Talk:missilium

RFV discussion: March–April 2019

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missilium

Supposedly a "New Latin" word meaning "missile". The nominative/accusative singular form "missilium" looks like a second-declension form, but the nominative/accusative plural could be either second or third declension, and the oblique case forms are unambiguously third-declension. The citations only attest to the existence of third-declension and ambiguous forms, not to the existence of the nom/acc singular form "missilium". The expected nominative singular form for a neuter noun of the third declension would be "missile" (which is clearly attested as the neuter nominative singular form of the adjective "missilis"; the OED entry for the English word "missile" also indicates that "missile" was used as a noun in Latin--obviously, not with the sense of modern English "missile"). I think that the entry was made for "missilium" only because of an error (mistaking the ambiguous plural form "missilia" as the plural of "missilium" instead of the plural of "missile"), but I don't know whether the error in question was made by a Wikipedia editor, or by the author(s) of some New Latin texts. There are some Latin neuter words where it came to be standard to use different stems in different cases/numbers; e.g. iugerum and vas, so this isn't outright impossible, it just seems improbable to me for this word. If "missilium" is actually used in any texts as a nominative singular form, then we should mention it, but if not, we should replace this with an entry for a neuter noun "missile". It's hard to search for forms because "missilium" does exist as a genitive plural form. Another thing I wondered is whether any clearly second-declension forms exist for the oblique cases, but that was also a bit hard for me to find, because e.g. "missiliorum" could exist as a third-declension comparative form. --Urszag (talk) 05:02, 14 March 2019 (UTC)

Seeing the quotation from the Nuntii Latini, I bet this was a mistake by the Wikipedia editor.  --Lambiam 12:38, 14 March 2019 (UTC)

[1] proofs that Nuntii Latini has "missile, is, n" => the quote doesn't support the entry. --Negel Growl (talk) 12:38, 16 March 2019 (UTC)

OK, I'm convinced that the nominative/accusative form "missilium" was a mistake. I've removed the entry from that page and replaced it with an entry for a neuter noun "missile". --Urszag (talk) 07:29, 17 March 2019 (UTC)

• RFV failed and already fixed by Urszag. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 21:16, 16 April 2019 (UTC)