effect, where the noun is more likely to use ə than the verb, in my experience, to distinguish the verb from affect. Possible counterexample: perfect.

On the other hand, subject appears to merit three separate etymologies, even though the noun, verb & adjective can all be traced back to "subiciō (“throw, lay, place”)". —DIV (1.145.41.30 08:20, 6 February 2024 (UTC))[reply]

The pronunciation difference is no different from other -ate words, e.g. obligate and delegate and separate and segregate, which we handle under one etymology section. Hmm... some words have very distinct etymologies, while in other cases there are situations where e.g. English or Middle English derived a noun from a verb, which some users used to put under separate etymology sections ("Etymology 1: from Middle English foobaren, verb", "Etymology 2: from the verb"), but after various discussions we see to have agreed to put under one etymology section. This strikes me as being at least very close to the "can go under one etymology section" side of the line, and it would be easy to handle it under one ety like delegate et al... - -sche (discuss) 16:52, 26 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

That's what I would have thought.

—DIV (1.145.41.30 07:07, 6 February 2024 (UTC))[reply]

through, long

We say through is a postposition in The baby cried the whole night through.
But say long is an adverb in He slept all day long.

What is the grammatical distinction? (I equally find google books:"slept the whole day long" and google books:"cried all night through".) Sure, through can also occur before the time—"cried through the whole movie"—but ago, which we also list as a postposition, can't AFAICT (and it seems like whether something has one POS shouldn't depend on whether it separately has another POS, anyway). Other dictionaries don't seem to have examples that are specifically through after a time term, but MW has "a: from beginning to end" as an adverb and Dictionary.com has "from the beginning to the end: to read a letter through" as an adverb. So it seems like this is rather an adverb...? - -sche (discuss) 15:15, 26 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps we need to not succumb to the etymological fallacy about the meaning of preposition for purposes of our headings. We could add {{lb|en|sometimes used postpositively (See Usage note below.)}} to the preposition definitions for which such a label obtained. DCDuring (talk) 18:59, 26 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

None of those are adpositions originally because no one is needed, it continues the accusativus mensurae or extension accusative of Proto-Indo-European. Works parallelly in German with hindurch and lang. -sche’s examples: Das Junge weinte die ganze Nacht hindurch. Er schlief den ganzen Tag lang. For contrast: Ich habe den ganzen Tag gearbeitet. (“I worked all day.”) So I don’t know why this terminology is so rare.

The distinction of an adposition appears that it combines for either semantic association or governmental constraints with a noun phrase rather than the verbal predicate, thus the said lexemes, which in bygone centuries clearly illustrated the actions of verbal predicates (and in other contexts have become those feared “separable prefixes” of verbs, e.g. entlanggehen, durchbraten, but hindurchgehen for some reason is not separable), serve little more than dead metaphors of the chancellery language / administrationese, and cannot be left out in some contexts: With gehen (“to go, to walk”) the examples at lang and entlang would hardly be grammatical leaving out these words, we can’t use gehen with a mere accusative object, unlike English walk (walk the dog, expressed awkwardly “mit dem Hund rausgehen” or “(mit dem Hund) Gassi gehen” where Gassi is of a dubious status and it would be coherent to reckon it a defective verb as it was formed in analogy to essen gehen, arbeiten gehen etc.). Fay Freak (talk) 20:27, 26 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@-sche: You can say "the baby cried through the whole night", but you can't say *"the baby cried long the whole night". With "through" it's really part of a prepositional phrase that's moved to the end, but with "long" it's separate from and parallel with the phrase it follows, so it modifies the verb directly rather than taking the phrase as its object. You can't say "ago three weeks", but it's still clear that "ago" refers to "three weeks" and not directly to the verb: in "I was here three weeks ago", it refers to "three weeks" rather than to "was", and "three weeks ago" as a whole modifies "was (here)". Chuck Entz (talk) 21:05, 26 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Hmm, I expected this line of argument, but I don't see how being able to move the word before the referent / being able to use the word also as a preposition is relevant or is an element of postposition-ness, since as you acknowledge, ago can't be used as a preposition / before the referent. If we're deciding, differently from other dictionaries, that through has a closer associating with the time and long a closer association with the verb (whereas other dictionaries are content to view though as an adverb, since the same sense seems to exist in non-time-related examples like "read the whole text through"), how reproducible do we expect our judgement to be? As in, if a new word foobaro develops or is found in some old texts, used analagously and synonymously to long and though, which of their POSes will we consider it to have? - -sche (discuss) 21:40, 26 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

sudarium

Are we missing a sense of sudarium? We say 𓆍 is a crocodile emerging from (perhaps) a sudarium, but then define sudarium only as "a napkin or handkerchief". Some handkerchief, that a crocodile can fit in! (Actually, we seem to be missing other senses, as I can find some uses where sudarium refers to a Roman sudatorium building/room, and other dictionaries say it can also refer to a veronica.) - -sche (discuss) 00:56, 27 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@-sche: No. You just incorrectly extrapolate the size of a sudarium from that as which a “napkin” or “handkerchief” is typicized (in the 21st century in America). Like it is a certain that a Roman malleus meant a different thing than an Anglo-Saxon hammer which even means a different instrument than a German hammer. In modern terms it is a gym towel, if not a bath towel or beach towel. Fay Freak (talk) 08:56, 27 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Crocodiles don't sweat as it happens but they might appreciate the extra warmth. Nicodene (talk) 09:08, 27 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Are we allowed to change the ==Glyph origin== section of the hieroglpyphs? They seem as if they were copied verbatim from some free-access academic source. In this case I wonder if it should say sudary instead of sudarium. If not then I think the definition of sudarium should mention that it can also refer to larger towels and perhaps to burial shrouds as well (which would make it a synonym of sudary). —Soap— 13:13, 27 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I added the additional senses of the Latin word to the Latin entry. The Latin word, while interesting, is not relevant to anyone trying to learn about Egyptian hieroglyphs: I think the hieroglyph page should use a less obscure term like "burial shroud", unless 'sudarium' or 'sudary' is a term of art with some more specific meaning in the context of Ancient Egyptian religion than those plainer synonyms.--Urszag (talk) 13:39, 27 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Soap: Yes, you can change them. They are not copied verbatim from anywhere; for the most part I was the one who wrote them, based on the information in the references listed at each entry. In this particular case, though, the specific term ‘sudarium’ comes directly from Betrò’s Geroglifici: 580 Segni per Capire l'Antico Egitto, at least in the English translation by S. Amanda George that I own: ‘… a type of sudarium or bandages in which it is wrapped’. What kind of cloth exactly Betrò (or George) meant by that I hesitate to assert with any certainty. @Urszag: To my knowledge, ‘sudarium’ is not a specific Ancient Egyptian religious term of art; I kept the wording solely out of caution to not misrepresent/misinterpret what the source said. I wouldn’t be opposed to changing the wording. — Vorziblix (talk · contribs) 19:35, 31 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

As for the English word, that entry definitely seems to be missing a sense: quotations 2 and 3 (2012, David Engel and 2016, J. Douglas Kenyon) don't seem to be describing what I would call a "napkin or handkerchief". See also, on Wikipedia, w:Sudarium of Oviedo and for the term in general, w:Sudarium.--Urszag (talk) 13:56, 27 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

In addition to the handkerchief sense, Century (via OneLook} has:

Specifically— The legendary sweat-cloth; the handkerchief of St. Veronica, according to tradition miraculously impressed with the mask of Christ; also, the napkin about Christ's head (John xx. 7).

In general, any miraculous portrait of Christ. See vernicle.

Same as maniple, 4. (our Ety 1, def 2)

The orarium or vexillum of a pastoral staff.

HTH DCDuring (talk) 15:43, 27 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

gender of cities in Spanish

are Spanish cities always feminine, even when named after a male figure such as Santiago and San Juan? The Spanish Wikipedia article for Santiago begins with

Santiago, también conocida como Santiago de Chile,

while the page for San Juan (Puerto Rico) isn't as clear but contains a sentence

El Viejo San Juan fue construido

suggesting it is masculine. Can it vary freely? Does it differ by context? Or is it unpredictable? Either way, we might need to look through our listings, because we have Santiago listed as always masculine and San Juan listed as gender-unknown. Thanks, —Soap— 15:47, 27 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I have a similar question about Portuguese- see diff --Geographyinitiative (talk) 15:52, 27 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

This is what the RAE says at the DPD entry for género:

En lo que respecta a las ciudades, las que terminan en -a suelen concordar en femenino: «Hallado un tercer foro imperial en la Córdoba romana» (Vanguardia [Esp.] 10.3.1994); mientras que las que terminan en otra vocal o en consonante suelen concordar en masculino, aunque en todos los casos casi siempre es posible la concordancia en femenino, por influjo del género del sustantivo ciudad: «Puso como ejemplo de convivencia cultural y religiosa el Toledo medieval» (Vanguardia [Esp.] 16.10.1995); «Ya vuela […] sobre la Toledo misteriosa» (Reyes Letras [Méx. 1946]); «El Buenos Aires caótico de frenéticos muñecos con cuerda» (Sábato Héroes [Arg. 1961]); «Misteriosa Buenos Aires» (Mujica Buenos Aires [Arg. 1985] tít.). Con el cuantificador todo antepuesto, la alternancia de género se da con todos los nombres de ciudades, independientemente de su terminación: «―¿Lo sabías tú? ―Bueno, Javier, lo sabe todo Barcelona» (Mendoza Verdad [Esp. 1975]); «Por toda Barcelona corre un rumor de llanto y de promesa» (Semprún Autobiografía [Esp. 1977]). La expresión masculina «el todo + nombre de ciudad» se ha lexicalizado en países como México y España con el sentido de 'élite social de una ciudad': «Su pequeño bar es el lugar donde se reúne “el todo Barcelona”» (Domingo Sabor [Esp. 1992]).

So I'm not really sure what they should be marked as. Maybe the feminine ones can stay feminine while the traditionally masculine ones could be marked as both masculine & feminine? CC: (Notifying Benwing2, Ungoliant MMDCCLXIV, Ultimateria, Koavf): AG202 (talk) 16:46, 27 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Note: this is also the case for French (and I assume all Romance languages). In French, cities tend to be feminine, because ville is feminine, but they can also take a masculine gender. For certain cities, one gender is more common, while for others, another is more common. Invariably, one speaks of le vieux Québec or le vieux Montréal, but nonetheless, I did a quick search and found that Montréal est connue is fairly common, even without the word ville. I think that whatever solution we find should be implemented for all Romance languages. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 04:24, 29 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

To answer your question, I don't know. I don't speak any romance languages. However, my initial thought is that cities such as "Santiago" and "San Juan" are the shortened forms of a longer construction such as "la ciudad de Santiago" etc., which would make them feminine. 2601:49:8400:26B:F0FD:BB3C:8954:BC35 15:03, 30 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

jalapenho

An user has put {{rfv-pron}}, asking if the J was read as /ʒ/ or /h/. I've found some Youtube videos that attest the /ʒ/ pronunciation in Brazil:

The /h/ pronunciation also exists, and I think is far more common, but it is in fact an unadapted borrowing and the spelling is kept as in Spanish, jalapeño.

I couldn't find examples for the pronunciation in Portugal. Trooper57 (talk) 19:10, 28 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

ohio

ohio 97.80.150.82 17:23, 29 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

So? DCDuring (talk) 18:15, 29 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It's a popular meme among the youths. "Only in Ohio" and the like. CitationsFreak (talk) 20:17, 29 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Pronunciation of smartphone in Brazilian Portuguese

I have never heard someone say this word as /ˌsmaʁt͡ʃˈfo(w)n/ in Brazil. To me, it doesn't really make a lot of sense. The sequence /sm/ isn't common in the language, let alone in the beginning of the word. Okay, there's a justifiable /t͡ʃ/ sound, but then a sudden /n/ at the end of the word, which doesn't match Brazilian Portuguese phonotactics. The possible pronunciation ending in /-fon/ makes it even more unusual. The most common pronunciation — as someone from São Paulo — is definitely /iz.maʁ.t͡ʃiˈfõ.ni/, which isn't even in the entry. OweOwnAwe (talk) 19:29, 29 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Well then add it. The sequence is also not common in German but yet it is pronounced exactly like said on Smartphone. Added by @Ungoliant MMDCCLXIV in 2016. Fay Freak (talk) 20:16, 29 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

German phonotactics is very different from Brazilian Portuguese. We tend to always use an epenthetic vowel in these positions. Unless the speaker is trying to imitate the pronunciation in English and already knows a bit of its phonology, it doesn't seem natural and usable to most of the people in Brazil. Fine, I'll add it. OweOwnAwe (talk) 11:13, 30 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

windy pasty

Which windy does this come from? Windy like breezy or windy like curly? SpAway (talk) 23:06, 29 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I’ve never heard the term until now and there are few hits when I do a Google search but as one hit says you have to ‘roll’, then ‘fold’, then ‘crimp’ pasty dough to make one of them I strongly suspect it’s ‘windy’ as in ‘curly’. Overlordnat1 (talk) 00:06, 30 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

English proper noun Amen (sense 1) - is this a hapax legomenon?

It's not labelled as such, but, as far as I know, it only appears in the bible in a single verse, Revelation 3:14, and, as far as I know, it is not used that way outside of the bible. (Of course the word "amen" shows up a lot, but not as a proper noun.) 2601:49:8400:26B:F0FD:BB3C:8954:BC35 14:53, 30 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It’s not a hapax because this sense has been used by other writers, but as far as I can see they all refer to the original use of the term in Revelation. OED lists five quotations after 1500, the latest one dated 2009. — Sgconlaw (talk) 15:01, 31 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

compersion

Your discussion of the definition of "compersion" does not make sense. The correct definition (that compersion applies across the board, not only to romance and sex) shows that it was removed for not "meeting criteria"...yet you still list "jealousy" and "possessiveness" as antonyms, two words that *do* apply across the board. If a spouse is possessive, they might not want their spouse to ever play video games, for example. Conversely, a spouse that feels compersion is happy when their loved ones are happy *whether or not they are included/part of it*. 2601:647:4D80:97D4:BECD:2F3D:6073:4844 06:35, 31 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]