Wiktionary:Tea room/2021/March

discussion rooms: Tea room • Etym. scr. • Info desk • Beer parlour • Grease pit ← February 2021 · March 2021 · April 2021 → · (current)

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5-gallon water bottle - bidón

Hi. Is there a reasonable, acceptable possibility for an English noun entry to describe this image? In Spanish it is called a bidón (although even this entry needs to be tweaked). [[1]] -- ALGRIF talk 13:11, 1 March 2021 (UTC)

In English it is called a carboy; see the photo in Wikipedia’s Carboy article. A name for an older type (a glass bottle) that is also in use for plastic bottles is demijohn.  --Lambiam 20:20, 5 March 2021 (UTC)

corobane

This is defined as "hemlock" which is ambiguous- so I started looking through Google Books to see whether it's Conium maculatum (the European plant that killed Socrates), or the related and equalluy toxic Cicuta virosa Cicuta maculata, a North American water plant (it has a European relative, Cicuta virosa). After a while, I realized that all of the hits in the older references were scannos for cowbane, which is Cicuta. The only non-scannos are from the 1970s and later. Most of this recent usage seems to be mentions in the kind of material that gets copied from previous books.

As far as I can tell, the first occurrence is in the index to the 1971 Dover paperback edition of Maude Grieve's A Modern Herbal- not in the book itself, but in the index. This is a very influential book that just about everybody who knows anything about herbs has read (I have a copy in storage somewhere), so I suspect that some typist working for the publisher misread the name, and all current usage traces back to that. That would make this a "common name" or "vernacular name" that has never seen common or vernacular use. I'd rfv it, but I think there's probably enough post-1971 secondary usage for it to just barely squeak by. I'm not quite sure how to deal with it in the entry, though. Chuck Entz (talk) 13:23, 1 March 2021 (UTC)

Fascinating. So it's a ghost word? (...Yeah it's not the clearest name for these things; I would love if a more intuitive / transparent name existed. I think I proposed "terms derived from errors or hoaxes" in a prior discussion, but that has its own problems besides just the length.) Perhaps you could make a note in the etymology like on fesnyng, or even describe it as nonstandard (if applicable). - -sche (discuss) 11:32, 2 March 2021 (UTC)

Fesnyng is actually an Old Scots noun, cognate with Old English fæstnung. It occurs in The Bruce, in the line Fesnyng of frendschip and of pess (“Consolidation of friendship and peace”). I wonder how this came to replace Joseph Strutt’s simple 1801 typo, a fesynes of ferrets, for what in The Boke of St. Albans of 1486 was a Besynes of ferettis. Was the change to fesnyng meant to be a correction? Or was it an unlikely confluence in a comedy of typos?  --Lambiam 20:56, 2 March 2021 (UTC)

Hmm, that could explain it, if someone knew fesnyng was a word and took fesynes to be an error for it (maybe some stray ink closed the upper right of the s enough to make it look like g in the copy someone was working from) rather than for business, an admittedly much less similar word! - -sche (discuss) 23:03, 2 March 2021 (UTC)

I think an explanatory note in the etymology would be clear enough. And a usage note or label to indicate how common it is. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 05:21, 59 March 2021 (UTC)

Why not define it as "cowbane (Cicuta virosa)". A usage note could cover use (mostly in fiction?). The etymology could cover the origins and circulation in mentions. I note that no OneLook reference, except us, has it. DCDuring (talk) 06:19, 5 March 2021 (UTC)

It is a bit bothersome that some of the mentions and uses are of spotted corobane and striped corobane, neither of which seems to be attestable at first look. DCDuring (talk) 06:23, 5 March 2021 (UTC)

I was a bit tired when I wrote the above and repeated myself. Actually, cowbane refers to both Cicuta virosa and Cicuta maculata. The name no doubt originated with C. virosa in Europe, but that species is fairly obscure compared to Conium maculatum, while Cicuta maculata is better known in North America. In the California Indian ethnobotanical literature it's usually called "wild parsnip" or "poison parsnip". As for "spotted corobane", that occurrence in the Grieve Modern Herbal index I mentioned is for "spotted corobane", not plain "corobane". I suspect pretty much all of the usage comes form people who looked up the plant in other references and copied the lists of common names. When referring to the plant in running text, more familiar names are more likely to be used. In fiction, an author is more likely to just arbitrarily pick something that sounds unusual from a list and use it like they know what it means. They might even have changed the name a bit to prevent readers from experimenting with the plant. After all, this is potent enough to be used as an arrow poison, so even handling the stuff is not a good idea.

I should also mention that Conium maculatum and Cicuta maculata sharing the same specific epithet has led to a lot of authors thinking they're synonyms for the same species- it's a real mess all around. Chuck Entz (talk) 08:11, 5 March 2021 (UTC)

I took a run at it. Would it be best to send a reader to [[cowbane]] or does the error only apply to the one taxonomic name? DCDuring (talk) 14:54, 5 March 2021 (UTC)

Grieve (1931, online) has Circuta maculata as American cowbean! Few other works even mention the name. DCDuring (talk) 15:00, 5 March 2021 (UTC)

Turkish pronunciation

Hi,

(please let me know if there's a better place to talk about this issue...)Moved from RFV by Metaknowledge.

I think the pronunciation of many Turkish words may be wrong. For instance, Turkish speakers I know (from Istanbul, Bursa and Izmir mainly) do not pronounce şimdi as /ˈʃim.di/ but as /ˈʃim.dɪ/. Same for online examples. Indeed, per Wikipedia: "/i, y, u, e, ø/ (but not /o, a/) are lowered to [ɪ, ʏ, ʊ, ɛ, œ] in environments variously described as "final open syllable of a phrase" and "word-final"."

If I'm right then the pronunciation of many (all?) Turkish words ending in /i, y, u, e, ø/ should be changed to [ɪ, ʏ, ʊ, ɛ, œ]. There may be issue even in the middle of the word, for instance: mutluluk: [mut.ɫu.ɫuk] -> [mut.ɫʊ.ɫʊk]. I don't know Turkish well enough to be sure of this, that's why I do this request for verification.

A455bcd9 (talk) 21:54, 1 March 2021 (UTC)

As long as there's no phonemic contrast between [i] and [ɪ] (and likewise for the other pairs), then the phonemic transcription /ˈʃim.di/ is correct. We may choose also to include the phonetic transcription [ˈʃim.dɪ], but it does need to be in square brackets, not slashes, and ideally should be listed in addition to the phonemic transcription in slashes. —Mahāgaja · talk 22:04, 1 March 2021 (UTC)

In my limited exposure to spoken Turkish, what caught my ear was the above-mentioned variation of e and i, plus devoicing of final r to something that I would call sh except it isn't. (I'd be terrible at speaking Welsh, I'm sure.). Redhouse's transcription of Ottoman Turkish has four versions of a, which may have been influenced by people trying to speak Arabic and Persian words properly. Are the patterns consistent enough for a wizard to conjure up a {{tr-IPA}}? Vox Sciurorum (talk) 22:21, 1 March 2021 (UTC)

Hi, Thanks for moving my post here.

I didn't know the difference between phonetic and phonemic transcription before, now it makes more sense but as a "non-expert" user it's very confusing when you read the IPA on Wiktionary and repeat it exactly to a native speaker who doesn't understand or tells you it's wrong...

Yes, I forgot the final r, this is also a recurring issue for me when I consult Turkish entries on the Wiktionary. Per Wikipedia: "/ɾ/ is frequently devoiced word-finally and before a voiceless consonant.[3] According to one source,[9] it is only realized as a modal tap intervocalically. Word-initially, a location /ɾ/ is restricted from occurring in native words, the constriction at the alveolar ridge narrows sufficiently to create frication but without making full contact, [ɾ̞]; the same happens in word-final position: [ɾ̞̊].[9]"

Other issue (still from Wikipedia): "In native Turkic words, the velar consonants /k, ɡ/ are palatalized to [c, ɟ] (similar to Russian) when adjacent to the front vowels /e, i, ø, y/. Similarly, the consonant /l/ is realized as a clear or light [l] next to front vowels (including word finally), and as a velarized [ɫ] next to the central and back vowels /a, ɯ, o, u/. These alternations are not indicated orthographically: the same letters ⟨k⟩, ⟨g⟩, and ⟨l⟩ are used for both pronunciations. In foreign borrowings and proper nouns, however, these distinct realizations of /k, ɡ, l/ are contrastive. In particular, [c, ɟ] and clear [l] are sometimes found in conjunction with the vowels [a] and [u]." (for instance: hikaye or belki)

I think most of these patterns are consistent and an algorithm could generate the IPA. A simpler (and/or temporary) solution could a note {{tr-IPA-help}} explaining that the pronunciation given on Turkish entries is the phonemic transcription and that in practice /i, y, u, e, ø/ are lowered to [ɪ, ʏ, ʊ, ɛ, œ] in final and /ɾ/ to /ɾ̥/ in final. A455bcd9 (talk) 22:53, 1 March 2021 (UTC)

Actual Turkish pronunciation is full of allophones, like [ä] versus [ɑ], and I sometimes hear this vowel realized as a front vowel [a], as in [äbɫa] and [haɫa]. For many entries the pronunciation section gives a narrow transcription, such as [bänɫijø] for banliyö, sometimes presented as if broad, like seen for /tɑˈbɑk/ – note that the Wikipedia article Turkish phonology to which we refer as the key for the IPA symbols just has the notation /a/. I also hear [jæɫɯ] with a very frontal vowel. I hear [kalɛ], and not the pronunciation [kɑle] given at kale. There are also regional and register differences, such as the elision of a final /ɾ/ or its replacement by [ʐ] as heard in [biʐ], and the pronunciation [nabɛɾ] for ne haber). Therefore I actually prefer a broad transcription – in particular when (not contrastive) realizations are entirely predictable. Apart from the stress, generating the pronunciations should be amenable to automation if it allows for the occasional exception – but I fear there are too many exceptions to the usual final stress to make this worthwhile.  --Lambiam 14:23, 2 March 2021 (UTC)

I don't see why; if someone makes {{tr-IPA}} it just needs to take a parameter |1= where the stress can be specified manually if it isn't on the final syllable, along with anything else that isn't predictable from the spelling (like palatalized vs. nonpalatalized realizations of ⟨k⟩, ⟨g⟩, and ⟨l⟩). —Mahāgaja · talk 17:08, 2 March 2021 (UTC)

Well, I was not arguing against someone undertaking the effort. Automatically generated pronunciations should have some bit though to signal them as not-yet-checked, which needs to be explicitly set to “checked” by hand. It occurred to me that vowel length is usually short, but that this too has many exceptions. What about the issue of narrow versus broad transcriptions?  --Lambiam 19:58, 5 March 2021 (UTC)

on the hoof

While finding quotations for on the hoof, I found a couple uses (both from books by Robert Heinlein) that I had a hard time parsing.

• 1959, Robert A. Heinlein, Starship Troopers‎^[2]:

  “I just want to remind you apes that each and every one of you has cost the gov’ment, counting weapons, armor, ammo, instrumentation, and training, everything, including the way you overeat—has cost, on the hoof, better’n half a million. Add in the thirty cents you are actually worth and that runs to quite a sum.”

• 1961, Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land‎^[3]:

  Jubal settled back in the tub, was surprised to find that he was not tired and his bones no longer ached. Patty was a tonic... happiness on the hoof.

Can anyone (possibly more familiar with the books) make sense of these? My best guess with the first quote is that the Sergeant, by talking about the cost of the men "on the hoof" is demeaning them by talking about them as if they're cattle? The second one I can't even guess at. Colin M (talk) 00:44, 2 March 2021 (UTC)

I read the second as something like "embodied". Ie, Patty was the embodiment of happiness. It could be taken as demeaning these days and may have been so to some extent even at the time. After all, science fiction was written for males. DCDuring (talk) 00:02, 3 March 2021 (UTC)

Fairlex Dictionary of Idioms has "Alive, as of cattle that have not yet been slaughtered." as one of their three definitions. That strikes me as an improvement on our first definition, reflecting modern extended use. It still doesn't quite fit the first example, though it is OK for the second. DCDuring (talk) 14:59, 3 March 2021 (UTC)

No, the first example has nothing to do with talking about the men as if they were cattle. It means "without going into it in too much detail, without studying the numbers too accurately". It means it's just a rough guess or broad-brush estimate. 81.154.42.114 07:34, 3 March 2021 (UTC)

That definition is UK. Heinlein does not seem to have been much influenced by UK speech. Moreover, when did that usage come into being in the UK? Starship Troopers, the novel was published in 1959 (movie loose adaptation 1997); Stranger in a Strange Land was published in 1961. DCDuring (talk) 15:20, 3 March 2021 (UTC)

I don't see any use of the "impromptu; off the cuff" sense until after 1980 in the UK. DCDuring (talk) 16:21, 3 March 2021 (UTC)

On the hoof means "on the fly". The meaning of the second example is what I stated it as. You claim we would need to investigate how long the usage has been in the UK. I don't know how to investigate that, but if this usage is in a book from 1959, wherever that book was published, this usagew must have been around in 1959.81.154.42.114 19:29, 4 March 2021 (UTC)

Find some evidence: unambiguous usage in that sense from before 1960 or a dictionary entry published before 1960. I couldn't. You could try the OED. DCDuring (talk) 00:10, 5 March 2021 (UTC)

We've found evidence from Starship Troopers. 81.154.42.114 08:30, 5 March 2021 (UTC)

This is circular reasoning. In cattle markets, you have a price “on the hoof”, which, by the pound, is considerably lower than for meat after butchering. How can we be sure that Sergeant Jelal does not use the term to emphasize that his high cost quote is actually on the low side?  --Lambiam 18:13, 5 March 2021 (UTC)

Indian English and tide over

In a Victorian novel I found a use of tide over to mean "endure" (as in "tide over a storm", "tide over a crisis"). This seems to have died off in the early 20th century in the west, but I was surprised to find many uses by Indian writers. For example, if you search google for "tide over this difficult situation" or "tide over the issue", basically all the results are Indian newspapers or papers/blogs written by Indian people. Similar situation on Google books. Just wondering if anyone familiar with Indian English can confirm that labelling the sense as such is accurate? (Or conversely, anyone who has this in their idiolect but doesn't speak Indian English?) Colin M (talk) 03:34, 2 March 2021 (UTC)

four-stroke, cross-ply: PoS

I created both these with senses such as in "four-stroke engine", "four-stroke principle", "cross-ply tyre" listed as adjectives. I did feel that these were debatable at the time, though Oxford and Collins do list both as adjectives (not that I always trust their judgement in these matters). In contrast, we also presently have two-stroke in e.g. "two-stroke engine" as an attributive noun. What's the view on these? Mihia (talk) 12:03, 2 March 2021 (UTC)

Two-stroke corresponds to the NP two strokes. The loss of the s is arguably a part of English morphology, so perhaps we don't need any entry for two-stroke, but it seems wrong to call it a noun when it does not follow number agreement, which would require two strokes. Something similar happens with cross-ply. It takes at least two plies to make an objective that is said to be cross-ply. IOW, adjective makes more sense to me than noun as word class. But if we, Oxford, and Collins didn't have entries for these, would any users be unable to figure the meaning of the expressions from their components? DCDuring (talk) 18:47, 2 March 2021 (UTC)

My answer to your last question is yes, very probably, and I feel happy that we should have some kind of entries for all these. I would say that this kind of change of number, generally speaking, is a regular feature of English that occurs because of reluctance to use plural attributive nouns, and can be seen also in cases that are unequivocally nouns, so may not be conclusive in itself, albeit, as you say, "two stroke" is not possible by itself. Going down the adjective route, if you look at, say, "two-stroke principle", one of the present usexes, it is hard to see that a principle can in any sense be two-stroke in a way that an engine can, even allowing for attributive-only adjectival use. But I can't bear thinking about having "two-stroke engine" as adjective and "two-stroke principle" as noun. That way madness lies. Mihia (talk) 19:07, 2 March 2021 (UTC)

Do we know for sure that it is attributive-only? I agree that it is unlikely to be comparable or gradable except in exceptional cases. But consider, eg, "whether the Diesel engine shall be two stroke or four stroke."; "In 1975, 42 % of the vehicles on the road were two-stroke, but in 1975, their number rose to 73%."; "A lot of dirtbikes are two-stroke."; "Slow-speed engines, up to 200 rpm, are two-stroke with separate combustion chamber and sump connected by a crosshead, with trunk and system oil lubricants for each.". I rest your case! DCDuring (talk) 23:23, 2 March 2021 (UTC)

I think you are quite probably right that we should convert the main attributive "two-stroke" sense to adj., but the point is not quite rested, because my (last) point was about "two-stroke engine" versus "two-stroke principle", which is where I started, or at least continued, becoming confused. "Attributive-only" referred to the "principle" example: Yes, an engine can be "two-stroke", but let's look at the example "The majority of modern internal combustion engines are based on the four-stroke principle". Even if we could say that "the principle is four-stroke", it seems implausible to me that "four-stroke" could possibly be an adjective there. So, is "four-stroke" really a different PoS in "four-stroke engine" and "four-stroke principle" (contrary to the present examples at four-stroke)? Perhaps we have to accept that it is? Mihia (talk) 01:43, 3 March 2021 (UTC)

I would very much like to dismiss the 4-stroke principle type of example as metonymy for the first sense. I think that is correct, but usually folks don't accept that kind of simplification. DCDuring (talk) 02:37, 3 March 2021 (UTC)

That's a good point. We do already have the sense "four-stroke = four-stroke engine" anyway; I wonder if it would be too much of a stretch to assign the "four-stroke principle" example to that? Generally speaking, this whole area seems to be somewhat of a rats' nest. For example, we could also look at something like "hydraulic principle". The principle is not in itself "hydraulic", so is "hydraulic" still an adjective? I would say quite possibly not. Anyway, I'll change the existing "attributive" sense of two-stroke to adjective, as you suggest, to at least cover the main uses as in e.g. "two-stroke engine". Mihia (talk) 10:33, 3 March 2021 (UTC)

ätstörning

The entry for the Swedish noun ätstörning (eating disorder) classifies it as masculine. Is that correct? Terms on -ing, such as bokföring and rengöring, are usually classified as having common gender.  --Lambiam 12:08, March 2, 2021 (UTC)

Nouns are technically not divided into masculine or feminine in Swedish – ätstörning is common gender. --Robbie SWE (talk) 19:20, 2 March 2021 (UTC)

The masculine gender is dying but not yet dead. See Category:Swedish masculine nouns. Vox Sciurorum (talk) 19:41, 2 March 2021 (UTC)

Not from a grammatical standpoint – Swedish has only the common and the neuter gender. That category is actually quite laughable ("cottage cheese"? An Anglicism, not even used outside of imported goods and by bad marketers). Practically all of the words in that category have the common gender. --Robbie SWE (talk) 20:04, 2 March 2021 (UTC)

Is the inflection gamle in the book title Den gamle och havet not grammatically determined by the masculine gender?  --Lambiam 22:06, 2 March 2021 (UTC)

That's a difficult question: gamle has a common gender, but can only be used to refer to males. We have a grammatical gender and a "physical" gender to consider. --Robbie SWE (talk) 22:10, 2 March 2021 (UTC)

digrafo, grafo orientado

Mathematical definitions are often inconsistent. Although sometimes digrafo/grafo direcionado and grafo orientado are treated as synonyms, some others they represent different objects. A digrafo represents a directed graph in the sense presented in Wikipedia, that is, they are graphs whose edges have direction associated with them. A grafo orientado is a digraph (as defined before and also with the sense presented in oriented graph of the Wikipedia page above), where an (a,b) pair implies there's no (b,a) pair. I would like to add these distinctions but I'm a bit confused how's the best way to do it. How do you think it's the best way to solve this situation? - Sarilho1 (talk) 15:12, 2 March 2021 (UTC)

The Portuguese Wikipedia treats them as synonyms – although the article Digrafo is solely about the orthographic sense and fails to refer to the graph-theoretical sense. If they are not synonyms, I suggest that you first change this on the Portuguese Wikipedia, where people are more likely to search for the term than here. I think we ought to have an English entry for oriented graph, and then grafo orientado can be redefined as “oriented graph”, perhaps with a brief gloss such as “(a directed graph with at most one edge between any pair of vertices)” to avoid needless link clicking.  --Lambiam 21:22, 2 March 2021 (UTC)

@Lambiam Problem is that some authors treat them as synonyms and other give distinct definitions for the two. I could open a discussion in Portuguese Wikipedia to try settle terminology, but I don't think this ambiguity goes away with just that. - Sarilho1 (talk) 21:50, 2 March 2021 (UTC)

If both senses are used and attestable in durably archived media such as books or journal articles, we should simply list both: “1. ... / 2. ...”, like we do in general in such cases. For an example, see natural number. If the policies at the Portuguese Wikipedia are like at the English one, the different uses of this term should also be noted there.  --Lambiam 21:59, 2 March 2021 (UTC)

I did my bachelor’s thesis on graphs, and all mentions of digrafo by my professors and texts that I can recall were as a synonym of grafo orientado and grafo direcionado. They never used the term, mind you -- it was only ever mentioned. No distinction between grafo orientado and direcionado was ever mentioned AFAIR.

But I do not doubt that it may exist; this kind of minor semantic distinction that is observed by some and not by others is common in technical terminology. A similar situation is found in camelo vs. dromedário where some speakers treat them as strictly distinct concepts and others treat the latter as a hyponym of the former.

Assuming both ways of using the set of terms pass the criteria for inclusion, the way I’d solve this is by adding a new definition to grafo direcionado along the lines of “(specifically) a graph that has such and such characterisitcs, [as opposed to grafo orientado, which has such and such characteristics instead]” and vice-versa. See also the qualifier to the synonym of mico for how I dealt with pointing to such a state of affairs (poorly perhaps? Suggestions welcome).

Incidentally, I advise against taking anything the Portuguese Wikipedia says about how any term is used at face value. — Ungoliant ^(falai) 23:15, 2 March 2021 (UTC)

Gayphobia and gayphobe

In both its academic and popular usage, the term "gayphobia" is used to refer primarily to the "Fear, dislike, or hatred of male homosexuals" (See: Your Dictionary, Find Words, Definify, Glosbe; Also: Encyclopedia of Cross-Cultural School Psychology p. 524, University of Lausanne anti-discrimination, The Dictionary of Homophobia, and Journal of Clinical & Developmental Psychology). Currently, both gayphobia and gayphobe privilege a more obscure definition: "Fear, dislike or hatred of gay people" rather than more specifically gay men. This less-used definition is only found in one source, an "Empowerment Series" text by Karen K. Kirst-Ashman. Wiktionary's definitions should match with both all other popular and academic definitions of these two terms. — This unsigned comment was added by RADICALFAIRY (talk • contribs) at 17:58, 2 March 2021‎ (UTC).

What we're interested in is how the word is actually used, not how other people have defined it. If the word "in the wild" is always used to refer to the fear/hatred of gay men only, then that's how we'll define it. If it's used more generally as a synonym of homophobia, then that's how we'll define it. If it's used in both senses (e.g. in the first sense by some writers and in the second by others), then we'll include both senses in our definition. I would recommend gathering evidence of real-world usage at Citations:gayphobia and seeing what turns up. —Mahāgaja · talk 18:06, 2 March 2021 (UTC)

Ok, thanks! I added a few. RADICALFAIRY (talk) 19:06, 2 March 2021 (UTC)

@Mahagaja: Basically all instances of the term I found "in the wild" refer to gayphobia as "the fear/hatred of gay men only." What now? RADICALFAIRY (talk) 21:49, 2 March 2021 (UTC)

In that case, I was going to suggest what I see Mahagaja has already correctly done, which is move the gay-man-specific sense up from being a subsense. :) (Side not, the one "broad" cite we have so far hints at the broad meaning "gay" has long been able to have in some cases, by which it includes not only e.g. bi but sometimes even trans, which is widespread informally when e.g. bi or pan people talk about being so "gay", but which is tedious to find clear cites for. I brought that up on Talk:gay earlier wrongly assuming it was dated.) - -sche (discuss) 22:07, 3 March 2021 (UTC)

two-stroke, four-stroke

Attributive use of two-stroke and four-stroke is clearly not limited to the specific phrases two-stroke engine and four-stroke engine, and, with the attributive senses covered at the former, the latter are seen to be redundant, and I have made them redirects (which I dislike doing, but that's another story). However, this has thrown up the issue of what to do with the translations formerly at two-stroke engine and four-stroke engine. As it happens, one of the meanings of two/four-stroke is two/four-stroke engine, so in a superficial way the translations can go at two/four-stroke, which is where I have for now plonked them, but to me this seems illogical, since the translations are translations of two/four-stroke engine, not two/four-stroke used in the sense of two/four-stroke engine, if you get my drift. What to do with this? Is it worth creating "translation hub" entries at two/four-stroke engine, or is that overkill? What do you think? Mihia (talk) 18:38, 2 March 2021 (UTC)

• OK, well since there have been no comments, I have reinstated two-stroke engine and four-stroke engine just to host the existing translations. Anyone thinks these articles are redundant, please feel free to refer them to RFD. Mihia (talk) 17:25, 7 March 2021 (UTC)

-stan

This seems to be more a gloss of the Persian rather than an explanation of how it is used in English.

The OED has two relevant entries:

• "A country with a name ending in -stan; a central Asian country, esp. a republic which was formerly part of the Soviet Union." (for stan)
• "(frequently humorous) Used as the second element in fictitious place names with the sense 'the notional realm or domain dominated by or centred around—', 'a world typified or characterized by—'", giving examples like Somewherestan.

I think the OED's definitions still miss cases like Londonistan, but it's clearly much better than what is currently at -stan.--Tibidibi (talk) 15:52, 3 March 2021 (UTC)

• Our definition is poor. Is -stan productive in a serious sense in English? Most of the contents of Category:English words suffixed with -stan are borrowings rather than English formations, e.g. Dagestan can be explained as a borrowing from Turkish داغستان. Londonistan, an English coinage, is informal. If it is part of a pattern it might suggest a meaning "place with people we associate with the stans." Vox Sciurorum (talk) 16:29, 3 March 2021 (UTC)

@Vox Sciurorum, somewherestan and whereverstan also seem (if barely) attestable (also perhaps nowherestan), where “-stan” probably means “exotic country”, and there are some back-formations from bantustan as well. In addition, I think most English speakers would analyze e.g. “Afghanistan” as “Afghan-i-stan”, so the geographic “-stan” is an English suffix in a synchronic sense.--Tibidibi (talk) 16:46, 3 March 2021 (UTC)

kunst meaning art

Middle Low German kunst originally meant knowledge, skill, and related concepts.(1) But its borrowings (Danish kunst, Estonian kunst, Norwegian Bokmål kunst) mean principally art, which I take to mean something artistic as opposed to a fancy synonym of expertise. High German shows a similar development, from primarily about knowledge and skill in Old High German(2) to primarily art in modern German.

(1) "Können, Vermögen, Fähigkeit, geistige Tätigkeit, Beschlagenheit, Wissen, Kenntnis, Gelehrsamkeit, Geschicklichkeit, Fertigkeit, Handwerkskunst, kunstvolles Werk, handwerklich vollkommenes Werk, mechanische Vorrichtung zur Beförderung (zum Wasserschöpfen)" (Köbler)

(2) "Kenntnis, Wissen, Vermögen, Fähigkeit, Können, Fertigkeit, Verständnis, Kunst; knowledge, ability" (Köbler)

Was the art meaning around a thousand years ago, or did it develop in parallel in several languages? (I recall seeing a lot of Plautdietsch translations added but I forget who did it. Whoever added them might have some insight on the inherited sense from Middle Low German.) Vox Sciurorum (talk) 16:20, 3 March 2021 (UTC)

Latin ars has the same dual meaning, as does Ancient Greek τέχνη (tékhnē). Historically, there was no clear distinction between being an artist and being an artisan. Today's stricter separation probably grew in tandem all over Europe.  --Lambiam 02:17, 4 March 2021 (UTC)

There's also always the possibility of semantic loans: if τέχνη (tékhnē) develops a second sense, then ars may develop the same second sense, and if ars develops a second sense, then kunst may develop the same second sense, and so on. —Mahāgaja · talk 08:09, 4 March 2021 (UTC)

However, in all uses the term referred to the skill, profession or activity, not to the product thereof. A question like “But is it art?” is not translatable to Ancient Greek or Classical Latin because the modern concept did not exist. Cicero would have understood the statement hoc non est enim ars as meaning “this is not really a skill”.  --Lambiam 17:48, 5 March 2021 (UTC)

forward

2. Without customary restraint or modesty; bold, cheeky, pert, presumptuous or pushy.

4. Ready; prompt; ardently inclined; in a bad sense, eager or hasty.

Anyone recognise #4, as distinct from #2, as being in modern use? Present citations are from c. 1600. If not, I will label it obsolete. Mihia (talk)

• I don't recognize the ready sense (except in military use, where physical forward deployment is associated with being more ready). If you call it obsolete I would remove the part after the last semicolon, which is the same as sense 2. And rearrange chronologically. Vox Sciurorum (talk) 18:34, 3 March 2021 (UTC)

OK, thanks, I've labelled it obsolete. If a modern use later occurs to someone, please un-obsolete it and add a modern example. Mihia (talk) 14:33, 4 March 2021 (UTC)

perseverant vs persevering

Is there a difference between the adjectives perseverant and persevering ? Thx Jona (talk) 21:39, 3 March 2021 (UTC)

To me, persevering is more specific: it implies a continual effort in the face of adversity. One can be perseverant by being obstinate, not requiring an effort, and also by continuing to work till a problem is solved or the work is done – which does require effort, but not an effort in a context of adversity.  --Lambiam 02:07, 4 March 2021 (UTC)

Turkish conjugation 3rd person plural imperfective past

Hi,

The conjugation table for almak gives alıyorlardı as the form for the 3rd person plural of the direct past imperfective. For other persons the forms follows the regular -du + -m, -n, -, -k, -niz. However, another website gives alıyordular. I asked one native speaker (young adult) who also naturally said alıyordular but told me the other one (alıyorlardı) was also possible and more common, and probably more correct.

There's the same thing with alırlarmış vs alırmışlar. As a matter of comparison, Azerbaijani, Wiktionary gives the "regular" form "alırmışlar" for almaq.

In both cases, forms not ending with -lar have way more results on Google:

• "alıyorlardı": About 495,000 results
• "alıyordular": About 1,740 results
• "alırlarmış": About 22,700 results
• "alırmışlar": About 2,980 results
• "ediyorlardı": About 2,050,000 results
• "ediyordular": About 6,330 results
• "yapıyorlardı": About 997,000 results
• "yapıyordular": About 4,250 results

So is alıyordular a "mistake"? A colloquial spoken form? Is its usage rising?

(Also: there's a bug in the conjugation table of etmek for the indirect aorist tense)

Best, A455bcd9 (talk) 10:46, 4 March 2021 (UTC)

The nl wiktionary gives both yapıyorlardı and yapıyordular. If both forms are used this could be a solution for the English wiktionary. We could have "yapıyorlardı (formal), yapıyordular (colloquial)" in the table. A455bcd9 (talk) 10:52, 4 March 2021 (UTC)

The Turkish Wiktionary only gives yapıyordular. Sometimes it gives the two forms: yaparsalar and yaparlarsa for instance. Same for gitmek and gelmek. A455bcd9 (talk) 16:49, 4 March 2021 (UTC)

Tahir Nejat Gencan in Dilbilgisi published by TDK in 1979 also gives both forms (i.e. "geliyorsalar — geliyorlarsa" and "geliyordular — geliyorlardı" on page 362 but without any explanation... A455bcd9 (talk) 17:14, 4 March 2021 (UTC)

According to an instructional YouTube video for the definite past tense -lardı, -dılar, and -dı are all correct for the third person plural, i.e. -lar is optional and -dı can come before or after. The same flexibility appears to be present here. Vox Sciurorum (talk) 17:28, 4 March 2021 (UTC)

Thanks Vox Sciurorum. I tried to look at other books and scholar articles. "Yabancılar için Türkçe-İngilizce açıklamalı Türkçe dersleri", by Kaya Can, 1991, says: "In the third person plural 'geliyorlardı' is more frequently used instead of 'geliyordular'" (read online). Modern Studies in Turkish Linguistics, Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Turkish Linguistics : 12-14 August 1992, says the same (read online). This article says: "Sometimes person suffix and second tense suffix may interchange their positions in the verbal inflectional structure depicted in Figure 2 (‘geliyorlardı’ = ‘geliyordular’)." but without explaining why. Studies in Turkish Linguistics, 1986, provides a potential explanation: "Cites Turkish examples such as geliyordular, geliyorlardı, geldiydim, geldimdi. Makes an interesting suggestion that the origin of such pairs lies in the ambiguity of the 3rd sg.: geldiydi may be gel + di + di + 0 or gel + di + 0 + di." Anyway based on all these sources and what you said, and as I can't find anything else I suggest to have both forms in the conjugation table. We could add "rare" after the least frequent one (based on aforementioned sources, confirmed by Google). What do you think? A455bcd9 (talk) 17:37, 4 March 2021 (UTC)

Another hypothesis (mine) is that the less regular order of the suffixes seen in alıyordular developed under the influence of such verb forms as sordular (a form of sormak), where this is the obligatory order; *sorlardı is just not possible.  --Lambiam 15:58, 5 March 2021 (UTC)

Lewis (Turkish Grammar, p. 109) adds “(alıyordular)” between parentheses below “alıyorlardı”.  --Lambiam 16:50, 5 March 2021 (UTC)

Hi Lambiam, is sormak especially relevant or do you just give it as an example? Aren't all direct past perfective forms in -dılar? A455bcd9 (talk) 09:30, 6 March 2021 (UTC)

Nothing special; I picked it to make the similarity more apparent, with both this specific perfective form and the irregular imperfective forms having an ...ordular ending. But aldılar works as well to make the point (for people knowing some Turkish).  --Lambiam 16:03, 6 March 2021 (UTC)

Pinging @Betseg.  --Lambiam 15:48, 5 March 2021 (UTC)

Hi yes it's me native Turkish speaker with an İstanbul accent mixed with a bit of an Aegean accent. Putting -lar at the end (like "alıyordular") feels a bit awkward, and my Firefox puts a red underline on it, though I have noticed that Eastern accents are more likely to use the -lar at the end? I'm not really sure.

Also yes I did a bot and a new Turkish conjugation template that was supposed to be better etc but uni got in the way. If everything is still ok can I do the thing this weekend? --Betseg (talk) 16:13, 5 March 2021 (UTC)

Bot vote --Betseg (talk) 16:33, 5 March 2021 (UTC)

Hi, if you have a new Turkish conjugation template that's amazing! Many forms are missing in the current one, especially imperative and "şart" form with "sa"/"if", can't wait to see the result :) The native speaker I asked is of Georgian + Rize descent and the -lar ending seems the most common in Azerbaijani, and you noticed it more among Eastern accents, so it's probably an Eastern feature. A455bcd9 (talk) 17:25, 5 March 2021 (UTC)

Names of types of measures, bare unfounded red links or bare sums of parts‽

What do Wiktionarians think we should have? I tried to make out a pattern when linking such terms when creating measure names, the last four years. We have unit of measure, weight measure, dry measure, liquid measure. As I speak we do not have square measure, linear measure, field measure, solid measure, area measure, areal measure, which have been good English. I assessed that it does not make a difference whether an adjective or compounded noun precedes the word measure or there is a prepositional expression with “of”, e.g. unit of distance, unit of mass, unit of angle or unit of area, which @Metaknowledge recently unlinked as SOP. Some of these seem more idiomatic, as in better English, than reverse expressions; not only that it is a paradox that we employ in the dictionary the term unit of currency but only have monetary unit.

All can be reckoned as sums-of-their-parts expressions, on the other hand they are necessary idiomatic designations of things, often having not-so-obvious translations, that is to say at least one seeks such entries because one asks oneself or wants to make sure what the idiomatic term in a foreign language is. However there is a bode that owing to measures for specific fields having been so common we may not run out of supply of such names: corn measure, wine measure, beer measure, apothecary weight, apothecary's weight. Delete all or take all attested? For German we have to take all anyway because d'oh it’s written together. More alluringly, there are lemmings for the less specific ones. Fay Freak (talk) 12:56, 4 March 2021 (UTC)

I don't see anything non-SoP in the present entries for unit of measure, weight measure or unit of measurement, though the definition of the last of these seems odd to me anyway. I guess dry measure could survive if it is specifically a unit of volume (rather than weight) (or maybe in any case?). Mihia (talk) 21:56, 4 March 2021 (UTC)

pronunciation of aardvark

Hi, I accept the transcription as given, as some minor points are not noted in phonological or broad transcription. But when I say this word there is no d.The d assimilates to v by place of articulation, and becomes labiodental. There is an IPA symbol for a voiced labiodental plosive, which is [b̪]. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voiced_labiodental_plosive . So what I came up with is [ˈɑːb̪.vɑːˀk]. I think there are people who don't assimilate - assimilation seems always to be optional in English, as you can always pronounce things closer to the spelling, but in natural, running colloquial English, that is the pronunciation I would use.81.154.42.114 08:36, 5 March 2021 (UTC)

When I say it, I have the [d] and the labiodental stop simultaneously, so for me, it would be [ˈɑɹd͡b̪.vɑɹk]. I don't think this kind of extremely narrow phonetic transcription is of any use whatsoever in a dictionary, though. —Mahāgaja · talk 11:16, 5 March 2021 (UTC)

As an avid language learner, I disagree. It's very useful to know when certain sounds are assimilated into other sounds, and how. It's tough to find this information too, so having it in entries would be quite useful. If you're trying to sound more like a native speaker, this is one of the things that will make all the difference in the world and is not intuitive to non-linguists. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 02:07, 7 March 2021 (UTC)

I agree with Mahagaja. If anything is certain here, no evidence has been presented that substantiates an even "minor-use" /ˈɑ(ɹ)b̪.vɑ(ɹ)k/ pronunciation like that mentioned in 81.154.42.114's comment. We ought not to list trivial realisations that a tiny number of people (potentially!) may have of a word.

There ought to be a purpose in us listing a pronunciation. Wiktionary might not be a paper dictionary (and thus not limited by said format with regard to how much it can contain) but it is also not an exhaustive library of every possible realisation of every possible word in every language.

In other words, the pronunciation sections of most entries ought not to have loads upon loads of narrow transcriptions following (a) broad transcription(s). Tharthan (talk) 03:37, 7 March 2021 (UTC)

Tharthan, are you saying that I do **not** pronounce the word the way I said? I stated in the opening comment that **that was my pronunciation**. I didn't make wider claims - although living in England, I can tell you for nothing that many/most do assimilate in such environments. It's anecdotal, but the only reason why it is only anecdotal is that all dictionaries have only broad transcriptions, and so you wouldn't know either way by consulting, e.g. the OED. As a broad transcription, you could then infer that many speakers will assimilate "on the fly", and produce an actual realisation that isn't exactly what the dictionary said. Where is my evidence that most speakers say "im bed" and "in bed"? No dictionary says so.... By the way, I **did** agree with Mahagaja that a dictionary should not contain very narrow transcriptions (unless a specialised dictionary aiming to give narrow transcriptions, for which there might be a minor use). I only reply because you here insinuate that I don't have the pronunciation that I do have, or that if I do, no-one else does.81.154.42.114 10:56, 7 March 2021 (UTC)

@81.154.42.114 My point was that—your own pronunciation notwithstanding—what you describe does not appear to be a dialectal difference or anything of that kind, but rather an incredibly minor pronunciation that would really only occur on an idiolectal level. Thus, not the kind of pronunciation that is fit for a dictionary. Tharthan (talk) 15:36, 7 March 2021 (UTC)

I think it's a minor detail that doesn't need to be in a dictionary, but it is ignorant for you to claim that such assimilation is merely idiolectal. Assimilation is normal colloquial pronunciation. Most people in England assimilate in the way I set out, just as most say "im bed" without realising it. I can accept that Mahagaja assimilates in a different way, by combining the d with a labiodental stop, and if so, I doubt he'd be the only one who did that. It is just wrong to keep on implying that I am the only native speaker who assimilates.81.154.42.114 19:59, 7 March 2021 (UTC)

Urius

Strange definition given as "A rare surname of Jupiter." What could be meant? I didn't know that the inhabitants of Jupiter had surnames... Oxlade2000 (talk) 09:46, 5 March 2021 (UTC)

The OED has a definition (1b), which it says is obsolete: "a second or alternative name". 81.154.42.114 09:55, 5 March 2021 (UTC)

It isn't a surname of an inhabitant of the planet Jupiter, it's a "surname" (better: "byname" or "epithet") of the Roman god Jupiter. He was probably called Jupiter Urius when worshiped in a specific location or in a specific function. —Mahāgaja · talk 11:13, 5 March 2021 (UTC)

I made an ad hoc category for divine epithets in Egyptian a while ago because there’s so many of them; would it be worthwhile to generalize this and throw [lang]:Divine epithets or somesuch in the category tree module? — Vorziblix (talk · contribs) 04:57, 7 March 2021 (UTC)

-shire pronunciation

English resident of Scotland for 10+ years here: I've noticed that particularly when pronouncing some counties, such as 'Aberdeenshire', many speakers rhyme '-shire' as-suffix with 'shire' as-standalone, i.e. /ʃaɪə(ɹ)/ in both cases. There's a couple of online discussions stating this. I suspect there's regional variation here (particularly say NE Scotland, as suggested by responses to this Reddit post). Would be good to incorporate if anyone knows better. Pechark (talk) 12:52, 5 March 2021 (UTC)

Added some stuff. Hazarasp (parlement · werkis) 11:25, 15 March 2021 (UTC)

young at heart

"Inclined to act in a way or enjoy things characteristic of a younger person. With his office cluttered with various cartoon character paraphernalia, Mr. Jones was considered quite young at heart by his co-workers." I think the definition is rather missing the point, and the usage example is misleading. Being young at heart doesn't mean being puerile, or attached to kiddy things; it means having more youthful joy and vitality, e.g. still able to dance and romance — right? Equinox ◑ 15:15, 5 March 2021 (UTC)

Right. Mihia (talk) 15:33, 5 March 2021 (UTC)

 Done Well, I've changed it. Equinox ◑ 20:08, 7 March 2021 (UTC)

Conjugation table at conjugate

Containing stuff like conjugatedst. Should that be there? Was that word ever used? Equinox ◑ 17:48, 5 March 2021 (UTC)

• Conjugatedst does not exist according to Google (one mention, no uses). Regular English verbs should not have conjugation tables. Vox Sciurorum (talk) 18:42, 5 March 2021 (UTC)

 Done Okay. Deleted. Equinox ◑ 18:46, 5 March 2021 (UTC)

Thou deletedst conjugatedst? Mihia (talk) 22:01, 5 March 2021 (UTC)

Meh. I find it strange we have big tables of German or French (etc) conjugated forms, including ones that aren't so common anymore, but are like "lol, if you want to know how a verb in the language we're written in and which we cover most extensively conjugated earlier in the modern English era, like in the era of some of the language's most famous writers like Shakespeare, tough". (Also, I think it's suboptimal from a tracking/organization standpoint for the entries on the inflected forms to not be linked-to from the main entries, when exceedingly rare obsolete alternative spellings are linked to.) I agree we shouldn't give archaic forms of verbs that didn't have them, though. At least we have Appendix:English verbs to document the patterns. (Could we link to this from each verb entry somehow, the way we have that little "dot" link before transliterations to the pages that explain our transliteration schemes? which even veteran editors have said they never realized was there / was a link...) - -sche (discuss) 22:15, 5 March 2021 (UTC)

• It always makes me chuckle to see the conjugation at give a shit. I added a full conjugation table to fuck someone's brains out too, for the lulz Oxlade2000 (talk) 22:28, 5 March 2021 (UTC)
• Sammimack (talk • contribs) added these. I think they are rubbish and should be deleted. The headword line is sufficient for all verbs except be, which has special treatment. 120.150.121.92 08:36, 6 March 2021 (UTC)

back, ago

Presently the exact same usage, as in "some years back" or "many years back", is listed as both a postposition and an adverb at back. Which should it be? ago also has both adverb and postposition sections, but it is unclear how they are supposed to differ, especially given that there are no usage examples for the adverb. Mihia (talk) 21:52, 5 March 2021 (UTC)

According to WT:AEN#Parts of Speech there's consensus to use "preposition" for all adpositions (though that consensus seems to be based on a thinly discussed post 12 years ago). The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language talks about this phenomenon on pg. 632 (in relation to ago and on). Some relevant bits:

it is syntactically highly exceptional... Traditional grammar classifies ago as an adverb, but on the basis that it takes a complement we analyse it as a preposition, in accordance with the criteria given in §2.4.

Colin M (talk) 04:28, 6 March 2021 (UTC)

As much as I like CGEL (2002), I don't think that most normal users view "preposition" as a word class appropriate for words above that are called "postpositions". I also don't believe that normal users view "postposition' as a word class. It is more of a term that would have to be looked up and that they don't recall having seen in other dictionaries or in school. "Adverb" seems good enough. Unique features of the grammar can be addressed in labels and usage notes. Innovation in linguistic terminology does not belong in our header, IMHO. As headwords, in all their novelty, variety, and overlap, we need them. As names for categories, I'm not so sure. as labels, generally not. In usage notes, OK, but the variety of terminology can make the note hard to understand. DCDuring (talk) 16:19, 6 March 2021 (UTC)

Our fundamental goal is to provide explanations useful to a wide variety of users, who, if youngish, may have learned any of a number of groups of novel terms for word classes, but who, young or old, almost always have been exposed to the traditional parts of speech. DCDuring (talk) 16:24, 6 March 2021 (UTC)

I agree with your premises, though I would take it even further. I think if you did a survey of Wiktionary readers, maybe 15% would be able to tell you what an adverb is, and 1% would be able to define a preposition. Especially in tricky cases like this where e.g. a word has some properties in common with prototypical adverbs and some properties in common with prototypical prepositions, our choice of PoS header will have almost no effect on what the reader takes away from the entry - it's really all about having good usexes/quotes, and, to a lesser extent, usage notes. So if we take it as given that our choice of header is of no consequence to the average reader, why not break the tie according to what will be more helpful for the exceptional reader who does have an understanding of or interest in the ins and outs of grammar? Calling CGEL "Innovation in linguistic terminology" might be overstating it - it's 20 years old now! According to Google Scholar it's been cited >7,000 times. Colin M (talk) 23:37, 6 March 2021 (UTC)

Has the linguistic community universally adopted CGEL's categories? I think not. There is a steady of terminological innovation, most of which does not take hold in works of general reference. Should we accept one of the CGEL's as a definitive authority? Should we have accepted Jespersen? No one ever followed him terminology. What about Poutsma or {{w|George O. Curme|Curme]]? Which version of Chomsky, or Halliday, or Croft? The newest innovation in word classes that we have adopted is determiner, invented in the 1930s by Bloomfield. Even that has not been universally adopted by all commercially successful dictionaries. DCDuring (talk) 18:03, 7 March 2021 (UTC)

Further, I don't think that dictionaries are a very useful way of learning grammar at the level of word class and phrase, clause, and discourse structure. Dictionaries can be useful in certain ares of grammar: the recording of grammatical features that are limited to unique terms or small (usually closed) sets of terms. DCDuring (talk) 18:03, 7 March 2021 (UTC)

• While we're here, we should probably also review the other members of Category:English_postpositions, as well as other lists of (alleged) English postpositions, such as at https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Category:English_postpositions. Unfortunately I just don't have a clear feel for this at all -- I mean whether these words are adverbs or some other animal. ahead and before are others not on either of these lists. I mean, is e.g. "a forecast of the average inflation rate for the period five to ten years ahead" (randomly Googled) any different from "ago"? Mihia (talk) 18:55, 6 March 2021 (UTC)

• An important difference is that the "five to ten years" is syntactically optional. i.e.

"a forecast of the average inflation rate for the period ahead"

...is grammatical, but these are not:

"a forecast of the average inflation rate for the period ago"

"a forecast of the average inflation rate for the period back"

It's for this reason that CGEL classifies the "five to ten years" as a complement in the cases of ago/back/on, but as a modifier in a case like ahead. In terms of classification, CGEL describes ahead as a preposition that cannot take an NP complement (alongside many others like upstairs, away, apart, or indoors). It gives reasons for this that I find compelling. For example, all these words can be a complement to the verb to be ("John is ahead", "The party is indoors"), whereas adverbs do not permit this ("John is exceedingly", "The party is naturally"). Colin M (talk) 23:11, 6 March 2021 (UTC)

Where the "important difference" is concerned, I considered that myself actually, but at the moment I don't buy it. Really it is only coincidence, or at least not relevant to the actual comparison that I mentioned, that "the period ahead" also works, since the bracketing in the original case is "the period [five years ahead]", where "five years ahead" is a phrase apparently exactly parallel to "five years ago". On the other, difficult point of "he is upstairs/indoors/etc.", I think presently we avoid or don't know what to do with these, or are not consistent. Could be analogous also to "he is back", below. Mihia (talk) 23:25, 6 March 2021 (UTC)

back (2)

Another awkward case of back. Presently we list uses such as "now he's back" as adverbial. Dictionaries seem to vary, and some seem to almost skirt the issue, or at any rate not emphasise it. Lexico has e.g. "he loved being back in his normal daily routine" and "sideburns are back" as adverb examples. Cambridge has "having returned to a previous place or condition" as an adjective definition, and M-W likewise "having returned or been returned", though neither with actual examples, these seem to mean the "now he's back" type of usage. Any thoughts? Mihia (talk) 20:39, 6 March 2021 (UTC)

This is similar to the issue above. Old-school grammar will analyse these as adverbs, on the theory that prepositions must take a noun phrase complement. But this leads to (arguably) an unnecessary mess where, e.g. down is said to be an adverb in "She went down to the basement", but a preposition in "We went down the mountain". The more modern linguistic take is that prepositions need not license an NP complement, hence CGEL would classify back as a preposition in all these cases.

A good reason to reject the adverb label is that adverbs generally can't be used predicatively with to be. "Now he's back" vs. "Now he's fortunately" / "Now he's again". Also, if something can be modified by "right" or "straight" it's probably a preposition rather than an adverb ("right back to the start" / "right under there" / "straight past the sign" vs. "right totally" / "right aloud").

A good reason to reject the adjective label is that back can't be used attributively ("It's a back hairstyle"), and doesn't accept degree modifiers ("Now he's too back" / "Sideburns are more back than mullets"). Colin M (talk) 00:12, 7 March 2021 (UTC)

I totally agree that adjective and adverb are both problematic for "he is back". Unfortunately, for me, preposition is more impossible than problematic, since I see no connection whatsoever with the normal meaning of the term. Mihia (talk) 01:05, 7 March 2021 (UTC)

Okay, well if you're able to get ahold of a copy of CGEL, maybe their argument will change your mind, or at least be of interest. Another very readable source is Oxford Modern English Grammar (specifically section 3.7.2 on what they call "intransitive prepositions"). Online sources on this topic are not great, but this short blog post on the topic is pretty good. Colin M (talk) 01:59, 7 March 2021 (UTC)

I don't see anything there exactly analogous to e.g. "He is back", with the "be" verb. As far as the examples such as "Rivera looked up" and "I saw him before" are concerned, where an "intransitive" word is said to be a preposition, the only evidence they offer is that you can say e.g. "looked straight up" and "saw him right before", but you can also say "shot straight upwards" and "saw him right afterwards", so are "upwards" and "afterwards" also prepositions? Also, look at all the existing adverb examples at back, and see how many of those can take "straight" and/or "right". Are all those prepositions too? Mihia (talk) 21:51, 11 March 2021 (UTC)

Just further on this topic, I think there is more of a case for us to treat these words as prepositions when there is a clear implied object. A case that came up a while ago was "vote for/against", and whether we really need adverb senses separate from the prepositional "vote for/against the proposal". Mihia (talk) 12:21, 12 March 2021 (UTC)

Also, views sought on PoS of "back" in "I left my keys back at the hotel" and "This is how they did things back in 1900". Is everyone happy that these are adverbs? Mihia (talk) 20:58, 6 March 2021 (UTC)

Sometimes these Prep+Prep combinations like "back at" or "back in" are treated atomically as one "complex" (or compound) preposition. We have many examples already in Category:English prepositions, like ahead of, across from, and indeed even back in. Generally prepositions can be mixed quite freely in English (in back of, back under, back with, back before...). Whether it's correct to analyze a given combination as a distinct compound preposition may depend on the degree to which the combination is fossilized. Is it possible to drive them apart, as in "The hotel at which I left my keys back", or "The rest of the family is back at the hotel and [back] at the park"? For wiktionary purposes, another relevant question is whether the combination can still be understood based on the sum of its parts. back under can surely be understood this way, but something like as to is clearly idiomatic. Colin M (talk) 00:32, 7 March 2021 (UTC)

Yes, for sure, some such combinations may be too idiomatic for the meanings of individual words to be easily extracted. To my mind, though, the meaning of "back" in e.g. "I left my keys back at the hotel", "This is how they did things back in 1900", and similar combinations, is surely separable since it adds a clearly identifiable sense to "I left my keys at the hotel", "This is how they did things in 1900". Mihia (talk) 11:16, 7 March 2021 (UTC)

spelling of динамо

On this page, someone has stated "дѵна́мо (dinámo) – Pre-reform orthography (1918)". It'd be interesting to know why. The letter ѵ corresponds to the Greek letter upsilon, and in English a "y" often denotes a derivation from upsilon. But in the pre-1918 period the letter was almost entirely confined to мѵрръ and сѵнодъ, "myrrh" and "synod", possibly because they are religious words where use is reinforced by Old Church Slavonic?? There may be a literal handful of very rare words (two or three) that could have rarely had ѵ, but most words deriving from upsilon did not use ѵ. Words like цилиндр "cylinder", are given in Dahl's dictionary (the famous pre-revolutionary dictionary) without ѵ. Динамо itself is not given in that Dictionary, but you can find динамика, "dynamic(s)", without ѵ. See the Wikisource transcription at ТСД2/Динамика/ДО and the image at https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/78/Толковый_словарь_Даля_(1-е_издание)._Часть_1_(1863).pdf/page390-1024px-Толковый_словарь_Даля_(1-е_издание)._Часть_1_(1863).pdf.jpg 81.154.42.114 11:05, 7 March 2021 (UTC)

The question is (I think) whether this spelling can be attested as having actually been used. We also have ѵпостась (ipostasʹ), whose historic use can be attested.^[4][5][6] The archaic use of сѵмвол^[7] may be contrived.  --Lambiam 16:47, 7 March 2021 (UTC)

Yes, that's right. It is a question over attestation. Logically, you could, e.g. if the old script was brought back, recommend using izhitsa wherever upsilon was found in Greek, and then the number of words with it would rise substantially. At some point, Russian spelling doesn't dovetail with Greek, partly because some words were taken from French. Eg. гипотез hypothesis - this was borrowed maybe from French, but had it been borrowed from Greek directly it could have been ѵпoѳесисъ. So at some point, the Greek-style spellings break down in Russian.81.154.42.114 20:06, 7 March 2021 (UTC)

gay

Can we get more eyes/input on Talk:gay? Inqvisitor changed gay from attraction to the same "sex or gender" to just "sex"; I undid this, as it's trivial/routine to find uses of gay for people or relationships where it is gender which is referred to, and indeed, when gender and assigned sex differ, applying gay by sex instead (e.g. saying a trans man dating a cis man is not gay but straight) is offensive. (It also often comes from inconsistent people; men who think a cis man dating a trans woman is gay often also call a cis man having sex with a cis woman gay, if the woman uses a strapon, and famously ask "fellas, is it gay to..." about a other things; other transphobes claim a cis woman dating a trans woman is not gay but straight, but often also say two trans women dating each other aren't gay either; etc. As Colin put it on Talk:gay, most disagreement over whether a cis woman dating a trans woman is gay is not over whether gay refers only to sex or also to gender, it's "upstream" of that, it's over whether trans women are women.)
Inqvisitor argues homosexual contains sex, and that some survey reported most gay people thought they dated by sex and not gender. (Also, some comments against "Anglophiles" I didn't follow given that we were both editing an English entry on the English Wiktionary.) I regard the first argument as etymological fallacy (and not even based on the etymology of gay, but of another, etymologically unrelated word, lol, which can be improved next, it being also offensive to apply it on the basis of sex rather than gender), and the second as accidentally demonstrating that even in a slanted, controversial survey, roughly a tenth of respondants still recognized and told the surveyer they'd date someone of the same gender but opposite sex.
IMO, the most cogent argument for just "sex" might be that most trans women or men respectively (IME) also describe themselves as female or male respectively and list (or, where prevented from doing so, want to list) their sex as matching their gender, etc, so while I think it's much clearer and better to say "sex or gender", if people prefer concision, a usex/quote about a gay trans person or relationship could illustrate the scope half as well. Among lemmings, Dictionary.com has "sex or gender", some other dictionaries have only "sex" (also typically being much less complete than our entry in other ways), and others define gay in a way that doesn't directly use either "sex" or "gender". - -sche (discuss) 19:05, 7 March 2021 (UTC)

I think your intention here is not to discuss a dictionary entry, but to push a Woke point of view. Gay men are attracted to real biological men. Of course they're not attracted to women with breasts and vaginas who claim to feel like men. 81.154.42.114 20:10, 7 March 2021 (UTC)

Some gay men are attracted to trans men, even if they do have vaginas; just like some straight men are attracted to trans women, even if they do have penises. Granted, in both cases, the attraction is stronger if the trans person has been taking hormones and has had top surgery so the overall body shape and hirsuteness matches that of the person's gender identity rather than sex assigned at birth, but still, it's true that gay men are attracted to people whose gender identity is male, even if they're AFAB. —Mahāgaja · talk 21:20, 7 March 2021 (UTC)

No, Mahagaja, I don't think that is true. I am gay and know what I'm talking about. You are just retailing extreme propaganda there. No gay man who is not bisexual would ever be attracted to a female body. And I do condemn the extremism here - this has nothing to do with a dictionary definition. The logic of your extreme statement is to wipe gay men out of existence entirely. There is no such thing as "sex assigned at birth" - there is real biological sex, which is the basis of the gay identity. 81.154.42.114 15:24, 8 March 2021 (UTC)

Uhhh... you do realize that Mahagaja is (very openly) gay, right? So he could just as easily say: "I am gay and know what I'm talking about." That's the problem with ad hominem (in this case positive rather than negative) argumentation: it pins things on incidental circumstances that may not be as you think they are. Chuck Entz (talk) 15:38, 8 March 2021 (UTC)

Well, so am I and I find his comment offensive -and deliberately designed to be so. You say you have a problem with "ad hominem", but say nothing of the posts dripping with insincerity made by people who are using political issues just to advertise presumed "virtue". The virtue signallers have no virtue, of course, but that is another issue. No sex is not assigned at birth. Listening to you, you would ask a father, "was it a boy or a girl?" and he would say, "how could you tell? there was a penis, but what does that show?" This was all cause by sche who tried to veer this discussion into far left cultural war politics - which is not what this board is for. We need to condemn such people as vocally as possible. 81.154.42.114 16:18, 8 March 2021 (UTC)

Sorry, can't you discuss this with civism? First, there's no reason for you to be insulted, Chuck Entz rightly pointed out that you being gay and therefore you know what you are talking about is a fallacy (I wouldn't say "positive ad hominem", but an outright appeal to authority). Second, accusing whoever has a different opinion of you of engaging in "far left cultural wars" and other appeals to motive aren't helpful either. You might have a point and you might even be right, but you aren't discussing anything logically, coherently, or with the respect Wiktionary deserves. So please, if you indeed are trying to improve the project, as I believe you are, express your arguments politely and with no insults or fallacies. - Sarilho1 (talk) 20:37, 8 March 2021 (UTC)

Let be be clear again. If Mahagaja is claiming to be gay and to be attracted to women.... then he is not fully gay. It's that simple. It degrades a dictionary to be re-editing entries with the sole objective of inserting culture war crap. We don't all live in California!81.154.42.114 16:19, 8 March 2021 (UTC)

Too bad we're not all fortunate enough to live in California – if you’ve never been, let me tell you, life would be so much easier and the weather definitely better. Joke aside, the only person politicising this subject as I see it, is you. Sexuality is a spectrum – Wiktionary is neither the place nor the right authority to exclude people and how they choose to describe themselves. Mind you, there are straight people out there who feel a strong sexual attraction to both sexes, but would never describe themselves as being gay or bi. And you know what? That's ok, there's enough space under the rainbow flag for everyone, even you. --Robbie SWE (talk) 18:55, 8 March 2021 (UTC)

To paraphrase a bard, there are more things on earth than are dreamt of in your ideology. I don't know that people need to disclose their specific sexual preferences—if you want to, sure, but I don't think anyone disputes that some gay people exclude trans people. Some gay people date "no fats, no fems" but I don't think the definition should be "attracted to thin people of the same [sex / gender]" or even "attracted to people, especially conventionally attractive people, of [etc]", lol.
As an aside, beyond the lack of awareness that goes into saying nothing against one person repeatedly editing the entry with the idea that it should be exclusionary, but calling edits to conserve an earlier state "culture war"—not much different, I suppose, from the common wiki tendency to think only "the other person" is edit-warring, heh—it's also amusing to see arguments about who is truly gay made in a trans-exclusionary direction, when other trans-exclusionary folks do things like be political lesbians while only attracted to men, or this (hey, it's her life, she can identify and marry how she likes). - -sche (discuss) 20:38, 9 March 2021 (UTC)

Heavens, how did I miss this whole discussion after my comment from 3 days ago? Anyway, yes I am gay (not bi, not pan, gay), and I am not attracted to women, but I am attracted to (some) trans men, even if they haven't had a phalloplasty. I'm attracted to men, not dicks – maybe this because I'm a top and so am more interested in guys' butts than their dicks anyway, and trans guys' butts are just as nice as cis guys'. Yes, they have to have undergone a certain amount of masculinization (mastectomy, testosterone therapy), but they're still people who were assigned female at birth, and being attracted to them doesn't make me less gay. —Mahāgaja · talk 13:05, 10 March 2021 (UTC)

The IP is proving Colin's point on the talk page that what is disputed is not really whether gay refers also to gender or only to sex, but whether trans men are men, which is "upstream" of this. (It is also a reminder that we could theoretically side-step the issue by not using "sex" or "gender" and just defining it in terms of e.g. "being a man attracted to other men, or a woman attracted to other women" or the like, if we felt that would be better.) - -sche (discuss) 19:21, 8 March 2021 (UTC)

Yes, a definition like "being a man attracted to other men, or a woman attracted to other women" is something that I've thought about, and I would 100% support it if only it weren't so wordy and awkward-sounding. But my feeling is that when people read "members of the same sex", they will mentally identify that with man+man or woman+woman. In the same way that same-sex is used as a synonym for gay/homosexual, and (at least in my idiolect) would be perfectly natural to apply to a relationship between a trans man and a cis man. To me, the academic meaning of sex (as contrasted with gender) only comes to mind when it's placed in the disjunction "sex or gender". Colin M (talk) 20:21, 8 March 2021 (UTC)

Yeah, wordiness is a downside to that, and I do like the existing "...attracted to the same..." format. (Let's for sure avoid "Examples being a male androphile or a female gynephile." LOL.) And yeah, as I said above, I've thought about whether it would suffice to leave "sex"; maybe let usage examples/quotes illustrate things. Maybe so. It makes me think of how certain people chant "woman = adult human female" because they think it excludes trans women, but I don't know any trans woman who feels that such a definition actually excludes them, since they are adult human females. - -sche (discuss) 21:46, 8 March 2021 (UTC)

Meanings of gay, etc., with "sex" replaced by "gender" are neologisms that deserve separate senses. Remember that last generation's radical feminist is this generation's TERF. (See also this month's Twitch womxn controversy.) Essentially everybody in the 20th century, and somewhere from a large minority to a large majority today, does not care about gender in the modern sense when saying gay. They mean men with XY chromosome pairs and penises attracted to and/or physically involved with other men with those. We shouldn't be putting concepts in their mouths. When a man counts as bi vs. gay is a separate issue which I don't think there ever was linguistic consensus on. And whether to call women gay is a third. Vox Sciurorum (talk) 20:00, 9 March 2021 (UTC)

The things some people think they use chromosomes for amuse me... most have never had theirs tested to know what they are, and I've never seen someone demand a date or stranger take a chromosome test before deciding if they find the stranger attractive (it'd be weird, and not how attraction works).
I would argue against separate senses. I think more users of the word conceive of the debate as being over the definition of the orientation/word (and it being "changed", "redefined", etc) than as the existence of 2-3+ valid senses only one of which they use, and I think it's sensible to view it like that—as a question of parameters (which differ with regard to only a few people, most having the same sex and gender), rather than as 2-3+ orientations/senses. I don't think senses would be practically distinguishable: for fifty cites along the lines of "as a gay man, I'm only into other men", we track the authors down and ask if they include trans men, and the same sentence and general orientation becomes one definition if they do, a second if they go based on current body / penis, a third if they go on assumed chromosomes and exclude postop trans men, etc? (Why not split based on whether they're "no fats, no fems, no Asians" gays or not, too? Whether they exclude fat people or Asians has a way bigger effect on who they date than whether they exclude trans men.)
Debate over what determines gender/sex extends language-wide, too: do we also split boy, lady, actress, she, etc to not "put concepts in the mouths" of people who don't view (e.g.) Laverne Cox as an actress or she vs those who do? (Do we split Jesus based on if a speaker considers him divine vs a prophet and historical vs fictitious, Christian based on if the speaker excludes Mormons, etc?) Let's not; people have different ideas of the attributes of things (even, as in the religious examples, stridently insisting Mormons aren't true Christians / true Scotsmen, etc) without it requiring lots of sense-splitting. - -sche (discuss) 22:37, 9 March 2021 (UTC)

Gay is not like Jesus. Richard Dawkins could have a conversation about Jesus with the Pope and each would understand the reference, despite disagreeing. I could talk to somebody about John Henry and we would understand each other, even if one of us thought he was a man and the other a legend. Jesus is not ambiguous. Gay is like dinosaur, which currently has three literal senses. People mean different things, the difference is important to understanding (especially in historical conext), and the difference is important to many writers, hence the rising popularity of the term non-avian dinosaur. And obviously the difference with gay important to you. This is not your first PoV-pushing incident. See Special:Diff/61163383 in which you redefined a term related to second wave feminism in modern culture war language despite having no evidence that anybody used it in that way. "Marginalized genders" is complete nonsense when you're talking about the 1970s. Vox Sciurorum (talk) 20:55, 12 March 2021 (UTC)

Regarding politically correct, would you find it better if the entry said something like "...people marginalized on the basis of race, gender, etc"? (Or do you think there simply weren't people [other than women?] who were marginalized on the basis of gender in the 70s? That's a conservative culture warrior claim which is simply mistaken.)
Regarding gay... contrary to the suggestion that "people mean different things", it seems like everyone here means one thing: we all seem to agree a gay man, as each of us would use the term gay, is one attracted to men. I don't think it's sensible to split gay into different definitions based on different parameters of who counts as a man, because for the average use of the word it isn't possible to tell which parameters someone is using; people who are included or excluded by one take on sex-vs-gender or another are a tiny fraction of the people who are included regardless (cis men) or excluded regardless (women), tinier than the fraction of people any individual gay men or gay men in general find attractive or unattractive based on other factors like weight, race, or looks (as mentioned above); in many citations sex-vs-gender doesn't come up, and if those were split as separate senses it wouldn't be possible to tell which is meant. (Your comment suggests you'd handle that by just assuming anything from before recently or which doesn't clearly include gender must be using a "gotta test your chromosomes and peek down your pants before I can tell if I find you attractive" approach and definition, but I don't buy that assumption. A more small-c-conservative way of handling it would be to have "sex or gender" sense for ambiguous citations, as well as "sex" vs "gender" (sub)senses — and BTW, use with regard to gender in explicit distinction to sex is attested by the 70s / early 80s — but again, it seems like it's not 2-3 senses but one sense "of a man; attracted to men / of a woman: attracted to women" where people just disagree on who's a man vs woman.) - -sche (discuss) 00:17, 13 March 2021 (UTC)

• I see no problem with "sex or gender" based on the arguments I've seen. The potential for misunderstandings is high as awareness of the distinction between sex and gender grows, but the two concepts remain tightly intertwined; so I'd prefer we be precise about what we're actually referring to. Because even when we explicitly distinguis them there's ambiguity! In this case, not between biological sex and social gender, but between biological sex assigned at birth and biological sex resulting from hormone treatment and surgery. Of course that's in the eye of the beholder, as -sche outlines above, but goes to show the need for precision. Ultimateria (talk) 00:16, 10 March 2021 (UTC)

• Late, late and I'm in a hurry, but I see nothing wrong with -sche's approach to the matter. Gender should be included in the definition. English is not a schematic artificial language, so homosexual containing the element sex means nothing. Accusing another user of pushing "a Woke point of view" is poor form at the least. ←₰-→ Lingo ^Bingo _Dingo (talk) 20:17, 12 March 2021 (UTC)

genitive form of particular Swedish pronouns

I'm thinking of the Swedish pronouns någon, något, and några. These have genitive forms (namely någons, någots, and någras) for which we currently don't have articles. What would be the appropriate templates for those? Gabbe (talk) 08:19, 8 March 2021 (UTC)

From what I heard, adding "forms" to the {{head}} template will automatically categorize it into the non-lemmas group (lemmas are the main form of a word, while non-lemmas are the changed forms). For your examples, you have to put {{head|sv|pronoun forms}} right after ===Pronoun=== to do that, I think. ॥ ☼ সূর্যমান ☽ ॥ 10:19, 8 March 2021 (UTC)

washateria, washeteria

Conflicting etymologies. Was "cafeteria" involved or not? Equinox ◑ 11:35, 8 March 2021 (UTC)

Definitely based on cafeteria. The other etymology makes no sense. Chuck Entz (talk) 14:35, 8 March 2021 (UTC)

I wonder if there is call for a regional designation to be entered for this word, the way some words are indicated as US or UK. The word I'm most familiar with in the UK is launderette (pronounced laundrette). I think I would recognise washeteria from US movies, but there may be the odd launderette with a washeteria sign over it in the UK reflecting US influence. Most of those establishments have closed down, so I'm not sure.81.154.42.114 15:27, 8 March 2021 (UTC)

 Done Equinox ◑ 20:55, 8 March 2021 (UTC)

work out

Can someone help me work out the meaning of work out here, which could be relevant to the dictionary? It is from Ch28 of Dickens' Great Expectations: "“And was that—Honour!—the only time you worked out, in this part of the country?”" The full file is at https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1400/1400-h/1400-h.htm#chap08 Could it just mean "practise your trade"? I can't find anything in the OED that would have this meaning, and it may not be a modern meaning.81.154.42.114 16:31, 8 March 2021 (UTC)

• It seems to mean to work outside of the prison. Not sure if it deserves an entry. SemperBlotto (talk) 17:14, 8 March 2021 (UTC)

I wouldn't be sure it required an entry, but I see your point. Thank you.81.154.42.114 17:16, 8 March 2021 (UTC)

• Nice find. It seems like it means to work off a debt. Somewhat clearer from a later quote when the convict says "Wotever I done is worked out and paid for". OED has the sense as: "Originally: to discharge (a debt or obligation) by labour instead of a monetary payment. Now also more generally: to earn money to pay off (a debt)." They include a Dickens quote, though from The Old Curiosity Shop, not Great Expectations, so it seems like an expression he was fond off. Colin M (talk) 20:44, 8 March 2021 (UTC)

Thank you for your comment, Colin. Yes, I saw that "worked out" occurs three times in the book, and noticed the OED quote from The Old Curiosity Shop. You may be right on the meaning, but the original quote looks intransitive. But I think sometimes when convicts are quoted in GE, Dickens seems to put slightly unclear words in their mouths, as if to give them the appropriate convict lingo (which Dickens may or may not have been familiar with). I also noticed meaning #7 in Wiktionary, which could fit, but then that is stated as being American only (???). 81.154.42.114 21:49, 8 March 2021 (UTC)

Yeah, that's interesting. Is the speaker of the first quote the same as the other two occurrences of "worked out"? Those two seem to so clearly have the "worked off" meaning, which make me think the first probably does also, assuming it's the same character. It's not so uncommon to use a transitive verb intransitively if the object can be understood from context. e.g. if Alice and I were working for the summer planting trees, I might ask her "Is this your first time planting?". Though I'll grant it feels less natural with a phrasal verb. Colin M (talk) 00:17, 9 March 2021 (UTC)

Could it mean be discharged (from prison)? I looked for some possible referent for an anaphora in the preceding text and found discharged. The discussion of "two one-pound notes" is central to the discourse and to Pip's thoughts. The notes were to have been given to someone when one of the prisoners was released. Release would obviously be a matter of great interest to prisoners. DCDuring (talk) 01:15, 9 March 2021 (UTC)

As you say, the nearest referent is being discharged. I'm wondering if this could be a kind of prisoner slang or cant at the time. It seems clear that the exact meaning is not clear. Of course, as a native speaker, when you come across such passages, you normally just read on, as it is not that important to grasp every word in a book, and it doesn't affect the plot. Strange that none of the notes, Spark Notes, Cliff Notes, etc, for this book actually mentions this passage or seeks to elucidate it. Thanks for your comments, everyone.81.154.42.114 11:05, 9 March 2021 (UTC)

backward

Adv. sense:

Toward, or in, past time or events; ago.

I am finding it hard to see examples to support "or in" and "ago". Does anyone get this? Mihia (talk) 18:39, 9 March 2021 (UTC)

Century has that as, I think, two definitions. The have one citation from a poem. IOW, we can't dismiss it. I wish I had access to the OED to get some more possible collocations to make search more practical. DCDuring (talk) 18:49, 9 March 2021 (UTC)

The old OED here has these time senses:

• [adv.] 8. Of time: a. Towards the past; b. In the past. (arch.; commonly back.) [...] He bids them look backward .. whole forty years. 1605 Bacon Adv. Learn [...] By a computation backward from ourselves. 1605 Burges Pers. Tithes 55 This Statue extendeth to 40 years backe-ward. 1692 T. Hale Acc. New Invent. 31 For any number of years backward. 1872 Smiles Character xi (1876) 305 It glorifies the present by the light it casts backward. [...]
• [adj.] 7. Behindhand in respect of time or progress, late. 1693 Luttrell Brief Rel. (1857) III 15 Which will occasion the French to be 6 weeks backwarder in their preparations. [...] A very backward scholar. [....] The inns of Spain are in that backward state in which those of Sicily are. [...] The law is here certainly in a backward condition. [...] If a child was backward in learning to walk.
• [adj.] 8. Reaching into the past. [...] Pope Odyss. II 122 Far as thy mind thro' backward time can see. 1822 Byron Ch. Har. IL. xxiv. Each backward year.

- -sche (discuss) 20:18, 9 March 2021 (UTC)

Thanks. I see that they label "in the past" as "archaic". On that basis I will split it out and mark it obsolete, which seems to me a better label for our purposes(?), though if anyone disagrees, of course please unobsolete it and provide a modern usage example. I don't see any evidence that would support our "ago", at least not in any sense of that word that I can recognise. Does anyone else? Mihia (talk) 18:30, 10 March 2021 (UTC)

FWIW, all their cites look to me like "towards" rather than "in", so I might even RFV it if we can't think of / find examples. I'm trying to think of how an adverb "in the past" would be used... "he lived backward, like a caveman of yore"? google books:"(live|living|lived) backward" "in the past" mostly turns up examples where it means "lived in reverse", though some might be the right sense, I'm not sure: [8]. - -sche (discuss) 20:33, 10 March 2021 (UTC)

When I looked at it originally, I somehow thought that "This Statue extendeth to 40 years backe-ward" was an example (I assume it should read "Statute"??), but looking again, while it may be possible (perhaps loosely) to say that something "extends 40 years in the past", meaning backward, it seems that "in" in this case really means "into", which would be covered by our sense "Toward or into the past". Also, this doesn't explain the "to", or the fact that it would be archaic, so I dunno. Yes, please send it to RFV if you wish. Mihia (talk) 21:49, 10 March 2021 (UTC)

backward (2)

Adj. sense:

Reluctant or unable to advance or act.

While I am familiar with the "reluctant" sense, not so with the "unable" sense. Does anyone know this? Mihia (talk) 18:40, 9 March 2021 (UTC)

Sent to RFV. Mihia (talk) 18:13, 11 March 2021 (UTC)

hard on, be hard on

In the sense of "excessively critical," we currently have this construction as a usage example at hard. Given that it's fairly common, I wonder if we should add this meaning on hard on, or create the separate entry be hard on, or keep everything as is. Imetsia (talk) 21:56, 9 March 2021 (UTC)

Personally I wouldn't advocate creating separate entries; I think it is just "hard" + "on", not idiomatic enough. However, we could have a helpful "&lit" entry at hard on, and also say something about common collocations at hard if thought necessary. Though "on" may be the most common, noting that you can also be hard with someone, or even hard towards someone. Mihia (talk) 22:22, 9 March 2021 (UTC)

What Mihia said. It might be useful to have a usage example at the appropriate sense of hard. DCDuring (talk) 22:34, 9 March 2021 (UTC)

FWIW, this passes the Lemming test, in that OED has an entry for the phrase "to be hard on", with three distinct subsenses, as in the following examples:

1. The coach was hard on the player who let the goal in. (already mentioned sense of "very/excessively critical or demanding")
2. Dish soap is hard on the skin., Metal utensils are hard on nonstick pans. (causing damage or wear)
3. Christmas is hard on him since he lost his wife. (difficult to endure, stressful)

I can see an argument for these being SoP, but I also think there's enough intricacy here that it wouldn't hurt to help the reader out. For example, it would be hard for someone to figure out from first principles that "hard on" means "causing damage" in "Dish soap is hard on the skin", but that it cannot be used this way if the subject and object are people. How is someone to know that it's not felicitous to say "Alice was hard on Bob" to describe the situation where Alice and Bob got into a fight and Alice left Bob with a black eye and 10 stitches?

There is some amount of substitutability possible, but it's limited ("harsh" and "tough" can be substituted for "hard" in most of these examples, but other synonyms like "difficult", "severe", "critical", "intolerable", "hostile" don't work). The range of replacements for "on" is highly dependent on which of the 3 subsenses above are at play: for 1, it would be "with" or "towards", for 2 there are no clear substitutions (maybe "against"?), for 3 "for" works. Colin M (talk) 23:44, 11 March 2021 (UTC)

Almost all words have some restrictions on their complements. The normal way of handling this kind of thing is to have labels or usage examples. We certainly don't have to invent new definitions for the combinations. OTOH, examining usage of hard followed by various prepositions (on, for, by, of, in, etc.), particles, and other function words) may be a good way to improve our definitions of hard. Wiktionary has 24 definitions of hard, Oxford 25, AHD has 44, MWOnline 51, so we have some reason to believe our entry may lack good coverage of some usage. DCDuring (talk) 00:34, 12 March 2021 (UTC)

But if, for example, the "causing damage or wear" sense only applies in combination with "on" (which seems to be the case), wouldn't it make more sense to place it at hard on, rather than having a sense at hard with the qualifier (with on)? Colin M (talk) 01:04, 12 March 2021 (UTC)

Even if that is the case, I would personally still argue no, given the nature of the combination. I wonder also whether "hard to" may be feasible, if rare, e.g. I found one example of boots being "hard to the feet", apparently in the sense of "hard on the feet". Mihia (talk) 17:20, 12 March 2021 (UTC)

black supremacy

Tashi believes we should only have cited examples since the topic could be controversial. I think Tashi may be right, but I'd still like to get some views on this. I added the following examples to Tashi's entry:

1. The ideology which holds that the black race is superior to all others.

   Black supremacy is a fringe view among Blacks as the majority believe in peaceful coexistence with their fellow human beings.

2. A situation in which black people are privileged over other people in society.

   Black supremacy remains an abstract concept as, in practice, non-Blacks are rarely denied their rights in Black societies.

Are these examples okay? Must we have cited examples or can we freely generate them for this topic? If we're allowed to think up examples and you're not happy with the examples I provided, what would you change them to? Why? — Dentonius 09:15, 10 March 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for bringing up the topic to the Tea room. Taking into consideration that there are tons of black supremacy groups and ideologies such as Nation of Islam or Garveyism, I think we can easily find some examples. Some people even describe "Black Lives Matter" movement as black supremacy including black actor Terry Crews. Yet since BLM has no offcial leadership it is hard to establish anything. That's why I believe the we can find better examples :) Tashi (talk) 09:42, 10 March 2021 (UTC)

Our normal standards require attestation per WT:ATTEST if anyone challenges a definition. It's usually a good idea to show attestation before any challenge for anything that might be considered controversial, especially if it is not covered in other dictionaries. I don't know how controversial this is, but it apparently isn't included in the OneLook dictionaries. DCDuring (talk) 17:49, 10 March 2021 (UTC)

Do the two example sentences offered illustrate usage? Or are they there to instruct anyone who consults Wiktionary as to what political views he should hold? Do you have any other political views that I should unquestioningly accept? 86.142.138.70 20:27, 10 March 2021 (UTC)

@86.142.138.70: From my experience, Wiktionary is not an ideologically partisan dictionary at all except for a tiny, tiny number of entries. Those entries stick out significantly from the other entries in our dictionary, so the average reader with common sense would immediately realise "[Entry XYZ] is clearly partisan. It would be wise for me to consult another source". As such, the damage caused by such rogue entries is very minimal. The discerning reader can easily tell apart the incredibly tiny number of rogue entries from the rest of the dictionary.

 

The entry under discussion, black supremacy, looks like a perfectly normal Wiktionary entry to me. Tharthan (talk) 21:38, 10 March 2021 (UTC)

I think the anon has a point. We would be well-advised to find actual citations, preferably more neutral or, at least, reflecting a range of evaluative uses, the range, in turn, reflecting what can actually be found. DCDuring (talk) 21:50, 10 March 2021 (UTC)

I had been under the assumption that what the IP address user was referring to were the example sentences given right under the definitions (which remain the same with your edit). With regard to citations, I always thought that it was not required to balance out the opinions presented in works that are cited. They are, after all, merely citations demonstrating usage of the term/sense in question. Of course, if a term is chiefly or solely found in works of a particular bent, that may well warrant a descriptor tag indicating as much.

Am I mistaken? Are Wiktionarians required to balance out opinions presented in works that are cited? Tharthan (talk) 00:19, 11 March 2021 (UTC)

Usage examples should show how a term is used, not explain why the people most likely to use it are wrong to do so. Chuck Entz (talk) 04:55, 11 March 2021 (UTC)

• I've added some citations for both definitions and added {{&lit}}. Black supremacy often comes up in books about the Nation of Islam and Rastafari, but I didn't want to place too much emphasis on such religious sects. DCDuring (talk) 22:39, 10 March 2021 (UTC)

Black supremacy should not have been created. It was deleted in RFD (discussion here) in part because it was not considered a set phrase and there were no lemmings. There has been no undeletion request. Besides there must have been a notice with a warning when the page was recreated. In my opinion the entry should be speedily deleted without it going to RFD again. ←₰-→ Lingo ^Bingo _Dingo (talk) 20:09, 12 March 2021 (UTC)

It doesn't strike me as more than a sum of parts. Supremacy already has the senses of being superior and being in charge. White supremacy is similarly a sum of parts, but it is more of a cultural atom than black supremacy. Anyway, since it failed RFD it should be speedily deleted after the quotations are archived. The quotations are worth having if it ever gets brought back, or they can be dispersed to other words. Vox Sciurorum (talk) 21:02, 12 March 2021 (UTC)

@Vox Sciurorum You are right, the quotations are worth keeping. I have put them on the citation page. ←₰-→ Lingo ^Bingo _Dingo (talk) 09:10, 13 March 2021 (UTC)

derailleur

Pronunciation:

(UK) IPA(key): /dɪˈɹeɪljə/

(US) IPA(key): /dəˈɹeɪlɚ/, /dəˈɹeɪljə/

Is it just me, or is jə a horrible mispronunciation to rank alongside /ˌlɑn.(d)ʒəˈɹeɪ/? Mihia (talk) 12:53, 10 March 2021 (UTC)

It's just you. The Longman Pronunciation Dictionary, which aims to be not purely descriptive but also to provide recommended pronunciations to nonnative speakers, recommends /diˈɹeɪljə/ for RP, though not for General American – I think we can remove it from the US line. As for /ˌlɑn.(d)ʒəˈɹeɪ/, that's the standard US pronunciation (again, recommended for learners of US English by Longman). —Mahāgaja · talk 13:11, 10 March 2021 (UTC)

That's shocking. Mihia (talk) 18:04, 10 March 2021 (UTC)

Not much more so than /luː/ in lieu of /ljø/. And what about /rɪˈvɪər/^[9] compared to French /ʁə.vɛʁ/?  --Lambiam 11:15, 11 March 2021 (UTC)

FWIW, I grew up in the Washington DC area. The only pronunciations I recall hearing as a kid working in bike shops were /dəˈɹeɪlɚ/ (similar to derailer), and /dɪˈɹeɪljɚ/ (not far from dee rail yer). ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 19:05, 11 March 2021 (UTC)

never a dull moment

Entryworthy or SOP? —Mahāgaja · talk 16:54, 10 March 2021 (UTC)

• Go for it. SemperBlotto (talk) 16:57, 10 March 2021 (UTC)

  Hard to see it as SoP; not even obvious what it is elided from, if that be its origin. DCDuring (talk) 17:51, 10 March 2021 (UTC)

I have to say that to me it seems to mean exactly what it says, albeit with a strong set-phrase feel that may justify our including it. May I ask why you feel it does not mean "never" + "a" + "dull" + "moment"? Mihia (talk) 19:25, 10 March 2021 (UTC)

In use, it seems to mean (sometimes, contrafactually) "a little bit of (surprising) excitement". I have never heard it used to mean "NEVER a dull moment". It is, at least, hyperbole. DCDuring (talk) 21:44, 10 March 2021 (UTC)

Well, you're right of course that it is often or usually hyperbolic and/or sarcastic, but I think the same could be said in numerous cases, as a general feature of language. But in any case, I wouldn't oppose its creation as a set phrase. Mihia (talk) 23:39, 10 March 2021 (UTC)

• • OK, I've created it. I'm not great at writing definitions for English entries, though, so additions and corrections from others are encouraged. —Mahāgaja · talk 18:21, 10 March 2021 (UTC)

backward (3)

Adv. sense:

By way of reflection; reflexively.

Anyone see what this is referring to?

I'm guessing it means that, for example, a mirror can be said to cast an image "backward" (i.e. back toward the source). Here's a quote from George Eliot that seems like it might fit:

It was still possible — perhaps it might be inevitable — for him to accept frankly the altered conditions, and avow Baldassarre's existence; but hardly without casting an unpleasant light backward on his original reticence […]

(Found by searching Google books for "light backward".) Colin M (talk) 08:39, 12 March 2021 (UTC)

Oh yes, thanks, you could be right. Mihia (talk) 12:28, 12 March 2021 (UTC)

backward (4)

Sorry about all these "back"/"backward" posts. Another one, adv sense:

From a better to a worse state, as from honor to shame, from religion to sin.

• 1700, John Dryden, Theodore and Honoria

  The work went backward.

Do we see this as fundamentally distinct from "In a direction opposite to the [...] desired direction of [...] progress" (an example of which is "This project seems to be going backward")? Mihia (talk) 18:29, 11 March 2021 (UTC)

I do not see them as distinct. However, "desired direction of progress" is not an ideal definition, because it does not cover contexts that do not involve/envision progress (like deterioration from a formerly stable condition). ←₰-→ Lingo ^Bingo _Dingo (talk) 10:58, 12 March 2021 (UTC)

Yes, I agree, I think it is a question of whether to try to tweak/generalise the "progress" definition or keep them separate. Unless I am missing something, I feel the difference may be insufficient for the latter, so I might try the former. Mihia (talk) 11:38, 12 March 2021 (UTC)

@Mihia I think you have merged the definitions well. The example in the definition first quoted served little purpose. ←₰-→ Lingo ^Bingo _Dingo (talk) 18:08, 13 March 2021 (UTC)

"nonad" is not an English word meaning "group of nine"

There is a listing for "nonad" in wiktionary. It should not be there, except perhaps in the technical, astronomical photographic sense listed there. The listing says it means "group of nine." I can find no evidence that the word "nonad" exists in English with the meaning of a group of nine. It is not in the Oxford English Dictionary; it is not the Unabridged Merriam-Webster; it is not in the American Heritage, Collins, or Random House dictionaries. I did find a citation at books.google.com in a treatise where the author is clearly making up his own jargon with total abandon. Non- is a Latin morpheme; -ad is a Greek one. This is an unlikely formation. I think this entry should be eliminated. The standard term in the -ad sequence of groups (monad, dyad, triad, tetrad...) for a group of nine is "ennead" using Greek "enne-" and Greek "-ad."

Mixing Latin and Greek is very common, e.g. television. If you think the word does not exist you can use the WT:RFV process. Equinox ◑ 20:34, 11 March 2021 (UTC)

The OED has entries for "octad" and "decad" but, indeed, it does not have an entry for "nonad" - and I think it would fail RfV. Strange. SemperBlotto (talk) 20:55, 11 March 2021 (UTC)

It's already cited, but I think nonadic is more questionable, with possible confusion with "non-adic" and "nomadic". DTLHS (talk) 21:04, 11 March 2021 (UTC)

Another definition of nonad can be found in the Urban Dictionary - https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=nonad Literally someone with no gonads, man with no balls.86.142.138.70 07:33, 12 March 2021 (UTC)

You know, I now think it should remain. I'm being annoyingly prescriptive. I have now seen three good faith uses of the word. I think in each instance the authors were in good faith trying to make the ninth "-ad" word in the series monad, dyad, triad, tetrad, pentad, hexad, heptad, ogdoad, ennead, decad. The authors either did not realize that the word "ennead" exists for a group of nind or didn't like it and coined their own word with Latin non- instead of Greek enne- That sort of thing happens all the time.

I didn't realise, but just read on Wiktionary that d(u)odecad(e) was the 16th century word for trillion, 10 to the power of 12. I wonder if a billion could be an ennead or a quadrillion a pentadecad(e)?86.142.138.70 15:21, 13 March 2021 (UTC)

Google Books, Scholar, and other online resources are available to help you in the quest for evidence of such usage and its context and extent. DCDuring (talk) 17:27, 13 March 2021 (UTC)

Well, there's nothing on Google Books or in the OED to justify the claim that duodecad/dodecad once meant trillion - it is stated on the dodecad page in Wiktionary, but without citations. 86.142.138.70 21:55, 13 March 2021 (UTC)

I've RFVed that sense of dodecad. (Nonad, for its part, is cited, although some of the citations seem awkward/low-quality: "The nonuply perspective nonads of Milne"?) - -sche (discuss) 01:20, 14 March 2021 (UTC)

I came, I saw, I conquered

Originally posted here: Talk:I came, I saw, I conquered. If there's no published work in my language with a translation of this, but I have a pretty good idea of what it would be in my language, am I allowed to add my translation to the entry? The language in this case is, of course, Jamaican Creole. — Dentonius 14:17, 12 March 2021 (UTC)

I don't know if we have a policy about this sort of thing. As a compromise, I would suggest adding the translation, but linking each word individually (e.g. [[I]] [[came]], [[I]] [[saw]], [[I]] [[conquered]]) so that no one is tempted to add an entry for it. What do others think? —Mahāgaja · talk 15:58, 12 March 2021 (UTC)

Isn't it more urgent to add translations for come and see?  --Lambiam 13:23, 13 March 2021 (UTC)

Special:Contributions/101.98.133.254

This user has created several pages for Requested Entries, some in quite small languages with few contributors and a few of them do not contain any requests at all. Are all of these pages desirable or should some be deleted? ←₰-→ Lingo ^Bingo _Dingo (talk) 19:58, 12 March 2021 (UTC)

I think we can delete the Requested Entries pages that don't actually contain any requested entries. —Mahāgaja · talk 20:00, 12 March 2021 (UTC)

Quote at inamorate

Recently, I've been adding some George Chapman quotes, for glory more than anything else. I generally have no idea what the guy is jabbering on about. One in particular was at inamorate (His blood was framed for every shade of virtue To ravish into true inamorate fire), which I decided to analyse. To me it means "he was a nice guy until he fell in love". Anyone else care enough to suggest an alternative? Oxlade2000 (talk) 20:37, 12 March 2021 (UTC)

Methinks the referent of "his" is the Earl of St. Anne, a widower who is doting over the embalmed corpse of his late wife. My guess is that it means he was disposed by nature ("framed by blood") to all-consuming, all-encompassing passionate love, probably to the neglect or dereliction of virtue but maybe the chap meant it as the consummation of virtue (even though canoodling a corpse is some dire necro stuff, perhaps Chapman thought it was endearing faithfulness or something). I absolutely have no idea what contemporary beliefs were on the fireproofness of virtue, really. ←₰-→ Lingo ^Bingo _Dingo (talk) 09:33, 13 March 2021 (UTC)

Actually, Vandome is reporting here to Vaumont that the plot, devised to make St. Anne fall in love with Eurione, has succeeded.^[10] Vandome sees St. Anne as his friend whom he calls “a sweet brother”; he was trying to help him overcome his obsession. And, clearly, he thinks him worthy of betrothing Eurione, the sister of his very dear friend Marcellina. So I think that St. Anne’s newly found ardent true love is portrayed here as virtuous, and that “every shade of virtue” means “every variety of virtue”.  --Lambiam 11:13, 13 March 2021 (UTC)

You're right, I think. So would you summarise and reformulate as: St. Anne is a man with a deeply amorous disposition in whom virtue flourishes in manifold ways? I suppose that aligns with our second sense of ravish? ←₰-→ Lingo ^Bingo _Dingo (talk) 12:56, 13 March 2021 (UTC)

I am not sure what the subject of the ravishing is – the Earl’s blood, or his virtues? I guess one could metonymically say that “his blood” was enraptured by love, but if the virtues are doing the ravishing, sense 2 is less adequate. Also, the preposition in ravish into does not fit well with sense 2, so perhaps the meaning is that his manifold virtues were precipitously conveyed into a burning love. However, this appears to require an intransitive sense of the verb, whereas the first, archaic sense appears to be transitive.  --Lambiam 13:58, 13 March 2021 (UTC)

The assumption here seems to be that ‘virtue’ is used with its modern moral meaning, but I don’t think that’s the case. ‘Virtue’ in Chapman’s time commonly referred to power or efficacy rather than necessarily moral qualities. It seems to me that Chapman’s meaning is more along the lines of ‘His disposition was ready for any kind of influence to fan the flames of love in it.’ — Vorziblix (talk · contribs) 14:14, 15 March 2021 (UTC)

general abbreviations

Looking at Category:English case citation abbreviations, there are lots of entries that aren't just abbreviated in legal cases. If anyone wants a quick&easy mini-project, they could de-abbreviate a few of them Oxlade2000 (talk) 21:39, 12 March 2021 (UTC)

I've done a few in the past, though I left the usage notes about X being the customary legal abbreviation (assuming that information to be true) and just removed the label since it's not only used legally. Not sure whether that's better than just dropping the note. (Maybe I also tried to tweak the notes to say the abbreviations were not only used in case citations, I don't recall.) - -sche (discuss) 21:49, 12 March 2021 (UTC)

@-sche: The category does not mention the abbreviations have to be exclusively legal; e.g., Category:British English contains terms that are not exclusively British. J3133 (talk) 11:42, 13 March 2021 (UTC)

True, I see no problem with the category being on entries which are case-citation abbreviations even if they're also general abbreviations; it could be restored to entries Oxlade removed it from. Although, regarding Category:British English containing terms that are not exclusively British, ... as much as I think that's sensible, contrast Category talk:Canadian English and Wiktionary:Beer parlour/2020/September#Canadian_English where there is objection to the Canadian English category including terms that are used both Canada and the US, even if they are distinctly Canadian and American and not used in Britain, Ireland, Australia, India, etc. - -sche (discuss) 18:39, 13 March 2021 (UTC)

Jesus

Reviewing the English entry Jesus, the following struck me:

• The final part of definition 1 goes "whom Christians consider to be the son of God and call "Jesus Christ" in the belief that he is the Messiah, and whom Muslims believe to be a prophet". This is all true, but somewhat misleading. Muslims in general also consider Jesus of Nazareth to be the Messiah and Christians also consider him to be a prophet (in addition to a king and priest, to name the other anointed offices). Mentioning all that may prove unwieldy. What do you say about omitting "prophet" and only mentioning "Messiah" in both instances?
• Definition 2 about western Manichaeism (my doing) is both unspecific (the emanations are not named) and rather noun-like. Jesus the Splendo(u)r and Jesus patibilis/passive Jesus/suffering Jesus may be worthy of subdefinitions or even entries, the other aspects probably not. See also this article.
• The noun section is extremely silly and is not very well supported by the quotations either. It may be a good idea to move the plurals and quotations to the proper-noun section and dispose of it altogether.

←₰-→ Lingo ^Bingo _Dingo (talk) 14:08, 13 March 2021 (UTC)

Some of that entry appears totally fictional, in particular the alleged plurals "Jesuses or Jesusses or Jesi or Jesii". Are all of these attested? I see that Jesusses is attested on books.google.com, but I would argue that was in a book by someone who didn't know how to spell Jesuses... but Jesi and Jesii? 14:55, 13 March 2021 (UTC)86.142.138.70 14:56, 13 March 2021 (UTC)

Using a double s has not become obsolete yet. J3133 (talk) 15:46, 13 March 2021 (UTC)

FWIW, I think very rare / obsolete plurals can be moved out of the headword and into e.g. usage notes if putting them in the headword gives them too much prominence. I only rarely seen entries which have a lot of rare/obsolete forms in the headword line to begin with, so I only rarely see such forms moved, and the examples I can call to mind are all cases where I moved the forms, so take all this with whatever dose of salt you find appropriate as far as whether it's a generally-accepted or acceptable practice. But for example, I moved "laugh'd" and "low" out of the headword-line of laugh following WT:Beer parlour/2013/July#Inconsistent_mention_of_inflected_forms. - -sche (discuss) 18:51, 13 March 2021 (UTC)

Lesbische liefde

@Lambiam, Rua, Morgengave, Mnemosientje, Vox Sciurorum: In Dutch writings up to the 1950s, the phrase Lesbische liefde with upper-case occurs for "lesbian love, lesbian sexuality", included in some dictionaries of that period, from about 1920 lower-case lesbische liefde becomes noticably more common. Pace the WNT, the spelling strongly suggests that Lesbisch is intended in the topographical sense "Lesbian, of Lesbos" and it clearly predates the meaning "lesbian" (even if that sense is 50 years older than the oldest cite in the WNT; the Kunstwoordenboek of 1847 gives a rather feline definition). So this usage seems idiomatic to me, at least from a historical perspective, not to mention that some older dictionaries include it (many are not really general dictionaries though). Should there be a lemma for the spelling Lesbische liefde or should it be included in some other way? ←₰-→ Lingo ^Bingo _Dingo (talk) 18:04, 13 March 2021 (UTC)

The appellation Lesbische liefde in the sense of (erotic) love between women is clearly derived from the name of the island,^[11][12][13] so I do not understand what the issue is.  --Lambiam 23:27, 13 March 2021 (UTC)

Do you think it merits an entry or not? I mean, I cannot exactly guarantee there aren't any other similar, amply attested collocations with a similar meaning that predate the general sense "lesbian". ←₰-→ Lingo ^Bingo _Dingo (talk) 10:57, 14 March 2021 (UTC)

Yes, I think it does, in the sense “lesbianism”. Perhaps it should be labelled dated. The later lower-case uses may be a modification of the upper-case term based on the lower-case spelling of lesbisch in the sense of the adjective “lesbian”, but it is more likely they arose independently as a sum of parts (just like the SOP combination homoseksuele liefde). Any idiomatic multi-word term may occasionally arise as an {{&lit}} combination, but nothing suggests that in this case any such uses can be amply attested.  --Lambiam 14:22, 14 March 2021 (UTC)

Pronunciation of the Icelandic word grænn

The entry for the Icelandic word grænn says that it's pronounced [ˈkʰraɪ̯tn̩], where I'd expect it to be [ˈkraɪ̯tn̩]. I think this may be an error, as other similar Icelandic words starting with gr- are given as being pronounced without aspiration, e.g. grafa, græja and græta, but not being an Icelandic speaker myself, I wouldn't want to go ahead and change it without any further input. Does anyone here know Icelandic enough to decide the matter? —Pinnerup (talk) 23:39, 13 March 2021 (UTC)

The Icelandic Wiktionary has [ɡraid̥.n̥], even though their IPA help page does not recognize a phoneme /ɡ/.  --Lambiam 00:00, 14 March 2021 (UTC)

'boue

Any idea what 'boue is supposed to mean in the following George Chapman quote? It looks like a preposition, perhaps according to? Oxlade2000 (talk) 11:42, 14 March 2021 (UTC)

1. Tis offerd, Sir, 'boue the rate of Caesar
   In other men, but in what I approue
   Beneath his merits: which I will not faile
   T'enforce at full to Pompey, nor forget
   In any time the gratitude of my seruice.

It looks like an archaic procopic spelling of above to me. ←₰-→ Lingo ^Bingo _Dingo (talk) 12:36, 14 March 2021 (UTC)

Yes, and 'bove contrasts with beneath later on.86.142.138.70 13:27, 14 March 2021 (UTC)

give a ... account of oneself

Presently we have give a good account of oneself but no others that I can see, though "excellent", "poor" etc. are clearly also possible. I'm not sure about verbs other than "give". "offer" seems to be occasionally used. Anyway, what do we do with these "template" expressions like "give a ... account of oneself"? Or, alternatively, is the meaning of "account" sufficiently extractable to put at account (with examples) and dispense with the entry(ies) for the expressions? What do you think? Mihia (talk) 18:33, 14 March 2021 (UTC)

My first impulse is to say that we should give a definition for the "largest manageable unit" (the best phrasing I could come up with). So in this case, I would transfer the definition over to account of oneself with a usage note and possibly a redirect of the most common phases that include it (like give a good account of oneself). Imetsia (talk) 20:36, 14 March 2021 (UTC)

Another similar one, btw, is get off to a good start, where obviously many words can be substituted for "good" (and possibly anyway it is decomposable into "(get) off (to) ~".) I think if I started actively looking for these I might find one or two more (!) Mihia (talk) 20:46, 14 March 2021 (UTC)

start off on the wrong foot etc.

What do we think about start off on the wrong foot, get off on the wrong foot, start off on the right foot? Are these redundant to on the wrong foot, on the right foot? Mihia (talk) 20:46, 14 March 2021 (UTC)

I think so. We could have redirects from those to on the wrong foot. But even usage examples would get users to the right entry were those expressions typed in the search box. DCDuring (talk) 21:50, 14 March 2021 (UTC)

dip out

"To leave a place without telling anyone." Is this definition correct? I saw a Discord user saying something like "I'm gonna dip out now". That doesn't match the definition. Equinox ◑ 07:37, 15 March 2021 (UTC)

I hear it used to mean leave or exit (not just a place but also e.g. a conversation). I don't think it requires not telling anyone. There may be some connotations to it but I can't put my finger on them. - -sche (discuss) 08:38, 15 March 2021 (UTC)

To leave unobtrusively perhaps. Somebody will complain that you can't obtrude by leaving. Equinox ◑ 08:53, 15 March 2021 (UTC)

Yeah, I would say to leave quietly, with as little fuss as possible. Chuck Entz (talk) 08:58, 15 March 2021 (UTC)

Ooh, yes. I'd been considering that some of the time it seems mean "leave, especially because you no longer want to be in the place, conversation, etc", maybe even "... e.g. out of resignation or to avoid confrontation" (as in the cites I initially added to the cites page), but that's only true some of the time (maybe even only by coincidence then) as I can also find "I'll have to dip out" and "I have to dip out of ketosis for my daughter's birthday cake". Something like "to leave, especially unobtrusively, with little fuss" (or fanfare?) is much better. :) - -sche (discuss) 17:41, 15 March 2021 (UTC)

There's an argument for that entry being redundant. We have the sense "To leave" at dip#Verb, and the current usex demonstrates its use with out: "He dipped out of the room so fast." The out is common but not mandatory. See, for example, Ariana Grande writing "sry I dipped" in the music video for "thank u, next" (as in, "sorry I ducked out of our relationship/engagement"). Colin M (talk) 15:09, 15 March 2021 (UTC)

Good point. Can it take words besides out? I only find a handful of web hits like "you might have dip over to the chat", and no hits for "have to dip the party", just Ariana's intransitive use, but my search was far from exhaustive. I noticed we only had head, not head out, but I see now we do have both "enter" at duck and "leave" at duck out, which seems to be used similarly (including: sometimes without out) and might help with writing the definition(s) for dip (out).
I sometimes wonder if we should do like some dictionaries and (soft?) redirect most phrasal verbs to the base verbs, not only to avoid us having to figure out when to house definitions at the base verb vs verb+particle, but also to avoid expecting less-adept readers to figure out that some verbs aren't defined in their entries but in verb+particle entries. Meh. If nothing else, we need to consistently, and IMO prominently, link to phrasal verbs from their base verbs; so dip needs to link to dip out if we keep it. - -sche (discuss) 18:19, 15 March 2021 (UTC)

Intransitive use without any following prepositional phrase (a la Ariana) is definitely pretty common. e.g. "Probably saw how unprofitable their venture was and decided to dip."

Not sure about prepositions other than "out". Based on a quick Reddit search, "dip away" is reasonably well attested. e.g. "Can I dip away (to order a delivery) / go shopping then cook then catch up with you later?". "Instant gratification, get their fix, and dip away before they get hurt." Can't think of any other likely candidates. Maybe 'outside' or some other narrow locative prepositions in certain contexts ("downstairs", "offstage", "underground").

Definitely agree about prominently linking from dip to dip out if the latter is kept. Colin M (talk) 22:57, 15 March 2021 (UTC)

This term reminds me a bit of bug out and duck out. I could be wrong but bug, dip, or duck don't really mean "leave" without out. Out seems to conveying the leaving and the verbs convey the kind of motion involved. DCDuring (talk) 18:24, 16 March 2021 (UTC)

Definitely similar to duck out. bug out is a new one to me. I haven't looked into it carefully, but I could imagine that the "leave" sense was initially restricted to "dip out" and later "dip" became a conventionalized ellipsis of this. But currently it's definitely commonly used without "out" to mean leave. Browsing some recent Reddit comments containing "had to dip", it actually looks like a majority of "leave" usages are without "out". Colin M (talk) 19:17, 16 March 2021 (UTC)

Quotation help at verärgern

I started to fix a quotation at verärgern but I think it requires more work there than I'm able or willing to put into it; I don't work on quotes much so I'm not familiar with the intricacies. The issues are: 1) It links directly to a website, no year, author, publisher. 2) The website wants to set cookies on my computer; generally I don't accept. 3) From the tone is sounds like some sort of religious blog. Not that there's anything wrong with religion but it seems like most of the quote is about how young people are immoral and debauched; seems kind of POV. 4) I not sure the quote is under the right entry since it's using the part participle verärgert as an adjective, and there is a separate entry for that. --RDBury (talk) 12:31, 15 March 2021 (UTC)

@RDBury: The quote is in the passive voice, so it's in the right entry, but it should be replaced by an uncontroversial example. I would suggest this: Ihr Mann sagte, sie solle den Mund halten, und sie schwieg, ohne verärgert zu sein. ("Her husband told her to shut up and she remained silent without being annoyed."; from DWDS; please change and correct whatever is necessary.). I think it conveys the meaning of verärgern, even though the pparticiple is used as an adjective. --Akletos (talk) 07:53, 16 March 2021 (UTC)

Non-durably archived quotes, especially when not fitting/appropriate, can just be moved to the citations page (or deleted, if not useful at all). – Jberkel 08:28, 16 March 2021 (UTC)

Since no one seems to think the quote is worth keeping, my preference is to just delete it. I don't really find quotes useful which is why I don't work on them much, but I won't try to stop someone else from adding a replacement if that's what they're into. --RDBury (talk) 13:09, 16 March 2021 (UTC)

Quraysh

Quraysh is a Proper noun used in two senses: an ancient Arab tribe and a chapter in the Quran. It's exclusively grammatically plural for only the first sense. Based on that, Equinox forked the entry into two different POS: a "plural noun" and a "proper noun". I disagreed about the POS, which should be a "Proper noun" for both senses, even if exclusively plural (e.g. Azores). For that I've been reverted, with Equinox citing that it's a plural only and that he is a great editor (which he truly is). As a reconciliation, I'm proposing this:
===Proper noun===
{{en-proper noun}}
# (plural only) An ancient Bedouin tribe that controlled Mecca at the time of Muhammad.
# (Islam) The 106th sura (chapter) of the Qur'an, named after the aforementioned tribe.

Thoughts? Assem Khidhr (talk) 15:11, 15 March 2021 (UTC)

How to handle 'collective plural' proper-noun-like people-group names is a tricky issue that's come up before; we really need to agree on a consistent overall approach, because a lot of people-groups' names can be used this way. (Btw, I can find a few citations of "a Quraysh", "Qurayshes" as a count noun, though like with Chinese it doesn't seem to be standard.) (Edit: general issue moved to Wiktionary:Beer_parlour/2021/March#POS_of_words_for_"X_tribe/people,_collectively"_like_British,_Chinese,_Cheyenne,_Xhosa.) - -sche (discuss) 19:13, 15 March 2021 (UTC)

Maybe I should move my/the general question to the Beer Parlour... - -sche (discuss) 19:21, 15 March 2021 (UTC)
(Edit: done.) - -sche (discuss) 19:52, 15 March 2021 (UTC)

@-sche: I must firstly express my admiration of your committment to an accurate review of the norms on Wiktionary, which honestly strikes me apropos of Equinox's full-scale assertion. Now I don't think eligible entries lacking coverage of this sense (namely, in your comment, Japanese, Xhosa, Finnish, and Lakota) really carry significance in this discussion, simply because absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence. That is, they might have just not received the appropriate attention yet, for example. Of course, each of those has its own particularities. But notably, Xhosa did include that sense before under a "Proper noun" until Equinox did the same unjustified change and then directly tweaked the def into a common noun. Proper nouns, being appellations of a more particular nature; and common nouns, being appellations of a more general nature — are surely defined arbitrarily and interdependently. The boundaries in between them would always be subject to the scope of attestation, whose determination is in turn case-by-case. However, my approach to classifying these collective syntactic-plural substantives is rather pragmaticist. It rests upon the following notes:

• A noun being routinely capitalized while not referring to an instance or a group of instances of a general class (a count noun) is characteristic of proper nouns. (passive definition)
• The notion of weak proper nouns unanimously includes plural proper names, which are mostly collective morphological-plural substantives (e.g. the Beatles; See Rodney Huddleston, Rodney D. Huddleston, Geoffrey K. Pullum with Laurie Bauer (2002 April 15) The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language‎^[14], Cambridge University Press, →ISBN, page 517). Those are significantly similar to our subject matter, especially the demonyms, in terms of being always semantically definite, regardless of context, whether by convention (as in Quraysh) or when syntactically supported by the. (active definition)
• The entries now classified under a Noun POS are probable results of the w:principle of least effort (lots of users won't bother check the list of allowed POS or use the most specific term). This is especially evident in the fact that even the Irish and Vietnamese languages, hardly ever a sense contested to be a Proper noun, are also under the same "Noun" header. (confounding variable)
• As Equinox himself had stated, he created "hundreds" of those entries while he has strong feelings about not categorizing them as Proper nouns (nay unilaterally reverting or deleting them, as was the case in Xhosa and Lakota^[1]). (confounding variable)

I haven't read the thread at WT:BP yet, and I'll try to do asap. Hope this makes some sense. Assem Khidhr (talk) 07:20, 17 March 2021 (UTC)

"What a" phases

We currently have what a pity, what a lovely day, what a way to go, what a shame. I'm thinking at least half of these are SOP based on what#Adjective. --RDBury (talk) 15:18, 15 March 2021 (UTC)

I'd say those are all definitely SoP - no different from what a disaster, what a heavy book, or what a load of nonsense. Any argument for keeping them would probably rest more on their value as phrasebook entries (what a lovely day is currently marked as such) or as translation hubs. Colin M (talk) 15:44, 15 March 2021 (UTC)

Some of the four may be set phrases with well-established discourse functions. But since we don't really have a good set of criteria for inclusion or exclusion of "phrasebook" entries, I'd not be sad to see them go. DCDuring (talk) 16:44, 15 March 2021 (UTC)

There is already a "what a pity" example at pity. The same could be done for shame. I think that would be enough for those. what a lovely day is just one example of numerous "what a ... day/morning/evening/etc." expressions, and does not merit any entry, IMO (not in the regular dictionary -- I dunno about the Phrasebook). "what a way to go" could be harder to understand from the parts, but it is again subject to numerous ad hoc variants such as "such a terrible way to go" etc., so seems hard to justify. I don't know whether something useful could be mentioned at way to go. Mihia (talk) 21:08, 16 March 2021 (UTC)

overcommittal - nonstandard?

I just created an entry at overcommittal. It's a word I've heard occasionally from commentators on competitive games (here's an example where it's spoken by both commentators on a match, about 8 minutes apart: a, b). I'm still getting a feel for labels, and wondering whether nonstandard would be appropriate here? Or something else along those lines? I think it could be argued that it's somewhat malapropistic, since its meaning doesn't really follow from the meaning of committal (at least not any of the senses we have recorded). It's also not listed in any dictionaries. But it does appear, somewhat rarely, in published books and other edited works (on the order of 100 results on Google Books, a couple on Google News, and a handful on Google Scholar - the distribution over time suggests it's not especially neologistic). For now I've gone the conservative route and merely labelled it "rare". Colin M (talk) 15:29, 15 March 2021 (UTC)

impound

A sense synonymous (or, occasionally, near-synonymous) with confiscate is given for impound in several notable dictionaries. We lack said definition.

Is there any particular reason for this? Do we for whatever reason not consider it substantially different enough from one of the existing definitions to warrant inclusion? Tharthan (talk) 19:22, 15 March 2021 (UTC)

I would imagine it's just an oversight. But do you have any example quotes that aren't covered by the existing senses? Three of the ones we have seem to me very similar to confiscate, just specialized. Colin M (talk) 23:08, 15 March 2021 (UTC)

Question about adding /ðɚ/ as an unstressed pronunciation of "they're" and "their"

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/they're https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/their Webster mentions both, and it seems like it might as well be added to the Wiktionary listings. — This unsigned comment was added by ClumbusGuy (talk • contribs) at 23:51, 15 March 2021 (UTC).

But is that really a standard pronunciation? It seems (in North America) to be, at best, a very rustic pronunciation that is only used by a small number of speakers. If there is any consistency to such pronunciation at all, I would imagine the same speakers who use that pronunciation would pronounce words such as wear and fair with /ɝ/ as well. And, in that case, it would be an example of the square–nurse merger, which (from my recollection) is not a merger that is usual in any of the more regular and established manifestations of any North American dialects. If you want to list it as an established dialectal pronunciation for some non-North American dialects, I think that that would be perfectly fair as it certainly has noted presence in a number of dialects elsewhere.

But unless there is actually proof (re: North America) that this is anything more than an occasionally found idiolecticism used by some who regularly pronounce their words lazily, presenting it as if it were a standard North American pronunciation ought to be avoided. Tharthan (talk) 10:12, 16 March 2021 (UTC)

I believe a large quantity of speakers without the square-nurse merger would use this pronunciation because they reduce they're/their under low stress (compare /ən/ for and, /jɚ/ for your/you're, etc.) Because reduction of function words under low stress is common in English, it would be unusual for it to be "an occasionally found idiolecticism". It might be less common than other reductions, but "less common" doesn't necessarily mean "occasional". Hazarasp (parlement · werkis) 12:11, 16 March 2021 (UTC)

Additionally, the square-nurse merger does occur in some American dialects; what kind of pronunciation do you think the spelling 'Murica represents? Hazarasp (parlement · werkis) 12:11, 16 March 2021 (UTC)

/ðɚ/ as a completely unstressed pronunciation sounds quite natural to me, for example in a sentence like "I think they're talking to their kids" which at a colloquial rate of speech would come out [aɪ ˌθɪŋk ðɚ ˌtɔkɪn də ðɚ ˈkɪdz]. —Mahāgaja · talk 14:19, 16 March 2021 (UTC)

If citations that pass Wiktionary's usual criteria for what constitutes a good citation can be provided for /ðɝ/ in North America, then obviously we ought to include it. Tharthan (talk) 18:29, 16 March 2021 (UTC)

We don't have criteria for what constitutes a good citation for a pronunciation. All our citation criteria relate to written language, not spoken language. —Mahāgaja · talk 21:03, 16 March 2021 (UTC)

If our citation criteria only apply to written language, then I defer to the general consensus of Wiktionarians with respect to which proposed citations on this matter are acceptable and which are not. Tharthan (talk) 03:33, 17 March 2021 (UTC)

This fixation on "standard" pronunciation is a fundamental misunderstanding of linguistics. From the standpoint of linguistics, all native pronunciations are "correct" - if people have grown up speaking a certain way all their lives and they make themselves understood, what is "incorrect" about it? This is why reference books cannot stray too far from descriptivism, or they will become entirely abstract or arbritrary constructs. The question of what pronunciation is entered in a dictionary is more nuanced, as dictionaries have to steer a cause between prescriptivism and descriptivism. There would be nothing objectionable to entering [ðɚ] as "colloquial unstressed" in a dictionary of the Wiktionary kind. Tharthan constantly (check the backhistory) alleges that other people's views are just "idiolectisms", and, consequently, Tharthan's pronunciations are all the prescriptive standard.... This doesn't get us very far. English has well over 300m native speakers, and you can't condemn so many pronunciations as mere idiolectisms. I think you could argue that L2 learners need to learn a certain more prescriptive pronunciation in the first instance, and then learn by experience that "in the wild" assimilation and reductions are employed. So, from that standpoint, yes, you could argue that overly descriptive entries would not be helpful either. I'm not familiar with [ðɚ] myself, as I'm not American, but I accept it as a real pronunciation. I'm more familiar with [ðɛ] as an unstressed pronunciation in England. 86.142.138.70 15:16, 16 March 2021 (UTC)

I liked Mahagaja's pronunciation there - and noticed he has "to" pronounced with a [d]. I think they're talking to their kids could be in England [a ˌfɪŋˀk ðɛ ˌtʰɔukɪn tə ðɛ ˈkʰɪdz]

It can be difficult to find evidence of colloquial unstressed pronunciations, but Youglish is a very useful site. I entered "to their kids", and the very first entry gave multiple instances of the unstressed "their" being discussed here. See https://youglish.com/pronounce/to%20their%20kids/english That link goes directly to the part of the video with the phrase "to their kids", but the following sentences then also have "to their" several times. 86.142.138.70 15:31, 16 March 2021 (UTC)

No, apparently bitter IP user, I do not believe my personal idiolect to be "the standard". I am very much against that sort of mentality being held by anyone.

If you are familiar with Wiktionary, you know that we have standards for what kinds of citations are acceptable and what kinds of citations are not acceptable. If good citations can only demonstrate that a /ðɝ/ pronunciation exists in North America in the speech of square-nurse merger speakers, we ought to consider indicating as much. Of course, if it can be demonstrated to have wider usage aside from such speakers, then obviously the aforementioned indication would not be necessary.

"There would be nothing objectionable to entering [ðɚ] as "colloquial unstressed" in a dictionary of the Wiktionary kind."

If reasonable citations can be provided, then I think that including /ðɝ/ / /ðɚ/ as an American English pronunciation tagged with (colloquial, unstressed) would be perfectly all right. Tharthan (talk) 18:29, 16 March 2021 (UTC)

I'd say there's an enormous difference between /ðɝ/ and /ðɚ/, as the former implies a stressed pronunciation, which would only be found in a few regional accents that have the square–nurse merger, while the latter implies an unstressed pronunciation that is widespread in North America and does not imply the presence of that merger. —Mahāgaja · talk 18:35, 16 March 2021 (UTC)

I agree. FWIW, /ðɚ/ sounds completely natural to me as an unstressed pronunciation for both their and they're. I use it all the time and hear others doing the same. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 00:22, 17 March 2021 (UTC)

I think not putting it in as a standard pronunciation is fine, and possibly adding a tag of any sort that marks it as an unstressed pronunciation would be good. Also, remember that it's a schwa and not the bet vowel, those are two totally different sounds. I can at least attest on my part that it isn't rustic, I hear it every day here in central Ohio, and given that word isn't exactly a way to get info on Wiktionary I thought I'd dig around and find a dictionary mentioning it, which it does at least to some extent here. I might be able to do some more digging later. -ClumbusGuy (The guy who wrote the first post and is new to this so forgot to sign) 20:36 UTC March 16th 2021.

gaffer

Hi. I'm interested to see whether UK contribs consider this definition adequate for the way I would use and understand who "my gaffer" refers to. -- ALGRIF talk 14:13, 16 March 2021 (UTC)

Probably = "my boss"86.142.138.70 15:06, 16 March 2021 (UTC)

I agree with 86. I would change "A foreman" to something a bit more general, and also label it informal. I don't know any of the other senses at ety 2. Mihia (talk) 19:03, 16 March 2021 (UTC)