Wiktionary:Information desk/2023/January

discussion rooms: Tea room • Etym. scr. • Info desk • Beer parlour • Grease pit ← December 2022 · January 2023 · February 2023 → · (current)

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fren

I would like to see the entry for Etymology 2 of fren changed from

1. Pronunciation spelling of friend.
2. (alt-right, Internet slang) A fellow, a comrade

   Antonym: nonfren

3. (Internet slang) A white nationalist; fascist; far-right supporter.

to

1. Pronunciation spelling of friend.
2. (Internet slang) A fellow, a comrade.
3. (alt-right) A white nationalist; fascist; far-right supporter.

   Antonym: nonfren

Or even to merge definitions 1 and 2 together with internet slang and pronunciation spelling being ordinary labels.

I realize that our labels are meant to be additive, in the sense that alt-right|Internet slang means "alt-right OR internet slang", but I suspect casual users and even some experienced users will just see the label alt-right and assume that it subsumes the definition ... in other words, that alt-right|Internet slang means the intersection of the alt-right and Internet communities.

I cannot provide any direct evidence that this word continues to be primarily used in its original sense as a playful misspelling of the common word friend, but I dont think there's any evidence that the alt-right community has the primary control of the word either ... it seems likeour entry got to its current state without a major discussion of any kind. Even if we did an exhaustive search of all social media, there would always be doubts about which posts were more widely read than others, whether people were using it with both meanings at once, and so on. As such, I would rather base my position on the worry that people will read the labels as they stand now, causing them to assume that both definitions 2 and 3 are irrevocably tied to the alt-right community, and then go on to misunderstand the online communication of hundreds of millions of people who only know the original light-hearted sense of the word.

I cannot edit the page myself because it has high-level protection ... I was actually going to post about it on the Tea Room at first, but I saw the message recommending I come here instead. I suspect that message is primarily aimed at new users who are trying to edit a page with much lesser protection, but I'd rather stick to the literal word of the message in this case as this page seems to be (surprisingly) less trafficked than the Tea Room.

Thank you,

—Soap— 13:02, 2 January 2023 (UTC)

In using the label “alt-right”, is the idea that this is alt-right slang (terminology used in this specific sense by the alt-right)? A gloss defining a term can ideally be substituted for uses of that term without change of meaning. So if we read, “people considered him little more than the village idiot”, we can see it means, more or less, “people considered him little more than someone known in their community for his stupidity and ignorant behaviour”. But if we read, “Craig saw him as a fren”, and we know that Craig himself is an alt-right activist, can we rewrite this as, “Craig saw him as a white nationalist, a fascist”? Or are these qualifications merely our interpretation, because we have drawn the reasonable conclusion that when Craig views someone as a fellow, a comrade in the struggle against socialism and Jewish space lasers, their comrade is very likely another white nationalist fascist?  --Lambiam 16:55, 2 January 2023 (UTC)

Some context here: [1]. Equinox ◑ 17:01, 2 January 2023 (UTC)

Not your main point, I know, but I actually don't think "labels are meant to be additive, in the sense that alt-right|Internet slang means "alt-right OR internet slang"". "(US, UK, slang)" is "used in slang in the US and UK", not "used (formally?) in the US and UK OR in slang anywhere else", and "(US, obsolete)" means "was used in the US but is now obsolete", not "used in the present-day US OR in obsolete documents from anywhere" (we have "obsolete outside..." or "obsolete except in..." for that). So I would've thought "alt-right, Internet slang" was indeed intended to mean it's used by the alt-right, in Internet slang. (In this case, that could be made unambiguous by tweaking the label to "(alt-right Internet slang)", but in "US, UK, slang" it'd be both excessive and technically impossible to write {{lb|en|UK|_|slang|US|_|slang}} — because redundant labels get deleted, that just displays as "(UK slang, US)".) I assume use in other internet slang may have been intended to be covered by the "pronunciation spelling"(?), but I agree this should be made a lot clearer. But I don't think it's right to include "comrade" in

1. (Internet slang) A fellow, a comrade.

I'd say it's more like

1. (Internet slang) A friend, a fellow.

and at that point it is indeed a bit silly to have it be separate from sense 1, so yeah, it seems reasonable to combine them like

1. (pronunciation spelling, Internet slang) A friend, a fellow.

(We're not terribly consistent in how we handle it when something is both an obsolete / archaic / pronunciation spelling, and a modern internet / jocular spelling, e.g. whyte handles it as one sense, poast as two.)

For the other sense, one relevant question — in line with Lambiam's comment — is whether the alt-right slang sense only refers to a political friend, i.e.

1. (in particular, alt-right, Internet slang) A fellow white nationalist or fascist, a comrade on the far right.

or whether it refers to e.g.

1. (in particular, alt-right, Internet slang) A fellow white person.

Like: are white liberals "misguided frens", or are they "nonfrens"? - -sche (discuss) 20:08, 2 January 2023 (UTC)

Sorry, Im not really familiar with alt-right slang, so I was hoping someone else would answer this. I dont know. But the images posted on the Beer Parlour thread lead me to believe that the alt-right usage of the term is a derived sense of the original sense of "friend, comrade" and may have entered colloquial political discourse in general, before coming to be associated with the alt-right. Nevertheless I still believe that the transparent meaning friend is still the primary sense of the term by sheer magnitude, and that the alt-right and Internet slang labels should be listed with separate senses.

Unrelated, I noticed while typing out this reply that while I have the preview window open, the section at the top suddenly has 107 "antonym" buttons instead of one. A cute and entirely harmless glitch, I suppose, but I wonder what causes it. —Soap— 06:45, 5 January 2023 (UTC)

Edited to add it seems that the [antonym] buttons multiply with each new word I type. It's possibly my reply up above had 106 words. Oh well. As long as it never saves when the edit goes live it's harmless. —Soap— 06:48, 5 January 2023 (UTC)

Sorry, even with the qualifier up above about being unfamiliar I should at least answer your question. It's only a hunch, but I'd say that the meaning of fren within the alt-right is likely to be close to the first of your definitions, the one that relates it to politics and not race, as the sarcastic comments on the 4chan threads posted in the Beer Parlour suggest to me that they *could* consider immigrants to be frens, but choose not to. —Soap— 06:56, 5 January 2023 (UTC)

Since I have autopatrol access now I can make the edit myself, but I dont want to do so without either getting more comments or letting this discussion fall off the page (which I believe will happen on March 1). And it may be best to wait for the protection to expire anyway since that is due in early April. —Soap— 16:47, 10 February 2023 (UTC)

How is this? Better? Worse? Should other changes be made? Compare nonfren btw. - -sche (discuss) 23:11, 10 February 2023 (UTC)

Yes thank you. If other people still have doubts, we can always attend to it further when the protection runs out in April, assuming we dont need to protect it again. Even if so I will watch the page so I can see if someone is posting to the discussion page. —Soap— 11:31, 11 February 2023 (UTC)

Creating a spoken Tamil verb conjugation template

Hello, I want to create a conjugation template for spoken Tamil verbs, which differ significantly from the standard, written forms currently listed in wiktionary entries for Tamil verbs. I'm a native Tamil speaker, and I've studied spoken Tamil and its relationship with standard Tamil extensively.

I plan to use the existing Tamil verb conjugation templates, but I don't know where to start in terms of where and how to create such a template. Could you direct me to some resources that would help? ताज 00:04, 5 January 2023 (UTC)

The existing Tamil verb conjugations are computed by the module Module:ta-conj, which is invoked by the template {{ta-conj-auto}}. The module is written in the programming language Lua. Learning Lua may be a tall order, but if you are prepared to invest the time, see Wiktionary:Scribunto § Getting started.  --Lambiam 19:00, 5 January 2023 (UTC)

picture gallery

I recently added some pictures to rack, but the format is pretty ugly. Is there a neat way of making a "gallery" of images that doesn't clutter up the page? Celui qui crée ébauches de football anglais (talk) 12:42, 6 January 2023 (UTC)

Why can't an edit summary be changed?

The title says it all. This is because I would make a mistake (e.g. press the submit button of an incomplete edit summary). Chuterix (talk) 19:27, 7 January 2023 (UTC)

Because it's published. Finito. Out there. Vininn126 (talk) 19:43, 7 January 2023 (UTC)

Yes, if you changed the edit history, we would need to have "history of the history", and that wouldn't end well. Equinox ◑ 23:19, 12 January 2023 (UTC)

You can make a dummy edit, e.g. add an extra space character or something similarly inconsequential, and leave your updated edit summary there. 70.172.194.25 23:22, 12 January 2023 (UTC)

bdella, bdellium, bdellid

Is the B pronounced or not? 2001:8003:2047:B500:A517:6D29:B437:8368 00:10, 12 January 2023 (UTC)

According to the IPA given on the entry bdellium, the /b/ is pronounced in Latin, but not (usually) in English. 70.172.194.25 00:12, 12 January 2023 (UTC)

is this a dictionaryy

because of the name Smallhairson (talk) 16:19, 12 January 2023 (UTC)

Yep, this is indeed a dictionary. Wiktionary, the free dictionary. Vininn126 (talk) 20:10, 12 January 2023 (UTC)

please help me they deletd my account 131.156.241.20 22:27, 12 January 2023 (UTC)

please 😭 131.156.241.20 22:28, 12 January 2023 (UTC)

What account? Were you editing as User:Smallhairson? —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 22:56, 12 January 2023 (UTC)

They were editing as that account, and they are probably a troll. This is a school device, the person who had this device before me did not close any of their tabs, and this was one of the tabs open. do not listen to anything they say. They've been locked for lock evasion. im going to literally be forced to edit from my phone (which is a pain in the as) because they are always on this devices' IP. 172.78.191.61 23:11, 12 January 2023 (UTC)

Sorry if i seem a little harsh to them, but I aint believing the "im innocent" stuff. my own account has literally been caught in collateral damage because of this nonsense and it kinda pisses me off. and this was the whole reason why i didnt want to create an account, but I convinced myself to try it hoping nothing would go wrong... and here we are. 172.78.191.61 23:13, 12 January 2023 (UTC)

yeah, im sorry that was alot, any further conversations i'll take to my IP's talk page. 172.78.191.61 23:18, 12 January 2023 (UTC)

problems with "flo" and "flaveo"

Someone better versed in Latin than am I needs to go in and fix the entries and links for the verbs cited in my title; they appear to have been confused, particularly in the instance of the mostly poetically-deployed and inflectionally-defective flaveo, which has ascribed to it tenses that according to other authority do not exist in its conjugation (to wit, perfect, pluperfect and future perfect). 2600:6C5A:477F:D341:B199:68AF:F86E:37E3 15:42, 14 January 2023 (UTC)

Collapsible elements in mobile view

Hello, I noticed that entries in the mobile view have collapsing elements This surprised me because the skin Minerva Neue does not have this by default. So out of interest (and also because I run a wiki myself) I wanted to ask what exactly was done in the wiki to enable this feature.

Thanks in advance! Bildungskind (talk) 10:03, 18 January 2023 (UTC)

How to search a full string.

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T317599

Let's say that I want to find a two-word phrase where both of the words have five letters, and is also an entry of Wiktionary. How do I not have, say, "motion picture" appear in the search result but have, say, "first light" be in the search page? Three citations, for all senses. (talk) 01:33, 25 January 2023 (UTC)

Like this? [2]. 70.172.194.25 01:42, 25 January 2023 (UTC)

Kind of. I want the non-lemma forms as well. However, I assume that the code I would want is intitle:/[a-z]{n} [a-z]{n}/ -intitle:/.[a-z]{n} [a-z]{n}./, where "n" in the number of letters in the word. I'll see if that will work. Three citations, for all senses. (talk) 03:26, 25 January 2023 (UTC)

Addendum: The code intitle:/[a-z]{n} [a-z]{n}/ -intitle:/.{1,}[a-z]{n} [a-z]{n}.{1,}/ works, but it times out. At least for the 5, 5 example. Three citations, for all senses. (talk) 03:33, 25 January 2023 (UTC)

Or at least it seems to. Three citations, for all senses. (talk) 03:43, 25 January 2023 (UTC)

It doesn't seem very accurate to me, including results like "green woodpecker" and "mountain range". Using -intitle:/.[a-z]{5} [a-z]{5}./ will only exclude terms where there's padding on both ends, not where there's only padding on one. That's why I added two disjunctive exclusion rules. 70.172.194.25 03:55, 25 January 2023 (UTC)

Is this correct?

подобре́ть • (podobrétʹ) impf (perfective добре́ть)

Is this correct? 84.106.61.79 18:02, 25 January 2023 (UTC)

No, it should be the other way around, as is the more common case with verbs prefixed with по-. Sources: [3] ("подобреть • verb, perfective"), [4] ("подобреть сов. см. добреть.") Thanks for spotting this. 70.172.194.25 22:11, 25 January 2023 (UTC)

I'll ping some admins who are knowledgeable about Russian 1) to confirm this 2) because handling this would require deleting certain inflections. I'm pretty sure it is perfective though, since searching for "подобреющий" brings up nothing other than Wiktionary and sites that probably copied from it. @Atitarev, Benwing2. 70.172.194.25 22:16, 25 January 2023 (UTC)

Yes, 99.99% sure this is perfective; there's only one verb I know where the opposite happens, and that's покупа́ть (pokupátʹ, “to buy”) with perfective купи́ть (kupítʹ). I can run a script to fix up the inflections. Benwing2 (talk) 22:29, 25 January 2023 (UTC)

Done. Benwing2 (talk) 22:41, 25 January 2023 (UTC)

Nice, you even corrected the tenses of the conjugations, thanks! 70.172.194.25 22:45, 25 January 2023 (UTC)

@Benwing2 While we're at it, can you check посвиста́ть (posvistátʹ), полысе́ть (polysétʹ), and попутеше́ствовать (poputešéstvovatʹ)? 70.172.194.25 22:53, 25 January 2023 (UTC)

All of these are perfective. I will fix. Benwing2 (talk) 23:04, 25 January 2023 (UTC)

Fixed. Benwing2 (talk) 23:43, 25 January 2023 (UTC)

Reference formatting

I've tried to add a reference to an etymology on yoink but I'm not sure I'm doing it correctly. Could you take a look? Microchip08 (talk) 21:22, 26 January 2023 (UTC)

Looks good to me. 70.172.194.25 21:25, 26 January 2023 (UTC)

ToC on Mobile

How does one get to the table of contents on mobile phones? --RichardW57m (talk) 12:22, 30 January 2023 (UTC)

@RichardW57m I would also like the answer to this question! I have discovered that the Table of Contents collapsible element is displayed in landscape orientation on a mobile but not in portrait orientation.

SimonWikt (talk) 05:33, 15 September 2023 (UTC)

Searching for Polytonic Hebrew

How do I search for 'polytonic Hebrew'; I particularly expect to find it in invocation of {{lbor}}. I've tried

insource:"bor" insource:/bor.*\|he/ insource:polytonic

but it doesn't seem to work.

I'm searching for it because I've found that misspecifying the script as polytonic prevents the stripping of the vowel pointing, and so the template is not linking to the Hebrew. --RichardW57m (talk) 13:01, 31 January 2023 (UTC)

@RichardW57m: I tried insource:"lbor" insource:polytonic insource:/bor\|[^\|]*\|he\|[^\}]*polytonic/ and didn't find any results. Are you sure that people incorrectly supply sc=polytonic to a Hebrew term? I haven't seen it. — Eru·tuon 17:21, 31 January 2023 (UTC)

@Erutuon: I found and corrected it at naheka today. Perhaps it was a one-off. --RichardW57m (talk) 17:31, 31 January 2023 (UTC)

More generally, I think it’s worth adding an automatic override if a script isn’t associated with a language, but the language has at least one script assigned to it. There are vanishingly few situations where manually specifying the script is the best way of ensuring it’s correct (the only time I can think of is when a language uses two scripts with overlapping character sets). In fact, it may be worth changing sc so that it only has effect if the term could be in more than one script (e.g. Translingual Cyrillic letter entries, which have Cyrl and Cyrs headwords: see а). Theknightwho (talk) 17:38, 31 January 2023 (UTC)

Transcription needed of Hebrew text

This Hebrew text comes from the silent film Intolerance (1916). It appears at File:Intolerance (1916).ogv at 1:06:00, being read by a Pharisee on the step next to Jesus and the woman who had the affair.

I need the text transcribed for an ongoing Wikisource transcription of the film. Can anyone help? @Lambiam PseudoSkull (talk) 14:40, 31 January 2023 (UTC)

This is the best I can make of it. I'm not sure whether the text is supposed to be Hebrew, which had not been a spoken language for several centuries around the time of the story.

שפרהש{ו|ר}{ז|ה|ח}

חנניהרחל

ראוכזפיות{י|}

The notation {X|Y|Z} stands for: perhaps X, or else Y, or perhaps Z. Something that is rather recognizable is רחל at the end of the second line, the Biblical name Rachel.  --Lambiam 16:34, 31 January 2023 (UTC)

I mostly agree, but I think the yod you identified in the last line is actually a vav. The first uncertain letter in the first line is much more likely a resh than a vav, I think. Preceding Rachel is what could be Hanania (which I notice we're missing both an entry for in Hebrew as well as one for the spelling "Hananiah"), though grammatically it doesn't work. It's of course possible that it's just a bunch of Hebrew words or even just letters strung together. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 06:32, 15 September 2023 (UTC)