Wiktionary:Tea room/2020/March

discussion rooms: Tea room • Etym. scr. • Info desk • Beer parlour • Grease pit ← February 2020 · March 2020 · April 2020 → · (current)

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formatting question

Is -ite#Suffix supposed to be all italicized like that? i don't recognize the [templates? coding?] used, so don't know how to edit them not to be italicized. --96.244.220.178 07:21, 1 March 2020 (UTC)

It looks a bit strange, but it is in line with the usual styling. The definitions are so-called non-gloss definitions, which are rendered in italics. And the examples – in this case just words, not sentences – are supposed (per Wiktionary:Entry layout#Example sentences) to be italicized, with the defined term boldfaced. The last bit had not been done, but I have now fixed that.  --Lambiam 18:39, 1 March 2020 (UTC)

material Derived terms

Does Wiktionary really want pages for material girl and material world, or did someone add those to material#Derived terms as a joke? --96.244.220.178 07:21, 1 March 2020 (UTC)

 Done Deleted (although Madonna is excellent). It's possible that these came from some sort of statistical analysis of texts to find common collocations, but more likely some nutter put them in. Equinox ◑ 08:23, 1 March 2020 (UTC)

Hyphenation of Hungarian Ilona

According to the page Ilona, the Hungarian pronunciation is [ˈilonɒ] (and that's about what it sounds like in the audio file), but the hyphenation is "Ilo‧na". The pronunciation in the audio file clearly has three syllables (and so does the IPA guide [ˈilonɒ] also suggest), so there should be one more syllable boundary in the hyphenation as well. I don't know where it would be (I‧lo‧na or Il‧o‧na), and if the reason for the lack of another ‧ is that "you are not allowed to leave a single letter on a different row as the first vowel in the word is a syllable in itself", then the same should apply to the Finnish hyphenation of the same name as the rule mentioned in quotes exists in the orthography of Finnish. Mölli-Möllerö (talk) 12:41, 1 March 2020 (UTC)

@Mölli-Möllerö: It is correct that Ilona is a three-syllable word, its syllabification is I‧lo‧na, but its hyphenation is Ilo‧na. From Appendix:Hungarian hyphenation: "Although not incorrect, it is not recommended to leave a single vowel at the end or the beginning of a line". Panda10 (talk) 00:50, 2 March 2020 (UTC)

OK, but the same is true for Finnish (see http://www.kielitoimistonohjepankki.fi/haku/tavutus/ohje/153 where it says ome-na, not o-mena). Why are the Finnish words omena and Ilona hyphenated here with their initial vowels separated if that exact rules apply to both Finnish and Hungarian? Mölli-Möllerö (talk) 09:30, 2 March 2020 (UTC)

I saw this rule in action “by example“ in a list of “correctly hyphenated words”, among which we find alal-la, evaïl-la, ivai-le-vin, oli-vat, unel-mien-sa, and yleen-sä. So we should consider the given Finnish hyphenation incorrect.  --Lambiam 18:58, 2 March 2020 (UTC)

OK, I tried to fix this problem by editing Module:fi-pronunciation so that it says "Syllabification" instead of "Hyphenation". Then it would be correct. I didn't do that to other Finnish syllabification/hyphenation-generating modules though. Mölli-Möllerö (talk) 10:35, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

I may as well also add that this kind of "incorrect" hyphenations such as I-lo-na (for either language) are still necessary at least in song lyrics (usually all syllables are separated into separate notes with a hyphen) and possibly also in books for small children learning to read. (I'm not sure if this information is relevant for this discussion, but it may well be so I decided to post it.) Mölli-Möllerö (talk) 10:37, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

Creating an unambiguous "hyphenation" is probably possible alongside the "syllabification", and to merge the two for words for which they are identical. — surjection ⟨?⟩ 11:07, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

Is Russian п for paragraph not an abbreviation?

Should not Russian п & пп in the sense of paragraph(s) be described as abbreviations? (A quote and table of declension would be useful if not.) PJTraill (talk) 19:01, 1 March 2020 (UTC)

I see that it does say it is an abbreviation under Etymology, perhaps that is adequate. PJTraill (talk) 19:03, 1 March 2020 (UTC)

But it is, confusingly, not uniform with entries such as м#Russian, where we see "abbreviation of метр (metr, “meter”)". PJTraill (talk) 10:26, 2 March 2020 (UTC)

circle

1. When a group of people form a circle, holding hands, by which sense of circle is this covered?
2. The definition of circle in a Wiccan sense is circular by defining it using the term circle. Not being familiar with Wiccan rituals, it is unclear to me which sense is meant.

 --Lambiam 08:38, 2 March 2020 (UTC)

I added a new definition that should cover (1):

Any shape or arrangement of objects that approximates to or resembles the geometric figures.

Children, please join hands and form a circle.

I'm not sure, though, whether we need quite so many numbered definitions as are in the article. For example, it would be good to have examples for the "Orbit" sense to show how this is distinct from all the others. Mihia (talk) 21:05, 2 March 2020 (UTC)

I'm often uncomfortable with "a representation or approximation of" type senses, but we already have a lot of them (and our geometric definition is very math-y), so, meh. It'd probably be good to try and group the senses that are more clearly just "a representation of..." at some point; maybe I'll do that later. I doubt the "Wicca" sense, once the definition is cleaned up, is specific to Wicca; I expect the actual meaning , once better defined, is broader and used in other witchcraft and paganism and fantasy references to wizards and conjuring. - -sche (discuss) 21:13, 2 March 2020 (UTC)

In my opinion, given the precise geometric definitions that the article probably rightly begins with, the "approximates to or resembles" wording is correct and appropriate (and better than "representation"). Mihia (talk) 21:52, 2 March 2020 (UTC)

Let's circle back to the definition of a circle; i'm too distracted by "approximates to", which sounds wrong to me. Maybe it's one of those UK/USA/Australia/etc differences?

The icosihenagon approximates to a circle.

The icosihenagon approximates a circle.

--96.244.220.178 23:15, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

authoritarian

I don't think the current definitions at authoritarian cover use in e.g. political science particularly well, [1] [2] [3] absolute/tyrannical obedience and dictatorial seem much too strong for a part of a spectrum that also includes democratic authoritarians. Interestingly many on-line dictionaries at OneLook don't include this sense well either. The print edition of the OED has something like "supporting the principle of authority over individual freedom" (paraphrase), which would not be the best definition but covers it at least. Maybe Favouring enforcement of conformity over individual freedom; illiberal would work? ←₰-→ Lingo ^Bingo _Dingo (talk) 10:35, 2 March 2020 (UTC)

What about defining the political sense by relating it to authoritarianism, e.g. by “Espousing, or characteristic of, authoritarianism”? The definition of authoritarianism, already less absolute, is more easily tweaked, and also tells the reader that English Wikipedia has an article on: authoritarianism where they can go for more background.  --Lambiam 15:29, 2 March 2020 (UTC)

Most other dictionaries don't chicken out that way, though they do have recourse to their entries on authority. We don't have any evidence of authoritarian being backformed from authoritarianism. To the contrary the ism does not appear in Century 1911 whereas authoritarian does.

I think conformity does not necessarily require the the conformers conform to authority. One could conform, for example, to unauthored social, market, or environmental pressure. DCDuring (talk) 16:09, 2 March 2020 (UTC)

I revised the entry a little to say "excessive" obedience rather than "absolute" obedience, but it still needs more work. - -sche (discuss) 21:18, 2 March 2020 (UTC)

Using excessive in the definition excludes neutral, descriptive use. Is it always now pejorative and has it always been pejorative? DCDuring (talk) 04:26, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

@DCDuring I have replaced excessive with strict (a feature in the Oxford dictionaries' definitions that I like); is that an improvement? ←₰-→ Lingo ^Bingo _Dingo (talk) 08:39, 4 March 2020 (UTC)

Sure. It's a good word that hadn't occurred to me. If you think authoritarianism id bad, you probably think strictness is bad too. And if you think strictness has its place, you might be open to that possibility for auheoritarianism. DCDuring (talk) 11:41, 4 March 2020 (UTC)

miskeit: new entry

• w:Larry David calls w:Susie Essman miskeit in w:Curb Your Enthusiasm
• Jewish usage: an ugly person

• From Yiddish mieskeyt: ugliness, an ugly person or thing

• from mies ugly, loathsome

• https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/mieskeit

24.7.104.84 19:16, 2 March 2020 (UTC)

See mieskeit, which redirects to the Yiddish מיאוסקייט. grendel|khan 18:50, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

That falls afoul of our redirect policies, and probably ought to have an English entry. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 18:53, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

Done; see mieskeit. grendel|khan 20:21, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

black (as in "black birch, etc", and as in "obscure")

Following "white", which handles "white birch" and "white grapes" under one sense, I merged "having dark hair, armor, etc: black knight" and the taxonomic sense. (I mention that in case anyone wants to make a case that that wasn't the right decision.) Along the way, I noticed we have a sense "Obscure." with no examples of use. We also have a sense "relating to an initiative whose existence or exact nature must remain withheld from the general public" for "black projects". Are these distinct or should they be merged? I can find a few uses of "black" that seem to mean something like "occult, concealed with the general public", which may be what "obscure" was trying to get at, like:

• 2014, J.R.R. Tolkien, Beowulf: A Translation and Commentary, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (→ISBN), page 168:

  But a hel-rúne was one who knew secret black knowledge – and the association of hell with the dead shows that the gloss in O.H.G. 'necromancia' is very close.

I'm not sure if it makes sense or not to put CIA black ops and black occult knowledge under one sense, though. Also: other dictionaries have a sense for "black propaganda", but I don't know if "black" ever has that sense outside the phrase "black propaganda". - -sche (discuss) 20:42, 2 March 2020 (UTC)

I combined the "black projects" and the uninformative, uncited "obscure" senses (and added the Tolkien quote to the now redefined, combined sense), because both the Tolken site and the "black projects" usex amount to "kept secret from most people", but it feels odd to combine them and if there's a way they could be sensibly distinguished, I'm all ears. - -sche (discuss) 06:35, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

There is also the use as in black room, which however perhaps deserves an entry on its own.  --Lambiam 15:59, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

Hmm, good point. "Black room", "black site", "black operation"... I'm going to resplit and rework the defs, fronting "clandestine" in one, and "occult" in the other. (The collocations could still have their own entries, since "clandestine room" is not enough to fully understand a "black room", etc.) - -sche (discuss) 18:02, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

Relatedly: the usage notes at black magic suggest another sense which should have its own definition line (as it does at black art). Indeed, the sense is in line with the "occult" sense of black I gave another citation/collocation of above, which suggests that it exists, but may be hard to find amid the citations of the other sense. and I've managed to find citations. - -sche (discuss) 18:32, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

stave (verb)

The entry looks like it still carries a lot of baggage from the original definitions bulk loaded at start-up. So, my question is, should we eliminate verb definitions 2,3,4, and probably 5, as they are covered under the phrasal verb entries at stave in and stave off? It's that "stave" on its own does not have these meanings. In all cases either in or off is a requirement (being phrasal verb definitions) rather than an "often followed by" usage note. Thanks. -- ALGRIF talk 11:30, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

Permalink to referenced version.

The challenged definitions at [[stave]] should be RfVed. Can we be sure about the absence of historical use without in or off? DCDuring (talk) 11:38, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

Definition 2 has two citations that don't fit the phrasal hypothesis, one without in and one in which in seems to be part of in pieces. DCDuring (talk) 11:46, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

Sense 5 is labelled intransitive, but the only example shows transitive use, and seems to illustrate essentially the same as sense 2 or obvious figurative extension thereof. Mihia (talk) 18:26, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

There is an intransitive use at [4]: "... we struck upon a rock, the boat staved to pieces ...". Mihia (talk) 18:32, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

A small number of examples of sense 4 without "off" can be found by Googling for e.g. "stave evil", "stave attacks" (obviously need to check that the "off" isn't delayed). It is hard to be completely certain that none are typos/slips, though Chambers Dictionary gives the example "staved her hunger with an apple" [5]. Mihia (talk) 18:40, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

Trouble is, Chambers does not reference that usex with a source. When I try Google books etc. I only get results with "staved off". ALGRIF talk 12:57, 7 March 2020 (UTC)

Of various likely phrases that I tried, "stave hunger" yielded the most off-less results in Book Search:

https://www.google.co.uk/search?tbm=bks&q=%22stave+hunger%22+-%22stave+hunger+off%22

There are smatterings of other examples from Book Search, e.g.:

https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=YSq5AwAAQBAJ&pg=PA165&dq=%22staving%22

https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=OdgypRtuVF8C&pg=PA253&dq=%22to+stave%22

Mihia (talk) 15:05, 9 March 2020 (UTC)

• I made some changes to address some of the above points. Mihia (talk) 20:28, 9 March 2020 (UTC)
  • Much better. Thank you. -- ALGRIF talk 16:23, 12 March 2020 (UTC)

Template use on commend.

(@Sgconlaw may know more about this, as they wrote the original template.) In commend, there was a Dryden quotation requested; it turned out to be from his Dedication to the Æneid, which we have his translation of in {{RQ:Dryden Virgil}}. However, it still says that it's by Virgil, translated by Dryden, which isn't quite correct. Should we add a parameter to the template for non-translated matter, and switch out the author and translator parameters there, or make a separate quotation template, or just leave it kinda incorrect? grendel|khan 19:00, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

For now, you should do it manually or request a cleanup, using {{rfc}}.

Also, since we are interested in the selection of the English word, not the Latin word translated by the English word, we should treat the translator as the 'author' of the translated work and the date of the authoring or publication of the translation as the emboldened date that leads off the citation. DCDuring (talk) 20:00, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

We are interested in the Latin word too, and in the fact that the work is a translation. If one can display the original author and title it should be displayed. Fay Freak (talk) 12:41, 4 March 2020 (UTC)

I'm confused by the preceding two comments. If the quotation is from the Dedication rather than from the portion of text that was originally authored by Virgil, why would there be a Latin word or any translation from Latin in the case of the quotation found on the page for commend? Did Dryden not just write the Dedication in English to begin with? Or are DCDuring and Fay Freak now talking about whether to change the template for the whole work, which is used on other pages?--Urszag (talk) 13:34, 4 March 2020 (UTC)

It would presumably be complicated to display different things in this respect depending on whether the dedication or the main text is quoted. Fay Freak (talk) 14:39, 4 March 2020 (UTC)

I'm sorry I introduced the canard about translation. I've been working on citations and have been annoyed to find things like cites of Homer and Dante as English authors and vented my spleen instead of paying attention to the specifics. DCDuring (talk) 23:00, 4 March 2020 (UTC)

讠

I don't know how to edit the template so I am posting this note here: On the page https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E8%AE%A0 there is html "{{n-g|" visible that should not be visible. "For pronunciation and definitions of 讠 – see 訁 (“{{n-g|Left radical form of Kangxi radical ; Kangxi radical ”). (This character, 讠, is the simplified form of 訁.)"

(Pinging Erutuon and Wyang.)  I suspect that the problem stems from Module:zh in that it (function replace_gloss?) is not prepared to cope with a definition of the form {{n-g|Left radical form of [[Kangxi radical]] #149 {{zh-l|言*}} }}. But my Lua skills do not suffice for me to grok what is going on.  --Lambiam 13:18, 5 March 2020 (UTC)

≉

Why is the symbol in the title displayed more like ≈ with a / stuck to it (≈/) on the right than the smaller version of the symbol? The smaller version seems to be displayed properly. Is it a problem with the fonts (e.g. serif fonts vs sans-serif fonts), or is it just my browser's display issue? Does anybody else have this issue? I am using Chrome and set the default serif font to 'Times New Roman' and the default sans-serif font to 'Product Sans'. Merrick919 (talk) 13:48, 4 March 2020 (UTC)

It looks OK for me; the font used for these first headers in my setup seems to be Georgia.  --Lambiam 11:49, 5 March 2020 (UTC)

That was on Firefox; with Chrome it still seems to be Georgia, but the ≉ symbol looks wrong everywhere on the page; the slash sticks out farther at the upper side, as if the character is obtained by sloppy overprinting. (It still goes more-or-less through the middle, though.) Using Firefox, the symbol is rotation-symmetric. Moreover, using Chrome, in the first header the parallel wiggles slant upwards, but not elsewhere on the page, where the font looks like Helvetica. The same is the case for the ≈ symbol.  --Lambiam 12:20, 5 March 2020 (UTC)

Since you ask, I use custom CSS to specify Gentium Book Basic, and the symbol looks fine. (I find Times New Roman rather ugly, particularly the horrible “e”, which I believe is quite unnecessary, being designed to avoid problems with high-speed newspaper printing.) PJTraill (talk) 12:06, 5 March 2020 (UTC)

Yes, I have the problem (latest Chrome on Windows 10 Pro). Equinox ◑ 14:29, 5 March 2020 (UTC)

You may wish to consider using another browser and operating system. Tharthan (talk) 13:45, 6 March 2020 (UTC)

Wow, if someone doesn't like the wallpaper do you suggest they move house? Equinox ◑ 16:11, 6 March 2020 (UTC)

It's probably a font issue. You can figure out the font by using the browser's developer tools. (The browser does not always use the default serif or sans-serif font, or the fonts specified in various CSS rules that apply to the header.) To find the actual font, in Firefox you right-click on the header, press "Inspect element", and go to the "Fonts" tab. In Chrome, you right-click on the header, press "Inspect", and scroll to the bottom of a frame that contains the actually-used CSS properties (see a more helpful explanation here).

For me, in Firefox the character has the slash in the middle (it is displayed in the font FreeSerif), in Chrome the slash is on the right (the font is Tinos). Another font that has the slash on the right is Arimo, which Chrome uses for the character in the Wikipedia article. So it looks like this is intentional on the part of the font developers. — Eru·tuon 19:35, 5 March 2020 (UTC)

In Chrome the font info given by "Inspect" for the first header is "Georgia — Local file (2 glyphs)". The other occurrences have "Helvetica" but are otherwise the same. So the character is apparently constructed by superimposing two glyphs – with offsets that are off.  --Lambiam 22:09, 5 March 2020 (UTC)

@Lambiam: Interesting – I didn't notice the "2 glyphs" bit. So apparently Chrome is displaying U+2249 ≉ as the equivalent combination of two characters, U+2248 ≈ + U+0338 ◌̸, because the font selected by the CSS doesn't have a U+2249 glyph, whereas Firefox is instead selecting a different font that actually has a U+2249 glyph. I like Firefox's decision here better. — Eru·tuon 22:44, 5 March 2020 (UTC)

cancel culture

Although the page for cancel culture is less than a year old and marked as a "hot word", the phrase itself has more than a year of history. [6]. Can it be made not hot? Vox Sciurorum (talk) 14:48, 4 March 2020 (UTC)

Where are the citations? DCDuring (talk) 23:03, 4 March 2020 (UTC)

I didn't pay enough attention to the page -- it addressed the phenomenon as an old one (in Internet years) but it doesn't have those exact words from more than a year ago. The New York Times does. An article dated June 28, 2018[7] says "Aisha Rimi, who works at the London School of Economics and has blogged about cancel culture, said: 'When someone’s canceled on black American Twitter, they tend to be canceled on black U.K. Twitter.'" (The hyperlink in the original of that sentence is a 404, but may have once pointed to an even older use.) Vox Sciurorum (talk) 23:26, 4 March 2020 (UTC)

A search found a blog post turning one year old in a couple days.[8]. Do we trust the dates to be accurate for blogs? I trust NYT to keep its archives in order. Vox Sciurorum (talk) 23:45, 4 March 2020 (UTC)

It would be nice if we could find three cites that are clearly uses in addition to those that define the term, which are typically mentions. The citations that offer definitions can be helpful. I'm a bit confused about the scope of the term. Calling for a boycott seems different from an implicit threat of violence to cause withdrawal of an invitation to speak. Are both part of cancel culture, in our definition and in the real world? DCDuring (talk) 00:05, 5 March 2020 (UTC)

I was trying to establish the age of the term but it's worth discussing the definition too. As NYT stated on 2019-10-31[9] it is "still nebulously defined." The problem is the phrase "cancel culture" is derogatory or at least critical and only used by opponents of whatever it might be. You don't have self-proclaimed cancel culture warriors the way you have social justice warriors who dislike SJW or Democrats who dislike Democrat as an adjective. On the conservative publication The Federalist we read "Cancel culture is, after all, almost entirely a product of progressive activists seeking to punish anyone who doesn’t agree with them, doesn’t support their agenda, or holds views they find offensive."(2019-10-31, [10]) This was in response to Barack Obama's criticism of a trend he disapproved of but did not call cancel culture. Libertarian Reason has "it represents a major victory for the online mobs of cancel culture."(2019-06-17, [11]) As a form of boycott, cancel culture at least includes a secondary boycott. Let me see if I can find more non-definition uses. Vox Sciurorum (talk) 14:53, 5 March 2020 (UTC)

I found the one cite from someone who paticipated in cancel culture but seems ambivalent about it.

i have always found fascism somewhat vaguely defined, except that it is a pejorative. DCDuring (talk) 04:40, 6 March 2020 (UTC)

咪

咪 Chinese etymology 1 definition sense 3 reads "（咪咪（mīmī））by girl’s chest". I guess this is an attempt to invoke sense 4 of 咪咪, slang for boobs, but it doesn't make sense as written. I don't want to correct it without knowing if my guess is right. Vox Sciurorum (talk) 20:53, 4 March 2020 (UTC)

@Vox Sciurorum: Fixed. --Anatoli T. ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 00:18, 6 March 2020 (UTC)

address

Sense: (transitive) To direct, as words, to (anyone or anything); to make, as a speech, petition, etc. to (any audience).

1. • (Can we date this quote by John Dryden and provide title, author’s full name, and other details?)

     The young hero had addressed his players to him for his assistance.

   He addressed some portions of his remarks to his supporters, some to his opponents.

The Dryden quote and the usage example would seem to be for different definitions. I did not find another definition under which the usage example seemed to fit. I am too tired to deal with this now. DCDuring (talk) 04:19, 5 March 2020 (UTC)

Hah, this is due to a typo; “the young hero had addressed his prayers to him for his assistance”. I don't think Webster is to blame, for it is correct in the 1911 edition.  --Lambiam 11:20, 5 March 2020 (UTC)

Thanks. I was evidently too tired to notice the possible problem and check the original. This is another reason why we should incorporate links to source text into our cites: one chance to check when we add the link, another chance for any subsequent skeptical user. If the link had been there I would have checked. BTW, I have discovered instances of quotation discrepancies bween Webster 1913 or Century 1911 and Google Books texts. Most of the time none of the editions scanned by Google contain the text of the quotation. DCDuring (talk) 14:14, 5 March 2020 (UTC)

I've changed parentheses and typography a little. It makes more sense to me, but do the changes make it better for others?

To direct, as words, (to anyone or anything); to make, as a speech, petition, etc. (to any audience).

DCDuring (talk) 14:45, 5 March 2020 (UTC)

Captain Planet

The 2007 citations refer to, respectively, Captain Planet the TV show, and Captain Planet its hero. They are not the generic sense as claimed. Equinox ◑ 14:29, 5 March 2020 (UTC)

Agreed, I'd remove them. Ultimateria (talk) 19:03, 5 March 2020 (UTC)

 Done I have "been bold". Equinox ◑ 19:45, 6 March 2020 (UTC)

Japanese on 作

Currently the Japanese section has two etymology sections, with two separate pronunciation sections within each.

Etymology 1 (Middle Chinese)

Pronunciation 1 [sáꜜkù]

Pronunciation 2 [sàkú]

Etymology 2 (Old Japanese)

Pronunciation 1 [tsùkúríꜜ]

Pronunciation 2 [zukuri]

Am I correct in thinking that this is dispreferred? I thought that different forms (even with the same history) are listed as separate 'Etymology' sections?

@Eirikr, TAKASUGI Shinji, Nibiko, Atitarev, Suzukaze-c, Poketalker, Atitarev, Britannic124, Huhu9001

Cnilep (talk) 01:31, 6 March 2020 (UTC)

If two words with the same spelling have different etymologies, they must be separate. Middle Chinese and Old Japanese are totally different. — TAKASUGI Shinji (talk) 04:14, 6 March 2020 (UTC)

• @Cnilep, that is our standard approach for years now. A single grapheme in Japanese may represent umpteen different distinct lemmata, each with separate etymologies and related data. Standard m.o. has been to split out each separate lemma to its own etymology header, with pronunciation and other data under that. For a somewhat extreme example, see also 柄#Japanese, which has nine separate lemmata with their own etymology sections.

Occasionally, as seen at 作#Japanese, two closely related and nearly-homophonous lemmata might have the same grapheme and etymology but slightly different senses depending on the pronunciation. In these cases, we often keep to a shared ===Etymology=== header and split out at the pronunciation level. Duplicating the etymologies just seems like a waste of space and effort, and introduces the maintenance hassle of keeping the information in the shared-but-separate etymology sections identical and ensuring that divergences don't creep in over time.

HTH, ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 23:28, 6 March 2020 (UTC)

Thank you, that makes sense. Cnilep (talk) 01:26, 7 March 2020 (UTC)

Appendix:Capital letter in cat:X lemmas

Almost all the sections on the linked page are categorised as lemmas, except for the Vietnamese which is under dated terms. Are the lemma/term categories really supposed to contain content like this? Right now they all show up under the letter C in the list of pages, that is surely an odd way of presenting it. ←₰-→ Lingo ^Bingo _Dingo (talk) 11:11, 6 March 2020 (UTC)

outlander as compared to barbarian

In diff, a note was added saying "outlander" is "used often as a 'softer' or neutral synonym to barbarian, which usually has a pejorative negative connotation". For referring to real peoples in the world today, it seems like "barbarian(s)" is not used much except to be derogatory, and the "neutral" word is "foreigner(s)" or the name of whatever people are being referred to ("Bedouins", "Africans", whatever); it seems like "outlander" would not be "used often" or be a "synonym". However, searching Google Books for the two terms makes me think outlander might've been used in the claimed way in the past(?), and may still be used that way in fiction like Outlander (novel) and A Song of Ice and Fire, so maybe the usage note should say "In fiction,..."? Thoughts? - -sche (discuss) 19:42, 6 March 2020 (UTC)

outcomeling, etc

Also, many of the synonyms listed [at outlander] need qualifiers (in their own entries and in this one) if they are rare, archaic, etc. - -sche (discuss) 20:12, 6 March 2020 (UTC)

sleep with one eye open

We define it thus: "To remain vigilant at all times, so as to avoid being caught off guard". Isn't it a bit off the mark? {{R:Lexico}} has "Sleep very lightly, aware of what is happening around one". PUC 21:23, 6 March 2020 (UTC)

Perhaps both senses exist. Attestations of the vigilance sense: [12], [13], [14]. I haven’t searched for uses indicating a more general light-sleep sense.  --Lambiam 05:09, 7 March 2020 (UTC)

It might be better/easier to have one sense that mentions both possibilities than try to tease out whether most citations are saying a person is vigilant due to remaining awake, or due to sleeping only lightly. (This is similar to what The Free Dictionary does.) Something like "To remain awake or sleep lightly, being constantly vigilant and aware of what is happening."? - -sche (discuss) 08:26, 7 March 2020 (UTC)

The idiom in the sense “to remain vigilant” is figurative and does not imply actual sleeping, however lightly. Many uses, like seen here, are about maintaining constant vigilance, which can be done by a group of people taking turns of guard duty.  --Lambiam 05:44, 8 March 2020 (UTC)

I see your point, though it seems like a group of people taking turns at guard duty is a group which is (as a group) "only partially asleep". At the moment I've just added an "especially", but perhaps it should be weakened further to "for example by remaining partially awake or sleeping only lightly so as to [...]". - -sche (discuss) 08:32, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

grapevine, vine, grape,

the last with the header “vine”, are three translation tables at least to be merged into one, but I am not judgmental enough to decide the end. Fay Freak (talk) 00:43, 7 March 2020 (UTC)

devotional

I feel there is a meaning missing here, which is for a devotional (religious) event, i.e. religious service. — surjection ⟨?⟩ 23:32, 7 March 2020 (UTC)

Do you mean as a noun? Can you give an example of use?  --Lambiam 05:27, 8 March 2020 (UTC)

Yes, I'm referring to a noun. There are many examples when saerching for "a devotional" on Google, particularly for "lead a devotional". — surjection ⟨?⟩ 11:23, 8 March 2020 (UTC)

Many dictionaries appear to define it as “a short religious service”. I did not see the musical sense in a brief OneLook examination.  --Lambiam 18:40, 8 March 2020 (UTC)

syntagma

What's the intended distinction between defs 1 and 2, "(linguistics) A syntactic string of words that forms a part of some larger syntactic unit; a construction.[1]" and "A sequence of linguistic units in a syntagmatic relationship to one another.[1]"? The (nonstandard) references after the def imply the OED considers them distinct. 2 also seems circular, since syntagmatic means "pertaining to a syntagma. - -sche (discuss) 20:19, 8 March 2020 (UTC)

Merged. If anyone thinks that was the wrong course of action, pipe up. - -sche (discuss) 21:24, 11 March 2020 (UTC)

繩／绳

Is there another reading mǐn for this character/word, particularly when reduplicated as 繩繩／绳绳? In this recitation from the Shījīng the reader pronounces it as such, and running a Google search for ‘繩 min’ turns up some discussions where (if I’m understanding them correctly) people say it should be read that way. On the other hand, Karlgren gives it as sheng sheng in his transcription of the Shījīng. — Vorziblix (talk · contribs) 21:54, 8 March 2020 (UTC)

@KevinUp, Justinrleung —Suzukaze-c◇◇ 02:36, 9 March 2020 (UTC)

Yes, it is a duōyīnzì (shéng, yìng, mǐn). See the relevant entry in the 古漢語字典. ---> Tooironic (talk) 04:32, 10 March 2020 (UTC)

Thanks! I see it’s been added at our entry too. — Vorziblix (talk · contribs) 05:33, 11 March 2020 (UTC)

pure (noun meaning dung)

Under Etymology 1 we have "Feces, especially dog feces gathered in pre-20th-century England for use in the tanning of leather." and under Etymology 2 "Alternative form of puer" with puer defined as "Dung (of dogs, fowls, etc) used in tanning, after applying lime, to soften skins." I know very little about etymologies, but I find it improbable that this particular same sense of the same word has two unrelated origins. --Droigheann (talk) 00:56, 9 March 2020 (UTC)

Fixed. The Etymology 1 section was obviously added by someone who was unaware it was already covered by Etymology 2. In the meanwhile, I noticed that there's a translation table for the (Northern) adverb section. This should probably be combined with the translations for a term with the same meaning using {{trans-see}} Chuck Entz (talk) 02:56, 9 March 2020 (UTC)

stave (2)

Is anyone familiar with verb sense 6?:

1. (intransitive) To walk or move rapidly.

I have never heard of it. It is in M-W, but not in several British dictionaries that I checked. Some sort of label may be in order. Is it specific to AmE? Is it in modern use? Google Book Search for "staving down" yields some relevant hits ("staving down the street" etc.) but most of them seem to be old. Mihia (talk) 11:54, 10 March 2020 (UTC)

DARE has "also with around, out, rarely with it: To rush, stride vigorously; to work hard; to storm about—freq in v phr rip and stave. [Engl. and Scots dial] chiefly Sth, S Midl"

last cite in DARE How to talk Yankee (1979).

It might be obsolete by now. DCDuring (talk) 14:01, 10 March 2020 (UTC)

I'm a bit confused by "[Engl. and Scots dial] chiefly Sth, S Midl". What country does "Sth, S Midl" refer to? Is it the US, do you think? Also, does DARE happen to have any info about the etymology of this sense? M-W has it under the same main heading as the other senses, but I was wondering whether it might be a different word altogether, as I don't see the connection. I could be wrong though. Mihia (talk) 14:56, 10 March 2020 (UTC)

The bold regional abbreviations are for the US: South (presumably centered on Georgia) and South Midland (presumably centered on Arkansas and Tennessee) [I'll check on those tomorrow.]. DARE is not so strong on Etymology. I think "Engl. and Scots dial" is their attempt. "South Midlands" is strongly influenced by migration from Scotland and the north of England. "South" is more influenced by migration from the south of England. DCDuring (talk) 04:07, 11 March 2020 (UTC)

Anyway, AFAICT this sense is not in general modern use, so I have added the label "old-fashioned or dialect". Mihia (talk) 20:48, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

BTW, for DARE, Sth includes all of Florida and parts of many states from southern Delaware to eastern Texas. Generally the included parts are the lowlands. S Midl includes all of Arkansas, Tennessee, and Kentucky and adjoining parts of almost all neighboring states as well as parts of Maryland. They have 37 different overlapping regions for which they have abbreviations. DCDuring (talk) 15:39, 17 March 2020 (UTC)

synharmonic

The current definition of synharmonic is the epitome of lexicographical uselessness --Backinstadiums (talk) 17:40, 10 March 2020 (UTC)

Why don't you actually do some work, instead of taking all our time by asking questions on talk pages, and create the red link then? Equinox ◑ 20:19, 10 March 2020 (UTC)

To start you off, try searching Google Books for "synharmony": it is a term in linguistics. Also look at synharmonic vowel. See what you can do, eh? Equinox ◑ 20:20, 10 March 2020 (UTC)

“Mordor” metaphorically used a proper noun?

I see that Mordor only mentions Tolkien’s sense in the etymology, and gives under Proper Noun a metaphorical sense which does not conform to the definition at proper noun. Should not Tolkien’s sense be listed under Proper Noun and the metaphorical sense under plain Noun? PJTraill (talk) 23:14, 10 March 2020 (UTC)

Gender behavior of cities vs. states/provinces/cantons/oblasts/etc. in different languages

At least in Portuguese, it appears that when a city and a state have the same name, the city is sometimes feminine while the state is masculine. One example: Hamburgo (Hamburg). This makes a certain amount of sense, as cidade (“city”) is feminine while estado (“state”) is masculine. In this same case, however, both the equivalent state and city in Spanish are masculine, perhaps based on the final -o. Does anyone know (a) is there a general rule in Portuguese about cases like these? (b) are there any other languages that have gender splits like this? (c) any rules of thumb for proper noun genders (particularly toponyms) in various major languages? Pinging some random people @Lambiam, Ultimateria, Canonicalization who it seems might know. Benwing2 (talk) 01:52, 11 March 2020 (UTC)

@Benwing2: Russian place names are also partially based on the sense. Cities that "look" masculine or feminine are masculine or feminine, otherwise, they are masculine because го́род (górod) is a masculine, countries that "look" masculine or feminine are masculine or feminine, otherwise, they are feminine because страна́ (straná) is a feminine. It's a general rule. Мана́гуа (Manágua) is a masculine, Никара́гуа (Nikarágua) is a feminine. --Anatoli T. ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 02:47, 11 March 2020 (UTC)

@Atitarev Thanks. However, I'm not quite sure what you mean by "look masculine or feminine"; to me as a non-native speaker, Мана́гуа (Manágua) and Никара́гуа (Nikarágua) look at least somewhat feminine because they end in -а. Maybe you mean that places that look more or less Slavic in nature take gender according to their ending, while others take gender according to their type (city = masculine, state = feminine, etc.)? Or is it that what matters is whether it's declinable? Both Мана́гуа (Manágua) and Никара́гуа (Nikarágua) are indeclinable. BTW I found a Russian example that is masculine as a city, feminine as a prefecture (in Japan, similar to a province): Ао́мори (Aómori). Benwing2 (talk) 02:59, 11 March 2020 (UTC)

@Benwing2: Yes, Мана́гуа (Manágua) and Никара́гуа (Nikarágua) are indeclinable and don't really look feminine or masculine to Russians despite the ending "-а". Yes, Ао́мори (Aómori) is a good example that shows that the gender is driven by senses when the word form doesn't look like belonging to a specific gender. --Anatoli T. ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 03:17, 11 March 2020 (UTC)

Spanish can't really be automated. From my favorite grammar resource:

• There are no fixed rules
• Names of countries ending in -a with no diacritic tend to be feminine, and all other countries tend to be masculine
• Names of cities ending in -a, regardless of diacritics, tend to be feminine
• All other cities tend to be masculine, but the feminine is very common due to influence from ciudad
• todo and toda are used interchangeably before a city name, e.g. todo Bogotá/toda Bogotá ("all of Bogota")

Unfortunately these are just guidelines; the key phrase here is tend to. Ultimateria (talk) 05:35, 11 March 2020 (UTC)

German city and land names are neuter. Even a name like Darmstadt, which is almost certainly equivalent to a compound with the feminine noun Stadt, is neuter, as seen e.g. in das Darmstadt der Gegenwart. Likewise, it is der Bach (masculine) but das Ansbach, and die Burg (feminine) but das Augsburg. This does not extend to names for regions (der Balkan). For plural proper nouns (Bahamas, Vereinigte Staaten) it is not possible to determine a gender. Dutch appears to behave the same.  --Lambiam 09:36, 11 March 2020 (UTC)

For Greek it appears that names that look masculine or are semantically masculine (e.g. Πύργος (Pýrgos)) are also masculine as a proper noun, those that look feminine or are semantically feminine (e.g. Σάντα Λουσία (Sánta Lousía)) are feminine, and those that look neuter or are semantically neuter (e.g. Πεκίνο (Pekíno)) are neuter. However, Μπαρμπάντος (Barbádos) looks masculine but is neuter, so this is not a hard and fast rule. It also leaves a large number of foreign names that do not look like anything undecided. Most are neuter, but there are plenty of exceptions. Why, for instance, is Ρουέν (Rouén) feminine? In French, Rouen is male (although its Latin etymon is feminine).  --Lambiam 12:55, 11 March 2020 (UTC)

chinaman (in playing cricket)

Please see and comment at Talk:chinaman if you are familiar with cricket. It seems like, despite a usage note claiming they're contranyms, two of the definitions mean the same thing (as presently defined). - -sche (discuss) 02:43, 12 March 2020 (UTC)

3 Shakespeare quotes

Hey all. I've been working on dating our Shakespeare quotes over the last few months. As of right now, there are just 3 undated Shakespeare quotes, according to Category:Requests for date/Shakespeare. One is for crack - "vainglorious crack", which I can't find. The others are for the words cool and event, which I can't edit as they're protected pages and I'm a n00b. If anyone can find the "vainglorious crack" quote (perhaps with a spelling variation) or add the dates to the other ones, I'd be superpleased, as it would mean I have completed yet another immense Wiktionary task. Alternatively, unprotect cool and event, and I'll do it myself. --Alsowalks (talk) 11:06, 12 March 2020 (UTC)

The issues in “crack”

Perhaps we can find out from the exceedingly prolific @Equinox, who made this edit adding the sense and quotations, where they got them from? I doubt that the quote is genuine: I have tried searching with Advanced search in Open Source Shakespeare for "vainglorious" and "cracks" phonetically; for the former I only find "what need these feasts, pomps and vain-glories while the latter has 66 hits (including relatively distant words such as "carcass"), none of which are even close. That the Burton quote for the same sense is also undated and does not appear in a web search strengthens my suspicion.

In the same edit, Equinox also added the senses

• crackpot with an still undated quote from Addison
• quality of a breaking voice with a genuine quote from Cymbeline
• lively child with a genuine quote from Coriolanus.
• mental flaw (still no quotes)
• breach of chastity, which later acquired a genuine quote from Cymbeline
• instant (still no quotes)

PJTraill (talk) 13:33, 12 March 2020 (UTC)

There's a Spenser quote with the phrase in dictionaries going all the way back to Samuel Johnson- misattribution? Chuck Entz (talk) 13:54, 12 March 2020 (UTC)

It was indeed Spenser, and I have fixed that, but I commented out my modern translation in case I had overlooked a significant shift in sense; perhaps somebody can check and release it? PJTraill (talk) 14:51, 12 March 2020 (UTC)

See following sub-section for comments on translation

Burton quote also fixed (but it was a verb, not a noun). PJTraill (talk) 16:35, 12 March 2020 (UTC)

Addison quote also fixed. PJTraill (talk) 23:22, 12 March 2020 (UTC)

Hello PJ! I will admit I did a lot of fairly copy-pastey dictionary work but I did always cast an eye over it and try to improve it where possible. A lot of my stuff came from Webster's 1913, and sometimes the sources cited are, unfortunately, other dictionaries (e.g. most Scots words come from Jamieson). There's been no fakery though so if you can't find a word in as everyday a source as Shakespeare then it is probably just spelled or hyphenated differently. Equinox ◑ 09:34, 14 March 2020 (UTC)

Translation of 16/17th century quotes

Reactions to possible translation of quote from Spenser

I don't think we should be translating Spenser any more than we should be translating Shakespeare or quotes with thick Irish accents. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 15:40, 12 March 2020 (UTC)

Template:RQ:Spenser_Faerie_Queene provides |translation=, as do the Burton and Shakespeare templates. I fear you may be overestimating the ease with which modern readers can understand old-fashioned English and/or underestimating the extent to which meanings can have shifted since the texts were written. Do you not feel that we should ensure that readers can readily understand the quotations? PJTraill (talk) 16:35, 12 March 2020 (UTC)

Quotations are present to illustrate (or merely attest to) the usage of a word. This is not like a Shakespeare class for undergraduates who need to analyse Hamlet's motives: our goal is purely lexicographical, not literary. And if people can't understand the obsolete words, this is a dictionary... they can look up them up. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 16:40, 12 March 2020 (UTC)

Some EME cites and, especially, MWME cites need translations, explanations, or footnotes to validate the relevance of the quote to the definition. Perhaps sometimes these can be dispensed with if there is a link to a well-footnoted edition of the word cited. DCDuring (talk) 17:42, 12 March 2020 (UTC)

@DCDuring Thanks for your comments; am I right in thinking EME=Early Middle English (1150–1300/1350)? I am not sure what you feel about translating of the rather later quotes in question. And what is MW? Please excuse my unfamiliarity with these abbreviations! PJTraill (talk) 22:18, 12 March 2020 (UTC)

@Metaknowledge (Perhaps this discussion belongs in Wiktionary Talk:Quotations or the Beer parlour.) I had already taken a look at WT:Quotations, but it does not currently give guidelines for when translations are desirable for older forms of English. What is does assert (in the first paragraph) is that citations both attest to a word/sense and illustrate how it is used. For the latter, a translation does seem useful; I like to feel that we can help the casual but interested user understand how a word is or was used, and indeed I prefer to err on the side of helpfulness. The user can look things up, but that is slow and cumbersome, especially as we are (subject to discussion) discouraged (Please note / 9) from linking words in citations . Perhaps a more precise specification of the purpose (not only of citations, also of Wiktionary itself, at a high level) and target users would be helpful, but I have yet to find that (e.g. here). PJTraill (talk) 22:18, 12 March 2020 (UTC)

Sorry, EME is Early Modern English, includes Shakespeare, MW should have been ME Middle English, from old English to ~1450 or ~1470. Some EME is easy for normal users to misunderstand. ME is often hard to understand. DCDuring (talk) 04:28, 13 March 2020 (UTC)

...Again I will admit I trusted Webster's 1913 dictionary a bit too much, before I realised that he sometimes manipulated spellings. This usually only matters with very old words that we would count under Middle English (basically Chaucer!) and I think a lot of them have since been fixed up, sometimes by myself. Equinox ◑ 09:38, 14 March 2020 (UTC)

It can be much worse than that. Webster 1913 “quotes” Dryden as writing:

Turnus addressed his men to single fight.

This is what Dryden wrote:

Then Turnus, from his chariot, leaping light, Addreſs’d himſelf on foot to ſingle fight.

Go figure.  --Lambiam 10:36, 14 March 2020 (UTC)

I wanted to write "at least I learned how to do that prissy pseudo-quoting style" but then I saw SPAN STYLE and  . Get outta here. P.S. Let's make sure we cover Dryden's actual use (he addressed himself to combat) even if my Webster content was bad. Equinox ◑ 02:15, 22 March 2020 (UTC)

live from paycheck to paycheck

Can this be considered an alternative form of live paycheck to paycheck? PUC 19:29, 12 March 2020 (UTC)

Yes; it has the same meaning.  --Lambiam 04:57, 14 March 2020 (UTC)

behind every successful man there stands a woman

I don't think "behind every successful man there stands a woman" means any more than the sum of its parts. Vox Sciurorum (talk) 13:04, 13 March 2020 (UTC)

It could mean that all successful men have a female stylist, spin doctor or reputation manager. From the parts it is IMO not obvious that that woman is their partner. It could also have meant that successful men have ambitious partners who are the drivers of the men’s ambitions. Instead, it references the publicly invisible support offered by women, making the men’s commitment to success possible.  --Lambiam 18:41, 13 March 2020 (UTC)

(Well, "all men are pigs" could mean they are the victims of mythological Circe...) Anyway the current definition doesn't state that the support is "publicly invisible"; should it be added? Equinox ◑ 18:47, 13 March 2020 (UTC)

Yes; moreover, I think it will be worthwhile to make clear that the intention of the phrase is not so much to make a factual observation, but to acknowledge the support that normally remains behind the scenes.  --Lambiam 10:26, 14 March 2020 (UTC)

Brackets and the use/mention distinction in attesting prosopopoeia.

In this edit, @DCDuring removed brackets (currently defaulted to on) for a quote from Langley's Rhetoric dictionary. When are they needed? Should they be defaulted to off, if the definitional rhymes are considered a use rather than a mention? As the question is nontrivial, it was suggested that I follow up here. grendel|khan 23:09, 13 March 2020 (UTC)

Although the doggerel to illustrate the term is made up, I deem it to be an actual (even if not very illuminating) use. If most quotes are such definitional rhymes, it is better (IMO) to make off the default.  --Lambiam 10:16, 14 March 2020 (UTC)

relate, verb

We have "(transitive) To give an association" and then "(transitive) To make a connection or correlation between one thing and another". The second one has a citation saying "The use of video made it possible to relate the talk to the answers given to particular problems in the test". How can we distinguish these two senses? What is the difference? Equinox ◑ 13:12, 14 March 2020 (UTC)

I can’t think of a pair of uses that would discriminate the two. Dictionary.com has a combined sense “2  to bring into or establish association, connection, or relation: to relate events to probable causes.”  --Lambiam 07:41, 15 March 2020 (UTC)

Portuguese dia as an adverb

In the Portuguese entry for dia, its meaning as "on the [...]th" is given as an adverb. I was going to move it to the noun section and explain that no is omitted, so no dia 5 = dia 5. We say o evento ocorreu hoje, o evento ocorrerá amanhã, but not o evento ocorreu dia — it has to be dia primeiro, dia dois or something. So, should it be kept as an adverb or should we move it so it's classified as a noun? A more wacky analysis would be seeing it as a preposition. Spargia (talk) 17:53, 14 March 2020 (UTC)

[EDIT] Semana passada, esse sábado and other noun phrases are used without a preposition. There's no case for dia as an adverb — everything indicates it should be classified as a noun. Spargia (talk) 18:02, 14 March 2020 (UTC)

In English you can use such noun phrases as adverbs: “One day, he would tell everyone he would prosecute it to the bitter end. The next day, he would reassure the peace party that he was in favor of immediate moves to terminate hostilities.”[15] Or, “My mother was the daughter of a king ; Who died the very minute I was born”.[16] French is similar: “Le lendemain nous en partîmes.” I guess the same applies to Portuguese.  --Lambiam 11:12, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

Yeah, that's true. But dia isn't being used as an adverb, it's the whole phrase (dia primeiro de fevereiro) that acts as an adverb. Dia there is just short for no dia (lit. in the day) — you can say no dia primeiro as well. Spargia (talk) 19:09, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

CAT:English terms spelled with ’

Should these be using ’ as opposed to '? @Geographyinitiative — justin(r)leung _{{ (t...) | c=› }} 18:21, 14 March 2020 (UTC)

See Talk:Jo-ch’iang. Of course they should be using '. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 23:33, 14 March 2020 (UTC)

Also worth noting that this special apostrophe isn’t even correct for Wade-Giles; in Wade-Giles it properly faces the other direction (i.e. Jo-ch‘iang). Wade derived it from the Greek rough breathing mark and had it curve the same way. — Vorziblix (talk · contribs) 02:17, 15 March 2020 (UTC)

safe travels! (interjection)

Worth an entry? PUC 21:34, 14 March 2020 (UTC)

I think so. It doesn't seem like an elision of anything SOP that most people would say, since a single trip is rarely referred to as "travels" (at least in my experience). Andrew Sheedy (talk) 03:06, 15 March 2020 (UTC)

Both “I wish you safe travels” and “We wish you safe travels” have several GBS hits. One can also wish that “God grant you safe travels”.  --Lambiam 07:21, 15 March 2020 (UTC)

piebakings

Equinox has deleted the page piebakings twice now. piebaking as a noun is an alt form of pie baking. There is also another form pie-baking. Both "pie baking" and "pie-baking" have attested plurals. "piebaking" is, however, a rarer form, and there is no attested plural on a durably archived source. This has gone through Requests for Verification, at which time I made the argument that it was excessive to delete the plural of an alternate form when two other forms of the same word allow the plural. As there was no disagreement, we allowed piebakings to remain. I am not comfortable with @Equinox simply deleting the plural with no discussion. There are many other nouns with alternative forms in Wiktionary that have unattested plurals except in the main lemma, just as there are many verbs that do not have attestations of all inflections, and yet we allow the inflections to have entries. What makes this one so special? Kiwima (talk) 04:15, 15 March 2020 (UTC)

I am surprised nobody has replied to this. In older times I actually wanted every single form to be attested (this is because I had imported some weird Shakespearean verbs that were only seen in one form, before we made our current rule about nonce words)... I understand it may feel uncharitable to attack a word's lack of plural, because any word might have a plural, but some just don't. You can get two beatings from your evil stepmother, but nobody has ever written about two defragmentings of a disk... yet... I think (radically) we should probably not even bother creating separate plural entries, but since we do what we do, let's not create non-existent ones. Equinox ◑ 02:05, 22 March 2020 (UTC)

Perhaps no-one has ever written about 'two defragmentings', but a Google search quickly turns up sentences like, "The longer you go between defragmentings, the longer it takes to do it.". That feels like perfectly good English to me. RichardW57 (talk) 08:38, 19 April 2020 (UTC)

Adverb: lie deep

In the example for the adverbial use of deep, "lies deep", deep must be an adjective lie being a copular verb --Backinstadiums (talk) 17:39, 15 March 2020 (UTC)

Because "lie" can be a copular verb doesn't mean it cannot take an adverb too. For example, "lie quietly". However, in this case I believe you are probably correct. Mihia (talk) 23:27, 15 March 2020 (UTC)

@Mihia: shulda said "the meaning of lie used in this example" being copular --Backinstadiums (talk) 00:11, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

Oh yes, sorry, I see what you meant. Mihia (talk) 01:28, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

In a sentence like “materials must lie flat on the table”, flat clearly functions as an adverb: this library regulation prescribes the manner of lying. It does not aim to constrain the shape of the books. In the quotation, “Hepaticology ... lies deep in the shadow ...”, we are not told copularly that hepaticology itself is deep; what is deep here is the position hepaticology finds itself in, a position so deep that it is overshadowed. Therefore I think also in this example the sense is adverbial.  --Lambiam 10:30, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

Hmmm. Looking again at the "deep" example, I think that the copular nature, or otherwise, of "lie" may be somewhat of a red herring, since "lies deep in the shadows" is "lies + deep in the shadows", not "lies deep + in the shadows", so the question is really about the role of "deep" in the phrase "deep in the shadows". Since "deep" in that phrase seems to describe "to what extent" or "how far", yes, I think it is an adverb -- though in fact not because of any relationship with "lie". Mihia (talk) 20:25, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

derogatory

"Tending to derogate, or lessen in value of someone". Is this grammatical?

Also, those glosses don't particularly help me in understanding the first quote. PUC 18:20, 15 March 2020 (UTC)

Glad to see someone has already fixed that grammar and given clearer glosses (though looking up derogate made pretty clear that detract was meant in the first quote (Acts […] derogatory from the power of subsequent Parliaments […]). I am, however, still unhappy with the way the new formulation “(usually with to) Tending to derogate, or lessen the value of someone; expressing derogation; detracting” lumps together the older rather technical usage and the more modern sense more or less equivalent to “insulting”. In the first two quotations the word seems to mean “reducing the powers (of)”, while in the third it means “hurtfully expressing a low opinion (of)”, which sound to me like two distinct senses. (I thought at first there were three, but it transpired that the Macaulay quote, which I extended to clarify this, did not mean “injurious to the reputation (of)”.) I think that the problem is partly that derogate itself has some five senses, only some of which are mentioned here; ideally we would give as many senses here, or at least quotations for all of them. PJTraill (talk) 21:59, 15 March 2020 (UTC)

Add cites for the senses that seem to be missing and then add the senses. I wouldn't stick too close to the verb definitions when wording the adjective definitions. DCDuring (talk) 02:14, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

I've tried to split the senses, as subsenses. - -sche (discuss) 19:21, 1 April 2020 (UTC)

Category:English rhyming compounds

As was noted on the talkpage, there's a bit of scope creep going on here, with words being included (sometimes by me) that are definitely not compounds; for example hit it and quit it or wham, bam, thank you ma'am. Any ideas for a new category name? PUC 18:25, 15 March 2020 (UTC)

If you are intending to split the cat, perhaps Category:English rhyming phrases?  --Lambiam 10:00, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

@Lambiam: I used your suggestion. See Category:Rhyming phrases by language. PUC – 20:03, 15 July 2020 (UTC)

lockdown

How about marking this term as a hot word? Also, the definitions could probably use some tidying. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 22:56, 15 March 2020 (UTC)

I guess you are talking about sense #3. I'm not sure this is purely "a newly coined term, or newly adopted sense of an existing term". Google hits for e.g. "country was in lockdown" yield results predating the present situation. Mihia (talk)

I think the only thing new is the reason for imposing a lockdown, which doesn't strike me as part of the definition. Basically, this sort of lockdown is merely a severe restriction on the movement of people within the area in question. Whether you're doing it to prevent forces from gathering to oppose you, to keep people separate to avoid conflict between them, or to prevent spread of a disease by keeping people from coming into contact with one another, you're still doing basically the same thing: restricting the movement of people in an area to keep them apart. Also, I heard someone just this morning refer to a senior care facility being in lockdown because of coronavirus, so it's not just "large areas of a nation or a whole nation". Chuck Entz (talk) 00:03, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

I've had a go at folding the "new" sense into the existing sense. The process of doing so highlighted some shortcomings of the first def (e.g., a lockdown can happen amid and not just after a disturbance), which I tried to fix. - -sche (discuss) 09:12, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

w:Lockdown and w:Stay-at-home order do make it seem like "mass quarantine" is a new sense, though. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 07:16, 25 March 2020 (UTC)

Frankish is a etymology-only reference to Proto-West-Germanic ?

Am I correct to understand that Frankish terms should link to Proto-West-Germanic ? At eschançon, the Frankish term is red-linked. Leasnam (talk) 01:39, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

@Leasnam: Wiktionary:Votes/2020-01/Make Frankish an etymology-only variant of Proto-West Germanic —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 18:13, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

Ok, it looks as though it passed. But Frankish terms in etymologies are not linking to their Proto-West-Germanic entries (see eschançon above). Are we still anticipating the completion of this ? Leasnam (talk) 20:43, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

Yes. All the Frankish entries and categories have to be out of the way first, or they will get errors when the language code is modified. —Rua (mew) 20:46, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

Ah, okay, gotcha. Thank you ! :) Leasnam (talk) 23:49, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

antistasis and antanaclasis are mutual hyponyms?

The former lists the latter as a hyponym, and the latter lists the former. I think the proper answer is that antanaclasis refers to the repetition of a word with a different sense, and antistasis with an opposite sense; thus, antanaclasis is the hypernym and antistasis the hyponym. Does this seem right?

So, for example, Franklin's "We must, indeed, all hang together or, most assuredly, we shall all hang separately." is an example of antanaclasis, but not of antistasis, while Thurber's "Why do so many people who can't write plays write plays?" is an example of both? These examples of antistasis don't seem to strictly follow the pattern; maybe the meaning has drifted a bit, as suggested in the second sense? grendel|khan 04:04, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

“Opposite” is too strong; the second sense merely has to contradict the first one. Here it is described as “a new, especially contrary sense”. But in the example that follows (“he sitteth on the right hand of the man who sitteth on the right hand of The Man”), the sense is actually not contrary but merely different – although different in a contrastive way. So, as the terms are used, they are practically synonyms. But antistasis seems less appropriate in case of a mere pun, as in “Time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a banana.” A beautiful characterization is found here: after somewhat blandly defining the antistasis trope as “the repetition of a word—the ‘same’ word—in a different context”, the text goes on to describe how a term may invoke a network of associations, concluding with, “Antistasis invites such connections by invoking ‘the same’ in a way that reveals difference.”  --Lambiam 09:57, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

@Lambiam Okay; I've edited both (here and here); it seems to make sense to me, especially with the usage note I added. grendel|khan 17:18, 21 March 2020 (UTC)

разведёнка usage example translation barely comprehensible

I can make only limited sense of the translation of the usage example at разведёнка:

На у́лице не даду́т прохо́да языка́тые кержа́чки, что поедо́м едя́т дереве́нских «бро́шенок» и «разведёнок», и те ходя́т к ре́чке полоска́ть бельё ноча́ми. ― Sharp-tongued battleaxes nagging the village women who were "deserted" by men and the "divorcées" won't let them pass outside and they go to the river to wash linens at night.

Could someone who understands the original please improve the English? As it stands it does little to help English native speakers to understand the word and its connotations. It would also be good to have some etymology. PJTraill (talk) 15:33, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

This is the best I could make of it, but my Russian skills are rather limited and the language use is on the colloquial side:

On the street, passage will not be allowed by the sharp-tongued Kerzhachki [Old Believer women], who have village “broshenkas” [abandoned women] and “divorcées” for a meal, and those [who] go to the creek to rinse their wash at night.

All I get from this is that divorcées are looked down upon by these Kerzhachki who apparently think themselves superior to simple villagers. I don’t know if разведёнка (razvedjónka) is already by itself somewhat derogatory, but брошенка (broshenka) is (according to Wikislowar).  --Lambiam 22:27, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

Origin of the word which names the animal - Grouse.

Hello,

I have been reading the English words from Old Germanic in the root of GhREh-. I see that the adjectives listed here are:

GRÓNIS > GRÓNÍ > GRÉNE > GREEN

GRÉWAZ > GRAEG > GREY

GRÍSAZ > GRÍS > *GRISE* (like rice, grey or terrible, perhaps hidden like a ghost)

GREThOS > GRÉDAZ > GRAED > *GRAD, GRADE* (not in use, grass)

GRASA > GRAS > GRAES > GRAS, GRASSE > GRASS

and finally,

GRÓSÓ > GRÓSA > *GRUS* > *GROUS, GRAUS* (like house)

Is it possible that the final, (from Grósó), becomes in some way the English for Grouse? I cannot immediately see the definitions for the German or Dutch.

The Pheasant Grouse can be grey in colour, The Pheasant Grouse is herbivorous, The Pheasant Grouse lives in greyish, greenish places?

The words between stars **, are speculative; representing something that appears to me, similar to a modern form.

19:08, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

I cannot find a postulated proto-Germanic *grōsō (meaning "greenness" (?)). If we were to trace back (not recommended) EME grouse, we would expect an OE *grūs, and this would prove to be problematic for connecting to *grōsō, I would think Leasnam (talk) 21:37, 21 March 2020 (UTC)

flatten the curve

Worth an entry? (I ask only on grounds of SOPpiness, not novelty; I found this attestation from 2014: “We have managed to flatten the curve of HIV prevalence, but now we must look inwards and seek local solutions”.) —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 01:53, 17 March 2020 (UTC)

But graphical curves representing all sorts of things can be flattened, and attestably so. DCDuring (talk) 03:09, 17 March 2020 (UTC)

So what? I'm talking about the epidemiological sense. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 04:10, 17 March 2020 (UTC)

This is old epidemiologist parlance (as seen used here in 1920) that has now become commonplace. What is new and makes this idiomatic is that you don’t have to specify which curve (unlike in the 1920 and 2014 use). One could even argue that “the curve” is the idiomatic part. It may however still be too hot to deserve inclusion; will this survive for a year?  --Lambiam 13:15, 17 March 2020 (UTC)

I tend to agree with this: "What is new and makes this idiomatic is that you don’t have to specify which curve (unlike in the 1920 and 2014 use)". PUC 13:56, 17 March 2020 (UTC)

I tend not to. There is a tendency here to be recentist (especially, dare I say, in relation to the current COVID-19 pandemic). If there is a particular state of affairs in a country or in the world, one will naturally find sources referring to, say, "the pandemic" or "the war" or "the President", assuming that readers will know the context and correctly identify which pandemic, war or President is referred to. I think it may be too early to assess whether the current state of affairs is significant enough for a term like flatten the curve to refer unambiguously to the COVID-19; contrast, say, Holocaust. Otherwise, we will end up having to add to a word like pandemic as additional senses every major pandemic that has taken place. — SGconlaw (talk) 19:27, 17 March 2020 (UTC)

But note that the term can be defined (and now has been defined) without reference to any specific pandemic or epidemic.  --Lambiam 03:42, 18 March 2020 (UTC)

I have no objection to that. What I would object to is any specific sense that refers to the current COVID-19 outbreak. — SGconlaw (talk) 05:28, 18 March 2020 (UTC)

@Lambiam, PUC, Sgconlaw: Like it or not, an anon has now created the entry. If anyone wants to refine it or send it to RF(V|D), be my guest. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 00:13, 18 March 2020 (UTC)

The definition and the usage notes feel awkward (“bunched”, “hill of a graph”). I changed “speed” to “rate”, then reworded the definition. I’ve changed “peak” cases to “active cases at any given time”. I’ve added “similar numbers of cases”, which is important, because the phrase refers to two curves with the same area, distinguishing “flattening the curve” from preventing infections. Roches (talk) 10:08, 19 March 2020 (UTC)

Though the equal-area qualification is superior for a good analysis, is there any evidence that common usage respects that qualification? Certainly virtually all of the recently circulated illustrative graphs don't show equal areas. DCDuring (talk) 02:56, 20 March 2020 (UTC)

There is no reason to expect equal areas under the curves. That is not a reasonable real-world outcome, as a flattened curve requires lower number of active infections at any given time, which could either reduce the total number of affected in the outbreak because of the lower likelihood of transmission, or an increase in the number of total affected, as a low level background activity continues without stopping, instead of burning out after the spike removes people from the possible nearby targets; and ofcourse the butterfly effect which will not result in equal numbers in any real world case. -- 67.70.32.186 11:15, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

The "curve" being flattened is idiomatic. Infections are not naturally a graph, and other things that are not even graphs can have curves that can be flattened. Highway realignment shows curves on routes being flattened straighter. -- 67.70.32.186 11:15, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

for crying out loud

For what is this a euphemism? What was wrong with it being in Category:English oaths? DCDuring (talk) 14:39, 17 March 2020 (UTC)

• It isn't a euphemism. SemperBlotto (talk) 14:42, 17 March 2020 (UTC)

For such a non-vulgar, non-euphemistic expression, is it accurate and helpful to language learners to have vulgar expressions and euphemisms as unqualified synonyms? DCDuring (talk) 15:45, 17 March 2020 (UTC)

Why isn't it a euphemism? According to our (slightly clumsily written) entry, "euphemism" means "The use of a word or phrase to replace another with one that is considered less offensive, blunt or vulgar than the word or phrase which it replaces." In this case, "for crying out loud" replaces "for Christ's sake". Why doesn't that fit the definition? Mihia (talk) 18:40, 17 March 2020 (UTC)

• I think it stands for for Christ's sake, which is fine if the minister uses it in a sermon to admonish us all to love our neighbours for Christ's sake, but may be considered less appropriate by said minister if we yell it at a neighbour we don’t love so much. We label jeeze as (mildly blasphemous).  --Lambiam 18:59, 17 March 2020 (UTC)

How do we know the intent of a current speaker? From the etymology? That's a fallacy that we have transcended for the definitions of terms. Why should we revert to the fallacy for context/usage labels? DCDuring (talk) 19:21, 18 March 2020 (UTC)

By that logic, almost any euphemism/minced oath is "in question" with regards to its status as a euphemism. When I used euphemisms/minced oaths growing up that I never knew were euphemisms/[in some cases] minced oaths, that certainly didn't diminish their status as being such. Tharthan (talk) 23:16, 31 March 2020 (UTC)

Exactly, by that logic we should reexamine all of the claims of "irony", "sarcasm", etc.

As to the matter at hand, what is the evidence other than Victorian-style armchair philological conjecture that this is a euphemism for anything, rather than being a mild oath. DCDuring (talk) 03:21, 1 April 2020 (UTC)

Is the etymology not widely known? I never mistook this for an independent phrase even when I was young. But perhaps I'm unusual, because I've always been much more sensitive to blasphemy than to obscenity. To me this is a clear example of a euphemism ... crying isnt a euphemism for Christ because it's confined to this one phrase, but the phrase behaves as an atomic unit ... no one says just "For crying!" So the phrase as a whole is a euphemism for the more offensive one. —Soap— 17:44, 5 April 2020 (UTC)

Would a term be a euphemism because of its etymology or because it is recognized as such by its users? Is it a euphemism without evidence? DCDuring (talk) 19:37, 5 April 2020 (UTC)

Well, in this case it might be both. Im no authority, so my opinion cannot be evidence, but neither can we have evidence against it ... how do we handle situations like this? e.g. if someone writes a book about euphemisms and mentions this specifically as one, does that make uncontroversial for us to use that description? —Soap— 21:51, 5 April 2020 (UTC)

The general principle is that a challenged assertion needs evidence. We have no specific forum for this kind of matter unless we treat the label as part of the definition, in which case it would be an RFD. DCDuring (talk) 00:33, 6 April 2020 (UTC)

[a] [cappella]

a is an English word. Plausibly, someone reading English might not realize a cappella is not one cappella. Would it be acceptable to add an English section to the cappella entry? if so, what form should it take? Perhaps...

English

Usage note

• Only used as part of the phrase a cappella

...or something like that? or a hatnote, like capella has See also... a capella? i know what i'm suggesting is slightly redundant to cappella#Related_terms, but that's part of cappella#Italian, and someone reading English might not even look at the Italian section. --96.244.220.178 05:30, 18 March 2020 (UTC)

Can you show that cappella is used in other English expressions? Is used in plural? Has other characteristics of a normal English noun? DCDuring (talk) 19:23, 18 March 2020 (UTC)

There’s also “à la” and “à la carte”, which might be written without the grave accent. It’s interesting how that’s usually written with the accent in English, like the acute accent in “café” that clarifies that it doesn’t rhyme with “safe”. I almost think that should be a sense of “a”, with a definition like “in borrowed phrases, ‘in the manner of’, taken from French ‘à la’ or Italian ‘alla’”. Roches (talk) 16:33, 19 March 2020 (UTC)

Not a great idea IMO. You could say the same about A level, A game, etc. Equinox ◑ 10:46, 20 March 2020 (UTC)

Not comparable. game is a regular english word, so there is a section for derived terms. 2001:464F:201D:0:C060:BF96:976:EA87 10:52, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

Oppose. PUC – 22:21, 22 March 2020 (UTC)

Use Template:only used in; this is exactly what that template is for, as indeed in capela. - -sche (discuss) 00:33, 31 March 2020 (UTC)

Letters and Science

Is this really a major, as claimed? It seems to be the name of a department, not the name of a course one takes. Equinox ◑ 21:24, 18 March 2020 (UTC)

I agree, and I changed it to match arts and letters by defining it as the subjects comprising letters and science, considered together. In a usage note, I mentioned that it can be a major. Roches (talk) 08:59, 19 March 2020 (UTC)

environment

Is "environment" ever used as an uncountable noun in English? For example, can we say: "Work environment is a factor that contributes to job satisfaction"? ---> Tooironic (talk) 05:38, 19 March 2020 (UTC)

Yes, that sounds fine to me. DTLHS (talk) 05:48, 19 March 2020 (UTC)

And yet I note that neither we nor the OED list an uncountable usage. ---> Tooironic (talk) 01:10, 20 March 2020 (UTC)

But that usage example is not a definitive demonstration of full uncountability, perhaps it suggests emerging uncountability. A better test is to find usage of NPs headed by environment with much as determiner. The few instances I can find usually have environment is single or double quotes. DCDuring (talk) 02:19, 20 March 2020 (UTC)

get lost

Shouldn't verb#1 and verb#2 sense be listed as Used other than with a figurative or idiomatic meaning, see get, lost? They are the same as be lost / become lost, in the same way as get fired equals be fired, and we do not list get fired as a phrase separately. - ZypA13510 (talk) 05:56, 19 March 2020 (UTC)

Yes. Mihia (talk) 00:16, 31 March 2020 (UTC)

... unless it counts as a "translation hub"? Also noting that distinction between interjection and verb imperative is not presented clearly (probably because there really isn't one). Mihia (talk) 13:12, 31 March 2020 (UTC)

I have merged the interjection use and imperative verb use. I have left the apparent literal definitions in place, largely because of the quantity of translations. Mihia (talk) 14:06, 31 March 2020 (UTC)

Oh bugger, scratch that. I forgot that there was a vote to keep the interj sense. Mihia (talk) 14:16, 31 March 2020 (UTC)

“greatest thing since sliced bread” / “best thing since sliced bread”

This idiom is “the neatest thing since sliced bread” for me, so I checked frequencies with Google N-Gram Viewer. “Neatest” is much less common than the others. “Greatest” had a slight lead in American English until the early 2000s, when “best” overtook it. In British English, “best” is almost twice as common as “greatest”. (I used the 2012 corpora.) Might it be useful to merge? Roches (talk) 08:20, 19 March 2020 (UTC)

Entries usually don't get merged, one form becomes the main entry and the others just refer to it. See {{alternative form of}}. – Jberkel 18:18, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

草に草生やすな

Is this suitable for inclusion? -- Huhu9001 (talk) 08:19, 20 March 2020 (UTC)

This is not an idiomatic phrase. If you know the meaning of 草 as an Internet slang, you can understand it with normal Japanese knowledge.--荒巻モロゾフ (talk) 12:20, 7 April 2020 (UTC)

But how would you know that it specifically criticizes mixed use as seen in 草wwwwwwwww?  --Lambiam 06:01, 19 April 2020 (UTC)

key to the house

Worth an entry ? meaning is "full access to", e.g. He practically gave me the key to the house. Leasnam (talk) 17:18, 20 March 2020 (UTC)

If it can be attested in a figurative idiomatic sense. But He practically gave me the full access to is not a good sentence, so the meaning has to be somewhat different.  --Lambiam 21:16, 20 March 2020 (UTC)

See keys to the kingdom (and possibly key to the city) for possible wording. DCDuring (talk) 23:34, 20 March 2020 (UTC)

avast usage note

I do not understand this usage note. Can someone explain it to me?

• The form "avast, ye!" (as in "Avast, Hoisting!" or "Avast, this noise" or "Avast ye landlubbers!!") is often seen, but this is nonstandard.

Equinox ◑ 00:05, 21 March 2020 (UTC)

It is strange, particularly the use of “as in”. In The Red Rover (1827), the captain exclaims, “Avast, ye villains!”, who are next scolded for being “cut-throat, lubberly villains”. Archaic, but otherwise standard. (The slang sense of “listen!”, though, if it can be attested, is totally different from the original sense.) There is also nothing wrong with “avast hoisting”, which simply means “stop hoisting”. But it is strange to put a comma in there. Here we see (1830) “Avast this jabbering” and here (1849) “Avast this bigotry”, so “Avast this noise” also appears standard use – but again, the comma seen in the usage note is strange.  --Lambiam 08:26, 27 March 2020 (UTC)

social distancing

Considering the current global outbreak of the coronavirus, it would be great if anyone who speaks a language other than English could add more translations at this important entry. For some weird reason, Wiktionary won't let me add requests for Arabic and Bengali - are their codes not "ar" and "bn" anymore? I get the error message: Could not find translation entry for 'bn:{{t-needed}}'. Please reformat. ---> Tooironic (talk) 00:37, 21 March 2020 (UTC)

I was able to add them without incident. DCDuring (talk) 17:10, 21 March 2020 (UTC)

Weird. Thanks. ---> Tooironic (talk) 05:06, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

Chelsea

To whoever claimed that football clubs don't belong in Wiktionary, I think you are mistaken. We already have a few entries for the names of football clubs here. Like Arsenal, or Atlético. If those are acceptable why can't we add the football definition to the Chelsea entry?

Go for it. DTLHS (talk) 01:32, 21 March 2020 (UTC)

Etymology of बयालीस

The Sanskrit word mentioned in the etymology (द्वाचत्वारिंशत्, dvācatvāriṃśat) seems to have no phonetic similarity to this Hindi word. If anything, the Sanskrit word looks like pseudo-Slavic for 23 or something... If this etymology is correct, how did dvācatvāriṃśat become bayālīs? Mölli-Möllerö (talk) 11:38, 21 March 2020 (UTC)

@AryamanA PUC 14:16, 21 March 2020 (UTC)

@PUC, Mölli-Möllerö: So a lot of overlapping sound-change processes are at play here, which I will try to explain and also add to the etymology in that page.

1. dv- > db- > b is a well-documented change. You can look at the Sanskrit word for twelve: द्वादश (dvādaśa) > 𑀤𑁆𑀩𑀸𑀤𑀲 (dbādasa) for the intermediate change to db.

2. ā > a is reasonable, could be due to this syllable becoming unstressed, nothing unusual.

3. VcV > VyV is a common change for unaspirated unvoiced intervocalic consanants. The historical development has been that they become voiced and then dropped as evidenced by Middle Indo-Aryan variation (Maharashtri Prakrit drops, Shauraseni keeps yet voices). But by the New Indo-Aryan stage they are usually always dropped unless re-Sanskritization is at play.

4. tv > ? is a little strange. The expected development is tv > tt > t with the previous vowel being compensatorily lengthened, but it appears this entire syllable was dropped.

5. ā remains, again not unusual.

6. r > l is very common in New Indo-Aryan. The fact is, r and l are very interchangeable depending on the language and even the dialect of the language. For example, the Persian borrowing Hindi दीवार (dīvār, “wall”) is pronounced दीवाल (dīvāl) in some Uttar Pradesh dialects.

7. iṃ > ī is usual compensatory lengthening for the dropping of the nasal.

8. ś > s is a usual sound change.

9. at > nothing is usual dropping of word-final consonants combined with Hindi schwa deletion rules (word final schwas are never pronounced despite being present in the orthography).

Besides this, we have historical evidence for this connection, including Pali dvācattālīsa, Maharastri Prakrit 𑀩𑀸𑀬𑀸𑀮𑀻𑀲 (bāyālīsa) as well as similar terms in every other New Indo-Aryan language. Feel free to ask for any other specific evidence for the sound changes. —Aryaman^{A (मुझसे बात करें • योगदान)} 20:26, 21 March 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for the detailed explanation! Number 4 with the dropping of an entire syllable is probably the weirdest part of this development. Mölli-Möllerö (talk) 21:26, 21 March 2020 (UTC)

@Mölli-Möllerö: Yeah, that's the only one that jumps out to me. Geminated t should usually remain. I imagine it may be due to how stress is placed in the word, with expected *bayātālis resulting in the tā syllable merging with the previous one. That's just speculation though. —Aryaman^{A (मुझसे बात करें • योगदान)} 15:40, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

all I got was this lousy X

So I created all I got was this lousy X, but I am wondering if this is the most correct title. Should it be "and all I got was this lousy X"? Or "X, and all I got was this lousy Y"? The precedent can be literally anything ("My brother went to Rome..."; "I defeated an alien invasion..."; "Earth was destroyed by a comet..."), and the thing described as being received can also be any number of things (typically a tee-shirt, or perhaps a mug or a notebook, but can also be anything, a common variation being "I voted, and all I got was this lousy president/government"). bd2412 T 17:58, 21 March 2020 (UTC)

@BD2412: The entry should be a subpage of Appendix:Snowclones, not in mainspace. As for its title, I think there always has to be a preceding phrase, so Appendix:Snowclones/X, and all I got was this lousy Y seems best. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 21:37, 21 March 2020 (UTC)

Sounds reasonable. Done. bd2412 T 21:42, 21 March 2020 (UTC)

I deleted the redirect for you. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 22:24, 21 March 2020 (UTC)

I was actually thinking to keep it, in case anyone looks up the phrase. I was under the impression that we did that. bd2412 T 02:50, 22 March 2020 (UTC)

• Surely it would be at all I got was this X? “Lousy” could be substituted with "stupid", "shitty", etc. ---> Tooironic (talk) 05:07, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

den of iniquity

Wordy etymology and usage notes. PUC 19:17, 21 March 2020 (UTC)

 Cleaned up. It was transwiki cruft. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 19:34, 21 March 2020 (UTC)

doorstep

Our current definition: "Step of a door. The threshold of a doorway. " Is this correct? I thought that a doorstep was the area just in front of a threshold. --Droigheann (talk) 12:12, 22 March 2020 (UTC)

And only on the outside of a house. Something left on the doorstep, like a package delivered while you were out, you find outside when you return (unless porch pirates got there first).  --Lambiam 21:47, 22 March 2020 (UTC)

put pen to paper

Do we need two different senses? PUC – 12:23, 22 March 2020 (UTC)

They seem distinct. Some of the referenced dictionaries have them linked by or, but the citations for one sense don't necessarily support the other. DCDuring (talk) 03:29, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

go their separate ways

The original entry for this was go one's separate ways, but the problem with that was that one person cannot by himself go separate ways. However, this current entry is inadequate too because of the constructions go our separate ways and go your separate ways that the entry does not currently encompass. There are three routes that I can think of/have seen proposed to address this issue: create separate entries for go our separate ways and go your separate ways; change the page to go one's separate ways, but add a usage note (my preferred option); or lemmatize it as go one's separate way, possibly with some usage note. (See some nascent discussion of this at User talk:Equinox). Any thoughts? Imetsia (talk) 17:37, 22 March 2020 (UTC)

The current entry does cover "go our/your [plural] separate ways", whereas "go one's separate ways" suggests that an individual can do this. You need at least two. Creating a separate page for go our separate ways is just as silly as doing it for go her separate ways if it were actually singular (which it isn't!). Equinox ◑ 19:57, 22 March 2020 (UTC)

I'm having a bit of a hard time believing that go their separate ways somehow covers our/your [plural]. In a construction like, e.g., grit one's teeth, one can substitute my or your or hers and so on for one's. Thus, that entry would cover all the relevant pronouns. Whereas, in go their separate ways, it seems much less intuitive or natural to substitute our or your [plural]. I'm sure there are some entries that have faced similar scrutiny in Wiktionary's past, and I'm not so well acquainted with how this particular issue of "only plural pronouns apply" has been dealt with before. Are there other terms for which the same treatment of just using "their" has done the trick - in other words, is there some precedent for this? Secondly, would a couple redirects be something to consider - that is, redirecting go our/your [plural] separate ways to go their separate ways? Maybe the cleanest way to solve it would be go separate ways, a solution I just thought of now, perhaps with a usage note indicating the plural pronoun mandate. — This unsigned comment was added by Imetsia (talk • contribs) at 20:33, 22 March 2020 (UTC).

"Grit my teeth" is possible but "go my separate ways" is not because one person cannot go two ways. If you want to redirect go our separate ways to go their separate ways then I wouldn't object but I would probably make a face. Equinox ◑ 21:02, 22 March 2020 (UTC)

One can go both ways. DCDuring (talk) 03:46, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

What about "go each one's separate ways"?  --Lambiam 21:34, 22 March 2020 (UTC)

There are zero Google Books hits for that. Equinox ◑ 21:50, 22 March 2020 (UTC)

There are also no GBS hits (other than mentions) for give someone the creeps. But in this lemmatized form someone is just a placeholder; there are hits for “it gave me the creeps”, “it will give you the creeps”, and so and so forth, all of which serve for attestation purposes. Likewise, each one's is just a placeholder, to be replaced by our, your or their as appropriate.  --Lambiam 02:23, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

Creative, but it sounds really weird. PUC – 22:09, 22 March 2020 (UTC)

There are (presumably not durably archived) uses though, like here: “It’s one thing to go each one’s separate ways while being common law, but ...” .  --Lambiam 02:32, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

• MWOnline has its entry at go separate ways, with usage examples that use their and our. We can throw in redirects. Cambridge Advance Learner's has it at go your (own) separate ways. Oxford (Lexico) has it at go one's separate ways. Take whatever action you deem appropriate. DCDuring (talk) 03:43, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

duty calls

Is it sometimes used humorously, with the meaning "I need to go to the loo"? PUC – 21:22, 22 March 2020 (UTC)

It seems believable but I've never come across that usage. Equinox ◑ 21:23, 22 March 2020 (UTC)

If someone used it that way, I’d assume they were confused and meant to say “nature calls”.  --Lambiam 21:37, 22 March 2020 (UTC)

Ah yes, that's what was nagging me! PUC – 21:52, 22 March 2020 (UTC)

Tenuously: in the US there is sometimes a pun on duty and doody (faeces). This doubly doesn't work in British English because (i) we don't generally replace /t/ with /d/ and (ii) the first syllable of duty in BrE has got /j/, like Jew or juice. Equinox ◑ 21:55, 22 March 2020 (UTC)

@Equinox: Isn't /dj/ also used, not just a (coalesced, etymologically) /dʒ/? Tharthan (talk) 23:45, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

star 69

Google books offers several star-69ed --Backinstadiums (talk) 22:49, 22 March 2020 (UTC)

Also several hits for “to star 69”. You have several thousands of edits now, but AFAIK no entry creations. This could be your first. You can find info at Wikipedia’s Star 69. For the verb forms, follow 69#Verb.  --Lambiam 12:58, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

Aren't the digits in these phone things pronounced separately, ie, '6-9' not '69'? DCDuring (talk) 18:42, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

@DCDuring: It's pronounced sixty-nine in the movie American Beauty --Backinstadiums (talk) 19:07, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

In fact, star sixty-nine is even an attestable alternative form.  --Lambiam 14:53, 24 March 2020 (UTC)

• I think this entry should be created, and *69 should also be created. Purplebackpack89 00:05, 25 March 2020 (UTC)

skookum as machinist's slang.

I've seen the word skookum used by machinists to describe things that are well-made, strong, big, tough. Also the phrase "skookum as frig". See these Redditors, this comment, this article about a YouTuber, and so on. Is this a novel sense? I haven't been able to find much of *anything* in GBS apart from the Pacific Northwest senses. I want to add the sense as machinist's slang, but I can't find much evidence outside of internet commenters, which I feel a little iffy about. Any ideas? grendel|khan 18:06, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

carhouse

sense: A garage attached to a house

There were three cites from To Kill a Mockingbird, none of which support "attached to a house". DARE has it just meaning "garage".

The more common orthography seems to be car house.

Also, is there use outside the US? DCDuring (talk) 23:21, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

sadboi

Relatively easily citable (added three uses to the citations page) but the current definition seems a bit off. --Einstein2 (talk) 00:51, 24 March 2020 (UTC)

An exposition on the meaning by a self-professed sadboi can be found here. Not being familiar with the term, I cannot judge if this is on the dot.  --Lambiam 14:50, 24 March 2020 (UTC)

सत्य (Truth)

On this Sanskrit portion of this page, this was found;

"सर्वाः अनिम्यः जपानाम् वक्तृभ्यः प्र भवन्ते यद् सत्यम् अस्ति।

sárvāḥ animyaḥ japānām vaktṛ́bhyaḥ prá bhávante yád satyám ásti."
It is true that all anime originated from Japanese speakers.
c. 1700 BCE – 1200 BCE, Ṛgveda

My problem isn't with the example/quote but it's blatantly false to quote that excerpt was from an ancient text written possibly over 4000 years ago was talking about anime, a recent pop culture phenomena. I don't know how to resolve this but hopefully someone can amend this !

It is very confusing, but the reference to the Ṛgveda was added as a quotation on May 7, 2018, and the example of the anime was added much later, on March 10, 2019, as a usex. It is not hard to believe the term occurs “somewhere” in the Ṛgveda, but without chapter and verse and any actual text this is useless, so I have  commented out this confusing non-quotation.  --Lambiam 07:51, 27 March 2020 (UTC)

ヘッチャラ, head-cha-la

“head-cha-la” is actually a rough English-ization of the Japanese slang word “hetchara,” whose meaning is roughly “it’s no problem” or “I can handle it.” 
http://www.daizex.com/multimedia/lyrics/jap-cha_la_head_cha_la.html

I do not know whether some kanji are used to represent it though --Backinstadiums (talk) 18:23, 27 March 2020 (UTC)

へっちゃら (hetchara) is originally an emphatic form of 平ちゃら (hei chara), where 平 (hei) is from 平気 (heiki, “calm, carefree, unbothered”, literally “even-tempered”) and ちゃら (chara) at its root is like English la-la in reference to a bit of nonsense, just making sounds with one's voice, and has come to include a sense of saying anything without care.

See also the pages at Kotobank for へっちゃら, 平ちゃら, 平気, and ちゃら. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 21:34, 27 March 2020 (UTC)

@Eirikr: then is Wikipedia article wrong? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cha-La_Head-Cha-La --Backinstadiums (talk) 22:10, 27 March 2020 (UTC)

@Backinstadiums: In what way? That link is to a page about the theme song for the Dragon Ball Z anime series. I know almost nothing about that. That particular WP page doesn't have anything to say about the Japanese term へっちゃら (hetchara), so I'm a bit confused by your question. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 23:28, 27 March 2020 (UTC)

@Eirikr: about the pronunciation it shows: ヘッチャラ --Backinstadiums (talk) 01:28, 28 March 2020 (UTC)

@Backinstadiums: I confess I'm still confused what you're asking about. If you mean the anglicized rendering on the EN WP page at w:Cha-La Head-Cha-La, as in "head cha-la", that is anglicized for English readers, and is a rough approximation of the Japanese. If you mean that the EN WP page lists the katakana rendering ヘッチャラ (hetchara), notice that that is just the katakana version of へっちゃら (hetchara), and that both are romanized and pronounced identically. The difference is a bit like the difference between THIS and this -- all the same letters, indicating all the same sounds, just using different glyph shapes. See the full entry at へっちゃら for fuller details. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 03:01, 28 March 2020 (UTC)

Formatting of terms that are both a plural form and a plurale tantum

Discussion moved to Wiktionary:Beer parlour/2020/March#Formatting of terms that are both a plural form and a plurale tantum.

slice of life

I think our definition doesn't quite capture what the term is about. Several dictionaries (Longman, Collins, Lexico) underline the realistic dimension of such works. PUC – 12:15, 28 March 2020 (UTC)

paracosm

Shouldn't this be labelled somehow? The citations give me an impression, strengthened by the word's non-appearance in the OED, that it's only used by child psychiatrists / psychologists. --Droigheann (talk) 00:02, 29 March 2020 (UTC)

As you can read in the Wikipedia article, the term was coined by a participant in a study by a BBC audience research methodologist. It was subsequently introduced in the worlds of psychology and psychiatry by a psychologist and a psychiatrist who published scientific articled about that study and further research. But by now it has escaped from the psych world into the world at large, being used by novelists and literature scholars alike: [17], [18], [19], [20], [21]. It has also found its way to news sources ([22], [23], [24]), introducing the term to a wider audience.  --Lambiam 13:45, 30 March 2020 (UTC)

see the day

Def ("To experience something in one's lifetime") seems a bit off, and not substitutable. PUC – 23:31, 29 March 2020 (UTC)

It is related to the expression live to see the day. Both are w:negative polarity items, I think. They are are always(?) followed by subordinate clauses, usually introduced by that or when. The something should be removed from the definition and a label should be introduced specifying the complement clause. Or at least that's what I think without research. DCDuring (talk) 02:39, 30 March 2020 (UTC)

Here the expression is used with positive polarity (unless you interpret the expression of hope something will happen as a concession that it may in fact not happen, but that seems far-fetched). I think hope to see the day – although possibly originating from a shortening of hope to live to see the day – is equally idiomatic. The desired experience can be left implied. The definition becomes substitutable if “something” is replaced by “a moment” – but then will only be understandable from being used in examples.  --Lambiam 13:01, 30 March 2020 (UTC)

We probably overcategorize things as negative polarity items anyway. DCDuring (talk) 02:29, 31 March 2020 (UTC)

I've remade the entry to my taste. YMMV. DCDuring (talk) 02:37, 31 March 2020 (UTC)

famous surnames

Would it be correct to put some famous surnames, e.g. Einstein, Shakespeare, Hubble, etc., under a translingual header? With a few possible exceptions, these proper nouns all refer to the same person in virtually all of the world's languages. The way it is now, it seems rather odd and somewhat arbitrary to list "Shakespeare" as an English and Portuguese word, since people from all around the world would recognize that name and associate the famous playwright to it. Imetsia (talk) 16:25, 30 March 2020 (UTC)

No, because we're a dictionary, and we don't include names of individuals unless they have some meaning beyond reference to the individuals: English Einstein means a very intelligent person (often sarcastically, as in "Hey, Einstein, you put that in backwards"). That meaning is part of the individual language, though it often comes from universally known traits of the individual. Chuck Entz (talk) 17:16, 30 March 2020 (UTC)

Many dictionaries list famous surnames with no other intent than identifying their bearers ([25],[26],[27]), so the suggestion is entirely reasonable. Also, the rule here is that “family names (...) are words, and subject to the same criteria for inclusion as any other words”. I see nothing wrong with having a translingual entry “Proper noun / Zaldarriaga / 1. a surname of Basque origin.” What is the point of having this, specifically, as a Cebuano proper noun?  --Lambiam 10:58, 31 March 2020 (UTC)

For most of these famous surnames entries, one sense is generally "a surname," another sense is the actual famous person whom most people associate with the surname, and the third is the "meaning beyond reference to the individuals." I certainly agree with Lambiam that at least the first one or two meanings could be put under a translingual header. But I also think that the third meaning is probably the same in most languages - which is to say that (whether you live in the US, Italy, France, Ghana, or what have you), one can probably still use "Einstein" to mean "a very intelligent person" or "Shakespeare" to mean "a great playwright." Because these are "universally known traits of the individual," it feels to me like they would have universal application and usage in most of the world's languages, thus meriting a translingual header. I saw some similar discussion of this over at RFD, and although it does not specifically speak of this particular issue, there are probably innumerable famous surnames which people worldwide could derive some universal characteristics. Imetsia (talk) 14:15, 31 March 2020 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Having an entry for a surname is different from having an entry for a "famous surname". Let's look at the first example given: I've always heard the name pronounced something like /ˈaɪnstaɪn/, but Albert Einstein no doubt pronounced it something like /ˈaɪnʃtaɪn/. I don't think most Americans would say "Hey /ˈaɪnʃstaɪn/, you put that in backwards!" unless they were affecting a German accent. Then there's the case of famous immigrants whose native language uses another script: do we have the entry in the original script, or in the script they used in the country where they were "famous"? Yes, there are cases where a translingual entry would reduce duplication for ordinary surname entries, but there are others where it would get very confusing due to differences in spelling as the name moves from country to country. My great-great grandfather was born in 1798 in Appenzell, Switzerland as Johann Friedrich Enz, but after he came to the United States, he went by John Frederic Entz. I don't think any single way of doing this would be ideal in all cases, but at least separate entries for separate languages allows for more language-specific information. Chuck Entz (talk) 14:40, 31 March 2020 (UTC)

• @Imetsia:, one possible counterargument to lumping everything under Translingual is that each language probably has its own different pronunciation of the name in question. And when it comes to lexicalized senses, there are probably overtones and allusive meanings that are also language specific. Not trying to throw wrenches, just wanting to make sure we don't lose sight of some things. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 15:19, 31 March 2020 (UTC)

  The issue of different pronunciations could, in theory, be solved by listing them separately the way we now often list Received Pronunciation and General American pronunciation separately. But this would probably become unwieldy, unless we have a show/hide feature for such cases as we have for translations. A much more difficult issue for translingually united surnames is that different languages have different inflections. Little Einsteins in English become Küçük Einsteinlar in Turkish. In Hungarian they are Kis Einsteinek.  --Lambiam 17:04, 31 March 2020 (UTC)

Partridge noise

Spanish has an excellent word, cuchichí, to describe the sound made by a partridge. What does a partridge go in English, anyhow? --Gorgehater (talk) 02:23, 31 March 2020 (UTC)

Here a partridge calls tzick, tzick. While here a hunter opines that tzick-tzick does not imitate the call of a partridge, the fact that it is mentioned confirms that this is being used for the purpose. It is not specifically used for partridges; you can find other birds' calls described this way.  --Lambiam 09:06, 31 March 2020 (UTC)

"Overhead the woodpecker knocked insistently, and in the forest depths the partridge boom-boomed and strutted in virile glory." Equinox ◑ 14:13, 31 March 2020 (UTC)

By now, partridges must have been genetically selected to only boom-boom outside the hunting season.  --Lambiam 11:49, 1 April 2020 (UTC)

種子島

Which ruby is better? -- Huhu9001 (talk) 06:47, 31 March 2020 (UTC)

• 種子(たねが)島(しま) (tanegashima)
• 種子(たね)島(しま) (tanegashima)

Is it possible that the reading tanegashima is a modification of tanegoshima? In that case 種(たね)子(が)島(しま) (tanegashima) might be preferable. Are there any other words in which 種子 might be read as tane? If not, the first ruby is better than the second, IMO.  --Lambiam 08:46, 31 March 2020 (UTC)

@Lambiam: This is unlikely since there are many placenames having the form "〇〇ヶ島", and although less common, 種子島 can be written as 種ヶ島. Then what about these two:

• 井(いの)上(うえ) (inōe)
• 井(い)上(うえ) (inōe)

-- Huhu9001 (talk) 10:32, 31 March 2020 (UTC)

Are there any other names that have a version of the form 〇子島 next to 〇ヶ島, for example 友子島 instead of 友ヶ島, or 梅子島 instead of 梅ヶ島? If Tanegashima is the only one, I’d surmise that the variant 種ヶ島 is an irregular spelling that arose under the influence of the many -ヶ島 names but does not reflect the etymology. For 井上 I suspect that the way this is written arose from 井の上 by filtering out the non-kanji particle, so that ruby-wise it is orphaned, making number two the better choice here.  --Lambiam 12:47, 31 March 2020 (UTC)

@Lambiam: たね is written 種子 because there is a synonym 種(しゅ)子(し) (shushi, “seed”) in Japanese (たね means also "seed"). But why 友子? Japanese don't call a friend "友子".

Excuse me, but you don't seem familiar with Japanese. -- Huhu9001 (talk) 14:50, 31 March 2020 (UTC)

But 種 by itself already means “seed“ and has a reading たね. If the ga is orphaned in the reading of 種子島, why is it not spelled 種島? My familiarity with Japanese is indeed limited, but Wiktionary entries for a language are also meant to be used by users who are not necessarily intensely familiar with that language, so their opinions about the presentation may matter.  --Lambiam 16:01, 31 March 2020 (UTC)

@Lambiam: Generally speaking, in Japanese proper nouns there are many words/phomemes that take the kanji spelling of a synonym. We also have いわみ for 石見. You have lead the topic to etymologies. This has gone out of the area of "opinions about the presentation" and you need to be at least familiar with Japanese to talk about it. -- Huhu9001 (talk) 16:25, 31 March 2020 (UTC)

I am sorry if I created the impression that I was attempting to forward an etymological theory. I believe it is helpful to users if the ruby kana line up with the kanji of which they are the reading. In light of that, I was merely trying to figure out, mainly by asking questions, what the relationship is between the kana が and the kanji 種子. Questions like, “Is it possible that ...?”, “Are there any other words in which ...?”, “Are there any other names that ...?” With these questions I was seeking relevant information. Clearly, I was not hiding my ignorance there. My strongest statements are “If ... I’d surmise that ...” and “I suspect that ...”, all directly related to the relationship between the kana and the kanji, and therefore relevant to the best way to make them line up.  --Lambiam 19:50, 31 March 2020 (UTC)

• Ya, proper noun spellings can get quite wacky, where in some cases the spelling is from a completely different set of etyma than the reading. In this case, it's simply using the orthographic synonym 種子 (shushi) derived from Chinese and applying the native Japanese word tane as the reading. That's actually how kun'yomi and jukujikun happened historically, so this is not a surprising development.

There are also no cases I'm aware of where 子 (ko, or voiced as go in some compounds) shifts to ka or ga, that just doesn't happen. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 17:27, 31 March 2020 (UTC)

-- also, orphaned particles in kanji spellings is not unusual, and was in fact the norm in the earlier stages of writing. See also [[w:Kanbun]], particularly the bit about kanbun kundoku, where all the Japanese-y elements (particles, verb endings, etc.) are not actually written out in the text. This kind of orphaned particle is still something we see in modern placenames, such as 富士見丘 (Fujimi ga Oka, literally “Fuji-View Hill”), where the particle が (ga) is again omitted. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 17:36, 31 March 2020 (UTC)

• By way of a comparative data point, a section in the JA WP article has this to say:

• 種子島は「種子」の二文字で「たね」と読み、「が」は漢字表記上は記載しない。そのため、仮名を振る場合、「が」は子と島の間に置く。
• In "Tanegashima", the two characters 種子 are read as tane, and the particle が (ga) is not explicitly written out in the kanji spelling. As such, when adding the kana, the が (ga) is placed between the 子 and the 島.

In cases where you're trying to be clear about which kana go with which kanji, I'd use the second choice at the top of this thread. In less exacting use cases, I'd use the first choice, as it just looks a bit cleaner. HTH, ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 15:16, 31 March 2020 (UTC)

@Eirikr: So... in less exacting use cases, what do you think of this two? -- Huhu9001 (talk) 16:05, 31 March 2020 (UTC)

• 種子(たねが)島(しま) (tanegashima)
• 種子(たね)島(がしま) (tanegashima)

• In less exacting cases, I'd do this instead:

{{ja-r|種子島|^たねがしま}}

↓

種子島(たねがしま) (Tanegashima)

That is, just don't use the % separator at all. Keep it simple. (But don't forget the ^ to output initial capitalization for proper nouns.) ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 17:27, 31 March 2020 (UTC)

torrefied

It says: "Of a biomass fuel like wood: heated to between 100 and 280 degrees Celsius". This seems curiously specific when we have no such numerical range at torrefy or torrefaction. What standards body is the source of these numbers? Equinox ◑ 14:11, 31 March 2020 (UTC)

Is this really an adjective, or is it simply the past participle of torrefy? The temperature range by which biomass gets torrefied is encyclopedic information and should not be part of the definition. (In addition, at 100 °C you’ll just be cooking it.) More important even than the temperature is the absence of oxygen. It is basically the same process as used for making charcoal. My suggestion: (of biomass) parched so as to increase the usability as a fuel.” But this meaning also applies to torrefy and torrefaction, as seen in these book titles: Torrefaction of Biomass for Energy Applications, Theoretical and Applied Aspects of Biomass Torrefaction, Systems Analysis of Integrated Biomass Torrefaction and Densification Technology. Another issue with the lemma: I question that the use for other substances than biomass is obsolete: torrefied flavors, torrefied coffee, torrefied wheat.  --Lambiam 16:40, 31 March 2020 (UTC)

A sentence containing the more encyclopedic information might make good usage examples without overspecifying or overburdening the definition(s). DCDuring (talk) 17:52, 31 March 2020 (UTC)

less

Determiner example:

I have less than you have.

Noun example:

I have less to do today than yesterday.

Anyone see any important difference? And are we ready to embrace "intransitive determiners"? Mihia (talk) 17:29, 31 March 2020 (UTC)

CGEL would call the noun example an example of a fused-head determiner. We usually just accept the duplication of having determiner PoS sections in an entry alongside those for adjective, noun, and/or pronoun, because, even today, not every basic grammar has 'determiner' as a word class. DCDuring (talk) 21:37, 31 March 2020 (UTC)

Do you think that the examples above make sense under any scheme? Yes, "less" in the "determiner" example possibly has a slightly more obvious uncountable implied object (e.g. "less money", or whatever it might be in the context), but, still, "less" in the "noun" example means, give or take, "less things", or "less stuff". Is this kind of difference enough? Mihia (talk) 22:08, 31 March 2020 (UTC)

I should have said that both look like fused-head determinative usage. We could make clear the duplication by using exactly the same usage examples for both PoSes. Perhaps a usage note could make the point as well. I sometimes answered word-class questions at Quora.com, but lately I wonder why people care so much or, rather, why they are taught to care so much. DCDuring (talk) 22:53, 31 March 2020 (UTC)

Well, I guess at Wiktionary we have to care, since it is the whole basis of our entries. Personally I am not keen on duplicating the same use across different PoS headings. Although in the past I think I may have argued against our classifying "fused-head determiners" as determiners, I may be coming round to the idea. But perhaps that is for another day. For now, I think I'll just delete the "intransitive determiner" example. Mihia (talk) 10:36, 1 April 2020 (UTC)

I was initially hostile to having determiner as a PoS header. Now I fully accept and am inclined remove some duplication of senses between determiner and other PoS headings. DCDuring (talk) 15:46, 1 April 2020 (UTC)

bare-arse minimum

Should this have an entry? It's a lazy absolute minimum (of work). bare-arse only has the literal buttock senses, and I can't think of any other noun than minimum that would use it this way. Note it's also referred to at bam. Equinox ◑ 17:34, 31 March 2020 (UTC)

There are one or two Google hits for "bare-ass nerve" and "bare-ass idiocy", where it seems to be essentially an intensifier, or maybe there is some overlap in people's minds with "barefaced"? My feeling is that other examples could probably be found, but I'm not sure whether they are exactly the same as "bare-arse minimum". Also, "bare-ass / arse / assed / arsed" may all exist? Mihia (talk) 17:48, 31 March 2020 (UTC)

Isn't this just bare minimum with the other word thrown in as an intensifier? Chuck Entz (talk) 03:20, 1 April 2020 (UTC)

Yes, we have another case like this sitting in RFD at the moment: Wiktionary:Requests for deletion/English § fine-ass-looking. PUC – 14:31, 1 April 2020 (UTC)

My reaction upon seeing the phrase was the same as Chuck's. I suppose the particular intensifier was chosen and hyphenated because "base-arse" is also a phrase, alongside "bare minimum", so it's a little bit of a blend. Whether this makes it sufficiently more entry-worthy than e.g. "bare goddamn minimum" to actually merit and entry, I don't know. - -sche (discuss) 19:27, 1 April 2020 (UTC)

less (2)

Determiner sense 1:

1. (now archaic except with numbers) comparative form of little: more little; smaller, lesser. [from 11th c.]
   • 1624, John Smith, Generall Historie, in Kupperman 1988, page 141:

     Those Rattels are somewhat like the chape of a Rapier, but lesse, which they take from the taile of a snake.

   • 1885, Edward James Reed, A Treatise on the Stability of Ships

     It is also easy to see that the straight line, representing the locus of centres of buoyancy for a rectangular section, must lie at a less inclination to the base (i.e., to the horizontal) than a line representing the locus of such centres for a parabolic section […]

I'm having difficulty understanding the "except with numbers" comment. Can anyone give an example of how this is used non-archaically with a number? Mihia (talk) 17:38, 31 March 2020 (UTC)

They mean something like "I have two less than you do" (more accurately fewer). Equinox ◑ 17:59, 31 March 2020 (UTC)

Is "less" a determiner in "two less"? Mihia (talk) 18:05, 31 March 2020 (UTC)

OK, possibly we can solve that conundrum by using the example "two less somethings", but then isn't it the same as determiner sense #3 "(sometimes proscribed) comparative form of few: more few: fewer; a smaller number of."? Mihia (talk)

less (3)

Permalink to referenced version

Can anyone see what the difference is supposed to be between adverb senses 1 and 2? I can't see any fundamental difference between "less diverse" on the one hand, and "less bad", "less disturbing" and "less fractious" on the other, which are the examples presently given. Mihia (talk) 19:17, 31 March 2020 (UTC)

I can't see the difference but perhaps someone was trying to express how "less X" doesn't always mean a smaller amount (e.g. a glass that is less empty has more in it)...? Equinox ◑ 19:33, 31 March 2020 (UTC)

We have 65 entries that have definitions that contain "extent or degree". I don't think that normal users find much value in two definitions distinguished only by the use of one or the other of those words. DCDuring (talk) 21:49, 31 March 2020 (UTC)

Could be, I guess. Personally I find it more confusing than helpful, so, as no one is supporting keeping the senses separate, I will merge them. Mihia (talk) 13:26, 1 April 2020 (UTC)

featuretype

Is the given definition correct? It looks as though it might have been drawn from the citation in a guesswork-y way. Equinox ◑ 19:32, 31 March 2020 (UTC)

The term feature type means “type of feature”, used in some context in which there are several features, which can be classified according to some typological system. Which kind of features and which types depends on the context. Not surprisingly, there are many contexts in which the term is used, such as cartography, pattern recognition, linguistics, computer science, and so on and so forth. In sequencing RNA, including, miRNA, the term “feature” is short for “sequence feature”, that is, a feature of an RSA sequence, which can be anything detectable by laboratory methods that some sequences have and others don’t. The spelling “feature type” is the normal one. In the cited scientific article, the authors give a nonce definition of their use of the term featuretype in their article. The first time it is used (which is where it is defined) they place it between quotation marks, which alerts the reader to the fact that this is a newly introduced term. Regardless of the correctness of the definition here (although it is indeed incorrect), unless other authors pick up this use (which seems unlikely since it has a purely ancillary role to explaining the details of the procedure followed in the analyses), it is IMO not entry-worthy.  --Lambiam 11:45, 1 April 2020 (UTC)

We don't have any provision for rejecting an English word spelled solid on the grounds that its meaning is readily derived from the morphemes that make it up. DCDuring (talk) 15:40, 1 April 2020 (UTC)

This is an issue that we need to think about. I don't know specifically about "featuretype", but there is the general problem of citable "words" written by people who cannot tell the difference between writing a variable name in computer code and a phrase in ordinary English, and also the issue of solid words with a suffix such as "like", which can be more-or-less arbitrarily applied, and where, in my opinion, it is tedious and unnecessary to have entries for every possible instance. Mihia (talk) 23:15, 1 April 2020 (UTC)

Okay, definition changed. Equinox ◑ 20:26, 1 April 2020 (UTC)