Talk:Greek letter

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RFD discussion: April–June 2021[edit]

The following information has failed Wiktionary's deletion process (permalink).

It should not be re-entered without careful consideration.

I thought for sure this would have some exciting idiomatic meaning, perhaps even something risqué, like a French letter. My heart palpitated with anticipation as I read it, but, alas, my hopes were dashed, my dreams stomped on, my face spat upon and my very core wounded by this SOP page. I have never read anything so predictable. I would like to, with all the power and strength I have left in this body, nominate it for deletion in front of this august body. 71.206.45.85

Or is there an adjectival US fraternity or sorority meaning? I see the use of the term "Greek-letter organizations" in the English Wikipedia article "w:Fraternities and sororities". — SGconlaw (talk) 13:43, 18 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
That's really just an organization signified by Greek letters. It requires understanding that the organizations denoted by Greek letters on the US college scene are fraternities and sororities, but that's more encyclopedic. (It's interesting that, as I expected, Greek mentions fraternities and sororities, but the letter and organization are important in making this SOP.)--Prosfilaes (talk) 07:31, 19 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
If the meaning of Greek-letter organization isn’t readily discernible from the words, that may suggest Greek-letter is idiomatic in this context. I wonder if there is a noun use too (Greek letter = a fraternity or sorority)? — SGconlaw (talk) 03:38, 20 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Doesn't seem to me that the "Greek epistle" meaning is relevant -- do we need a page for angry bear because it could be a ferocious creature with claws or a hairy gay man with demeaning comments? As a fraternity/sorority thing, I guess it may be worth including, but still seems pretty SOP -- a "Greek-letter organization" is basically an organization named after Greek letters. For comparison's sake, we do not have a definition for three-letter acronym despite that being used to describe organizations based on their name (we do have an entry at TLA, but that's an initialism -- we'd have an entry at GL too if that was often used). 71.206.45.85 22:34, 21 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The letters themselves are not Greek. The sense “a letter in the Greek alphabet” should be obvious to people who know that there is such a thing as a Greek alphabet. Is this equally obvious to a less informed reader? It may not be obvious from the context.[1] I furthermore think that the attributive use seen in “Greek-letter fraternity” has lexical status.  --Lambiam 12:52, 19 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The letters themselves are from Greece and used with Greek. I'm not sure how Greek letter isn't every bit as SOP as Greek island.--Prosfilaes (talk) 14:47, 20 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
If an American writes a passage using the Greek alphabet, does that make these American letters? The association of the alphabet with Greece does not make them any more tied to the geographical location than Greek yogurt. bd2412 T 22:40, 28 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Does he write the passage in Greek? That's not the way language works; if I wrote a passage in de Estonin älfabet, does that make it the American alphabet? We don't have an entry for the Estonian alphabet nor for Greek script or Greek writing; I don't think the lack of either will confuse anyone. I might argue for an addition to Greek that includes the script, but not Greek plus any number of other words.--Prosfilaes (talk) 14:38, 1 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The Estonian language is written in the Latin alphabet. Of course, there is no tradition of primarily referring to characters of the Latin alphabet as "Latin letters", which by itself makes Greek letters somewhat unique. bd2412 T 05:59, 2 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The Estonian language is written in the variant of the Latin alphabet known as the Estonian alphabet. There is no tradition of referring to the Latin alphabet at all; in English, it's usually just called the alphabet. Nonetheless, you can find uses of it either referring to the Latin language, as in "y is not properly a Latin letter", or as a script "However, as early as 1922 — six years before Turkey had converted its Arabic script to Latin - a proposal was put forth to begin writing the languages of the Soviet East in Latin letters."--Prosfilaes (talk) 22:01, 2 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The entry Arabic numeral is not fully descriptive; w:Arabic numerals (disambiguation) shows more of the complexity, and Arabic numeral may or may not include the numerals traditionally used in Arabia, though it seems that the modern forms were originally from northwestern Africa.--Prosfilaes (talk) 14:38, 1 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
!Vote changed to delete per the persuasive case made in this discussion. bd2412 T 02:32, 12 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Note: I have added an adjective sense for the organizational sense and converted the RfD to an RfD-sense. If deleted, an &lit can be added under the noun header. bd2412 T 06:48, 4 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Keep entry due to fraternity/sorority sense, keep SoP definition as more prevalent meaning. DAVilla 23:49, 7 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete. Greek-letter covers the fraternity/sorority sense in American English more accurately and makes Greek letter unnecessary. Tcr25 (talk) 13:32, 10 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    • Attested alternative spellings are not judged on "necessity". bd2412 T 18:04, 10 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    • @Tcr25 Yeah, I also want to kind of emphasize to Tcr25 that alternative forms/synonyms are not judged by their necessity for the goal of conveying useful knowledge about a definition to the reader in the sense that Tcr25 seems to mean (if I understand correctly). Instead, the value of having alternative form pages is in allowing people unfamiliar with a given alternative form or synonym to realize that there is some other form out there that they aren't using, for instance to-morrow, coöperate, p'in-yin and such. Also, it allows people that run across those rarer forms to get a search result when they type it in on Google or Wikipedia-- "what is this word I'm seeing? Oh, I see now, it's a variant form." I do a lot of work on alternative forms that are "unnecessary" in the sense you seem to mean, but they are useful to readers in terms of helping you realize "hey, some people spell the word funny". --Geographyinitiative (talk) 18:21, 10 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. Imetsia (talk) 17:01, 31 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
RFD-deleted. Are we saying Greek-letter is a hyphenated attributive form and should therefore be deleted? Imetsia (talk) 17:01, 31 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
No one here has stated specifically that they think this meaning of fraternity/sorority should not be included in any form, once that point was brought up. DAVilla 22:05, 2 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]


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