Wiktionary - Recent changes [en]: Wiktionary:Tea room

Wiktionary - Recent changes [en] Track the most recent changes to the wiki in this feed. // via fulltextrssfeed.com

Wiktionary:Tea room Mar 30th 2012, 19:27 Revision as of 10:14, 30 March 2012 (edit) Prosfilaes (Talk | contribs) Latest revision as of 19:27, 30 March 2012 (edit) (undo) Line 1,798: Line 1,798:   :Attempted. Still seems a little forced, but it's a start.[[User:Chuck Entz|Chuck Entz]] ([[User talk:Chuck Entz|talk]]) 08:14, 30 March 2012 (UTC)   :Attempted. Still seems a little forced, but it's a start.[[User:Chuck Entz|Chuck Entz]] ([[User talk:Chuck Entz|talk]]) 08:14, 30 March 2012 (UTC)   :: My problem with "belonging to a single ethnicity or nationality" is with African-American or as one cite puts it "Negro-Americanism", which is no more multiple ethnicity or nationality then white American.--[[User:Prosfilaes|Prosfilaes]] ([[User talk:Prosfilaes|talk]]) 10:14, 30 March 2012 (UTC)   :: My problem with "belonging to a single ethnicity or nationality" is with African-American or as one cite puts it "Negro-Americanism", which is no more multiple ethnicity or nationality then white American.--[[User:Prosfilaes|Prosfilaes]] ([[User talk:Prosfilaes|talk]]) 10:14, 30 March 2012 (UTC)   +   + "Not [[hyphenated#Adjective]]."&nbsp;''—[[User:Mzajac |Michael]]&nbsp;[[User talk:Mzajac |Z.]]&nbsp;<small>2012-03-30&nbsp;19:27&nbsp;z</small>'' Latest revision as of 19:27, 30 March 2012 Wiktionary > Discussion rooms > Tea room WT:TR redirects here. For Translation requests, see Wiktionary:Translation requests. For guidelines on translations, see Wiktionary:Translations Wiktionary discussion rooms (edit) see also: requests Information desk comment | history Newcomers' questions, minor problems, specific requests for information or assistance. Tea room comment | history | archives Questions and discussions about specific words. Etymology scriptorium history Questions and discussions about etymology- the historical development of words. Beer parlour comment | history | archives General policy discussions and proposals, requests for permissions and major announcements. Grease pit comment | history | archives Technical questions, requests and discussions. All Wiktionary: namespace discussions 1 2 3 4 5 - All discussion pages 1 2 3 4 5 A place to ask for help on finding quotations, etymologies, or other information about particular words. The Tea Room is named to accompany the Beer parlour. For questions about the technical operation of Wiktionary use the Beer parlour. For questions about specific content, you're in the right place. Archives Wiktionary:Tea room/Archive 2003 Wiktionary:Tea room/Archive 2004 Wiktionary:Tea room/Archive 2005 Wiktionary:Tea room/Archive 2006 Wiktionary:Tea room/Archive 2007 Wiktionary:Tea room/Archive 2008 Wiktionary:Tea room/Archive 2009 Wiktionary:Tea room/Archive 2010 Wiktionary:Tea room/Archive 2011 Please do not edit section titles as this breaks links on talk pages and in other discussion fora. Oldest tagged RFTs lock achromatic address escape inversion web pack model douse maze basionym fasces Dickensian genie paradox dime a dozen particular ooze narc pull a Homer contraceptive windlass quote unquote downgrade Fred all-a-mort misd -burger bad apple epidemiology sex on a stick answer the call of nature real McCoy loth fascinum discobolus rub it in all very well reddish dryth miscarriage take its toll Coupe du Monde V-1 more than one can shake a stick at exceptio res judicata one and one's SRU professional wrestling Fates for all hot with to the meandering stoutness never-never land uneatable haricot guesstimation polar cone Chernobyl pantograph say grace what do I know big box weiner shapen isochrony mind you facteur attorney-in-fact weigh in whatsay graphics card spreadeagle not a sausage gossypiboma abiogenic all right, my lover corporomental aggravated assault hiding to nothing Nihilarian cDNA score a brace dotted decimal panacherie hybrid hot tub lateral area nothing to see yif open sunshine xisto winge purgatoric figmo brass neck man of parts euclidianness feed a cold, starve a fever as much as possible box and whiskers plot The Enlightened One wipe the floor going on lay at the feet of hollow victory price point drug store 23 Skidoo Street Inessa offski Haruspices the wheels fell off on one's tod dice cleanser broil chance scrape for put one's trousers on one leg at a time good house pin snitch gull yell silently ope potted show a clean pair of heels amigo valve oil vara include me out unparliamentary language aide elision startling snip hyperhygienist okama impassionate cognate see mui li hing mui cocciu meatatarian wist stand pat red face test baptismal name meatgrinder sit on the fence blame walkabout open redline nasho when hit wicket commoner partyer Turkish bath precedent first-person singular automobile équilibrisme it's all Greek to me gyrophare szukać wiatru w polu drawing dead case quarter invert honorary heterophobia programing instantly coffee something vive la différence about time corn on the cob Chantilly/Tiffany hazard a/k/a shanty seal beeline nut excelsis make love, not war toss around fall illegal alien morning star whole hog measles sarcoptic mange whats cork Is that "would arush me" at 1:08 in this clip?​—msh210℠ (talk) 00:03, 31 October 2011 (UTC) No, it's "were to rush me" in a non-rhotic accent but with intervocalic alveolar flapping. So it's [wɜɾəˈɹʌʃmi], not [wʊɾəˈɹʌʃmi]; admittedly the acoustic difference between them is minute. —Angr 18:52, 2 November 2011 (UTC) Ah! Thanks.​—msh210℠ (talk) 19:51, 2 November 2011 (UTC) It should be noted that this is both countable and uncountable: one should have an understanding of part of speech (uncountable); the part of speech of this word is "noun" (countable). How to fix the template to reflect this? ---> Tooironic 00:29, 31 October 2011 (UTC) See diff.​—msh210℠ (talk) 05:59, 31 October 2011 (UTC) I don't think that is uncountable. DCDuring TALK 23:03, 31 October 2011 (UTC) Agree. Would like to see a phrase like "understanding of part of speech" in a real citation. Equinox ◑ 23:04, 31 October 2011 (UTC) [1] ("Lexicographers acknowledge the importance of part of speech by […] ") is one. But the complete sentence is "Lexicographers acknowledge the importance of part of speech by following the principle substitutability." which sounds as though the author is using invisible quotation marks to make nouns into proper nouns ("by following the principle 'substitutability'") ,in which case he may well have meant also "Lexicographers acknowledge the importance of 'part of speech'" along the same lines. So it's not a great citation. There are probably others (I haven't looked much), but it certainly seems rare. I was too hasty in adding a claim of 'uncountable' to the entry, and we should revert, I think, it.​—msh210℠ (talk) 16:05, 1 November 2011 (UTC) These entries need to be harmonised - one should be a soft redirect to the other, and all the translations and countable/uncountable information should be keep in only one of the entries. Who can help? I'm out of time right now. ---> Tooironic 00:31, 31 October 2011 (UTC) We really need a way to redirect both to a common entry. No user wants to be redirected to an incorrect spelling for their variety of English. Dbfirs 22:56, 31 October 2011 (UTC) I agree. This should be like what Wikipedia does with Jurassic Park (film) vs. Jurassic Park (movie). There may be all kinds of dialects and preferences (we tend to think about UK, US, maybe AU and CA, probably not Trinidad or Jamaican or Irish English) but ideally they should not see an "alternative spelling of". I tend to feel that doing this properly is a low priority and far from where we are now. Equinox ◑ 23:01, 31 October 2011 (UTC) I wondered about the possibilities for doing something like this for Japanese as well, where a single word might have several possible renderings that should all have the same page content. The closest way I could think of was to have a common page that would be transcluded into all of the others. The problem I ran into was where to locate that common page. -- Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 15:32, 2 November 2011 (UTC) We could call the entry behavior/behaviour? Or behavio(u)r? —CodeCat 15:40, 2 November 2011 (UTC) I like behavio(u)r myself (it's shorter and leaves out the potentially political question of which spelling comes first). -- Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 17:53, 2 November 2011 (UTC) The parentheses are good also because they don't introduce the possibility of confusion with a subpage. But the common page should be in template space, i.e. Template:behavio(u)r so it's clear that we aren't talking about an individual word spelled behavio(u)r. —Angr 18:48, 2 November 2011 (UTC) There was a problem with a combined entry at colour/color and centre/center because of other languages, so would the template solution work there for an English section as part of the main entry? I've adjusted Widsith's removal of the definitions from the British and Commonwealth spelling of centre because "Alternative" is misleading. I understand the desire for a single entry, but the spelling with "u" has had a full entry in Wiktionary for seven years and I hate to see it go. The template would avoid an argument, perhaps? Dbfirs 19:46, 3 November 2011 (UTC) What about if we create colo(u)r, and transclude it on both color and colour? —CodeCat 20:03, 3 November 2011 (UTC) I think that behavio(u)r, parentheses and all, actually meets the CFI! —RuakhTALK 19:51, 3 November 2011 (UTC) Update: I've now created an entry for behavio(u)r. —RuakhTALK 20:34, 3 November 2011 (UTC) Yes, fair entry, but it doesn't solve our problem about behavior/behaviour. I'm still not happy with the deletion of the full entry at centre. Dbfirs 10:46, 4 November 2011 (UTC) I wasn't trying to solve any problem about behavior/behaviour, I was trying to reinforce Angr (talk • contribs)'s point that "the common page should be in template space, i.e. Template:behavio(u)r so it's clear that we aren't talking about an individual word spelled behavio(u)r". CodeCat (talk • contribs) seems to be ignoring that point, however. —RuakhTALK 17:59, 4 November 2011 (UTC) Above I spoke in favo(u)r of parentheses rather than a slash, but it occurs to me that some BE/AE spelling differences can't be easily captured with parentheses, such as center/centre or organise/organize (which isn't strictly a BE/AE difference since z also occurs in BE). So maybe Template:center/centre and Template:organise/organize are the way to go. (The words can be arranged in alphabetical order to avoid favo(u)ring one spelling or the other.) As for the current state of [[centre]], I not only dislike that it's been stripped of its content, but also the fact that its context label says (England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, Canada, Australia, New Zealand), listing all the countries of the UK separately while omitting the Republic of Ireland, South Africa, and all other countries of the world (India, Pakistan, Kenya, Nigeria, Belize, Jamaica, etc.) where Commonwealth spellings may be encountered. And listing all of them would mean a great long list of countries the reader has to scan over before getting to the meat of the definition - particularly frustrating when that meat contains no meat at all but merely an indication that one has to look up the American spelling. —Angr 11:21, 4 November 2011 (UTC) Yes, I didn't like the partial list of countries, but I hoped that it was going to disappear soon. The OED just uses a comma (e.g. "center, centre"). I don't know much about template space, so don't want to upset experts by experimenting, but I can't see any reason why some such template containing the definitions couldn't be inserted into the separate entries at center and centre. For pairs such as organise/organize, our existing "alternative spelling of" template is fine because the spelling with the "s" is still just an alternative in Britain (though I can see it gradually taking over from the older spelling.) Dbfirs 18:36, 4 November 2011 (UTC) There is nothing special about template namespace, it is just more pages. The only thing different about it is that when a page is transcluded the wiki engine assumes that the template namespace is meant if no namespace is specified. In short, you are unlikely to break anything by creating these pages. SpinningSpark 12:36, 6 November 2011 (UTC) Does this really mean "The rich can afford more immoral behavior than the poor"? I thought it meant "The rich are unlikely to enter Heaven", probably because "The rich are more likely to be immoral". That may be because "The rich can (monetarily) afford more immoral behavior" — but our definition implies that their ability to (monetarily) afford immoral behavior is the point of the saying, whereas I think the point is that they're not likely to (live in such a way that they) make it to heaven. They certainly cannot spiritually afford immoral behavior, from the text's point of view (it will damn them, as it will anyone else). - -sche (discuss) 05:04, 31 October 2011 (UTC) Agreed, that is not the meaning as I understood it. Actually it would be very easy for a rich man to get a camel through the eye of a needle. All one needs is a very large liquidiser and a funnel. SpinningSpark 05:51, 31 October 2011 (UTC) The metaphor, as I know it, is that you have to take off all your possessions from your camel to make it go through a small gate in Jerusalem named "eye of a needle". And the interpretation is that a rich man must abandon his wealth when he dies; the possessions can't go to the other side with him. --Daniel 10:16, 31 October 2011 (UTC) Hey Daniel take a look at this: http://www.biblicalhebrew.com/nt/camelneedle.htm . I agree with the "must abandon wealth" interpretation though. Ungoliant MMDCCLXIV 13:24, 31 October 2011 (UTC) From what I heard on the TV show QI, the small gate in Jerusalem story is nonsense; supposedly what Jesus meant was the literal meaning of the words. Mglovesfun (talk) 13:54, 31 October 2011 (UTC) I wouldn't trust QI as a source. Anyway, there's some debate among actual experts; some think that it's actually supposed to mean that it's easier for a rope to go through the eye of a needle (the Aramaic word for camel having been used also to refer to a camel's-hair rope), while others point to similar metaphors elsewhere, using different animals, to suggest that it's quite literal. But regardless of what it meant to its author, the main question is what it means to English-speakers today. The rest is etymology. —RuakhTALK 14:29, 31 October 2011 (UTC) I would think it means that to get to heaven one must renounce false gods (and love only God), and rich men would have a hard time renouncing Mammon (loving money too greatly, and having done so all their lives). — Pingkudimmi 16:17, 31 October 2011 (UTC) (collective) The people living within a political or geographical boundary The population of New Jersey will not stand for this! The people living in a single place. The population of some small towns is numbered in under four digits. Am I missing something, or are those identical?​—msh210℠ (talk) 20:16, 1 November 2011 (UTC) The sense 2 probably means the number of the population in a particular area, not the people themselves. You can replace population with people in the first example above, but you can't in the following sentence: The population of the US is bigger than that of Japan. — TAKASUGI Shinji (talk) 00:00, 2 November 2011 (UTC) (蛇足 / tangent): Although the meaning changes, you *can* still say the following, what with the state of public health in the US.  ;-) The people of the US are bigger than those of Japan. Yes of course, and your example clearly shows the difference of the singular and plural population. — TAKASUGI Shinji (talk) 00:13, 2 November 2011 (UTC) So you're saying #2 above is the same as 4. A count of the number of residents within a political or geographical boundary such as a town, a nation or the world The town's population is only 243. then, right?​—msh210℠ (talk) 00:16, 2 November 2011 (UTC) Yes, I think they are the same. Perhaps someone added the sense 4 because the definition of the sense 2 was not clear. — TAKASUGI Shinji (talk) 01:17, 2 November 2011 (UTC) I have deleted the original sense 2 and moved the original sense 4 there. — TAKASUGI Shinji (talk) 02:03, 9 November 2011 (UTC) Why was this done outside of process? This is the kind of thing RfD is for. DCDuring TALK 03:38, 9 November 2011 (UTC) I thought it was okay because they were the same and there was no objection. If it needed a further discussion, revert my edit. — TAKASUGI Shinji (talk) 03:55, 9 November 2011 (UTC) I think your edit was fine. It's O.K. to start an RFD discussion about merging redundant senses, but I don't think it's essential. —RuakhTALK 18:03, 10 November 2011 (UTC) "A final examination; a test or examination given at the end of a term or class; the test that concludes a class." Is this word use like this in American English only? In Australia we rarely use it. ---> Tooironic 03:11, 2 November 2011 (UTC) Dunno. But in case you're doubting its existence altogether, let me assure you it's common in American English.​—msh210℠ (talk) 05:55, 2 November 2011 (UTC) In American English, it's a standard term for that test. But more commonly, final exam. Often used in the plural, because during final-exams week, there are finals in virtually every class. —Stephen (Talk) 11:07, 3 November 2011 (UTC) Rare in British English except for degree-level "finals". Dbfirs 11:45, 3 November 2011 (UTC) I would venture that "final" is way more common in spoken American English than "final exam". DCDuring TALK 11:58, 3 November 2011 (UTC) I'll go in with you on that venture. :-)   —RuakhTALK 20:36, 3 November 2011 (UTC) In that case I'm adding a US context tag. ---> Tooironic 23:41, 3 November 2011 (UTC) [edit] Correct word please Hello. I am French speaking ; so I want to known what is correct : "free entry", "free entrance" or "free access" for the "entry" without payment to an exhibition or a museum. Thank you for yours anwers. --Égoïté 10:07, 3 November 2011 (UTC) "Free admission." —Stephen (Talk) 11:04, 3 November 2011 (UTC) Thank you very much ! --Égoïté 11:30, 3 November 2011 (UTC) I'd note that "free entry" and "free entrance" are okay, if not idiomatic. "Free access" would be access without limitation; e.g. "after you pay, you will have free access to the museum."--Prosfilaes 17:05, 3 November 2011 (UTC) Please see Talk:numen. This contributor is interested in expanding our English definition at numen to include "god or goddess" rather than just "god". For my part I'm not familiar with this word and, while I would have thought that "god" includes both male and female deities, I suppose it's arguable. Thoughts? Equinox ◑ 21:06, 3 November 2011 (UTC) I agree with BabeMN (talk • contribs): if numen is known to have been used in reference to goddesses, then I would definitely write "god or goddess". Bare "god" is sometimes gender-neutral, but it's sometimes specifically male (hence google books:"god or goddess", "gods and goddesses"), so we should disambiguate. —RuakhTALK 00:23, 6 November 2011 (UTC) Is it more common to say "in modern society" or "in the modern society"? My feeling - and it's backed up by Google Books - is the former sounds more natural and is much more common. A usage note to this effect would be very useful as it is totally unintuitive to non-native-speakers. It is also especially confusing considering that most other "big-concept" nouns like "government", "environment", "Internet", "world", "press", "workforce", "media", etc., almost always use the definite article (or occasionally the plural form). Who is with me? ---> Tooironic 23:39, 3 November 2011 (UTC) One would say "in the modern society" only when contrasting with an older society, but "in modern government" is also used in the same way as "in modern society" when the nouns are used in an abstract way. Perhaps the ideas of society and government allow greater abstraction than the other nouns. Environment and workforce can also take an indefinite article, but we usually assume that we have only one Internet, world, press and media. I'm struggling to define rules about which of the three options to use in which contexts. Dbfirs 10:38, 4 November 2011 (UTC) [edit] I "just" know What sense of just is being used in "I just know", for example in "I can tell, I just know that it's going down tonight"? Fugyoo 19:03, 4 November 2011 (UTC) "Only, simply, merely"? I just know; I haven't learned or proven it. Equinox ◑ 19:04, 4 November 2011 (UTC) Seems to be {{non-gloss definition|An emphatic.}}, a sense we don't yet have.​—msh210℠ (talk) 16:01, 6 November 2011 (UTC) I agree with Equinox; it's not an emphatic. It's saying that I know this despite a lack of information to make that claim.--Prosfilaes 20:35, 7 November 2011 (UTC) The Spanish and Portuguese words have different etymologies, but they have the same meaning so that seems a bit strange. Which one is it? —CodeCat 23:47, 5 November 2011 (UTC) http://liveweb.archive.org/http://www.etimo.it/?term=lindo&find=Cerca mentions limpidus (and many others), but not legitimus. I think it's much more likely to have come from limpidus anyway. We should find who added the etymology in Spanish and ask him where he got that. Ungoliant MMDCCLXIV 14:13, 6 November 2011 (UTC) It was Strabismus (talk • contribs).​—msh210℠ (talk) 15:59, 6 November 2011 (UTC) The legitimus etymology is from DRAE.Matthias Buchmeier 10:30, 2 February 2012 (UTC) Like, grammatically, it is a word composed of 2 words, where both of the words mean the same thing, and the word composed of both of the words also means the same thing. What's the grammatical name for this? Are there other example of it? motor car is one, I guess. --Rockpilot 23:08, 6 November 2011 (UTC) And pussy cat and kitty cat. I hope they're not just called reduplications, maybe called extreme reduplications instead, or even better doubling reduplications ('coz then, like, the term doubling reduplication is also a doubling reduplication, which leads to awesomeness in the form of autologicality). --Rockpilot 00:34, 7 November 2011 (UTC) Reduplication is usually at the level of sounds, AFAICT. Rhetoricians might call these examples of parelcon, synonymia, or perissologia. See Silva Rhetoricae. DCDuring TALK 02:07, 7 November 2011 (UTC) Those names suck. I prefer doubling reduplication, or bunny-rabbit word --Rockpilot 09:40, 7 November 2011 (UTC) Not "motor car" since this is just a car(t) with a motor. After 700 years of regular use, "car" came to be used as an abbreviation for the motorised variety, but not exclusively. Dbfirs 09:37, 7 November 2011 (UTC) motor car is actually a bunny-rabbit word, as motor and car both mean motor car. --Rockpilot 09:40, 7 November 2011 (UTC) Yes, but only because both "motor" and "car" are now used as abbreviations for the original correct term "motor car". Not all cars are designed to have motors, and not all motors will fit in a car. This is not the same as the duplication of words for children in your other examples. Dbfirs 10:11, 7 November 2011 (UTC) I would call bunny rabbit a tautological noun used by children. —Stephen (Talk) 22:09, 7 November 2011 (UTC) Other examples would include oak tree. These are very common in Mandarin, helping to reduce ambiguity. Fugyoo 21:20, 8 November 2011 (UTC) Yet, tree does not necessarily mean oak, and oak on its own is ambiguous -- are we talking about the tree? the wood? the color? Context can make this clear, but sometimes an additional word is needed. Meanwhile, a bunny is, in most respects, the same thing as a rabbit, with the main differences having to do with the age appropriateness of word choice and similar social connotations. -- Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 22:40, 8 November 2011 (UTC) "Avon" means 'river' in Celtic, so the popular "Avon river" means "river river".[2] Does that make "Avon river" a "bunny-rabbit word"? How about "hollow pipe" or "girly girl" or "manly-man" or "rifled rifle" or "buttery smooth"? --DavidCary 03:07, 10 November 2011 (UTC) FWIW, a pipe can be not hollow, such as when filled with something, be it water or dirt or what have you. Meanwhile, "girly girl" and "manly man" seem to be emphatics more than the kind of doubling seen in bunny rabbit. "Rifled rifle" strikes me as redundant -- a rifle is by its very definition rifled; if it looks like a rifle but the barrel isn't rifled, it's not a rifle, it's a musket. "Buttery smooth" is a bit different, and different again from bunny rabbit, for while butter is certainly smooth provided it's not frozen, smooth on its own does not necessarily call forth connotations of butter. "Avon river" is the closest analog, but for the problem of different languages, and the simple fact that most English speakers don't know that "avon" means "river". By contrast, English speakers will recognize bunny and rabbit as being essentially the same thing. (My favorite example of this kind of cross-language redundancy was a three-way of sorts, on a sign in Tokyo labeling a waterway as the Shin Sen Gawa River. In kanji, it was the 新川河, which is already redundant, using the Chinese-derived reading "sen" for 川, which means "river" but is used here as a proper noun, and 河, which means river, but is used here as the placename label. So then in English it's the New River River River. Joy!) -- Cheers, Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 07:23, 10 November 2011 (UTC) The obvious American English example, which I'd forgotten, is pizza pie. DCDuring TALK 15:58, 10 November 2011 (UTC) But pizza pie isn't tautological any more than oak tree is; a pizza is a kind of pie, and not all pies are pizzas. —Angr 17:00, 10 November 2011 (UTC) But all pizzas are pizza pies. And, for many (most?) speakers, not all rabbits are bunny rabbits, only young ones. DCDuring TALK 18:57, 10 November 2011 (UTC) You think? I don't feel any semantic difference between bunny, rabbit, and bunny rabbit at all. Young ones are called kits or kittens. —Angr 19:34, 10 November 2011 (UTC) Or, for those of us who didn't know the technical term, they're baby bunnies or baby rabbits.  :) -- Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 21:42, 10 November 2011 (UTC) I would be interesting to see what the actual meaning-in-use of "bunny rabbit" is. It might change the answer to the original question. Similarly, it would be interesting to see how common terms like "kit" or "kitten" are in reference to rabbits. In a typical corpus it would probably depend on the inclusion of a single journal article that used the term. DCDuring TALK 00:19, 11 November 2011 (UTC) On the frequency of the word kit and kitten in this sense, see Rabbits at bgc. DCDuring TALK 00:33, 11 November 2011 (UTC) Growing up, I heard countable pizza refer to a slice. Fwiw.​—msh210℠ (talk) 00:38, 11 November 2011 (UTC) Apparently the ambiguity of the term kit/kitten in this sense is such that there is some scholarly usage of kit rabbit/kitten rabbit synonymously with bunny rabbit ("young rabbit"). DCDuring TALK 00:46, 11 November 2011 (UTC) Again, what is the evidence that bunny rabbit means specifically "young rabbit" rather than "rabbit" (of any age)? That's not what our definition says, it's not what my native-speaker intuition says, it's not what Oxford says. It may have connotations of cuteness, but rabbits (unlike many other animals) remain cute even when fully grown. —Angr 16:51, 11 November 2011 (UTC) It's not hard to find cites where "bunny" appears to be contrasted with "adult (rabbit)"; for example, see here (and scroll to the next page); google books:"bunnies and adult rabbits" (just two distinct cites, but still); this web-page (N.B. not durably archived); and some of the hits at google books:"bunnies and rabbits". Obviously there are speakers for whom "bunny" means "rabbit", but there are apparently (and attestably) speakers who use it to mean "young rabbit". —RuakhTALK 20:16, 14 November 2011 (UTC) One of the reasons I like Wiktionary: A discussion about bunny rabbits can end up in a discussion about pizzas. And all the while it remains a serious thread. --Rockpilot 15:13, 11 November 2011 (UTC) Erm, what are your favourite toppings? I like Hawaiian personally. --Rockpilot 15:13, 11 November 2011 (UTC) Fresh powdered West African black rhino horn, but it's getting hard to find. DCDuring TALK 18:22, 11 November 2011 (UTC) Bunny rabbit. (kidding!) --Robert.Baruch 00:04, 25 November 2011 (UTC) Random question: are these words homophones? ---> Tooironic 02:15, 13 November 2011 (UTC) To me, the stress is on the first syllable for the first, and the second syllable for the second. SemperBlotto 08:24, 13 November 2011 (UTC) Don't forget peaking and peeking. --Mglovesfun (talk) 16:20, 14 November 2011 (UTC) I'd say piquing, peaking and peeking are homophones; Peking has the stress on the second syllable. Any of the first three words together with Peking is a good example of a purely stress-based minimal pair in English. (Those aren't easy to find because of the English tendency to reduce unstressed vowels to schwa.) —Angr 16:29, 14 November 2011 (UTC) I've more often heard the three verb forms pronounced as IPA: /ˈpiːkɪŋ/, and Peking pronounced more as IPA: /peːˈkɪŋ/ -- with the difference not just in the stress, but also in the first vowel sound. -- Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 21:46, 14 November 2011 (UTC) Hi everybody. I just created fr:phoquesse, and I was wondering if sealess could be used to name a female seal (pinniped), like lioness for the lion. Thanks for your help. --ArséniureDeGallium 16:10, 14 November 2011 (UTC) I don't think so; I've never heard and can't find any examples of it. Female seals, if not simply called "female seals", are called "cows" (or "seal cows" or "cow seals" if necessary for disambiguation). —Angr 16:18, 14 November 2011 (UTC) This a pity I can't say a sealess sealess (a female seal in a zoo? :D). Thanks very much for your answer. --ArséniureDeGallium 19:24, 14 November 2011 (UTC) Following a discussion elsewhere, I've realised that "striked" is seemingly becoming more common, but only in the context of industrial relations. I don't have time now to alter then entry and I don't know how it should be labeled. I wouldn't say it's "non-standard" but it's not the most common. Anyway, some cites: [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11]. Also when looking for those, I found a few uses of "striked" as an adjective describing a type of measure or maybe the term is "striked measure", [12] gives a definition. It seems to be related to wheat and possibly other similar crops only. Thryduulf (talk) 18:34, 17 November 2011 (UTC) Look at the pronunciation of phew (/ɧu˥˩/). Does this English term really have tone and a sound which exists only in Swedish? Ungoliant MMDCCLXIV 00:49, 20 November 2011 (UTC) It's pronounced identically with few. Equinox ◑ 00:51, 20 November 2011 (UTC) Isn't it often pronounced with a bilabial sound? —CodeCat 01:24, 20 November 2011 (UTC) Not in my idiolect, it's not. phew is much more aspirated then few.--Prosfilaes 12:15, 22 November 2011 (UTC) Likewise in mine, where phew is pronounced somewhere between few and shoe, and does have a tone drop. There are a small number of English interjective sounds that have qualities not normally associated with English. This can include unusual IPA characters not present in other words and tonal information. See ugh for another example, where the pronunciation is that given by the Cambridge Pronouncing Dictionary, and with which I agree based on my own idiolect. --EncycloPetey 16:21, 28 January 2012 (UTC) I just noticed this when looking at recent changes and came here to say it might be the bilabial sound ɸ. So, um, hmm. Weigh that as you will.--Prosfilaes 23:28, 20 February 2012 (UTC) Right, I think phew has a bilabial sound; in any case, it's different from whew. - -sche (discuss) 23:38, 20 February 2012 (UTC) Shouldn't our pronunciations represent the English word as it would be read aloud, or spoken in neutral English, rather than the natural noise that it imitates or names, or some specific imitative expression? Consider bang, budda budda, burp, zoom, bark, moo, woohoo. —Michael Z. 2012-01-28 17:57 z Yes, but "phew" is usually pronounced slightly more expressively than few, even by people who are trying to read in a boring and unexpressive way. Dbfirs 18:36, 20 February 2012 (UTC) We should represent both the expression (noise) and the pronunciation of the word. - -sche (discuss) 23:38, 20 February 2012 (UTC) Abbr for Persian. Should this not be at Pers? Equinox ◑ 15:44, 20 November 2011 (UTC) Probably Pers. in fact, like Ger. and so on. --Mglovesfun (talk) 14:52, 21 November 2011 (UTC) [edit] Adding Latin 3rd conjugation template for verbs with no perfect? Hi all! I stumbled across the Latin word adlubesco / allubesco, which seems to have no perfect forms (see for example here). There is a template for 3rd conjugation verbs with only one part, and for 3rd conjugation verbs with 3 parts, but none for those with 2 parts. Is it truly the case that adlubesco has no perfect? I couldn't find any in my random search. Is there any objection to my creating the 3rd-noperf template? Thanks! --Robert.Baruch 02:28, 24 November 2011 (UTC) The Latin inchoative verbs (ensing in -esco) that I've come across have no infinitive form, which is why albesco and similar verbs use the "no234" template. Have you found an inifinitive form for adlubesco? I didn't spot it in the link you provided, though I might have just missed it. --EncycloPetey 05:52, 24 November 2011 (UTC) Well, the infinitive is given in L&S and Cassell's. It's also mainly in various post-Gutenberg works, e.g. here (1738) and here (1639). There's also the imperfect subjunctive found in Metamorphoses, so there must be an infinitive form to conjugate, right? And I guess I can add allibesco to the alternate forms :( --Robert.Baruch 15:06, 24 November 2011 (UTC) The L3 header says Noun, but the definition suggests this is an adjective. Which is true? -- Liliana • 20:17, 24 November 2011 (UTC) I'd definitely call it a noun. It is often used as a predicate with the meaning given. It could be defined as "Someone or something that is ....". Also sometimes it is used to mean something like "intensely good or successful" of a performance, especially a competitive one. DCDuring TALK 20:36, 24 November 2011 (UTC) "All of the countries of the world other than those in Asia taken as a whole." Urgh. That is the worst definition I have ever heard. It excludes countries like Israel, but includes all of Africa which many people do not perceive as "western". -- Liliana • 21:33, 24 November 2011 (UTC) Jack Nicholson once said about The Terror that it was the only movie he ever acted in that didn't have a plot. When told, director Roger Corman replied that I'm sure it's not the only movie he's acted in without a plot. Weak humor aside, it didn't impress me either. My real question is whether it's varied over time. I went ahead and added an obsolete sense of the Americas, but I'm wondering both in age of book and subject of book. Pre-Western discovery Australia is surely not part of the Western World, and I suspect that Cold War authors were likely to exclude Eastern Europe and modern authors possibly include Russia to the sea (or certainly at least the entire EU.)--Prosfilaes 22:08, 24 November 2011 (UTC) To cat around, meaning to seek out sexual companionship. Being a wiktionary n00b, would this be eligible for its own entry? Or does it go under cat? --Robert.Baruch 00:42, 25 November 2011 (UTC) I've added an entry. Equinox ◑ 15:21, 25 November 2011 (UTC) I found the word bon viveur but we don't have it as a headword but it is used in a definition. Is it the same as bon vivant? viveur says in means someone who lives well. The good life? (Is this uncommon? I found the word in the Wikipedia. Should it be changed?). RJFJR 01:15, 25 November 2011 (UTC) Hi. In the sense of "stir fry" as a compound noun, "stir fries" is listed as the only plural form. I came here after seeing an article that used the form "stir frys." This is a bit over my head, but between a google search, by comparison to the "still life" entry, and after reading this article, it seems likely that "stir frys" is probably acceptable. Cheers. Haus 01:23, 25 November 2011 (UTC) I'd create it, and then see what happens Purplebackpack89 (Notes Taken) (Locker) 01:26, 25 November 2011 (UTC) Do you also eat "French frys" on your side of the pond? Dbfirs 14:48, 25 November 2011 (UTC) Well, do you have gang shootouts called "drivebies"? Equinox ◑ 14:53, 25 November 2011 (UTC) Good point! Even though "driveby" is often written as a single word, "drivebies" is not attestable (there is just one "drive-bies" in print on bgc). I think we can cite both "stir frys" and "French frys" to satisfy CFI for Wiktionary, though not for some more conservative dictionaries who ignore deviant authors. We ought to indicate, for our users, which plural is more common. Dbfirs 15:12, 25 November 2011 (UTC) Where the thing can be called a fry (like a French fry: "I dropped a fry on the floor") I think it's ungrammatical. Stir-fry, driveby, passer-by etc. seem like different cases. Equinox ◑ 15:47, 26 November 2011 (UTC) Indeed. When by is actually from the preposition by, it shouldn't ever turn into bies. -- Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 03:09, 27 November 2011 (UTC) Agreed, but it probably will within the next fifty years. "Passerbies" already has over 32,000 (mistaken?) hits in Google, including in some dictionaries. Dbfirs 15:02, 2 December 2011 (UTC) Should we merge the senses, since #3 comprehends both #1 and #2? Equinox ◑ 21:57, 25 November 2011 (UTC) I don't see any value keeping senses #1 and #2 separate from #3. There is some discussion of the term computer language in the last paragraph of w:Programming_language#Definitions suggesting that it has distinct senses, but these do not correspond to our current #1 and #2. All the examples in our current #3 are languages that a computer can typically read and act on, but computer language is sometimes used more broadly - see e.g. w:Template:Computer language. I think #3 should also mention specification languages, or something similar. --Avenue 21:50, 28 November 2011 (UTC) I'd think the third one is legitimate in a more informal sense. For the first senses I would prefer programming or machine language to this term. Other than loosely, the only other way I'd employ it is to refer to messaging protocol. Actual use, however, tells a different story. "A computer language...allows you to specify a series of commands or operations." "Like any other computer language, [C] is used for writing programs or sets of instructions." DAVilla 03:42, 12 December 2011 (UTC) Wrong suffix: -tor = -or, the letter before being part of the radical of the suffixed noun/verb. --Diligent 14:23, 26 November 2011 (UTC) Not in the case of arator — this can be interpreted as ara- + -tor (from aro, arare). --MaEr 15:42, 26 November 2011 (UTC) I thought such nouns arose from the third-person singular? In such a case, arator would be arat + -or, and amator would be amat + -or. The cantor example on the -tor page could be analyzed as canit + -or, with the unstressed interstitial -i- disappearing, much as it did in the evolution of magister into the varieties present in modern European languages. Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 03:27, 27 November 2011 (UTC) From a non-historic point of view, one can re-interprete existing formations in this way. I mean: if speakers of Latin believe that the suffix is -or instead of -tor they will use -or as a suffix. Reanalysing suffixes happens often, not only in Latin. From a historic point of view, however, there is a suffix -tor. It is inherited from Proto-Indo-European and is also found in Ancient Greek. The vowel between t and r has ablaut, so the suffix may appear in Ancient Greek dotēr (from dh₃-tér) and in Ancient Greek dōtōr (from déh₃-tor). The zero-grade appears in -tro (= -tr-o), as in Latin aratrum (<ara-tr-o-m). According to Jean Haudry, there is an old phonetic variant -tel which appears in Slavic -tel (Russian учитель etc.) --MaEr 09:12, 27 November 2011 (UTC) Well, you'd need to convince the well-respected scholars who wrote, edited, and revised both the veneable work A Latin Grammar and its successor New Latin Grammar. They disagree with you. They consider -tor to be the suffix, as MaEr has pointed out already. --EncycloPetey 16:42, 27 November 2011 (UTC) Amator = radical of amatus + -or cantor = radical of cantus + -or Arator = radical of aratus + -or It is very systematically based on the past participle's radical: Actor = radical of actus + -or Motor = radical of motus + -or Servitor = radical of servitus + -or Monitor = radical of monitus + -or This went on in Roman languages: torear, toreado, toreador. --Diligent 13:01, 28 November 2011 (UTC) It looks that way in retrospect, but that's not how it happened historically. The fact that it has been reinterpreted this way is merely an artifice of similarity in the endings. --EncycloPetey 18:14, 4 December 2011 (UTC) (tosses some gasoline) Moreland and Fleischer in Latin: An Intensive Course have this to say in Unit 11 (my notes in italics, showing that the derivation probably follows regular rules): "The suffixes -tor (M.), -trix (F.) added to the stem of a verb produce a noun. Each means 'one who.' Thus: inceptor, -oris incipio -> incip -> inciptor -> inceptor auditor, -oris audio -> audi -> auditor scriptor, -oris scribo -> scrib -> scribtor -> scriptor spectator, -oris spect -> spect -> specttor -> spectator actor, -oris ago -> ag -> agtor -> actor liberator, -oris libero -> liber -> libertor -> liberator amator, -oris and amatrix, amatricis amo -> am -> amtor -> amator inventor, -oris and inventrix, inventricis invenio -> inveni -> invenitor -> inventor cantor, -oris and cantrix, cantricis cano -> can -> cantor victor, -oris and victrix, victricis vinco -> vinc -> vinctor -> victor petitor, -oris peto -> pet -> pettor -> petitor "By analogy, there are viator, -oris and viatrix, viatricis (from via, 'way' + -tor or -trix). --Robert.Baruch 15:28, 28 November 2011 (UTC) Many thanks to all for the varied examples! Note that I was not stating an opposing argument, and instead trying to clarify my own understanding, so this wealth of information is certainly welcome. One minor curiosity that continues to puzzle me is that a number of these are noted as deriving from the perfect passive participle, which would suggest "one who is [verbed]", rather than the active "one who [verbs]". Does anyone know more about that? And in looking around to learn about the various suffixes used, I found that -or has no etymology given. Is this suffix derived from -tor, or does it arise from the same underlying root as -arius? -- Cheers, Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 17:55, 28 November 2011 (UTC) They appear to be derived from the passive participle but they are distinct suffixes that both happen to begin with -t-. They were already distinct in Indo-European: *-tōr (from earlier *-tors) and *-tós. —CodeCat 20:18, 28 November 2011 (UTC) Aha! That makes more sense. This would suggest that the pages stating that the -tor agent nouns derive from the perfect passive (such as actor or quadrator) are incorrect, since it looks now like the perfect passive and the agent noun both amount to the verb stem (radical?) + -tus or -tor respectively. (And since there isn't a -tus entry, I'm adding it to the list of requested Latin terms.) -- Cheers, Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 16:52, 29 November 2011 (UTC) An ending like -tus is considered inflectional, not formative. We generally do not have entries for inflectional endings in Latin. --EncycloPetey 18:14, 4 December 2011 (UTC) Etymology and definition are fine, but the part of speech doesn't quite fit. Can we do anything about this, e.g. move to "one couldn't organise..." or even "be unable to organise" (which is probably less common) — or should it be marked as a Phrase rather than a Verb? Equinox ◑ 15:46, 26 November 2011 (UTC) But couldn't is a verb. It is, however, a past tense: does the form can't organise... exist? Should that be the main entry?​—msh210℠ (talk) 04:53, 27 November 2011 (UTC) The tricky thing is that couldn't is a modal auxiliary Purplebackpack89 (Notes Taken) (Locker) 04:55, 27 November 2011 (UTC) Compare to [[can't seem]] and [[can't help]].​—msh210℠ (talk) 05:01, 27 November 2011 (UTC) Isn't it pronounced "GROW-per"? If so, then why does it link to Rhymes:English:-uːpə(r)? ---> Tooironic 06:57, 29 November 2011 (UTC) I'd pronounce it group-er, but I'm hardly an expert on fish. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eM8dJy2a_-Y says "today we're making a special fish, called group-er, some people call it grope-er," [or GROW-per] "I call it grope-you." I don't call this end-all and be-all of the subject, but it's one source that doesn't seem completely ignorant on the matter. (And I'm lazy today.)--Prosfilaes 07:46, 29 November 2011 (UTC) FWIW, I've always heard it pronounced as group-er, which I thought made sense just because of the way certain fish group together. -- Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 16:54, 29 November 2011 (UTC) I think the "rare" plural innuendis is a mistake or scanno. Anyone know different? Equinox ◑ 00:42, 30 November 2011 (UTC) The one citation looks awfully like a typo to me! Mglovesfun (talk) 14:04, 1 December 2011 (UTC) I think we are missing a sense. There's a slang sense (possibly American, hip-hop or rap) that means "unconcerned" or "not bothered", as in "Shall we go to Restaurant A or Restaurant B?" "I'm easy" ("I don't mind"). Have others encountered this? Should we add a sense? Equinox ◑ 22:04, 30 November 2011 (UTC) Possibly just US, but much wider than AAVE, rap, or hip-hop. (My city has sought to be the site of the National Hip Hop Museum, so I'm an expert.) I've always thought of it as short for "easy-going" or "easy to convince" etc. Perhaps it is most commonly just "agreeable". DCDuring TALK 01:25, 1 December 2011 (UTC) I have added a first attempt at the phrase I'm easy - not sure if I have linked to it from the correct section. SemperBlotto 08:21, 1 December 2011 (UTC) Is the pronoun always I? Mglovesfun (talk) 19:45, 5 December 2011 (UTC) Well, She's easy would probably be interpreted with a quite different meaning of easy. But we're easy would probably be interpreted with the same meaning as I'm easy. Other pronouns would probably ambiguous. —Angr 17:04, 9 December 2011 (UTC) Is this just a spelling variation, or are these distinct words with different etymologies? Neither has an etyl, and neither references the other, I only happened upon the pair by chance. -- Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 23:55, 30 November 2011 (UTC) Online Etymology Dictionary says that briar and brier are the same word, but that brier itself has two etymologies, both of which happen to be shrubs (one is Germanic, the other Gaulish via French). —CodeCat 00:17, 1 December 2011 (UTC) The OED agrees, with etymologies: "Old English: West Saxon brǽr" and "French bruyère heath, erroneously identified with brier" (the second root only for the wood, of course). Should we split our senses into separate etymologies? Dbfirs 14:54, 2 December 2011 (UTC) I've been doing so for Japanese, but I'm not sure what the consensus approach is for English entries. -- Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 16:54, 2 December 2011 (UTC) I would not treat them as alternative forms because there is apparently some etymological difference, but use {{also}} to keep them linked and Synonyms to keep them connected appropriately. DCDuring TALK 17:49, 3 December 2011 (UTC) I don't think there is an etymological distinction between brier and briar. Instead, from what I've gathered, briar is an alternative spelling of brier for both etymologies. —CodeCat 18:22, 3 December 2011 (UTC) ... but is there still a difference in the senses (as the OED claims), or has the confusion now become total so that people now use the two spellings interchangeably? When I see the "brier" spelling, I think of a pipe, but is this distinction shared by others? A quick Google search for "brier" + pipe gives over 7 million hits, compared with only 1.5 million for "briar" + pipe, but I don't think this is enough to claim a well-known distinction between the spellings. Many dictionaries now accept "briar" for the pipe-wood, so I'm forced to agree that "briar" has now become an alternative spelling for the formerly distinct word "brier". Perhaps we could just add a usage note explaining the history. Dbfirs 09:00, 4 December 2011 (UTC) It's not uncommon for a distinction in meaning to be formed between two alternative spellings, like what happened with to and too. If there is any distinction at all I think it may be emerging in a similar way. But the only way to be sure is to look at the historical usage. Did people use the two spellings interchangeably a few hundred years ago? —CodeCat 11:50, 4 December 2011 (UTC) I think the tendency is the other way, in the direction of totally confusing the original meanings so that they are becoming just alternative spellings in modern usage. I'm probably trying to preserve an outdated distinction (as I often do!) Dbfirs 21:44, 4 December 2011 (UTC) Hello guys. My question is: how do English-speaking people pronounce this ? --GaAs 18:53, 5 December 2011 (UTC) I just read it out: as far as I know. That generally takes less time and is easier for me to say than to spell it out verbally: ei ef ei ai kei. -- Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 19:24, 5 December 2011 (UTC) Same, I only use this as an Internet short hand, I would never say it out loud. Having said that, I have started saying OMG out loud, which I'm not exactly proud of... Mglovesfun (talk) 19:44, 5 December 2011 (UTC) You mean sthng like /əfɛɪk/ (sorry, I'm very bad with english IPA) is not used ? --GaAs 20:56, 5 December 2011 (UTC) I've never discussed it with anyone until you posted your question, and have never heard anyone say it (not even myself, I don't think), so don't know how people pronounce it. I've always imagined it pronounced as as far as I know.​—msh210℠ (talk) 18:00, 6 December 2011 (UTC) Ditto. (Similarly SFAIK, AFAICT, SFAICT. But I take IIRC to be an initialism. I couldn't say why.) —RuakhTALK 03:32, 7 December 2011 (UTC) Maybe it has something to do with the number of syllables in each form. Although honestly I use OMG and WTF all the time as initialisms, despite "double-you" having three syllables and "what" having one. Although I use them purely for comedic effect. There's nothing comedic about AFAIK. --Robert.Baruch 00:51, 9 December 2011 (UTC) google books:"humorous doubt" gets enough hits to make it conceivable that someone, somewhere, will someday find a way to use AFAIK for comic effect. :-)   —RuakhTALK 15:49, 9 December 2011 (UTC) I wouldn't speak it aloud, but in my head it's always sounded like "aff-AY-ik". Equinox ◑ 15:27, 9 December 2011 (UTC) For me, like "a fake" (too lazy to do the IPA, sorry). Mglovesfun (talk) 12:04, 10 December 2011 (UTC) [edit] practice to achieve perfection I can't remember where I recently read the sentence "SirEdmundHillarywasthefirstmantoclimbMtEverest" followed by the same sentence spelled backwards. This was used as an example of repetitious practice to achieve a level of proficiency in any field. I thought I read it in "The Genius in All of US' by David Shenk. It was not. Has anyone seen this anywhere? —This unsigned comment was added by Christyreuben (talk • contribs) 17:32, 6 December 2011‎. I fail to see your point, sorry, please explain further. Mglovesfun (talk) 11:23, 8 December 2011 (UTC) [edit] checksyns template There is the template {{checksyns}} on the psychopath page. I'm not sure what to do about it since sociopath seems to be a general synonym for the senses of the definition. RJFJR 02:36, 8 December 2011 (UTC) Does sociopath fit sense 4? It looks like there are many missing synonyms. Collins has "madman, lunatic, maniac, psychotic, nutter (Brit. slang), basket case (slang), nutcase (slang), sociopath, headcase (informal), mental case (slang), headbanger (informal), insane person" as synonyms. They don't fit all the senses given. It seemed like a lot of work, but worth doing (eventually) if we are to maintain an ability to convey the colloquial distinctions. DCDuring TALK 01:51, 10 December 2011 (UTC) This might be a job for Wikisaurus. DCDuring TALK 01:52, 10 December 2011 (UTC) "Examples include thoughts, ideas, theories, practices, habits, songs, dances and moods and terms such as race, culture, and ethnicity." What does this mean? That, for instance, the word "Caucasian" might be a meme? Equinox ◑ 15:26, 9 December 2011 (UTC) I've wondered whether this kind of thing would be better defined by a {{non-gloss definition}}. DCDuring TALK 01:58, 10 December 2011 (UTC) I'll just chip in and say I don't understand it either. Mglovesfun (talk) 12:03, 10 December 2011 (UTC) I think the sentence should be deleted. It is encyclopedic. The definition given seems adequate. DCDuring TALK 09:59, 13 December 2011 (UTC) In combination of watching the snooker and reading the debate on nominative case et al., I wonder if white ball, red ball (and so on) would be acceptable. They're often just shortened to 'white', 'red' and so on and I think they definitely need an entry at white, red etc. But what about white ball? It is a ball that's white after all, but has specific implications in pool, snooker and other billiards games. Mglovesfun (talk) 12:02, 10 December 2011 (UTC) Meh... accelerator pedal is a pedal that's an accelerator, but it has specific details in vehicles (e.g. it's located in a certain position relative to the other two pedals). That's encyclopaedic. Equinox ◑ 22:00, 10 December 2011 (UTC) If you look into Category:en:Snooker you will find that all the colours already have snooker definitions. -- ALGRIF talk 14:58, 22 December 2011 (UTC) This is missing a computing sense (as in, the cylinders of a hard drive), but I don't know how it should be defined. -- Liliana • 21:57, 10 December 2011 (UTC) Added. SemperBlotto 08:32, 13 December 2011 (UTC) [edit] Rubber I was reading in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the chapter entitled "The Red-Headed League". A Mr. Merryweather, who is a bank director, says, "Still, I confess that I miss my rubber. It is the first Saturday night for seven-and-twenty years that I have not had my rubber." Sherlock Holmes replies, "I think you will find that you will play for a higher stake to-night than you have ever done yet, and that the play will be more exciting." I wondered if the "rubber" that he is referring to is the soft covering for a finger used to count money - like a rubber thimble, or if it is something else. Does anyone know? It's a best-of-three game of bridge, the card game. See rubber bridge. Equinox ◑ 23:19, 10 December 2011 (UTC) This would far more commonly be written triple 0, right? A phone number 12045 would usually be read out "one-two-oh-four-five" but never written 12O45. Equinox ◑ 23:48, 10 December 2011 (UTC) I would expect so. A search of Google News confirms it, finding only 29 "triple O", only half in English and very few in the meaning given vs. 189 "triple 0"s. DCDuring TALK 09:53, 13 December 2011 (UTC) Triple zero = triple 0 = triple oh = triple O. Transitivity doesn't carry that far in the humanities. I would consider it to be an error. DAVilla 16:18, 13 December 2011 (UTC) Does fantastical really mean fantastic (as in extraordinary), and if so shouldn't the sense be more clearly explained? DAVilla 03:30, 12 December 2011 (UTC) Is acinaci a legitimate plural of this? Equinox ◑ 13:17, 12 December 2011 (UTC) "The p is optionally silent, thus comptroller may be a homophone of controller." Huh? Since when does m sound the same as n? Equinox ◑ 23:23, 12 December 2011 (UTC) In New York State and its cities, comptroller is an elected office usually pronounced "controller". DCDuring TALK 09:56, 13 December 2011 (UTC) Even if that isn't just a malapropism, wouldn't the inflection still vary? It should be stated that it's a near homophone which makes pronunciation of the p all that more significant. DAVilla 16:16, 13 December 2011 (UTC) It is pronounced that way in the swearing-in ceremonies for the offices. That is the first pronunciation given at MWOnline. DCDuring TALK 19:08, 13 December 2011 (UTC) I don't dispute that it may be a homophone of controller, but I do dispute that that pronunciation is the obvious "visual" pronunciation of comptroller with a silent p. This would require an m sound turning to an n sound. Equinox ◑ 21:40, 13 December 2011 (UTC) It's not just a homophone, it's also the same word and it has the same etymology. The spelling was influenced by French compte but if anyone pronounces the m or p, it would be a spelling pronunciation. —CodeCat 22:57, 13 December 2011 (UTC) Okay, fine, but see my original comment in this discussion. I think it's inaccurate. Equinox ◑ 00:57, 14 December 2011 (UTC) You must be saying that if "the p is optionally silent" it would be pronounced comtroller. Well, it is not what the explanation wants to say. The p is silent, and the m is pronounced n, just like controller. — TAKASUGI Shinji (talk) 04:37, 14 December 2011 (UTC) Then I really don't understand the explanation. Am I stupid, or will this be even more confusing for most casual users? Equinox ◑ 03:37, 17 December 2011 (UTC) @Equinox: I completely agree. @everyone else: The problem isn't the statement that "comptroller may be a homophone of controller"; the problem is the statement that this is so because "[t]he p is optionally silent". Silencing the <p> does not, by itself, turn the "COMPtroller" pronunciation into the "conTROLLer" pronunciation. —RuakhTALK 18:43, 14 December 2011 (UTC) But I think the question has been answered incidentally, I mean what other answer do we want other than the one(s) we have? Mglovesfun (talk) 19:06, 14 December 2011 (UTC) "To be watching over something. It's tough to sneak vandalism into Wikipedia as there are plenty of other users prowling the recent changes page." The usex is believable, but does it really mean "watching over" rather than (say) patrolling or hanging around it? Equinox ◑ 10:57, 13 December 2011 (UTC) Moved usage example. Not sure if definition is legit. DAVilla 16:12, 13 December 2011 (UTC) An early Wonderfool entry. As a result, should be given a rewrite. --Simplus2 20:00, 23 December 2011 (UTC) I don't understand how this could be more than 2, maybe 3 definitions. How would you classify these? May he rest in peace. Peace on earth, good will torward men. Peace be with you. DAVilla 16:07, 13 December 2011 (UTC) Our second definition, "A state free of oppressive and unpleasant thoughts and emotions", has an example sentence with "peace of mind". I suspect this sense requires "of mind" or similar, and that it's actually just the "A state of tranquility, quiet, and harmony" sense. That latter seems very different from the "A state free of war" sense: people speak of as nation at peace even if there's little tranquility in the country. (We should provide a gloss for state there: it's a status, not a country.) I'm not sure what our current sense 3 ("Harmony in personal relations" means, or whether it's different from the "A state free of war" sense — or, if so, whether it exists. I'm also not sure we don't need a different (countable?) sense, found in separate peace.​—msh210℠ (talk) 19:00, 13 December 2011 (UTC) [edit] language templates not used - why? I'm looking for the discussion on language templates such as {{en}} for English etc. I wonder if those templates are available why are they not used in the translation section. Can anyone give me a link to the discussion in the tea room archive? I couldn't find it. Kampy 19:07, 13 December 2011 (UTC) The translation section alphabetizes by language name, which is hard for people to do when editing manually and seeing language codes. (It's also more for code for bots then.) I seem to recall that that's why we use the names, but could very well be wrong.​—msh210℠ (talk) 19:25, 13 December 2011 (UTC) I see. Thank you. Kampy 19:31, 13 December 2011 (UTC) It also puts too much template burden on a page download when all the translations have different templates for their own languages. Each template takes time to decode and render, and for pages with many definitions, this can hugely slow down user access to the information. --EncycloPetey 03:31, 15 December 2011 (UTC) This doesn't really matter, because the translation template {{t}} includes those templates anyway. —CodeCat 15:44, 15 December 2011 (UTC) It does. Page load is calculated for every use of a template. If you use {{de}} ten times in an entry, it has ten times the load of a single transclusion of {{de}}. -- Liliana • 16:00, 15 December 2011 (UTC) The state of apparent weightlessness which occurs when in free fall. A state/shuttle/simulator which produces weightlessness. I'm not sure exactly what sense 2 means, but is it not just listing examples of sense 1? —Michael Z. 2011-12-14 00:12 z 1 is a state (situation); 2 is a machine.​—msh210℠ (talk) 00:32, 14 December 2011 (UTC) Not getting it. Does shuttle mean "space shuttle?" I can't imagine how or when such a device is called "zero gravity." Other dictionaries aren't helping me. Citation? —Michael Z. 2011-12-14 03:54 z You are getting it, then. (Well, if I am, then you are.) 2 is, yes, a space shuttle. Like you, I've never heard of this meaning of zero gravity; perhaps {{rfquote-sense}} or {{rfv-sense}}?​—msh210℠ (talk) 05:28, 14 December 2011 (UTC) I'm quite certain that a space shuttle doesn't produce weightlessness. Having stared at this for a day, I believe it is nonsense. A bit of rewriting and rfv-sense, I think. —Michael Z. 2011-12-14 15:10 z WT:RFV#zero gravity. —Michael Z. 2011-12-14 15:30 z It definitely produces weightlessness. Anyway, the sense 2 seems to be a nonsense. — TAKASUGI Shinji (talk) 18:00, 14 December 2011 (UTC) Being in free fall, including being in orbit, leads to weightlessness, enshuttled or otherwise. A shuttle can be used to put you there, but to say that the machine "produces" the state implies some mechanism that doesn't exist. —Michael Z. 2011-12-15 01:11 z More precisely, being within any free-falling object produces a state equivalent to that of "weightlessness". However, "weightlessness" is a misnomer as the object does not actually lose all weight during its fall; objects simply are not resting against a static surface. "Weightlessness" can occur in a falling elevator, at the crest of a roller coaster, or inside a plane specially designed to free-fall with astronaut trainees inside. So, the second "definition" results from attributive use of the noun's primary definition and is not distinct. --EncycloPetey 03:28, 15 December 2011 (UTC) In the entry for post, there's a bit of overlap. Some meanings are mentioned under both Etymology headers. --Simplus2 10:47, 14 December 2011 (UTC) Hello, I typed by error "acromyrex" on Google and found there was a page on en.wikt, but I suspect this is an typo/spello too. However, being quite incompetent in taxonomy, I can't say that fore sure (but I searched the Max Planck Gesellschaft and the University of East Anglia websites in addition to Wikipedia before posting). --Eiku (t) 17:01, 14 December 2011 (UTC) Yes. My mistake from 2006! Now moved to the correct spelling. SemperBlotto 17:06, 14 December 2011 (UTC) 1. A container for liquids or gases, typically with a volume of several cubic metres. 6. In USA scuba divers' usage, a compressed air or gas cylinder. Why should 1 be limited to large tanks, and 6 to USA scuba divers? To me, welders use medium-sized acetylene tanks, a barbecue has a small propane tank, and a camp stove may have a very small (liquid or gas, refillable or disposable) fuel tank. On the other end of the spectrum, oil companies and water utilities use tanks of many thousands of cubic metres capacity. Also, fuelling a car is "filling the tank." Any objections to merging these into one general sense? —Michael Z. 2011-12-15 17:09 z Go for it. SemperBlotto 17:13, 15 December 2011 (UTC) Can someone help me with capitalization and Wiktionary? We currently have IMDB which redirects to IMDb as the "correct" capitalization. I'm trying to add the verb form, to IMDB someone. In print sources, I've got two "IMDB him"s and two "IMDb her"s (note the capitalization) in independent sources. I've got a bunch of hits on Google Groups for "IMDB him" or "imdb him" and a couple for "IMdb him", and one more for "IMDb him". (I've got an "Imdb him", but it seems like merely sentence-initial capitalization.) So. Do I just add everything to IMDb? Do I make entries on IMDB, IMDb, and imdb for verbal forms? (And IMdb?) IMDB is arguably wrong, I'd argue imdb and IMDb are both acceptable variants (though any use should be tagged casual or whatever the equivalent is) and IMdb seems clearly wrong.--Prosfilaes 04:58, 16 December 2011 (UTC) I replaced the redirect with alternate spelling since we generally do not use redirects. RJFJR 14:59, 24 December 2011 (UTC) Is the interjection real, or is it just the adverb sense with an exclamation point (or comma) after it?​—msh210℠ (talk) 06:26, 16 December 2011 (UTC) An interjection is not a part of speech, it is a word or phrase uttered as an exclamation with no particular grammatical relation to a sentence. Interjections are comprised of words of various parts of speech, often adverbs. —Stephen (Talk) 21:14, 16 December 2011 (UTC) "(poetry) A rhyme in which the first line of a stanza (A) rhymes with the fourth line, and the second and third lines rhyme (B)." Yes. But doesn't this open the doors for all kinds of poetical structures (for example ABCB is well known)? It isn't an initialism, doesn't stand for anything; the letters are "variables" for specific rhymes, if you like, making this more akin to a statement like 2a+3b (math equation) which we clearly would not include. Equinox ◑ 03:35, 17 December 2011 (UTC) [edit] Kith and Kine I think this is an eggcorn of kith and kin. Albeit, an old one. The word kith more generally refers to friends and acquaintances while kin refers to family ... thus kith and kin means "friends and family". The word kine is an archaic plural of cow. So kith and kine would mean "friends and cows". Kin and Kine would make more sense than kith and kine. Other than a play on words in a book or articles about cows/animals, I haven't found "kith and kine" used. In ME English there are many spelling variations that could lead to this confusion: Oþer whyle þou muste be fals a-monge kythe & kynne. ... and here kynne = kin. I'm having trouble believing this is anything other than a mistake for kith and kin unless used more literally: By the end of this disaster, the Bull stands amidst the corpses of kith and kine. ... Is he standing among the corpses of friends and family or friends and cows? --AnWulf ... Ferþu Hal! 17:18, 17 December 2011 (UTC) As the editor who added this, I agree with you. I think from memory I added it as some kind of special request.. but I share your analysis of it. Ƿidsiþ 17:53, 17 December 2011 (UTC) Maybe the meaning should be changed? I looked on sundry pages with a Google search and didn't find any usage along the line of "relatives and property; one's total possessions". If no objects, I'll put the first meaning as an error for kith and kin ... As for the other meaning, it looks more like someone trying to backform a meaning from the error (like folks backformed a meaning for "hone in", an error for "home in"). I think it should go unless someone can find a few usages of it with that meaning but I'll leave that yu. --AnWulf ... Ferþu Hal! 14:24, 18 December 2011 (UTC) [edit] The attitude of not having to answer to anyone Is there a word or phrase that describes the attitude or ideal of not having to answer to anyone? 74.82.68.160 20:24, 17 December 2011 (UTC) Headstrong? Recalcitrant? ---> Tooironic 09:59, 18 December 2011 (UTC) I am "my own man/woman"? --Robert.Baruch 22:31, 26 December 2011 (UTC) [edit] baking/roasting Is there any methodical difference between baking and roasting in oven, or is it just that some foods you bake and others you roast? --Hekaheka 05:54, 18 December 2011 (UTC) AFAIK, you bake stuff in an oven, while you can roast things in an oven OR over a fire. Of course, collocations vary; normally, one says, "Let's bake a loaf of bread!" not "roast a loaf of bread". ---> Tooironic 09:20, 18 December 2011 (UTC) A baked potato is very different from a roast potato, but I can't explain how. Equinox ◑ 14:27, 18 December 2011 (UTC) To me, baking implies the application of dry heat within a container (oven), whereas in roasting the thing being cooked normally lies in a liquid (e.g. fat), or is basted with a liquid during cooking. SemperBlotto 14:39, 18 December 2011 (UTC) Okay, that explains the potatoes. You can bake a potato in a microwave or conventional oven, and you're basically just heating it up. But a roast potato is cooked in meat fat (right?) so it ends up golden and crispy. Also, a roast one tends to be peeled first, while a baked potato is done with the skin on, but that's a cultural / fried egg thing. Equinox ◑ 15:10, 18 December 2011 (UTC) Chestnuts roasting on an open fire isn't lying in a liquid, for one example of why I don't think that's the proper distinction between the two, although I cant say what the distinction is, exactly. Roasting on a spit is another, I think, though typically what's being roasted has liquids inside, such as animal or game meat. sewnmouthsecret 08:47, 31 December 2011 (UTC) "One's true home is where one feels happiest." Really? I thought this proverb meant something like, "Your home will always be the place you feel the most affection for, regardless of whether it is your true home or not." ---> Tooironic 09:58, 18 December 2011 (UTC) McGraw-Hill has both[13]: "People long to be at home.; Your home is whatever place you long to be." Equinox ◑ 14:26, 18 December 2011 (UTC) There is also home is where the hearth is, which brings up many Google hits. I don't know if this may be the original form of the phrase, but it would make sense because it corresponds more closely to the Dutch equivalent, eigen haard is goud waard. —CodeCat 19:42, 22 December 2011 (UTC) Are these edits sound? [14], [15]. The stress doesn't seem right for a rhyme: it's NU-clear, not nu-CLEAR. Equinox ◑ 15:08, 18 December 2011 (UTC) Undid those edits independently of this thread. A lot of users 'mistakenly' add rhymes based only on the last syllable, which is not what we do here. The IPA in the entry clinched it for me. Mglovesfun (talk) 16:31, 18 December 2011 (UTC) I'm amazed at the number of people, some of them well educated, who seem to think that nuclear rhymes with avuncular! Dbfirs 23:09, 30 December 2011 (UTC) How are these definitions any different from each other? How can "rude" constitute a single definition when rude itself has five meanings? DAVilla 12:48, 20 December 2011 (UTC) Rude might not have had 5 senses at the time when insolent was created. There is probably work to be done there. Equinox ◑ 00:37, 9 January 2012 (UTC) Why is this in "Category:English politically correct terms"? Equinox ◑ 23:22, 21 December 2011 (UTC) Ditto person. Sure, policeperson is PC, but just person? Equinox ◑ 01:46, 22 December 2011 (UTC) Also -person is a peculiar entry --Simplus2 13:16, 22 December 2011 (UTC) Robin Lionheart seems to have added a couple of hundred of these last year - most of which look like being simply gender-neutral rather than politically correct. For a lot of them, I can't even think what a gender-specific version might be. 81.142.107.230 16:34, 28 December 2011 (UTC) Surely this isn't a suffix! Everything here should be moved to handed, IMO. Equinox ◑ 12:55, 22 December 2011 (UTC) Add -goaler and -looking and -cheeked and -headed to this debate. Maybe this part should be linked from these pages. I dunno how to do that. --Simplus2 13:10, 22 December 2011 (UTC) Yep, delete/merge everything. It's a misunderstanding than using a hyphen for affixes is a notation used by dictionaries (for example, to distinguish between re and re-) while something like two-headed uses an actual hyphen. Mglovesfun (talk) 18:35, 23 December 2011 (UTC) Merged. Equinox ◑ 00:39, 9 January 2012 (UTC) This term is marked as an obsolete spelling, but I think the spelling is still used, although considered nonstandard. Could it be both? —CodeCat 19:33, 22 December 2011 (UTC) It can be. (I don't know that it is, but believe you.) You can use {{obsolete|now|_|nonstandard}} or similar.​—msh210℠ (talk) 08:16, 23 December 2011 (UTC) Seems to be very much in use. A Google search gets 2,7 million hits. Msh210's suggestion looks fine. --Hekaheka 00:18, 26 December 2011 (UTC) I'd have to agree with Hekaheka (talk • contribs) here, this is still very much in use. -- Cirt (talk) 23:35, 13 February 2012 (UTC) I'm surprised this entry doesn't exist yet. Can it be added, since we already have roadworks? —CodeCat 20:38, 22 December 2011 (UTC) Road works seems to be significantly more common than roadworks, so WT:COALMINE says yes. —RuakhTALK 21:48, 22 December 2011 (UTC) [edit] leading I was thinking of adding an adjective sense of leading meaning "playing a primary role in a film or similar", as found in the phrases leading man, leading actor, etc. Then I realized that it might be a verb (lead). But google books:"led|leading in films" turns up nothing relevant; likewise "to lead in films". So maybe it's an adjective after all — but I'm not confident enough saying so to add it. Thoughts?​—msh210℠ (talk) 08:14, 23 December 2011 (UTC) and leading role You could be right. COBUILD has it as an adj. and gives leading actor as an example. Includes two more senses (although I'm hard put to see much difference between the them :-/) as leading industrial nation and leading group (in front in a race). -- ALGRIF talk 15:39, 26 December 2011 (UTC) Though the collocations with "man" and "lady" are limited to performances and seem like live metaphors when applied outside of theatrical type performances, other collocations of "leading" such as "leading role" don't seem so limited. Apparently some professional lexicographers think these are not transparent: leading man at OneLook Dictionary Search and leading lady at OneLook Dictionary Search. In contrast we don't have leading man and leading lady. DCDuring TALK 18:49, 26 December 2011 (UTC) I would say it's a verb: *She is the very leading lady. *The lady became leading. If it were an adjective, those should probably work.--Brett 01:41, 27 December 2011 (UTC) But if it were a verb, then we would say There are two ladies leading rather than There are two leading ladies, wouldn't we? . Another point in favor of adjective would be the Oscar nominations .. Best actor / actress in a leading role. It has to be an adj in this phrase. -- ALGRIF talk 14:29, 27 December 2011 (UTC) "There are two running ladies" works. So does "best juggler in a moving vehicle".​—msh210℠ (talk) 00:55, 28 December 2011 (UTC) My point being that an English L1 speaker sees the difference! Basically because of recognizing the adjectival sense in There are two leading ladies. -- ALGRIF talk 14:57, 28 December 2011 (UTC) [edit] parent of my child What's the word in English meaning "parent of one's child"? There is one, right? If not, do other languages have a word for this? --Simplus2 12:34, 24 December 2011 (UTC) Well, there's baby mama and baby daddy, but those terms are somewhat loaded. I think for most of history people just said "the father/mother of my child" in any case where "husband" or "wife" didn't cover it. —Angr 14:36, 24 December 2011 (UTC) Don't we use the terms biological father and biological mother? As in, say, "my son Timmy's biological mother"? --Robert.Baruch 22:26, 26 December 2011 (UTC) Just "my son Timmy's mother", no?​—msh210℠ (talk) 19:39, 28 December 2011 (UTC) In Dutch "The father of my child" is used to explain in one sentence: "We are divorced, I hate him, and that's how got my son". Joepnl 01:59, 30 January 2012 (UTC) The term co-parent exists, and IMHO is usually pretty clear in context, but is not terribly common. I wouldn't expect most people to recognize it. —RuakhTALK 02:11, 30 January 2012 (UTC) Isn't this a proverb, as opposed to a verb? ---> Tooironic 23:43, 25 December 2011 (UTC) Seems pretty amateur to me. —Michael Z. 2011-12-29 04:03 z I've never actually heard it, but it doesn't look like a proverb, too literal, looks more like a verb use only in the infinitive and the imperative (same as the infinitive of course). Mglovesfun (talk) 15:36, 29 December 2011 (UTC) It is more usual in the Latin - see w:Caveat emptor. SemperBlotto 15:39, 29 December 2011 (UTC) buyer beware is usually a catchall phrase for consumers making purchases or signing up for services; often these services are confusing to the general public, i.e. purchasing real property, buying a car, signing up for phone service, buying jewelry from shady street vendors, etc. I'd say it can be taken proverbially and literally. sewnmouthsecret 08:41, 31 December 2011 (UTC) Thought I've seen both usages, it's more common as simply, buyer beware. -- Cirt (talk) 23:34, 13 February 2012 (UTC) [edit] push (early Australian slang) "Push.—A company of rowdy fellows gathered together for ungentle purposes." (from wikisource:The Songs of a Sentimental Bloke/The Glossary); What C.J. Dennis really means is a violent gang. Several Wikipedia articles refer to a push but other that this, I can't find a formal definition. See for eg. w:Sydney Push, w:Rocks Push, w:The Songs of a Sentimental Bloke. It would be good to added into the push article. Moondyne 14:22, 26 December 2011 (UTC) I feel sure we should have this, for example google books:"go up the aisle" and google books:"got him up the aisle", quite how to define it, I don't know. I also don't think the sense should be at aisle, but rather at up the aisle. Mglovesfun (talk) 17:01, 26 December 2011 (UTC) I've had a stab at it. Feel free to improve (and add citations). SemperBlotto 08:39, 27 December 2011 (UTC) Looks pretty good so far. ;) -- Cirt (talk) 23:32, 13 February 2012 (UTC) [edit] dictionnaire de langue French includes a useful distinction between dictionnaire de langue (a dictionary providing definitions + linguistic information, such as etymology, pronunciation, gender, etc.) and dictionnaire encyclopédique (a dictionary including in some entries encyclopedic information, e.g. the causes of a disease, how it is treated, etc., as well as linguistic information ; generally speaking, most entries about proper nouns are 100% encyclopedic, while only some of the other entries include encyclopedic information). I understand that only the first kind of dictionary is traditional in English, but what are the English names for dictionnaire de langue and dictionnaire encyclopédique? Would not be useful to be more precise when describing the difference between Wikipedia and Wiktionary e.g. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, Wiktionary is a language dictionary? Lmaltier 08:50, 30 December 2011 (UTC) Well, the second one is encyclopedic dictionary. --Simplus2 08:59, 30 December 2011 (UTC) Well, not really. It's mainly just a language dictionary with some extended features. It deliberately avoids encyclopaedic material. In English, dictionary nearly always means just a language dictionary. Dbfirs 23:03, 30 December 2011 (UTC) So, language dictionary may be used in English? I would use it to refer to the project, mainly for people used to encyclopedic dictionaries (in some countries, best-selling dictionaries are encyclopedic dictionaries). The fact that we include proper nouns when they are words (for etymology, pronunciation, etc.) may be misleading because, unlike Wiktionary, almost all dictionaries including proper nouns are encyclopedic dictionaries (except some specialized dictionaries, e.g. those specialized in placename etymologies). Of course, this is a huge plus of the project, especially for pronunciation: I don't know any other dictionary systematically giving the pronunciation of proper nouns, but this difference may be misleading. Lmaltier 08:29, 31 December 2011 (UTC) I'd regard "language dictionary" as tautology, but that doesn't prevent you using the term to make a clear distinction. Specialist encyclopaedic dictionaries are sometimes called "A dictionary of" [specialist subject]. Dbfirs 22:17, 9 January 2012 (UTC) [edit] word request Is there a word for the style/device of making one aspect of a literary work contrast with another drastically? E.g., making the medium/style of a book contrast with the subject matter (as in Maus*) or having the tune of a song contrast with its lyrics (as in "Copacabana" (w:))? *Nowadays, there are many serious graphic novels, but I don't think that that was the case when Maus came out.​—msh210℠ (talk) 19:45, 30 December 2011 (UTC) Now re-asked elsewhere.​—msh210℠ (talk) 06:46, 1 January 2012 (UTC) I look forward to the answer. DCDuring TALK 14:23, 1 January 2012 (UTC) Is this really a noun? 的 is used to create adjectives, in Chinese anyway, don't speak Japanese though... ---> Tooironic 20:20, 1 January 2012 (UTC) We have decided to call them so recently, based on the fact that they are indeed nouns grammatically. See Wiktionary:Beer parlour#Proper label for Japanese "quasi-adjectives". — TAKASUGI Shinji (talk) 10:54, 17 January 2012 (UTC) [edit] non divisi Is non divisi a sum of parts if its entry (if it will have one) has: ==English== ===Adverb=== {{en-adv|-}} # {{music}} not divided ====Usage notes==== * to make every player play all of the notes in a non-[[arpeggiate|arpeggiated]] chord or other groups of notes played simultaneously Celloplayer115 20:49, 1 January 2012 (UTC) I wouldn't say so, because the term isn't actually English but Latin. In Latin it would be SOP, but not in English. —CodeCat 21:16, 1 January 2012 (UTC) Italian, not Latin - like many terms from music. SemperBlotto 08:41, 2 January 2012 (UTC) This is a Dutch verb that describes some kind of dance, often associated with carnaval. But I'm not really sure what it actually is, or how to define it. Can anyone help? —CodeCat 14:05, 7 January 2012 (UTC) Dutch wiktionary describes it something like "to dance and jump about as a group". Maybe to square dance? SemperBlotto 14:45, 7 January 2012 (UTC) It's not usually performed in a square but in a line, so it seems more like conga. —CodeCat 14:48, 7 January 2012 (UTC) Does this describe it a bit? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IfQRXnek_wI http://www.bndestem.nl/regio/roosendaal/8291167/Hossen-met-de-buurtschappen.ece http://www.google.nl/imghp?&tab=wi&q=hossen+-sylvia+-silvia --MaEr 14:18, 8 January 2012 (UTC) I don't understand the last link but the other two show it well yes. :) —CodeCat 14:42, 8 January 2012 (UTC) About the last link: just click the search icon, this will start the google image search for "hossen", skipping all manga stuff with "Silvia van Hossen". --MaEr 14:53, 8 January 2012 (UTC) Could this be a w:en:Polonaise (Dutch w:nl:Polonaise)? --MaEr 15:07, 8 January 2012 (UTC) The Dutch article does contain this sentence: Aanvankelijk betekende het 'langzame Poolse dans in driekwartsmaat', maar later werd het vooral gebruikt in de betekenis "dans waarbij men in een sliert achter elkaar host, met de handen op de schouders van de voorgaande persoon" At first it meant 'slow Polish dance in three-quarter measure', but later it came to be used especially in the meaning "dance where people hos after one another in a line, with the hands on the shoulders of the person in front" —CodeCat 15:11, 8 January 2012 (UTC) So hossen is the same as dancing a polonaise? If yes, you could add the missing definition. --MaEr 18:23, 10 January 2012 (UTC) As I understand the article, the modern form of polonaise dancing involves hossen. The only real defining feature of hossen that I can think of, aside from the polonaise part, is taking steps in the rhythm of the music, so that everyone moves together. —CodeCat 18:25, 10 January 2012 (UTC) The entry for /. "(computing, proscribed) the punctuation mark /, properly called "slash"; see below." The notes claim that / is often misread when reading out Internet addresses. I've never heard this mistake made. Are others familiar with it? Is it really so common? Equinox ◑ 14:37, 7 January 2012 (UTC) I've heard it many times, even from people who I think probably do know which one is the slash and which is the backslash, but who get it wrong sometimes in speech (or in listening — hear "backslash", type /); but I really don't know how common it is. Obviously the error stands out much more than the correct version. It pretty clearly meets the CFI that we apply to non-errors: 2001, http://books.google.com/books?id=KXwp_xwbHrcC&pg=PA455&dq=backslash: […] I was trying to find a web-site for which I had been given the following address: http://www.isop.ucla.edu/pacrim/pubs/korjournal.htm. […] I began to work backwards, removing first the last part of the address following the last backslash (/korjournal.htm). 2010, http://books.google.com/books?id=CXzvPfYaJWsC&pg=PA25&dq=backslash: "So, do what I tell you. Open a browser window and type this in the menu[sic] bar: F-T-P colon backslash backslash euronews dot net backslash..." I pecked carefully at the keyboard as he dictated a URL that was about fifty characters long, […] 2010, http://books.google.com/books?id=IZoOxPievkYC&pg=PT205&dq=backslashes: Also, avoid submenus[sic] that can confuse the audience—if you're giving lengthy Web site addresses full of backslashes, shorten it so only the Web site's home page is given. but we do apply a "common"-ness requirement to misspellings, and we've sometimes applied that to certain other types of clear errors, so if people want to treat it only in usage notes, I think a case could be made. —RuakhTALK 22:05, 7 January 2012 (UTC) A commonness requirement for misspellings is important because we accept cites from Usenet, where typographical errors and lazy typing are rampant, and, for that matter, from published works, where typographical errors are not at all uncommon. Use of backslash for slash is not a typographical error or a misspeaking or a lazy typing but a wrong choice of word, which is the kind of thing we as alleged descriptivists should not bar form full entry in the dictionary. MHO.​—msh210℠ (talk) 17:02, 8 January 2012 (UTC) Okay. I don't object to us having it if it's real, and Ruakh's examples seem to show that. (I'd really like to see that kind of thing in the entry to support the usage note.) Thanks. Equinox ◑ 00:29, 9 January 2012 (UTC) O.K., I've added the cites to the entry. :-)   I think the definition and usage notes should be rewritten, though. Or maybe the usage note should just be removed, and the definition reworded. —RuakhTALK 01:21, 9 January 2012 (UTC) The usage note surely belongs on \, not on backslash. 81.142.107.230 10:37, 10 January 2012 (UTC) For the record, I was referring to a usage note that's since been removed (by me). The usage note that you refer to doesn't pertain to this sense. (But yes, I agree.) —RuakhTALK 21:05, 10 January 2012 (UTC) My feeling is that backslash can now refer quite acceptably (if confusingly) to either / or \. Ƿidsiþ 11:00, 10 January 2012 (UTC) Perhaps some Windows users, accustomed to seeing backslashes as directory separators, don't notice that slashes in URLs go the opposite direction. In other words, to those who don't recognize the difference, backslash may signify not / per se, but either / or \. ~ Robin 23:57, 10 January 2012 (UTC) I agree with Robin: people unaware of the handedness of slashes use backslash to mean "file-system pathname delimiter," or perhaps just "slash character," and not specifically back- nor forward slash. However, since this contradicts all of the subject experts (glossaries, standards, and style guides in writing, computing, typesetting, etc.), we should indicate that it is considered an error, even if we documentary lexicographers refuse to hold it as such ourselves. —Michael Z. 2012-01-12 18:04 z [edit] Proto-Germanic -eu- in Saxon (and/or Dutch) Moved to Wiktionary talk:About Middle Low German —CodeCat 22:23, 29 January 2012 (UTC) Can someone check these out and confirm they are not just scannos? I'm worried Pilcrow doesn't know what he is doing and is inadvertently creating garbage (e.g. he had created the definitely wrong forms judgs and acknowledgs). Equinox ◑ 23:07, 7 January 2012 (UTC) acknowledg would find ready attestation at google books:"acknowledg". A search for judg yields many hits for the abbreviation of the book of the Old Testament. But Locke's Of Human Understanding has the verb abundantly and I think that would be a well-known work. DCDuring TALK 02:29, 8 January 2012 (UTC) [edit] pronounce Do you really pronounce pronounce /pɹəˈnæwns/? Should that /w/ be there for a start? 81.142.107.230 10:35, 10 January 2012 (UTC) I do, which is why I added that transcription to the entry. I see it's now bene changed to use /aʊ/ instead. Is that a British thing? I really do think Americans have an /æ/ in there, not an /a/.​—msh210℠ (talk) 16:44, 10 January 2012 (UTC) I pronounce it /pɹəˈnaʊns/. —Stephen (Talk) 16:54, 10 January 2012 (UTC) I think in most varieties of both General American and RP the starting point is closer to [a] (not [ɑ]!) than to [æ]. At any rate, it's a custom of long standing to transcribe the mouth vowel as /aʊ/ in broad transcriptions (which is what we want here) of both GenAm and RP. Whether we transcribe the end of the diphthong as /w/ or /ʊ/ is much of a muchness; /ʊ/ is more customary in IPA-based transcriptions, while /w/ is more customary in Americanist transcriptions. Our {{IPA}} links to w:International Phonetic Alphabet chart for English dialects, which uses /aʊ/. Our own WT:ENPRONKEY also uses /aʊ/, though why {{IPA}} doesn't link there, I cannot fathom. —Angr 18:02, 10 January 2012 (UTC) I pronounce it closer to [æʊ] or even [ɛʊ]... —CodeCat 18:13, 10 January 2012 (UTC) Yeah well, you're Dutch. ;-) —Angr 18:20, 10 January 2012 (UTC) *points to the native English speaker tag on her profile page* I was raised speaking Dublin English! —CodeCat 18:21, 10 January 2012 (UTC) I've been to Dublin. Frankly, Dutch is easier to understand than Dublin English, and I don't even know Dutch! But I suppose in Dublin, your Netherlandic tendency to change th into t or d won't be particularly noticeable. (I once bought something in Dublin for £3.30 and was told "Dat'll be tree turrty.") —Angr 18:31, 10 January 2012 (UTC) But I don't have any Netherlandic tendencies, I still speak Dublin English with my family. You're right dough, I do dat... —CodeCat 20:59, 10 January 2012 (UTC) I actually only edited it so the IPA matched the rhyme, I dunno what the 'correct' IPA is. Mglovesfun (talk) 10:08, 11 January 2012 (UTC) However msh210, I seem to think we've been here before with dominoes. I mean, I couldn't say /ow/ if I wanted to; is your accent just a bit unusual? I think it would be best to avoid rare pronunciations as otherwise we would have literally dozens of pronunciations in some entries. Mglovesfun (talk) 11:46, 12 January 2012 (UTC) I don't think he's indicating a rare pronunciation; he's using an alternative transcription of a common pronunciation. Transcribing the vowel of pronounce as [æw] isn't wrong and doesn't indicate some minority pronunciation, it's just another way of transcribing exactly the same sound as [aʊ] indicates. But [aʊ] is the more usual transcription in IPA--very few print dictionaries and phonetics textbooks that use IPA will use anything other than [aʊ], and Wiktionary should use it too. —Angr 12:33, 12 January 2012 (UTC) I've been wondering about that some time ago. /aʊ̯/ is used for German <au>. While my dialect pronounces German /au/ as [ɒʊ̯], I am constantly exposed to the German pron. [aʊ̯] through school, university and media. It does sound very much like -ou- in pronounce. It does however not sound like English /au/ in thousand, which always and in every dialect sounded more like /θäo̯zə̯nd/ to me. Are those two really the same? Because no German pronounces Haus like any English-speaking person I've ever heard in my life ever pronounced house. Ever. Dakhart 17:12, 12 January 2012 (UTC) Apart from the fact that the ou in pronounce is nasalized, I don't hear a difference between the ou in pronounce and the ou in thousand. It's true that Haus and house sound very different, but that's a matter of precise phonetic realization, which isn't within the scope of a dictionary's pronunciation guide. The fact that German /aʊ/ and English /aʊ/ don't sound the same doesn't mean it's wrong to transcribe them the same way when your goal is a broad phonetic transcription. German /iː/ as in Miete and English /iː/ as in meet don't sound the same either, but we use the same transcription for both. (In a phonetics paper where the difference between the two sounds is the topic of discussion, of course two separate transcriptions would have to be found.) —Angr 17:22, 12 January 2012 (UTC) I think we should provide both a broad and a narrow transcription, when possible. A narrow transcription can help aid in the exact pronunciation especially when there's no audio. —CodeCat 18:25, 12 January 2012 (UTC) ... but we'd need dozens of different "narrow transcriptions" and lots of new symbols if we were to precisely represent every possible variant. Most readers struggle with simple standard IPA. ... also, could Dakhart please explain how German Haus differs from my northern English house? I've always heard them as homophones. Dbfirs 17:08, 4 February 2012 (UTC) [edit] Ree (Latin) In response to the Latin form, double e is very unlikely (as vocative of reus). Is this backed up by any other dictionaries (mine doesn't say)? Might it form a vocative singular like deus instead?Metaknowledge 16:05, 13 January 2012 (UTC) See [16] SemperBlotto 16:12, 13 January 2012 (UTC) [edit] pedalomotor I have no idea what this word means, or even that it existed once. I found it in this book: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/38540/38540-h/38540-h.htm#Page_202 Is it a bycycle, or something else? 76.117.247.55 03:07, 14 January 2012 (UTC) It seems to be only in that one book. A few lines later, it is referred to as a "pedalmobile". Equinox ◑ 02:37, 16 January 2012 (UTC) Listed as an alt spelling of at large. Is this real? It would be non-standard (at best! — IMHO wrong) to say "the criminal is at-large", but perhaps you could talk about an "at-large criminal" (?). Equinox ◑ 02:36, 16 January 2012 (UTC) As you know, in English you hyphenate an adjective placed before a noun if it contains spaces, like a book out of print vs. an out-of-print book, and coding from scratch vs. from-scratch coding. Don't they have different stresses, by the way? — TAKASUGI Shinji (talk) 10:38, 17 January 2012 (UTC) [edit] Ego Eris, correct standalone I'm not sure if I'm doing this correctly. I'll be finding out the hard way, I suppose. In the phrase "Tu fui ego eris" are the parts of the phrase grammatically able to stand alone? Is "Tu fui" grammatically sound? Then is "Ego eris" able to stand alone as well? Looking at the words individually in their tenses all seems correct, but I wanted to be sure. Many thanks for any information. Monica Neither its parts nor its whole would be grammatically correct. It's like saying "tu suis, je seras" in French (using present rather than past for illustration), deliberately misconjugating être in the wrong person to suggest "I [you]-are, you [I]-will-be". ~ Robin 10:21, 18 January 2012 (UTC) [edit] paucity Paucity is defined in Wikipedia as few in number. This is inaccurate. Specifically the meaning is "not enough". This is a critical distinction. A person may not have very much money but they may be considered as having enough and therefore are not paupers.—This unsigned comment was added by 69.223.193.199 (talk • contribs). I have adjusted the definition. You could have done so yourself. SemperBlotto 15:44, 19 January 2012 (UTC) This is a colloquial or humorous variation of the imperative of 'help' that's pretty common on the internet. I'm quite sure it would meet CFI, but what is it exactly? Is it a misspelling (but it's intentional), is it an alternative form? —CodeCat 14:40, 20 January 2012 (UTC) How about {{nonstandard|humorous}}? Mglovesfun (talk) 10:45, 22 January 2012 (UTC) That particular template application appears to work perfectly for this entry. ;) -- Cirt (talk) 23:29, 13 February 2012 (UTC) Halp is also the archaic spelling of the noun help and the archaic strong past tense help, halp, (ge)holp(en). --AnWulf ... Ferþu Hal! 16:21, 17 February 2012 (UTC) [edit] Devoicing next to voiceless cons. There is a phenomenon in German and Polish, similar to Terminal Devoicing, where a voiced consonant becomes voiceless when preceded by a voiceless consonant. (Sucht = /zuxt/, Streitsucht = /ʃtraitsuxt/) What's it called?Dakhart 21:13, 20 January 2012 (UTC) I think it's called voicing assimilation, and it happens in many languages, not just those with terminal devoicing. For example, Latin scribo has the participle scriptus. English has leaves /liːvz/ but sleeps /sliːps/. It doesn't always work the same in every language though or even the same in one single language, for example the equivalent Dutch words are strijd /strɛi̯t/ and zucht /zʏxt/ but the combination can be either /strɛi̯dzʏxt/ or /strɛi̯tsʏxt/ depending on the speaker. —CodeCat 21:50, 20 January 2012 (UTC) [edit] xtal/XTAL We have an entry for the abbreviation xtal but I'm used to seeing it XTAL. What should be placed at XTAL? RJFJR 23:41, 21 January 2012 (UTC) There is no good reason for capitalising "xtal" (no good reason to abbreviate either, but that's another story). When seen capitalised, it is usually in electronic parts lists, which tend to captitalise everything not nailed down anyway. SpinningSpark 22:29, 22 January 2012 (UTC) [edit] (colloq. Japan) What does "(colloq. Japan)" mean in the current version of ronin? --Daniel 14:25, 22 January 2012 (UTC) colloq is short for colloquial. How does it look now? We need citations for this def in English. I know it's totally valid in Japanese. Jamesjiao → T ◊ C 01:25, 3 February 2012 (UTC) There appears to be a fairly widespread Internet phenomenon of applauding particularly clever comments by responding with pluses, usually with two together. I imagine such a thing would be nearly impossible to document in a CFI-worthy fashion, but it still seems to me to be a clearly widespread use. Any thoughts on that? Cheers! bd2412 T 16:23, 22 January 2012 (UTC) I would think + would be enough, other iterations would then become SoP as + + + (yeah I know, it looks pretty funny) -- Liliana • 20:20, 26 January 2012 (UTC) But it might very easily be derived from the ++ used in programming languages to increment, or add one, i.e. a geeky way to say "me too". Equinox ◑ 20:27, 26 January 2012 (UTC) I think the preponderance (at least in my experience) of pluses coming in pairs suggests that Equinox's theory is the more likely explanation. How do we search for citations for something like this? bd2412 T 14:26, 27 January 2012 (UTC) Dunno. Try Usenet, perhaps? -- Liliana • 17:32, 27 January 2012 (UTC) Right, but how? How do you search Usenet for ++? —RuakhTALK 15:25, 29 January 2012 (UTC) Perhaps subscribe to a newsserver for a few weeks and then search around a bit? -- Liliana • 16:01, 29 January 2012 (UTC) I read Usenet more or less regularly, so if you have a particular newsgroup in mind, I could subscribe for a month and then search the downloaded text. The ones I read are a little too old-fashioned to use this ++ notation. Equinox ◑ 00:20, 30 January 2012 (UTC) I'm suspicious of the plural forms. In English (paganism), it varies, but isn't it always uncountable in Latin? Metaknowledge 22:56, 23 January 2012 (UTC) I have no answer to your question, but would like to point out that Paganismus is one German translation of paganism. Cheers! bd2412 T 05:35, 24 January 2012 (UTC) [edit] Ravel==unravel, is there a name for this? I was watching an episode of "The Big Bang Theory" where a character uses the pseudo-word "un-unravelable" to mean something like a mystery that can't be solved. So, I wondered if "ravelable" was a word, checked here, and was surprised to see that definition #1 of ravel is unravel. So, I wonder if there is a term for this situation that can be added at the definitions of ravel and unravel? Cheers. Haus 02:40, 24 January 2012 (UTC) Sadly, there is but one cite for un-unravelable, but I shall add it to Citations:un-unravelable and hope that more shall poke up at some point.--Prosfilaes 08:16, 24 January 2012 (UTC) Thanks for the response. I see that my question was probably unclear - let me try again. Is there a name for the situation where un-word means the same as word? Thanks! Haus 02:48, 25 January 2012 (UTC) I don't know what the word for the phenomenon is, but another facet is that "ravel" itself means both "untangle" and "tangle", which makes "ravel" an auto-antonym, contronym or antagonym. That doesn't describe its relationship to "unravel", but I would guess most words that are synonymous with unwords are probably also their own auto-antonyms. Another example of the phenomenon is "unthaw" (meaning both "freeze" and "unfreeze") and "thaw" (also meaning "unfreeze"). Phol 08:14, 25 January 2012 (UTC) It's related to the contranym but I'm not sure what they're called. Other examples are debone and bone, regardless and irregardless, flammable and inflammable. DAVilla 03:33, 28 January 2012 (UTC) Interchangeable pairs, or pseudantonyms. Other pairs are flammable/inflammable; regardless/irregardless; caregiver/caretaker; restive/restless; iterate/reiterate; candescent/incandescent; loosen/unloosen. —Stephen (Talk) 04:17, 28 January 2012 (UTC) Wiktionary currently has two senses relating to women: 3. A young (especially attractive) woman. Three cool chicks / Are walking down the street / Swinging their hips 4. A woman. Check that chick out. I wonder about the following: Do we need two senses? (Dictionaries often have only one sense relating to women.) Age Is being young a necessary condition for a chick as a woman? Is being young an "especially" condition for a chick as a woman? Is being young a condition at all for a chick as a woman? Attractiveness Is attractiveness a necessary condition for a chick as a woman? Is attractiveness an "especially" condition for a chick as a woman? Is attractiveness a condition at all for a chick as a woman? See also chick at OneLook Dictionary Search. I am interested in informal perceptions of native speakers, and, formally, in attesting quotations. --Dan Polansky 09:55, 24 January 2012 (UTC) My informal perception as a native speaker is that young is an "especially" condition for a chick as a woman, but not an absolutely necessary one. Attractiveness is not a condition at all for a chick as a woman--I myself have been known to refer to women as "chicks", but for me the properties "woman" and "attractive" are mutually exclusive. —Angr 10:11, 24 January 2012 (UTC) I agree. Chick is a slang term for a woman, particularly a young women. As for attractiveness, however, Google Books returns 500+ hits for "ugly chick". bd2412 T 20:09, 24 January 2012 (UTC) I'd say they are a single sense, but it needs to be broadly worded to include what bd2412 says, which is almost exactly what I was going to say. Mglovesfun (talk) 21:18, 24 January 2012 (UTC) Can someone research this and/or flag the entry? I've added an note on the discussion page, but have some doubts that this is an accepted word...?? About the only authoritative place I've found it is here! Samatva 19:22, 24 January 2012 (UTC) It's okay. Valid citations are easy to find. For example, this one. —Stephen (Talk) 00:01, 25 January 2012 (UTC) Yes, it's certainly an accepted word. Good source cited above by Stephen G. Brown (talk • contribs). -- Cirt (talk) 23:28, 13 February 2012 (UTC) [edit] Places for language-specific discussions Is there a place where aspects particular to a single language can be discussed? I was thinking maybe the 'WT:About' page for that language, but is that common practice? —CodeCat 21:48, 24 January 2012 (UTC) I think so. --Yair rand 22:52, 24 January 2012 (UTC) The "WT:About" pages are to discuss how we treat languages. (what are the templates, POS headers, definitions, romanizations, etc.) I'd use the Information desk for linguistic questions like "WTF is the difference between 'tu' and 'você' in Portuguese anyway?" or "How is the order of words in this Egyptian Arabic phrase?" --Daniel 08:30, 25 January 2012 (UTC) But for consensus-building discussions about a single language? —CodeCat 11:30, 25 January 2012 (UTC) Wiktionary talk:About Languagename.​—msh210℠ (talk) 19:16, 25 January 2012 (UTC) [edit] be be a form of be! In a sentence like "I try not to offend them: I be polite, I take off my shoes when entering their house, etc", what form of "be" am I using? The infinitive? A conjunctive/subjunctive form? I am aware that I could also say "I am polite", but isn't "I be polite" also grammatical, if literary? What form am I using in the sentence "I'll make you a deal: I be nice to your friend John, you be nice to my friend Jane"? Phol 07:54, 25 January 2012 (UTC) You be nice is imperative. I be polite is, I believe, an antiquated form of the present indicative. —Stephen (Talk) 09:31, 25 January 2012 (UTC) That use of be is part of AAVE. Some linguists who study the dialect assert that it is usually used to indicate a habitual or characteristic or, at least, continuing state or condition. Superficially, it seems to me to be used to cover more tenses, aspects, and moods than that. DCDuring TALK 15:04, 25 January 2012 (UTC) It's not just AAVE. It's relatively rare, but I remember noticing it in a preview for Bratz: The Movie; one of the lead characters asks, "What do we do?" and another replies, "We be ourselves." (N.B. I don't know if this exchange occurred in the actual movie; previews are not always accurate.) I think everyone can agree that "We are ourselves" would not have worked (though I'm sure that many speakers will find that even "We be ourselves" will not work for them). As for what form — I think it's just a regular old non-third-person-singular present indicative form, but of a certain, defective sense of be. ("Defective" in that it doesn't have a complete conjugation; I'm fine with "We be ourselves", but I would not be fine with "So what did you do?" ?"I be'd myself!". Some speakers, however, do accept "be's" and "be'd", so for them I guess the conjugation isn't defective.) CGEL, by the way, refers to this sense of be as "lexical be", giving the example of "Why don't you be more tolerant?"[17] —RuakhTALK 15:23, 25 January 2012 (UTC) This work has be's as an inflected form sometimes occurring in the corpus used. OTOH, be'd seems much rarer. DCDuring TALK 17:24, 25 January 2012 (UTC) Sorry, I think we need to backtrack a bit. Above, I wrote, "It's not just AAVE"; but really what I should have written was, "it's not AAVE at all". I disagree with your statement above, "That use of be is part of AAVE." There is a use of "be" that is part of AAVE, but Phol is (I believe) asking about a different use. My comment was about the use that (s)he is asking about. So the book that you link to, with its AAVE quotations that use be's, is not relevant to my comment. —RuakhTALK 18:23, 25 January 2012 (UTC) See under Observations. —Stephen (Talk) 18:32, 25 January 2012 (UTC) All these non-subjunctive senses might well be archaisms reflecting the Old English dual conjugation of the copula, see beon-wesan. In fact, ic bēo(m), þū bist, hē/hēo/it biþ, wē/gē/hī bēoþ, which would then be continued more or less directly in I be, thou beest, he/she/it be, we/ye/they be (which is also found as the general paradigm dialectally), do seem to have had a habitual sense originally. Note that AAVE can very well continue dialectal/archaic features conveyed through Southern American English dialects. Fascinating stuff. --Florian Blaschke 19:43, 25 January 2012 (UTC) @Stephen G. Brown: Yeah, that may be what Phol has in mind; I wouldn't have thought so, except that (s)he describes it as "literary", which is a fair description of that use, and not a fair description of the use that I mentioned. —RuakhTALK 19:44, 25 January 2012 (UTC) Thinking over it again, the usage that Phol describes (and you, Ruakh, too, in your movie example) may rather be something else than an archaism – just an infinitive with a pronoun prepended: "What do we do?" – "We? Be ourselves." or "We, be ourselves." Though this might eventually have been supported by the archaic or (also) AAVE usage. --Florian Blaschke 19:59, 25 January 2012 (UTC) Re "What do we do? ―We be ourselves", is that because there's an elided "do" in there ("We [do] be ourselves"), copied over from the question? Does the answer to that question make any difference?​—msh210℠ (talk) 22:01, 25 January 2012 (UTC) This source characterizes non-imperative "do be" as part of Irish English and not part of Standard English, the latter being in accord with my ear. There are a few things you can't quite say without it. "So what do we do? Do we be ourselves?" Definitely cannot use "are" here. Equinox ◑ 20:25, 26 January 2012 (UTC) I would be nice to know more about the context of the usages Phol has offered for discussion. DCDuring TALK 22:27, 25 January 2012 (UTC) sorry, i've just been following this discussion rather interestedly. Perhaps this is actually a (rare) example of a first-person plural imperative being attested in English? Piddle 05:14, 26 January 2012 (UTC) CGEL's "lexical be" seems like a simple infinitive to me, at least in the example given. Phol 06:52, 26 January 2012 (UTC) No, sorry, you misunderstand me. CGEL's "lexical be" is not a form, but a sense. Like, the word "child" has one sense where it means "young human" (as in "hundreds of children attend the school") and one sense where it means "a human's offspring" (as in "all of her children are in their thirties"). In the example sentence, "Why don't you be more tolerant?", the form is the infinitive, but the sense is the so-called "lexical be". —RuakhTALK 14:47, 26 January 2012 (UTC) Ah, gotcha. Phol 21:12, 26 January 2012 (UTC) So would a good definition be "To exist or behave in the manner specified" with a usage note about how it differs from the usual be?​—msh210℠ (talk) 22:01, 26 January 2012 (UTC) Ah, now I gotcha (I hope); it is easier to handle this as a sense (with its own conjugated forms), rather than as a conjugated form. [[Hang]] might be a model for how to explain the differing conjugations of the different senses. Phol 00:30, 27 January 2012 (UTC) I can't be sure it's the same form, because I'm not sure what the form is, but I think "what do we do? we be ourselves" is great example of the form I'm thinking of. An alternate indicative rather than a subjunctive seems like a good explanation. In fact, I would guess that Ruakh's defective conjugation of "be" is Stephen's archaic conjugation, which just lost a few forms as it made its way into the modern era. (It's not missing past tense forms for me; I'd say "what did I do? I was myself"; but I am missing a third person singular indicative.) The difference between the conjugations for me is that "I be" connotes doing, whereas "I am" is static. "I am polite to them" means I am unremarkably showing them the politeness I generally show everyone (and note this as I list everything that should lead to them not being offended), whereas "I be polite to them" emphasizes that I show them politeness (even when they test me with rudeness, or even when my politeness is not sincere). Hence I wrote "I be" in an e-mail, but then I questioned the grammar. (And FWIW I would say "We're in Japan! What do we do? We be ourselves.") Re: my second, hypothetical example: I suppose whether "I'll make you a deal: I be nice to John, you be nice to Jane" is subjunctive or imperative depends on whether it's truly an offer or a demand. Phol 06:52, 26 January 2012 (UTC) Re: "'I be' connotes doing, whereas 'I am' is static": Yes, exactly: "I be polite" is a lexical be, whereas "I am polite" is a regular copula be. —RuakhTALK 14:47, 26 January 2012 (UTC) So, how's this for a usage note? (Maybe we should have a giant collapsible table of forms like rechercher#Conjugation.) Phol 21:12, 26 January 2012 (UTC) In the case of I'll make you a deal: I be nice to your friend John, you be nice to my friend Jane? ... That's a subjunctive form. Fee, fie, fo, fum / I smell the blood of an Englishman; / Be he alive or be he dead, / I'll grind his bones to make my bread. (Jack and the Beanstalk) --AnWulf ... Ferþu Hal! 15:29, 17 February 2012 (UTC) [edit] Irish sí and English sidhe Isn't sidhe/Sidhe simply borrowed from the pre-reform spelling sídhe/Sídhe of sí? Both words mean "(of the) fairy-mound", and seem to be pronounced identically; however, the pages note no connection, and sí lacks an etymology. Note that the pages sídhe and Sídhe have been deleted for unclear reasons. Also note Scottish Gaelic sìdh, sluagh sìdhe, bean-shìdh and the like. More precisely, I think the derivation is (and MacBain agrees): Proto-Celtic (Nom. Sg.) *sīdos, (Gen. Sg.) *sīdesos (a neuter s-stem) 'seat' > Old Irish síd, síde (neuter, I think) 'fairy dwelling/hill/mound' > Modern Irish sídh, sídhe (modern spelling: sí, sí) and Scottish Gaelic sìdh, sìdhe, with the genitive abstracted from set phrases such as fir síde, daoine síde and áes síde already in Old Irish as síde 'fairies', from whence Modern Irish sídh ~ sígh (modern spelling: sí) 'fairy', Scottish Gaelic sìdh ~ sìth. Proto-Celtic *sīdos is apparently also the origin of Old Irish síd 'peace' and its modern descendants. A mailing list post suggests that the ambiguity could be employed in Old Irish deliberately, to interpret the Áes Síde as 'people of the peace'. --Florian Blaschke 20:44, 25 January 2012 (UTC) Has anyone else heard of judgment of Solomon to mean 'really good judgment'? It's one of those things where I say it, and I'm not sure if anyone else does. Compare patience of Job. Mglovesfun (talk) 22:41, 25 January 2012 (UTC) I'm familiar with wisdom of Solomon. I'm not sure it's idiomatic.​—msh210℠ (talk) 20:13, 26 January 2012 (UTC) I've heard it in connection of decisions that appear to be impossible to make. "It will take the judgement of Solomon to make a fair settlement in this divorce". SpinningSpark 22:16, 26 January 2012 (UTC) I've had a go. feel free to improve. SemperBlotto 22:22, 26 January 2012 (UTC) Daniel come to judgement is similar. In the case of Solomon, the famous judgement seems to be the one about cutting a baby in half to appease two woman claiming to be its mother. (The one who refused to have this done was the real mother.) Equinox ◑ 21:27, 29 January 2012 (UTC) Yes, I'd have to agree I've certainly heard it used in that fashion. -- Cirt (talk) 23:24, 13 February 2012 (UTC) In German, we rather use salomonisches Urteil, i. e. "Solomonic judgment", and it seems that variant is in use in English, as well. A salomonisches Urteil is a wise judgment that satisfies all involved sides. Apparently the German sense is different from the English (and from the original story), or simply more general. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 22:33, 2 March 2012 (UTC) The noun meaning of batshit is given as "alternative spelling of bat shit", but bat shit redirects batshit leaving no definition at all. Also, this does not have a plural, surely. SpinningSpark 22:36, 26 January 2012 (UTC) Fixed. Jamesjiao → T ◊ C 22:43, 26 January 2012 (UTC) The etymology is simply fascinating! -- Cirt (talk) 23:20, 13 February 2012 (UTC) In the entry for weaker vessel there's this quote: 1868, Louisa May Alcott, Little Women, ch. 41: When women are the advisers, the lords of creation don't take the advice till they have persuaded themselves that it is just what they intended to do. Then they act upon it, and, if it succeeds, they give the weaker vessel half the credit of it. If it fails, they generously give her the whole. Does "lord of creation" refer to men? If so, is it a common enough usage to merit an entry? I searched Google for this term, but found little evidence, but perhaps it's dated. Capitalized it seems to refer to God. In Finnish there's the expression luomakunnan kruunu ("crown of the creation"), which refers to men, and I would want to find a proper translation for it. "Men" will do, of course, but I want something that catches the spirit. --Hekaheka 05:51, 27 January 2012 (UTC) I'm not familiar with that phrase in lowercase referring to mortal men, either. But I suppose patriarchal Judeochristians may hold a doctrine that Yahweh created Adam in his image to be lord over Yahweh's creation. ~ Robin 06:57, 27 January 2012 (UTC) Plenty of bgc hits in the plural. I'm not sure if it means men, though, or has some other meaning with men as the most common referent.​—msh210℠ (talk) 15:55, 27 January 2012 (UTC) Could someone not previously involved in editing this entry please check it over and make sure it conforms to this project's policies, please? Definition 2 seems particularly gratuitous. --Anthonyhcole 14:31, 28 January 2012 (UTC) Note: Admin CodeCat (talk • contribs) has dutifully explained matters pertaining to site policy at the talk page for the entry, and admin Robin Lionheart (talk • contribs) has been quite helpful with adding additional sourcing and referencing for the page, both at its main definition page with quotes, and at the citations page with additional referencing. -- Cirt (talk) 16:14, 28 January 2012 (UTC) Definition one is absolutely solid. Definition 2 is a bit more precarious, and I will be happier when we get more printed citations and fewer usenet ones. But it still looks like it passes CFI. (Arguably, the two could be combined without much loss.) Ƿidsiþ 08:45, 29 January 2012 (UTC) I made this edit to the etymology to correct some POV. The wording "equated homosexuality with bestiality" was particularly nebulous IMO. Equated in what way? You could read that as "he said that homosexuality was equally as bad as bestiality" whereas his opinion was really that bestiality is another thing that a "healthy family" is not. It was enough to say that his views were "perceived as anti-gay" in the spirit of NPOV. Although even for NPOV it wouldn't be a too much of a stretch to say that they were anti-gay, someone might take exception to that and WT:NPOV does say "It's OK to state opinions in articles, but they must be presented as opinions, not as fact." —Internoob 03:56, 4 February 2012 (UTC) Update: Admin Robin Lionheart (talk • contribs) created a Citations page for this entry, at Citations:santorum. Cheers, -- Cirt (talk) 04:04, 4 February 2012 (UTC) I just realised we copied the definition verbatim from spreadingsantorum.com and several other sources. Isn't that a copyright violation? Shouldn't we reword the definition? —CodeCat 21:11, 6 March 2012 (UTC) If it originated at spreadingsantorum, I wouldn't worry, since that site's name (and the fact that the definition is its entire contents) makes it clear that it wants people to share and distribute the definition. I wouldn't even be surprised if such a site was using our definition — perhaps cause and effect are reversed here? If it comes from somewhere else then we should think about it more. Equinox ◑ 21:14, 6 March 2012 (UTC) This Italian word is defined as meaning morphosis, which doesn't appear to be an English word at all. Is morphosis a word that needs to be added, or is morfosi bogus/unclear/otherwise problematic? Metaknowledge 23:45, 28 January 2012 (UTC) Added English word. I know we have nearly three million words, but there are just as many that we haven't got yet. SemperBlotto 08:40, 29 January 2012 (UTC) How come this is defined as an alternate form of gelatine? In my experience, it is exactly the opposite. Can we switch these two? Metaknowledge 21:00, 29 January 2012 (UTC) The label of "alternative form" does not mean "lesser" or less common. It means that the spelling is an alternative, and the difference may be regional. --EncycloPetey 21:13, 29 January 2012 (UTC) It's probably a US/UK variation. In these cases our normal policy is - whoever bothers to actually add the word gets to choose which is the primary form and which is the alternative. It is considered impolite to swap them around later. SemperBlotto 21:17, 29 January 2012 (UTC) What about a case such as this in which gelatin is 75 times more common than gelatine in the US and just one-third as common in the UK (based on COCA and BNC)? And generally are evidence-based changes rude? DCDuring TALK 23:07, 29 January 2012 (UTC) Interesting. I suppose we could use ((mostly|UK)) and ((mostly|US)). IMO, in general, if one form is significantly more common than another, and without large variation between major Englishes, we should put the main content at the common form and have others link to it. But (i) ideally those "links" should probably be drawing in the content from the main entry, rather than forcing us to click again, and (ii) the commonness of forms is definitely variable across the time dimension. Equinox ◑ 23:19, 29 January 2012 (UTC) I have a package of "Gelatine" which clarifies itself by saying "Ingredients: Gelatin" :P - -sche (discuss) 00:44, 30 January 2012 (UTC) The other ingredient is an E number. Equinox ◑ 00:46, 30 January 2012 (UTC) @ -sche on my packet of ibuprofen it says "do not take if allergic to ibuprofen". Mglovesfun (talk) 12:26, 2 February 2012 (UTC) Can someone write a real definition for it? The current one isn't very helpful. — Jeraphine Gryphon 10:11, 2 February 2012 (UTC) I agree; LART needs work too, if attested, in both cases. Mglovesfun (talk) 12:27, 2 February 2012 (UTC) Good now? (Both entries.) Incidentally, for future reference, you can use [[WT:RFC]] for issues like this.​—msh210℠ (talk) 21:13, 2 February 2012 (UTC) I'd say both entries look pretty understandably worded right now, good work. ;) -- Cirt (talk) 23:18, 13 February 2012 (UTC) I think there's at least a phonetics sense missing here, which might possibly even make contour tone SoP. -- Liliana • 00:56, 4 February 2012 (UTC) Added it. Ungoliant MMDCCLXIV 01:35, 4 February 2012 (UTC) This does not seem like a real word after a quick Google search. Attestation, anyone? Metaknowledge 02:33, 4 February 2012 (UTC) Striking as an RFV has been started. Equinox ◑ 13:10, 5 February 2012 (UTC) [edit] upstate I seem to remember occasionally hearing the word "upstate" used in a euphemism for killing an animal (like put out to pasture... hmmm... the entry doesn't mention that meaning, either). On 1/31, Colbert's "The Word" had a screen suggesting that the Arapaho people were "Sent to a Reservation 'Upstate'". Does anyone know more about such uses of "upstate"? Rl 10:02, 4 February 2012 (UTC) "third person dual pronoun." From User:Shoof, who IMO has done quite a few strange/non-standard entries. I would like to know if this is either non-standard (versus "those two", "the two of them") or NISoP. Equinox ◑ 20:04, 4 February 2012 (UTC) they two sounds alien. I've never seen it or heard it before. If I encountered it, I would think they were saying "they too". —Stephen (Talk) 20:34, 4 February 2012 (UTC) you two failed RFD, so I would guess this is also SOP. - -sche (discuss) 20:56, 4 February 2012 (UTC) I would have supported keeping "you two." I'd note that "us two" also doesn't sound horrible, and I've heard it used before, though "the two of us" or "both of us" sounds better. With "them two," you've got not only "two of them" and "both of them" but "those two" as well, yet I can still see it working. On the other hand the term in question: "they two" definitely sounds weird. --Quintucket 21:39, 4 February 2012 (UTC) I agree with the misgivings. It seems rare, at best, though it looks like it might be used ocaasionally to translate certain pronouns (Arabic & Tok Pisin?) - which consideration should be ignored. See [18].— Pingkudimmi 23:31, 4 February 2012 (UTC) Dual seems wrong as English, to the best of my knowledge, has never had a dual. Mglovesfun (talk) 12:04, 7 February 2012 (UTC) Old English had dual forms for we (wit) and you (ġit). I second what Quintucket said. You two is very common, at least in my region, ... as is us two and them two ... I'v even heard we two tho us two is more common. An aside here ... When you admin folks delete an entry please put something more than failed RFD ... that tells the reader absolutely nothing!. Either provide a link to the RFD discussion or provide a one or two sentence comment. Forwhy you two failed, I don't know. But it couldn't hav been for the lack of cites. Byspels of its usage are many. ... Back on topic, they two can be found in a few versions of the Bible: Matthew 19:5: And said, For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they two shall be one flesh? Mark 10:8 And they two shall be one flesh: so then they are no more two, but one flesh. or noting twain: And they twain shall be one flesh: so then they are no more twain, but one flesh. --AnWulf ... Ferþu Hal! 15:26, 17 February 2012 (UTC) In the expressions discussed so far, the first word is a determiner functioning as a specifier (or a determinative functioning as a determiner, in CGEL terminology), and the second word, the number, is a noun functioning as the head of the NP. As a determiner, they is likely archaic or at best regional, but it's essentially the same as other determiners like you, these, another, and every. It's strictly SOP. Ezekiel 1:8 And they had the hands of a man under their wings on their four sides; and they four had their faces and their wings. --Brett 01:06, 18 February 2012 (UTC) So now subject pronouns are determiners? I don't know if calling this a dual is the right meaning but it's an unusual use and more than the some of its parts. In fact, I ween that it's seld-seen usage argues that it isn't normal and deserves some type of comment. Some SOPers hav an unreasonable dislike of two-word terms. I'm sure that full time would hav been dismissed as SOP but yet now we hav full-time and fulltime. For this, I'm guessing that it is more of stilted translation (or mistranslation) of the original Greek or Hebrew (in the case of Ezekiel). Both Classical Greek and Hebrew had duals. I say it feels stilted because the more natural "duals" in English note the objectiv form of the pronoun ... OE often has pronouns in the dativ case where we now hav subject pronouns which may explain why "them two" and "us two" are common whereas "they two" seems mostly found in the Bible or references to the Bible. So maybe the meaning should be something like "a calque sometimes used in Bible translations for Greek and Hebrew duals" (assuming that is the origin of them) and marked nonstandard. --AnWulf ... Ferþu Hal! 17:05, 18 February 2012 (UTC) The original Greek for Matthew 19:5 is "οἱ δύο" ("the two"), with a plural- not dual- article. Classical Greek had the dual, but it was pretty much lost well before Koine arose. I believe δύο could be technically construed as dual, but the fact that it takes a plural article here argues against any influence on the translation. Chuck Entz 17:47, 18 February 2012 (UTC) Not all pronouns have a second life as determiners, just you, we, and us, as in you people are good or it's different for us players.--Brett 20:23, 18 February 2012 (UTC) @AnWulf: It's true that Hebrew has a dual, but it's very limited, and there are no dual pronouns. Brett's Ezekiel quotation uses they four to translate Hebrew אַרְבַּעְתָּם (arba'tám), which is an inflected form of ארבע (árba, "four"); the narrowest translation would probably be "the four of them". —RuakhTALK 21:17, 18 February 2012 (UTC) I found a translation of Beowulf with they two in the section header and they twain in the body. I looked at the OE and I would hav a written they both. They twain or they two is more skaldic so I think what we hav here is poetic license even in the Bible version. So rather than calling it a 3rd person dual. Change it to: (poetic) they both ... Then if someone looks it up (huru an outlander), they'll understand that it isn't some usage that they can throw out in everyday speech. --AnWulf ... Ferþu Hal! 23:14, 18 February 2012 (UTC) There's no need to call it anything. It's just a poetic/archaic/perhaps-regional use of determiner they where standard current English would expect the or those. It can be they two, they three, they four, they others, etc. There's nothing special about they two.--Brett 00:57, 19 February 2012 (UTC) I've added the determiner sense to they.--Brett 14:21, 19 February 2012 (UTC) They is a subject (nominative) pronoun. It is NOT a determiner any more than you is a determiner in you two. The byspels that you posted are poor grammar rather proper byspels of it being a determiner. Darn'd if they Cockney Chaps can zee there worn't nort but lie in him. Really? Would you also like to claim that worn't is a past tense of "to be"? It would be like posting you is and claiming that is is a valid 2nd person plural verb form and I could eathly find byspels of you is in books. Further, claiming it is a determiner could be befuddling. In "they both", the determiner is "both" not they. I am far from a prescriptist but even I have limits. I wouldn't call "they both" proper or even good English but I'll give it a pass as poetic since that is where it is mostly found. But then, I see that wiktionary has "they" as a possessive as well ... So what the heck! Call it anything you want. --AnWulf ... Ferþu Hal! (talk) Your comment is very confused. First of all, Brett explicitly wrote of "other determiners like you, these, another, and every", so your attempt to compare it to "you two" was preempted by the opposition. ;-)   Secondly — and much more importantly — this is nothing like claiming that is is a valid second-person plural verb form; it is only like claiming that is is sometimes used as a second-person plural verb form. —RuakhTALK 21:58, 5 March 2012 (UTC) The forms enthraling and enthraled seem very much obsolete, and rare. I get the impression that the usual inflections of this verb are enthralling and enthralled (just as the L can double in, say, travelling). Equinox ◑ 23:34, 4 February 2012 (UTC) Yes, the participle forms with the single ell don't exist in British English, and if American English always uses "enthrall", then the single ell form for the participles must be a mis-spelling. I've changed the entry, and also removed the false impression that "enthrall" is not used in British English. I think the mistaken impression arises because British English removes an ell before -ment (as in enthralment, instalment, etc.), so some people assume, by back-formation, that the word enthrall has only one ell. The single ell version is not unknown, of course, and the OED includes it as an alternative spelling (with just two cites out of seventeen using the single ell, and those are from 1695 and 1720), but does not permit the single ell participles. My preference would be to have just "alternative spelling of", rather than a separate entry for the single ell version. I believe that Garner's modern American usage is wrong in its claim that "enthrall" is American and "enthral" is British. Search Google books for evidence, where both spelling are used on both sides of the pond. What does anyone else think? Dbfirs 08:09, 5 February 2012 (UTC) Agree with all you said. Just to add 2c .. I am of the informed opinion that when the stress of a word like this falls on the last syllable, the ell is normally doubled in British English, and in participle etc. formations in both UK/US English. Hence traveled in US and travelled in UK, but enthralled in both language pools. -- ALGRIF talk 12:30, 5 February 2012 (UTC) Do I have the correct part of speech for this? Metaknowledge 03:30, 5 February 2012 (UTC) I'd say it appears to be a preposition. —Quintucket 09:59, 5 February 2012 (UTC) I didn't know, so I just put it as an adverb because it seemed like a broader form of sic#Latin. Metaknowledge 16:41, 5 February 2012 (UTC) I'd say it appears to resemble, based on the definition give, the English preposition "like." ("You worked him like a dog.") —Quintucket 17:30, 5 February 2012 (UTC) Maybe I didn't define it well enough. If x is a noun, then Samoan: fa'a x can be translated to English: x-style. Metaknowledge 17:44, 5 February 2012 (UTC) I'm afraid I still don't understand. —Quintucket 18:00, 5 February 2012 (UTC) I think that in English we'd use the preposition like, or another preposition, for a word with that meaning — except that sometimes we'd use the noun style (appended, after a hyphen). In general, AFAIK, what POS something is isn't dependent only on its meaning, and doesn't necessarily translate from one language to another. You need to know Samoan to answer this question. (This is but one of the reasons people shouldn't add entries in languages they don't know.)​—msh210℠ (talk) 18:23, 5 February 2012 (UTC) I'm afraid that I am ignorant about many POS designations even within English, my native language. If there is a way I can help you tell which one this is by means of usage, let me know. Metaknowledge 03:02, 6 February 2012 (UTC) Can you give us some example sentences with word-for-word translations? I also suspect it's a preposition, but I need to see it in its native habitat to be sure. —Angr 11:14, 6 February 2012 (UTC) Common phrases using it include: fa'a Samoa ("Samoa-style", or "the way it is done in Samoa"), fa'a tama ("like a [male] child", usually translated as "tomboy"), fa'a fafine ("like a woman", referring to certain feminine men). "Fa'a Samoa" if treated as a single word would be an adverb or adjective, depending on usage, but "fa'a tama" and "fa'a fafine" usually function as nouns when each is taken as a single word.Metaknowledge 01:51, 8 February 2012 (UTC) It's almost certainly a preposition then, as it's always followed by a noun. The noun-like usages of fa'a tama and fa'a fafine are substantivized prepositional phrases. —Angr 11:12, 8 February 2012 (UTC) Changed it. Metaknowledge 05:08, 9 February 2012 (UTC) I Just noticed the subtle changes you made there, Meta. The spacing between fa'a and Samoa is entirely optional. In fact, more often than not, the two are written together with fa'a acting as a prefixed preposition to the name of the country/culture following it. Jamesjiao → T ◊ C 00:58, 10 February 2012 (UTC) As I understand it, fa'a is also somewhat like "to make" or "to do", with a multitude of senses. It's much more complex than this single construction. Chuck Entz 22:33, 17 February 2012 (UTC) It is an intensifying prefix (AFAIK) when not isolated, but as Jamesjiao pointed out, orthography can vary in this regard, and in many cases if fa'a were to be separated from the verb, it would take the form of "make" or "do" with the verb interpreted as a noun. I thought about making fa'a-, but the subjective decision of what a prefix is or isn't seems to be too much for me. --Μετάknowledgediscuss/deeds 22:56, 17 February 2012 (UTC) How sure are we that the translations given under "queen of beasts" mean "lioness" and not just "queen of beasts" ? Shadyaubergine 22:33, 6 February 2012 (UTC) They all are "Queen of Beasts". None of them contains any literal term for lion or lioness. Chuck Entz 21:41, 18 February 2012 (UTC) So, to win is to obtain a victory and victory is the state of having won a competition or battle. Is this a circular definition or not? --flyax 22:49, 6 February 2012 (UTC) I think we are missing a victory sense; the current one seems to be uncountable, and the one we are missing would be a synonym of win (noun: an individual victory). But I can't think of a definition which isn't circular. Ungoliant MMDCCLXIV 03:44, 7 February 2012 (UTC) The "SB rule of dictionary circularity" states that EVERY definition in EVERY dictionary is ultimately circular. They all define words in terms of other words whose definitions do the same. To avoid circularity you would need to start with a word (or words) that need no definition because they are self-evident. SemperBlotto 08:28, 7 February 2012 (UTC) Ultimately, yes. However there is a difference between a circle of 5 and a circle of 2 words. It seems we have here the latter. --flyax 11:56, 7 February 2012 (UTC) Even in American Sign Language, where it seems like things should be self-evident by pointing, only the numbers 1-5, you, I, and he/she are self-evident, and the latter three wouldn't be self-evident if you tried to used them to explain a spoken language. See w:Gavagai. That said, it's possible that these could be clearer. I'll think about it and y'all should too. —Quintucket 11:44, 7 February 2012 (UTC) I agree with SB about the ultimate impossibility of escaping circularity of definitions. Further, I think that in practice we are likely to have instance of circles of two. From a user perspective, it is probably satisfactory if at least one of the headwords in the circle has either, 1., a good set of usage examples in the appropriate sense or, 2., an ostensive definition, such as, 2a, an image or, 2b, another reference to one or more examples, such as the, 2bi, examples of rhetorical devices or, 2bii, the sound files. Still, checking to see how other dictionaries word their definitions wil;l almost always reveal an approach to, 3., rewording. DCDuring TALK 17:04, 7 February 2012 (UTC) Bingo. If, theoretically, we wanted to avoid circular definitions, DCDuring hits on the way we could do it: not self-evident words, per se, but words defined by pictures (and videos and sounds). Of course, it would be impractical to sort through our entries to be sure they were all noncircular, so let's not... but we could expand this' circle if we defined win as "to obtain success, to triumph" or such. - -sche (discuss) 18:12, 7 February 2012 (UTC) It's 3am and I'm tired so I'm not going to touch this one, but suffice to say the definitions are far from adequate. "Delete" is more than just "remove, get rid of, erase" - it is only used in written or computing contexts, for one. An example sentence wouldn't go astray either. Who can help? ---> Tooironic 15:50, 7 February 2012 (UTC) Can it also be a euphemism for kill/destroy? Is the computing sense correct, to hide? Mglovesfun (talk) 14:44, 9 February 2012 (UTC) I don't think so. It's true that "deleting" is often used in computing contexts to refer to actions that don't actually expunge something from existence (for example, "deleting" a file just unlinks it from the filesystem, but doesn't immediately affect the contents of the file; and "deleting" a bit of text doesn't mean that Ctrl-Z can't retrieve it), but I think that "delete" still means "delete", it's just that sometimes expunge-from-existence is an adequate abstraction even it's not really what's happening. —RuakhTALK 00:52, 10 February 2012 (UTC) I was referring more to the context in which the word is used, not the actual process that occurs when you delete something. I've modified the definition to "To remove, get rid of or erase, especially written or printed material, or data on a computer." It's not perfect, but it's closer to being a clearer, more helpful definition. ---> Tooironic 11:56, 10 February 2012 (UTC) Hello, guys! I'm from russian wiktionary and we have the entry judical (ru:judical). I think it's a common mistake (typo) in english, and it's a word for immediate deletion. And others think is a word spelled by a small community, for example by emigrants or it's a intentional typo. And the number of entries in google can prove it, according to their opinion. I think not the number, nor the small community not explain the addition of the word to the wiktionary. Have you heard about this word? The discussion in russian wiktionary (in russian) -- #1 #2, #3 Thank you! --141.113.85.91 16:21, 7 February 2012 (UTC) Hi there. I think that many of its usages are spelling mistakes / typos for judicial, but that it is (or has become) a real word. I can see many Google hits from government (and similar) websites. It seems to have a slightly different flavour of meaning - maybe "pertaining to judges" rather than "pertaining to courts". We should have an entry for it, SemperBlotto 16:31, 7 February 2012 (UTC) I don't see it as other than a misspelling. The "pertaining to judges" sense is just missing from our definition of judicial, I think. To test the independent word theory we could see whether the distribution of meanings for judical was about the same as that for judicial in contemporary usage. Though we don't have multiple meanings for judicial, MWOnline has five, some of which seem current. DCDuring TALK 19:31, 7 February 2012 (UTC) I don't see this difference neither. I agree with DCDuring. I think if we talk about difference we should view a constant use of the word in a part of a book (1st sense) and in other part of a book (2d sense "pertaining to judges"). And i don't see it. I don't see the strong system of 2 different senses of this two different words. In fact i see statistically irrelevant results in google. May be, i missing something because i'm not a native speaker... --141.113.85.91 12:30, 8 February 2012 (UTC) I agree with DCDuring and the anon: I can only find what appear to be typos for judicial. Like SemperBlotto, I see many Google hits from government web-sites, but in most of them, the typo appears only the page's "title" (where it's easy to miss), with the exact same phrase appearing correctly-spelled in the page proper. The only page I can find that even could be using them non-synonymously is this one, and even there, I see no reason to interpret it that way. —RuakhTALK 18:38, 8 February 2012 (UTC) ... agreed, so should we have just "common mis-spelling of judicial"? Dbfirs 13:18, 9 February 2012 (UTC) I'd say no; it's probably a typo not a spelling error. In the same way that to is spelt ot if you accidentally invert the letters. The mean reason I say this is the two can't really be homophones, since -cal should be pronounced /kəl/. Mglovesfun (talk) 14:43, 9 February 2012 (UTC) I don't think the rules about soft and hard "c"s are taught much these days, but you are probably right. It's an amazingly common typo with over nine million ghits, and nearly a quarter of a million in Google Books. I can see that it is very easy to omit the second "i" when typing, but the fact that the errors don't seem to have been noticed suggests that some people must think that "judical" is a correct spelling. Perhaps people are just less observant than I expect them to be? Dbfirs 17:23, 10 February 2012 (UTC) Yeah, I think it's chiefly that people don't notice it. Like I mentioned above, there are a lot of web-pages that use it in the page-title, but not in the body; to me, this suggests that it's a simple typo that best escapes notice in small print that no one reads very carefully. —RuakhTALK 21:08, 10 February 2012 (UTC) I agree too, that is not a spelling error, but a pure typo. I think it may be a recognition error also. I compared the book on BNC [19] (judical) and on google books [20] (judicial). --141.113.85.91 14:29, 13 February 2012 (UTC) [edit] Policy violation w/ regard to spelling variations? Hi, just wanted to check on Wiktionary policy regarding spelling variatons between US, Canada, Commonwealth, NK, AU, and so on. The only thing I can find regarding this is on Talk:color, where User:Stephen_G._Brown says, Any spelling that is normal in the U.S. carries exactly the same weight as a different spelling that is normal in the UK or NZ, regardless of which came first or which is truer to etymology or any other reason. If this is correct, then I wanted to bring to someone's attention the recent edit to aeroplane (UK/NZ/AU spelling) and airplane (US spelling). Previously, airplane was defined as "an aeroplane; [rest of definition]" and aeroplane was defined as "an airplane; [rest of definition]". This was just changed by User:SemperBlotto, who has removed aeroplane from the definition of airplane, and replace the entire definition of aeroplane with the text "an airplane". Is this as per Wiktionary policy? Edam 17:04, 8 February 2012 (UTC) There really isn't any policy on this as we don't agree. Some argue that having a full entry for color and colour in English is impractical as editors will edit them separately, so they'll say different things. Others say that since they're both very common, both need an entry and there's no way to choose which one to 'soft redirect' to the other. In cases where one variant is common and all other variants are uncommon or a lot less common, {{alternative form of}} is usually used uncontroversially. The problem is situations like this, where both are very common. Mglovesfun (talk) 17:08, 8 February 2012 (UTC) Wow. I'd have thought you'd have a clear policy for this! Well, SemperBlotto is an Admin and, as a simple user, it's probably not appropriate for me to roll back his edits. So who would I raise this with? How should I resolve this if there is no policy!? Edam 17:17, 8 February 2012 (UTC) Just negotiation I'm afraid. Unless anyone else has a better idea. Mglovesfun (talk) 17:18, 8 February 2012 (UTC) To me, it makes no sense to duplicate definitions as we do on color/colour. We should choose just one to have the definitions etc., and the other should be a soft redirect. On color/colour we have a synchronization warning at the top, but editors only see this if they edit the entire article (rather than a section). SemperBlotto 17:23, 8 February 2012 (UTC) I don't like it either; I always use US spellings when editing for the same reason, despite being British. Mglovesfun (talk) 17:24, 8 February 2012 (UTC) Hi SemperBlotto. Thanks for replying! No, I agree that having two separately maintained definitions is a poor solution. The only reason that I think it is a better solution than one being defined in terms of the other (or a redirection) is that it gives greater credibility to one (and in this case, defines one in terms of a word that doesn't exist in the same language variant!). Let me ask you this: as an Admin, how would you have reacted if someone had edited those entries in the reverse, so that airplane was defined as "an aeroplane"? Edam 18:01, 8 February 2012 (UTC) That would be even better (I'm English and "aeroplane" is the spelling that I use). SemperBlotto 19:45, 8 February 2012 (UTC) Oh, fair enough.  :o) So, IIUC, you are saying that you find having to maintain separate definitions more obnoxious (even where the definitions are trivial) than redirecting one to the other (even where the other spelling variation is not valid in places where the one is used). If this is your preference then I suppose that will probably be unable to sway you to revert your edit. Edam 00:09, 9 February 2012 (UTC) On a slight side-note, a nice solution would be if the technology allowed for two separate pages to display the same content. Not a redirection, but an "alias". Then, the one page, accessible via all spellings, could list the spelling variations. Edam 18:01, 8 February 2012 (UTC) The technology does allow for that. (We call such a thing a "redirect", sometimes a "hard-redirect", as opposed to the soft-redirection discussed above and (I assume) in the comment of yours I'm replying to.) We've decided not to use it for things like this.  :-) ​—msh210℠ (talk) 21:14, 8 February 2012 (UTC) But a redirect does not allow two pages to show the same content. It only allows one page to show the same content as a second "master" page. There is still one page that is clearly the main, true, master page. If we redirected colour to color then it would be clear that colour was the poor relation. Equinox ◑ 23:46, 8 February 2012 (UTC) I just had this idea... The problem with different spellings doesn't just happen with term entries but also with definitions that use those terms, even definitions of words in other languages (such as German Farbe). In the end, a user is probably only going to be interested in the spelling native to their area, and will expect US spellings to be 'alternatives' if they use British spelling, and British spellings if they use US spelling. So in a sense this is really a localisation issue, and what users expect to see depends on each individual user. So, could a script of some kind be made so that users can set their preferred spelling standard in their preferences, and then entries can be formatted in such a way that it takes that setting into account? That way, color could show 'US spelling of colour' if their preferred spelling is British, but contain all the right definitions if their preferred spelling is US. —CodeCat 18:09, 8 February 2012 (UTC) Even if that's feasible, it'd only help the very few users who set preferences.​—msh210℠ (talk) 21:11, 8 February 2012 (UTC) Speaking of German, that brings up a similar issue. If someone is making an entry of a German loanword (as an English entry), he/she might as well make one in lower case (in the case of a noun) and without an umlaut (if it has one). Most English speakers don't speak German and aren't aware of German orthography. If they encounter a "clean" German word (minus the umlaut and capitalization), they won't know about umlauts and German capitalization to try and find it. And if there is a redirect to the German word (or German spelling of the word), there usually isn't a usage note telling the reader that under English orthography that capitalization and diacritics aren't required. --AnWulf ... Ferþu Hal! 15:35, 17 February 2012 (UTC) I agree that spellings within articles are a localisation issue, but I'm not sure that I would agree for the entry names themselves. What if an Englishman wanted to look-up an American spelling? I like the idea of a script that handles in-article spellings though. Edam 00:09, 9 February 2012 (UTC) See also the pair mold/mould, although that might be controversial. -- Liliana • 21:19, 8 February 2012 (UTC) Since some people get so touchy about this, I think we should have a user-level setting or preference saying "I want to see N.Am. spellings as the primary spellings", or "I want to see British spellings as the primary spellings". Citations aside, we could then present the same content under either form. This would also work for those madmen who liketh ye Spællings of Olde. (Obviously this is over-simplified and I know there are forms of English that are neither US nor UK. I'm really having a jab at the modern Democracy2.0 where you stick your fingers in your ears and downvote anything you don't like.) Equinox ◑ 23:08, 8 February 2012 (UTC) D'oh, CodeCat got there before me. Well done. Equinox ◑ 23:44, 8 February 2012 (UTC) The solution, when we find it, needs to be easily available to all users, even casual IPs, so I'm not convinced that a settable preference would work. I've suggested elsewhere (with help from others) that both spellings should be redirects to template space where the full entry is shown with both spellings (as in the OED and other good dictionaries). I'm not expert enough in the way things work here to risk testing this out, and I don't want to upset the experts here who work so hard to improve Wiktionary. Are there reasons why this method will not work? Dbfirs 13:10, 9 February 2012 (UTC) It breaks things like Random page, AutoFormat, Statistics, and others. Bad idea. -- Liliana • 13:18, 9 February 2012 (UTC) Sorry, yes, I got that wrong, didn't I? I should have suggested having both as real entries (without redirect), but using a template that has both spellings and contains the definitions . Can anyone suggest a better solution? Dbfirs 13:22, 9 February 2012 (UTC) We've had that before, for translations only. It was a lot of trouble because it made the pages really confusing to edit for newcomers. -- Liliana • 13:53, 9 February 2012 (UTC) If MediaWiki were to support page "aliases" (where the same content is displayed an can be edited via multiple page names), this wouldn't be a problem. Edam 00:23, 10 February 2012 (UTC) To Edam, this is exactly why we have no policy on this; there are many ideas of how to handle this situation, and none of them has something even close to a majority. Mglovesfun (talk) 14:41, 9 February 2012 (UTC) That's all well and good until someone realizes they actually aren't used in exactly the same way. We've been through these kinds of conversations before, and no preference has always been the recommended course. Corrected. DAVilla 21:21, 13 February 2012 (UTC) Scrabbled together from Wikipedia. Can someone who knows about tasty PIE check that my definition makes sense, please? Equinox ◑ 13:10, 10 February 2012 (UTC) It was a little confusing so I changed it a bit and added a usage notes. The definitions of amphikinetic and proterokinetic are much more vague, though, especially in the context of PIE... and when compared to hysterokinetic and acrostatic which are much clearer. —CodeCat 13:18, 10 February 2012 (UTC) I don't do "social networking", but I've come across this term wall for a sort of personal Internet notice-board that shows an ongoing stream of messages related to its owner (e.g. stuff posted by their friends). Is this only used on Facebook or is it a generic term? For example can you have a "Google+ wall" or a "LiveJournal wall" as well? Equinox ◑ 17:23, 10 February 2012 (UTC) I've only heard it on FaceBook, but Google Plus calls it a wall and apparently people apply the term to MySpace and other social networking sites. LiveJournal is closer to a blog and doesn't seem to have it. DAVilla 21:10, 13 February 2012 (UTC) I'd agree with this assessment by DAVilla (talk • contribs), it seems to be primarily a term that grew out of Facebook and is quickly becoming applicable to multiple other spheres of social networking. -- Cirt (talk) 23:16, 13 February 2012 (UTC) Okay, I've tentatively added the following: "(internet) A personal notice board listing messages of interest to a particular user." Equinox ◑ 22:06, 19 February 2012 (UTC) The definition reads, "boldly self-assured; aggressively confident; cocky". This is not the meaning I am familiar with. I always thought it meant something like you are confident but not in an aggressive way. Apparently this is also how the Oxford Dictionary interprets it. ---> Tooironic 11:16, 11 February 2012 (UTC) The definition seems within range of some of the usage I hear. AHD: "Inclined to bold or confident assertion; aggressively self-assured." DCDuring TALK 14:59, 11 February 2012 (UTC) In my impression, the word often alludes to aggression as well as confidence. Assertive people are usually calm, and make sure-footed progress towards a goal often at the expense of other less assertive individuals. They tend to be more in favour of their own ideas, and would voice them without giving others a chance to voice theirs. Jamesjiao → T ◊ C 21:53, 12 February 2012 (UTC) Actually, I've encountered the word usage in various mediums as all of the definitions discussed, above. Perhaps the best approach would be to document each definition, with appropriate citations. -- Cirt (talk) 23:08, 13 February 2012 (UTC) The extended definition of "háček" that has been entered into háček, resulting in this revision, seems unduly encyclopedic. The pronunciation háček is used to indicate in various languages is not part of what the diacritic is. I am inclined to remove the recent additions to the definition, leaving only this: "A diacritical mark: 〈ˇ〉, usually resembling an inverted circumflex: 〈ˆ〉, but in the cases of ď, Ľ, ľ, and ť, taking instead a form similar to a prime: 〈′〉" or this "A diacritical mark 〈ˇ〉 used in some West Slavic, Baltic, and Finno-Lappic languages, and in some romanization methods, e.g. pinyin, to modify the sounds of letters", which was the definition before recent additions. I do not see two senses of "háček" but only one. --Dan Polansky 09:31, 12 February 2012 (UTC) I think you're right that the word háček just means 〈ˇ〉, but ˇ needs all the information that I've currently added to háček. I'm a bit swamped IRL at the moment, so could you give me a couple of weeks to transfer to and re-present that information in various sections of ˇ, so I can show you what I mean? — Raifʻhār Doremítzwr ~ (U · T · C) ~ 18:51, 12 February 2012 (UTC) Done and done; is that alright? — Raifʻhār Doremítzwr ~ (U · T · C) ~ 21:55, 6 March 2012 (UTC) Since the original complaint has now been addressed, I'll strike this section's header and remove the {{rft-sense}} from the entry. — Raifʻhār Doremítzwr ~ (U · T · C) ~ 19:22, 9 March 2012 (UTC) [edit] in I don't know how long I have seen in I don't know how long several times, and its meaning is clear, but isn't it unusual grammatically? The preposition is directly placed before the proposition. I can't find a grammatical explanation here on Wiktionary. — TAKASUGI Shinji (talk) 15:44, 12 February 2012 (UTC) It's not too unusual: "You have to ask permission before each and every action, from smooching to you know what." "He's engaged in God knows what {activities|shenanigans|nonsense)." ":It's been in business since I don't remember when." It does seem best considered grammatical, not lexical. CGEL, I think, characterizes such clauses as constituting "nominals" in such usage. DCDuring TALK 16:27, 12 February 2012 (UTC) Okay, they are similar to the French je ne sais (like in je ne sais quoi) but freer grammatically. — TAKASUGI Shinji (talk) 00:48, 13 February 2012 (UTC) For a contrasting case of one particular instance of preposition + nominal clause that may be idiomatic because of a semantic shift, see in that. A few OneLook dictionaries show in that as an idiomatic run-in entry at in. DCDuring TALK 01:00, 13 February 2012 (UTC) In French too, it's used: in I don't know how long = dans je ne sais combien de temps. Lmaltier 21:00, 17 February 2012 (UTC) (Adjective) I have discovered numerous uses of "more plural than", sometimes seeming to me to mean "more pluralistic than". However, some of the citations don't really fit that definition. What definition would fit? DCDuring TALK 17:08, 12 February 2012 (UTC) Someone pointed me to this on Youtube [21]. Obviously the whole thing's in Italian, but what's the instrument called if not a hang? The artist describes himself as a "hang player", presumably both of those words are from English. Do we need another definition for hang, and if so, what's the etymology, maybe Mandarin or Korean. Mglovesfun (talk) 23:26, 12 February 2012 (UTC) Probably German. W:Hang_drum. Ungoliant MMDCCLXIV 23:32, 12 February 2012 (UTC) Just noticed. We already have this entry at Hang. Ungoliant MMDCCLXIV 23:34, 12 February 2012 (UTC) Hmm. I've added it at hang (English & Italian) as well. SemperBlotto Note there's an oral citation for musicoterapia in the link above. Mglovesfun (talk) 12:02, 13 February 2012 (UTC) Is this just a sum of parts, or am I missing some odd idiomaticity? Metaknowledge 05:56, 13 February 2012 (UTC) It's SOP. It's arguably, but probably not, phrasebook material.​—msh210℠ (talk) 07:01, 13 February 2012 (UTC) Probably is phrasebook material. Many people would want to know how "Bon appetit" is said in the local language. A rather important word in terms of politeness/etiquette, and for practical purposes--they would like to know what the waiter/waitress is saying when they bring their meal, etc.--96.246.71.101 10:56, 19 February 2012 (UTC) Right, but because "bon appetit" is used in English, we can list the translations there and delete this (IMO). - -sche (discuss) 16:50, 19 February 2012 (UTC) Discussion continued at [[WT:RFD#enjoy your meal]].​—msh210℠ (talk) 19:23, 20 February 2012 (UTC) [edit] 's for does At 's, to the meaning "contraction of does" I have added the following qualifier: (used only with the auxiliary meaning of does and only after what). Can anyone think of any exceptions to these conditions? I can't think of any other time when does contracts to 's. Probably not after who (*?Who's he think he is?), certainly not after non-interrogative pronouns (*He's not see her for He doesn't see her), and definitely not after non-auxiliary does (*What's its best? for What does its best?). Other ideas? —Angr 13:31, 13 February 2012 (UTC) Not specifically what — consider "Where's he live?", "When's he get […]?", "How's he do […]?" — but I agree that it's only with auxiliary does, and I can't think of any examples without subject-auxiliary inversion. —RuakhTALK 15:02, 13 February 2012 (UTC) Hmm, BGC also has several hits for google books:"who's he think he is". But perhaps only after wh-words (a group that includes how). —Angr 15:36, 13 February 2012 (UTC) Is this relevant?​—msh210℠ (talk) 17:01, 13 February 2012 (UTC) I'm not sure; I don't see anything there but a description of the book. Is there a possibly relevant quote you mean? —Angr 17:59, 13 February 2012 (UTC) Sorry. I've added it to the right.​—msh210℠ (talk) 18:07, 13 February 2012 (UTC) Well, in that clearly nonstandard and possibly nonnative variety of English (a pidgin or creole, perhaps) it's difficult to say. "He's" may be "he is" followed by a bare infinitive rather than the present participle. In "he's come" and "he's sed", of course, it may be "he has". —Angr 18:36, 13 February 2012 (UTC) An American Indian dialect, FWIW. (Per the book's intro.)​—msh210℠ (talk) 19:29, 13 February 2012 (UTC) [edit] ul-Haq There are several prominent Pakistani people whose name is of the form Xyz-ul-Haq (e.g. the cricketers Inzamam-ul-Haq and the less famous Misbah-ul-Haq (currently 0 not out against England)). What does the term signify. and is the entire name a surname (or what)? SemperBlotto 15:55, 13 February 2012 (UTC) From Arabic الحق (ul-Haqq, "the Truth"), one of the epithets of God in the Qur'an. The whole name (such as Misbah-ul-Haq) forms the person's last name. مصباح (miSbaH, "lamp") + الحق (ul-Haqq, "the Truth") = Lamp-of-Truth or Light-of-Truth (where Truth is a figurative reference to God). —Stephen (Talk) 18:38, 13 February 2012 (UTC) I think "the Truth" is al-Haqq. As I understand it, ul-Haqq is "of the Truth", with the u being a Classical nominative-construct ending from the previous word (and the al getting reduced to l as a result). —RuakhTALK 18:58, 13 February 2012 (UTC) I don't think it's like that ... different countries and different languages that use Arabic words romanize the Arabic differently. In some countries such as Egypt, it's usually el-. In others, it's il-, in others al-. In some like Pakistan, it's ul-. And u being a Classical nominative-construct ending from the previous word is Classical Arabic, it's not Urdu, and generally not the case with modern Arabic dialects. —Stephen (Talk) 19:23, 13 February 2012 (UTC) Obviously Classical endings are Classical, what else would they be? ;-)   But you said yourself that this construction is from Arabic. I'm just clarifying what (I think) the ul means, and that it's ultimately that way from Classical Arabic. It's pretty common, cross-linguistically, for borrowings to act as a bit of a "freezer" while the original language changes; speakers of modern Arabic dialects have updated the "ul-" to "el-/il-/al-" in such names because they no longer use the case endings anywhere, but Urdu-speakers have no reason to do that. Like how in English we write connoisseur, even though the French no longer use that spelling, because once we'd borrowed the word we no longer had to keep it up-to-date. (And I think that Urdu speakers probably have some idea of the Classical meaning of ul in such names, because in romanization they'll sometimes attach the ul to the preceding name-part, e.g. by writing "Zia-ul-Haq" as "Ziaul-Haq".) —RuakhTALK 22:08, 13 February 2012 (UTC) It would be different if we were speaking of the spelling or construction in Perso-Arabic, but we are not. This is just the romanization. Romanizations don't do those things that you mentioned. Even in Classical Arabic, the ul- did not mean "of the", it only meant that the head word was in the nominative case. Hebrew has a feature where a word like בתי is analyzed as "houses-of", but Classical Arabic does not have anything like that. Classical Arabic has true noun cases, so "lamp of truth" would have the word al-Haqq in the genitive, which is al-Haqqi. The head word, if the subject of the sentence, would be in the nominative, giving ul-Haqqi, but in other parts of the sentence, the head word could be in the accusative or the genitive, giving al-Haqqi or il-Haqqi. But "of truth" is in the Haqqi, not in the ul-. But in Urdu, we are talking about romanization only, and the u of ul- is the English u of uh. —Stephen (Talk) 00:45, 14 February 2012 (UTC) Re: " […] Classical Arabic does not have anything like that": Well, it does, but you're right: in that case Haqq should also be in the genitive. (And I see what you mean about the romanization.) —RuakhTALK 01:52, 14 February 2012 (UTC) I knew that somebody here would know. So, do we need an (English?) entry for any of ul, ul-Haq or Haq? SemperBlotto 19:29, 13 February 2012 (UTC) No, because they don't seem to be productive in Urdu, just as we don't need al- for words like algebra. I suppose someone could check for haq in Arabic, but I'd be astonished if we didn't already have it. Chuck Entz 17:58, 18 February 2012 (UTC) I'm not sure, but think we may be missing the sense(s) of both found in "Both of them are..." and/or in "Give me both." (which latter usex we do have, but I think it may be under the wrong sense).​—msh210℠ (talk) 19:35, 13 February 2012 (UTC) These are standard determiner constructions (cf., many/none/all/etc. of them are & give me many/none/all/etc.). What is missing is the function as a marker of coordination (e.g., it was both good and bad). This is still the determiner, but it is being used in a different function (analogous to a noun phrase being used not as a subject, but as a complement).--Brett 22:24, 17 February 2012 (UTC) [edit] Entry for aza I occasionally come across entries that are or may be in error. The latest find is for "aza". The word has been categorized as an English noun (uncountable) when I believe it should be an English adjective (not comparable). One can see from the quotation cited in the definition that the word "aza" is used as an adjective, and througout the source cited, "aza" is used in the same manner as "azo", a word that is noted in many dictionaries as an adjective. I did not find any use for "aza" that could imply its use as a noun. 09:10, 16 February 2012 (UTC) Stuart K Only occasionally? I do it a dozen times a day, if not more. Mglovesfun (talk) 12:00, 16 February 2012 (UTC) [edit] Full - prefix or compound Is full/ful a prefix or part of a compound word? In the etym of fulfill it is written as a prefix (category full- is red-linked); in full-time/fulltime it is a compound; in fullbring, it is a prefix; there is no etym for fullback … Which would it be … prefix or compound? There are a lot of hyphenated full- words … prefixes or compounds? --AnWulf ... Ferþu Hal! 21:14, 17 February 2012 (UTC) I would say that ful- is trivially a prefix because it is not a stand-alone word. In contrast full is and seems to lend its meaning as an ordinary word to the words formed from it. Thus, fullback would seem to be a compound of full words. DCDuring TALK 16:01, 17 February 2012 (UTC) Then what about fulsome? It's given as full + suffix -some in wikt ... other wordbooks have it as full + some ... same for fulfill, full + fill. Then there is fullbring. It looks and acts like a prefix there even tho is has both L's. There are a lot of full words. Do we want a category to track them? To me it could go either way. Since full is noted so much as the lead word, it feels like a prefix. Should we hav it both ways ... for byspel, list the etym of fullback as a compound but add the internal category marker of a prefix so that that it can be grouped with other full+ words? There doesn't seem to be any consistency across these words. --AnWulf ... Ferþu Hal! 21:14, 17 February 2012 (UTC) Generally, I would be loath to add a term like full- when full exists. But if there were no current sense of full in any good dictionary that suits a word starting with full, there would be nothing for it but to add full- with the sense in question, which may be an obsolete sense of full. It can be helpful to determine whether the prefix is "productive" and place it in Category:English unproductive prefixes and note the unproductiveness for each sense or in a usage note. DCDuring TALK 23:14, 17 February 2012 (UTC) [edit] Just another sense There's one sense of just that we don't seem to cover in our current definitions. It's derived from "only, simply, merely", but it's not quite the same. It seems to be a marker of unimportance applying to the whole sentence rather than just the verb. For example, "I just called to say 'hi'" (not "I only called to say 'hi', not to do anything else"). I've heard it used in prayers by US Protestant Christians of a more evangelical bent as sort of a marker of humility, as in: "We just want to thank You and praise Your Name...". I'm not quite sure how to incorporate it into the current framework of the entry. Chuck Entz 18:03, 17 February 2012 (UTC) We have Category:English sentence adverbs, which may give you ideas of how to proceed. DCDuring TALK 18:53, 17 February 2012 (UTC) Ok, I added two senses. What do you think? Chuck Entz 20:39, 17 February 2012 (UTC) I had previously punted on this entry, despite having a copy of CGEL and other references at my immediate disposal. I find many of the adverbs that don't end in -ly to be difficult to define well. I reordered the senses, split a sentence-adverb use from the first sense, added {{non-gloss definition}} and broadened the prayer sense. Senses 2 (split from 1) and 3 and 4 (yours) seem to overlap, but I can't quite figure out how. DCDuring TALK 23:03, 17 February 2012 (UTC) Did you mean to move the "Just follow the directions on the box" sentence to the "prayer" sense? It looks better under the 2nd sense, which you just added Chuck Entz 23:29, 17 February 2012 (UTC) Yes. Thanks for catching the error. We could compare our definitions with the references at just at OneLook Dictionary Search or consult the OED. DCDuring TALK 00:02, 18 February 2012 (UTC) I'm a speaker of US English and I'm not sure humility is the key sense, or only sense, behind the "prayer" usage. Perhaps part of it, but it also serves as an implicit intensifier, and, ultimately, it seems to have become formulaic, increasingly difficult to discern the specific function other than being an accepted or expected norm (in certain circles, of course).--96.246.71.101 10:59, 19 February 2012 (UTC) That "de-intensifier" meaning might cover other senses as well, I suppose. DCDuring TALK 12:42, 19 February 2012 (UTC) You're right. Your interpretation makes more sense than mine. The intensifier sense is another we're missing: "I just love that song!", for example. As for the opposite, "de-intensifier" meaning- that interpretation might tie together a couple of the definitions we've been discussing. Chuck Entz 15:44, 19 February 2012 (UTC) Hm, I don't think "Lord, we just want to thank you" is that different from the first sense, "only, simply merely", or any different from the "I just called to say hi" sense. (I was baffled when I read above that there was a "prayer" sense of "just", and had to click through to the entry.) One could possibly even subsume the "reduce an imperative" sense ... although after looking at this further, I see what you mean by distinguishing those senses from the first one. (Still, I don't think "Lord, we just want to thank you", "I just called to say 'hi'" and "Lord, I just called to say 'hi' and 'thank you'", lol, are any different.) - -sche (discuss) 16:43, 19 February 2012 (UTC) I would also consider putting "moments ago" and "by a narrow margin" as subsenses of one sense. - -sche (discuss) 16:52, 19 February 2012 (UTC) Let me clarify: I was agreeing with the anon. that the prayer sense is an intensifier, rather than to show humility. When used in prayers, it's sprinkled throughout, with little attention payed to the semantics of the verbs it goes with- definitely used to establish a tone or a register, much as "thee" and "thou" and other King James bible language is used in more old-fashioned prayers. Chuck Entz 17:37, 19 February 2012 (UTC) Thanks for the agreement, Chuck :) In any case your suggestion that its use is sprinkled throughout also adds to the argument that it is implicitly formulaic, as you said, forming a feature of this particular "register" or mode...And just to touch on another point (this use of "just" was unconscious, I promise), I would argue strongly that its use in "Evangelical" prayer language can not be reduced to merely the "only" sense.--96.246.71.101 21:01, 19 February 2012 (UTC) The more I think about it, the more it seems like the use of "just" in prayers is to evoke a feeling that the speaker is having trouble finding the words to express strong emotions: "pouring one's heart out to the Lord". IMO this is in line with the evangelical Christian philosophy that religion should be very personal and intensely emotional. Chuck Entz 21:31, 19 February 2012 (UTC) Incidentally, CGEL characterizes all of the the adverbial use of just as "informal". I'm not sure that "all" is correct, but some senses certainly seem "chiefly informal". DCDuring TALK 18:11, 19 February 2012 (UTC) Which of these synonyms listed in dustman is the most popular in English? I want to merge translations to one table and add {{trans-see}} on other pages. Maro 23:12, 17 February 2012 (UTC) It depends. Each of the regional varieties of English have their own "most popular" form. On a related note, I think the relationship of dustman to dustbin needs to be pointed out, and I suspect that the use of "dust" rather than "garbage" in both is the result of euphemism Chuck Entz 00:20, 18 February 2012 (UTC) In the U.S., I think "garbage man" is the most common, but even so, I think it would be better to list the translations at "garbage collector" than at "garbage man", because the latter is more colloquial and less gender-neutral. (Or, potentially, they could both have translations sections, in the hopes that the differing translations would reflect these nuances.) —RuakhTALK 00:26, 18 February 2012 (UTC) In my household they are the binmen. Of course, dust is no longer the major part of the rubbish because there are far fewer people with coal fires, and much more packaging to be disposed of. SemperBlotto 08:07, 18 February 2012 (UTC) I've generally heard them casually called "dustmen" (southeast England) but "binmen" isn't uncommon. Anything with "garbage" or "trash" sounds American. Official bodies like the council are likelier to call them "refuse collectors". When I once referred to the rubbish collection vehicle as a "dustcart" (father's term) I was mocked by contemporaries. Equinox ◑ 22:01, 19 February 2012 (UTC) To me, binman is the most common. I guess that an American term would be the "most popular in English", simply because there are more Americans than Brits, Canadians, Aussies and so on. Am I right? Mglovesfun (talk) 22:06, 19 February 2012 (UTC) [edit] "Where in" vs "What part of" Suppose I'm talking to an English person and looking for an answer like "London" or "Yorkshire". Is it more natural to ask "where in England do you come from?" or "what part of England do you come from?" I'm also kinda curious as to how other languages would handle this kind of question. Shadyaubergine 17:35, 18 February 2012 (UTC) I think it depends on what kind of answer you're looking for. If you asked me the first question I would be more inclined to say something like Liverpool or Cambridge, while the other question might lead to answers such as the Midlands, Yorkshire or the Southeast. In Dutch, my other native language, it's the same more or less. You can ask 'Waar in Engeland kom je vandaan?' or 'Uit welk deel van Engeland kom je?' and you might expect similar answers. —CodeCat 21:52, 19 February 2012 (UTC) To me (British) they are basically synonymous, though "what part" might carry an extra hint of wanting to know the county. Equinox ◑ 21:58, 19 February 2012 (UTC) In France I would say "tu viens d'où en France" (or vous venez, let's not split hairs). Not sure if a native speaker would say the same. Mglovesfun (talk) 22:18, 19 February 2012 (UTC) Re: English: If someone asked me (American) "where in the U.S." I come from, I'd probably say "Ohio" or "Cleveland", but if they asked me "what part of the U.S." I come from, I'd just as likely say "the Midwest". Re: other languages: in Hebrew, you can say מאיפה את\ה\ם\ן ב־…? (lit. "from where you in …?"), but I'm having a hard time picturing a conversation where that would sound natural. I think that in a typical conversation, this question would be a response to "I'm from …" (e.g., "I'm from the U.S."), so the most natural question is just איפה ב־…? (lit. "where in …?"), with no need for the "from" or "you". —RuakhTALK 03:29, 20 February 2012 (UTC) If you want to elicit a specific answer, I recommend you to use more specific wording, such as Which town in England are you from?. I realize it's unusual, but you can't expect people to read your mind. Jamesjiao → T ◊ C 21:09, 20 February 2012 (UTC) Today an anon added a new sense at be off: [22]. The content is good, but is it under the right headword? It seems to require an adverb, i.e. it is not (ever) just be off. Cf. well off (but this doesn't cover the "how are you off for milk?" sense). Equinox ◑ 21:57, 19 February 2012 (UTC) Well, you can say "How are you off for money" as well as for milk. But well off seems to be almost unrelated. Thinking ..... SemperBlotto 22:01, 19 February 2012 (UTC) There's badly off too. But you can never simply ask (as be off might suggest) "Are you off at the moment?" Equinox ◑ 22:09, 19 February 2012 (UTC) It's ruddy hard to think of another adverb that goes with off in this way. You can't be brilliantly off or terribly off. Not with the same meaning anyway. Mglovesfun (talk) 22:11, 19 February 2012 (UTC) Perhaps there should be more at off#Adjective?— Pingkudimmi 16:41, 20 February 2012 (UTC) Well, MWOnline has six senses (16 subsenses), including "started on the way" <off on a spree> and "circumstanced" <worse off>. DCDuring TALK 17:28, 20 February 2012 (UTC) The latter would seem to be it.​—msh210℠ (talk) 18:59, 20 February 2012 (UTC) There's recent discussion at http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/135911/30490 about these two entries.​—msh210℠ (talk) 18:56, 20 February 2012 (UTC) I agree with the comment there that "one who designs software" is a misleading definition for programmer. It is common for somebody else to do the design, and the programmer to do the actual implementation of that other person's design. But in general a programmer is anyone who writes computer programs, so that would be a fine def. Equinox ◑ 17:51, 21 February 2012 (UTC) In my days (i.e. in the last century) the design was normally done by a systems analyst - at least in the commercial world of data processing. SemperBlotto 17:54, 21 February 2012 (UTC) I would say programmer is a hyponym of developer. —CodeCat 18:00, 21 February 2012 (UTC) I have gone ahead and changed programmer to "One who writes computer programs; a software developer", moving it away from the inaccurate focus on design of programs. Equinox ◑ 16:29, 26 February 2012 (UTC) Can anyone define this? See google books:"buying a dog and barking yourself|himself|herself". Mglovesfun (talk) 19:39, 20 February 2012 (UTC) To use an inferior approach when a better one is readily available. Chuck Entz 20:34, 20 February 2012 (UTC) how the heck do you pronounce this? short a or long a? whichever it is, this entry should have a pronunciation entry.—This comment was unsigned. And now someone's added it. Short a.​—msh210℠ (talk) 00:25, 22 February 2012 (UTC) We have geek and nerd as synonyms, more or less, but I have always thought of them as being defined based on usefulness and applicability of knowledge/interests (nerds having the "useful" interests). Is this a definition particular to my social subset or an actual definition that should be added? --Μετάknowledgediscuss/deeds 08:02, 22 February 2012 (UTC) Your definition isn't universal. Note the corporate/brand name "Geek Squad", applied to technical support services. The rise of the "tech-savvy" sense is recent enough that it's hard to pin down established usage. Chuck Entz (talk) 22:33, 24 February 2012 (UTC) I'm thinking that these defs are all too similar to cite, anyway (how would you know which def a citation referred to in most cases?). --Μετάknowledgediscuss/deeds 05:13, 25 February 2012 (UTC) You also have to realise that this discussion renders itself moot (see xkcd 747). 81.142.107.230 15:25, 1 March 2012 (UTC) Is "thru" synonymous with "through''"? 27.69.44.223 12:02, 22 February 2012 (UTC) Yes, because they are the same word. Read the usage notes in thru for more information. Ungoliant MMDCCLXIV 13:40, 22 February 2012 (UTC) ... except in British English where "thru" is considered incorrect by most people (or is just not used). Dbfirs 23:53, 24 February 2012 (UTC) ... and in American English, where the same is true. (And probably all other national forms of English as well, though I suppose you never know!) —RuakhTALK 00:47, 25 February 2012 (UTC) I agree. Definitely nonstandard, though no one seems to mind it in advertising or when used as a sort of abbreviation (signs, notes on plans, etc.). Chuck Entz (talk) 01:07, 25 February 2012 (UTC) [edit] Emmanuel Defined as "A name given to Messiah in the Old Testament". POV, anyone? Jews don't interpret the verse in Isaiah as describing the messiah at all. I suggest "A person in the Old Testament". (That's if we're to have this sense at all. Personally, I don't think we should have "character" senses at all: the second sense, "A male given name", is sufficient. But I think I'm in the minority on that.)​—msh210℠ (talk) 00:18, 23 February 2012 (UTC) The POV problem is a direct consequence of encyclopedic content. There might be a way of rewording though, perhaps using {{non-gloss definition}}. DCDuring TALK 00:35, 23 February 2012 (UTC) How about Immanuel: "a biblical name which Christians believe prophetically refers to the messiah." It provides information to those who run into it in Christian writings without pushing a POV Chuck Entz (talk) 21:14, 24 February 2012 (UTC) That fixes the "what Christians believe is correct" POV, but it leaves the "we only care about what Christians believe" POV intact. —RuakhTALK 21:28, 24 February 2012 (UTC) True. Of course, it probably is more significant to Christians than to others, but I'm not familiar with other interpretations. Chuck Entz (talk) 21:46, 24 February 2012 (UTC) After looking at the wikipedia entry for w:Immanuel, it would seem too complicated to explain both interpretations. The messianic interpretation is too common in Christian theological usage, though, to simply omit it. Perhaps we need a separate sense, with context appropriately marked, of Emmanuel as a Christian term for messiah. Chuck Entz (talk) 22:02, 24 February 2012 (UTC) Maybe various groups' beliefs about who he is should be a usage note? E.g. define I/Emmanuel as "a figure mentioned in the w:book of Isiah", perhaps even "a figure mentioned in the book of Isiah as to be born to a virgin mother" (which is the text of the verse), and then have a usage note explain that different groups regard him as X, or Y. - -sche (discuss) 22:53, 24 February 2012 (UTC) I think it should be pretty easy to cite as a synonym for messiah, starting with "Jesus, our Emmanuel" from w:Hark! The Herald Angels Sing. Chuck Entz (talk) 23:09, 24 February 2012 (UTC) Ah, good point. It even acts a bit noun-like, rather than strictly proper-noun-like, in usage like that — although strictly speaking, I could still interpret that as "Jesus, our [figure mentioned in Isiah as born of a virgin]", heh.) What does everyone think of something like this? If anyone has suggestions for a {{Judaism}} sense, please make them. Also: do we want to rephrase references to the 'Old Testament' in this and other entries, to something like 'Hebrew Bible'? - -sche (discuss) 01:07, 25 February 2012 (UTC) I think "Hebrew scriptures" sounds less POV to me. I also use "the Christan New Testament" in similar situations for the New Testament Chuck Entz (talk) 01:14, 25 February 2012 (UTC) My impression of the difference between Christianity and Judaism here is it amounts to a uniform article of faith vs. a more open debate. It doesn't seem to be amenable to summary in the same way. Also, in Christian usage it becomes at times sort of a title. Google "He is the Emmanuel" and you'll see what I mean. Chuck Entz (talk) 01:25, 25 February 2012 (UTC) "The Emmanuel" might be a noun derived from the proper noun, rather than the proper noun per se. Actually, a Google Books search for "are Emmanuels" supports the idea that Emmanuel can be a noun. - -sche (discuss) 02:03, 25 February 2012 (UTC) To muddy things further, the word translated as "virgin" has multiple senses such as "young woman", with "virgin" being one of the least common. I don't think you can mention "virgin mother" without being POV. Chuck Entz (talk) 02:24, 25 February 2012 (UTC) Oh, right; I've modified that bit. - -sche (discuss) 04:10, 25 February 2012 (UTC) @Ruakh or msh210: can you check the Hebrew in the etymology I added? - -sche (discuss) 02:22, 25 February 2012 (UTC) The obvious quibble is that it's a compound, with the 'Immanu and the El being separate words. Chuck Entz (talk) 02:30, 25 February 2012 (UTC) Or to analyze it further, the 'immanu part is the preposition עם + the suffix form of the 2nd-person plural pronoun אנחנו/אנו Chuck Entz (talk) 03:27, 25 February 2012 (UTC) I presume it's also considered a whole unit (namely a name) in Hebrew, too, though. - -sche (discuss) 04:10, 25 February 2012 (UTC) It looks ok to me as a single name, but you shouldn't take my word for it since my knowledge is rather limited. I did find some names in Wikipedia that had Hebrew interwikis on the side, though, and the Hebrew articles seem to use the same spelling. I notice that the Hebrew disambiguation page doesn't even mention the Isaiah passage [23]. I also notice that Immanuel is also the name of an Israeli West Bank settlement w:Immanuel (town). I suppose the further etymology could go in the article for the Hebrew, but we don't have one yet. Chuck Entz (talk) 04:58, 25 February 2012 (UTC) @-sche:  Done. I've also created [[עמנואל]]. —RuakhTALK 00:07, 29 February 2012 (UTC) Thanks! Are there still problems with the entries, or should I remove the RFT tags now? - -sche (discuss) 00:36, 1 March 2012 (UTC) aphrodisiac: There is a new one called azulinstant: wouldlikea write up on it including the contents. Itis an all new one put out by noveau life pharmaceuticals and sold at Wlgreens soon. This is a new brand name that appears to only show up so far in press releases and discussion in financial media about the company and its marketing of the brand. It doesn't seem to have entered the language in any way that would pass our Criteria For Inclusion. Chuck Entz (talk) 21:24, 24 February 2012 (UTC) [edit] Change from plural to singular The entry cellophane noodles says it is only plural, but of course like noodle in general, one cellophane noodle is singular, more are plural, and a dish is typically plural. Since the page itself has the plural "s," what is the best way to change this? BenjaminBarrett12 (talk) 03:35, 25 February 2012 (UTC) I'm a newbie myself, but I believe you would want to create a new page for the singular, then edit the plural to make it a "plural form of" page for the singular page. Chuck Entz (talk) 04:00, 25 February 2012 (UTC) Chuck Entz is right. I've done basically what he suggests, except that I've moved the page so that the "lemma" has the history (of who created it, etc). It would have been perfectly alright to have just created the singular and modified the plural without moving anything, of course. - -sche (discuss) 04:09, 25 February 2012 (UTC) Thank you so much! BenjaminBarrett12 (talk) 08:28, 25 February 2012 (UTC) There are two senses that say "with a capital initial letter". Should these be moved to Sana, then? Equinox ◑ 16:26, 26 February 2012 (UTC) I assume so, also the synonym, according to the entries themselves, is for the wrong sense of sana. Mglovesfun (talk) 12:41, 27 February 2012 (UTC) Sum of parts? Mglovesfun (talk) 11:29, 27 February 2012 (UTC) Of course. DCDuring TALK 11:35, 27 February 2012 (UTC) I don't think so. It's a specific offense with a definition that goes beyond perverting justice's course. See the Wikipedia entry. ---> Tooironic (talk) 12:26, 27 February 2012 (UTC) It seems very much like a concept, referred to by various SoP terms. The article says that in England and Wales the offense is variously referred to as "perverting the course of justice", "Interfering with the administration of justice", "Obstructing the administration of justice", "Obstructing the course of justice", "Defeating the due course of justice", "Defeating the ends of justice", "Effecting a public mischief". I did not find compelling the NSW statute citation, in which perverting the course of justice is used in the title. DCDuring TALK 12:53, 27 February 2012 (UTC) What is the full name of the discoverer of Hatschek's pit, for whom it is named? — Raifʻhār Doremítzwr ~ (U · T · C) ~ 15:24, 27 February 2012 (UTC) It is probably Berthold Hatschek (1854–1941). Equinox ◑ 15:28, 27 February 2012 (UTC) This corroborates that. Thanks. — Raifʻhār Doremítzwr ~ (U · T · C) ~ 15:56, 27 February 2012 (UTC) This is used in support of a w:United Ireland (a single country spanning the whole island of Ireland). It's supposed to indicate that the 26 counties of the Republic of Ireland and the 6 counties of Northern Ireland together make 1 Ireland. I'm quite sure this can meet CFI because it appears all over the place, but what is its definition? —CodeCat 21:32, 28 February 2012 (UTC) I suppose the definition is what you said: "The 26 counties of the Republic of Ireland and the six counties of Northern Ireland together make one Ireland." Equinox ◑ 21:34, 28 February 2012 (UTC) United Ireland. Ungoliant MMDCCLXIV 21:38, 28 February 2012 (UTC) I created the entry now, is this ok? —CodeCat 21:54, 28 February 2012 (UTC) Attested? I see nothing on ggc.​—msh210℠ (talk) 23:19, 28 February 2012 (UTC) It doesn't seem like something that would show on google books, it's a popular slogan. You'd more likely find it on t-shirts and bumper stickers. Maybe usenet? —CodeCat 23:36, 28 February 2012 (UTC) That's what I meant by ggc.​—msh210℠ (talk) 02:05, 1 March 2012 (UTC) Usage note says: "Possessive forms: princess's (main form used by academics and book publishers) The princess's golden hair.; princess' (main form used by newspapers) The princess' golden hair." This seems remarkable to me. Can we find any evidence for these two disparate forms per media? Equinox ◑ 00:07, 29 February 2012 (UTC) I've never heard this pronunciation (except as a dialectal omission of possessive), nor seen the spelling in newspapers, and if I did I would think it an error, but I'm willing to learn otherwise if someone can find some cites. Dbfirs 17:42, 3 March 2012 (UTC) Both versions are definitely citeable; that's not even a question. But I agree with Equinox; there's no way there's a categorical distinction here between academic/book usage and newspaper usage. I doubt there's even a tendency toward such a distinction. —RuakhTALK 22:30, 3 March 2012 (UTC) Maybe it's a terrible way of saying "(some) newspaper style guides (e.g. AP) prefer A, (some) academic style guides (e.g. Strunk & White) prefer B", in which case it would be better to name specific authorities. - -sche (discuss) 04:19, 4 March 2012 (UTC) [edit] Ordinal numbers (or not?) Does anyone know the correct term for numbers such as 'primary', 'secondary','tertiary', and 'quaternary' ? And, more important, does the sequence continue (fifth, sixth, etc.), and if so, what are the further terms? Where could I find that information? wikipedia:English_numerals#Ordinal_numbers BenjaminBarrett12 (talk) 00:35, 29 February 2012 (UTC) Sorry about that. Wikipedia calls them ranking numerals. It seems there are words for one to ten and twelve: Ask Oxford. BenjaminBarrett12 (talk) 00:46, 29 February 2012 (UTC) See arity. In addition, Google gives you undenary for 11-ary. — TAKASUGI Shinji (talk) 07:16, 9 March 2012 (UTC) Isn't undenary strictly for designating base 11, analogous to binary for base 2? The Latin derivation of the ending seems to be the same, but the meaning is different. Chuck Entz (talk) 02:35, 10 March 2012 (UTC) This class of words seems to be formed, for the most part, on the stem of Latin distributive numerals + -ary, although primary, secondary, tertiary, and nonary are instead formed on the stems of Latin ordinal numerals + -ary. — Raifʻhār Doremítzwr ~ (U · T · C) ~ 15:02, 9 March 2012 (UTC) Hi, I'd really love to hear how the French pronounce this word (seeing as it's theirs originally). If anyone with a knowledge (preferably native) of French is able, could you please upload an audio file here? [24] Thanks! --Person12 (talk) 12:13, 29 February 2012 (UTC) [edit] "damned if" There is a common construct along the lines of "I'm damned if I know", "I'll be damned if she cheats me out of my inheritance", which really means "it isn't the case or won't happen" (cf. a cold day in Hell). This is also sometimes flipped around (presumably by guilty sinners, for whom being blessed is beyond the realm of possibility) into "I'm blessed if I know" etc. I can't immediately see a good way for us to include this ("damned if" and "blessed if" seem like awkward fragments, in the same way that we wouldn't have, say, "willing to"), but they seem like important idioms. Equinox ◑ 00:13, 2 March 2012 (UTC) I've added a usage note to damned#Adjective. Tweak or supplant as necessary.​—msh210℠ (talk) 00:59, 2 March 2012 (UTC) You're probably right that we should handle this at damned rather than damned if, but I say we should still redirect damned if to damned, just to reinforce the relation (so "damned if" shows up in the search autocomplete). - -sche (discuss) 01:12, 2 March 2012 (UTC) I am thinking of extending the political sense to a more general one. I hear this used on a regular basis to mean someone or something who's little known or reveals little about him/herself, but who otherwise possesses talents that are not expected by others. The political sense is really just a specific case of that. Jamesjiao → T ◊ C 22:36, 3 March 2012 (UTC) I'm not familiar with the second sense. It's often used to describe someone or something which has an outside but realistic chance of winning something, despite not being amongst the favorites. E.g. "Chico is the dark horse to win the 2012 Series of Dancing on Ice" (UK cultural reference). Once the person has won, you might say they were the dark horse, not they are a dark horse. Mglovesfun (talk) 12:26, 5 March 2012 (UTC) I have to agree with you on that. For me it has always referred to the person getting the success, not the success itself. Anyway what do you think of my suggestion of extending the first definition? Jamesjiao → T ◊ C I think MG is saying that the competitor can only be a "dark horse" before the success. A "dark horse" who has won a competition is no longer a "dark horse". DCDuring TALK 21:40, 6 March 2012 (UTC) I'm familiar only with the political meaning, but the Wikipedia entry supports an expanded meaning. The AHD ([[25])] does not seem very good, and the OED is badly dated (last citation: 1893). BenjaminBarrett12 (talk) 21:44, 6 March 2012 (UTC) Some dictionaries have a sense under which a successful dark horse remains a dark horse. That isn't how I would use it, but presumably they have citations supporting their definition. DCDuring TALK 23:27, 6 March 2012 (UTC) I think it has been reduced to meaning long shot in much current usage, but has had much more specific meaning in US politics. The entry could stand improvement to include the sense evolution, especially if the US Republican presidential nomination contest leads to a brokered convention, from which "dark horse" candidate in one of the older narrow senses could have emerged at least in earlier days. Sarah Palin might be viewed as having been a "dark horse" candidate for the Republican vice-presidential nomination in 2008, as she was not at all well-known to the US public and media. I've forgotten where I read that dark meant "of unknown parentage" in horse-breeding. DCDuring TALK 23:49, 6 March 2012 (UTC) [edit] Ø superscript Is there a character that looks like Ø that is superscript, so that it will look like Ø⁷? Celloplayer115 (talk) 04:03, 4 March 2012 (UTC) Ha, what's the context? There's a BP discussion about superscripts. One thing discussed there was small-sup tags, so in this case Ø(⁷). - -sche (discuss) 04:15, 4 March 2012 (UTC) [edit] on and off Usually we would say put on and take off as opposites of each other. I've seen that this can be abbreviated if both actions are taken. Something can be put on and off or taken on and off. However, put off and take on by themselves do not have the meanings of removing or replacing. Where should this be documented, if at all? DAVilla 05:39, 4 March 2012 (UTC) A recent edit by a redlinked user with very few contributions has significantly changed the definitions without an edit summary (diff); it was on 15 January 2012. His edits: "Without artificial additives" -> "Without intervention, "[sic]; two definitions for colors were removed; two definitions were moved. Translation tables were left unadjusted. Should we revert? --Dan Polansky (talk) 08:11, 4 March 2012 (UTC) Yep. He was right (IMO) to remove the two odd noun senses (from the adjective section!), though. - -sche (discuss) 04:16, 13 March 2012 (UTC) I very much doubt this series of edits were an improvement (diff). The edits made the entry quite messy, and the allegged subsenses ("With verbs, especially past participles", "With prepositional phrases and spatial adverbs", etc.) have nothing to do with semantics, so are not really subsenses. I also find the definition "In a fully justified sense" not so good. The original version has example sentences associated with each main definition; I find example sentences much better than quotations equipped with all that metadata (year, author, etc.) that is of no concern to understanding the definition. I don't know what to do about it; reverting would be an option, and copying most of the citations to citations namespace. --Dan Polansky (talk) 09:13, 4 March 2012 (UTC) That's quite (1.2? 2.3?) ugly! I'm not quite (1.6?) sure what to think... Definitely TMI. Chuck Entz (talk) 02:27, 10 March 2012 (UTC) Interesting page; I added {{t+|en|scolopids}} and KassadBot moved it to the top ahead of Catalan. Thoughts? Is adding English translations desirable to translation tables in Translingual entries? Mglovesfun (talk) 12:20, 5 March 2012 (UTC) Normally, we would just include "- the scolopids" as part of the definition. SemperBlotto (talk) 12:22, 5 March 2012 (UTC) I had thought that our practice is to completely exclude Translation L3/L4 sections from Translingual L2 sections. The "translations" that we have in such sections seem to me to be often calques of the equivalent of "scolopid family" or transliterations of the equivalent of "scolopids". Such "translations" are not equivalent in context to the Translingual headword. DCDuring TALK 12:46, 5 March 2012 (UTC) I'm not convinced this is a word at all, but really llama with the particle me attached to it with no space. The only difference between this and call me is that call me has a space in it. Are we prepared to keep this solely because it doesn't contain a space in the title? I mean nor does Steven's but we don't allow it. Mglovesfun (talk) 22:40, 6 March 2012 (UTC) Isn't that the principle behind Wiktionary:COALMINE, that we should keep those words?--Prosfilaes (talk) 02:02, 7 March 2012 (UTC) No, not at all. Wiktionary:COALMINE would only apply if we did decide to keep these entries; in that case, it would say that we should have entries as well for any spaced-out forms that are more common than the solid ones — which, as it happens, is none of them. —RuakhTALK 03:04, 7 March 2012 (UTC) Our rules aren't clear here, but the implication I've got is that in most, non-polysynthetic, languages, a word basically amounted to a space-delineated set of letters.--Prosfilaes (talk) 12:35, 8 March 2012 (UTC) Your comment is indented as a reply to mine, but it doesn't seem to have anything to do with mine . . . but I'll try to address it anyway. That definition is a reasonable place to start when trying to understand what the word "word" means, but I think it should quickly become clear that it's not workable as an actual rule. Consider: Plenty of languages aren't written, or aren't written with "letters". Do these languages therefore not use "words"? How about languages whose writing systems don't use spaces — or languages with multiple writing systems, of which one or more do use spaces and one or more do not? In "Maya gave her a why-so-many-questions look, then shrugged", is "why-so-many-questions" a "word"? In "you & I", is "&" a "set of letters"? If not, is it therefore not a "word"? Some English-speakers, historically, systematically wrote o' ("of") without a space after it; as a result, combinations like "o'time" and "o'the" meet the attestation requirements. However, it was much more common to write it with a space; as a result, there are combinations like "o'room" that, due to their word-sequences being less frequent overall, seem to have only one or two cites. (If 0.1% of uses of o' don't use a space, and o' room was used only 2000 times, then ceteris paribus, we'd expect o'room to get 2 cites.) Do we say that "o'time", "o'the", and "o'room" are "words", such that "o'time", "o' time", "o'the", and "o' the" merit entries, while "o'room" and "o' room" do not? In some of these cases we may be satisfied with the space-separated-set-of-letters approach; but I'm not prepared to take it for granted that we want to use it for all of them. —RuakhTALK 16:54, 8 March 2012 (UTC) Is "coalmine" a word? It's clear that does Ruakh think this is a word and does the Tea Room thinks this is a word are not workable as actual rules, and you haven't offered a workable actual rule. It's entirely natural that our definition of word is specialized by language; there's no reason, practical or theoretical, that our definition of word for Chinese should be the same for English or Spanish. There is good reason for our definition of word for English to be the same as German or Spanish, since they're similar languages and the same rule works for them all. It's pretty clear to me that a set of space-delineated letters is our definition of word for English. Since all your questions include non-letters, they don't seem pertinent to the issue. (And no, & is not a word; it's an abbreviation symbol.)--Prosfilaes (talk) 23:30, 8 March 2012 (UTC) I . . . I actually do think that "does the Tea Room thinks this is a word" is workable as an actual rule. (Not that it's exactly the rule I'd propose, but it's in the right general ballpark.) Can you elaborate on how/why it's clear that it's not? —RuakhTALK 23:44, 8 March 2012 (UTC) There's 3,000 "words" on User:Prosfilaes/Esperanto corpus/4-5; which of them are acceptable to the Tea Room? On one hand, that's a lot more entries then the Tea Room can reasonably process, all of which involve getting into the details of Esperanto. On the other, when I take the time to add a word to Wiktionary, I like to know my work isn't just going to get summarily deleted. Me adding 3,000 entries to Wiktionary knowing that half my work can go up in flames on a whim of the Tea Room? Not happening.--24.120.231.24 02:09, 9 March 2012 (UTC) If you have real reason to doubt that the community would accept them, then I'd advise you to ask about them (here or at RFD, as you prefer) before you create them. And I think the Tea room can process a great many entries at once; this discussion, for example, is simultaneously processing several million potential Spanish entries. But in general, there are never any guarantees; we could decide that something is worth including, and then change our minds. Someone could start a vote tomorrow proposing that that Esperanto entries be banned, and — if you don't trust the community's judgment, as you apparently do not — then that vote could pass in a month's time, and all your work deleted. —RuakhTALK 02:51, 9 March 2012 (UTC) Yes, that was me. Yes, a vote could be started. But there's a huge difference between a vote could be started and we as a community could decide to make a change after a month's discussion, and us having no rule and each word living or dieing by ad hoc reasoning of who ever is on RFD that day. I don't see that as not trusting the community's judgment; I see that as having general guidelines for me to work with, and for the community to have generally agreed-upon guidelines on how to decide words. You still haven't explained why words like coalmine, which is a simple combination of English words and unforgivable, that is a combination of un- and forgivable (which itself was assembled from smaller, completely predictable pieces) are words and llámame isn't. If this were a vote on general principles, I could use the result to figure out how that applies to ĉeesti and ĉirkaŭflugi. If it's an ad-hoc word-by-word decision, I suspect there will be no coherent answer.--Prosfilaes (talk) 05:06, 9 March 2012 (UTC) Fair enough. (By the way, re: llámame vs. unforgivable: me is a clitic, whereas un- is an affix. Though Wikipedia claims, on the basis of a single foreign-language Chomskyite journal article, that me is actually an affix by all criteria; it's clearly violating its NPOV policy by making that claim, since the standard view is that me is a clitic, but at least this suggests that there may be some disagreement on this point.) —RuakhTALK 15:02, 9 March 2012 (UTC) You're right that it's not a word not a clear-cut word; me is a clitic pronoun both in no me llames (where it precedes the verb) and in llámame (where it follows it). But one difference from call me or Steven's is the addition of the accent-mark; this is just a spelling detail (llama and lláma- are pronounced the same), but still. And in related compounds, there are actual small pronunciation changes: -s, when present, gets dropped before -nos. Overall, I'd prefer that we deleted them — especially ones like llamarme where there's not even the slightest spelling change — but I don't feel strongly about it. I just worked it out on paper, and I believe that allowing these compounds, when attested or at least plausible, would less-than-quadruple the number of Spanish verb entries. —RuakhTALK 03:04, 7 March 2012 (UTC) Edited later to change "not a word" to "not a clear-cut word", since as others point out, there are senses of "word" that this does satisfy. 23:44, 8 March 2012 (UTC) Would it work to put those in as redirects and provide a table that shows how the orthography changes? BenjaminBarrett12 (talk) 04:24, 7 March 2012 (UTC) Whether this is word or not depends on the precise definition of the term word. For example one could argue that inflected forms are no words but a combination of the root plus suffixes or affixes. At least applying a phonological criteria (pause in speech) or orthographic criteria (space in written text) llámame is IMHO a word. On the other hand using morphological or syntactic criteria it is not easy to give an unambiguous definition. So we really should give definition of what exactly we understand to be a word.Matthias Buchmeier (talk) 17:37, 8 March 2012 (UTC) I agree with much of what you say; but note that phonological criteria would also count me llamas as a word. The word "word" is definitely blurry around the edges. I strongly disagree with your last sentence. I don't think we can give a definition of what exactly we understand to be a word; if such a thing were possible, it would be great, but it's not, and the best we can do is consider individual situations individually, inform ourselves as best we can, and make decisions that apply as narrowly as necessary. —RuakhTALK 18:21, 8 March 2012 (UTC) Even though we are all amateurs, I find WT:CFI too amateurish even for us: WT:CFI says "all words in all languages" but then doesn't define word or language. Note the language issue comes up just as often if not more; see Category talk:Croatian language. Mglovesfun (talk) 18:53, 8 March 2012 (UTC) Catalan is closely related to Spanish and its orthography follows very similar rules when it comes to accents. The cognate phrase of llámame would be clama'm. But here the orthography is different as the clitic is separated with an apostrophe (and in other forms with a hyphen), the two words are never written together. And the Catalan word does not have an accent mark on any of the letters, even though when written as a single word it would require one (clàmam). I very much doubt this has to do with an inherent syntactical difference in the usage of the clitics. French treats the clitics as Catalan does, but Italian treats them as Spanish does and writes them together. So I think that this is still a matter of orthography to some degree: llámame is a single word in writing, even though it probably is not one in speech. —CodeCat 20:37, 8 March 2012 (UTC) @Ruakh's comment (several paragraphs ago) "Wiktionary:COALMINE would only apply if...": ah, but BACKWARDS COALMINE! Er, but on a serious note, I recall that we've discussed the many, many forms of Finnish words. In this case, we aren't dealing with many forms of words, we're dealing with only a few forms per word. I still don't have an opinion on whether we should have entries for the forms or not. - -sche (discuss) 04:27, 13 March 2012 (UTC) These are both techniques for hardening metals, and they both involve carbon and nitrogen, but they are not the same thing. Perhaps somebody who knows more can improve my rudimentary definitions to distinguish the two. Equinox ◑ 01:43, 9 March 2012 (UTC) I noticed this in the English requests. We have English boutonniere (flowers worn in a buttonhole) and French boutonnière (a buttonhole), but we don't have English boutonnière (flowers worn in a buttonhole). Online, I see both spellings. The dictionary app on my Mac has only the boutonnière spelling, and I have yet to find either spelling in any of the older dictionaries online (from before 1922). This leads me to guess that the word was borrowed recently enough that prescriptive sources still insist on the French spelling- accent grave and all- but that it's rapidly losing the accent in everyday use. Which leads to my question: how should I treat the different spellings in English? I could add an English entry to boutonnière as an alternative spelling, move the definition from boutonniere to boutonnière and make boutonniere the alternative spelling, or I could have definitions in both places. I'm sure there are some bells and whistles I'm omitting, but that basically seems to be it. Chuck Entz (talk) 01:50, 10 March 2012 (UTC) I don't believe there's any really standard rules. Pick one, preferably the one that already exists or the one that is truly dominant if there is one, and make the other alternative spellings.--Prosfilaes (talk) 11:49, 10 March 2012 (UTC) [edit] britches Found by using the "Random word" function: someone added a second sense in this eidt, but it seems redundant to the first sense. Should we combine the two? - -sche (discuss) 05:09, 10 March 2012 (UTC) The anon had a point. Take a look. DCDuring TALK 14:31, 10 March 2012 (UTC) [edit] German: gerunds/deverbal nouns German has a few ways of making nouns from verbs.. 1.1 Das Verzieren ist eine hohe Kunst. – "(The) adorning is a high art." 1.2 Die Verzierung ist eine hohe Kunst – same as above 2. Die Verzierung an der Jacke passt. – "The adornment at the jacket fits." 3.1 Die Verzierung war eine mühselige Arbeit. – "(The) adornment was a tiring task." 3.2 Das Verzieren war eine mühselige Arbeit. – same as above I think that are all the uses. Am I using the right terminology if I call 1+3.2 gerunds and 2 a deverbal noun? (3.1 should be interpretable as both.)ᚲᛟᚱᚾ (talk) 12:31, 10 March 2012 (UTC) I generalized the definition of heartbreaker; google books:"it was a heartbreaker" quickly shows that it's not limited to people. But I don't know if the translations, in Finnish, Norwegian and German can be so generalized.--Prosfilaes (talk) 00:12, 12 March 2012 (UTC) The definition applies now only to things, not to people. It seems possible that "s/he's a heartbreaker" can refer only to love, in which case, the definitions for things and people should be different. BenjaminBarrett12 (talk) 02:40, 12 March 2012 (UTC) For me, something includes people, but feel free to change it to "something or someone" if you like.--Prosfilaes (talk) 05:05, 12 March 2012 (UTC) [edit] Intolerant I know that this page is not durably archived enough to qualify as a citation, but it does raise the question, do we need a new definition of intolerant, namely "lactose intolerant"? —Angr 07:41, 12 March 2012 (UTC) To me, "1. Unable or indisposed to tolerate, endure or bear." works fine for that.--Prosfilaes (talk) 22:13, 12 March 2012 (UTC) You think that on the page I linked to the person meant he was "unable or indisposed to tolerate" in general? —Angr 22:33, 12 March 2012 (UTC) I don't think intolerant is ever used as "in general"; there's always an implied "against other religions", "against blacks", etc. In this case he is indisposed to bear lactose.--Prosfilaes (talk) 23:29, 12 March 2012 (UTC) But lactose is not otherwise mentioned in the utterance; it has to be inferred from the word "intolerant", suggesting that "intolerant" by itself may be used to mean "lactose intolerant". (Do you feel that lactose intolerant is SOP? I don't.) I would look for other, more CFI-friendly cases if I could, but living in Germany I don't get as good b.g.c. results as people in the U.S. do, and I don't really know how to google for cases where the word "intolerant" means "lactose intolerant" in a situation where the word "lactose" does not appear. —Angr 10:31, 13 March 2012 (UTC) The comments on that imply that the abbreviation of lactose intolerant to just intolerant is not good English, at least not yet. lactose intolerant is a subset of the definitions of intolerant of lactose, so it does sort of work as English without a new definition for intolerant. It strikes me as a one-off example that the audience was slightly intolerant of. I'm finding b.g.c. hits for wheat intolerance and food intolerance; unless I could find a lot of examples where intolerant was used for lactose intolerant in a way where the context doesn't make the lactose part crystal-clear, I'd look at expanding intolerant to include a food meaning, not just add lactose intolerant.--Prosfilaes (talk) 12:27, 13 March 2012 (UTC) MSG intolerance is another common one (monosodium glutamate). Equinox ◑ 12:29, 13 March 2012 (UTC) And glucose intolerance has become popular over the past several years. —RuakhTALK 12:52, 13 March 2012 (UTC) I think adding a food/medical definition at intolerant is a good idea, and one at tolerate as well. —Angr 13:18, 13 March 2012 (UTC) What sense of tour are these: "The soldier is married with two children, and a veteran of three tours in the Iraq War. He was on his first tour in Afghanistan"? I keep seeing it all the time, maybe it needs a new military sense or I am missing something. Ungoliant MMDCCLXIV 23:43, 12 March 2012 (UTC) tour of duty Equinox ◑ 23:48, 12 March 2012 (UTC) I've added that as a sense to tour.--Prosfilaes (talk) 23:56, 12 March 2012 (UTC) Thank you both. Ungoliant MMDCCLXIV 00:12, 13 March 2012 (UTC) Is there a difference between the adjective sense of Etymology 1 "To a great extent or degree: I am right glad, the Right Honorable" and the adverb sense of Etymology 2 "Very, extremely, quite: I made a right stupid mistake". Is the first really an adjective, or is it an adverb? Can we be sure it's etymologically distinct from the second, the adverb? (I was right surprised to see that the first was called archaic, by the way. As has been said on the talk page, even in the US it's dated and dialectal at worst, but still broadly familiar.) - -sche (discuss) 03:42, 13 March 2012 (UTC) Are any of the adverb senses under Etymology 2 really from that etymology, rather than from Etymology 1? - -sche (discuss) 03:43, 13 March 2012 (UTC) As to first set of questions, I think right ("to a great degree or extent") is an adverb. Unlike some degree adverbs, it does not have a corresponding adjective sense, AFAIK. As to separate etymology question, I don't think so. BTW, apparently the OE verb rihtan (ety 2) is itself from the OE adjective riht (ety 1). DCDuring TALK 14:46, 13 March 2012 (UTC) I need to knw the corct defintion nd de equation!!!!!!!!!!!! plz nd thnk you :) I would have thought it was fairly obviously the product of the perimeter of the polygon times the length of the prism. You also seem to have a problem with your keyboard skipping letters. SemperBlotto (talk) 08:00, 13 March 2012 (UTC) [edit] Is lower case an alternative "spelling"? For the English word "delete" the definition reads: Noun delete (uncountable) Alternative spelling of Delete. I lost the file when I accidentally hit delete. Is "Delete" an alternative spelling of "delete"? It's the case that's different. Would "Iphone" be an alternative spelling of "iPhone"? That is how we do it. For example, German nouns are always capitalised, so they'd have a separate entry from a lower-cased word of the same spelling. I prefer to say "alternative form" though. Equinox ◑ 16:57, 14 March 2012 (UTC) Yes, "form" is now preferred, because it covers a range of things that include spelling, capitalization, hyphenation, whitespace, diacritics, etc. —Michael Z. 2012-03-14 17:16 z This is listed under the Translingual header, but I'm not sure how it got there. It was coined in an English work and (besides translations of English works) I can't find any uses in other languages, although it is certainly cited well in English. Can we switch the language to 'English'? --Μετάknowledgediscuss/deeds 03:15, 15 March 2012 (UTC) I'd consider it an English word, or word-like entity. ~ Robin (talk) 09:15, 15 March 2012 (UTC) [edit] Marco Polo and the noodle The noodle entry has a sample sentence saying that Marco Polo brought noodles back from China. According to wikipedia:Pasta#History, that is a story invented to promote pasta in the US. I don't want to delete a sentence that someone has written, but leaving it seems against the purposes of Wiktionary. BenjaminBarrett12 (talk) 20:24, 17 March 2012 (UTC) There's no expectation that example sentences be true, is there? —Angr 21:05, 17 March 2012 (UTC) Well, if you read something stated as a fact in a dictionary, you generally would accept that as fact. One possibility is something like "is an urban rumor," but I think that would be distracting. BenjaminBarrett12 (talk) 21:12, 17 March 2012 (UTC) Why not replace it with some real citations? They are always better to have than usage examples. Equinox ◑ 21:07, 17 March 2012 (UTC) Why debate this? It's factually wrong, it misapplies quotation marks, and worst of all, it doesn't really serve the goals of WT:ELE#Example_sentences. I'll replace it. —Michael Z. 2012-03-18 19:45 z Nice! BenjaminBarrett12 (talk) 22:04, 18 March 2012 (UTC) [edit] acostado acostado was added as a translation of inshore. It does look like "coast", but the only meaning I can find in dictionaries is "lying in bed". Does it, indeed, also mean "inshore"? - -sche (discuss) 17:58, 19 March 2012 (UTC) After the DRAE definition of acostar that is one of the meanings. Matthias Buchmeier (talk) 10:57, 20 March 2012 (UTC) I have recently been doing some tinkering at wireless, and I realise that I am confused about whether, in compounds such as "wireless network", "wireless communication", and so on, the word "wireless" is truly an adjective, or is really an attributive noun. To me, it seems more like the latter. If that is really the case, then I am struggling to think of any true examples of adjective sense 2, "Of or relating to communication without a wired connection, such as by radio wave." Can anyone shed any light on this? 86.160.83.116 21:57, 19 March 2012 (UTC) I suspect that wireless as a noun in the field of computers is a backformation from wireless network. "wireless" certainly feels like an adjective that's become a noun.--Prosfilaes (talk) 23:02, 19 March 2012 (UTC) "Is your network wireless or is it wired?" looks like an adjective to me. I'm not even sure how you can consider it to be a noun. Certainly, a wireless network is a network without wires, not "a network based on the wireless." "Has Coffeebucks got wireless" is an abbreviation of "wireless networking," rather than the other way around. —Michael Z. 2012-03-20 02:05 z In your last example 'has got wireless', even if it is a noun, in that usage it's clearly an uncountable noun. —CodeCat 02:50, 20 March 2012 (UTC) In 1898, Tesla proposed a system of "wireless transmission of power." — Pingkudimmi 02:51, 20 March 2012 (UTC) There's another sense that I see a lot in advertising, as an adjective to distinguish cellphone service from regular phone service: "You can save money by combining your wireless plan with your home phone service". It shows up in names of business entities in the cellphone industry, too. I'm not sure how independent it is as a sense, though. Chuck Entz (talk) 19:00, 23 March 2012 (UTC) Is me, myself and I a pronoun? I guess so, as it is a combo of 3 pronouns, but it looks a bit like an adjective too. Maybe an emphatic pronoun? --Cova (talk) 08:23, 20 March 2012 (UTC) I've heard this used about men who buy apartments for their mistresses ("he put her up in an apartment on Upper East Side"). Should this be an article? __meco (talk) 12:44, 20 March 2012 (UTC) It's put up (to house or shelter). Equinox ◑ 12:49, 20 March 2012 (UTC) Okay. __meco (talk) 15:46, 20 March 2012 (UTC) A RFV resulted in all the senses in this entry being well-cited, but the question remained: are we interpreting the citations correctly? I left this on WT:RFV for a month tagged {{look}}, but it occurs to me it's more of a Tea Room (or perhaps WT:RFC) question, anyway, now that it's cited. For "draw the line / draw a line", Merriam-Webster has "1: to fix an arbitrary boundary between things that tend to intermingle, 2: to fix a boundary excluding what one will not tolerate or engage in". Dictionary.com has "draw a line in the sand: to set a limit; allow to go up to a point but no further". What senses, if any, does the OED have? What senses do we think the citations support? - -sche (discuss) 20:47, 21 March 2012 (UTC) We seem to be missing the sense found in civil sunrise, civil dawn, civil dusk, civil sunset, and civil twilight.​—msh210℠ (talk) 15:53, 22 March 2012 (UTC) I think the sense is 'having to do with government' and covers civil service. I'm not clear that that's distinct enough from Having to do with people and government office to require another sense. Wcoole (talk) 19:32, 22 March 2012 (UTC) I've never heard of any of the four collocations msh210 suggests, are they US only? Or non-UK should I say? Mglovesfun (talk) 22:56, 22 March 2012 (UTC) I don't think so. The UK Air Almanac for the Year 2006, authored by (and I quote Google Books here) "S.A. Bell, Great Britain: H.M. Nautical Almanac Office. Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, C.Y. Hohenkerk" lists times of civil twilight.--Prosfilaes (talk) 03:18, 23 March 2012 (UTC) I would interpret it as "sunrise/dawn/dusk/sunset/twilight for civil purposes", "civil purposes" being things like park openings and closings. If there are legal meanings to the terms, we should find out what they are. I could see entries for the legal senses of each compound term more easily than I could imagine a corresponding sense for civil. DCDuring TALK 03:56, 23 March 2012 (UTC) google books:"civil twilight" come up with several sources (over almost a hundred years) that say that civil twilight is between sunset and the sun being 6° below the horizon.--Prosfilaes (talk) 04:14, 23 March 2012 (UTC) That's the sense I know for civil dusk, with civil dawn being its mirror in the morning and civil twilight being either. Civil sunrise and civil sunset I've come across recently; they seem to mean, respectively, "when the sun is six degrees below the horizon before sunrise" and "[same] after sunset". But what sense of civil is all this? A new one, "referring to the sun's being six degrees below the horizon"?? (Seems very strange.)​—msh210℠ (talk) 06:50, 23 March 2012 (UTC) It was probably civil=government and then it got specialized.--Prosfilaes (talk) 13:34, 23 March 2012 (UTC) That's good info for an etymology section, then, I'd think. Right?​—msh210℠ (talk) 16:49, 23 March 2012 (UTC) It looks to me like a very specific definition of each of these terms must have been created for regulatory purposes, and the term civil was used to distinguish between these specialized versions and general usage, after which it spread to places that never heard of those regulations as an independent term. Chuck Entz (talk) 18:21, 23 March 2012 (UTC) Likely, or perhaps some of them (e.g. sunrise and sunset) had regulatory definitions, and people called them civil sunrise and civil sunset, and civil twilight et al. followed therefrom. That's a question for etymologists, and an important one, but my more immediate question is what definition to put.​—msh210℠ (talk) 19:37, 23 March 2012 (UTC) (Re DCDuring.) I have no reason to think the term is / terms are lawyers'. (Do you?) Astronomers', maybe? Meteorologists'?​—msh210℠ (talk) 06:54, 23 March 2012 (UTC) I know it's used in aeronautics; besides the UK air almanac, the term shows up in the works by the Federal Aviation Administration in the same b.g.c. search. I think it's used by anyone needing to make subtle distinctions of light levels as the sun goes down.--Prosfilaes (talk) 13:34, 23 March 2012 (UTC) Merriam-Webster has "of time : based on the mean sun and legally recognized for use in ordinary affairs"; Dictionary.com has a new and possibly different collocation by its temporal def "(of divisions of time) legally recognized in the ordinary affairs of life: the civil year". Civil day and civil year are other collocations; we either need a vague sense, or multiple senses, or dedicated entires for civil sunset, etc. - -sche (discuss) 19:42, 23 March 2012 (UTC) Rft-sense: The last noun sense is defined as (informal, attributive) Secretly. This doesn't look like a noun at all to me, but rather some other part of speech. Opinions? -- Liliana • 22:42, 22 March 2012 (UTC) If anything, should be secret, not secretly. A closet Republican is not a secretly Republican, but a secret one. And 'secret' on its own is still way too ambiguous for a definition. Mglovesfun (talk) 22:51, 22 March 2012 (UTC) Other dictionaries have as many as three adjective senses, roughly: "private", "secret", and "theoretical". I'm not familiar with the third. DCDuring TALK 04:07, 23 March 2012 (UTC) I think the missing element is that the person in the closet is the one hiding something from others, though there's also often the implication that it's "out of shame" or "to avoid disapproval" Chuck Entz (talk) 19:19, 23 March 2012 (UTC) The -ly would mean adverbial, but I can't imagine saying "he closet was a homosexual". I agree with Mglovesfun that it's an adjective. It originated as shorthand for "a homosexual who is in the closet (as a homosexual)", so one could make a case for it being attributive use of a noun sense, but it substitutes for the whole phrase- not just the single word that's left. Chuck Entz (talk) 18:35, 23 March 2012 (UTC) I have a cite for closet drinker from 1940. I have added the adjective sense of "secret". DCDuring TALK 22:50, 23 March 2012 (UTC) Currently, there is just one category for possessive adjectives for Catalan. Shouldn't be a separate category for possessive adjectives for all languages? At the moment they are classified as pronouns not even (simple) adjectives.--Forudgah (talk) 07:56, 23 March 2012 (UTC) Definition: "There will be discomforting consequences to lying." Is that what it means? I thought it was just a rhyming catcall to be chanted at a liar, without any implication of consequences. Equinox ◑ 13:22, 23 March 2012 (UTC) To the best of my knowledge, you are correct. Mglovesfun (talk) 13:24, 23 March 2012 (UTC) Agreed. SemperBlotto (talk) 13:26, 23 March 2012 (UTC) Fourthed. (American.)​—msh210℠ (talk) 16:53, 23 March 2012 (UTC) Another one I remember from school: copycat, copycat, don't know what you're looking at. (This makes more sense because it is saying that the plagiarist doesn't understand the material being copied!) Equinox ◑ 13:29, 23 March 2012 (UTC) Fifthed. Shouldn't be worded as a proverb. I don't know how many childhood rhymes merit inclusion, but "liar liar...." would be perhaps one of the most meritorious candidates. Are there any attestable chants or rhymes that would not warrant inclusion based on absence of meaning or some other criterion? DCDuring TALK 18:04, 23 March 2012 (UTC) Really? No reference to the meaning of life? That is kind of shocking. That is probably one of the most important definitions. -- Liliana • 12:50, 25 March 2012 (UTC) I added it (we all know it's citable), but I think it needs cleanup from somebody else, because this may be the driest defintion ever made for such a tongue-in-cheek concept. --Μετάknowledgediscuss/deeds 15:35, 25 March 2012 (UTC) Could someone check whether the audio file is for the noun or verb senses? — Paul G (talk) 08:49, 25 March 2012 (UTC) I think it covers all senses of both PoSes, except the verb sense "to cry louder than". DCDuring TALK 12:25, 25 March 2012 (UTC) [edit] overhaul Is the audio file for the noun or the verb? — Paul G (talk) 09:55, 25 March 2012 (UTC) It is correct for the noun. Not quite sure about the verb! Equinox ◑ 13:22, 25 March 2012 (UTC) In my (US) experience, noun and verb are pronounced identically in this case. --Μετάknowledgediscuss/deeds 15:25, 25 March 2012 (UTC) [edit] overhead Which part(s) of speech is the audio file for? — Paul G (talk) 10:04, 25 March 2012 (UTC) It has 11 alternative forms, most obsolete, and currently arranged as a list. What do you think of formatting it like this? It wastes less vertical space and makes the American form more visible, in my opinion. Ungoliant MMDCCLXIV 16:47, 25 March 2012 (UTC) I would just lay them out as a comma-separated list - on one line. SemperBlotto (talk) 16:50, 25 March 2012 (UTC) What about this? It's something of a combination of both ideas. - -sche (discuss) 17:48, 25 March 2012 (UTC) Pretty good. Ungoliant MMDCCLXIV 18:20, 25 March 2012 (UTC) [edit] Pronunciation of -tion/-sion The Scandinavian languages, English and Low German pronounce the mentioned endings with /sh/ or /ch/ while not having a notable palatalisation-feature. (As in Polish /s/=/s/ -> /si/=/shi/) Can anyone provide information on why this is and where it originated?ᚲᛟᚱᚾ (talk) 17:57, 25 March 2012 (UTC) w:Phonological history of English#Up to the American–British split. "In some words, /tj/, /sj/, /dj/, /zj/ coalesce to produce /tʃ/, /ʃ/, /dʒ/, and new phoneme /ʒ/ (examples: nature, mission, procedure, vision)". Ungoliant MMDCCLXIV 18:18, 25 March 2012 (UTC) But that would mean that all languages took their pronunciation from the fairly uninfluential English in the 17th century. Also, in languages other than English the /sh/ is confined to that specific syllable rather than to /Cj/-pairs. (Cf. djup, matjes, själv, which all sport different sounds.)ᚲᛟᚱᚾ (talk) 14:45, 26 March 2012 (UTC) The coalescing isn't unique to English, it happens in Dutch too, although the result is slightly different and more palatal in pronunciation, not a true palato-alveolar. /tj/ is often realised as [tʲ] or [c] in Dutch, and /sj/ as [sʲ] or [ɕ]. —CodeCat 21:31, 26 March 2012 (UTC) Does our entry for [[group]] account for things like these? What POS is "group" in such quotations? It is contrasted with adverbs. - -sche (discuss) 00:31, 26 March 2012 (UTC) I read the one with seriatum[sic] to be using it a verb: "You say on one hand, you run it seriatum and then [you] group [the results]". (I see how it could be read as an adverb — "You say on one hand, you run it seriatum and then [you run it] group" — but by asking b.g.c. to show me results for "group it" in that book, I found that another part of the page has "When you group[,] it seems to me that you do not introduce any wider […] ", which is clearly a verb.) We do have [[group#Verb]], though depending on your point of view, it either doesn't include this sense, or else it mislabels this sense. (That is, either we're missing a sense, "(intransitive) To put things together to form a group", or else our existing sense "(transitive) To put together to form a group" needs to be tweaked.) I believe the ones that coordinate individually with group are using it as a noun complement to "housed" or "penned"; "group-housed" means "housed in groups". There's a general tendency for coordinands to have the same part of speech, but it's not a very strong tendency, as long as the coordinands have the same semantic role and the same locally-relevant grammar. —RuakhTALK 01:36, 26 March 2012 (UTC) [edit] Etyl of Japanese term ピン (pin) I just substantially expanded the entry at ピン, but ran across a puzzle in the background to etyl 1. My sources to hand all list one sense of Japanese pin as deriving from Portuguese pinta, and all explain that pinta means "point". Yet, as the pinta entry clearly shows, it means "he/she/it paints", while the Portuguese word for "point" is ponto. Does anyone know if there might be a Portuguese dialect in which pinta = "point"? Or are my sources to hand incorrect on the source language, and pinta means "point" in some other tongue not yet included on the pinta page? -- Cheers, Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 20:28, 28 March 2012 (UTC) 日本語大辞典 agrees with Portuguese "pinta" as the source. See pt:pinta, where the first definition is "mancha de pequeno tamanho." BenjaminBarrett12 (talk) 21:20, 28 March 2012 (UTC) Aha, so the issue is that en:pinta#Portuguese is in need of significant expansion to cover the senses listed at pt:pinta. Thank you, Benjamin. I shall amend ピン momentarily. -- Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 21:44, 28 March 2012 (UTC) pinta means a small dot or stain (especially, but not necessarily, one in the skin). It's not dialectical as far as I know. Ungoliant MMDCCLXIV 21:44, 28 March 2012 (UTC) I've expanded pinta and it now includes this sense. Ungoliant MMDCCLXIV 22:00, 28 March 2012 (UTC) I question whether the following sense of "up to" is adjectival as claimed: What have you been up to? "up to" in this sense, as far as I can see, must have a noun as an object, as in He's been up to something. (In the example sentence I would say the object is "what", which has become detached due to inversion.) Therefore, "up to" would seem to have the properties of a preposition. However, I am not quite confident enough to change it unilaterally. 86.160.85.74 02:39, 29 March 2012 (UTC) Our quotation (KJV, Genesis 3:16) doesn't seem to match any of the senses; rather, I think in our quotation it must mean "pregnancy" (which is what the Hebrew means). Does anyone know if conception ever included pregnancy? —RuakhTALK 14:58, 29 March 2012 (UTC) The Century Dictionary (which I looked to in the expectation that it would have now-obsolete senses of the term) uses Genesis 3:16 to illustrate "The act of becoming pregnant; the beginning of pregnancy; the inception of the life of an embryo". "Inception of pregnancy" is also the sense dictionary.com has; Merriam-Webster has "the process of becoming pregnant involving fertilization or implantation or both" (and also says "conception can mean "embryo, fetus"!)... none of those dictionaries has "conception" as "[the entire] pregnancy", which is what I think you mean(?), nor "childbirth"/"childbearing", which is what the NIV translates the Hebrew word as(!). FWIW, Luther's German translation is similar to "conception": "wenn du schwanger wirst" (when you become pregnant). Is it possible that (1) the KJV mistranslated the Hebrew (and used 'conception' in the standard sense), perhaps influenced by the Latin, or (2) the Hebrew word can also mean 'the beginning of pregnancy'? - -sche (discuss) 19:09, 29 March 2012 (UTC) - -sche (discuss) 20:17, 29 March 2012 (UTC) Re: the possibility that the Hebrew form herón can mean "the beginning of pregnancy": It's possible — in fact, having consulted all of my dictionaries now, I find that two of them list not only "pregnancy" but also "conception" as translations, so I might upgrade it from "possible" to "true" — but I really don't see how Genesis 3:16 can be interpreted that way. G-d will increase pain and conception? The pain of conception? It just doesn't make sense to me. Both of my Bibles translate it as "childbearing". (Proof that I'm not the right Jew to answer this question: I have one Hebrew dictionary, six Hebrew-English dictionaries, six grammars of Modern Hebrew . . . and only two Bibles. Three if you count the one I keep at my parents' house. Unlike the compilers of the KJV, I am not a Biblical scholar, and it's no use pretending!) So, I really don't know. —RuakhTALK 23:39, 29 March 2012 (UTC) True, "the pain of conception" doesn't make much sense. OTOH, in looking for more information on this, I spotted a couple of scholarly articles specifically saying herón meant conception, not childbearing/childbirth. - -sche (discuss) 01:14, 30 March 2012 (UTC) I've started quoting scholarly analyses on Talk:conception. I don't think the first two I've quoted are internally consistent and cogent at all; they both say "herón means X, not Y […] so as you can see, herón means Z". - -sche (discuss) 01:33, 30 March 2012 (UTC) For what it's worth, my NIV translates it as 'childbearing', which fits with how I've always understood the passage. In any case, isn't this whole discussion really about הרון, and not about conception? Might we simply say that the passage in question is probably a poor quote for the entry and remove it? -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 00:59, 30 March 2012 (UTC) It might be a bad translation/quotation, but it's so well-known that it should probably be accounted for... - -sche (discuss) 01:14, 30 March 2012 (UTC) @Atelaes: I thought it was a discussion about conception because I'd figured that the KJV compilers were interpreting the verse the same way I do, so I imagined that they were using the word conception differently from how I do. But it seems that I figured and imagined wrongly, so yeah, I guess it's now a discussion about הרון (herón) — and that discussion now seems easy to resolve, by re-editing [[הרון]], which I'll go do now. —RuakhTALK 02:54, 30 March 2012 (UTC) Having spent way more than I should have on bible software, I have a good bit of material on this, but I think you'll find this the most interesting. It's a translator's note from the New English Translation: "Conception," if the correct meaning of the noun, must be figurative here since there is no pain in conception; it is a synecdoche, representing the entire process of childbirth and child rearing from the very start. However, recent etymological research suggests the noun is derived from a root הרר(hrr), not הרה(hrh), and means "trembling, pain" (see D. Tsumura, "A Note on הרון (Gen 3, 16)," Bib 75 [1994]: 398-400). Chuck Entz (talk) 06:26, 30 March 2012 (UTC) I just found the same translation online (with lots of other stuff!): [26] Chuck Entz (talk) 08:52, 30 March 2012 (UTC) I have copiously cited a definition of this relating to ethnicity. But I'm having trouble defining it and I'm not sure where I should go with. Right now I have a literal definition of an ethnicity not having a hyphen, but that seems to miss a lot of the real meaning. Some of them have the implications of "real" Americans or Canadians, whereas some (mostly social science material using "unhyphenated whites") have a neutral definition of "those who identify themselves as simply Americans instead of Italian-Americans or the like". Given the complexity of use, I'm not sure how or if to tag it in someway; the idea (of "real" Americans or Canadians) is more offensive then the word, but the two are tied fairly tightly together.--Prosfilaes (talk) 07:41, 30 March 2012 (UTC) Attempted. Still seems a little forced, but it's a start.Chuck Entz (talk) 08:14, 30 March 2012 (UTC) My problem with "belonging to a single ethnicity or nationality" is with African-American or as one cite puts it "Negro-Americanism", which is no more multiple ethnicity or nationality then white American.--Prosfilaes (talk) 10:14, 30 March 2012 (UTC) "Not hyphenated#Adjective." —Michael Z. 2012-03-30 19:27 z

You are receiving this email because you subscribed to this feed at blogtrottr.com. If you no longer wish to receive these emails, you can unsubscribe from this feed, or manage all your subscriptions