Talk:windfucker

Windsucker

I think this is actually a transcription error from the old way of drawing "s" characters, and this should be "windsucker". The 1871 copy I could find has this spelling; page 77, https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=JzI1AAAAMAAJ&pg=PA77#v=onepage&q&f=false

81.144.234.34 15:44, 5 August 2015 (UTC)

I think this is very much the case, and seems to be a common error. Unfortunately, I'm not in a position to be able to edit the title. ArdClose (talk) 16:46, 15 September 2015 (UTC)

Other names

H. Kirke Swann's Dictionary of English and Folk-Names of British Birds (1913) gives, in the entry on the windhover, other wind- names: "windcuffer (Orkneys), windsucker (Kent), windbibber (Kent), and wind-fanner." Other names are "blood hawk: the kestrel (Oxon.)", "brown hawk" (Yorkshire), "coistrel", "creshawk [...] (Cornwall) probably a corruption of Cristel-hawk", "cristel-hawk", "cudyll coch (South Wales)", "cudyll y gwynt (North Wales) lit. windhover", "fanner-hawk: a West Sussex (Arundel) name", "fleingall", "hover-hawk (Berks., Bucks., Yorkshire)", "jack hawk (Arkengarthdale, Yorkshire)", "keelie" (Edinburgh), "kryssat" (Cornish), and "vanner hawk".
Edmondston's Etymological Glossary of the Shetland & Orkney Dialect also lists "wind-cuffer" as an Orkney name. It could possibly be a metathesis of windfucker, but is more likely cuff (“hit, slap”). George Barry's 1805 History of the Orkney Islands says the "kestril" is named the "windcuffer" "from its motion in the air".
- -sche (discuss) 18:48, 5 May 2017 (UTC)

RFV discussion: April–May 2017

This entry has survived Wiktionary's verification process (permalink).

Please do not re-nominate for verification without comprehensive reasons for doing so.

---

windfucker

On the talk page, someone has claimed that this is a misinterpretation of "windſucker" and should thus have a definition at windsucker rather than the current page. Note that if this fails, the link in the etymology for windhover will have to be changed. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 05:34, 14 April 2017 (UTC)

Some books have cited earlier sources that use the word, but it's possible they have been misread and thus not quoted faithfully. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 05:37, 14 April 2017 (UTC)

What does the OED reference say? DTLHS (talk) 05:38, 14 April 2017 (UTC)

Rubbish. ‘Windfucker’ is clearly in use in the 16th and 17th centuries in many well respected sources – Chapman, Nashe, Rowley, Ben Jonson, etc etc. Ƿidsiþ 05:59, 14 April 2017 (UTC)

Can you link to an example of an original text that uses it (not quoted in a secondary work)? DTLHS (talk) 06:02, 14 April 2017 (UTC)

If you have a subscription to Oxford Scholarly Editions Online, you can see the Jonson example here. Ƿidsiþ 06:12, 14 April 2017 (UTC)

So what sense of fucker is this? DTLHS (talk) 20:56, 14 April 2017 (UTC)

A few works suggest that it preserves an old meaning of (the predecessors of) fuck which is also found in some of the cognate terms that entry lists, namely "beat, strike". - -sche (discuss) 05:03, 15 April 2017 (UTC)

There seems to be evidence of use for both terms. For every quote (but one, from a work written in 2008) that uses windfucker, I can find another source that uses windsucker for the same quote. I haven't found any sources old enough to see which spelling is included in the originals, but clearly both entries deserve a definition - the question is which is the alternative form? Most of the "windsucker" quotes I find date to the 1800s, while the "windfucker" quotes tend to be in more modern works. Kiwima (talk) 21:21, 14 April 2017 (UTC)

• Of the five quotations in the entry, 1599 and 1611 may actually be using "windsucker" (the form that appears in some versions), in which case "windfucker" is presumably a scanno or error made by someone unfamiliar with long s; 1956 is quoting 1611; 1965 was originally published in 1596 and is by the same author as 1599, Thomas Nashe; and 2008 seems to be using the form "windfucker", though I'm not sure what it means. Widsith also pointed out a Ben Jonson quote. So I think we have four independent citations, of one form or the other (Nashe, 1611, Jonson, and 2008). Here is a 1745 version of one of the Nashe quotes, the earliest version I can find, which looks like it uses a long s. Here is the 1611 Chapman quote, apparently its original version, which seems to be using an f. And here is the Jonson quote, which looks like it uses a long s. The 2008 quote is surely using an f. —Granger (talk · contribs) 00:35, 15 April 2017 (UTC)

Yes, for Nashe I can find many versions with "s" but also a few with "f"; until we find the original, it's hard to know which is the error. Frederick David Clandfield's 1981 Books and Readers, 1616 agrees with your finding that Chapman uses "f" (but has sometimes been misquoted as "s"), so Chapman is a good citation of the spelling with "f". The edition of Jonson you link above definitely says "hear ſuch a Wind-ſucker" with a long "s" and a hyphen, so Jonson does not seem to be a good citation of this spelling, and Alex Horne's Wordwatching opines that Jonson is using sense 2 (the term of abuse), anyway. I agree/can independently confirm that the 2008 quote from Akhtar is using "f". We need one more citation that clearly uses "f". Then we could try to suss out which spelling is original... - -sche (discuss) 05:03, 15 April 2017 (UTC)

Come on – there are no "windsucker" citations before the 19th century – surely it's clear that they are a result of later editors' prudishness. "Windfucker", with an F, is cited in the OED and the evidence has been examined and discussed by lexicographers for a long long time. Along with pissabed or arsesmart, it's a classic example of the way "swearwords" were once more common in natural daily vocabulary. Ƿidsiþ 11:29, 16 April 2017 (UTC)

Both of the "windsucker" citations I linked were published before the 19th century. The edition of Jonson I linked was printed in 1692, and the edition of Nashe I linked was printed in 1745. —Granger (talk · contribs) 11:41, 16 April 2017 (UTC)

Ah sorry, I didn't see those links. I agree that the Jonson, at least, looks like a long s in that edition. Ƿidsiþ 17:45, 17 April 2017 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ Resolved. — SMUconlaw (talk) 17:13, 3 May 2017 (UTC)

Unstriking. Unless I'm missing something, we need one more citation in order to keep this, as -sche said. —Granger (talk · contribs) 17:23, 3 May 2017 (UTC)

If windsucker is treated as a mere alternative form of windfucker and thus essentially the same word, then all quotations with the form windsucker are valid for windfucker as well. However, I noticed that -sche has just removed those from the entry. Is it suggested that we should treat windsucker as a synonym rather than as an alternative form, thus requiring another citation? — SMUconlaw (talk) 17:32, 3 May 2017 (UTC)

As far as I know, we've always required each spelling to have its own citations, even in cases of clear alternative spellings (compare Talk:gaplapper), and that seems even more prudent in this case where it seems likely than one spelling or the other was originally a typo for the other. (We could combine the two rather disparate definitions into a disjointed Frankendefinition which would have the three cites already in the entry, but it would be better to find a third cite, and it actually shouldn't be that difficult, if we allow editions of works that have windfucker even where earlier editions have windsucker.) It's tricky to say whether either entry should be called an alt form or synonym of the other; perhaps the best thing is to move the second half (basically) of the etymology to a usage note, which could either be templatized and placed in both entries, or placed in one entry with a pointer from the other. - -sche (discuss) 17:51, 3 May 2017 (UTC)

Pooling citations of alternative forms is a perennial source of disagreement here at RFV. Talk:gaplapper was closed by -sche as RFV failed, whereas Talk:gutbread was closed by Smuconlaw as RFV passed, even though they apparently had pretty similar sets of quotations. But in both of those cases, the alternative forms in question were very close to each other, the difference being a space vs. a hyphen vs. nothing. In this situation, the difference between windfucker and windsucker is significant, even implying a difference in pronunciation. So while I don't have a strong opinion about whether or not to combine quotations for alt forms like gaplapper/gap-lapper, I don't think we should combine them for windsucker/windfucker. —Granger (talk · contribs) 18:13, 3 May 2017 (UTC)

Here are some more RFV discussions where pooling citations was discussed: Talk:skinnymalinky, Talk:tewit, Talk:witenagemot. My impression is that, like -sche said, our usual practice is not to pool them. —Granger (talk · contribs) 18:47, 3 May 2017 (UTC)

I added a few more quotations to windfucker and one to windsucker. See if you think that they suffice – two are from old dictionaries but are in the definitions rather than the headword, so I feel they don't count as mere mentions. I am also leaning towards treating windfucker and windsucker as synonyms, rather than regarding windsucker as an alternative form of windfucker given the rather different spelling and thus pronunciation. — SMUconlaw (talk) 19:18, 3 May 2017 (UTC)

P.S. Do you think the word is too inadvertently rude to feature as a Word of the Day? — SMUconlaw (talk) 19:23, 3 May 2017 (UTC)

Of the five quotations for this sense currently in the article, I think all but 1991 are uses (though 1648 might be debatable). But they're of three different spellings, so unless we pool citations for windfucker and windefucker (or windfucker and winde-fucker), we still need another citation.

Re WOTD: Yes, I think it violates the "No offensive words" bullet point at WT:WOTDN, as well as the last bullet point, which says to avoid "words whose definitions are only obsolete, archaic, rare or similar". —Granger (talk · contribs) 21:21, 3 May 2017 (UTC)

I'm not convinced by the argument that each variant spelling needs to be separately verified with at least three citations. This is difficult to achieve for archaic words, and doesn't seem to adequately account for the fact that there was less consistency in spelling in the past. If there isn't already a policy on this, perhaps we should have a full discussion on the matter. Concerning the word at hand, I would treat windfucker and windsucker as different words which are synonyms given the fairly different spelling, but wind-fucker, windefucker and winde-fucker as mere variant spellings of windfucker. — SMUconlaw (talk) 18:22, 4 May 2017 (UTC)

Nevertheless, I think we have at least three citations for the spelling windfucker for sense 1 (1611, 1991 and 2008) and sense 2 (1980, 1987 and 2016). Can we treat this matter as resolved? — SMUconlaw (talk) 15:12, 5 May 2017 (UTC)

I've added one more citation to the citations page, which is a clearer use than "the days when the [...] windhover could be called the windfucker", so both senses are adequately cited now, thanks mainly to your excellent efforts to find citations, and Mx Granger's efforts to track down the originals of some of the early citations. :) - -sche (discuss) 18:53, 5 May 2017 (UTC)

@-sche: hmmm, regarding the 1991 Udall transcription of The Birth of Merlin, an 1869 edition rendered it windsucker (q.v.). — SMUconlaw (talk) 22:23, 5 May 2017 (UTC)

Apparently there are a number of copies where it's impossible to tell whether the letter in question is an f or a long s, but at least one (shown here) has a clearly visible crossbar, thus proving the original to have the f spelling. It's not surprising that an editor in Victorian England would choose the less vulgar of the two possible readings if their original was ambiguous, even if the context suggested otherwise. And indeed, this would seem to be a very broad double entendre meant for laughs. The character's sister has just given birth to a fully-grown adult child (with a beard!) out of wedlock, and the father is literally the Devil. This line comes as the character is faced with having to explain this to the others. The whole point of the joke depends on an innocent word for a type of hawk sounding like a word referring to a sexual act. Chuck Entz (talk) 00:55, 6 May 2017 (UTC)

Fascinating. I've added the 1662 reference to the entry; this is actually the first published edition of the work. — SMUconlaw (talk) 15:29, 6 May 2017 (UTC)

It looks to me like this is resolved. Regarding pooling citations: I think it's not a problem when the pronunciation would be the same, simply due to the fact that it's often the only way of documenting words that were spoken, but rarely written, and for attesting archaic words with no standard spelling. It would be a shame if every spelling absolutely had to be attested. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 20:34, 5 May 2017 (UTC)

As a point of information, regarding whether or not there is a need to pool citations: the number of words which have more than one spelling without any one spelling managing to have 3 citations (but with all of them taken together having 3+ citations) is exceedingly small. The only words I recall being in such a situation are gap-lapper and gyneconome, both of which actually have 3+ citations and were able to be restored in at least one spelling within one year of initially failing RFV, because Google digitized enough additional books over the course of that year that it became possible to find enough citations of at least one spelling, and gutbread, which was passed over objections and which I suspect (hope) is in the same position of having become thrice-attested in at least one spelling by now, at which point the unattested spellings could be made {{only in}} redirects. There was also some discussion of Judenlaim, a variant spelling of Judenleim which lacks three citations, but in that case the spelling Judenleim always had enough citations. - -sche (discuss) 18:01, 6 May 2017 (UTC)