Wiktionary:Requests for deletion

Wiktionary > Requests > Requests for deletion

Wiktionary Request pages (edit) see also: discussions
Requests for cleanup add new request | history | archives Cleanup requests, questions and discussions.	Requests for verification English add new request | history CJK add new request | history Italic add new request | history Non-English (all other languages) add new request | history Requests for verification in the form of durably-archived attestations conveying the meaning of the term in question.	Requests for deletion English add new request | history CJK add new request | history Italic add new request | history Reconstruction add new request | history Non-English (all other languages) add new request | history Requests for deletion of pages in the main and Reconstruction namespace due to policy violations; also for undeletion requests.	Requests for deletion/Others add new request | history Requests for deletion and undeletion of pages in other (not the main) namespaces, such as categories, appendices and templates.
Requests for moves, mergers and splits add new request | history | archives Moves, mergers and splits; requests listings, questions and discussions.			Language treatment requests add new request | history Requests for changes to Wiktionary's language treatment practices, including renames, merges and splits.
{{attention}} • {{rfap}} • {{rfdate}} • {{rfquote}} • {{rfdef}} • {{rfeq}} • {{rfe}} • {{rfex}} • {{rfi}} • {{rfp}}

All Wiktionary: namespace discussions 1 2 3 4 5 - All discussion pages 1 2 3 4 5

Scope of this request page:

• In-scope: terms suspected to be multi-word sums of their parts such as “green leaf”
• Out-of-scope: terms whose existence is in doubt

Templates:

• {{rfd}}
• {{rfd-sense}}
• {{rfd-redundant}}
• {{archive-top|rfd}} + {{archive-bottom}}

See also:

• Criteria for inclusion
• Page deletion guidelines

Scope: This page is for requests for deletion of pages, entries and senses in the main namespace for a reason other than that the term cannot be attested. The most common reason for posting an entry or a sense here is that it is a sum of parts, such as "green leaf". It is occasionally used for undeletion requests (requests to restore entries that may have been wrongly deleted).

Out of scope: This page is not for words whose existence or attestation is disputed, for which see Wiktionary:Requests for verification. Disputes regarding whether an entry falls afoul of any of the subsections in our criteria for inclusion that demand a particular kind of attestation (such as figurative use requirements for certain place names and the WT:BRAND criteria) should also go to RFV. Blatantly obvious candidates for deletion should only be tagged with {{delete|Reason for deletion}} and not listed.

Adding a request: To add a request for deletion, place the template {{rfd}} or {{rfd-sense}} to the questioned entry, and then make a new nomination here. The section title should be exactly the wikified entry title such as [[green leaf]]. The deletion of just part of a page may also be proposed here. If an entire section is being proposed for deletion, the tag {{rfd}} should be placed at the top; if only a sense is, the tag {{rfd-sense}} should be used, or the more precise {{rfd-redundant}} if it applies. In any of these cases, any editor, including non-admins, may act on the discussion.

Closing a request: A request can be closed once a month has passed after the nomination was posted, except for snowball cases. If a decision to delete or keep has not been reached due to insufficient discussion, {{look}} can be added and knowledgeable editors pinged. If there is sufficient discussion, but a decision cannot be reached because there is no consensus, the request can be closed as “no consensus”, in which case the status quo is maintained. The threshold for consensus is hinted at the ratio of 2/3 of supports to supports and opposes, but is not set in stone and other considerations than pure tallying can play a role; see the vote.

• Deleting or removing the entry or sense (if it was deleted), or de-tagging it (if it was kept). In either case, the edit summary or deletion summary should indicate what is happening.
• Adding a comment to the discussion here with either RFD-deleted or RFD-kept, indicating what action was taken.
• Striking out the discussion header.

(Note: In some cases, like moves or redirections, the disposition is more complicated than simply “RFD-deleted” or “RFD-kept”.)

Archiving a request: At least a week after a request has been closed, if no one has objected to its disposition, the request should be archived to the entry's talk page. This is usually done using the aWa gadget, which can be enabled at WT:PREFS.

Oldest tagged RFDs

• No pages meet these criteria.

August 2013

moral authority

Seems to mean "an authority with respect to morality". Mglovesfun (talk) 12:43, 22 August 2013 (UTC)

Actual, it's more or less the other way around. It means having authority because one is believed to be moral. The authority can be over anything. In other words, if a person is believed by others to have impeccable morality, those others may follow the commands of the person with "moral authority", even if that person has no formal authority (i.e. doesn't have academic expertise in a subject or hold a political office). bd2412 T 12:55, 22 August 2013 (UTC)

Government/politics and academia only? Really?

Some other sources of formal authority includes management position, property ownership, officially certified competence, legal violence or threat thereof. There may be more. Other, informal sources of authority can include extra-legal violence or threat thereof, status from any source derived, celebrity, a track record of success (or its tokens), acknowledged competence or knowledge (certification-free), friendship with or leverage over others. I don't know what I'm missing.

Moral authority is in no OneLook reference besides Wiktionary. DCDuring TALK 14:27, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

Looking at citations, I think that the definition incorrectly combines two different ideas, The first is of a person or institution (as in, so-and-so is a moral authority) who is respected because they are thought to be moral; and the second is a type of morality itself. For the sense of a particular person, I find things like this:

• 2009, Robert Jefferson Norrell, Up from History: The Life of Booker T. Washington, p. 431:

  At first Martin Luther King Jr. invoked Booker as a moral authority for King's ethic of love and his posture of passive resistance to white hatred.

• 2010, Dan P. McAdams, George W. Bush and the Redemptive Dream, p. 207:

  No less a moral authority than Elie Wiesel, the celebrated holocaust survivor and Nobel laureate, urged President Bush to invade Iraq to defend freedom and liberate the Iraqi people.

• 2011, Scott C. Lowe, Christmas - Philosophy for Everyone: Better Than a Lump of Coal, p. 100:

  Santa is not only a moral authority, like a strict father, but he is also like a nurturing parent, traditionally, a mother.

For the sense of a force detached from individuals, I find things like this:

• 2002, Samuel Edward Finer, The Man on Horseback: The Role of the Military in Politics, p. 20:

  Thus, when the military breaches the existing political order, it will be forced to claim a moral authority for its actions.

• 2008, Philip B. Heymann, Living the Policy Process, p. 121:

  Victims of palpable injustice enjoy a moral authority that is likely to provide access to even busy players.

• 2011, Daniel Walker, God in a Brothel: An Undercover Journey into Sex Trafficking and Rescue, p. 124:

  In that knowledge I realized that while I lacked any legal authority, I already possessed all the necessary moral authority to confront and interview Watson for his crimes.

I think, therefore, that the problem with this definition is that it needs to be two distinct definitions to reflect two distinct concepts. bd2412 T 14:06, 25 June 2014 (UTC)

• Keep, or so am I inclined; the definition does not seem to be sum of parts. If the usual pro-deletion suspects have not shown up until now, let us err on the side of keep. --Dan Polansky (talk) 17:39, 25 June 2014 (UTC)

  See “moral authority”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.. Delete. DCDuring TALK 18:29, 25 June 2014 (UTC)

  From looking at authority, I actually do not see a sense of authority that, when combined with "moral", yields "moral authority". "The power to enforce rules or give orders" does not do; "Persons in command; specifically, government" does not do either; "A person accepted as a source of reliable information on a subject" does not work either, I think, since a moral authority is not necessarily a source of reliable information on morality. This could be because of a weakness of the authority entry. --Dan Polansky (talk) 18:43, 25 June 2014 (UTC)

  Weakness indeed. MWOnline has 12 definitions compared to our 3. Even Webster 1913 had "3. The power derived from opinion, respect, or esteem; influence of character, office, or station, or mental or moral superiority, and the like; claim to be believed or obeyed; as, an historian of no authority; a magistrate of great authority." DCDuring TALK 19:17, 25 June 2014 (UTC)

  Let's not adopt the weaknesses of other dictionaries, then. Keep. bd2412 T 13:40, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

• Let's honor the strength of language: that it can make a virtual infinity number of utterances whose exact meaning depends on context. — This comment was unsigned.

  Under that theory we could delete fire drill or tennis player as utterances whose exact meaning depends on context. However, for various reasons we have decided to keep such things. bd2412 T 15:13, 18 July 2014 (UTC)

  One key difference (key if we have the humility to recognize the possibility that the professional lexicographers at other dictionaries may have nearly as good judgment as we do) is that many other OneLook dictionaries have “fire drill”, in OneLook Dictionary Search., some have “tennis player”, in OneLook Dictionary Search., but none have “moral authority”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.. DCDuring TALK 17:35, 18 July 2014 (UTC)

  I would happily delete fire drill and tennis player. There is some obscure reason I can't remember that made others want to keep tennis player. --WikiTiki89 17:17, 18 July 2014 (UTC)

  Those two should be kept. Purplebackpack89 20:27, 18 July 2014 (UTC)

• Keep: per BD and Dan Purplebackpack89 19:54, 27 June 2014 (UTC)
• Delete. --WikiTiki89 17:17, 18 July 2014 (UTC)
• Delete. — Keφr 20:16, 23 July 2014 (UTC)

For keeping: BD2412, DP, PBP. For deletion: Gloves, DCDuring, Wikitiki89, me. Anyone else? — Keφr 07:38, 26 July 2014 (UTC)

• Keep. The phrase is highly notable. The definition is basically right. It's a hard concept to get a handle on and I'd word it slightly differently, but it's OK. The second definition is... erm, not exactly right, and IMO could be dispensed with (the first definition really covers the same ground), but it's not wrong either. Herostratus (talk) 12:51, 16 August 2014 (UTC)

  Unlike Wikipedia, Wiktionary does not care about notability. --WikiTiki89 13:36, 16 August 2014 (UTC)

• Keep. Both definitions are valid and that fact alone indicates that this is not a simple, straightforward sum-of-parts term. Further counting against reading this term as SoP is the fact that its meaning was not evident to Mglovesfun when he originally nominated it. I also suspect the term tends to be a bit of puzzler for many people who are not native speakers of English, and that its inclusion here is a valuable service to them. It doesn't really matter whether the term is in other OneLook dictionaries or not. -- · (talk) 06:18, 17 August 2014 (UTC)

Your reasoning is specious. The more different meanings writers writing for the same type of audience can intend when they combine two words, the less evidence there is that the term has sufficiently fixed meaning to be said to have entered the lexicon. The two senses, roughly, "authority on the subject of moral matters" and "authority derived from morals" follow two standard ways in which meaning is derived from compounds. There are more ways as well, based on other senses of authority. "sartorial authority" would have the same two meanings and apparently does:

Delete and supply at least some of the missing definitions of authority#Noun that more comprehensive dictionaries have. DCDuring TALK 13:14, 17 August 2014 (UTC)

Although I am involved in this discussion, I am loathe to see an RfD stay open for more than a year, as this one now has, and would like to close. At this point, the !vote stands as follows:

Keep

• User:BD2412
• User:Dan Polansky
• User:Herostratus
• User:Purplebackpack89
• User:Talking Point

Delete

• User:DCDuring
• User:Kephir
• User:Mglovesfun
• User:Wikitiki89

Putting aside the argument on the merits of the entry, does anyone disagree that this reflects an absence of consensus to delete? bd2412 T 13:49, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

Seems like a pretty clear-cut case of no consensus. --WikiTiki89 15:19, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

I'm not sure that we'll get a consensus on that point. What is a lack of consensus, really? Do we need a BP discussion or a vote on that? DCDuring TALK 15:33, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

• RFD kept. This is a clear-cut no consensus for deletion. --Dan Polansky (talk) 17:20, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

  I knew there would not be consensus. I don't think this is quite the same as an outright keep decision. DCDuring TALK 20:10, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

  Keeping for lack of consensus is standard procedure. --WikiTiki89 20:11, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

October 2013

drastically

rfd-sense: "Using drastic or severe measures." Isn't this the same as "in a drastic manner"? Mglovesfun (talk) 15:19, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

You would think so, being a native speaker, but what about the poor language learner who doesn't know that? DCDuring TALK 15:56, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

Sorry, what's your point? Mglovesfun (talk) 20:19, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

It may look like duplication to you from your privileged position as native speaker, but not to the poor, struggling language learner. DCDuring TALK 22:06, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

• Combine them. Sense 1: In a drastic manner; using drastic or severe measures. bd2412 T 22:42, 17 October 2013 (UTC) Striking !vote, new vote below. bd2412 T 15:21, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

They are not the same, are they? "The numbers have fallen drastically" does not mean they have fallen "using drastic or severe measures" (no measures were used!), but to a drastic or severe extent. Equinox ◑ 22:46, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

I made the degree sense separate from the 'manner' sense today. The challenged sense is "using drastic or severe measures", which could be considered duplicative of the manner sense "in a drastic manner". DCDuring TALK 23:31, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

Can someone provide an example of a sentence using "drastically" to refer to the use of drastic or severe measures, that would not be covered by the meaning, in a drastic manner? bd2412 T 23:17, 24 August 2014 (UTC)

I'm not even sure that I know how to distinguish "in a drastic manner" from "to drastic/extreme extent".

???They cut back on store hours minimally, but drastically.

That doesn't seem right at all. DCDuring TALK 23:36, 24 August 2014 (UTC)

• Delete. In retrospect, the problem here is not that drastically has multiple meanings, but that drastic has multiple meanings, which are contained in that entry. Drastically means one thing, in a drastic manner, no matter which sense of drastic is used. Compare passionately; we do not list separate senses for the romantic, excited, and bereaved senses of passionate. This reflects our practice with other parts of speech. For example, posters is merely defined as the plural of poster, not as "the plural of paper hung on the wall" and "the plural of one who posts things". bd2412 T 15:21, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

  It can seem to be a problem with -ly adverbs that the senses simply carry over from the adjective. However, I think the seeming may not be reality. In this case can you really call this a manner adverb at all? I can detect no semantic difference in the meaning of this adverb whether it modifies an adjective or an adverb. In both cases it seems to have no meaning other than that of a degree adverb. What seems interesting is that it is not or cannot be used with just any verb or adjective. Perhaps this restriction is the vestige of whatever semantically distinguished it at one time from other degree adverbs. It is a shame that older print dictionaries like MW 1913 and Century 1911 rarely offer separate definitions for -ly adverbs. Does the OED define them separately? DCDuring TALK 15:51, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

  Why is there a dichotomy between manner and degree at all? If drastic relates a degree, and I do something "in a drastic manner" then I am doing it to a degree that is drastic. Drastically, in that sense, still means "in a drastic manner". bd2412 T 20:31, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

  There are -ly adverbs that have lost all possibility of being interpreted as manner adverbs, such as greatly. DCDuring TALK 22:40, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

  There is a small class of words like greatly, mostly, and lastly, which can not be described as being in the manner of their corresponding adjective, but they are few and far between, and I don't think this is one of them. bd2412 T 00:52, 26 August 2014 (UTC)

  I'd like to see an instance, invented or real, of the use of the word in current English that clearly had a 'manner' and not a 'degree' interpretation. DCDuring TALK 00:59, 26 August 2014 (UTC)

  Do beautifully or silently convey degree? bd2412 T 01:17, 26 August 2014 (UTC)

  What about these citations (not the usex)? - -sche (discuss) 01:19, 26 August 2014 (UTC)

  They look good as cites of a 'manner' sense, which would seem to merit its own definition. They seem dated to me, but confirming that would take a bit more research. DCDuring TALK 04:31, 26 August 2014 (UTC)

I have combined all of the senses into one sense: "in a drastic manner; to a drastic degree". - -sche (discuss) 21:45, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

face sex oral

Sum of parts, especially considering that we already have face sex. --Æ&Œ (talk) 01:26, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

I was wondering what face sex was, until I clicked on it and it was Romanian. Mglovesfun (talk) 01:12, 21 October 2013 (UTC)

At least it's better than face cum... -- Liliana • 05:00, 11 November 2013 (UTC)

• Keep. It is not obvious to an English speaker that the Romanian phrase would follow this construction. bd2412 T 13:41, 10 July 2014 (UTC)
• Delete. The verb face just means “do”. — TAKASUGI Shinji (talk) 00:01, 24 July 2014 (UTC)

Klebsiella pneumoniae carbapenemase

Translingual entry. In the translingual community that uses this term Template:l/mul (a species name, in italics) seems to be used attributively as a modifier to chemical term carbapenemase (not italicized). This seems SoP. The same may be true for more casual use in English, but that is a separable matter.

The whole mess of related MWEs surrounding this in both English and Translingual L2s needs review. This seems like the best place to start. If this passes, then the rest almost certainly would pass RfD, whatever redundancy-eliminating cleanup they might need. DCDuring TALK 13:06, 27 October 2013 (UTC)

• Basically, it's totally wrong. Originally it was a (deprecated template usage) carbapenemase produced by (deprecated template usage) Klebsiella pneumoniae - this would be SoP. Now, KPC refers to (deprecated template usage) carbapenemases produced by other bacteria. I would just delete it. SemperBlotto (talk) 17:33, 27 October 2013 (UTC)

  The misnomer principle would say we should keep it if the SoP name is misleading as to the actual meaning in use. DCDuring TALK 15:54, 28 October 2013 (UTC)

Indeed, that to me sounds like a reason to keep (but improve). Mglovesfun (talk) 19:22, 29 October 2013 (UTC)

It might not be too easy to attest the non-SoP definition. Who would like to take a crack at an alternative definition?

Perhaps, these definitions ought to be RfVed. In the course of the RfV maybe better definitions will emerge. If no one is willing and able to find good attestation for the definitions, then we are incapable of including it, whether or not it is in fact part of the language. DCDuring TALK 19:39, 29 October 2013 (UTC)

December 2013

sveda lingvo

Sum-of-parts entry created by Tbot (though it has been edited by a couple of other editors since). Mr. Granger (talk) 07:37, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

Erm, it's pretty obvious what it means. However Special:WhatLinksHere/lingvo shows quite a few of these. Have any of them been nominated for deletion before? What was the result? Mglovesfun (talk) 11:20, 3 December 2013 (UTC)

Evidently greka lingvo has. See Talk:greka lingvo. —Mr. Granger (talk • contribs) 13:52, 3 December 2013 (UTC)

Delete all (we need to list them to do that, of course). If you know what sveda and lingvo mean, you know what sveda lingvo means. And if you don't know what they mean, that's why we have entries for sveda and lingvo. Mglovesfun (talk) 15:26, 3 December 2013 (UTC)

I'm listing the others below; if you have a comment specific to these, please put it in the language's individual section. Mglovesfun (talk) 17:01, 3 December 2013 (UTC)

Agreed - they should all be deleted. —Mr. Granger (talk • contribs) 17:15, 3 December 2013 (UTC)

 Delete Yes, all SOP. And remove derived term links at sveda, eŭska, vaska, itala, irlanda, and klingona. ~ Röbin Liönheart (talk) 09:22, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

• Keep, outside of CFI. The incomplete inclusion criterion that I am using: it is a term denoting a concept or thing for which English has a single word; Esperanto probably does not have a single word to refer to Swedish. --Dan Polansky (talk) 20:28, 5 December 2013 (UTC)

  Actually, the most typical way to refer to Swedish in Esperanto is "la sveda" (the Swedish). Saying "sveda lingvo" is a lot like saying "Swedish language" in English. (Maybe this is a sense that should be added to sveda, actually.) —Mr. Granger (talk • contribs) 15:36, 6 December 2013 (UTC)

  But then you need a noun sense at sveda, right? Anyway, striking my keep, since I believe you. --Dan Polansky (talk) 06:25, 7 December 2013 (UTC)

  Switch to Keep again. From google:"sveda lingvo" define, I see multiple multilingual dictionaries having this. I looked at google books:"sveda lingvo" and google books:"la sveda" -"sveda lingvo" -"sveda literaturo" -"sveda universitata" -"sveda reĝo" -"sveda insulo" -"sveda regiono" -"sveda atmosfero" -" sveda urbeto" -"sveda originalo" -"sveda somero" -"sveda tradukis" to verify that "la sveda" is the most common way of referring to Swedish and I failed. --Dan Polansky (talk) 09:06, 27 July 2014 (UTC)

• Delete. --WikiTiki89 15:41, 6 December 2013 (UTC)

Delete per nom. - -sche (discuss) 05:33, 7 December 2013 (UTC)

Keep. In Esperanto, Swedish is called la sveda lingvo, or la sveda by abbreviation. Note that Esperanto nouns always end with -o, and sveda is clearly an abbreviation and not a noun of its own. It is not clear whether an adjective + lingvo stands for an actual language or not. Compare sveda lingvo (“Swedish language”) and amerikaj lingvoj (“American languages”). — TAKASUGI Shinji (talk) 05:56, 8 December 2013 (UTC)

emergency physician

Looks like sum of parts to me. —Mr. Granger (talk • contribs) 14:56, 10 December 2013 (UTC)

• Keep as a translation target. The French translation is urgentiste, a single-word non-compound. Per WP, Portuguese is emergencista. German Notarzt is a compound, but I am not sure one would be able to be sure about the translation by combining translations for "emergency" and "physician". I am not sure what the Czech translation should be; maybe záchranář, but not nouzový lékař offered by Google translate (actually, Google offered "nouzové lékař", which is ungrammatical for gender mismatch). Slovak would probably be pohotovostný lekár, which is quite transparent, yet Google translate offers núdzové lekár. Admission: translation target is outside of CFI. --Dan Polansky (talk) 18:38, 26 May 2014 (UTC)

I would delete as not likely to be a good phrasebook entry. You don't ask for an emergency physician, you ask for an ambulance or to go to a hospital. Renard Migrant (talk) 21:04, 23 July 2014 (UTC)

Delete per nom.​—msh210℠ (talk) 07:02, 3 August 2014 (UTC)

• Keep emergency physician as a particularly useful translation target. bd2412 T 13:25, 18 June 2014 (UTC)
• Note: User:Mglovesfun voted to delete, but the comment was archived. It can be seen at Talk:emergency doctor. —Mr. Granger (talk • contribs) 16:55, 26 August 2014 (UTC)

  User:Mglovesfun is User:Renard Migrant (which I knew for some time, and I say it here since he openly admitted this in one wiki discussion), so should only count once. --Dan Polansky (talk) 17:43, 26 August 2014 (UTC)

parquet

The adjective shown here is a noun modifier, according to Oxford. The derived terms could be transferred to the noun, and the quotations too. Donnanz 11:58, 15 December 2013 (UTC)

Delete (or cite as unambiguously adjectival). Mglovesfun (talk) 20:07, 15 December 2013 (UTC)

Seems to me this is a rather fruitless discussion. Is "parquet" in "parquet floor" a noun-modifier or an adjective? On what grounds could you offer a definitive answer to that question? (And is it even a sensible question to ask?) Unless the parsimony that a noun-only definition would offer is the goal, maintaining the adjectival entry makes it clear that "parquet" can be used to modify a variety of nouns ("floor," "table," etc.).

homo marriage

Obvious SOP added by the author because it applies to his gay lifestyle. --Æ&Œ (talk) 17:24, 20 December 2013 (UTC)

First of all, you added it yourself. Second of all, you also added homomarriage, so now WT:COALMINE applies unless homomarriage is not citable. If you want it to be deleted, why did you add it? --WikiTiki89 17:36, 20 December 2013 (UTC)

homomarriage is just homo + marriage. --Æ&Œ (talk) 17:47, 20 December 2013 (UTC)

You do know about WT:COALMINE, don't you? --WikiTiki89 17:56, 20 December 2013 (UTC)

Is WT:COALMINE a Wiktionary policy? If it is, then that automatically makes it worthless. All that matters is common practice. --Æ&Œ (talk) 18:08, 20 December 2013 (UTC)

Yes it's a policy, and the common practice happens to be to follow it, despite the editors (including me) who disagree with it. --WikiTiki89 18:21, 20 December 2013 (UTC)

We don’t need policies; Wiktionary can exist without any policies. --Æ&Œ (talk) 18:42, 20 December 2013 (UTC)

Without policies, there would no criteria for blocking people for making bad edits. --WikiTiki89 18:50, 20 December 2013 (UTC)

Ah who cares. Let the admins block whomever they want! It’s not like they ever needed reasons, well, aside from the fact that blocking is fun. --Æ&Œ (talk) 19:06, 20 December 2013 (UTC)

Move homomarriage to RFV (and delete both once it fails). Ƿidsiþ 18:00, 20 December 2013 (UTC)

• Does this ever mean a gay person's straight marriage of convenience? Including this would seem to be justified, nay, required by our slogan with no justification in CFI for excluding it (even without COALMINE). Similarly for breeder marriage, which is attestable on Usenet from a few different groups. DCDuring TALK 22:01, 20 December 2013 (UTC)

On the contrary, I would to request the deletion of this entry on the grounds that it’s an idiotic word and I don’t want to be associated with it. My comments above were just me making a damned idiot out of myself as usual. --Æ&Œ (talk) 01:57, 22 December 2013 (UTC)

brimstone

The adjective PoS does not suggest a true adjective rather than attributive use of the noun. The citations could use clean up as they illustrate literary use of the noun attributively. DCDuring TALK 20:14, 26 December 2013 (UTC)

• Yes, delete the adjective entry. The citations can be listed under the noun. Donnanz (talk) 17:28, 27 December 2013 (UTC)

Ditto. Mglovesfun (talk) 11:49, 28 December 2013 (UTC)

Sense deleted. bd2412 T 23:07, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

chè sâm bổ lượng

Sum of parts: chè + sâm bổ lượng. The latter is a noun taken as an adjective, but any construction of chè + <name of dish> is unnecessary. Suggest deleting definition and moving it as alternative form of sâm bổ lượng. TeleComNasSprVen (talk) 22:43, 28 December 2013 (UTC)

January 2014

‎in one stroke, ‎at a single stroke, at a stroke, at one stroke

All created at a single stroke. --Hekaheka (talk) 07:40, 2 January 2014 (UTC)

• Keep all; they seem fairly idiomatic to me. bd2412 T 17:14, 4 June 2014 (UTC)

Non-idiomatic Vietnamese words

The following pages contain classifiers, which serve the same grammatical function as English articles (though more descriptive). I think they should be deleted because they are non-idiomatic (the forms given in parentheses should not be deleted):

• cái võng (=võng)
• cây điều (=điều)
• cây keo (=keo)
• cây sa kê (=sa kê)
• cây thông rụng lá (=thông rụng lá)
• cây xương rồng (=xương rồng)
• con cóc (=cóc)
• con ếch (=ếch)
• con giòi (=giòi)
• con muỗi (=muỗi)
• con nhím (=nhím)
• con rận (=rận)
• đàn ghi-ta (=ghi-ta)
• quả sa kê (=sa kê)
• quả sầu riêng (=sầu riêng)
• quả táo (=táo)
• sự hy sinh (=hy sinh)
• sự giải quyết (=giải quyết)
• trái chà là (=chà là)
• trái mít (=mít)
• trái sa kê (=sa kê)
• trái vú sữa (=vú sữa)

I don't think Wiktionary should have articles like "cái võng", which means "a hammock" (as opposed to "võng", which means "hammock"). Also, "sự giải quyết" is considered a word with a classifier in front, not a word per se. (This means there will never be a Vietnamese entry with the definition "decision".) I'm less sure about deleting the tree (cây) and fruit (quả, trái) entries, because we do have entries like "apple tree". Note that not all entries named with classifiers are problematic: "quả đất" would be perfectly fine, because it means "Earth", not "ball of dirt".

See also Wiktionary:Requests for moves, mergers and splits#Non-idiomatic Vietnamese words.

 – Minh Nguyễn (talk, contribs) 10:29, 3 January 2014 (UTC)

Delete those that seem problematic. I'm curious about nouns with the nominaliser "sự", though, such as sự hy sinh, sự giải quyết. Do you always treat them as non-lemma forms? What about sự kiện vs kiện? Is that a different case? We could use [[giải quyết]] as a lemma for "to decide" but [[sự giải quyết]] is a translation for "decision". So a valid translation for "decision" would be sự giải quyết (vi) where "sự giải quyết" is displayed but linked to the verb "giải quyết". Perhaps an approach for Japanese -suru verbs can be taken, e.g. 勉強 has both noun and verb sections. Thus, nouns with "sự" could all be linked to verbs/adjectives without them. --Anatoli ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 13:11, 3 January 2014 (UTC)

What helps in determining whether or not a word fits the idiomaticity requirement of CFI is the prevalence of the expression in general use as well as the semantic weight each individual expression can carry. "frog" has as much semantic equivalence as "the frog" for example, and even when the latter is more grammatically correct and more commonly used, most people are apt to understand just the former by itself as well. Does the classifier carry any semantic weight with it? Your example quả đất is a good starting point, as it indicates that when the literal translation "ball of dirt" is extended to its logical conclusion, it becomes "Earth" in its totality. The initial classifier quả changes the meaning slightly yet significantly. I think we would have to make similar considerations, such as sự giải quyết ("the act of deciding" = "decision") for example. Does "decision" have anything semantically new that is not provided by "the act of deciding"? As for precedent, I think it's great in discouraging future redundancies such as "muỗi" and "con muỗi"; I don't think there should be equivalent entries at "mosquito" and "the mosquito" for example. TeleComNasSprVen (talk) 22:05, 3 January 2014 (UTC)

I don't know if you like the idea but I suggest to have sự-nouns in the entries without them. E.g. see this revision of hy sinh where I added a noun section (and other things) - {{vi-noun|head=[[sự]] [[hy]] [[sinh]]}}. To an English speaker "sự hy sinh" is a noun meaning "sacrifice", even if the lemma form is "hy sinh". "sự hy sinh" could be formatted as an "Alternative form of hy sinh" or a "sự-noun form (or similar) of hy sinh" if a template is created. I have created Category:Vietnamese sự-nouns, which now contains just one entry - "hy sinh" but perhaps "sự hy sinh" should be there instead? Not sure if redirect is the best option, users might want to know what this "sự" means and why we have two forms - "hy sinh" and "sự hy sinh".

With the living creatures too, a Vietnamese translation of "toad" is "con cóc". It seems both "cóc" and "con cóc" mean the same thing - "a toad". Many dictionaries use "con cóc" to translate "toad" even if "con" can be dropped. Not sure if "toad" and "the toad" is a good analogy here or even Mandarin or Japanese measure words (counters or classifiers). E.g. Mandarin 蟾蜍 (chánchú) is never used in dictionaries as 只蟾蜍 (zhī chánchú) (classifier + noun). Vietnamese "con" must have a much wider usage. Perhaps another category for "con-" nouns should be created. Sorry, my knowledge of the Vietnamese grammar is very basic but I'm thinking from the users' point of view. Using "cls=con" in Vietnamese noun entries is not a bad idea but perhaps con-nouns should also exist? --Anatoli ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 02:36, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

As I have never used the word sự in regular Vietnamese I cannot speak to that, but what I can say is that the word con and the like are really semantically empty categories, save for a few specific situations. Why do we omit particles a/an/the from our entries even though they are so commonly and widely used? We have seen and heard many ESL learners even omit these words when they try to speak English, and their utterances remain perfectly understandable. It is because these particles are semantically empty categories, they are only used as specifiers in number and specificity. If you were to omit the word the from your paragraph above, it is still semantically parsable even as it is grammatically incorrect. Similarly, a Vietnamese speaker would simply tell you that omitting the classifiers is grammatically incorrect, but they'd still be able to understand what you were trying to say (save for a few ambiguous homonyms where classifiers are expected, but again homonyms exist in English too, and besides those may warrant separate entries). The majority of these are rather silly and redundant entries for a dictionary to have, like nhím and con nhím, duplicating the entire contents of one onto the other. This extra maintenance, we do not need, it provides more work for us should something change, and it takes up empty space. TeleComNasSprVen (talk) 17:27, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

I cannot fully agree with you at the moment. See my section about sách below. nhím is used with con but not all nouns seem to behave the same way. Could you explain, e.g. why dictionaries list living creatures with "con"? Why do they show "con nhím", not simply "nhím" for porcupine?

With nouns with classifiers I may agree to delete the terms but the corresponding lemmas should have a "cls=" parameter. --Anatoli ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 12:24, 5 January 2014 (UTC)

I certainly agree that we want to help readers find out how to turn "hy sinh" into a noun, but calling "hy sinh" a noun is misleading. It really is a verb. The "sự" is understood if you try to use "hy sinh" like a noun; indeed, "sự" is very rare in spoken Vietnamese, only used to disambiguate e.g. "sự chết" (death) from "cái chết" (a death). Why not simply treat "sự hy sinh" as a usage example? We can definitely have Category:Vietnamese con nouns and the like for actual nouns, but I would expect Category:Vietnamese verbs classified by sự rather than Category:Vietnamese sự-nouns. If necessary, I can add a cls parameter to {{vi-verb}} that doesn't display the classifier but instead adds the entry to a "classified by" category.

"Con cóc" can be the Vietnamese translation of "toad" just as "hy sinh" would be translated as "to sacrifice" rather than just "sacrifice". That is, I have no problem with mentioning the classifiers in translation sections, but they don't usually warrant separate entries. And I think the classifier should be linked separately, if at all.

We should make an exception for Sino-Vietnamese terms like "sự kiện" (事件). As far as Vietnamese is concerned, "sự" and "kiện" are just syllables.

One point I neglected to make is that "cây táo" (apple tree) would probably be acceptable, because "táo" on its own refers to the fruit, as in English. "Cây" can still be omitted (e.g., "trồng táo" to grow apple trees, not just the apples). In contrast, "bạch dương" (poplar) on its own refers to the tree, so "cây bạch dương" is redundant.

 – Minh Nguyễn (talk, contribs) 09:21, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

Well, you yourself suggested to delete the "sự" nouns. I was just thinking of a way to allow such entries.

I want you to consider the Japanese analogy again, where the situation is the same but verbs and nouns swap their placec with Vitenamese. 勉強 (benkyō, "studying, studies") is a noun and a verbal noun. To form a verb, you need to add する (suru, "to do") to the end. Rather than having a separate entry for "勉強する", which means "to study". The entry for 勉強 contains a verb section, which displays 勉強する in the header. I've done the same thing for "sự hy sinh" (only it's a noun made from a verb, the reverse from Japanese), which is in the verb entry "hy sinh" but now has a noun section and displays "sự hy sinh" in the header. This resolves the lemma problem, IMO. It remains to be discussed whether "sự hy sinh" gets a special entry or a hard/soft redirect to the lemma form "hy sinh". Re: but calling "hy sinh" a noun is misleading. If you examine the "hy sinh" entry carefully, you will see that it's not "hy sinh" but "sự hy sinh", which is a noun. If they don't warrant a separate entry, they can be turned to redirects but the information should be saved into separate sections in the lemma entries. Cases like "sự kiện" may get separate entries, no problem with that. Other words like "con cóc" can be treated similarly but there shouldn't be any information loss for users.

I have renamed the category as suggested -Category:Vietnamese verbs classified by sự. --Anatoli ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 10:47, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

I don't think an entire section is necessary for "sự hy sinh" in hy sinh; a usage example is enough. See "cạnh tranh", which gives both "sự cạnh tranh" and "tính cạnh tranh" as examples. I don't think there would be any information loss this way. (There would be two noun sections under your proposal.) – Minh Nguyễn (talk, contribs) 05:18, 5 January 2014 (UTC)

Delete. sự kiện is fundamentally different from "sự hy sinh". Wyang (talk) 13:04, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

• Keep, since I find the stated reason for deletion implausible: "The following pages contain classifiers, which serve the same grammatical function as English articles ...". The claim that the leading syllables serve the same grammatical function as English articles is hard to believe: "cây" is also a noun meaning tree, "quả" is also a noun meaning fruit and "trái" is also a noun meaning fruit. Admittedly, these are also entered in Wiktionary with the part of speech of "classifier". W:Vietnamese_grammar#Classifier_position contains no inline references, so its accuracy is hard to verify. On another note, the spaces seem to indicate separation of syllables rather than words; thus, to delete sự hy sinh ("sacrifice", noun) as sum of parts (sự "nominaliser particle" + hy sinh "to sacrifice") may be a bit like deleting "crucifying" as a sum of parts (crucify + ing). --Dan Polansky (talk) 14:45, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

  Vietnamese classifiers can carry as much meaning as "set" in "a set of underwear" but grammatically function the same way as "a" in "a shoe". That is, you can usually delete "sự" when "hy sinh" is used where a noun would go, and you can delete "cây" where there is no possibility of mistaking the tree for the fruit. I purposely left alone any "cây" entry for fruit trees, where there would be such an ambiguity ("apple tree" meets CFI and so would "cây táo").

  Vietnamese is an analytical languge, unlike English, so not all analogies work. Spaces do separate all syllables, but those syllables are each words in their own right, except in onomatopoeia, reduplication, or Sino-Vietnamese borrowings. "Sự hy sinh" can be viewed as two words: whereas "ing" has no meaning on its own in English, "sự" is a noun in isolation. ("Hy sinh" is a Sino-Vietnamese borrowing, so "hy" has no meaning on its own.)

  I'll improve Wikipedia's discussion of classifiers shortly, but in the meantime, there's a wealth of academic research online about them, for example: [1][2]. [3] starts out with a good overview. For something more accessible, see this grammar chapter and this one by Laurence Thompson. Finally, it may be helpful to see how reputable translationaries deal with this issue.

   – Minh Nguyễn (talk, contribs) 23:50, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

  These things called Vietnamese classifiers do not seem to be very similar to English articles. You say they serve the same grammatical function, but I am rather unclear about what you mean by that. I can add "a" or "the" to almost any English noun; from what I have understood, you cannot freely combine any classifier with any noun or verb; furthermore, an addition of "a" vs. "the" indicates definiteness or determinacy, while that is not what the classifiers do. The classifiers seem to be similar to -ing, -ion, -ness, -ize, -er, -or suffixes and to "tree" and "fruit" in "apple tree" and "apple fruit". An almost perfect regularity in application of classifiers--if there is one--may make it customary for Vietnamese-English dictionaries to omit combinations that include the classifiers, but it is less clear that this fits the overall approach of English Wiktionary, which even includes inflected forms as separate entries, and which has "coolness" as a separate entry, unlike Merriam-Webster online, which only has a dedicated entry for "cool". --Dan Polansky (talk) 10:09, 5 January 2014 (UTC)

  I think that a large part of this problem is that you are too fixated on interpreting these to be like prefixes or suffixes when the comparison to English "-ing", "-ness", etc is pretty inadequate on its own. And besides, muỗi is redundant to con muỗi and this duality would only create more maintenance work in the future should something change. This seems to be a problem dictionaries have with Sinitic languages in general, when classical classifications of PoS like "noun", "verb", "adjective" are inadequate at fully capturing the meaning of a lemma. But I'll let Mxn speak more about these entries. TeleComNasSprVen (talk 10:28, 5 January 2014 (UTC)

  You have not explained why the comparison of "sự" to -ing and -ion and the like is inadequate; I have explained what makes a comparison to English definite and indefinite articles implausible to me, or at least not useful in deciding whether the Vietnamese combinations should be kept. A reasoning along the lines of '"sự hy sinh" should not be kept, since we do not keep a car' is entirely implausible to me.

  As for maintenance, I do not see any maintenance problem with "con muỗi" vs. "muỗi" that is absent in "blueness" vs. "blue" or "plowing" vs. "plow"; indeed, MWO avoids "blueness"[4], while en:wikt does not. However, since both con muỗi and muỗi mean "mosquito", the former could have a definition line reading like "classifier-extended form of muỗi", or the like; the same approach is not so useful for sự hy sinh (sacrifice, noun), which is not synonymous with hy sinh (sacrifice, verb). But even there, sự hy sinh could read like "Nominal form of hy sinh; sacrifice". --Dan Polansky (talk) 11:17, 5 January 2014 (UTC)

  I have already given my explanation further up the page and I'd have expected you to fully read all the arguments presented here before coming up with a rebuttal of your own. You might have done so, but nevertheless, I believe Mxn is more qualified to comment on the classifier-as-PoS-issue (he's even given you links to the literature on them which I was not previously aware existed), so rather than risk having the appearance of talking out of my ass I will leave it to him. TeleComNasSprVen (talk) 11:41, 5 January 2014 (UTC)

  Your diff does not explain why the comparison of "sự" to -ing and -ion and the like is inadequate. The only part of the diff that pertains to "sự" is this: "As I have never used the word sự in regular Vietnamese I cannot speak to that [...]". --Dan Polansky (talk) 12:05, 5 January 2014 (UTC)

  I was certainly simplifying things by comparing classifiers to English articles. My point was only that they often introduce the noun in usage but aren't considered part of the word.

  As you suggest, you can't arbitrarily combine just any classifier with any noun, but you can't say "stick of cattle" or "head of butter", either. Now, "butter" and "cattle" are collective or mass nouns, so what about count nouns? Well, Vietnamese has no such thing: "mít" refers to the concept of jackfruit, so "quả" is required to refer to an individual jackfruit. If that's enough to warrant a separate entry, why not include "stick of butter" and "head of cattle" as well?

  Even though "sự" may be used in many of the situations in which English uses the suffix "-tion", they are not equivalent grammatical features. I'm a fan of inflection entries, but Vietnamese has no inflection, as the most basic description of the language will attest. Chinese, another analytical, non-inflected language, has a similar system of classifiers (including a nominalizer), yet Wiktionary doesn't use them in entry titles. Inflection entries help me master Spanish conjugations because I can find poder if all I have is pudieron, without needing to remember that poder is a stem-changing verb. But if you know no Vietnamese and encounter sự cạnh tranh in a sentence, does that need still arise?

   – Minh Nguyễn (talk, contribs) 12:10, 5 January 2014 (UTC)

• @Minh Nguyễn. Could you answer my question I asked above: why dictionaries list living creatures with "con"? Why do they show "con nhím", not simply "nhím" for porcupine? I am familiar with Mandarin and Japanese, Mandarin and Japanese dictionaries don't list nouns with their classifiers. So, a Chinese porcupine is simply 豪猪 (háozhū) in dictionaries, not 头豪猪 (classifier "tóu" + háozhū). --Anatoli ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 12:33, 5 January 2014 (UTC)

• (edit conflict) I can't speak for the other languages, but English-Vietnamese dictionaries show "con nhím" as a translation of "a porcupine" as opposed to the general concept of "porcupine". (Hence my original rationale, which in hindsight was a distraction.) Plus, you may very well want to say "three porcupines", at which point you need to know "con". That's why I've been putting classifiers in translation sections and in Vietnamese entries here. But I just don't think they need to be so prominent. – Minh Nguyễn (talk, contribs) 13:02, 5 January 2014 (UTC)

• (after an edit conflict) Since Vitnamese has no inflection, it can easily afford entries like sự cạnh tranh (competition) in addition to cạnh tranh (compete) and still take fewer pages in English Wiktionary than all the inflected entries in a highly inflected language. You point to the pair of pudieron and poder as worthwhile for its surface intransparency, but "plowing" (plow + -ing) and "plowed" (plow + -ed) seem rather surface transparent and yet we include them. I admit that the sự-combinations seem extremely transparent, also for the inclusion of a space after "sự", but I am still not sure this should lead us to have no entries for transparent sự-combinations, not even soft-redirect entries. I think the representation of Vietnamese in English Wiktionary should be accurate while still convening to the needs and expectations of English speakers. Thus, some English speakers ask that we include long German compounds such as Bindungsdissoziationsenergie, since they do not feel comfortable finding the locations of split into component words, while many German speakers may feel this is a transparent sum of parts not worth having; this is an accomodation of representation of German in English Wiktionary to the needs of English speakers. As for maintenance, I have addressed the issue above. --Dan Polansky (talk) 12:52, 5 January 2014 (UTC)

• The generic classifiers "cái" and "con" don't even translate into English. Look at all the examples at w:Vietnamese grammar. (I just like to think of them as meaning "a", ignoring English's definite/indefinite distinction, because both languages put something in that slot before the noun.) "Sự" is a bit special in that it appears mostly in dictionaries (to be pedantic) and very formal writing (like the thank you letter the Foundation sends donors). In "normal Vietnamese" it barely even exists, so I'm not sure that it would help people much. When I was just starting to learn Vietnamese, "sự" was just one more individual word I had to look up when trying to parse a formal sentence. If a total newbie encounters "Cảm ơn sự thông cảm của bạn" ("Thank you for your understanding") and doesn't know what "sự" is for, they won't immediately know to start a search with it anyways. More likely, they'll look up "cảm" (huh?), "cảm ơn" (ah: thanks), "sự" (turns things into nouns), "sự thông" (nothing, so "sự" goes by itself), "thông" (huh?), "thông cảm" (ah: sympathize), "của" (belonging to), "bạn" (you). You don't start out by knowing that "thông" and "cảm" go together, or that "sự" starts anything in particular. Spaces in Western languages are boundaries for search terms. Vietnamese is not so convenient, and I'm not convinced that soft redirects are worth it for "sự". – Minh Nguyễn (talk, contribs) 13:35, 5 January 2014 (UTC)

I think Dan Polansky is not far off saying that certain additional words/syllables serve the same purpose in Vietnamese as they -ing, -ion, -ness, -ize, -er, -or, etc. suffixes do in English. "sự" is certainly a nominaliser that turns verbs like "hy sinh" (to sacrifice) into nouns, e.g. "sự hy sinh" (sacrifice). It's not an "instance of sacrificing" or "a sacrifice" but simply a noun meaning "sacrifice". See sacrifice@vdict.com, which gives "sự hy sinh" as a noun translation for "sacrifice". So does my pocket Berlitz English-Vietnamese dictionary. Admittedly, "hy sinh" is the lemma here, that's why a noun section can be added here. A usage example is not sufficient, IMO.

Let's take some more examples. con cóc appears in dictionaries in this longer form, even if "con" is a classifier but "cóc" is the lemma. Why words such as hotel are not used with classifiers but simply as "khách sạn". Why is "book" simply sách, not "cuốn sách" - classifier "cuốn" + sách (book). Are cóc and con cóc synonymic? --Anatoli ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 11:51, 5 January 2014 (UTC)

(edit conflict) As I just mentioned at w:Vietnamese grammar#Classifier position (with sources), classifiers aren't used for Sino-Vietnamese compound words like "khách sạn". Your dictionary is inconsistent: given the "con nhím" example you gave above, I would expect "cuốn sách" for "book", even though it means "a book". ("Sách" by itself could just as well mean "books" in general.) There's more than one nominalizer in Vietnamese, which is why "cạnh tranh" mentions both "sự cạnh tranh" and "tính cạnh tranh". But "sự hy sinh" does also mean "an instance of sacrificing" if you append a demonstrative: "sự hy sinh này" (this sacrifice) or "sự hy sinh đó" (that sacrifice). Please don't tell me we need to add sections for those too! "Cóc" and "con cóc" are synonymous, yes.

The difference between a noun section and a usage example is to me one of emphasis. I believe these extra sections would just clutter up entries for words like "bay" that already have both verb and noun senses. If we must include a grammar lesson (nominalization) at each and every verb entry, how about usage notes, like the ones at "cattle"? Templates could help. (Wiktionary should have more such usage notes: "corn" fails to mention "ear of corn" anywhere.)

 – Minh Nguyễn (talk, contribs) 13:02, 5 January 2014 (UTC)

Thanks. I'm now convinced about Vietnamese classifiers. It's not just one dictionary, which is misleading learners to believe that "con cóc" is a word. I can quote at least two, plus some textbooks (plus Google Translate for some reason). No other dictionary for a language, which features classifiers, AFAIK, confuses users providing "classifier + noun" in translations of English nouns. It's also to do with the way specifically Vietnamese classifiers work, compared to other languages. In Vietnamese, a sentence can start with a classifier, without a numeral or determiner, it's not the case with some other languages. Anyway, I'm OK to delete such cases - "classifier + noun".

I'm not convinced about "nominaliser + verb" cases, though, even if some Vietnamese grammarians don't consider them true nouns and there could be more than one nominaliser. Some grammarians don't considers Japanese suru-verbs true verbs either. --Anatoli ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 21:36, 5 January 2014 (UTC)

Request for move discussion is here Wiktionary:Requests_for_moves,_mergers_and_splits#Non-idiomatic_Vietnamese_words. Only applies to entries with "classifier + noun" entries from the above list. --Anatoli ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 00:02, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

Reviving the discussion, which mainly moved to Wiktionary:Requests_for_moves,_mergers_and_splits#Non-idiomatic_Vietnamese_words and that part is complete - entries moved to terms without the classifier. Further comments are sought for "sự" nouns, a few of the above. --Anatoli ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 06:27, 23 April 2014 (UTC)

I am inclined to close the above discussion as no consensus. There does not seem to be much certain momentum for deletion, and there is some thoughtful argumentation that the words in question are the equivalent of prefixed and suffixed English words. If anyone else has anything to add to alter the balance of this discussion, speak now. Cheers! bd2412 T 22:52, 24 August 2014 (UTC)

We had agreement on words prefixed with classifiers. They have been fixed and converted to redirects to proper terms. The "sự" nouns are waiting for further comments. Even if there are various nominalisers in Vietnamese, IMO it's safe to keep them. A reference to how grammarians treat these words would be appreciated. --Anatoli T. ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 22:58, 24 August 2014 (UTC)

In that case, closed as resolved. Cheers! bd2412 T 01:11, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

A small correction: sự hy sinh and sự giải quyết are kept as no consensus to delete (or any sự-noun). --Anatoli T. ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 04:38, 26 August 2014 (UTC)

risk appetite

Another doubtful entry from the RFC sludge pile. Ƿidsiþ 12:26, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

There's risk tolerance by the same contributor. I don't know. Mglovesfun (talk) 13:03, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

They are virtually synonymous. To me risk tolerance seems SoP. I'm not as sure about risk appetite, because if the two terms are always used synonymously, the senses of appetite do not include "tolerance" in any definition I've yet seen.

In the kind of rational setting suggested by three mutually redundant definitions, decision-makers do not have an absolute preference ('appetite') for risk, rather than a tolerance for risk associated with higher expected returns. DCDuring TALK 15:45, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

Keep. I looked at Google translate, and it seems the translations are not word-for-word. The Czech translation "ochota riskovat" (willingness to risk) seems to be much more common (and actually attested) than the word-for-word translation "rizikový apetit". See also http://www.dict.cc/?s=risk+appetite for translations to German. So this will be useful at least for translations. --Dan Polansky (talk) 18:16, 22 August 2014 (UTC)

• Keep. I recently watched a documentary on the history of the 401k, where a number of financial professionals were throwing this phrase around with abandon. bd2412 T 23:21, 24 August 2014 (UTC)

take exception to

This seems redundant to take exception (and even that is a bit SoP, considering exception#Noun sense 4, but I'm willing to keep that for whatever reason) so recommended course of action is to delete senses, merge metadata (quotes, refs, translations) to take exception, then leave it as a hard redirect to take exception. Perhaps there could be a usage note saying that take exception is usually, but not always, paired with to. (I wasn't exactly sure whether to best post this in RFM or RFD, but since deletion of the senses seemed more controversial I decided here.) TeleComNasSprVen (talk) 05:29, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

My preference is to combines everything along the lines you suggest, including the redirect. I like to put the complement information on the relevant sense line with {{cx}} (like Longman's Dictionary of Contemporary English) and have the redirect from take exception to go to the specific sense using {{senseid}}. Those who have less interest in Wiktionary as a useful monolingual dictionary seem to like the freedom of having as many translation targets as possible. DCDuring TALK 06:06, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

The RFD discussion archived at Talk:wait for may be relevant. (And there's also some discussion archived at Talk:take exception to, but just between DCDuring and me.) —Ruakh_TALK 07:26, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

If my memory worked better, I would have provided the Talk references. The only new development is the availability of {{senseid}}. I also note that the length-of-entry (actually length-of-L2) argument does not apply to [[take exception]]. DCDuring TALK 13:38, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

• Redirect as proposed. bd2412 T 17:15, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

February 2014

محمد بن عبد الله

This kind of entry is explicitly disallowed by WT:CFI, which says "No individual person should be listed as a sense in any entry whose page title includes both a given name or diminutive and a family name or patronymic. For instance, Walter Elias Disney, the film producer and voice of Mickey Mouse, is not allowed a definition line at Walt Disney." Move the content to (deprecated template usage) مُحَمَّدٌ (muḥammadun) and delete this. - -sche (discuss) 02:59, 1 February 2014 (UTC)

Keep. What about Jesus Christ? We also have Christ. --Anatoli ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 09:03, 1 February 2014 (UTC)

Jesus Christ does not include "both a given name or diminutive and a family name or patronymic". —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 09:14, 1 February 2014 (UTC)

محمد بن عبد الله is one of the fuller names, which identifies Muhammad as the prophet, rather than any person called Muhammad. --Anatoli ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 12:31, 1 February 2014 (UTC)

...and it does so by spelling out his given name (Muhammad) and patronymic (son of Abdullah), which CFI explicitly forbids. If you think something is gained by having a dictionary entry for this (I don't see what), please start a BP discussion about changing CFI to allow it. - -sche (discuss) 22:10, 1 February 2014 (UTC)

• Delete. @Atitarev please read the line that -sche quoted from the CFI. I don't see why this is up for debate. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 04:38, 8 February 2014 (UTC)

I just expressed my opinion and put a vote. The reason I voted keep is because I think CFI is imperfect in case of Arab prophet names who are better known by names other than "first name + surname". BTW, I'm not voting "keep" for Владимир Ильич Ульянов or suggesting to create Владимир Ильич. --Anatoli ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 11:13, 8 February 2014 (UTC)

Delete. --WikiTiki89 20:50, 8 February 2014 (UTC)

Keep. I don’t think it’s a name in the modern Western sense, but more like "John who lives down the street". No one would have referred to him as Mr. بن عبد الله (or Mr. Ibn Abdullah). Among his family and his friends, he would have been known simply as محمد. It’s just that محمد is such a common name that a little extra description is sometimes needed. I see it as much more like the Christ in Jesus Christ than to Obama in Barack Obama. —Stephen ^(Talk) 04:44, 19 February 2014 (UTC)

evening prayer

noon prayer

Delete as sum of parts. It could be argued that they are not sum of parts since they refer specifically to Islamic prayers, but I do not believe they do so refer. --Dan Polansky (talk) 10:57, 2 February 2014 (UTC)

Evening prayer at least is also used in Anglicanism. Not sure about either the Muslim or the Anglican meaning being SOP though, since I think both are more specific than "any prayer uttered in the evening". —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 11:23, 2 February 2014 (UTC)

If the meaning is more specific, what are their specific defining qualities or characteristics beyond "prayer taking place in the evening"? How do you know that these specific additional qualities are really picked by the term "evening prayer"? --Dan Polansky (talk) 11:31, 2 February 2014 (UTC)

See Evening Prayer (Anglican). The Anglican Evening Prayer service has a specific form, with certain elements that belong to it and certain elements that don't. However, on consideration, the name of the Anglican service is usually capitalized, so maybe Evening Prayer would be a better entry for it. I don't know about the Muslim service (or the Jewish one Maariv). —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 11:54, 2 February 2014 (UTC)

Defining qualities for evening prayer includes 4 rak'as. A specific amount of sunnah prayers afterwards. As well as vocal utterance as opposed to the quiet ones during dhuhr and asr. Similar defining characteristics exist for the other entries. Pass a Method (talk) 13:57, 2 February 2014 (UTC)

Wouldn't we need a different definition for the specification of the prayers evoked by the use of this term for each religion and sect thereof by the inclusion logic suggested to far? Is each such definition a reflection of a name of a specific entity? DCDuring TALK 18:57, 2 February 2014 (UTC)

They are probably not SOP's since they're not any prayers uttered in the evening, but a specific one which is typically done in congregation with various doctrines attached. As for different definitions, thats up for other editors to add since i'm not knowledgeable about that. Pass a Method (talk) 19:03, 2 February 2014 (UTC)

The way I see it, "evening prayer" refers to the prayer that you say in the evening (not any prayer you say in the evening, but the prayer you say in the evening). The specific content of such a prayer in various religions is encyclopedic and not part of the definition of the word. --WikiTiki89 21:31, 2 February 2014 (UTC)

• “evening prayer”, in OneLook Dictionary Search. would have led to inclusion of the Anglican sense, which might have led to inclusion by analogy of the Islamic sense. DCDuring TALK 03:17, 3 February 2014 (UTC)

I think they all should be kept. They can all be expressed as single words (abbreviated) in Arabic and some other languages. They are like "breakfast", "lunch" and "supper" as opposed to "meal". See فجر (fajr)‎, ظهر (ẓuhr)‎, عصر (ʿaṣr)‎, مغرب (maḡrib)‎ and عشاء (ʿašāʾ, ʿišāʾ)‎ (some definitions are incomplete, they also stand for the short names of the five daily prayers). English synonyms for all these prayers: "fajr", "zuhr"/"dhuhr", "asr", "maghrib" and "isha" (English definitions are also incomplete or missing). --Anatoli ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 03:32, 3 February 2014 (UTC)

The existence of breakfast, lunch, dinner, supper, etc. does not mean that we need to include morning meal, evening meal, etc. --WikiTiki89 05:15, 3 February 2014 (UTC)

morning meal is synonymous with "a meal in the morning". thus not the best example.Pass a Method (talk) 11:19, 3 February 2014 (UTC)

Keep and merge: I think many people know breakfast, lunch, dinner, but a few (at least I) don't know what the Arabic name of the prayers are. If I want to know what the prayers are called in Arabic, deleting them would make this impossible. --kc_kennylau (talk) 12:40, 3 February 2014 (UTC)

I've updated entries "fajr", "dhuhr"/"zuhr", "asr", "maghrib" and "isha" - the synonyms, which are much less known to English speakers but in case the community decides to delete the above entries, we'll have at least something. --Anatoli ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 05:15, 10 February 2014 (UTC)

Kept; no consensus for deletion. bd2412 T 00:42, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

mondo bizarro

Adjective PoS section. The citations are only for attributive use, clearly uses of the noun sense. DCDuring TALK 17:55, 2 February 2014 (UTC)

See Citations:mondo bizarro for cites. -Cloudcuckoolander (talk) 03:01, 3 February 2014 (UTC)

• Keep: the adjectival citations are now at Citations:mondo bizarro, including "... this is totally mondo bizarro", "Very mondo bizarro", "most mondo bizarro unscheduled event of the year". --Dan Polansky (talk) 09:35, 10 August 2014 (UTC)

Kept, no consensus to delete. bd2412 T 00:44, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

a modo mio

SOP? --Back on the list (talk) 18:28, 3 February 2014 (UTC)

irreverent

The sense in question:

1. Disrespectful, cynical, cavilling, querulous, or vulgar, where one's own feelings, or especially deference to the feelings of others, customarily command silence, discretion, and circumspection.

Which is redundant to:

1. Lacking proper respect or seriousness; sarcastic.

Aside from being redundant, it's a textbook example of thesaurus abuse... Chuck Entz (talk) 14:08, 10 February 2014 (UTC)

Delete. Pretty much the same sense written in a way that makes it harder to understand. — Ungoliant ^(falai) 14:24, 10 February 2014 (UTC)

I agree. What also bothers me is that there is a translation section with two senses, and I'm not sure that the glosses correspond to the senses above them, or if they do, which is which. "Lacking proper respect or seriousness; sarcastic." seems to be the only accurate sentence on that entry. I'd keep that, delete the ugly one, merge the translations, and revise the gloss so that it matches. Haplogy (話) 14:33, 10 February 2014 (UTC)

-aculum

I'm not sure we ought to have this. The thing is, it doesn't seem to be used with verbs other than those of the first conjugation, whose stem ends in ā- (habitaculum from habito, cenaculum from ceno, spectaculum from specto, ientaculum from iento, potaculum from poto, etc.). Thus it would just be a wrong analysis spect-aculum for specta-culum : it's the suffix -culum (conventiculum, etc.), really. --Fsojic (talk) 13:03, 9 February 2014 (UTC)

Actually the same goes for -atio ~ -tio. --Fsojic (talk) 14:02, 9 February 2014 (UTC)

• I agree, but I reckon this belongs at WT:RFD instead. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 03:50, 10 February 2014 (UTC)

  Fsjocic has given a cogent analysis that entry was created in error. As I have some recollection of the quality of the creator's work, I can vouch for the possibility of such mistaken analysis. If someone has evidence that there are terms that do not fit Fsjocic's hypothesis that all terms ending in aculum are from first conjugation verbs the evidence can the introduced here. I would think we should not delete this in less than a month to give those who would search for such evidence a chance. DCDuring TALK 19:12, 10 February 2014 (UTC)

  There is a whole book written about this: here. I don't have it at hand at the moment, but hopefully soon. --Fsojic (talk) 19:30, 15 February 2014 (UTC)

Again, the same goes for -abilis, -atum, -atus. There is a lot of questionable material in Category:Latin suffixes. --Fsojic (talk) 19:30, 15 February 2014 (UTC)

Redirects from the with-leading-vowel versions of the suffixes to the without-leading-vowel version might help rationalize these without losing users who are accustomed to the version with vowels. Probably the same logic applies to any Translingual (taxonomic) suffixes, though their meaning and use can be quite distinct from their Latin forebears. DCDuring TALK 01:06, 20 February 2014 (UTC)

refreshing

Is this sense, "Serving to refresh." not redundant following "That refreshes someone; pleasantly fresh and different; granting vitality and energy." ? If not, the meaning is not clear and it ought to be stated more specifically. Haplogy (話) 05:29, 19 February 2014 (UTC)

I found "It sets the refreshing frame rate to 30 frames per second" (referring to computer displays) but IMO the verb covers that adequately. Equinox ◑ 18:24, 1 March 2014 (UTC)

March 2014

biological clock

Second sense: "The progression from puberty to menopause during which a woman can bear children." I don't think so. The biological clock is most often mentioned in connection with woman's fertile age, but it does not mean that they would be the same thing. This is like saying that "alarm clock" has the sense "sleep". --Hekaheka (talk) 04:03, 12 March 2014 (UTC)

This is more of an RFV matter then, isn't it? --WikiTiki89 04:40, 12 March 2014 (UTC)

That there is some sense or subsense relating specifically to childbearing cannot be doubted. It is the definition that is inadequate. Try substituting it in the citation sentences: Take Linda, a thirty-nine-year-old newscaster who relished her career but began to hear the alarm ringing on her biological clock. It is not so long ago that this was a live metaphor. A possible definition might be "A figurative clock that indicates the decline in a female's ability to bear children." Some such definition should be readily citable, perhaps even under "widespread use". DCDuring TALK 17:06, 12 March 2014 (UTC)

My original thought was that this would be covered with sense #1, but as there is only one cycle involved in the childbearing as opposed to e.g. sleep or metabolism, this could probably be a sense of its own. On the other hand, the female-fertility point of view may be too narrow, as I've seen texts of men's biological clocks. Perhaps something along these lines: "The internal mechanisms regulating the development and ageing of the body of a living thing during its lifetime, used especially to refer to the limited duration of a woman's fertile age." --Hekaheka (talk) 18:43, 14 March 2014 (UTC)

I think references to men's biological clocks are also references to fertility, specifically to things like the quality of one's sperm degrading to the point that it is more likely that a child conceived of that sperm will have genetic problems. Perhaps it's "One's life cycle and tendency to age, seen as a clock that ticks particularly towards a time when one cannot bear healthy children."? (Nah, that's not a good wording.) - -sche (discuss) 19:38, 14 March 2014 (UTC)

Standard English

Template:l/en (may need specific linguistics definition) + Template:l/en. — Ungoliant ^(falai) 02:35, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

Delete, and I don't think a special definition of standard is necessary. --WikiTiki89 02:38, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

Keep. Defined at Oxford, Merriam-Webster, etc. BTW, keep those with "Ancient", "Old", "Modern", "Eastern" prefixes languages one may have appetite for. --Anatoli ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 03:03, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

Old English, Modern English, etc. are the names of specific languages. Standard English is any register of English considered standard. — Ungoliant ^(falai) 03:40, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

The border between languages and registered is often blurred. Modern Standard Arabic is both a register and a quite distinct language if compared to Arabic dialects but not so, if compared to Classical Arabic. Standard Chinese (it's missing but it shouldn't, = Mandarin) and Standard Mandarin are also complicated. Anyway, the term is defined in notorious dictionaries, using Lemming principle, we should keep it. --Anatoli ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 05:28, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

You are right about MSA, but that does not apply to English. --WikiTiki89 05:57, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

The Lemming principle is still applicable and whether it is a register or a language, it's a word. I'm not encouraging to have Standard + plus language name entries but for Standard English there are English definitions (more than one) (I gave a SoP Russian translation станда́ртный англи́йский язы́к m (standártnyj anglíjskij jazýk) because I haven't found a dictionary entry for it.). The standard Spanish is not called "Standard Spanish" but "Castilian Spanish". --Anatoli ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 06:06, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

The OED for example does not have a separate definition for it, instead mentioning it as an example of standard definition 3e: "Applied to that variety of a spoken or written language of a country or other linguistic area which is generally considered the most correct and acceptable form, as Standard English, Standard American, etc.; Received Standard; also, standard pronunciation = received pronunciation n." --WikiTiki89 06:17, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

OED definition, although "standard" is in lower case: [mass noun] The form of the English language widely accepted as the usual correct form. In Merriam-Webster both words are capitalised. --Anatoli ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 07:26, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

Why is it so hard for people to understand that Oxford Dictionaries is not the Oxford English Dictionary? --WikiTiki89 07:33, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

Sorry for the confusion. Merriam-Webster is still valid and is in the right case. --Anatoli ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 07:44, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

I'm not saying Merriam-Webster is not valid or even that Oxford Dictionaries is not valid. I'll make my point about the OED explicit: The OED acknowledges the existence of "Standard English" by mentioning it as a boldface example of "standard", yet it does not include it as a headword. That can only mean that the editors of the most prestigious English dictionary did not find the phrase idiomatic, since it is clear they did just simply leave it out due to oversight. --WikiTiki89 07:50, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

Standard Spanish is called Standard Spanish. — Ungoliant ^(falai) 06:19, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

Any language can have a standard register. I'm not asking to create or keep Standard Spanish, I don't see a definition for Castilian Spanish either. --Anatoli ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 07:26, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

Exactly. I don’t see why Standard English is idiomatic. — Ungoliant ^(falai) 07:36, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

I mean I don't see a definition for standard Spanish names in dictionaries but there is "Standard English". --Anatoli ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 07:44, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

Delete. A linguistic definition of standard is needed, since its technical definition appears in linguistic dictionaries and glossaries.

Can someone provide a good link to WT:Lemming principle? I hate it when I can’t find guidelines that specifically support other editors’ arguments and really exist. —Michael Z. 2014-03-26 17:00 z

The lemming test is one of several potentially (though not necessarily) persuasive tests, outlined at WT:IDIOM, based on simple precedent / examination of which entries have survived RFD in the past and what arguments were made in favour of them. - -sche (discuss) 18:57, 26 March 2014 (UTC)

A brief discussion of formalizing and automaticizing the lemming principle for inclusion decisions is at WT:BP#Proposal: Use Lemming principle to speed RfDs. DCDuring TALK 19:20, 26 March 2014 (UTC)

Thank you. So it appears to me that #Lemming identifies a principle that has been applied, but makes no recommendation for applying or disregarding it in specific cases. Is that a fair interpretation? —Michael Z. 2014-03-27 15:38 z

That's right, I think. The proposal.is an attempt to give it a formal definition for a limited purpose. It is mach like many of the list of idiomaticity indicators advanced by Pauley. It is just particularly easy to implement at any of several levels of inclusion on the list of lemmings. — This unsigned comment was added by DCDuring (talk • contribs).

• Keep. Why is it "Standard English" and not "standard English"? Furthermore, in “Standard English”, in OneLook Dictionary Search., Oxford Dictionaries (not OED), AHD, Collins, Macmillan, and even Merriam-Webster's have the term. One semantic quirk of the term "Standard English" might be that it is not English as prescribed by a regulatory body. As for Received Standard, I would not know what it is from looking at received and standard, yet in “Received Standard”, in OneLook Dictionary Search., fewer dictionaries have it, including Merriam-Webster's. --Dan Polansky (talk) 09:17, 10 August 2014 (UTC)

aniôn

Uncommon misspelling of ânion. — Ungoliant ^(falai) 03:41, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

Is this not a matter for RFV? Keφr 07:49, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

I don’t think so. But move it there if you want to, I don’t care. — Ungoliant ^(falai) 08:06, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

Any supporting evidence? --Dan Polansky (talk) 06:49, 29 March 2014 (UTC)

Some data: Google Books Pt aniôn: 15 hits; Google Books Pt ânion: 2,470 hits; Google books hit ratio: 164. Since the absolute numbers leading to the ratio are rather low, it is hard to judge. Furthermore, some of these allegged 15 hits are clear scannos. This spelling may even be hard to attest. --Dan Polansky (talk) 08:15, 29 March 2014 (UTC)

April 2014

Gotham

• RFD-sense: A fictional city, the hometown of Batman. (Inserted later.) --Dan Polansky (talk) 18:19, 28 April 2014 (UTC)

I'd expected to find at least a couple of citations that could support a sense like "A crime-ridden fictional city where the Batman comics are set" by comparing a real crime-ridden city to the fictional one, but surprisingly, I can't find anything like that. Therefore, this seems to fail WT:FICTION. Smurrayinchester (talk) 17:46, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

Should this be an RFV? But given the choice, delete all such fancruft. Equinox ◑ 17:50, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

• Delete, Batman's home town is Gotham City anyway, not just Gotham. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 18:55, 9 April 2014 (UTC)
  • "When Gotham City is ashes, you have my permission to die"? I guess it fails WT:FICTION anyway, though we could move this to RFV to keep obnoxious bureaucrats our consciences silent... — Keφr 17:33, 13 April 2014 (UTC)

• Keep and reword There's no deletion rationale here. RfV rationale, yes. Rewording rationale, yes. RfD rational, no Purplebackpack89 ^{(Notes Taken) (Locker)} 19:40, 12 April 2014 (UTC)

Delete per nom. — Ungoliant ^(falai) 19:52, 12 April 2014 (UTC)

This might be citable.

1. [5] I don't think she's saying New York City is like New York City. Esp. because of the Star Wars reference, I think she's comparing it to Gotham City..
2. [6] Because of the crowds and police, I suspect he's comparing London to Gotham City. Bit ambiguous to me, though.
3. [7] May not qualify, but not far off.

I'd suggest RFV. DAVilla 20:39, 26 April 2014 (UTC)

I can't see the quote at the third link you gave, but in the first I think she's saying the apartment felt like a log cabin in the middle of the big city and is using Gotham to mean NYC as the big, bad city. But I don't think she's thinking of Batman's Gotham City at all. The second quote might be referring to Batman's city, especially since the guy's name is Robin, but it could really equally well be referring to NYC. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 21:04, 26 April 2014 (UTC)

corgŵn

The plural of corgi in Welsh is corgwn without the circumflex i.e. not *corgŵn. You can look it up in the Welsh Academy Dictionary and the National Terminology Portal. It follows the pattern of other "dogs" e.g. helgwn "hounds", milgwn "greyhounds", dwrgwn "otters", morgwn "dogfish", celwyddgwn "liars" etc. Llusiduonbach (talk) 16:01, 17 April 2014 (UTC)

The Geiriadur Prifysgol Cymru has a cite for Cor’gŵn from 1630, so it may be worth keeping this as a {{nonstandard spelling of}} or {{obsolete spelling of}} or the like. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 14:47, 18 April 2014 (UTC)

dative of purpose

SOP. This is no dictionary material. --Fsojic (talk) 18:28, 27 April 2014 (UTC)

It is part of a set of correlative terms: the types of dative cases. DCDuring TALK 22:44, 27 April 2014 (UTC)

Keep. There are also dative of benefit, ethic dative, etc. — TAKASUGI Shinji (talk) 06:31, 3 June 2014 (UTC)

Keep. --Anatoli T. ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 23:02, 24 August 2014 (UTC)

private language

RFD SOP sense: "A language used exclusively within a group of closely associated people, such as lovers, immediate family members, or members of a profession." --WikiTiki89 19:54, 29 April 2014 (UTC)

Delete {{&lit}} covers it. DCDuring TALK 20:58, 29 April 2014 (UTC)

Deleted.​—msh210℠ (talk) 07:37, 3 August 2014 (UTC)

greenlining

Gerund? It doesn't have a plural or anything to distinguish it meaningfully from the verb. Or am I wrong on this, in which case every single present participle, even e.g. "defragmenting", should have a noun section of this kind? Seems silly. Equinox ◑ 15:47, 30 April 2014 (UTC)

• Keep: The reason you don't find a plural is that greenlining is usually used with a definite article, i.e. "the greenlining of ...". As for your second sentence, a) not every present participle is used as a noun in common parlance, and b) the ones that are SHOULD have noun definitions Purplebackpack89 ^{(Notes Taken) (Locker)} 16:00, 30 April 2014 (UTC)
  • Actually, all -ing forms are both gerunds and present participles. What seems silly is calling them all present participles alone when actually they're both. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 16:02, 30 April 2014 (UTC)
    • I agree with Angr, but it might not be practical if we do it this way. After all, the same form can also be used as an adverb: Sitting here, I can't help but wonder.... —CodeCat 16:23, 30 April 2014 (UTC)
      • I think that in the sense you described, sitting is a verb Purplebackpack89 ^{(Notes Taken) (Locker)} 16:36, 30 April 2014 (UTC)
        • Since when do verbs modify clauses like adverbs? —CodeCat 16:43, 30 April 2014 (UTC)
          • Since when does your case show an -ing-form modifying a clause? Consider: "Sitting there, I viewed the car." and "Sitting there, the car was viewed by me." In the second case, the natural, native interpretation is that it was the car that was "sitting". DCDuring TALK 16:55, 30 April 2014 (UTC)
            • And in that case, "was sitting" is the present progressive form of sit. But we've gone off-topic. The topic is that this and other gerunds should be kept if used in common parlance (and therefore attestable) Purplebackpack89 ^{(Notes Taken) (Locker)} 17:05, 30 April 2014 (UTC)
      • I'm not convinced that sitting is an adverb in "Sitting here, I can't help but wonder." I think "sitting here" is an adjective (as all participles are) modifying "I"; after all, sitting is describing a property of the speaker, not the manner of her wondering (or the manner of her inability to help wondering). It's like disappointed in "Disappointed, he went back home" or "He went back home disappointed", which are different from "He went back home disappointedly." I have no particular objection to listing both the present participle and the gerund under a ===Verb=== header (categorized as verb forms); I merely object to persistently omitting the gerund sense from -ing forms. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 18:05, 30 April 2014 (UTC)
        • It's debatable whether in the example above "sitting" is an adjectival participle or an an adverbial participle. Same goes for something like this: "She fell, screaming, down the rabbit hole." I think the best way to analyze it is as an adverb that describes the subject's state while performing the action. --WikiTiki89 18:20, 30 April 2014 (UTC)
          • Another clear example of why it must be an adverb is "It is not good to eat walking.", because the subject that "walking" would refer to is not even mentioned in the sentence. --WikiTiki89 18:27, 30 April 2014 (UTC)
            • It's also fairly easy to see by adding "while". "While sitting", "while walking" and so on. This makes it more obvious that we're dealing with a subordinate clause that expresses time or circumstance, which behaves syntactically as an adverb within the overall sentence. A good way to see this with any phrasal part of speech or subordinate clause is to replace it with an interrogative for which the phrase is the answer, or alternative a demonstrative. In this case, the question must be "when" (in the meaning of "in what case/circumstance" or "at what time"), and the demonstrative can be either "then" (in that case) or "now" (at this time). For Angs example with "disappointed", the question is "how", and the demonstrative is "so", "thus" or "like that". These are all clearly adverbs, which means that the original phrase must be as well. —CodeCat 19:21, 30 April 2014 (UTC)
            • (edit conflict) Lest we forget, this RfD is about a noun sense, not an adjective or adverbial sense. This and other gerunds can function as both noun and verb senses, and definitions should be created accordingly Purplebackpack89 ^{(Notes Taken) (Locker)} 19:27, 30 April 2014 (UTC)

  The discussion is confusing word class and function. The existence of the adverbial usage of Thursday in "He left Thursday" does not require us to have an adverb PoS section in [[Thursday]]. Just because we are confused on this doesn't mean we should confuse our users. DCDuring TALK 19:25, 30 April 2014 (UTC)

  I don't believe walking or Thursday are adverbs in those senses...walking is a verb and Thursday is an object (consider the the proper way to say those things are "It is not good to eat while you are walking" and "He left on Thursday". In either case, this RfD is not about an adverb, but a noun, and no one has yet to give a valid reason why the word is used improperly as a noun and/or should be deleted. I have no intention of adding an adverbial sense, even if I did believe one existed Purplebackpack89 ^{(Notes Taken) (Locker)} 19:31, 30 April 2014 (UTC)

  If there was such a word as Thursdaywalking, it could be a gerund. However, the word would have to exist before it could be classified. bd2412 T 21:04, 30 April 2014 (UTC)

  I was concerned with CodeCat's introduction of the idea of an -ing-form of a verb generating an adverb PoS because it might be construed as adverbial. I don't recall anyone else introducing or advocating that idea.

As to the matter at hand, if an -ing-form of a verb can be found in the plural (rantings) or modified by a determiner (much ranting), we have been declaring it to be a noun even if, as in the case of ranting there is no distinct meaning in the alleged noun, apart from aspect. I think the noun PoS is a distraction. IMO, we would be better off creating and applying a template for English ing-forms that conveyed the idea that such forms were both nominals (gerunds) and participles (inflected forms of verbs also serving as modifiers of nouns).

Further, just as the PoS header "Prepositional phrase" eliminated the need to have essentially duplicative definitions under "Adjective" and "Adverb", a PoS header for -ing-forms would also eliminate duplication, though at a price of causing occasional users confusion not guaranteed to be meliorated by a linked definition in Appendix:Glossary. DCDuring TALK 21:30, 30 April 2014 (UTC)

Having a gerund template is probably a good idea, so long as we count definite and indefinite articles as determiners Purplebackpack89 ^{(Notes Taken) (Locker)} 23:55, 30 April 2014 (UTC)

Some count the articles as determiners. I was focused on the uncountable senses that -ing-forms can have, which are associated with determiners like much and little. Some define determiners broadly to include the articles, others chop determiners into many classes, based on various differences in their usage properties. It's not a debate I'd care to pursue until it proved important lexicographically. DCDuring TALK 01:22, 1 May 2014 (UTC)

If "a" or "the" is used properly in front of a word ending in -ing, it is a noun and that sense should be kept Purplebackpack89 ^{(Notes Taken) (Locker)} 02:08, 1 May 2014 (UTC)

I disagree. In "feed the starving", "starving" is an adjective. --WikiTiki89 02:19, 1 May 2014 (UTC)

No, it's a noun, because it is preceded by a definite article, and there is no noun for it to modify. Its Dutch equivalent has singular and plural forms ("starving" is implicitly plural), and can have genders. It's a noun. —CodeCat 03:18, 1 May 2014 (UTC)

Haven't we had this discussion hundreds of times? It's an adjective used in place of a noun. Whether you call it a noun or noun is irrelevant, it's still an adjective. Any adjective can be used this way. --WikiTiki89 03:45, 1 May 2014 (UTC)

CGEL calls it a "fused-head" construction, something both determiners and adjectives are capable of, which behaves as a nominal. DCDuring TALK 04:14, 1 May 2014 (UTC)

Yes, and the important point here is that it's not a gerund, but a participle. --WikiTiki89 04:18, 1 May 2014 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ Here, here, and here greenlining is a gerund, not a participle. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 21:51, 1 May 2014 (UTC)

I agree with that. --WikiTiki89 02:41, 2 May 2014 (UTC)

• This should be closed as keep as it has run for ~3 months and no one other than the nominator has expressed a deletionist opinion. Purplebackpack89 16:50, 26 July 2014 (UTC)

May 2014

-si

Discussion moved from User talk:Angr#-si.

Thank you to kc_kennylau for initiating this RFD. The OP's "yes i think so" is a response to the automatic edit summary of my revert here. I do think the anons make a good case that -si isn't a suffix but an enclitic pronoun and that the entry at si should be sufficient, but I do want to submit this to wider discussion rather than just deleting it tout court. I'd also like someone who knows Italian to look at the two entries and see if there's anything at -si that can usefully be merged to si before the former gets deleted (assuming it does). —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 17:18, 7 May 2014 (UTC)

Keep, but convert the POS to pronoun and the definition to something like {{form of|Template:l/en form|si|lang=it}}. A hyphen before a term means the term is spelt without a space between itself and the preceding word, not necessarily that it is a suffix. — Ungoliant ^(falai) 17:44, 7 May 2014 (UTC)

Delete, and also -arsi, -ersi and -irsi. In fact, italian verb (e.g. : « dire ») is in a lexical domain and « dirsi » is in a fonctionnal domain. The lexical verbs are associated with a position for clitic pronouns (proclitic or enclitic). As described above, clitic constructions and especially clitic climbing is an essential part of italian grammar. It's an innovating nonsense to summarize this complexity in a false item -si. This type of article can only lead readers to be in the wrong and to confound with a suffix. — Elbarriak (talk) 16:16, 14 May 2014 (UTC)

Catalan has similar enclitic particles, but our entries for them are at the hyphenless forms. See se etc. —CodeCat 14:14, 16 May 2014 (UTC)

Delete. I'd be ok with what Ungoliant MMDCCLXIV says if it were only used in compounds, but it isn't. Renard Migrant (talk) 18:38, 27 May 2014 (UTC)

greenline

Sense of “To designate an area as suitable for profitable real-estate lending and property insurance” is redundant to “To ease access to services (such as banking, insurance, or healthcare) to residents in specific areas.” Purplebackpack89 ^{(Notes Taken) (Locker)} 20:48, 7 May 2014 (UTC)

The broader sense is unsupported, which is why it is RfVed. The new, narrower sense has three citations. If the broader sense is actually attestable, then of course it stays. The narrower sense is the original definition, going back at least to the 1960s. The extension to other services, if attestable at all, is certainly newer, which lexical information is most readily displayed using {{defdate}} with separate definitions. DCDuring TALK 21:51, 7 May 2014 (UTC)

The senses are essentially the same, therefore both senses can be supported by any of the citations provided. The only difference between the definitions is that the correct one (mine) is about residents GETTING stuff, while the incorrect one (yours) is about banks GIVING stuff. Purplebackpack89 ^{(Notes Taken) (Locker)} 22:49, 7 May 2014 (UTC)

Transitivity needs to be dealt with here. One sense suggests the verb applies to an area (which agrees with the citations) while the other suggests it applies to a service. Can you "greenline the banking in Ontario", or would it be "a bank that greenlines Ontario"? Equinox ◑ 22:54, 7 May 2014 (UTC)

First off, it would help if you said which was which. Secondly, I'm not seeing that. They both talk about areas and services Purplebackpack89 ^{(Notes Taken) (Locker)} 23:08, 7 May 2014 (UTC)

If you can't tell which is which, then you are proving my point that the transitivity needs to be specified! Equinox ◑ 00:53, 8 May 2014 (UTC)

• One more thing: in this sense, the word "profitable" is not supported by the citations. What is supported is THAT more services are provided, not WHY they are Purplebackpack89 ^{(Notes Taken) (Locker)} 23:08, 7 May 2014 (UTC)

• I think this is really a debate about how to word the definition, rather than about the existence of one or the other variant of the same thing. --WikiTiki89 23:10, 7 May 2014 (UTC)

  Yeah, DCDuring should never have added a second definition and should have started a discussion on the article's talk page about the definition rather than an RfV of a definition that was correct, but that he didn't like. But he didn't, so here we are. Purplebackpack89 ^{(Notes Taken) (Locker)} 23:27, 7 May 2014 (UTC)

  I'm not really interested in gum-flapping. I'm interested in citations, empirical support instead of verbosity. I usually descend to verbosity only as a last resort, usually when others fail to provide empirical support for their questionable positions. DCDuring TALK 00:21, 8 May 2014 (UTC)

  You have three citations that support either definition, there's no need to accuse me of gum-flapping. THIS isn't an RfV anyway, so citations schmitations. If more citiations are needed (again, the citations in there support either definition), I have at least a week to find them, during which I can do as much gum-flapping or whatever you call it as I want Purplebackpack89 ^{(Notes Taken) (Locker)} 00:33, 8 May 2014 (UTC)

  There is NO EMPIRICAL SUPPORT for the extension of meaning beyond real-estate loans and property insurance. You have admitted to only having a symmetry argument (from the antonym), which symmetry argument has no support in WT:CFI. I rest your case. DCDuring TALK 00:44, 8 May 2014 (UTC)

  Um, you don't get to rest my case. This is the request for deletion of YOUR definition, not the request for verification of MINE. It's embarrassing that you haven't made that distinction, nor frankly provided any argument why your definition should be kept. Tearing down my definition won't save your own. I again remind you that while citations might be preferable, I don't have to cite it this very minute. Purplebackpack89 ^{(Notes Taken) (Locker)} 00:52, 8 May 2014 (UTC)

  I was (foolishly) responding to your off-topic objection to my decision not to use Talk:greenline as a venue. That was the case previously rested.

  The second definition is not redundant to the first as it has a materially narrower scope, as mentioned above. No other reason for deletion has been presented. I hereby rest your RfD case. DCDuring TALK 01:23, 8 May 2014 (UTC)

  You don't get to arbitralily decide that a deletion discussion of a definition you wrote it over, sorry. That's not how it works. Editors other than I have questioned your decision to do things in the manner in which you did, and you really have yet to offer a reasonable explanation for that as well. So we're going to keep talking. Purplebackpack89 ^{(Notes Taken) (Locker)} 18:29, 8 May 2014 (UTC)

  @Purplebackpack89, It didn't help that you duplicated the discussion here at RFD (when it could have been resolved at RFV), and then blamed DCDuring when he made a comment on one page rather than the other. --WikiTiki89 22:51, 8 May 2014 (UTC)

jedynka

Sense: "a tram or bus number 1". Actually, you could refer in this way to television or radio stations, highways, rooms, seats, people even (google:"jedynka na liście"). Anything with a number designation can be referred to with a noun naming the number (or just the numeral, if you are careless enough). An alternative would be to broaden the sense to include this metonymic usage, but is it worth it? Compare Talk:A cup. — Keφr 20:12, 10 May 2014 (UTC)

I agree that this does not seem to be an instance of metonymy that merits a sense. Further I don't think a general metonymic sense should be included for every number, letter, color, etc in every language. OTOH. I wish I had something other than my intuition to rely on to discriminate inclusion-worthy metonymy from exclusion-worthy metonymy. DCDuring TALK 16:11, 11 May 2014 (UTC)

I would rephrase and fix the definition to have a broader noun sense (derived from the numeral - "by extension") but keep. No other sense seems to cover this. I didn't give it a lot of thought, though. Thinking fivesome - piątka, pięcioro? In Russian too, when someone says - сади́сь на едини́цу (sadísʹ na jedinícu), not sure if it's obvious to a learner that they mean "take number one (tram, bus, etc.)". --Anatoli ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 07:27, 13 May 2014 (UTC)

How about a usage note? — Keφr 07:45, 26 July 2014 (UTC)

I think the best way is to keep the sense "number one" (expanded). It may cover some other cases, not transportation. I have also added this sense to едини́ца (jediníca), pls take a look. --Anatoli T. ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 22:51, 26 July 2014 (UTC)

Keep the sense 'a tram or bus no. "1"' of a Polish entry, but probably make it broader; no other sense currently in the entry does the job. --Dan Polansky (talk) 15:10, 26 July 2014 (UTC)

subito accelerando

SOP. We already have appropriate English-language entries for both subito and accelerando; musical terms like this can be combined freely (subito piano, subito fortissimo, subito presto, etc.) and it is unnecessary to list them all. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 13:51, 16 May 2014 (UTC)

mahā

I would like to request the restoration, in some form, of mahā, the transliteration of the Sanskrit महा (great). In the course of fixing disambiguation links to this title on Wikipedia, I have found many uses of mahā with this meaning. It is similarly widely used in books. However, searching for it here takes the reader to maha, which has no information on the Sanskrit meaning of the word. Cheers! bd2412 T 17:54, 20 May 2014 (UTC)

We don't do Sanskrit romanised forms. If you want to find a term using this transliteration - 1. paste/type it in the search window and linger to see suggestions, 2. select containing mahā from the bottom and click enter/double-click. A Search results page will appear 3. "Search in namespaces:" check "None" first, then check (Main). This will shorten your search to the main namespace and click "Search". again. महत् appears the 4th in the results. --Anatoli ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 02:08, 21 May 2014 (UTC)

I don't think that sort of advice is going to reach the average reader, who is more likely to either type maha into the window, or to type/paste in mahā and hit enter, which will take them to maha. I'm not sure why we wouldn't "do" this unusually well attested romanization. If someone sees this word in English text, they should be able to find it defined here. bd2412 T 02:55, 21 May 2014 (UTC)

(E/C)I was just giving you a technical advice how to reach the entry currently, since searching in Wiktionary and search results keep changing. There's no policy on romanised Sanskrit, AFAIK, even if romanisations are attested, they are not in the native script. E.g. ghar is an attestable transliteration of Hindi घर but we only have घर (there's Irish but no Hindi), yeoksa is an attestable transliteration of Korean 역사 but we only have 역사. I'm just stating the fact, so if mahā is created, any admin may delete it on sight. The policies can be created and changed, though. There are romanisations for some languages with complex scripts. --Anatoli ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 03:19, 21 May 2014 (UTC)

We could add matching transliterations to the {{also}} templates. As for whether this entry should be restored, WT:About Sanskrit#Transliterated entries bans transliteration entries, so I oppose unless the Sanskrit editing community decides to change that. — Ungoliant ^(falai) 03:18, 21 May 2014 (UTC)

The use of {{also}}, as now at maha, seems like a decent idea that respects our prejudices and yet offers the more persistent users at least a way of finding native script entries that provide a useful definition for the transliteration they may have come across, the Wiktionary definition for which they may not find by direct search. DCDuring TALK 03:40, 21 May 2014 (UTC)

I personally have no objections to redirects. --Anatoli ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 03:47, 21 May 2014 (UTC)

A redirect from mahā to महा would be fine with me, so long as there are no other meanings of mahā. bd2412 T 12:17, 21 May 2014 (UTC)

I think we should reconsider permitting Latin-alphabet entries for Sanskrit, even if all they say is "Romanization of महा". We already allow Latin-alphabet entries for Pali, Gothic, and some other ancient languages that are usually encountered in Romanization in modern editions. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 12:27, 21 May 2014 (UTC)

Is it used as a word in any language? Renard Migrant (talk) 18:24, 27 May 2014 (UTC)

According to Google Books, it appears in about 150,000 books. bd2412 T 22:43, 28 May 2014 (UTC)

If it's used as an English word or any other language, it may get an English or other entry. For romanised Sanskrit, I'm afraid it's a policy question, you'll have to start a separate discussion or a vote. --Anatoli ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 22:53, 28 May 2014 (UTC)

Alternative form of maha (“four”) in Tahitian. — Ungoliant ^(falai) 00:01, 29 May 2014 (UTC)

I would like to see a discussion or policy that says that romanizations of Sanskrit are disallowed. Until then, I consider the above statement "We don't do Sanskrit romanised forms" unsubstantiated. In fact, Wiktionary:Votes/pl-2011-08/Romanization of languages in ancient scripts resulted in 7:4 for the proposal that "If an ancient, no longer living language was written in a script that is now no longer used or widely understood, and it was not represented in another script that still is used or widely understood, then romanizations of its words will be allowed entries." (I wrote 7:4 rather than 8:4, since Ruakh only supported for Gothic.). A subsequent vote Wiktionary:Votes/pl-2011-09/Romanization of languages in ancient scripts 2 unanimously expressly allowed romanizations for Etruscan, Gothic, Lydian, Oscan, and Phoenician.

I found Wiktionary:Beer_parlour/2013/August#Sanskrit_in_Latin_script?. There, couple of people support allowing Sanskrit romanizations, including Ivan Štambuk (apparently), Angr, Dan Polansky (me), and Eiríkr Útlendi, where Ivan reported User:Dbachmann to support including Sanskrit romanizations as well; opposition seems to include Liliana; Chuck Entz is unclear. --Dan Polansky (talk) 09:33, 1 June 2014 (UTC)

I don't know much about Sanskrit, but I do know that there are tens of thousands of books that use the mahā (in that script) to signify a specific word with a specific meaning. I'm not about to suggest that we incorporate the whole transliterated Sanskrit corpus, but it seems absurd to refuse to have a definition for a word used as widely as this one. bd2412 T 15:14, 1 June 2014 (UTC)

I think we should continue to have a consistent (uniform) policy towards romanized Sanskrit. At the moment, that policy is to exclude it. I wouldn't mind reversing that policy and allowing romanized Sanskrit to be entered similarly to romanized Gothic or pinyin Chinese, and the preceding comments suggest that enough other people feel the same way that we should probably have a vote.
Allowing some romanized of Sanskrit words and not others according to some arbitrary threshold such as "n Wiktionary users think this word is important" or "[we think] this word is used in x books (where x is some very high number, like 10 000)" does not strike me as a workable state of affairs. Google Books' raw book counts are unreliable, as are its attempts to restrict searching to particular languages, so although we might decide to include only romanizations used in e.g. more than 10 000 books, we have no easy way of ascertaining whether or not a romanization actually meets that threshold.
Even if we continue to exclude romanized Sanskrit, it might be possible to cite mahā as a loanword in some language, if it is really as common as has been suggested. - -sche (discuss) 17:11, 1 June 2014 (UTC)

What evidence supports the hypothesis that the current policy is to exclude romanized Sanskrit? Or, put differently, what makes you think and say that the policy is to exclude it? --Dan Polansky (talk) 20:12, 1 June 2014 (UTC)

See WT:ASA. — Ungoliant ^(falai) 20:16, 1 June 2014 (UTC)

Wiktionary:About Sanskrit is not a policy; it is a policy draft. Furthermore, this is not evidence; a discussion or a vote is evidence of policy. The draft says "Entries written in IAST transliterations shall not appear in the main namespace." which was added in diff. The first edit I can find to that effect is diff, before which the page said "If entries are made under the IAST orthographic transliteration, they should use the standard template {{temp|romanization of}} to reference the Devanagari entry." Since none of the diffs refer to a discussion or a vote, they are illegitimate as means of policy making. --Dan Polansky (talk) 20:31, 1 June 2014 (UTC)

Draft or not, excluding transliterated Sanskrit is the common practice. Start a discussion if you want to change that, or continue refusing to believe it, I don’t care. — Ungoliant ^(falai) 21:48, 1 June 2014 (UTC)

I asked "What evidence ...". If you had no answer to that question, you did not need to answer; the question was directed to -sche anyway. --Dan Polansky (talk) 05:42, 2 June 2014 (UTC)

If you really want evidence, look for RFD archives of romanised Sanskrit entries. I’m familiar with your strategy of asking people to waste their time looking for this or that and then finding some excuse for why what they found is not valid or outright ignoring it. I’m going to act like CodeCat and not waste my time; as I said, you can continue refusing to believe it. — Ungoliant ^(falai) 10:32, 2 June 2014 (UTC)

Putting aside the outcomes of previous discussions, what is the reason for not having entries for such things? We are talking about a well-attested word that readers may well look to us to define. bd2412 T 16:21, 2 June 2014 (UTC)

I think the logic is that, insofar as we hold that Sanskrit is not written in the Latin script, mahā is not a Sanskrit word. Compare: insofar as Russian is not written in the Latin script, soyuz is not a Russian word. And mahā (“great”) and soyuz (“union”) have not been shown to be English words, or German/Chinese/etc words. If mahā is not a word in any language, it is both outside our stated scope ("all words in all languages") and not technically includable anyway : what L2 would it use?

In contrast, महा (mahā) is a Sanskrit word, and is included, and союз#Russian is included.

That said, we have made exceptions for some languages, e.g. Japanese and Gothic, and we have said in effect "even though this language is not natively written in the Latin script, we will allow soft-redirects from the Latin script to the native script for all the words in this language which we include." (Note this is very different from your statement of "I'm not about to suggest that we incorporate the whole transliterated Sanskrit corpus, but [... only] a word used as widely as this one.") I think one could make a strong case that we should make a Gothic-style exception for Sanskrit, since Sanskrit, like Gothic (and unlike Russian), is very often discussed/mentioned (whether or not it is used) in the Latin script. - -sche (discuss) 20:17, 2 June 2014 (UTC)

Even if we admit that "mahā is not a Sanskrit word" (and that is rather questionable since it seems to confuse words with their writen forms), it still does not follow that we have a policy that forbids having Sanskrit romanization soft-redirect entries in the mainspace, on the model of Japanese, Chinese and other romanizations (Category:Japanese romaji, Category:Mandarin pinyin). We have had Japanese romanizations for a long time (dentaku was created on 17 August 2005‎), full will definitions or translations, since no rogue oligarch bothered or dared to eradicate them (we still have them, albeit in reduced form). Whether we have a policy could be quite important in a possible upcoming vote about Sanskrit romanization, since it is not really clear what the status quo is. Therefore, it is rather important to avoid misrepresentations (unintentional or otherwise) about there being or not being a policy. As for the amount of Sanskrit romanization in the mainspace, there may well be none, which would be a fairly good sign for there being a common practice of avoiding Sanskrit romanizations, but one has to consider that this could be a result of rogue olicharch actions. Generally speaking, I find it hard to find a reason for having Japanese and Chinese romanizations while avoiding Sanskrit romanizations. --Dan Polansky (talk) 08:25, 3 June 2014 (UTC)

@Ungoliant MMDCCLXIV: Re: "I’m familiar with your strategy of asking people to waste their time looking for this or that ...": Not really. You would be familiar with my strategy of asking people to source their claims, supply evidence, clarify the manner in which they use ambiguous terms or explain themselves. Since you already know this strategy (as you say), since you don't like it, and since the question was not directed at you, you should have spared yourself the trouble and avoid answering the question (about evidence for there being policy as opposed to common practice or a draft page that anyone can edit regardless of consensus) that you did not intend to really answer anyway. --Dan Polansky (talk) 07:51, 3 June 2014 (UTC)

I did intend to answer. Not for your benefit, but for that of others who may otherwise be fooled by you into thinking that adding romanised Sanskrit is totally OK. — Ungoliant ^(falai) 13:00, 3 June 2014 (UTC)

I still see no rationale for excluding a widely used romanization that readers are likely to come across and want defined. Some justification beyond the naked assertion of policy or the momentum of past exclusions. bd2412 T 14:01, 3 June 2014 (UTC)

AFAICS, adding romanised Sanskrit is totally OK; there is no discussion or vote the outcome of which is that Sanskrit romanizations shall be excluded from the mainspace. --Dan Polansky (talk) 15:02, 3 June 2014 (UTC)

@BD, re "I still see no rationale": I just explained one rationale (mahā is not a word in any language).
The previous BP discussion linked-to above, and comments in this discussion by people who didn't participate in the previous discussion, suggest that a proposal to allow romanizations of all Sanskrit words would pass. I myself could support such a proposal. I suggest, for the third time, that someone make that proposal.
I do not see any indication that the proposal to allow "widely used romanization[s]" only has gained traction with anyone beyond you and possibly Dan. As you note, quite a lot of momentum is against you: AFAIK, there has never been a language for which we allowed romanizations for only some words according to some threshold of exceptional commonness. AFAIK, there has never even been an alphabetic or abugidic language for which we allowed romanizations for only some words according to the threshold of any citations at all. (If you discovered that one of our Gothic romanizations had 0 attestations at Google Books, Groups, etc, we'd still keep it as long as it was derived from an attested native-script form according to the rules of Wiktionary:Gothic transliteration.)
You could keep trying to overturn this momentum, but — especially given that the only people who still seem to be participating in this discussion are you, me, Ungoliant, and Dan, and we don't seem to be changing each others' minds — I think it would be more productive to grasp the support for allowing all romanized Sanskrit, and run with it. - -sche (discuss) 17:58, 3 June 2014 (UTC)

We generally decide whether any unbroken string of letters is "a word" by looking to see if it is used in print to convey a consistent meaning. We do this because the existence of the word in print is what makes it likely that a reader will come across it and want to know how it is defined, or possibly how it is pronounced, derived, or translated into other languages. There are now a half dozen citations of mahā at Citations:mahā, including several where the word is used in English running text without italicization. In some previous discussions we have used the compromise position of declaring the word to be English, but derived from the language of its original script. I think this is absurd. Is tovarich English, really? bd2412 T 18:33, 3 June 2014 (UTC)

I have posted this at the Beer Parlour. bd2412 T 19:04, 3 June 2014 (UTC)

Yes tovarich is indeed English if it's used in running English text as an English word (for which a citation is provided). Same with mahā - the word originates from Sanskrit but it's not a Sanskrit word in the context of provided citations - it's an English word now because it's used in English. --09:57, 27 July 2014 (UTC)

• Keep mahā as an IAST transliteration of the Sanskrit महा. (To make my stance clear to a prospective closing admin; my reasoning is above.] --Dan Polansky (talk) 08:46, 27 July 2014 (UTC)

stf-

This covers both the prefix and its category:

• stf-
• Category:English words prefixed with stf-

I added this based on a dictionary but two other users have pointed out that this isn't really a prefix and words derived from stf should be described as blends rather a prefix + X combination. This makes sense, so these two should probably be deleted. - AdamBMorgan (talk) 11:07, 22 May 2014 (UTC)

We are actually arguing with the mighty OUP by calling this not a prefix, since they call it one in their Brave New Words (admittedly a populist spin-off and not quite the OED). But I still feel it's too narrow and specialised to be really prefix-like. Probably delete. But thanks Adam for adding the various related words, which seem quite attestable in fandom. Equinox ◑ 19:55, 22 May 2014 (UTC)

Delete. The examples in the entry don't even use this prefix: stfandom is st- + fandom, not stf- + *andom. - -sche (discuss) 17:09, 1 June 2014 (UTC)

cult film

Per cult video game. SoP. Equinox ◑ 23:31, 22 May 2014 (UTC)

I think cult film should not be deleted. The first reason is that I can find 10 sources right now on the internet and put them into citations. Also, cult classic is a synonym, made before cult film (not created by me), and was edited by several people, and was still not deleted. Third, kultfilm is a full word, a Danish translation of the word cult film, and kultfilm has no spaces. Every word without spaces should be added to the dictionary unless it was clearly a made up word. As for cult video game, yeah just delete cult video game. But not cult film. What do you guys think? What else do I have to do to prove that this is not a bad entry?

One more thing. Equinox said it should be deleted because it is like "brown leaf". Well no it's not, because cult film is a very widespread word and is used quite a lot, whereas cult radio or cult video game are not used as much. Please consider that. Ready Steady Yeti (talk) 22:20, 24 May 2014 (UTC)

You're still missing the point. RFD doesn't mean that it isn't a real thing. We know you could show that it exists. But "brown leaf" also exists. The point is that the meaning is clear from the separate words. Equinox ◑ 22:29, 24 May 2014 (UTC)

It's not that it exists. Lots of things exist. I want it kept because it is used very widely. I'm not saying that I want to show that it exists. I'm saying I want to show that it's used a lot.

And I do understand that you are an administrator here, have been here much longer than I have by a long shot, and are probably much older than me (I'm a young editor). Maybe my idea of a multi-lingual dictionary containing all words in all languages is different by a long shot than what experienced editors and administrators think, but I still really want this to be kept. Ready Steady Yeti (talk) 22:31, 24 May 2014 (UTC)

"brown leaf" is also used very widely, as you can see here [8], so that argument, on its own, isn't enough to justify keeping. Equinox ◑ 22:47, 24 May 2014 (UTC)

My criteria:

1. Is it used widely? Yes
2. Does it have a Wikipedia page? (not required but helps a lot in my cause) Yes
3. Does it have a translation in more than one language? Yes
4. Does it have translations in a language where the word in that language has no spacing or hyphens? Yes
5. Is it important? Yes
6. Would someone look it up in this dictionary? I'd say yes to that too, eventually they will
7. What happens when it's not there? Well then hell. Ready Steady Yeti (talk) 23:13, 24 May 2014 (UTC)

Please read our criteria. The first three criteria mean nothing for rfd. The forth has some relevance, but only as a sort of circumstantial evidence- there are languages that can say things like "I saw those two women walk this way" as a single word with prefixes, suffixes and infixes. The fifth is also irrelevant to RFD. The last two are really part of the same point- and also relevant but not decisive.

The point about "sum of parts" entries is that there are a near-infinite number of such entries possible, but none of them would convey any useful information that isn't already provided by the entries for the component parts. You really have to show that cult film has a meaning that can't be found at cult or film. Chuck Entz (talk) 02:15, 25 May 2014 (UTC)

Delete per my rationale on #cult video game, unless someone manages to cite cultfilm where I failed. — Ungoliant ^(falai) 01:28, 25 May 2014 (UTC)

Delete per nom. It isn't idiomatic. - -sche (discuss) 02:08, 25 May 2014 (UTC)

Okay. Delete it. I have no more arguments. This is not criteria for this dictionary. Ready Steady Yeti (talk) 03:25, 25 May 2014 (UTC)

... or for any dictionary that I've ever seen. Dbfirs 08:18, 25 May 2014 (UTC)

Lemming test: Collins has it. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 09:01, 25 May 2014 (UTC)

Oops! So it does! I've added a sense to our noun entry for those (like Collins) who regard "cult film" as attributive use of the noun, rather than adjectival use of "cult". In this context, I see why Ready Steady Yeti argued for inclusion. Perversely, we have art film and Collins doesn't. Dbfirs 09:26, 25 May 2014 (UTC)

Not SoP. If it were SoP, then it would mean a film made by a cult. If the Branch Davidians had filmed David Koresh preaching to his flock, that would be a cult film. But that is not what cult film means. Cult films are not produced by cults, nor are they about cults. Cult films are weird and unusual, and their audience becomes obsessive and irrationally appreciative of the film. Pink Flamingos (1971–72) starring Divine became a cult film. —Stephen ^(Talk) 09:45, 25 May 2014 (UTC)

Yeah, as defined at "cult", adjective. You might as well falsely argue that "brown leaf" itself requires an entry, since there are different senses of brown and leaf: it isn't, for example, a brown page in a book, even though that's a "leaf", and plausible. Equinox ◑ 18:29, 26 May 2014 (UTC)

So do we need the words "weird and unusual" in the definition? That would make it more than SoP. Dbfirs 07:12, 27 May 2014 (UTC)

• Keep, after a hesitation. For one thing, Collins has it. For another thing, here is cult film,cult movie,cult comedy,cult book,cult video game,cult horror,cult radio series at the Google Books Ngram Viewer., which suggests that "cult film" and "cult movie" are the main expressions, of which the other ones are immitations. I do admit that these cult things form a group, but I am not sure this makes them sum of parts. Yes, you can take the group, figure out a definition of "cult" used in these combinations, and add it to cult (adjective), but I am not sure this is the best treatment; it smells too much of adding a definition to adjective red: Of a dwarf planet, being relatively cool and of the main sequence, and then claiming SoP for red dwarf. For those editors that are sometimes ok with a redirect, I propose you consider to figure it out how to take the reader from "cult film" to the adjectival sense that cult currently has; what about cult#Adjective? Although cult#Portuguese also has an adjectival definition. In any case, keeping "cult film" entry seems to serve the users better than removing it. --Dan Polansky (talk) 10:37, 25 May 2014 (UTC)

  Correction: The Ngram actually suggests "cult book" is the term that appeared earlier. I would still keep "cult film" and "cult movie" together with "cult book". --Dan Polansky (talk) 10:42, 25 May 2014 (UTC)

• Keep is what Stephen seems to say above, albeit without boldface. (A note made for the likes of me who like to count votes.) --Dan Polansky (talk) 10:37, 25 May 2014 (UTC)

Never mind what I said above. I also say keep. Forgive me for not understanding every bit of what you guys just said. But I think I get the point. This is what I was thinking about this morning before getting out of bed. Cult film, for one, is not a combination of the entries for cult and film. Cult film means "A film that has acquired a cult following.". This word cannot be guessed by combining the meanings of cult and film in any senses. It is not about cults or having to do with cults (well I suppose it could be but that's not what the word means), it has to do with the film acquiring a cult following. Plus, more support is that another dictionary, Collins, has this entry. In that case, cult video game still seems questionable. I would actually rather cult video game be deleted, because the Wikipedia article does not have articles in other languages about cult video game. But this rule for inclusion is not what Wiktionary is looking for. I think Wiktionary (not me) would rather keep this entry for the same reason as cult film. For the reason, it is not a video game about or made by a cult, but it is a video game that has acquired a cult following, once again. I think I've made my case. Thanks for the support. Ready Steady Yeti (talk) 16:46, 25 May 2014 (UTC)

• One of our definitions of cult is "Enjoyed by a small, loyal group", so if a cult film is nothing more than a film that is enjoyed by a small, loyal group then this is SOP. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 17:37, 25 May 2014 (UTC)

No, because the word does not assume that the movie has something to do with a "small loyal group of enjoyers", neither does it mean that it was made by a "small loyal group of enjoyers". The meaning of the word is "A film that has acquired a cult following" (not a cult). Ready Steady Yeti (talk) 17:45, 25 May 2014 (UTC)

Definitions are just explanations. They can be rephrased and still refer to the same thing (approximately, but no one uses uses natural languages like legalese anyway, except lawyers). What if we deleted "small" from the definition of cult? Would it still not be cult + film? — Keφr 18:06, 25 May 2014 (UTC)

Delete! I did not realize. Look at the example in the definition that Angr refers to. "cult horror movie"! On the contrary, in commemoration of this attempt to keep this world, let's replace the example with "cult film"! Ready Steady Yeti (talk) 18:18, 25 May 2014 (UTC)

Delete (I think this discussion is effectively dead anyway). Renard Migrant (talk) 18:31, 27 May 2014 (UTC)

Keep. I think cult film is the original term, rather than the adjectival use of cult. — TAKASUGI Shinji (talk) 06:31, 3 June 2014 (UTC)

Delete! I don't know why we haven't yet. This discussion is long since over. Rædi Stædi Yæti {-skriv til mig-} 15:02, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

Delete per nom.​—msh210℠ (talk) 07:42, 3 August 2014 (UTC)

Kept for lack of consensus to delete. bd2412 T 01:09, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

nadgorliwość jest gorsza od faszyzmu

This is defined as a Polish proverb, but does not seem to be one. google books:"nadgorliwość jest gorsza od faszyzmu" finds only 6 hits, in only 4 of which the phrase is actually shown by Google. To be a proverb, a phrase must have many more durably archived hits, I believe. --Dan Polansky (talk) 20:10, 30 May 2014 (UTC)

Plus they they took a concise, direct phrase and gave it a rambling, vague heap of verbiage instead of a definition. Chuck Entz (talk) 07:26, 1 June 2014 (UTC)

Keep. There is no exceptional criterion for proverbs, and the variant nadgorliwość gorsza od faszyzmu is listed in at least one published glossary of proverbs. — Ungoliant ^(falai) 04:31, 13 July 2014 (UTC)

If it cannot be demonstrated to be a proverb, then this is simply a sum of parts sentence. The published glossary is this, right? The typesetting looks extremely cheep, so it is as "published" as any random web page, and its being "published" in this way does not matter at all. --Dan Polansky (talk) 08:00, 13 July 2014 (UTC)

June 2014

lado bom

Lado (“side: one possible aspect of a concept, person or thing”) + bom (“good”).

Many SOPs can be and are formed with this sense of lado: lado bom (good side), lado ruim (bad side), lado mau (bad/evil side), lado divertido (fun side), lado chato (boring side), lado difícil (difficult side), lado fácil (easy side), etc. — Ungoliant ^(falai) 20:08, 1 June 2014 (UTC)

foder-se para

The term demands the adverb Template:l/pt otherwise has (assumes) a literal meaning "screw yourself by" (to get, or, in name of something or someone) --Tchirruá (talk) 22:33, 1 June 2014 (UTC)

Keep. Usually true, but it is occasionally used without pouco. — Ungoliant ^(falai) 22:21, 1 June 2014 (UTC)

@Tchirruá On the other hand, I’ve never seen it not used in the progressive aspect, so maybe it should be moved to estar se fodendo para. What do you think? — Ungoliant ^(falai) 12:55, 3 June 2014 (UTC)

culona inchiavabile

SoP of culona and inchiavabile (which we seem to lack at the moment; I'll look into it). It's not an idiom it's a famous quotation. Wiktionary is not Wikiquote! Renard Migrant (talk) 12:07, 2 June 2014 (UTC)

Delete. This does not seem to be a common Italian insult, believing google books:"culona inchiavabile". If this were a common insult, I would find it worth keeping, since it would be unobvious to me that they actually say this in Italian, but it is not. --Dan Polansky (talk) 08:40, 3 June 2014 (UTC)

Keep. Language is what is spoken and the phrase was uttered by the President of Italy, thus requiring definition. It is what a dictionary is for, to define the language as used. The What Wiktionary is not article does not in fact say that "Wiktionary is not Wikiquote"; this argument is a red herring.O'Dea (talk) 11:18, 3 June 2014 (UTC)

But we can define culona and inchiavabile. By your argument, why not make an entry for Angela Merkel è una culona inchiavabile as that's the whole phrase? PS surely despite the link, you're not denying that Wiktionary isn't Wikiquote are you? Renard Migrant (talk) 10:24, 4 June 2014 (UTC)

The difference between Wiktionary and Wikisource could not be clearer, but lots of multiword entries are already defined in dictionaries: bus stop, hammer price, credit mule, polling booth, bunk off, pole dancer.... Before adding the entry I searched online for a clear statement of its meaning and its etymology. Finally, having satisfied myself that I grasped it confidently enough to write a respectable definition of it, I wrote one to help others who, like me, need an easier-to-find definition with etymology to clarify it. There is so obviously a justification for this. Wiktionary exists to provide accessible meaning so people don't have to waste time Web-wandering to duplicate research already performed. The definition provides a helpful service, as it ought. O'Dea (talk) 06:33, 12 June 2014 (UTC)

Delete. The President of Italy speaking something doesn’t make it idiomatic. The entries Template:l/it and Template:l/it should give our users the information necessary to understand precisely what it means. — Ungoliant ^(falai) 12:51, 3 June 2014 (UTC)

Delete per nom. - -sche (discuss) 19:55, 3 June 2014 (UTC)

Deleted. bd2412 T 14:13, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

tvær vikur

Nominating jointly with...

fjórtán dagar

These are "two weeks" and "fourteen days" respectively. SOP per #vierzehn Tage above. I've held off on nominating hálfur mánuður ("half month") since it's not clear whether it literally means "half a month", or if it always idiomatically means a fortnight regardless of the length of the month. Any Icelandic speakers able to clarify? Smurrayinchester (talk) 10:59, 4 June 2014 (UTC)

Just to make it more fun, bear in mind that there are non-Western calendars (e.g. Hebrew and Hijri) which also have "months", and their lengths are more variable. Equinox ◑ 17:00, 4 June 2014 (UTC)

• I'm not sure there's an Icelandic word for fortnight, and I don't think there is in Norwegian (fjorten dager, to uker in Bokmål), Danish (fjorten dage, to uger) and Swedish (fjorton dagar, två veckor) either. For that reason it may be a good idea to keep these Icelandic phrases. Donnanz (talk) 17:29, 4 June 2014 (UTC)
• Delete both. The absence of an Icelandic word for fortnight is no reason to violate our own CFI. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 21:22, 4 June 2014 (UTC)

Delete. Unidiomatic sums of parts by their etymology sections’ own admittance. — Ungoliant ^(falai) 21:23, 4 June 2014 (UTC)

• Keep, as probably the best Icelandic translations of fortnight. Both entries were created in 2007 by User:BiT, who is a native Icelandic speaker. I often wonder how these sorts of nominations are supposed to improve the dictionary. --Dan Polansky (talk) 07:37, 14 June 2014 (UTC)
• I have just come across a Nynorsk word "fjortendagar", which is rather interesting. “fjortendagar” in The Nynorsk Dictionary. Donnanz (talk) 10:44, 25 June 2014 (UTC)

Delete both. Just because English has the word fortnight doesn't mean that all languages that don't have such a word need to have entries for "two weeks" or "fourteen days". --WikiTiki89 10:53, 25 June 2014 (UTC)

• It does seem that fjortendagar is attestable, which would invoke WT:COALMINE if they were in the same language. However, I do not read either Nynorsk or Icelandic, so I don't know offhand what language these cites are in.[9], [10], [11], [12], [13]. bd2412 T 13:53, 26 August 2014 (UTC)

wyjść po angielsku

wyjście po angielsku

The minimal idiomatic part is po angielsku (which I now added; improvements to the definition are welcome), because the verb may be replaced with any synonym, like zniknąć, ulotnić się, czmychnąć without any loss of meaning, making this term SOP. (Alternatively, one might consider synonym substitutions as alternative forms of this term, but I think it is not feasible to do so.) — Keφr 20:37, 4 June 2014 (UTC)

Possible SoP Japanese terms

女に化ける

Delete. --kc_kennylau (talk) 10:46, 5 June 2014 (UTC)

Delete. Not idiomatic. — TAKASUGI Shinji (talk) 13:23, 10 June 2014 (UTC)

• Delete per TAKASUGI Shinji. bd2412 T 17:36, 12 June 2014 (UTC)

綿の実

Delete. --kc_kennylau (talk) 10:46, 5 June 2014 (UTC)

Keep. It means a cotton boll. — TAKASUGI Shinji (talk) 13:23, 10 June 2014 (UTC)

• Keep per TAKASUGI Shinji, whose authority on the idiomacity of Japanese words I trust completely. bd2412 T 17:29, 12 June 2014 (UTC)
• @Atitarev I assume this was deleted in error? 124.149.147.207 12:16, 25 June 2014 (UTC)

Yes, restored. --Anatoli ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 13:04, 25 June 2014 (UTC)

I'd like to withdraw this. It seems like the word is more complex than I thought. It could mean cotton boll and cottonseed. Thanks for pointing it out, TAKASUGI Shinji. Whym (talk) 15:00, 26 June 2014 (UTC)

実らなかった努力

Add a metaphorical definition to 実る before deleting this. --kc_kennylau (talk) 10:46, 5 June 2014 (UTC)

Done. Whym (talk) 11:51, 5 June 2014 (UTC)

Delete. --kc_kennylau (talk) 12:46, 5 June 2014 (UTC)

Delete. Not idiomatic. — TAKASUGI Shinji (talk) 13:23, 10 June 2014 (UTC)

• Delete per TAKASUGI Shinji. bd2412 T 17:36, 12 June 2014 (UTC)

熟れた果実

Delete. --kc_kennylau (talk) 10:46, 5 June 2014 (UTC)

Delete. Not idiomatic. — TAKASUGI Shinji (talk) 13:23, 10 June 2014 (UTC)

• Delete per TAKASUGI Shinji. bd2412 T 17:36, 12 June 2014 (UTC)

無実の罪

Delete. --kc_kennylau (talk) 10:46, 5 June 2014 (UTC)

Keep. Idiomatic. — TAKASUGI Shinji (talk) 13:23, 10 June 2014 (UTC)

• Keep per TAKASUGI Shinji, whose authority on the idiomacity of Japanese words I trust completely. Taken character by character, this would seem to mean "no truth to the crime", which is not the same as identifying a charge (presumably a criminal charge or accusation) as false. Cheers! bd2412 T 17:31, 12 June 2014 (UTC)

判断の尺度

All above are simply non-idiomatic phrases. Whym (talk) 10:33, 5 June 2014 (UTC)

Delete. --kc_kennylau (talk) 10:46, 5 June 2014 (UTC)

Delete. Not idiomatic. — TAKASUGI Shinji (talk) 13:23, 10 June 2014 (UTC)

• Delete per TAKASUGI Shinji. bd2412 T 17:36, 12 June 2014 (UTC)

既成の事実

既成事実 is an established term, but this is not. Whym (talk) 10:33, 5 June 2014 (UTC)

Create 既成 before deleting this. --kc_kennylau (talk) 10:46, 5 June 2014 (UTC)

Done. Whym (talk) 11:51, 5 June 2014 (UTC)

Delete. --kc_kennylau (talk) 12:46, 5 June 2014 (UTC)

Delete. Not idiomatic. — TAKASUGI Shinji (talk) 13:23, 10 June 2014 (UTC)

• Delete per TAKASUGI Shinji. bd2412 T 17:36, 12 June 2014 (UTC)

世界最古の職業

Translation of the English idiom "world's oldest profession", not idiomatic as a term in Japanese. Whym (talk) 10:33, 5 June 2014 (UTC)

I abstain my vote until further notice. --kc_kennylau (talk) 10:46, 5 June 2014 (UTC)

Could be an RFV issue? Renard Migrant (talk) 10:51, 9 June 2014 (UTC)

Delete. Not idiomatic. — TAKASUGI Shinji (talk) 13:23, 10 June 2014 (UTC)

• Delete per TAKASUGI Shinji. bd2412 T 17:36, 12 June 2014 (UTC)

Deleted a bunch except for some for which there were keep votes. Voting keep for 世界最古の職業, even if it may be a translation. I think English "world's oldest profession" is also idiomatic. Undecided about 無実の罪. --Anatoli ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 02:30, 19 June 2014 (UTC)

I believe most Japanese have no idea what the world’s oldest profession is. As far as I know, it is used to explain the English concept. — TAKASUGI Shinji (talk) 15:17, 24 June 2014 (UTC)

But this type of opinions seems quite common on the Japanese Web: 売春婦が世界最古の職業というネタが広く流布しているような気がする。 しかし、... (or similar), quoted or without quotes. It doesn't have to be known to MOST Japanese but to MANY, IMHO. It is a translated phrase for many languages, not sure where it originated. More importantly, it seems attestable in Japanese as uses, not mentions. --Anatoli ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 14:24, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

I might have said too assertively. Your example is quite ordinary, however. It means: "It seems a widespread story that the prostitution is the world's oldest profession, but…" Here, "世界最古の職業" doesn’t means the prostitution but literally means the oldest profession of the world. It is not idiomatic. — TAKASUGI Shinji (talk) 02:14, 28 June 2014 (UTC)

Isn’t it better to move it to RFV? — TAKASUGI Shinji (talk) 00:01, 24 July 2014 (UTC)

I disagree with you on idiomaticity of this term in Japanese but I just don't see it a very important term to spend too much time on it, as I read Japanese with difficulty. :) The few examples I've read seem to suggest that it's used not mentioned in Japanese, just like it is in other languages. I met a few Japanese, even living in Japan who live "in the West", reading only Western books, watching only Western movies and series, even if it's all in translation. For westernised Japanese what is idiomatic in English, is also idiomatic in Japanese. Just a thought. "World's oldest profession" is a common term, which is used in the world literature. Feel free to RFV. --Anatoli T. ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 00:24, 24 July 2014 (UTC)

Moved to RFD. — TAKASUGI Shinji (talk) 08:09, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

Delete. Wyang (talk) 03:07, 5 August 2014 (UTC)

Closed as resolved. The terms for which there was consensus to delete have been deleted; the terms for which there was consensus to keep have been kept; one term has been sent to RfV. bd2412 T 13:41, 26 August 2014 (UTC)

cendre volcanique

Sum of parts, consisting of cendre + volcanique. Or ought we have volcanic ash? --Fsojic (talk) 22:23, 6 June 2014 (UTC)

Unless I'm missing something, if you know what cendre (“ash”) means, and you know what volcanique (“volcanic”) means, you know what cendre volcanique. Renard Migrant (talk) 12:13, 7 June 2014 (UTC)

Delete. Renard Migrant (talk) 10:44, 9 June 2014 (UTC)

Topramenesha

Discussion moved to Wiktionary:Requests for verification#Topramenesha.

丁丁

"Tintin, the Belgian comic book character"

"Tinky Winky, one of the Teletubbies"

Does this really need to be here? Page Tinky Winky was deleted because it was not notable enough, and I don't think a Belgian comic book character is notable either. Why we keep these two senses? Isn't this against the rules? Rædi Stædi Yæti {-skriv til mig-} 04:16, 23 June 2014 (UTC)

Tintin

Same as above. Already failed an RFV discussion. Rædi Stædi Yæti {-skriv til mig-} 04:18, 23 June 2014 (UTC)

I think you're misusing the term "notable", and I'm quite certain the present definition of Tintin would pass RfV if RfVed. However, it probably should still be deleted for the real reason Tinky Winky was deleted: we don't keep brand names or characters as definitions. Purplebackpack89 ^{(Notes Taken) (Locker)} 04:25, 23 June 2014 (UTC)

If Tintin is notable then the Tinky Winky sense only should be obliviated. It's kind of funny how I'm tagging this for deletion, as Teletubbies is actually one of my favorite TV shows. Rædi Stædi Yæti {-skriv til mig-} 07:41, 23 June 2014 (UTC)

Please re-read my comment again. Something can be deleted here in spite of (Wikipedia) notability. Tinky Winky was deleted that way. Tintin should be too. Purplebackpack89 ^{(Notes Taken) (Locker)} 15:07, 23 June 2014 (UTC)

As you say, it already failed RFV, so was re-added out of process. Deleted again. Equinox ◑ 20:12, 24 June 2014 (UTC)

• I think "Tintin" (name of a fictional character) should better be kept, full with pronunciation. However, Wiktionary:CFI#Fictional_universes applies, supported by Wiktionary:Votes/pl-2008-01/Appendices for fictional terms. I don't support that policy, but it is supported by a vote, so no bold keep from me. But again, it would be preferable IMHO to keep the entry. My rationale is that this is a single-word attested proper name on which lexicographical information such as pronunciation can be kept. An objection would be that this would lead to an inclusion of too many names of fictional characters, but this can be addressed by applying frequency criteria to such names. --Dan Polansky (talk) 21:01, 24 June 2014 (UTC)

This entire discussion has been closed, as both things needed to be deleted are now deleted, officially. The 丁丁 senses were speedy deleted. Rædi Stædi Yæti {-skriv til mig-} 14:07, 26 June 2014 (UTC)

am I right

Previous discussion: Wiktionary:Tea room/2014/June#am I right?

Created despite two editors one editor objecting and none supporting. --WikiTiki89 13:49, 26 June 2014 (UTC)

I realize that I did not actually vocalize my own objection. --WikiTiki89 13:55, 26 June 2014 (UTC)

I took the objection as inapplicable since Equinox claimed there was humor in the longer phrase, and was simply unaware that it occurs in the simpler phrase. Choor monster (talk) 15:48, 26 June 2014 (UTC)

More relevant, the stated definition makes it clear this is not SOP, which is what I interpret Equinox's "transparent". See the three citations, in no case is the questioner actually in doubt.

Of more interest to me is the relation with the phrase "am I not right?" The two phrases are seemingly interchangeable! Choor monster (talk) 16:02, 26 June 2014 (UTC)

No, the stated definition is exactly what you would expect from a rhetorical question. --WikiTiki89 16:07, 26 June 2014 (UTC)

Right. As opposed to the more common SOP usage of the phrase "am I right". The difference between this and "am I right or am I right" is simply the latter is never used in an SOP manner.

So I have no idea what you are actually objecting to. Choor monster (talk) 16:36, 26 June 2014 (UTC)

I don't think the possible interposition of "not" is of any consequence. Consider, constructions like "am I tall" and "am I not tall" can also basically mean the same thing. However, I wonder whether WT:COALMINE stretches far enough to encompass am I right as an alternative spelling of amirite. bd2412 T 17:34, 26 June 2014 (UTC)

I understood Wikitiki89's "No" as referring to my "More relevant" paragraph, not "Of more interest", and responded accordingly. (We had a side discussion on Talk:am I right regarding "rhetorical question", and also in the edit summaries on the entry history.) Choor monster (talk) 17:44, 26 June 2014 (UTC)

• Comment: In our disagreement, there is possibly some confusion over the phrase "rhetorical question". I am using the phrase in the sense of WP rhetorical question, and not in the sense of WT rhetorical question. Choor monster (talk) 17:12, 26 June 2014 (UTC)

  The only reason I brought up the rhetoricalness of the question in the side discussion is because the definition stated the question is rhetorical and thus a citation that isn't contradicts the definition. That had nothing to do with this deletion debate. --WikiTiki89 21:25, 26 June 2014 (UTC)

Clarification: I nominated this because it is SOP, not because it is rhetorical. You can ask many questions rhetorically, that doesn't make them idiomatic. --WikiTiki89 21:25, 26 June 2014 (UTC)

And I claim that because it is rhetorical, it is not SOP. When someone asks "are you nuts?", he is not engaging in an SOP query based on incomplete information about your mental health, but is simply asserting that your recent suggestion/activity was deeply and obviously flawed.

For the phrase "am I right?", the difference between literal and idiomatic meaning is less extreme, but it is definitely there. The four cited examples are all cases where the speaker is taking it for granted that the answer is a resounding, unambiguous yes. The speaker is not trying to resolve doubts about something he just said. Let me cite three examples that I did not include:

• "At first the man-child has no teeth, but about the sixth month—am I right, sir?" (Herman Melville, The Confidence-Man, [14])
• "My idea is: let young lad run about and play with young lads of his own age and not be. Am I right, Jack?" (James Joyce, Dubliners, [15])
• "The only airstrip capable of taking such a plane—am I right, Harling?—is here in Nassau." (Ian Fleming, Thunderball, [16])

In each of these cases, it's not clear to me whether the question is literal or rhetorical.

Overall, the use of "amirite" as a substitute for the rhetorical usage is proof the two senses are far enough apart to warrant our attention.

Again, I see no difference between distinguishing between the literal and rhetorical senses of "am I right?" and of "am I right or am I right?", other than the latter is not normally used in a literal sense. Why do you oppose "am I right?" but support "am I right or am I right?" (I'm assuming your support for the latter is not contingent on the snowclone issue.) Choor monster (talk) 12:33, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

Regarding "Are you nuts?": That is a typical example of exactly why I think we don't think we should add every possible rhetorical question. Rhetorical questions are part of language usage, that does not mean they have their own special place in the lexicon. Both "Am I right?" and "Are you nuts?" have exactly the meaning you would expect given their parts and the contextual indication that the question is rhetorical.

Regarding "Am I right or am I right?": As Equinox said, he created this not because it is rhetorical, but because it has the unusual feature of having identical clauses on both sides of the "or". I'm not saying I necessarily agree with this, but the point is that that argument is irrelevant for the plain "Am I right?". --WikiTiki89 17:10, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

Perhaps we can use logically-equivalent phrases to look for the limits of idiomaticity: "are you nuts?" can have any synonym (crazy, daft, out of your mind, etc.) substituted for nuts and mean the same thing. If we were to discover a new word, "zglurn", that meant the same thing, it could be substituted and the phrase as a whole would mean the same thing: "are you zglurn?". The question then becomes: do we change anything if we say "am I correct?", "am I wrong?" or "am I in accordance with reality?", and does any change come strictly from the nature of the item substituted? Chuck Entz (talk) 17:48, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

Yes, as long as they are said in the same tone, "am I correct?", "am I wrong?", and "am I in accordance with reality?" all mean the same as "am I right?", although they may be less common and the last one even unciteable as a rhetorical question. --WikiTiki89 17:53, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

(ec, response to earlier comment) I don't recommend adding every possible rhetorical question. Just those that are properly attested. The fact that the meaning changes from SOP, whether or not it follows a predictable arc, means that it is not SOP. You are claiming, when you refer to expected meanings, that in essence, SOP+"rhetorical marker" is still SOP, so an entry explaining the rhetorical meaning is superfluous. And you are relying on a claim that the change in meaning is canonical.

But this is absolutely not true. You are speaking as a native and are mistaking your deeply embedded fluency for logic. For example, it's perfectly logical that "are you nuts?" could have been rhetorical words of encouragement to a friend having a wild and crazy time. It's perfectly logical that "am I right?" could have been a rhetorical expression of self-doubt, but we actually say "or maybe I'm just kidding myself". The fact that these are not the meanings is idiomatic.

The canonical example of how native speakers are rather poor judges of SOP regarding their own language is "Time flies like an arrow".

I fail to see how being "unusual" makes a difference in our goals here. We're trying to document both usual and unusual forms. The fact that "am I right or am I right?" is funny looking with "or" used in a humorous way seems ridiculous as a justification, if, ultimately, it's just SOP all along. At that rate, we should include all well-attested jokes and puns. "I'm a frayed knot" anyone? (I like "am I right or am I right?" because coming up with a natural, non-rhetorical SOP usage requires thinking like Kripke, but of course that's not a justification either.)

Should we delete nicht wahr? Choor monster (talk) 18:31, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

I'm not advocating keeping "Am I right or am I right?", in fact I even nominated it for deletion below. Let's keep these discussions separate though, because there are different arguments to be made. Anyway... Being rhetorical does not make something non-SOP. SOP has to do with the meaning, while rhetoricity has to do with the reason. The meaning is clearly SOP even if the reason for saying it is rhetorical. And when I said we shouldn't add every possible rhetorical question, I meant every possible attested rhetorical question. As for "time flies like an arrow", it is SOP. --WikiTiki89 18:53, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

My apologies regarding "am I right or am I right?". I interpreted your request below as a preference, and when you quoted Equinox I assumed you regarded his explanation as a valid reason, one that "am I right?" lacks.

We don't care too much what somebody's reasons for saying something are. We care what the meanings are. (If the reason is relevant we supply it as a note.) The rhetorical usage has a distinct and non-predictable meaning in the two phrases I've mentioned: you are point-blank ignoring my explicit proofs above. (I am making no blanket claims about other phrases.) "Time flies like an arrow" is SOP if and only if you know the meaning already, which ultimately means it's not SOP at all. (That's what the link was for.) Choor monster (talk) 20:43, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

The rhetorical usage has the exact same meaning as the literal meaning. The difference is that the person asking already knows he is right and is using the question to emphasize his point (that's what I mean by a reason, and as you said, the reason is irrelevant). --WikiTiki89 20:57, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

"Time flies like an arrow" is definitely SOP. To not figure out what it means, you would have to assume the existence of time fly, which would have to be a noun parallel in meaning to fruit fly. As for ambiguity: it happens all over the place in English, and trying to eliminate it by treating all of the pairs of different meanings as lexical items would quickly become untenable: there's a famous line from w:Animal Crackers where Groucho says "I once shot an elephant in my pajamas- how the elephant got into my pajamas, I'll never know". Try clearing that up with dictionary entries! Chuck Entz (talk) 21:09, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

• I absolutely do not see how it is possible to say that informing one's listeners that one does not know something can be understood as informing one's listeners that one definitely does know something. In the case of "am I right?" I agree the literal and rhetorical meanings are close. In "are you nuts?" they are not even close.
• We include Houston, we have a problem. It's use is 100% SOP, with or without "Houston" as part of the situation.
• We include one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind. Again, 100% SOP.
• We include nicht wahr.
• How about What we've got here is failure to communicate? The actual meaning is that the speaker wants his listener to know that the speaker gets to lie his head off, and is not to be called on it, nor to be contradicted in any way.
• In contrast, You Had Me at Hello, while now a catchphrase, is simply clever.
• I was thinking of 'Time' the imperative verb, not the fictitious Musca temporus. Of course ambiguity is everywhere, but almost all of it is simply a one-off, and hence not our concern. Choor monster (talk) 15:52, 1 July 2014 (UTC)

How is saying Houston, we have a problem SOP when Houston is not the target of the statement SOP? How can one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind, a statement nigh incoherent be SOP when used in reference to the original?--Prosfilaes (talk) 01:06, 2 July 2014 (UTC)

Of course Houston is not the target! The point of "Houston, we have a problem" is that Houston still means Houston (ie, SOP). And since Mission Control is so obviously not interested in somebody's petty problem, there is some serious mockery going on. (The snowclone "Earth to X" is similar.) The non-SOP aspect that should have been mentioned is that we here frequently means you have a problem, but I suppose that is covered under some "royal we" sense.

If I say "one small step ..." when I've finished some project, I've said, SOP, that my project is of great importance to humanity. The allusion is extra.

In both cases, this is what WikiTiki89 above called the "reason" something was said, and he asserts having a "reason" that intimately ties in with an SOP-phrase is ultimately grounds for deletion. I disagree. Choor monster (talk) 13:57, 2 July 2014 (UTC)

No. All I said was having an unexpected reason is not grounds for inclusion. --WikiTiki89 14:12, 2 July 2014 (UTC)

If you defend your RfD by identifying this weakness, then you are using it as grounds for deletion. Choor monster (talk) 17:30, 2 July 2014 (UTC)

No I'm not. If you added the phrase I like apples and claimed it should be included because apples are delicious, and I said that apples being delicious is not grounds for inclusion, that does not mean I am saying the phrase should be deleted only because apples are not delicious; it means that I am saying there is nothing else about the phrase that merits inclusion. If that makes not sense to you, then you can see how little sense your argument is making. If that does makes sense to you, then it will show you how little sense your argument is making. --WikiTiki89 18:02, 2 July 2014 (UTC)

I like pie. If you called for that phrase's deletion on the grounds that its supporter's argument that it is a non sequitur is all about the reason the phrase is said—it remains, literally, a statement about savor, and the given definition is really just the speaker's reason only—then point out, "oops, no argument left for inclusion, guess we'll have to delete it" you would have done the exact same thing you're doing here.

I concede the statement I made is too strong. If indeed there were two arguments for inclusion and you reclassified one of them as merely "reason", you would not call for deletion. However, that does not apply, so far as I can tell, to any of the instances I've mentioned above. And in general, multiple supporting arguments for inclusion are uncommon with CfD-nominated terms anyway, so I consider it too strong in theory but not in practice. I like lamp. Choor monster (talk) 22:31, 2 July 2014 (UTC)

Kept for lack of consensus to delete. bd2412 T 01:07, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

am I right or am I right

(This discussion should not influence or be influenced by the discussion above.)

I believe this is a snowclone and should be moved to the appendix. Any adjective can be used: "Am I awesome or am I awesome?", "Am I hot or am I hot?", etc. --WikiTiki89 13:54, 26 June 2014 (UTC)

• Appendicize per WikiTiki. bd2412 T 14:30, 26 August 2014 (UTC)

July 2014

file allocation table

Nothing more than file + allocation + table. — Keφr 07:04, 5 July 2014 (UTC)

Keep. It's much more than SoP. Forms the basis of some operating systems. --Dmol (talk) 07:26, 5 July 2014 (UTC)

So what if it does? The term, as defined, is SOP. — Keφr 07:35, 5 July 2014 (UTC)

Delete generic sense. --WikiTiki89 20:01, 5 July 2014 (UTC)

Keep. This is both the name of a specific data structure in file systems of the FAT family, and the name of the file system itself. It is therefore on par with terms like inode. The data structure sense may be SOP, but as it can refer to a type of file system as well, it definitely isn't in that sense. —CodeCat 21:36, 5 July 2014 (UTC)

The citations we entered support a generic sense, in which the term is SOP. Unless you are arguing for adding a subsense of "a data structure of this sort as found in the FAT family of file systems", in which you might argue the term is idiomatic. — Keφr 21:50, 5 July 2014 (UTC)

Well, this RFD is for the whole entry, but I'm arguing for keeping the entry because there are non-SOP senses that should be there. —CodeCat 22:15, 5 July 2014 (UTC)

Keep. --Anatoli ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 23:52, 7 July 2014 (UTC)

User:Atitarev: to clarify, keep a generic sense or a specific one? — Keφr 07:56, 26 July 2014 (UTC)

Currently it only has one sense. My vote is for a generic sense, which may need a change. --Anatoli T. ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 22:41, 26 July 2014 (UTC)

Kept. bd2412 T 15:29, 26 August 2014 (UTC)

ageless sleep

Misinterpretation of SOP expressions in poetry by an IP better known for adding bad content to Japanese entries and to entries on magic and deities. Chuck Entz (talk) 20:50, 5 July 2014 (UTC)

No idea. Renard Migrant (talk) 09:23, 7 July 2014 (UTC)

Keep and RfV. It might just be a less-used euphemism for death. DCDuring TALK 15:51, 26 July 2014 (UTC)

eternal sleep

Same as previous, but also merely a copy of it- even to the point of using the same quote, which doesn't include the entry title. Chuck Entz (talk) 20:56, 5 July 2014 (UTC)

Delete. The sleep is either actual sleep, or a trivial metaphor. The magical cause or mechanism can vary from one story to another. "A magical state of suspended animation" is being too specific. Equinox ◑ 10:59, 6 July 2014 (UTC)

No idea. Renard Migrant (talk) 10:25, 7 July 2014 (UTC)

Delete if the creator tries to define a magical sleep. But isn’t it rather a common euphemism of death? — TAKASUGI Shinji (talk) 15:46, 26 July 2014 (UTC)

Keep A euphemism for death, of uncertain scope of usage beyond Christianity. DCDuring TALK 15:52, 26 July 2014 (UTC)

canine distemper virus

the viral agent that causes canine distemper. Renard Migrant (talk) 10:25, 7 July 2014 (UTC)

That is not the complete meaning of the term, it is its etymology. As with many vernacular names for organisms, it corresponds to a particular proper noun in taxonomy. It has a generally accepted abbreviation that is in fairly common, though specialized use. It is probably lexical only in the context of veterinary pathology, but we have many, many thousands of entries that have an SoP meaning that is close to and the source of a meaning that is not SoP in a specialized, often technical context. DCDuring TALK 11:28, 7 July 2014 (UTC)

Furthermore, this virus name is retained, at least tentatively, when it is found in other mammals (lions, ferrets, raccoons, stoats, etc), though the illness is not called canine distemper. DCDuring TALK 11:44, 7 July 2014 (UTC)

I think the entry should be moved to Canine distemper virus#Translingual, following the International Committee on Taxonomy of Virusess orthography. DCDuring TALK 18:37, 7 July 2014 (UTC)

I'm very sceptical that the term is translingual. google books:"canine distemper virus" cette, for example, turns up exactly one hit of the term used in French. That search does turn up enough hits of the term used in English to refer to the virus in hamsters and other animals to suggest that you're right that the virus is still called "canine distemper virus" even when it's found in non-canids, but I'm not sure that lends it any idiomaticity, since it's still "the virus that causes canine distemper". (Compare: many "red cars" have silver hubcaps, black or beige or grey seats, etc; their failure to be entirely red does not make "red car" idiomatic.) The point that this is the specific common name for a particular taxonomically identifiable virus is more suggestive of idiomaticity, IMO. - -sche (discuss) 19:23, 7 July 2014 (UTC)

This or the capitalized, ICTV form is a no-brainer as to idiomaticity. It is part of a nomenclature system. Virus naming often adopts English customary names as the formal names of species. As to use in French see this Google Scholar search and German see this one. The yield of valid cites is not too high, so patience or an RfV is required to get definite results. DCDuring TALK 20:47, 7 July 2014 (UTC)

See also [[talk:tobacco mosaic virus]].​—msh210℠ (talk) 05:23, 24 July 2014 (UTC)

and so on and so forth

User:Type56op9 (really You-Know-Who) added this even though it previously failed rfd after a discussion in late 2009. Isn't that a no-no? -- · (talk) 00:39, 8 July 2014 (UTC)

Speedied. RFD-failed entries need an “RFD” to be undeleted. — Ungoliant ^(falai) 00:42, 8 July 2014 (UTC)

Endorse speedy deletion of previously RfD'd content. bd2412 T 13:31, 8 July 2014 (UTC)

Lord Voldemort added this? Cool! Renard Migrant (talk) 12:48, 10 July 2014 (UTC)

Shh! WF's hard enough to deal with without giving him ideas... Chuck Entz (talk) 13:29, 10 July 2014 (UTC)

Keep aka restore. Well, it was RFD-deleted in October 2009 (Talk:and so on and so forth), but I am not sure it should have been, since it looks like a fine entry for our phrasebook; this is very much a set phrase. In that RFD discussion, I did not vote in boldface since I did not realize there was a phrasebook allowance in WT:CFI back then; it was only after I nominated "I love you" in February 2010 (Talk:I love you#Deletion_debate_.282.29) that it became very clear that we did have phrasebook allowance in the WT:CFI. google:"and so on and so forth" finds it in multiple dictionaries. dict.cc gives two German translations that I recognize as valid and perfectly suited to "and so on and so forth": "etc. pp." (from my memory, "et cetera pe pe"), and "und so weiter und so fort" (I heared it often). --Dan Polansky (talk) 08:41, 13 July 2014 (UTC)

We already have entries for and so on and and so forth. This is merely a combination of the two that adds nothing to their individual definitions. I think it is like the phrase "out of touch and behind the times", which is attested but merely combines repetitions of more or less the same idea. bd2412 T 14:45, 15 July 2014 (UTC)

Yes, for the decoding direction, the phrase is transparent. As is I love you. It is the encoding direction that matters. The second argument I made was with respect to translation target, keeping in mind that Wiktionary is a multilingual dictionary. In German, you say google:"und so weiter und so fort" but you fairly rarely say google:"und so fort und so weiter". It is a unit whose parts get glued together in the mind as one lexical item, at least in my mind. Of course, German "etc. pp." is just intransparent and deserves an entry anyway. As for google books:"out of touch and behind the times", it does not seem very phrasey with its 31 Google books hits. --Dan Polansky (talk) 18:15, 21 July 2014 (UTC)

Do not undelete.​—msh210℠ (talk) 05:22, 24 July 2014 (UTC)

User:Msh210: was that a vote or a closure? — Keφr 07:57, 26 July 2014 (UTC)

A vote (per nom and bd2412).​—msh210℠ (talk) 17:03, 28 July 2014 (UTC)

Closed as resolved, consensus remains in favor of deletion. bd2412 T 15:45, 26 August 2014 (UTC)

共同通訊社 & 共同通讯社 (Chinese) and 共同通信社 (Japanese)

Seems sum of parts, and not dictionary material. ---> Tooironic (talk) 06:08, 9 July 2014 (UTC)

• The Japanese is a proper noun, and thus not SOP. However, whether that proper noun merits an entry, I am uncertain. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 18:30, 10 July 2014 (UTC)

• I'm sorry but I don't quite understand your logic. Both the Chinese and Japanese are proper nouns, the Chinese is merely a translation of the original Japanese. Xinhua News Agency, France 24 and China Radio International are also proper nouns, and of a similar type, but we don't have entries them - nor should we, arguably, since that's the job of an encyclopedia not a dictionary. Then again we do have British Broadcasting Corporation, but that hasn't been through a deletion request (yet). ---> Tooironic (talk) 09:59, 11 July 2014 (UTC)

• I'm inclined to keep 共同通信社. It might appear as if a sum of parts that means a certain type of news agencies ("通信社") that are based on joint ("共同") membership or something, while it actually is the name of a particular agency. The possible misinterpretation would motivate us to have an entry for 共同通信社 to explain that it can only be a proper noun in Japanese. Whether to have Xinhua News Agency mentioned above is a different matter, because that term would be unlikely to be mistaken as a general term. I don't have a particular opinion on the other two Chinese entries listed. Whym (talk) 04:48, 12 July 2014 (UTC)

• @Tooironic --

Your initial comment was seems sum of parts, which 共同通信社 demonstrably isn't, as much as it might look like one. That's what I was responding to in the first sentence of my post above. Your second comment, [seems to be] not dictionary material, was what I was responding to in the second sentence of my post above. Does that help make my logic any clearer? (Serious question, no snark intended at all.) Note that my previous post doesn't actually evince any position on whether 共同通信社 merits an entry.

FWIW, looking at this issue again, I lean towards Whym's opinion, in that 共同通信社 does indeed look like it might just be any old (deprecated template usage) 通信社 (tsūshinsha) that happens to be (deprecated template usage) 共同 (kyōdō) in some way -- i.e., it does look like an SOP phrase. However, this term really isn't just an SOP phrase, it's the name of a specific news agency, so perhaps an entry is merited to make that clear: users could conceivably come here looking for this as a term to find in a dictionary. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 22:38, 14 July 2014 (UTC)

gakko and gakkou

Discussion moved from WT:RFV.

• It's been four months. Done, striking. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 19:21, 10 July 2014 (UTC)

• Just think, if Wiktionary:Votes/pl-2014-06/Allowing attested romanizations passes, we'll end up restoring gakkou (gakkou) just a wek from now. :b - -sche (discuss) 16:35, 13 July 2014 (UTC)

  I don't know what you are talking about. Where do you see any attesting quotations of "gakkou" in use to convey meaning? Enjoying setting up straw men much? "gakkou" was sent to RFV, no attesting quotations were provided for the form, so it was deleted, right? --Dan Polansky (talk) 16:46, 13 July 2014 (UTC)

  google books:gakkou has loads of instances of the string gakkou. I argue they're not "uses" of a "word" to "convey meaning", and it seems no-one disagrees with my view, since no-one cited any of those citations when the term was at RFV. Nonetheless, those citations are identical in form to citations which the main proponent of allowing romanizations (BD) has argued are "words used to convey meaning", hence I presume that if the vote to allow romanizations passes, he'll support including gakkou (gakkou). - -sche (discuss) 17:37, 13 July 2014 (UTC)

  • @-sche It bears noting that at least some of those hits are likely bogus, like the top title on this page of hits: The Phonology of Hungarian.  :)

  That aside, there have been occasional conversations among us JA editors about what to do with spellings that don't fit the modified Hepburn scheme in use here at EN WT. So far, the general consensus (at least, as I've understood it) has been to remove such entries. The use of ou or uu instead of the macron versions ō and ū is very common online and even in some academia, in part due to the difficulties of inputting macrons using US keyboards. (For those interested, this is sometimes called wāpuro rōmaji or “word-processor romanization”.) Given that we already have a standard for romanized Japanese entries, and given that we already have romanizations for a high percentage of our JA entries (and even the JavaScript tools in place to accelerate their creation), I don't think BD's arguments in favor of including romanizations have much immediate bearing on Japanese -- we're already doing that.  :)

  If folks wish to expand that discussion to include the issues of alternate spellings and what to do with those, I'm happy to engage in that conversation, and if such alternates are deemed entry-worthy, it would be very easy to (re)create the [[gakkou]] entry as a similar {{ja-romanization of}} redirection. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 22:51, 14 July 2014 (UTC)

la mia

la nia

As far as I know, any Esperanto adjective can be preceded by the definite article in this way. For example, la granda (“the large one”), la tia (“the one like that”) and so on. So I don't think these merit separate entries. —CodeCat 16:39, 11 July 2014 (UTC)

Agreed. Delete all. These are comparable to the Spanish phrases el mío, la suya, etc., which we rightly do not have entries for. —Mr. Granger (talk • contribs) 00:02, 12 July 2014 (UTC)

The French equivalents le mien, la mienne (etc.) all got merged into mien, mienne (etc.) Renard Migrant (talk) 12:19, 13 July 2014 (UTC)

The deletion of the French terms le mien, etc. seems wrong. The French dictionary has them. — TAKASUGI Shinji (talk) 12:26, 13 July 2014 (UTC)

I don't know Esperanto but there's a discussion below about le mien. @TAKASUGI Shinji could you link us to the dictionary or tell us, which dictionary, if it's a paper one? --Anatoli T. ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 00:30, 17 July 2014 (UTC)

In Esperanto they are not special, as you can use both mia et la mia. In modern French, however, you use only le mien [17]. — TAKASUGI Shinji (talk) 00:56, 17 July 2014 (UTC)

Thanks, interesting that the dictionary's article is for [[mien]], [[mienne]]. I voted "undelete" in the RFD below, please comment there. --Anatoli T. ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 01:23, 17 July 2014 (UTC)

cast a pall

Our entry for pall#Noun omitted the definition "a sense/feeling of gloom", which I've added.

That definition of pall occurs as subject of verbs like descend, came over, settle, fall, hang, not just as part of cast a pall. No OneLook lemmings follow us in including this.

I will shortly add a usage example for some form of 'cast a pall'. I suggest that this be made a redirect to that definition. DCDuring TALK 01:44, 12 July 2014 (UTC)

Pall appears after verbs like be, throw, put, set, spread, keep, leave in expressions fitting the new definition. DCDuring TALK 02:20, 12 July 2014 (UTC)

It also appears after prepositions. IOW, it is a normal noun in this sense appearing in a range of usages that should clearly show that there is no idiomaticity to cast a pall. DCDuring TALK 02:25, 12 July 2014 (UTC)

Delete per nom. - -sche (discuss) 17:15, 12 July 2014 (UTC)

emptive

Only used in pre-emptive. This doesn't look like a good use of {{only used in}} because it's not likely to be interpreted as a word on its own! Renard Migrant (talk) 00:06, 17 July 2014 (UTC)

Delete per nomination. — Ungoliant ^(falai) 00:14, 17 July 2014 (UTC)

Delete per nom. DCDuring TALK 03:06, 17 July 2014 (UTC)

Comment may exist, in a very rare form. One clear use in this book, meaning "acting to counteract something when it happens (but not beforehand)", one clear mention (but italicised) meaning "to do with purchasing", one citation from New Zealand Hansard as a nonce word: "At that time we secured from the Maori people what is called the pre-emptive right; but that, I think, is a misnomer—it should have been the “ emptive right,” to be correct" (snippet will not appear, unfortunately). Vast majority of hits are scannos for emotive or eruptive, though. Smurrayinchester (talk) 19:42, 17 July 2014 (UTC)

Delete. Wonderfool created a huge number of these, along the lines of topsy (only with turvy), upside (only with down), etc. Pretty clearly doing it to mess around, since the search facility finds the relevant entries even without such worthless stubs. I thought I had zapped 'em all but clearly missed this one. Equinox ◑ 20:45, 17 July 2014 (UTC)

@Cloudcuckoolander's removed this unilaterally. It would seem petty to add it back given the way this debate is going. Shall we just leave it as it is? Renard Migrant (talk) 10:06, 18 July 2014 (UTC)

Keep: attesting quotations showing the use of "emptive" outside of "pre-emptive" are in the entry since 18 July 2014‎. They may be considered too rare or created by what might be non-native speakers, but I do not recall how we handle such cases; WT:ATTEST does not deal with rarity, and WT:CFI does not say rare forms should be excluded. Thus, the reason originally stated in this nomination no longer applies to the entry. --Dan Polansky (talk) 12:38, 20 July 2014 (UTC)

• Keep per Dan Purplebackpack89 14:29, 20 July 2014 (UTC)

You've misunderstood, the challenged sense has already been deleted, you're voting keep for an entirely different sense. Renard Migrant (talk) 15:30, 20 July 2014 (UTC)

@Renard Migrant I think Dan and Purp are taking the RfD notice literally,not as you seem to have intended. Yous should have used {{rfd-sense}} if you did not intend the entire entry (actually L2 section) to be deleted. DCDuring TALK 16:04, 20 July 2014 (UTC)

I nominated the entire entry as it was at the time for deletion, Cloudcuckoolander deleted the sense unilaterally and replaced it with a completely different one. The deletion debate is a bit of a nonevent to be honest. Renard Migrant (talk) 17:26, 20 July 2014 (UTC)

@Cloudcuckoolander 1. You shouldn't remove an item after such a brief discussion (less than four days in this case). We usually like to let at least a full week pass. That allows those who only come by on weekends to contribute. 2. When there is an RfD for an entire L2 section, but definitions are added that were not present at the time of the original RfD, {{rfd}} should be replaced with ?{{rfd-sense}} applied to the sense(s) that were there at the time of the original RfD. DCDuring TALK 18:02, 20 July 2014 (UTC)

The "only in pre-emptive" sense was clearly a joke. Joke entries and senses are generally treated as deletable on sight. I didn't (and don't) see cause for retaining a joke sense for a "grace" period. The sense that was nominated for deletion is quoted in Renard's post at the top of this section, and it's also viewable in the history of the entry.

That said, I've made it a personal policy not to touch RfD templates. It's not my place to deem an RfD discussion closed, or to judge that any new sense I've added to an entry passes CFI and that the page is thus keepworthy. -Cloudcuckoolander (talk) 21:07, 20 July 2014 (UTC)

I never cease to be amazed that definitions I think of as jokes or possible Wonderfoolerery have defenders, so caution in trusting one's intuition is appropriate. As to the rest, it's just a question of making it easier for other contributors, nothing more or less. DCDuring TALK 21:41, 20 July 2014 (UTC)

I probably should've left a note here about replacing the definition. That was an oversight on my part. Sorry. -Cloudcuckoolander (talk) 04:10, 23 July 2014 (UTC)

Contested sense deleted; uncontested senses, of course, remain. bd2412 T 20:39, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

metaphorical extension

Listed on RFC. But not convinced it's really a set term. Ƿidsiþ 14:40, 18 July 2014 (UTC)

• Delete. Seems like an encyclopedic and otherwise transparent combination. bd2412 T 20:41, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

childs

To my knowledge, this is not a common error by adult native speakers of English. It needs significant written sources for inclusion.Jchthys (talk) 15:47, 24 July 2014 (UTC)

This is really an RfV matter, but that would be satisfied by the following examples:

• 1970, Freda Utley, Odyssey of a Liberal: Memoirs, page 103:

  I remember one amusing episode: in a conversation with an engineer when responding to the usual Japanese enquiry in making social talk, "How many childs have you?"

• 1979, Spit in the Ocean, Volume 1, Issues 5-6, page 106:

  "It is as they say;" he clucks; "these childs are smoke the evil dope and the old ways of behave are forget.

• 2003, Richard Matheson, Duel: Terror Stories by Richard Matheson, page 172:

  I can have many childs. Ten at a time at once.

• 2005, Stephan Olariu, ‎Albert Y. Zomaya, Handbook of Bioinspired Algorithms and Applications, page 6-402:

  Thus, the initial random vectors are all normalized and the childs are also normalized to unit vectors after any crossover or mutation operation.

• 2006, Holman Day, The Landloper: The Romance of a Man on Foot, page 192:

  It is poison that has kill our little Rosemarie – and all her life ahead! The doctor say so – and he say I cannot understand about the rich man, why he do it. But I understand that the childs are dying.

• 2010, Jack Dazey, Dying For Her Love, page 114:

  We are not confused children and if we were then let these childs be free, for life is short and every bit of a smile extends life one more day.

Cheers! bd2412 T 17:53, 24 July 2014 (UTC)

• FYI: (childs*10000),children at the Google Books Ngram Viewer.; “childs”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.. --Dan Polansky (talk) 18:01, 24 July 2014 (UTC)

  @Dan Polansky I've never seen that before, I'm assuming it inflates the number of occurrences of "childs" by 10000? --WikiTiki89 18:06, 24 July 2014 (UTC)

  That's right; it multiplies the plotted frequency. To verify, plug in different numbers and see what they do to the graph. --Dan Polansky (talk) 18:10, 24 July 2014 (UTC)

We could use some kind of usage label or usage note for this to explain in what usage situations it might be found. But, as it is not a misspelling of children, the question of whether it is a "common" has no relevance. DCDuring TALK 18:11, 24 July 2014 (UTC)

It is not a misspelling, but it seems to be a malformation. If we decide to exclude rare misspellings, we can similarly decide to exclude rare malformations. I am not saying we necessarily have to do that; I am merely providing some data that have a bearing to a prospective exclusion policy, similar to the unwritten policy of excluding rare misspellings. --Dan Polansky (talk) 18:15, 24 July 2014 (UTC)

Is it a malformation? It's nonstandard, but it is "child" with an "-s", which is the correct way to form most plurals. Actually, given the context of most of the uses I found (outside the math book), it seems to primarily be a literary device designed to convey the dialect of a character. bd2412 T 18:24, 24 July 2014 (UTC)

Good point. One might actually argue that "children" is a malformation, albeit an incredibly common one. In fact, children seems to be a relict, part of the historical core of the language. --Dan Polansky (talk) 18:31, 24 July 2014 (UTC)

It's already tagged as "nonstandard". Tag it as "rare" and add a usage note indicating that it is generally used to portray dialect that is something less than fully literate, and keep it like that. bd2412 T 19:11, 24 July 2014 (UTC)

I think we could keep it but add a usage note saying it's primarily used to indicate that the speaker is not a native speaker of English. It's a whole different kind of "nonstandard" from, say, chillun. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 19:15, 24 July 2014 (UTC)

Keep (tagged "rare", as bd2412 says).​—msh210℠ (talk) 19:17, 24 July 2014 (UTC)

Keep, make sure it's tagged as nonstandard in modern English. Renard Migrant (talk) 14:54, 10 August 2014 (UTC)

Kept and tagged as "rare". bd2412 T 16:03, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

fat as a cow

fat as a pig

These are really not idioms but simple comparisons of which you could construct potentially infinite examples of, just by taking any exceptionally large object. -- Liliana • 23:28, 24 July 2014 (UTC)

You could replace them with just about any other animal but these two are by far infinitely more common, almost set phrases. No one ever says you're as fat as a rhinoceros...a whale ( when water or the beach is in context) yes, and cow and pig. Leasnam (talk) 23:35, 24 July 2014 (UTC)

Undecided for the moment but there are other, very similar expressions with comparisons, which probably passed RFD or RFV. Is it an RFV case, rather than RFD? I think there is a limited number of animals/things you compare a fat person with. Slavs (at least some Slavic languages) use pigs (male or female varieties) but commonly barrels, e.g. Russian: "толстый как бочка", Polish: "gruby jak beczka". --Anatoli T. ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 23:39, 24 July 2014 (UTC)

Here are a few from a 1917 dictionary of similes:

• Fat as a bacon-pig at Martlemas. — Anon.
• Fat as brawn. — Ibid.
• Fat as a sheep's tail. — Ibid.
• A red bag, fat with your unpaid bills, like a landing net. — Dion Boucicault.
• Fat as Mother Nab. — Samuel Butler.
• Fat as a whale. — Chaucer.
• Fat as a barn-door fowl. — Congreve.
• Fat as seals. — Charles Hallock.
• Fatte as a foole. — Lyly.
• As fat as a distillery pig. — Scottish Proverb.
• As fat as a Miller's horse. — Ibid.
• Fat as butter. — Shakespeare.
• Fat as tame things. — Ibid.
• Fat and fulsome to mine ear

As howling after music. — Ibid.

• Fat as grease. — Old Testament.

Some would quite likely be from well-known works and therefore would thereby pass RfV without regard to whether they were otherwise common. DCDuring TALK 03:05, 25 July 2014 (UTC)

So, what's your vote on this? Having a variety of similes is not a reason to discard them. Some of the above would be includable, IMO. They are quite useful for language learners, especially the common ones but I'll wait for other opinions. --Anatoli T. ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 03:20, 25 July 2014 (UTC)

Your criterion favoring "common" but not merely attestable similes has nothing to do with WT:CFI. It seems like a BP matter, possibly even a vote. There are lots of amusing similes (happy as Larry, happy as a clam at high tide, happy as a pig in shit) that are common among some groups during some periods. Some of them seem arbitrary (eg "Larry") and thereby possibly idiomatic, others seem to make a great deal of sense, ie, be transparent. But as our coverage is supposed to span a time periods for which we cannot rely on unaided intuition, I think we would need to be able to apply our standard rules of attestation and non-transparency to similes.

Thus I would be happier with happy as Larry than with fat as a pig as an entry. Cassell's Dictionary of Slang (2005) agrees with my inclusion instincts and criteria. DCDuring TALK 04:28, 25 July 2014 (UTC)

Yes, I favour common over temporary expressions. "Happy as Larry" is not very useful for language learners, almost like an in-joke. My mother-in-law liked to say a rhyme здоро́в как Труно́в (zdoróv kak Trunóv) "healthy as Trunov" (referring to a long-time mayor of a city named Trunov who I never knew, implying he's healthy because he is a mayor, probably very corrupt, so he has money to look after himself). It was fun to say this in the family but if I said this to another Russian, they wouldn't have a clue what I'm talking about. Is [[sly as a fox]] idiomatic enough? --Anatoli T. ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 04:43, 25 July 2014 (UTC)

“fat as a pig”, in OneLook Dictionary Search., “as fat as a pig”, in OneLook Dictionary Search., “fat as a cow”, in OneLook Dictionary Search., “as fat as a cow”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.

It's just us and McGraw-Hill's Dictionary of American Idioms and Phrasal Verbs. I'd think we'd be doing language learners a better service if we bothered to translate the entries in Category:English phrasal verbs, but naybe they are too hard. DCDuring TALK 10:21, 25 July 2014 (UTC)

• Delete both, unless it is shown that they are needed solely as a translation target for an idiom that is uniquely meaningful in some other language (which I doubt). Metaphors are cheaply transparent, unless the asserted comparison does not automatically assume the characteristics of the operative adjective (e.g. fit as a fiddle). bd2412 T 12:58, 25 July 2014 (UTC)
• Keep similes, or at least high-frequency similes, even if transparent, since they are useful for the encoding direction ("How do I say 'very fat' using a simile?"), and for simile-to-simile translation ("How do I render 'fat as a pig' using a Spanish simile?"). As for the examples listed by DCDuring, I wonder whether they are attested in use to convey meaning; for instance, google books:"Fat as a bacon-pig at Martlemas" does not suggest as much. --Dan Polansky (talk) 16:41, 25 July 2014 (UTC)
• Delete as obvious SOP. I suggest common similes of this sort be listed in a usage note sub the adjective (or adverb as the case may be, in this case fat, e.g. "Common exemplars for flat, used in similes, are a board (emphasizing lack of protrusions) and a pancake (emphasizing thinness)") and/or in an appendix devoted to such similes.​—msh210℠ (talk) 19:18, 25 July 2014 (UTC)

  What is the advantage of listing these in usage notes rather than in separate entries, which can be linked to separate translations, which will not necessarily be word-for-word translations? Per fat as a cow, Italian and Polish would be like fat as a barrel. --Dan Polansky (talk) 19:58, 25 July 2014 (UTC)

  I've never heard "happy as Larry" and I would vouch for "happy as a pig in mud" (but not "shit", never heard that before either). Keep. Its a set phrase comparison that has some members (like pig, though not all pigs are fat necessarkly) more transparent than others ( like whale). Comparable to "as hungry as a horse" & "as big as a house" (oh yeah? my house is tiny.) Leasnam (talk) 02:49, 26 July 2014 (UTC)

  Why are we supposed to care whether any individual has not heard of a given expression? DCDuring TALK 05:09, 26 July 2014 (UTC)

You don't. And did I don't see where anyone has asked anyone to. Its an indicator of how common a word or phrase is Leasnam (talk) 11:12, 26 July 2014 (UTC)

Delete per all (Dan Polansky). Renard Migrant (talk) 15:03, 10 August 2014 (UTC)

Deleted. bd2412 T 15:54, 26 August 2014 (UTC)

rediculous

An alternative spelling of ridiculous. Though it may be in some idiolects, it seems like a low-frequency (ie, not "common") misspelling, occurring a a frequency less than 0.5% of the frequency of the generally accepted and used spelling. DCDuring TALK 11:20, 25 July 2014 (UTC)

This should be at RFV. —CodeCat 11:24, 25 July 2014 (UTC)

It's not a question of attestation. It's a gum-flapper. DCDuring TALK 11:58, 25 July 2014 (UTC)

gum-flapper? In any case, if this is attested, and there is no idiomaticity issue, then I don't see a reason not to have it. So keep. —CodeCat 12:03, 25 July 2014 (UTC)

Keep but change to misspelling. Not sure where your frequency figures come from but I see this all the time online. Equinox ◑ 12:09, 25 July 2014 (UTC)

• Keep but classify appropriately - I think we need a new categorization scheme for intentionally ironic Internet-age nonstandard spellings (wrong spellings that are nevertheless not an oversight by the writer). On a side note, I have heard this word in spoken English (where the speaker clearly intentionally pronounced the first syllable as "reh"); although the correctly spelled form uses a schwa and could theoretically take this pronunciation, it is far more likely to naturally take a "ri-" or "ree-" pronunciation. I therefore think that the use of the spelling, "rediculous", implies the specific pronunciation "reh-diculous". bd2412 T 13:05, 25 July 2014 (UTC)

  I disagree that the misspelling implies anything about the pronunciation. For example, the way I always type "ridiculous" as R-E-D-<backspace>-<backspace>-<backspace>-R-E-<backspace>-I-D-I-C-U-L-O-U-S. It seems my fingers are just itching to put an "e" in there. --WikiTiki89 13:09, 25 July 2014 (UTC)

  I'd love to see the data and methodology from which we could make a determination as to what might be ironic. DCDuring TALK 16:10, 25 July 2014 (UTC)

  I suppose one could tell from the context, in Usenet posts and Twitter posts and the like. For example, this forum post looks like intentional misspelling. bd2412 T 19:18, 25 July 2014 (UTC)

  I should have made it clear that I don't doubt that enough good-quality citations could be found for attestation especially on Usenet. I am very skeptical how one could document that such usage predominated. DCDuring TALK 21:34, 25 July 2014 (UTC)

  If enough citations exist to attest that the intentional usage exists independent of spelling errors, what difference does it make whether that usage predominates among all usage? bd2412 T 04:02, 26 July 2014 (UTC)

  Because if it will mislead normal users if we do not treat some minor deviant usage as a minor deviant usage. If it is attestable as an intended usage by an author writing in his own voice, it is includable aa such. But we would be downgrading normal use in favor of the precious to treat this as an alternative spelling, any more than we should treat boyz as an alternative mainstream spelling of boys. DCDuring TALK 05:24, 26 July 2014 (UTC)

  All of that can be solved with context tags and usage notes. We have plenty of words in the dictionary with multiple definitions, some of which are rare or obscure. We don't leave them out just because including them might seem to overstate their importance. I'm sure we can arrive at some solution that describes this word both as a misspelling, and sometimes as an occasional intentional usage. bd2412 T 17:26, 26 July 2014 (UTC)

• Keep but change to misspelling. I completely agree with Equinox. --WikiTiki89 13:06, 25 July 2014 (UTC)

  I only checked Google Books, BNC, and COCA. For misspellings GloWBE is a better source of both absolute and relative frequency. It is hard to trust Google counts. But after several years of the question coming up we still don't have any consensus of what combination of absolute and relative frequency on any corpus makes something "common". A formula like (log(misspelling_rate_per_billion))*(misspelling_percentageratio) for a specified corpus should yield a good ordering. If there were agreement on the adequacy of the ordering, we would need to determine which corpus and where we would set the threshold. DCDuring TALK 15:39, 25 July 2014 (UTC)

  At GloWBE rediculous occurs about 2.0% as often as ridiculous, 560 occurrences per billion words. For comparison occurence occurs 300 times per billion and 3.9% as often as occurrence. Applying the formula gives a score of 0.127 for rediculous and 0.222 for occurence, ie, same order of magnitude. DCDuring TALK 16:06, 25 July 2014 (UTC)

• Comment: This may or may not be relevant, according to Google Ngrams, the relative frequency (ignoring what seems to be noise) has stayed rather constant throughout history (at a ration of about 1:1000, or around 0.1%). --WikiTiki89 15:46, 25 July 2014 (UTC)

  Edited works may not be good for finding out about the tendency to misspell among ordinary folks. OTOH the GloWBE corpus would over-represent typos. DCDuring TALK 16:06, 25 July 2014 (UTC)

• Keep, possibly as a common misspelling, per ridiculous,(rediculous*1000) at the Google Books Ngram Viewer.. For a calibration that I used, see User_talk:Dan_Polansky/2013#What_is_a_misspelling. If this is intentional, then I don't really know how to mark it. Common misspellings are kept per long-standing practice, and there is now even better evidence of consensus or lack of it at Wiktionary:Votes/pl-2014-04/Keeping_common_misspellings. @DCDuring what are 7 examples of common misspellings that you would keep, and why would you keep them? --Dan Polansky (talk) 16:49, 25 July 2014 (UTC)
  • Dan P., re "If this is intentional, then I don't really know how to mark it", see template:deliberate misspelling of.​—msh210℠ (talk) 17:20, 28 July 2014 (UTC)
    • There's no reason we can't have two senses, one for a "misspelling of" and the other for a rare "deliberate misspelling of". bd2412 T 16:18, 30 July 2014 (UTC)
      • Yes, there is a reason: the sense is the same sense in both cases. But a note can explain this point. Lmaltier (talk) 21:07, 30 July 2014 (UTC)
        • Just my opinion, but I think an intentional misspelling, whether for irony or emphasis, is a different "sense" from a mere lack of care in spelling or typing. bd2412 T 22:05, 9 August 2014 (UTC)

Kept. The question of whether an intentional misspelling is something different from a common accidental misspelling is beyond the scope of RfD. bd2412 T 15:55, 26 August 2014 (UTC)

• So where does such a discussion belong? If it can't be decided - one way or the other - here, is it a matter of policy? Does it need a vote, too? If the discussion needs to continue to resolve this, so be it. DCDuring TALK 17:43, 26 August 2014 (UTC)

European dragon

Chinese dragon

A dragon from Europe? A dragon from China? We've had a lot of crazy entries fall to SOP; I'm surprised that these stayed. Purplebackpack89 20:25, 25 July 2014 (UTC)

It's a little more complicated than that: these are two completely different mythological "species". The European dragon is a malevolent, fire-breathing devourer and destroyer, while the Chinese dragon is an ebullient symbol of strength and vitality. The question is whether the two concepts are present in the language as discrete entities independent of their parts. I'm inclined to think they aren't, though there's a small amount of usage set in fantasy universes/alternate realities where they're treated as actual species- sometimes even with taxonomic names. Chuck Entz (talk) 21:48, 25 July 2014 (UTC)

Regarding the nuances between European and Chinese dragons, those nuances a) are kinda encyclopedic, and b) don't exist in the definitions RfDed at the moment. Purplebackpack89 21:55, 25 July 2014 (UTC)

I think the nuances are present in the Chinese entry, at least, in as much as I think its sense 2 (which details the appearance of the dragon) is the same as its sense 1. (I've added a RFD tag to sense 2.) I agree with Chuck on all his points, and am inclined to delete these. Frankly, I think it would make more sense to have two senses at [[dragon]], as we already do. - -sche (discuss) 22:18, 25 July 2014 (UTC)

• Delete European dragon, but keep Chinese dragon. A European dragon is basically just the generic idea of a dragon; the Chinese dragon imports additional qualities. Also, the definition as written suggests that Asian dragons generally are called "Chinese". If a dragon from Vietnam or Mongolia is therefore "Chinese", then this would seem to be idiomatic. bd2412 T 00:33, 26 July 2014 (UTC)

Both look rather encyclopaedic to me, i.e. I'd lean toward deletion. Equinox ◑ 12:57, 26 July 2014 (UTC)

• Delete While it's true that Chinese dragons are different to western dragons, they're not consistently called Chinese dragons. "Asian dragons", "Eastern dragons", "Oriental dragons", "Japanese dragons", "Korean dragons" are all citable, as is simply "dragon" used to refer to Chinese-style dragons (for example, this description of a scene in Spirited Away simply says "The first time is when Haku, in his dragon form, has been attacked by paper planes, and he's bleeding profusely", without ever mentioning that his "dragon form" is based on an Asian dragon.) These entries should definitely go, although I would support keeping the current subsenses at dragon (which explain the distinction quite nicely without getting too encyclopaedic). Smurrayinchester (talk) 16:01, 26 July 2014 (UTC)

• Delete. The differences are encyclopedic, not lexical. --WikiTiki89 16:36, 26 July 2014 (UTC)
• Abstain. --Dan Polansky (talk) 07:49, 27 July 2014 (UTC)
• Keep Chinese dragon. It's a different creature from normal dragons, e.g. it can't fly. It's a single word in CJKV languages (single character and single syllable). --Anatoli T. ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 10:06, 27 July 2014 (UTC)

  The fact that it is a single-character word in Chinese is completely irrelevant. --WikiTiki89 11:31, 28 July 2014 (UTC)

• Keep Chinese dragon, because I think it belongs to the vocabulary of the English language. The fact that there are synonyms is not a reason to delete. I don't understand The differences are encyclopedic, not lexical: the lexicographical importance relates to the term, not to characteristics. Note that, according to Bernard Heuvelmans, this dragon was inspired by observations of a species of marine mammal. However I think that this marine mammal is never called Chinese dragon. I know that there was such an observation by soldiers from a French military vessel in the Hạ Long Bay, and note that this name Hạ Long Bay refers to a legend stating that the bay was created by a dragon. Lmaltier (talk) 10:23, 27 July 2014 (UTC)

  There's some slight controversy about whether this type of dragon is Chinese from Japanese, Korean or Vietnamese point of view but from the Western perspective, it's probably Chinese but there may be some variations in Japanese, Korean or Vietnamese mythologies. --Anatoli T. ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 02:28, 28 July 2014 (UTC)

  Delete both (accidentally voted twice). It does not "belong to the vocabulary of the English language". When people talk about Chinese dragons, they usually call them "dragons". The fact that they are Chinese is just an occasional clarification. Even though dragons are different in European and Chinese mythologies, the word "Chinese" does not create a lexical difference. --WikiTiki89 11:31, 28 July 2014 (UTC)

  Of course, they usually call them "dragons". Just like they usually call red foxes foxes. Lmaltier (talk) 19:08, 28 July 2014 (UTC)

  Yes, but you would never call a "red fox" a "fox that is red" or a "maroon fox", because "red fox" is a set term that refers to a type of fox. But with "Chinese dragons", you could just as easily say "dragons in China", "dragons in Chinese mythology", "Asian dragons", or even "dragons in the Far East" to mean the exact same thing. --WikiTiki89 19:13, 28 July 2014 (UTC)

  Chinese dragon is a further clarification, just like "brown bear", which is also a bear, you don't have to call them "brown bears" every time you talk about them. A Chinese lantern is also a type of lantern. Brown bears and red foxes can also be called bears and foxes but they are brown bears and red foxes, not simply bears and foxes. --Anatoli T. ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 22:31, 28 July 2014 (UTC)

  Once again, you can't call a "brown bear" using any other synonym for "brown". You can't call a "Chinese lantern" using any other synonym for "Chinese". But you can call a "Chinese dragon" using any synonym for "Chinese". --WikiTiki89 02:03, 29 July 2014 (UTC)

  I disagree. I've cast my vote and let the RFD take its course. "Chinese dragon" is not just the name of the creature but has some symbolism, as in Zodiac, hence "Year of the Dragon", which is not using a common dragon in the European sense. --Anatoli T. ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 02:28, 29 July 2014 (UTC)

  Notice how it's the "Year of the Dragon" and not the "Year of the Chinese Dragon". I am not denying the existence or separate identity of the dragons of Chinese folklore; I am only denying that they are idiomatically named "Chinese dragon". --WikiTiki89 02:32, 29 July 2014 (UTC)

  The same can be said about Chinese lanterns. You don't need to use "Chinese" all the time, e.g. in "lantern festival". --Anatoli T. ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 02:38, 29 July 2014 (UTC)

  The first part of the above can be said about "Chinese lanterns", the second part (the part about not being idiomatically named) cannot. "Chinese lantern" is idiomatic because "lanterns in China" are not necessarily "Chinese lanterns", but "dragons in China" are the same thing as "Chinese dragons". --WikiTiki89 02:44, 29 July 2014 (UTC)

  No, dragons in the Chinese fashion are the same thing as "Chinese dragons". A translation that put Middle Earth in the Middle Kingdom would not turn Smaug into a Chinese dragon; TMZ's Dargon the Dragon, originally a mislabeled Chinese stuffed animal, was always a European dragon made in China.--Prosfilaes (talk) 06:18, 29 July 2014 (UTC)

• Keep Chinese dragon; the use of panda alone does not make red panda and giant panda not words; likewise with Chinese dragon. I'm less sure with European dragon, as it seems to be the default for dragon to mean the European dragon in English, with European just being a geographic clarifier.--Prosfilaes (talk) 18:41, 28 July 2014 (UTC)

  Yes, "European dragon" seems to be used only in comparison with other types of dragons, such as Chinese dragons. Noteably, for East Asians, 龍 and its Sino-Xenic descendants is the default and European and other dragons would need clarifications. --Anatoli T. ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 22:50, 28 July 2014 (UTC)

At present, the balance of the discussion is as follows:

European dragon

0 keep, 6 delete (Purplebackpack, BD2412, Equinox, Smurrayinchester, WikiTiki89, -sche)

Chinese dragon

4 keep (BD2412, Anatoli, Lmaltier, Prosfilaes), 5 delete (Purplebackpack, Equinox, Smurrayinchester, WikiTiki89, -sche)

On these numbers, I would close this as a clear delete for European dragon, and no consensus for Chinese dragon. Does anyone object to this reading of the outcome? bd2412 T 16:28, 26 August 2014 (UTC)

animalike

A misspelling of "animallike". It seems attested: google books:"animalike", google groups:"animalike", “animalike”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.. But this is not a common misspelling by any stretch (not found by Google Ngram Viewer at all), and should be deleted as a rare misspelling. animalike, animallike, animal-like at the Google Books Ngram Viewer.. For regulation, see WT:CFI#Spellings; for consensus, see Wiktionary:Votes/pl-2014-04/Keeping_common_misspellings; for previous practice of deleting rare misspellings, see talk:himand. --Dan Polansky (talk) 08:40, 26 July 2014 (UTC)

anima-like seems to barely exist in Jungian writing, meaning "like an anima", but animalike doesn't seem to be used. Delete Not sure if it's worth having an article for "anima-like" - the hyphen makes it a totally transparent compound. Smurrayinchester (talk) 16:08, 26 July 2014 (UTC)

• Delete. Should be created if this spelling of anima-like is found. My Pocket Oxford Dictionary considers that the -like suffix may be added to any noun, and that all these adjectives should be considered as English words. But I think that this theoretical existence is not sufficient, and that at least one attestation is required before creating the page. Lmaltier (talk) 10:29, 27 July 2014 (UTC)
• Delete. Even animallike looks weird to Kiwi eyes. As for anima-like, well, if it exists it should be spelt that way, and not animalike. Donnanz (talk) 22:20, 8 August 2014 (UTC)

arfer dda

Completely SOP; simply (deprecated template usage) arfer + (deprecated template usage) dda. BigDom 08:43, 26 July 2014 (UTC)

Jacob Marley

"A fictional man" etc. We have a lot of characters from this particular work, for some reason (!): see Category:en:A Christmas Carol. This underwent RFV before and some citations were given. I think them inadequate since they do not show any generic use. I propose deletion because book characters, aside from generic use, are not suitable dictionary content IMO. Equinox ◑ 21:57, 26 July 2014 (UTC)

Probably all the characters except Scrooge can go, though there may be idiomatic possibilities for the spirits. Purplebackpack89 22:17, 26 July 2014 (UTC)

What about the following quotes:

• "He would listen for the tinkle of chimes behind him, the hurried wind through louver windows, or the loose strand of a wandering conversation from the house next door, and think that they have come back to warn him, a Jacob Marley to his Scrooge, that reckoning was upon him."[18]
• "Having been raised from the death of my sin, I often forge new bonds for myself, a Jacob Marley who should no longer be burdened but continues to carry the chains of my own making."[19]
• "It would have been nice to have had a Jacob Marley who could have run down the rules at the start of the game for me."[20]

Do these count as "generic use"? —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 23:16, 26 July 2014 (UTC)

The first one is clearly referring to the characters in the book, and the second seems to. I don't know about the third. Chuck Entz (talk) 00:41, 27 July 2014 (UTC)

After looking at it in context, I would sat that the third one is referring to Jacob Marley's role in the narrative structure of the book. I think they all are referring to Jacob Marley as a character in the book, rather than as some kind of generic character or archetype, though the second quote is the least explicit about it. Chuck Entz (talk) 01:03, 27 July 2014 (UTC)

The following seems to apply, from Wiktionary:CFI#Fictional_universes: "With respect to names of persons or places from fictional universes, they shall not be included unless they are used out of context in an attributive sense." Examples are in Wiktionary:Criteria_for_inclusion/Fictional_universes. One of them is this: "Irabu had hired Nomura, a man with whom he obviously had a great deal in common, and, who, as we have seen, was rapidly becoming the Darth Vader of Japanese baseball." The "a Jacob Marley" quotes above appear to me very much like "the Darth Vader" in the above quote, although I am not sure what "attributive sense" mentioned in CFI is. --Dan Polansky (talk) 07:45, 27 July 2014 (UTC)

I would say "a Jacob Marley to his Scrooge" is attributive. It's simply extending the metaphor. I don't see how it's a problem if an author does use a name in an attributive sense and goes on to explain it too. Anyway, I've added 3.5 attributive citations. Choor monster (talk) 16:07, 27 July 2014 (UTC)

Now it's 4.5. I added a sports citation that is dead-on imitative of the Darth Vader example. Choor monster (talk) 16:18, 27 July 2014 (UTC)

Would this count?

• 2012, Brian Norman, Dead Women Talking: Figures of Injustice in American Literature, page 93:

  Nor is she exactly a grand tormentor from beyond, Roy's own Jacob Marley.

Cheers! bd2412 T 16:51, 27 July 2014 (UTC)

One problem I see perusing the quotes is that there doesn't seem to be any agreement on what "Jacob Marley" as a common noun means. Is it a person wearing metaphorical chains? Is it a person with no metaphorical bowels? Is it a miser? Is it someone who warns someone else about the error of his ways? —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 17:17, 27 July 2014 (UTC)

I don't see why this is a problem. We run into the same question with almost any proper noun. Do we worry about the supposedly different meanings between "he spoke in a Darth Vader voice" and the Nomura example above? I'm quite sure the quotation wasn't referring to Nomura's breathing! Consider words like Dickensian. It can be used to refer to poverty, time/place, writing styles, plot twists, and so on. (We've split the meaning in two. It took four years and a bit of edit-warring.) There are exceptions: Scrooge and Tiny Tim are quite narrow. And when I created Ludlumesque, I didn't notice at first there were precisely two senses as to how it was used. Choor monster (talk) 21:18, 27 July 2014 (UTC)

Quite apart from "Jacob Marley" I think this is an important point. If (say) Bloggs is a famous author who wrote surrealistic beatnik novels about lonely poor people, then does "Bloggsian" suggest surrealism, beatnik-ism, loneliness, poverty, or a combination of some or all, and how is this to be defined? "Like the writings of Bloggs" is sufficient, but useless to somebody who hasn't read the books and wants to interpret the word. P.S. Jordanesque is my fave eponym. Equinox ◑ 21:30, 27 July 2014 (UTC)

Checking what the OED did with Dickensian, I noticed that our split in two is one sense there. But they had a noun sense (with three cites!) that we missed. I added the noun. Choor monster (talk) 21:44, 27 July 2014 (UTC)

I'm not bothered by the idea of a definition that lays out the general characteristics associated with the term, and then notes that the term is used to describe a person or thing sharing any number of those characteristics. bd2412 T 02:40, 30 July 2014 (UTC)

In my opinion, CFI are wrong when they require "used out of context in an attributive sense". I would exclude all these names, but I would include "single word" well-known names, considered as having entered the general vocabulary. But first name + last name names cannot have a linguistic interest. All these names, either fictional or not, including yours, can be used out of context in an attributive sense, but it only depends on encyclopedic characteristics. As it's a general rule, and no linguistic data (other than data about the first name and data about the last name) can be provided, they should be excluded. Lmaltier (talk) 18:02, 27 July 2014 (UTC)

Your opinion isn't policy, so your comment serves no point. Your ideas regarding linguistic interest are purely your own. Of course every name can be used in an attributive sense, the question is which ones have in fact been used so.

I noticed that the existing citations for Tiny Tim were entirely non-attributive, yet it somehow passed RFV? I added 4 on the Citations page, all out of context attributive. Choor monster (talk) 20:23, 27 July 2014 (UTC)

Our policy is based on our editors' opinions, so yes, his comment is very much to the point. Ƿidsiþ 11:32, 28 July 2014 (UTC)

This discussion is whether Jacob Marley meets existing policy. Someone's wish for a different policy is completely pointless here. Choor monster (talk) 14:36, 28 July 2014 (UTC)

On one hand, I agree with Choor monster that any talk about changing policies belongs at the WT:BP, otherwise it is just whining. On the other hand, we have to remember that WT:CFI is meant to reflect out policies, not the other way around, and it often does so imperfectly or inaccurately. --WikiTiki89 14:50, 28 July 2014 (UTC)

@Lmaltier, I would point to Benedict Arnold as a clear instance where a first and last name must be used together to convey linguistic content. bd2412 T 22:20, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

Unattestable Japanese terms

All below seem to be non-existing terms in Japanese. Whym (talk) 10:10, 29 July 2014 (UTC)

Nōriko

Speedy deleted. — TAKASUGI Shinji (talk) 11:08, 29 July 2014 (UTC)

I spend a lot of time trying to figure what to do with contributions from this person, who changes their IP constantly to avoid being blocked, but consistently geolocates to Sky Broadband or Easynet in London or sometimes elsewhere in the UK. Is there any way I could post links to their latest batch in an agreed-upon place for special attention? Yesterday they posted as 176.253.165.197 and 90.194.200.218. Chuck Entz (talk) 14:13, 29 July 2014 (UTC)

Maybe ask for reverse-DNS and/or GeoIP variables in mw:Extension:AbuseFilter at bugzilla:. — Keφr 08:32, 2 August 2014 (UTC)

The problem is that anything IP-based would encompass an entire national ISP. It's only when you combine that with the language and/or subject matter that it becomes obvious you're dealing with this individual. Chuck Entz (talk) 16:40, 2 August 2014 (UTC)

Then set up a filter which checks both. If you can come up with a clever enough regular expression (of those two checking language seems easier), you are set. — Keφr 18:23, 2 August 2014 (UTC)

I have no experience with regular expressions so I'm likely to do it wrong. I can see possibilities, but that would require some extensive string processing- is that really practical? Chuck Entz (talk) 18:58, 2 August 2014 (UTC)

Check the IP address first; I think that check is cheaper. Regex syntax seems to be PCRE; you may ask User:CodeCat or User:Ruakh for help, whoever annoys you less. Also, there are tools available to test and debug filters. You may initially make the filter only tag edits, or keep it disabled for a while. There are many possibilities, so do not worry too much about getting it wrong. — Keφr 19:46, 2 August 2014 (UTC)

That's a rather gratuitous swipe. Is there something specific you'd like to complain about, or are you just being generally irritable? —Ruakh_TALK 01:45, 3 August 2014 (UTC)

The latter. I was rather snarking at the amount of strife in this community. Though probably writing something that could be interpreted as adding to it is not very helpful. Apologies. Myself, I do not tend to be annoyed too often by either of you. — Keφr 06:13, 3 August 2014 (UTC)

Ah, O.K., understood. No worries. :-)   —Ruakh_TALK 16:31, 3 August 2014 (UTC)

aspect-oriented software development

'Tis software development that is aspect-oriented. Equinox ◑ 00:48, 30 July 2014 (UTC)

Delete. --WikiTiki89 01:12, 30 July 2014 (UTC)

Interesting concept, but not for a dictionary. Delete DCDuring TALK 01:36, 30 July 2014 (UTC)

• Delete. I wonder why we even have software development, which is transparently software plus sense six of development. bd2412 T 02:26, 30 July 2014 (UTC)
• Delete. I thought we had got rid of Sae1962's rubbish long ago. SemperBlotto (talk) 18:13, 30 July 2014 (UTC)

Deleted. bd2412 T 20:35, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

chief god

Sum of parts: chief among the gods. Chuck Entz (talk) 16:26, 2 August 2014 (UTC)

Delete: standard use of "chief". No Wikipedia article suggesting it isn't any special kind of set phrase. Equinox ◑ 00:23, 3 August 2014 (UTC)

Is this a set phrase? I would imagine that their are other collocations commonly used to indicate the top-most god in a pantheon ("head god"? "lead god"? "king god"?) but don't know whether there are. I would delete if other collocations are attestable. bd2412 T 22:33, 7 August 2014 (UTC)

Delete, standard use of the word chief followed by a standard use of the word god. Renard Migrant (talk) 14:51, 10 August 2014 (UTC)

True, but two standard usages can add up to a set phrase if collocations of synonyms would be considered odd or unusual. If I thought that this was such a case, I would have voted to keep it. bd2412 T 14:00, 14 August 2014 (UTC)

There is nothing odd or unusual about main god or chief deity, for example. --WikiTiki89 14:50, 14 August 2014 (UTC)

Indeed - that one gets about 41,500 Google Books hits, so my delete vote is solidified. Cheers! bd2412 T 16:11, 15 August 2014 (UTC)

Deleted. bd2412 T 20:36, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

suꝑficialis

See also discussion at MediaWiki talk:Common.css#Font support for Latin Extended-D.

As far as I know we exclude such spellings on the same grounds we exclude long-s spellings for German, fi-ligature spellings for English and the like. -- Liliana • 21:36, 2 August 2014 (UTC)

Delete. --WikiTiki89 22:02, 2 August 2014 (UTC)

Even if we allowed use of the contested character, it's an abbreviation, not an alternative spelling, and the cited use has no space in it. Considering the prevalence of conventions such as having part of a word in smaller characters above the line and underlined, though, I think it would be a bad idea to even try representing scribal shorthand. This particular variation has a Unicode look-alike, but most won't. Chuck Entz (talk) 22:39, 2 August 2014 (UTC)

Pace the nominator, Liliana, the exclusionary principle that applies to ſ, fi, etc. is inapplicable to ꝑ; ſ and fi can in every case be correctly converted to s and fi, respectively, without error. Ꝑ cannot be converted in the same way because sometimes it acts as a sigil for per, otherwise it may represent par, and at other times it stands for por. Therefore, the autoredirection that can be implemented for ſ, fi, and the like cannot be implemented for ꝑ.

@Chuck Entz: This isn't just "a Unicode look-alike", it's one of Unicode's "Medievalist additions"; i.e., this is exactly the sort of thing for which ꝑ was intended. The Medieval Unicode Font Initiative works to sort out which characters mean what, and where their proposals are accepted by the Unicode Consortium, I believe we should use these characters where appropriate. I'm not suggesting that we try to copy every nuance of scribal shorthand, but where certain conventions are sufficiently clear and widespread that they have been granted codepoints, I think it's safe for us to represent that aspect of scribal abbreviation.

Keep as creator. — I.S.M.E.T.A. 00:19, 3 August 2014 (UTC)

banner year

I created this entry then realized it is probably SOP so thus added RFD to the entry and banner years. Yes, I should have checked out banner#Adjective first. If we do delete, I think it might be worth having a redirect for banner year to banner#Adjective. Cheers, Facts707 (talk) 17:31, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

batcape

Delete. More bupkis from a self-confessed WF sock, -- · (talk) 20:33, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

Did you try Google books ("batcape")? This word does exist, it's used in a number of books, in English, in French, etc. Most uses are capitalized, but not all of them. Lmaltier (talk) 20:42, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

Remarks: this word seems to be capitalised (Batcape); the definition is dubious (in reality, it seems to refer to the specific cape that is part of a Batman costume, not just any cape); and I've added two possible citations, though they aren't terribly satisfactory. Equinox ◑ 21:09, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

I think this needs citations which are "independent of reference to that universe" per WT:FICTION Siuenti (talk) 21:15, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

Would we need to remove the 1st sense in vampire unless we find uses of this sense without reference to the vampire universe? Or fully remove the page cyclops if there was no 2nd sense? This rule seems absurd, and inconsistent with the basic rule all words in all languages. It's normal to exclude words created by an obscure novelist in one of its novels and not used alsewhere, because they cannot be considered as words of the language, but this is not the case here. Anyway, it's not a fictional word, as batcapes are actually existing objects, even if the words refers to fiction. Lmaltier (talk) 18:03, 5 August 2014 (UTC)

A "fictional universe" refers to a specific fictional universe, usually created and owned by one author or organization. If there were three entirely separate and independent fictional universes that all used the word "batcape", I would consider it attested. --WikiTiki89 18:22, 5 August 2014 (UTC)

epula, epulam, epulorum

The word epulum is heterogeneous, having neuter singular forms and feminine plural forms with epulae also acting as a plural noun. The feminine singular and neuter plural nouns epula are backformations User:JohnC5 4:19 AM August 8, 2014.

If they're back-formations, then they exist! Is that actually an RFV issue? Read the introduction of WT:RFV. Renard Migrant (talk) 14:46, 10 August 2014 (UTC)

The Snow Queen

Fairy tale and its character. Essentially a book title, thus not dictionary content despite the translation table. Equinox ◑ 06:03, 8 August 2014 (UTC)

Move to Snow Queen and keep as the character. Translations need to be reviewed. --Anatoli T. ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 10:31, 9 August 2014 (UTC)

• I agree, move to Snow Queen and keep. bd2412 T 14:20, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

Krypto

Superman's dog. The citations are incredibly weak, not suggesting any particular generic usage. Equinox ◑ 06:13, 8 August 2014 (UTC)

• Keep, despite the citation being weak. This can host useful lexicographical content such as pronunciation. No added value in deleting the entry. --Dan Polansky (talk) 15:15, 10 August 2014 (UTC)

Delete per nomination. — Ungoliant ^(falai) 20:13, 10 August 2014 (UTC)

• Delete per nom. The citations do not show sufficient use of this term apart from the fictional universe from which it arises. bd2412 T 21:49, 10 August 2014 (UTC)

  What is the rationale for WT:FICTION and Wiktionary:Votes/pl-2008-01/Appendices for fictional terms? Where can I find it? --Dan Polansky (talk) 08:16, 11 August 2014 (UTC)

  To avoid Wiktionary becoming a detailed wiki for every fictional universe out there. --WikiTiki89 12:20, 11 August 2014 (UTC)

  How can a wiki dictionary that only defines terms and does not provide descriptive encyclopedic information beyond that become a "detailed wiki"? Furthermore, should W:Frodo Baggins be deleted from Wikipedia, so that Wikipedia does not become "a detailed wiki for every fictional universe out there"? --Dan Polansky (talk) 12:30, 11 August 2014 (UTC)

  Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. They have coverage of the content of notable works of fiction, which includes information about some of the characters. We're a dictionary. We don't. Notice also the word "notable". Wikipedia's notability criterion excludes huge quantities of information that our CFI don't. I don't think we want to have entries for every minor character in every comic book, cartoon show, etc. that has occurred in durable media three times in independent sources over more than a year. Chuck Entz (talk) 13:29, 11 August 2014 (UTC)

  Why do we want to exclude entries for [single-word terms denoting] every minor character in every comic book, cartoon show, etc. that has occurred in durable media three times in independent sources over more than a year? Italics mine; square brackets mine. Do we fear to run out of digital storage space? Do we fear the management overhead more than we fear the management overhead of all the names of all the species or all the names of chemicals? --Dan Polansky (talk) 14:19, 11 August 2014 (UTC)

  I think the effect of WT:FICTION ensures "true" independence. I'm dubious whether any direct reference to Superboy's pet dog should be counted as independent. It's somehow just a highly non-authorized "sequel", no matter how brief. But something attributive, like Fido was always fearless, diving in to danger and loyal to his unit, a real-world Krypto strikes me as independent. Scooby-Doo and Mighty Mouse and Mary Worth and Winnie the Pooh have all entered the language to that depth. Has Krypto? Choor monster (talk) 15:52, 11 August 2014 (UTC)

  We don't require species names or names of chemicals to "enter the language" and gain "true independence" by referring to something else but the species and the chemicals. Ditto for Perun. Ditto for place names. (Note that my questions are so far unanswered.) --Dan Polansky (talk) 16:22, 11 August 2014 (UTC)

  I presume this is our version of w:WP:SNOW, really a SNOWKEEP. You have not received answers in the form you asked, true.

  Meanwhile, why are you questioning policy here? We have a policy regarding fictional characters, and the question here is whether Krypto meets this policy, not whether this is a good policy. In the past two weeks I've added citations for a half-dozen or so such, including a recreation of Winnie the Pooh, awaiting a Czech translation. If there was something about Krypto that shows there's something funny or borderline about policy, that's one thing, but you're saying nothing specific regarding Krypto. Choor monster (talk) 17:11, 11 August 2014 (UTC)

  I have the habit of voting contrary to written policy if I deem it good for the dictionary; when I do, I present my reasoning. This is especially true when I use "translation target" as an argument. I am not alone in this; in Talk:olinguito, editors decided to keep the entry despite its failing WT:ATTEST; the keeping was not policy-based. --Dan Polansky (talk) 17:41, 11 August 2014 (UTC)

  And there the pretty much unanimous consensus was that policy was obviously incorrect in that kind of instance. Like I said, it was kept as a SNOWKEEP. The only thing missing is no one bothered to propose an official rewrite of policy. Choor monster (talk) 18:13, 11 August 2014 (UTC)

Deleted. bd2412 T 01:58, 26 August 2014 (UTC)

Scooby-Doo

"A fictional dog." Yep, that's all it says. Useless. Something for Wikipedia. Equinox ◑ 06:14, 8 August 2014 (UTC)

Oddly enough, I was planning to add this last week. I split this into two meanings (the series and the dog), with 3 citations for each. I believe the citations for the series meet WT:BRAND, and those for the dog WT:FICTION. I found lots for each. Heck, I believe "Scooby-Doo mystery" and "Scooby-Doo moment" might even warrant their own entry. I mean, we have Scooby snack. Choor monster (talk) 15:10, 8 August 2014 (UTC)

What the heck, we now also have rut roh. Choor monster (talk) 18:11, 8 August 2014 (UTC)

For the sake of the Martian rock, I added Scooby Doo. Choor monster (talk) 18:32, 8 August 2014 (UTC)

I added the interjection creepers --Type56op9 (talk) 19:42, 8 August 2014 (UTC)

• Keep as amended, and add Scoobies while we're at it. bd2412 T 22:15, 8 August 2014 (UTC)

Delete and any other fictional animals. There's nothing that would make Scooby-Doo keepable, after we decided to delete Winnie the Pooh back in 2010. --Hekaheka (talk) 14:59, 10 August 2014 (UTC)

Really, any other fictional animals? Would you delete Pegasus and Cerberus? There is no hat that neatly fits all fictional animals. The question is whether it is used as a word outside of the context of the fictional universe from which it originates. bd2412 T 21:45, 10 August 2014 (UTC)

• Keep, given WT:FICTION and the quotations in the entry. Also, the definition no longer just says "A fictional dog." Winnie the Pooh was deleted via RFV since no-one cared to provide attestation; I find it a pity, since it has a non-obvious translation to Czech. --Dan Polansky (talk) 15:11, 10 August 2014 (UTC)
  • Winnie the Pooh is back, now with 4 cites to the series (which I believe meet WT:BRAND), and 4 cites to the bear (which I believe meet WT:FICTION). I followed your link, but in retrospect, I would have preferred if the main entry had been Winnie-the-Pooh, Milne's spelling. Choor monster (talk) 15:23, 11 August 2014 (UTC)
• Keep sufficient out of universe usage.--Prosfilaes (talk) 03:54, 11 August 2014 (UTC)

I have to agree this passes WT:ATTEST, WT:IDIOM and WT:FICTION, and is therefore a keeper. Renard Migrant (talk) 16:08, 11 August 2014 (UTC)

Kept. bd2412 T 01:59, 26 August 2014 (UTC)

Odie

Fictional dog in Garfield. Again, the citations are very weak. Someone saying "my dog looks like Odie" does not suggest dictionary-worthiness, any more than someone saying "TV Show X is a lot like TV Show Y". Equinox ◑ 06:15, 8 August 2014 (UTC)

Delete per Winnie the Pooh. --Hekaheka (talk) 15:00, 10 August 2014 (UTC)

@Hekaheka There is no let-us-remove-Winnie the Pooh policy. Winnie the Pooh was deleted via RFV since no one provided quotations. Now, Winnie the Pooh is back with quotations that appear to meet WT:FICTION. --Dan Polansky (talk) 07:02, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

• Keep, despite the citation being weak. This can host useful lexicographical content such as pronunciation. No added value in deleting the entry. --Dan Polansky (talk) 15:14, 10 August 2014 (UTC)

I don't see much justification in this. Any writeable word or phrase can be pronounced. Equinox ◑ 01:53, 11 August 2014 (UTC)

The pronunciation of a multi-word proper name is largely sum of parts. As for attested single-word proper names, they should IMHO be included as far as possible, unless we have a very good reason to exclude them; I have never heard such a reason. Even Winnie the Pooh should be included, for the translations. If we want to exclude valid lexicographical information (pronunciation, etymology, translation), we need a reason. --Dan Polansky (talk) 08:14, 11 August 2014 (UTC)

I think Equinox once said that if someone uploaded a load of pictures of cats, there would be no value in deleting them. So what? Renard Migrant (talk) 16:09, 11 August 2014 (UTC)

I don't think you are making a serious attempt at an argument. Of course there is value in deleting excess cat images that we do not need to support our cat entry. --Dan Polansky (talk) 16:29, 11 August 2014 (UTC)

What I'm really saying is the 'no value in deleting' argument is a bad one. There's value in deleting anything that shouldn't be here. Renard Migrant (talk) 16:57, 11 August 2014 (UTC)

• Delete. The cites are awful. I have not been able to find a single cite that even comes close to WT:FICTION. Choor monster (talk) 15:48, 12 August 2014 (UTC)
• Delete per nom. bd2412 T 15:55, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

  @BD2412 Could you perhaps point me to a page where I can read a rationale for WT:FICTION and Wiktionary:Votes/pl-2008-01/Appendices for fictional terms? --Dan Polansky (talk) 16:16, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

  The vote was presented to the community and passed with overwhelming support. I'm not sure what further rationale is needed. It didn't just come out of the blue, but required some discussion to reach the point of feeling like a vote was needed. I wish I could point you to that discussion - I see some of it here. bd2412 T 16:48, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

  @BD2412 So would you agree that the vote fails the elementary standard of rationality, namely that the proposal it makes is not supported by arguments? A support, even an overwhelming one, is not a rationale. To the contrary, each editor needs to have a reason for supporting the vote, and that reason should ideally be disclosed. In a vote having a rationale where the votes are bare, they can be guessed to support the rationale, but even that is uncertain. When the voter provides a rationale, the poor reasoning is sometimes disclosed; one supporter wrote this in the vote: "I do not believe words should have different criteria just because they are fictional or because they are company names instead of brand names." This flies contrary to their supporting vote. --Dan Polansky (talk) 18:33, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

  @Dan Polansky Could you point me to any policy that requires rationality? Even if there were it would be a counsel of perfection without impact for practical people. DCDuring TALK 19:14, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

  I know of no such policy. Some people here claimed (Lmaltier, CodeCat, Angr I think) that proper consensus-building exercise requires arguments and not just bare votes. I am quite sympathetic to this view. I wanted to be certain that I have not overlooked the rationale for the vote. There is now a considerable chance that the vote is based on poor thought which, when articulated, would get harshly bleached in the direct sunlight of critical inspection. --Dan Polansky (talk) 19:20, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

I think a rational man will not expend time on arguments, rational or otherwise, when they are not necessary or productive, as when a vote's outcome seems not likely influenced by such arguments. DCDuring TALK 19:30, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

Maybe not a rational man but a man supporting the consensus-building exercise as envisioned by some. And the rational man might simply say "as per User XYZ", since User XYZ already did the articulation for them. --Dan Polansky (talk) 19:36, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

@Dan Polansky, I would not agree that "the vote fails the elementary standard of rationality"; discussions were conducted that lead up to the vote, and the rationality of having this rule came out of those discussions. bd2412 T 19:44, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

I cannot find the rationale in these discussions. But differently, the discussions do not provide to me the answer to the following question: What is it that makes the proposer and the supporters think that the proposal of the vote is a good one, worthy their support? --Dan Polansky (talk) 21:19, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

Suppose I write a story about an alien wizard named Sklerzblerzer. That's a new word - should it go in the dictionary? Suppose my story gets published in a magazine? In a book? It seems fairly obvious that there's a large swath of activities which fall short of having that word merit inclusion in a dictionary. A line has to be drawn, and the community just did some line-drawing. bd2412 T 21:57, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

For "Sklerzblerzer", you will need three independent quotations. Independent is defined in WT:CFI#Independent, and requires that the quotations are from different authors. Why we need a stronger drawing line than presented by this is left unexplained. Is it the digital storage? Or the editing cost? Is it comparable in volume to every attested species name? --Dan Polansky (talk) 22:17, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

The issue for Odie is that the citations are very poor. The first one specifically refers to Odie in "Garfield", which is not very independent. bd2412 T 23:20, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

My subject is, is WT:FICTION supported by a meaningful rationale; since if it is not, then justification via that policy is a justification that leads nowhere as a justification. That was the subject of at least two previous posts. The subject of your post is, are quotations for Odie good enough for WT:FICTION. That is a different subject. You discuss whether the quotations are independent; they are absolutely WT:CFI#Independent. --Dan Polansky (talk) 08:18, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

The third citation is of a different dog. The chatter writes about his/her former dog Odie. In the text from which fourth citation is taken, a reference is made to Garfield cartoon before discussing Odie. Does not look very independent. Do web chats really count as citations? They did not count when superoptihupilystivekkuloistokainen was deleted. Not that I would miss it so much, but it would be reassuring to see some logic in judgments. --Hekaheka (talk) 21:31, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

Re: "Does not look very independent.": It is WT:CFI#Independent. It is quite possibly not independent for the purpose of WT:FICTION and its phrase "independent of reference to that universe".

Re: "Do web chats really count as citations": Let me remind you of our long-standing practice of accepting Usenet quotations as durably archived and thus suitable for WT:ATTEST. The four quotations that I see at Citations:Odie are all from Usenet.

As for "superoptihupilystivekkuloistokainen": when it was sent to RFV, you provided exactly zero attesting quotations meeting WT:ATTEST; actually, Citations:superoptihupilystivekkuloistokainen could even host quotations that do not meet WT:ATTEST when properly so marked, for interest, but even there you placed no quotations at all. Here is a search for attesting quotations, which finds nothing at all: google books:"superoptihupilystivekkuloistokainen", google groups:"superoptihupilystivekkuloistokainen", “superoptihupilystivekkuloistokainen”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.. --Dan Polansky (talk) 08:55, 14 August 2014 (UTC)

I don't understand your objection with respect to whether WT:FICTION is supported by a meaningful rationale. I think we agree that we can't have entries for every proper name given to a fictional character, and some line must be drawn as a cutoff for including such names. I gather that your disagreement is not with the existence of such a line, but with where it has been drawn. I would suggest that if a citation refers to "Glorfindel from the Lord of the Rings", that qualifier by itself indicates that the name has not acquired linguistic significance justifying inclusion in a dictionary. Odie may be closer to the line, but I have yet to see the evidence that it crosses it. bd2412 T 14:18, 14 August 2014 (UTC)

I don't agree that some line needs to be drawn beyong the general CFI. The general CFI already excludes non-attested items. Attestation requires three independent quotations, where independence requires different authors. WT:FICTION introduced addition to the general CFI, one whose very existence lacks rationale. I have offered the directions in which the rationale could be sought, such as disk space, maintenance, overflood (beware of species names), but no one confirmed I am looking at the right direction. I still do not know the rationale. I only know that people feel additional line has to be drawn beyond the general CFI, but do not explain why it needs to be drawn. --Dan Polansky (talk) 19:35, 14 August 2014 (UTC)

Why have Odie when we don't have the corresponding sense for Garfield? If we keep Odie, shouldn't we have Jon Arbuckle and every other more or less famous cartoon character as well? Sometimes I have serious doubts about this project. --Hekaheka (talk) 21:10, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

Obviously nobody created the corresponding sense for Garfield. We have Popeye, and there's no reason we shouldn't add the few cartoon characters that people actually refer to this way (which I'm not sure includes Jon Arbuckle.)--Prosfilaes (talk) 07:17, 14 August 2014 (UTC)

And what about Lyman? And Nermal? And Pooky? And Herman Vermin? Especially the last one, there are at least three!

And what is the purpose of Citations:Garfield as it is now? 90% of it should be deleted, right? Choor monster (talk) 15:09, 14 August 2014 (UTC)

Actually, no, not really. There is no rule requiring that citations be attached to an entry. We have a number of citations pages for unattached terms to explain why they don't merit an entry. What needs to be done here is to subdivide Citations:Garfield into its applicable senses. bd2412 T 02:21, 15 August 2014 (UTC)

I'm aware of this non-attachment policy, and have used it several times myself. What I meant is that most of the citations are not attesting anything according to our WT:FICTION guidelines. That is, Odie is the fictional dog, but we don't consider "Odie" to have entered the language until we get citations like Come on, Fido, stop playing Odie with me! And yes, our policy may change, but I find it distracting to have non-policy-now citations mixed in. And certainly in the case of Odie, the character is so well-known I doubt anyone would insist on citations. (Unlike, say, Herman Vermin.) Choor monster (talk) 15:00, 17 August 2014 (UTC)

There are other reasons why it makes sense to keep them. For example, if "Odie" (as a comic character still in use) does come to meet the CFI in the future, we won't need to reinvent the wheel in collecting earlier citations. We can also keep a note on the Citations page to show that we know these uses exist, but the community has determined that they don't justify inclusion of the word in the corpus. bd2412 T 16:19, 17 August 2014 (UTC)

• As someone who has come late to the game here, with policies like WT:BRAND and WT:FICTION already in place, I thought they simply made good sense, and that was that. Start a WT:BP discussion, but here it is very distracting clutter. I have been happy to find WT:FICTION attestation for numerous fictional characters. Choor monster (talk) 15:09, 14 August 2014 (UTC)

Deleted. bd2412 T 02:00, 26 August 2014 (UTC)

fag marriage

lacking any etymology, there is no usage outside of a few quotes from people of negligible importance.Two kinds of pork (talk) 16:08, 8 August 2014 (UTC)

The etymology is transparent. The importance of the people whom the cites come from is irrelevant. The only real question is whether this is sum of parts or idiomatic. Since gay marriage and same-sex marriage have both already survived RFDs, we've already decided that they are idiomatic. If they are, this is. So keep. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 16:50, 8 August 2014 (UTC)

Keep. We have gay marriage and same-sex marriage as Angr pointed out. This is arguably more idiomatic, since the citations suggest it's used broadly to refer to all same-sex marriages, not just male-male marriages, as a literal interpretation of the term's components would suggest. -Cloudcuckoolander (talk) 18:43, 8 August 2014 (UTC)

@both of ^^^, I agree GM and SSM are idiomatic. The terms are in the vernacular. But unlike the puerile suggestions of mine (that became definitions!), FM is anything but, now nor ever in the past. Seems a low bar to merit a definition, akin to Wikipedia's notability principle. It's usage is practically non existent. But I'm new here so I acknowledge I might not have considered other reasons.Two kinds of pork (talk) 05:55, 9 August 2014 (UTC)

If it is not SoP, then the rules of WT:CFI are applied. If it meets those criteria, it is kept. In a nutshell, if the term is used in durably archived media such as printed books, and three citations can be found that span at least a one year, then it is kept. You feel that it should not be included because it is too rare, but it only needs to be used three times. We do not limit ourselves to common terms, but we also include rare terms, antiquated terms, and obsolete terms. —Stephen ^(Talk) 06:31, 9 August 2014 (UTC)

I consider this (and gay marriage, which I think already passed a discussion) to be SoP. I would like this entry gone, but I don't agree with the deletion rationale since, as Stephen says, there are sufficient citations available. Equinox ◑ 16:22, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

I would delete as not meeting WT:CFI#Idiomaticity. Gay marriage and same-sex marriage don't meet WT:CFI#Idiomaticity either but majority decisions count more here than WT:CFI. Renard Migrant (talk) 17:14, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

Kept. bd2412 T 02:01, 26 August 2014 (UTC)

bacon and eggs

SOP. --WikiTiki89 20:37, 8 August 2014 (UTC)

Does it pass the fried-egg test? If you have bacon together with scrambled eggs or poached eggs or soft-boiled eggs, is it still bacon and eggs? —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 20:43, 8 August 2014 (UTC)

I have no idea, since I've never eaten it. --WikiTiki89 20:45, 8 August 2014 (UTC)

It usually means fried eggs. Donnanz (talk) 21:03, 8 August 2014 (UTC)

• Keep: I don't think the possibilities of this entry have been fully explored by the nominator. Purplebackpack89 20:48, 8 August 2014 (UTC)

  The more possibilities, the more SOP it is. --WikiTiki89 20:59, 8 August 2014 (UTC)

• Keep. A delicious combination, by the way. I had bacon, eggs and fried tomatoes for brunch today. Donnanz (talk) 20:54, 8 August 2014 (UTC)

  Unfortunately, I don't eat bacon (and from what people tell me heard, turkey bacon is a poor substitute). --WikiTiki89 20:59, 8 August 2014 (UTC)

I'm withdrawing the nomination, since it will likely pass and I think I have changed my mind about it. --WikiTiki89 21:19, 8 August 2014 (UTC)

@Angr One normally specifies the way one likes one's eggs, but the presumption is that they are fried, sunnyside up or over easy, or scrambled. DCDuring TALK 22:00, 8 August 2014 (UTC)

• RFD withdrawn, two lines above. Other than that, there is an emerging consensu for keeping. --Dan Polansky (talk) 09:24, 10 August 2014 (UTC)
• I know this RFD has been withdrawn, but I have to say - a Google Image for "bacon and eggs" gets, on the first three pages, 40 images of bacon and fried eggs, 6 of bacon and scrambled eggs, 7 of bacon and poached eggs, one of a bacon and egg sandwich, two of eggs wrapped in bacon, and three of eggs fried with chopped bacon. I don't think this phrase actually implies fried eggs - fried eggs are the most common, but certainly not the only meal described as "bacon and eggs". I think this RFD should be reopened, in which case my vote would be delete. Smurrayinchester (talk) 10:56, 10 August 2014 (UTC)

  Reopened. It is mere two days after this RFD started. Even if the nominator no longer wishes to delete the entry, other editors may. --Dan Polansky (talk) 11:30, 10 August 2014 (UTC)

Delete, it's simply useless. --Hekaheka (talk) 14:43, 10 August 2014 (UTC)

• Keep. Donnanz (talk) 15:40, 10 August 2014 (UTC)

  @Donnanz Deboldfaced and striken out: you've already voted above. Above, you left a comment that is not a rationale; may I ask what is your rationale for keeping this entry? Is the rationale based in WT:CFI? Oops, you already said "It usually means fried eggs.", so this would be as per WT:FRIED. --Dan Polansky (talk) 09:23, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

• Delete. I've had bacon and eggs at many a diner. The first question they ask is, "how would you like your eggs". However, if it is asserted that "fried" is understood, I would request that this be RfV'd for that proposition. bd2412 T 14:47, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

Delete. Cultural context only; not really a lexical issue. Same applies to ham and eggs, sausage and egg, and anything with chips (are they crisps or fries?). Equinox ◑ 15:09, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

• Delete. I've become convinced that this does not pass the fried-egg test, so it's just sum of parts. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 15:14, 18 August 2014 (UTC)
• Delete. Some commercial operations may limit your choice, eg, to scrambled eggs, which are easier to prepare on a large scale, but in general one has a choice of mode of egg preparation and even such possibilities as egg-whites. Bacon preparation is not really restricted either as microwaving is possible and turkey bacon could be specified or Canadian bacon, a misnomer. That there is a "typical" configuration hardly seems to merit an entry in this or most other cases. DCDuring TALK 16:02, 18 August 2014 (UTC)
• I would actually keep this since it refers to fried bacon and fried eggs. Renard Migrant (talk) 16:05, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

  Doesn't "He had bacon for breakfast." also imply that the bacon was fried? --WikiTiki89 16:11, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

  @Renard Migrant, does it refer to "fried eggs"? Can we prove that? bd2412 T 16:21, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

@Wikitiki89 yes you're right, @BD2412 it depends how high you set the burden of proof. Renard Migrant (talk) 17:15, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

Well, do we have any evidence whatsoever that eggs, as used in this expression, by default refers to "fried eggs"? Is this any different than saying that one is having "eggs" without reference to the bacon? bd2412 T 17:22, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

"Eggs" may not always refer to fried eggs, but it always refers to cooked/prepared eggs. Purplebackpack89 20:11, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

That is the case whether we are talking about "bacon and eggs" or "eggs" alone, isn't it? Or whether we are talking about, say, "eggs and toast" or "steak and eggs" or "french toast and eggs"? bd2412 T 21:31, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

When "eggs" is paired with another breakfast dish, it always refers to cooked eggs. Just "eggs" can refer to either cooked or uncooked eggs. Purplebackpack89 21:59, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

Not only when it is paired with a breakfast dish, but anytime the context is breakfast (e.g. "He had eggs for breakfast"). However, the question at hand is whether or not it is implied that the yolk is intact. For me there is no such implication even in the phrase "fried eggs", but for other speakers there is. --WikiTiki89 22:02, 18 August 2014 (UTC) --WikiTiki89 22:02, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

"I had eggs for breakfast" virtually always means cooked eggs. The rarity of people eating raw eggs for breakfast makes it hard to say anything about that, but someone who would say they had eggs for breakfast instead of "raw eggs" would probably say "eggs and bacon" instead of "raw eggs and raw bacon".--Prosfilaes (talk) 22:08, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

• Delete Any argument about eggs and bacon applies equally to eggs and toast or eggs and English muffins.--Prosfilaes (talk) 22:08, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

Delete as SOP. The suggestion that the term implies the eggs are cooked is mistaken — it is rather the context that implies the eggs are cooked; one does not normally eat raw eggs, neither as "bacon and eggs" nor as "some pancakes and a couple of eggs". The suggestion that the term implies the eggs are fried is dubious per Smurrayinchester's Google Image data, and if this passes on the basis that it implies frying, I'd suggest RFVing it and then re-RFDing it if the limitation to "fried" eggs is found on RFV to be unwarranted. I also agree with bd's comment of 14:47, 18 August 2014. - -sche (discuss) 22:18, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

Keep as a translation target (at least). Known outside Anglosphere as a common English dish (also translated into e.g. Japanese and Korean phonetically). --Anatoli T. ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 00:22, 19 August 2014 (UTC)

• Is there any language for which the translation of bacon and eggs would differ from the translation for bacon and eggs? bd2412 T 01:15, 19 August 2014 (UTC)

• @BD2412 Please clarify, I don't know what you mean. --Anatoli T. ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 01:21, 19 August 2014 (UTC)

In Japanese and in Korean, they are different from bacon and eggs. — TAKASUGI Shinji (talk) 01:43, 19 August 2014 (UTC)

So are French, Russian and German where "and" is not translated literally. --Anatoli T. ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 01:51, 19 August 2014 (UTC)

Would "bacon and pancakes" or "lox and eggs" also have a different form, reached through the same construction? What I'm getting at is the question of whether there is something unique about the phrase "bacon and eggs" that would make it translate differently then similar combinations of bacon with another food or eggs with another food. bd2412 T 03:55, 19 August 2014 (UTC)

Keep. There may be scrambled eggs instead of fried eggs, but never boiled eggs. — TAKASUGI Shinji (talk) 01:43, 19 August 2014 (UTC)

Not true; "Bacon. And eggs. Maybe poached eggs. Or boiled. Boiled is nice.". Here's "bacon and eggs any way you want". Or "Pancakes with Bacon & Eggs Serves 4 To prepare hard-boiled eggs that are easy to peel,..." I'm also seeing "Fried bacon and eggs" and "bacon and eggs over easy" and "bacon and eggs, or ham or sausage and eggs". --Prosfilaes (talk) 06:10, 19 August 2014 (UTC)

I think that this one is right on the edge of consensus to delete. Having myself voted to delete, I don't want to be the one to make that call, but my sense is that the discussion has petered out, and we should count Wikitiki's statement of withdrawing the nomination and having changed his mind as a "keep" vote and close this as no consensus. bd2412 T 02:06, 26 August 2014 (UTC)

No, you should not count my withdrawal as a keep. --WikiTiki89 02:31, 26 August 2014 (UTC)

Would you say, then, that you are neutral on the question at this point? If so, what would you read as the outcome of the discussion? bd2412 T 02:38, 26 August 2014 (UTC)

I'm still for deletion. I'm not sure if I can actually vote delete though, if I am the one who nominated it and thus I am already implicitly accounted for. --WikiTiki89 11:55, 26 August 2014 (UTC)

cheese on toast

SOP. --WikiTiki89 20:40, 8 August 2014 (UTC)

Keep (possibly); I have amended it to uncountable (always), in case the entry survives. Donnanz (talk) 21:27, 8 August 2014 (UTC)

What do you mean by possibly? If you're unsure, you shouldn't vote. --WikiTiki89 22:12, 8 August 2014 (UTC)

I think it's worth keeping, but let's see what others think. Should also be categorised under "Foods". Donnanz (talk) 22:42, 8 August 2014 (UTC)

Delete. Just another goofy creation by Wonderfool, trying to play us for fools. --- · (talk) 02:46, 9 August 2014 (UTC)

The current definition is definitely SOP, but the Wikipedia article seems to indicate that a slice of cheese placed on a piece of cold toast would not qualify. Chuck Entz (talk) 04:41, 9 August 2014 (UTC)

Correct. Make the toast first, put the cheese on top, then grill it until the cheese melts. Donnanz (talk) 09:44, 9 August 2014 (UTC)

I think that's a feature of toast, though. If you order a "toast" for breakfast, you can expect it to be fresh out of the toaster. --WikiTiki89 12:26, 9 August 2014 (UTC)

• I have had a go at improving the definition. I would class it as a hot snack rather than a dish (part of a main meal). Donnanz (talk) 09:06, 10 August 2014 (UTC)

delete. Just think which other things you can put on toast. "Bacon on toast" gets about 1.5 times as many Google hits as "cheese on toast". "Ham on toast", "ham and cheese on toast" and "bacon, egg and cheese on toast" are quite popular as well. Wonderfool! --Hekaheka (talk) 14:52, 10 August 2014 (UTC)

Fried egg test? As far as I know cheese on toast always refers to melted cheese on toast. Renard Migrant (talk) 16:11, 11 August 2014 (UTC)

See WT:FRIED for the fried egg test. --WikiTiki89 16:54, 11 August 2014 (UTC)

Keep. It's a specific thing and has to be prepared properly. Cold cheese on a slice of toast is not ‘cheese on toast’. Ƿidsiþ 07:15, 19 August 2014 (UTC)

It's impossible to have cold cheese on a hot piece of toast. And as I've already mentioned, "toast" by itself implies a hot piece of toast. --WikiTiki89 11:26, 19 August 2014 (UTC)--WikiTiki89 11:26, 19 August 2014 (UTC)

Well the point is that the cheese has to be grilled and melted over the toast. You can't just make toast and put some slices of cheese on it; that's not cheese on toast. Ƿidsiþ 11:29, 19 August 2014 (UTC)

Now we're getting somewhere. Can you find citations of this definition? Would you say it is the equivalent of the American term grilled cheese? --WikiTiki89 11:34, 19 August 2014 (UTC)

I think a grilled cheese is a sandwich though, isn't it? In the UK that's what we'd call a (cheese) toastie. But cheese on toast is open. Just do a Google Images search and you'll exactly what it is. Ƿidsiþ 11:44, 19 August 2014 (UTC)

See also Cheese on toast. Ƿidsiþ 11:45, 19 August 2014 (UTC)

An open-face sandwich is still a sandwich, though, isn't it? Anyway, in my idiolect, I sometimes use "grilled cheese" to refer to refer to exactly what is pictured at cheese on toast, but I can't speak for anyone else. --WikiTiki89 11:50, 19 August 2014 (UTC)

Personally, I do make cheese on toast by toasting bread and then putting processed cheese on it and allowing the heat from the toast to melt the cheese. But maybe others would say that isn't "real" cheese on toast. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 12:33, 19 August 2014 (UTC)

We're in another fried egg situation where some people say that any fried egg is a fried egg, while others add specific restrictions to it. --WikiTiki89 12:38, 19 August 2014 (UTC)

As the nominator of the entry, I have been convinced and am voting keep. --WikiTiki89 11:50, 19 August 2014 (UTC)

Keep. Renard Migrant (talk) 15:59, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

No consensus to delete. bd2412 T 02:08, 26 August 2014 (UTC)

go to work

Rfd-sense: the first two senses "To begin performing some task or work." and "To go to one's job, as by commuting." should be replaced by {{&lit|go|to|work}}. -- Liliana • 00:24, 11 August 2014 (UTC)

The first sense would not be idiomatic, even with our definitions of work. We have the right sense of the components for "to go to one's job".

There is a use of the expression for which we lack the right sense of work#Noun. MWOnline has what seems like the right definition: "sustained physical or mental effort to overcome obstacles and achieve an objective or result". They place it as a subsense under the sense "activity in which one exerts strength or faculties to do or perform something:". MW puts their definition for our "employment" sense as a subsense to the same sense, whereas we make "employment" to be a main sense.

go/get to work often use the MW sense. Definitions that to not include elements corresponding to "sustained effort", "overcoming obstacles", and "achieving results or objectives" fail to capture this.

At least we have the right sense of go: "start". DCDuring TALK 01:45, 11 August 2014 (UTC)

In my parochial experience, "(let's) get to work" is commoner. I would imagine work covers it. Equinox ◑ 01:52, 11 August 2014 (UTC)

forest fruits

SOP. Definition 2 of fruit, before anyone says it’s impossible to know that they are edible. — Ungoliant ^(falai) 19:18, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

But how will the readers know that it doesn't refer to homosexual or effeminate men dwelling in the royal hunting grounds? Delete. --WikiTiki89 19:24, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

At least over here, forest fruits refers to specific fruitved=0CFwQ6AEwCDgK#v=onepages like berries and not just any fruit growing in a forest. keep. -- Liliana • 19:25, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

That's because berries happen to be the kinds of fruit that grow in forests. --WikiTiki89 19:27, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

They can also grow outside of a forest though. And of course, fruits that you wouldn't call forest fruits can grow in a forest, like apples. -- Liliana • 19:29, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

It's not about what can grow in a forest; it's about what typically does. Anyway if this is kept, it should be moved to the singular. --WikiTiki89 19:31, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

I must say I didn't know this expression was ever used in English. I've heard Waldfrüchte here in Germany often enough to mean mixed berries, but growing up in the States I don't remember ever hearing "forest fruits". The German word at least is practically a plurale tantum, but I'm not familiar enough with the English word to make that call. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 19:52, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

In British English, you come across it as a flavour of yoghurt and of squash (as in the drink), though it's normally "fruit(s) of the forest". The easiest version to attest though is "fruits of the forest pie", which seems to usually be made of raspberries, blackberries, blueberries and apples (some recipes also use rhubarb - not technically a biological fruit, but a culinary fruit as listed under sense 2 at fruit). It doesn't look like there's a fixed recipe though, which doesn't help in proving it means anything other than "fruits that come from a forest". On the other hand, quite a few languages have cognates - Italian has frutti di bosco, Portuguese has frutos silvestres and Dutch has bosvrucht. Smurrayinchester (talk) 14:17, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

Do we know that this term is not attestably used to refer to inedible fruit? Do any of the putative restrictions on the meaning have any empirical support?

Also, almost all fruit of any kind is edible by something, if only by fungi with the assistance of sun, water, oxygen, and the passage of time. — This unsigned comment was added by DCDuring (talk • contribs).

I don't think edibility makes a difference really (although "toxic forest fruits" and "forest fruits are poisonous" get Google hits). Sense 2 at fruit is "Any sweet, edible part of a plant..." and that would cover everything that's come up in this discussion so far (including rhubarb, which is not a true fruit). Smurrayinchester (talk) 14:17, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

Keep, I would absolutely consider this idiomatic. Renard Migrant (talk) 15:33, 14 August 2014 (UTC)

Probable keep - but should be an alternative form of (deprecated template usage) fruits of the forest SemperBlotto (talk) 08:03, 15 August 2014 (UTC)

Here's fruits of the forest, forest fruits at the Google Books Ngram Viewer.. --Dan Polansky (talk) 08:10, 15 August 2014 (UTC)

Changing my vote to keep, but move to the singular. Also, see fruits of the forest,forest fruits,fruit of the forest,forest fruit at the Google Books Ngram Viewer., showing that even though the singular may not be quite as common, it still makes up a good percentage of the uses. --WikiTiki89 12:05, 15 August 2014 (UTC)

Keep, per SemperBlotto et al. Leasnam (talk) 01:33, 26 August 2014 (UTC)

Kept. Any moving of the lemma is outside the scope of RfD. bd2412 T 02:09, 26 August 2014 (UTC)

送料共

Sum of its parts, non-idiomatic: 送料共 (sōryō-tomo, "shipping fee included") = (deprecated template usage) 送料 (sōryō) + (deprecated template usage) 共 (tomo). It is simply a productive combination of nouns and the suffix -tomo, as seen in usages like 手数料共 (tesūryō-tomo, "transaction fee included") = (deprecated template usage) 手数料 (tesūryō) + (deprecated template usage) 共 (-tomo), 消費税共 (syōhizei-tomo, "consumption tax included") = (deprecated template usage) 消費税 (syōhizei) + (deprecated template usage) 共 (-tomo), 電池共 (denchi-tomo, "battery included") = (deprecated template usage) 電池 (denchi) + (deprecated template usage) 共 (-tomo), etc. unsigned comment by Whym 09:11, 13 August 2014‎ (UTC)

Tentatively delete, although it's included in EDICT. I have added one usage example at 共. --Anatoli T. ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 02:56, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

-kunst

This page has a huge list of derived terms, many of which I'm not familiar with. However, all of those I do know are simply very transparent compounds of the noun Kunst (Popkunst is very clearly pop art). German forms compounds readily, and it would be daft to list every compounding form as a suffix (the only comparable examples we have are -kunde, which honestly seems pretty borderline to me as well, and -wesen, which has taken on an abstract meaning well beyond the meanings of Wesen). Unless there are examples where X-kunst doesn't mean "art that is X" or "art of X", this should probably go. Smurrayinchester (talk) 11:53, 19 August 2014 (UTC)

• I agree. Ƿidsiþ 11:58, 19 August 2014 (UTC)
• Me too. Delete. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 12:23, 19 August 2014 (UTC)

Delete and move the derived terms -list to "Kunst". --Hekaheka (talk) 12:34, 19 August 2014 (UTC)

That part I just did. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 12:41, 19 August 2014 (UTC)

Agreed and delete per nomination. Renard Migrant (talk) 12:43, 19 August 2014 (UTC)

Not directly related to this nomination, but perhaps kunst- as a prefix meaning "artificial" would be acceptable (see the current sense 2 of the noun). There's also Kunstfehler (“malpractice”), which seems to be based on the original meaning of "ability" rather than the current meaning of "art". —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 12:45, 19 August 2014 (UTC)

Delete. Equinox ◑ 19:14, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

Delete per nom. - -sche (discuss) 20:13, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

d'autobus

d'ali

These aren't words, they are a contraction of two words. I wanted to put {{d}} but with no SemperBlotto I thought they might get ignored, but they are speedy deletion candidates. Renard Migrant (talk) 09:49, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

Speedied. User: PalkiaX50 ^{talk to meh} 09:56, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

mackinaw jacket

Also mackinaw coat. A jacket (coat) made from mackinaw. Entry content is encyclopaedic. Compare "denim jacket", "woollen jumper", etc. Equinox ◑ 19:40, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

Delete, about as straightforward as it gets. Renard Migrant (talk) 09:31, 22 August 2014 (UTC)

• Delete both per nom. bd2412 T 02:11, 26 August 2014 (UTC)

men who have sex with men

And males who have sex with males. Purest SoP I ever saw. Equinox ◑ 19:43, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

Delete. I'm expecting someone to say "But it is a term for a specific concept" or "But it has a Wikipedia article" or "But it has an acronym"... --WikiTiki89 19:48, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

"But it's got a translation table!" MSM, of course, is well worth keeping in this sense. Equinox ◑ 19:54, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

"Keep as a phrasebook entry; I always need to know how to say this when I travel. And it is culturally important and meets Wikipedia's notability criteria and has an odd number of vowels." (>.>) Yep, delete — it was coined precisely to be a sum-of-parts designation. Move any translations to MSM (and link them as SOPs). - -sche (discuss) 20:09, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

On the fence about this one. It's of course pretty clear what it means, but has a widely-used acronym and in some contexts (i.e. AIDS research, blood donation) refers specifically to men who have certain types of sex with other men (for example, until recently, "men who have sex with men" were one of the groups disallowed from donating blood in the UK, even the actual disqualifying question only refers to anal and oral sex). That's a very weak deviation from the literal meaning of the words, I'll admit, but it's there. On the other hand, not a single medical dictionary has it. Smurrayinchester (talk) 20:13, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

I agree with deletion of this. User: PalkiaX50 ^{talk to meh} 20:18, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

Delete, about as straightforward as it gets. Renard Migrant (talk) 09:32, 22 August 2014 (UTC)

white man

SOP. The first sense is sense 2 white + sense 1 or sense 3 of man (depending on whether or not one includes non-males); the second sense is sense 2 white + sense 2 or 4 of man. Consider that we don't have Asian man, African man, etc. We do have red man, but that's because of redman and WT:COALMINE. - -sche (discuss) 04:44, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

Delete, about as straightforward as it gets. Renard Migrant (talk) 09:33, 22 August 2014 (UTC)

Delete. --WikiTiki89 12:14, 22 August 2014 (UTC)

Multiple delete and keep votes for RFD#white man are at #black man (later Talk:black man). These currently include keeps by Widsith, BD2412, Atitarev, Purplebackpack89, Smurrayinchester, and Angr. So to close RFD#white man, please follow the discussion there. --Dan Polansky (talk) 06:10, 24 August 2014 (UTC)

• Yes. To be clear, keep as below. bd2412 T 16:01, 24 August 2014 (UTC)

black man

RFD of sense 1, which I think is SOP — sense 3 of black + sense 1 or 3 of man (depending on whether or not one includes non-males). - -sche (discuss) 04:44, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

Terms whiteman and blackman may be attestable. --Anatoli T. ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 04:51, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

Definition of "black man" at MW: Black man - Definition and More from the Free Merriam-Webster Dictionary. Also, (dialectal, dated) an evil spirit. --Anatoli T. ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 04:54, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

• Keep both. Crucial collocations. I think citation evidence for these is instructive, when it was first used etc. Both are also in the OED, FWIW. Ƿidsiþ 05:01, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

black person was deleted (I cannot find the discussion) and so should these be. Equinox ◑ 12:04, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

• Keep both. Also, what about red man? bd2412 T 16:30, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

  I would say (and did say above) that redman and WT:COALMINE ensure its inclusion, but now that I think about it, we have disregarded that policy for other _ man terms, e.g. when we deleted Chinese man despite Chineseman, so who knows — maybe red man should be RFDed. (Are blackman and whiteman attested with relevant senses?) - -sche (discuss) 18:53, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

  I think red man would be kept even if WT:COALMINE didn't apply, since we don't call communists that. bd2412 T 20:15, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

  Don't we? --WikiTiki89 20:19, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

  Not according to our definition. bd2412 T 20:27, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

  Right, I forgot our definitions are always complete and accurate. --WikiTiki89 21:02, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

  The underlining point is that colors are ambiguous enough for these definitions to pass muster, COALMINE or no. Purplebackpack89 21:08, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

  @WikiTiki, it's not a question of whether our definitions are accurate, but of whether there is any evidence that the word is actually used in any other way. There are many meanings of black, white, red, and yellow, but white man, red man, black man and yellow man appear to be set phrases for which it would be wrong (or at least weird and disconcerting) to apply the phrase to one of the other meanings. You don't see communists or red-state conservatives referred to as "red man", cowards or sensationalist journalists referred to as "yellow man", or elderly people referred to as "white man". bd2412 T 16:03, 22 August 2014 (UTC)

  I'm entirely unconvinced that English-speakers don't call male communists "red men". A cursory search turned up several citations, one of which even uses the collective sense. Nawal Saadawi's autobiography uses "red woman" to denote "communist woman", and for that matter also uses "red nights" to denote the kind of nights communists have (which are apparently different in some way from the night-times which capitalists experience), "red Pasha" to denote a Pasha who is communist, etc, etc. - -sche (discuss) 21:47, 22 August 2014 (UTC)

• Keep white, red, black and yellow: per Widsith, and because "white" is ambiguous. Purplebackpack89 18:21, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

• Keep The fundamental difference between these phrases and standard collocations of the word "man" is that it takes the definite article in an unusual way, and it isn't pluralised in cases that you think it would be - for example, in the sentence "Ever since the black man was accepted in professional sports, the game quality has constantly risen to new heights." Taken literally, this implies that one specific man, who was black, improved the quality of sports when of course, "the black man" is really a synonym for "black people". This doesn't work for other social groups - you can't say *"Ever since the woman..." to mean "Ever since women" or *"Ever since the gay man..." to mean "Ever since gay men". In fact, "Ever since the gay man" doesn't appear even once in Google Books, while "Ever since the white man" appears 11,900 times - almost always in this synecdochic sense. (For sense 1 at white man, I'd happy with an {{&lit}} if people really insisted, but I don't personally think it does any harm when there are additional senses on the page) Smurrayinchester (talk) 21:09, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

  Another interesting symptom of the way these terms have become lexicalised is the pronunciation: ˈblack man; compare ˌblack ˈcar, ˌblack baˈlloon etc. Ƿidsiþ 09:08, 22 August 2014 (UTC)

  But that's just how you refer to men sharing an attribute as a class. It's not hard to find the left-handed man, the unhappy man, the Lithuanian man, etc. What about phrases such as "that's what the well-dressed man is wearing these days"? They're certainly not referring to individuals, either. Chuck Entz (talk) 21:12, 22 August 2014 (UTC)

To me, each of those just seem to be mean some along the lines of "the average X man" or "some hypothetical X man" - in each case, you could add the word average or typical without affecting the meaning of the sentence at all ("It seems to me that the [average] Lithuanian man is [...] becoming more depressed", "the world of the [average] happy man is a different one from that of the [average] unhappy man", "what the [average] well-dressed man is wearing"). You couldn't do the same with, for example "The white man brought many diseases to the New World" - here, "white man" is a clear synecdoche. Smurrayinchester (talk) 21:35, 22 August 2014 (UTC)

Forgot to say keep. --Anatoli T. ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 01:13, 22 August 2014 (UTC)

Delete, about as straightforward as it gets. I'#d imagine this is another one where WT:CFI will be defeated by a vote though. Perhaps we should have a policy that WT:CFI goes ahead of voting. But we don't. Renard Migrant (talk) 09:33, 22 August 2014 (UTC)

We should never have that policy, Mgloves. That would give deletionists an unacceptable supervote. It'd essentially make SOP a criteria for speedy deletion. That's ridiculous considering that a great many print dictionaries have hundreds, maybe even thousands, of entries that fail CFI. We lose face by having a restrictive CFI that doesn't allow us those entries. Purplebackpack89 14:46, 22 August 2014 (UTC)

We don't lose face. We simply have different criteria than other dictionaries. Choor monster (talk) 14:58, 22 August 2014 (UTC)

Delete. --WikiTiki89 12:14, 22 August 2014 (UTC)

• Keep both per Smurrayinchester, at least in the generic/collective senses (currently missing at black man, I see, but doubtless attestable). —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 15:22, 22 August 2014 (UTC)

  Created. Smurrayinchester (talk) 19:33, 22 August 2014 (UTC)

yellow man

Adding "yellow man" to the above debate, just to give the lie to PBP's smarmy edit summary when creating it. Equinox ◑ 20:45, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

They will be kept. I guarantee it. Purplebackpack89 20:47, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

Was using the word "smarmy" really necessary? Also, yellow man is pretty darn attestable, maybe as much as red man which we kept. (Note I already voted keep on yellow above) Purplebackpack89 20:58, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

• Keep, as above. bd2412 T 01:50, 22 August 2014 (UTC)

Delete, about as straightforward as it gets. Renard Migrant (talk) 09:33, 22 August 2014 (UTC)

Delete. --WikiTiki89 12:14, 22 August 2014 (UTC)

• Keep assuming cites for the generic/collective sense can be found. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 15:27, 22 August 2014 (UTC)
  • Incidentally, this passage has several uses of black man, white man, and yellow man in the generic/collective sense that IMO makes these terms keepable (more than SOP). The content of what it says strikes me as utter bullshit, but he uses the terms in the way we're looking for, which is what matters. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 15:33, 22 August 2014 (UTC)
    • Isn't the collective sense of white man, black man, yellow man etc just the racial sense of white, black etc + the collective sense of man? (That's either sense 2 or 4 depending on whether or not the specific uses include non-males; I expect both male-only and all-gender uses can be found.) Compare google books:"(of|when|before|after) Caucasian man", google books:"(of|when|before|after) African man". ("Of" introduces a lot of chaff to the results like "a type of Caucasian man", but if you weed that chaff out you find the many, many collective uses like "All our observations of African man show him as living in a state of savagery and barbarism, and he remains in this state to the present day.") - -sche (discuss) 21:39, 22 August 2014 (UTC)
      • That use of "man" doesn't take the definite article, though: "All our observations of (*the) African man show...". This expression does, and as Smurrayinchester showed above, you can't replace the colors "black/white/yellow/red" with other adjectives: you can't say "the gay man" to mean "gay men in general" or "the German man" to mean "German men in general" or "German people in general". —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 22:57, 22 August 2014 (UTC)

• BTW, has anybody considered the possibility that these could be translation targets? Purplebackpack89 21:20, 22 August 2014 (UTC)

  There are several other places translations already exist and can continue to exist if these terms are deleted (Caucasian, white#Noun, black#Noun, Asian, etc). - -sche (discuss) 21:39, 22 August 2014 (UTC)

• Delete per my comments on white man and black man. - -sche (discuss) 21:49, 22 August 2014 (UTC)

Annual Filing Season Program

CFI, SOP. --kc_kennylau (talk) 23:38, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

Delete as encyclopedic. DCDuring TALK 00:45, 22 August 2014 (UTC)

• Delete per nom and per DC. bd2412 T 15:27, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

Delete. Equinox ◑ 15:33, 25 August 2014 (UTC)