Talk:rijksambtenaar

RFV discussion: September–November 2019

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rijksambtenaar

Dutch rfv-sense of "A (national) state official in public service in a monarchy". A Verbo definition, probably made-up on the spot. ←₰-→ Lingo ^Bingo _Dingo (talk) 11:51, 11 September 2019 (UTC)

It took some time before I understood the meaning of “Verbo definition”. Now we need three durably archived uses, so we can add it as an entry :). Undoubtedly some rijksambtenaartjes are employed in a monarchy, so it is not clear to me what verification entails in this case. Since sense 1 is subsumed by sense 2, it would appear that it can safely be removed. But is sense 2 not too broad? Would a Dutch source refer to a US federal civil servant as a rijksambtenaar? Even in Belgium a Belgium federal civil servant is called a federale ambtenaar. We could define the term as a civil servant employed by a rijksoverheid, but I am not sure how to define the latter term. Is the UK government a rijksoverheid? In this Dutch newspaper article the words “een rijksoverheid” are used in the generic sense of “a national government” (which is also how Google Translate translates this, while “de rijksoverheid” becomes “the central government”), but that appears to be quite exceptional.  --Lambiam 11:02, 12 September 2019 (UTC)

Well, to be a true "Verbo definition" it should have some gratuitous reference to spanking, though he was just as likely to employ usexes for that... Chuck Entz (talk) 13:16, 12 September 2019 (UTC)

@Lambiam In hindsight I suppose I should have just emended that definition, but the phrase "state official" really threw me off; I thought some civil-service bigwig was intended. It's fair to say that a rijksambtenaar is most commonly a civil servant working in the Netherlands and therefore works in a monarchy and a (decentralised) unitary state, but it is marginally used of those in other countries (for instance Britse rijksambtenaren), including both federations and republics. I have added "usually one working in the Netherlands or another unitary monarchy" to the second definition. ←₰-→ Lingo ^Bingo _Dingo (talk) 10:18, 17 September 2019 (UTC)

Then I think now we should indeed remove sense 1.  --Lambiam 14:20, 17 September 2019 (UTC)

 So done.  --Lambiam 17:41, 3 November 2019 (UTC)