Wiktionary:Requests for deletion

Wiktionary Request pages (edit) see also: discussions
Requests for cleanup add new | history | archives Cleanup requests, questions and discussions.	Requests for verification/English add new English request | history | archives Requests for verification in the form of durably-archived attestations conveying the meaning of the term in question.	Requests for verification/CJK add new CJK request | history Requests for verification of entries in Chinese, Japanese, Korean or any other language using an East Asian script.	Requests for verification/Italic add new Italic request | history Requests for verification of Italic-language entries.	Requests for verification/Non-English add new non-English request | history | archives Requests for verification of any other non-English entries.	Requests for deletion/Others add new | history Requests for deletion and undeletion of pages in other (not the main) namespaces, such as categories, appendices and templates.
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{{attention}} • {{rfap}} • {{rfdate}} • {{rfquote}} • {{rfdef}} • {{rfeq}} • {{rfe}} • {{rfex}} • {{rfi}} • {{rfp}}

All Wiktionary: namespace discussions 1 2 3 4 5 - All discussion pages 1 2 3 4 5

This is for pages in the main namespace. For all other pages, see Wiktionary:Requests for deletion/Others.

This page is where users can propose and discuss the deletion of pages in the main namespace (see the nomination category). Requests are archived when a decision has been reached (be it deleted, kept, or transwikied); the deleting administrator should remember to sign.

Notes

• Terms that failed a request for verification are presumed invalid. They should not be resubmitted as the same term without adequate verification (see verification archives) and do not need duplicate listings here.
• Terms should be listed on Requests for verification if their attestation is being called into question.
• Section title should be exactly the wikified entry title, only. The entry should have the tag {{rfd}} at the top.
• Very blatantly obvious candidates for deletion should only be tagged with {{delete|Reason for deletion}} and not listed (here, nor elsewhere).
• The deletion of just part of a page may also be proposed here. If an entire section is being proposed for deletion, the tag {{rfd}} should be placed at the top; if only a sense is, the tag {{rfd-sense}} should be used, or the more precise {{rfd-redundant}} if it applies. In any of these cases, any editor (not necessarily an administrator) may act on the discussion.

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Good nomination guidelines - Page deletion guidelines - Overview of the deletion process - List of deletion templates, categories, etc. Start a new deletion nomination

Oldest tagged {{rfd}}s
No pages meet these criteria.

February 2008

akennedness

Defined solely in terms of a redlink "The state or quality of being akenned." Akenned has 474 raw googles, but they seem to be proper nouns and email addresses. Akennedness has 5 raw googles (one of them us). RJFJR 18:06, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

uh, wait. Middle English dict. shows akenned. But that doesn't support akennedness. RJFJR 18:08, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

There seems to be OE: on cristes akenned-nysse daege from Aelfric's Lives of the Saints] DCDuring TALK 18:28, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

• It's OK. You can debate about whether it's English or Middle English, but it's definitely a word. I've now added akenned and aken. Ƿidsiþ 07:38, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

Move to RfV. DCDuring TALK 10:49, 7 December 2008 (UTC)

get sick

Edit: To become ill. Per [[get fill-in-the-blank]]. DAVilla 17:10, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

"To become ill" is almost idiomatic. Keep? --Connel MacKenzie 05:14, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

This can also mean "to vomit." So can "be sick," of course, but I don't think "sick" by itself normally has this meaning. -- Visviva 15:06, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

I'm okay with that definition. Changed to rfd-sense. DAVilla 07:07, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

Wow it means "vomit"? Just in American English, right? Kappa 01:45, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

I think it's regional; I've heard it, and I'd understand it, but I'd never use it, and I don't think most Midwesterners would. (Of course, ~30–40% of the time I say on Wiktionary that a word/sense/construction doesn't exist in my region, it's less than a month or two before I hear someone use it in real life, so who knows?) —Ruakh_TALK 02:42, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

Keep, to contrast with "vomit" sense. DCDuring TALK 11:03, 7 December 2008 (UTC)

Keep per DCDuring.—msh210℠ 21:09, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Spanish double l

Note: there exists a previously archived request that may be relevant to this one.

Bad entry title. --Connel MacKenzie 20:57, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

This was matked as kept in November. I repeat my arguments here:-
Books DO refer to this as the "Spanish double l". gbc shows a couple, but more usage can be found in a simple google search, which finds a lot of current usage. Also any Spanish language teaching aid in English will mention the "Spanish double l". There is no other way in English to talk about this letter, which comes after "L" and before "M" in the official Spanish alphabet. -- Algrif 17:29, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

If we are going to re-discuss this, I'll weigh in as weak delete or move to RFV: I think it's SoP (deprecated template usage) Spanish + (deprecated template usage) double l; it gets very few hits on b.g.c.; and your statement notwithstanding, I don't think 288 Web hits demonstrates "a lot of current usage". However, I'll also weigh in as weak wait a few more months before repeating a resolved discussion, unless we have a specific reason to re-evaluate the validity of that resolution. —Ruakh_TALK 00:48, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

It seems to have been marked 'keep' incorrectly - both when I renominated it and now reviewing that previous nomination. (Who added that previously lost link, anyhow?) The title is still bad, no matter what DAVilla decreed unilaterally, when considering it an encyclopedic topic, therefore worthy of inclusion in a dictionary. --Connel MacKenzie 22:01, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

Double l is not the same as Spanish double l. The English spell travelling with a double l, unlike the Americans, who use a single l. This does NOT mean that the UK English pronunciation is eλe. This is, on the other hand, the pronunciation of the Spanish double l. -- Algrif 11:54, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

Keep This is the English name for a specific letter of the Spanish alphabet. We have alpha, ess, long s, and Eszett. This follows the same pattern of being the name of a letter of an alphabet. This has already been discussed and kept. To re-open the discussion, we should have some new reason to do so, not the same reason as before. --EncycloPetey 04:19, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

I think the reason is different this time. The entry title looks just fine to me, but Ruakh has brought up the question of idiomaticity. Certainly it's a descriptive name, which are sum of parts. It also happens to be the name of a single letter, rather than two, as in the English example EncycloPetey gave. That knowledge is not apparent from the name, so keep on those grounds. DAVilla 07:28, 9 February 2008 (UTC)\

Sorry, but that does not follow. The previous nomination was not because it had a bad entry title (but should have been, perhaps.) That subject was not discussed at all, before you mistakenly marked it as kept. --Connel MacKenzie 22:03, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

Since I didn't vote clearly earlier, strong delete from this entry title (even if content is retained in an appendix somewhere.) --Connel MacKenzie 21:56, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

I've added a quotation showing attributive use of this word. --EncycloPetey 00:35, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

lapidate

Two identical senses?—msh210℠ 20:58, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

In my experience, stone is at least a specific subset of "to throw stones at" (at least within biblical references, the only place I've ever experienced the verb "stone"). I would switch "sometimes" to "generally." Past, that I'm happy with the entry as it stands (although it wouldn't be the end of the world if the two senses were merged, as they're obviously closely related). Atelaes 21:31, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

If stone only sometimes is to death (which is what you must say if you want to change "sometimes" to "generally", or, for that matter, if you want to keep the "sometimes"), then how does stone differ in meaning from throw stones at? To me they're completely synonymous, which is why I said these are identical senses. Is there some difference between them of which I'm unaware? (I.e., what "specific subset" is it?) (Note we have s.v. stone "to pelt with stones, esp. to kill by pelting with stones", which agrees with the entry lapidate and with my understanding.)—msh210℠ 21:41, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

If I had to pick one sense I would pick one that included the idea of stoning to death, partially because "lapidation" is topical in connection with the use of lapidation as punishment in some cultures currently. DCDuring TALK 21:35, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

I have edited his and provided a single real quotation for each of three non-redundant senses. Please inspect. Feel free to edit or RfV or otherwise edit. DCDuring TALK 11:42, 7 December 2008 (UTC)

Merge 1 & 2. These fail the lemming test: although MW3 and the OED both acknowledge that this can mean either "stone to death" or just "throw stones at", they both confine it to a single sense. Some lapidations are more thorough than others, but that isn't enough to justify two separate senses. -- Visviva 12:05, 7 December 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps a legal context? DCDuring TALK 12:18, 7 December 2008 (UTC)

If it is used with the specific legal meaning of "stone to death as punishment" then definitely that would merit a separate sense. But I don't think the current journalistic cite is enough to support that. Are the Sharia-based northern Nigerian legal codes written in English, and do they use this term? (At least in Zamfara state, the technical term seems to be "rajm" and the general term "stoning".) Or are there other current or historical English-language legal codes that use it? -- Visviva 16:13, 7 December 2008 (UTC)

vector

rfd-sense: (psychology) "a recurring psychosocial issue that stimulates growth and development in the personality"

not in 2 psych dictionaries in this sense, incl APA 2006, contibutor cites one author in edit summary. DCDuring TALK 15:51, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

A section about Arthur Chickering from Professional Orientation to Counseling may shed some light on this use of the word "vector". It still sounds to me like an application of a generic term for a specific purpose that may not be widely recognized as a new connotation, but I'm not a psychologist (nor do I play one on TV). Interestingly, I hadn't read the edit summary of the addition of this sense before I checked, so the fact that my quick search yielded the same Chickering weakly reinforces the idea that this is a very uncommon connotation, maybe only in use by a single professional. Broader evidence is certainly called for. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 21:43, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

everybody's

Do we want to actively delete these or leave them be if someone wants to create them? Conrad.Irwin 13:25, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

I want to actively delete them. (I might be more O.K. with them if they were more accurate, though. "Genitive singular form" is misleading on three counts: this isn't really a "genitive"; it's a "singular" only in that (deprecated template usage) everybody is a syntactically singular pronoun, which hardly seems relevant to (deprecated template usage) everybody's, since syntactically it doesn't have a number, and it's not like there's a genitive plural it needs to be distinguished from; and it's not really a "form". And our POS header, "noun", is flat-out wrong: (deprecated template usage) everybody is a pronoun, so there's no way (deprecated template usage) everybody's is a noun.) —Ruakh_TALK 02:17, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

There's a reason the vote was for noun plurals only - to keep entries like this. Move to RFC. Keep. --Connel MacKenzie 04:08, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

I don't know what vote you're referring to, but the vote I remember did forbid entries like this. It explicitly made exception for "the irregularly-formed possessive forms of pronouns", and there seems to have been general agreement that the personal pronoun (deprecated template usage) one's would probably be O.K., or at least was a special case to be considered independently; but I see no suggestion that the vote only cover nouns. —Ruakh_TALK 03:34, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

Agree with Ruakh. The vote clearly only allows for irregular pronominal possessive forms, such as whose and its. While I don't know how I would have voted, had I been around for this vote, its mandate is fairly clear. Delete -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 03:57, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

To quote Ruakh: "(I'd actually prefer that there also be an exception for one's, which is the only personal pronoun that we use the apostrophe in, but whatever. This way is quite fine.)". The only one, eh? Really? Not that it is my place to protest deletion: this is not my mother tongue. However, Dutch does have: ieder - ieders (everybody - everybody's) and imho ieders deserves a lemma. What translation should I give [[everybody|everybody's]]?

Jcwf 04:18, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

We do not create English entries simply to provide a translation substrate. I would probably do everybody's. -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 04:24, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

I believe that when there is enough reason to we should, even for entries like father/mother's brother which could be linked in place of a translation of uncle in certain languages. It would not surprise me if several languages necessitated this for all possessives of pronouns. Therefore weak keep as a phrasebook entry. DAVilla 10:37, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

The only one, yes. (In Standard English, at least. Certainly "it's" is a very common misspelling of "its".) I don't speak Dutch, but on the face of it, yes, [[everybody|everybody's]] looks like quite a reasonable translation, as does [[everybody]][['s]] [edit:] or, as Atelaes suggests, [[everybody]]'s. (From what I gather, the genitive in Dutch is mostly archaic except with pronouns like (deprecated template usage) ieder. If this is correct, then I agree with your opinion that (deprecated template usage) ieders deserves a full entry.) —Ruakh_TALK 04:26, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

Yes, genitives are mostly archaic and in fact less common than the English possessive. They are mostly limited to persons: Jan->Jans etc. Pronouns are a bit of an exception like wiens, wier, ieders, niemands, but then there is a whole bunch of adverbs that derive from genitives. I still don't understand your 'the only one' argument: i.e. I fail to see the difference between everybody's, one's, somebody's and anybody's.

Jcwf 04:45, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

March 2008

Teepol

--Connel MacKenzie 04:34, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

:Delete per WT:CFI#Company names and abundant precedent including #Microsoft above. -- Visviva 04:39, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

Delete as spam.--Dmol 12:15, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

Weak keep - it is used generically in the UK by mechanics etc as any detergent to rub into your hands to get rid of grease etc. SemperBlotto 12:19, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

Changed to strong keep - over 700 google book hits, many from scientific journals. SemperBlotto 12:25, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

Definitely remove company sense. Not being British I had never heard of this, but these and a smattering of Book/Scholar hits strongly indicate generic use to refer to certain detergent compounds. -- Visviva 12:31, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

After finally actually looking at the definition (!) I have rewritten it as a noun, and added a few citations. SemperBlotto 14:57, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

The 1987 quotation is mention-only. You seem to be saying this is in widespread use in the U.K., but it would still be nice to have quotations that demonstrate the term meets CFI. :-) —Ruakh_TALK 15:28, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

I can confirm that the term is (was?) used in the Netherlands. I know it from my undergraduate chemistry labs. Jcwf 16:07, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

Keep Παρατηρητής

router

Ancient vandalism [1] that went undetected (original sense's example still with that incorrect, redundant sense.) While there may be a desire to list the literal back-formation definition, it should be listed after the real definition, perhaps as a sub-sense (the back-formation meaning "dispatcher", I'm not convinced even exists, but that would be a question for RFV.) But even if attested, it would still be redundant (or "by extension" or whatever.) --Connel MacKenzie 00:42, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

I don't understand. Firstly, the sense that you tagged (sense #1) was not the sense added in the diff you linked to (sense #4). Secondly, neither sense #1 nor sense #4 seems like it could plausibly be a backformation. Thirdly, sense #1 doesn't seem even remotely arguably redundant, while sense #4 is after whatever the "real" definition might be, in that it's the very last definition. All told, I'm really not sure what sense you're talking about and what you're trying to say about it. —Ruakh_TALK 00:53, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

I am also confused, but note that sense 1 is attested back at least to 1927 in the field of logistics. However, inasmuch as the uses I have found refer to a job title rather than a simple description, they might need a separate sense. Senses 3 and 4 do seem likely to be redundant (defining the same thing in different ways). -- Visviva 03:03, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

I would rather say that senses 2 and 3 describe the same thing... where as sense 4, maybe similar but could be distinctly different...--BigBadBen 20:10, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

• Keep now attested RfD'd sense. Agnostic on other improvement potential. Start over if more cleanup, verification, deletion required. DCDuring TALK 23:14, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

router as power tool

Made a new section to keep original discussion clear. -- Algrif 11:21, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

While we're about it...Isn't the power tool definition a different etymology and pronunciation? -- Algrif 16:26, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

I don't know about the etymology, but in UK the power tool is pronounced and the other uses . I believe in the US the pronunciation is used for all senses. Thryduulf 16:56, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

Power tool router is from the verb to rout (which needs some work, btw), while the other senses are from the verb to route. -- Algrif 23:49, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

• I hope you don't think I've jumped the gun, but I've separated the power tool out to a separate etymology. -- Algrif 13:40, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

birthday party

Unlike birthday present (see WT:TR#birthday present), this seems to be SOP in both English and all the languages for which translations have been entered. If so then its value as a phrasebook entry would seem limited. Thryduulf 16:57, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

Um, distinguishes from a political party? Keep. Harmless. bd2412 T 23:33, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

Delete; just as "Halloween party", "Christmas party", "keg party", etc. The context of which definition of (deprecated template usage) party is intended is clear from the pairing with (deprecated template usage) birthday. --EncycloPetey 14:50, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

Delete just have party

Do we have any statistics on passive pageviews by anons? There really ought to be some reflection of the interest of our users in an entry in the RfD process. There may be some common collocations (that also form phrases, probably noun phrases) that should be in here for users. Or is this only for smart, alert useers? I suspect that this would be oft-visited. Based on that suspicion, 1,390,000 raw web hits, 235,000 raw news hits, 1900 b.g.c. hits, and 353,000 groups hits: keep. DCDuring TALK 11:00, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

How many hits would you get for the Bible? Does that mean we should have an entry for the Bible? No. We don't use number of hits for a juxtaposition of words to justify it as an entry. Most such common juxtapositions are the result of regular English grammar. --EncycloPetey 18:35, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

Keg party seems okay to me, also wedding party, but this one I have a hard time justifying. It's the principal meaning of party, and it's not really used figuratively, so rather than deconstructing a sum-of-parts collocation the only reason to keep it would be to discover it if construction were not straightforward. But as to that, it apparently makes a poor phrasebook entry as well. DAVilla 05:24, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

Fairly harmless, but delete if you want. Παρατηρητής

Delete.—msh210℠ 21:19, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

ring

A bunch of interspersed redundant senses. --22:59, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

I'm presuming that you are wanting to merge the following noun senses:

• "A round piece of metal put around a bird's leg used for identification and studies of migration." (3) with "A circumscribing object (looking like an annual ring, earring, finger ring, etc.)" (1).
• "A circular arena where circus acts take place, a circus ring." (5) with "A place where some sports take place; as, a boxing ring." (4)

If so, I can see what you mean about 4 and 5, although the definition of 4 would need to be modified slightly to note that it isn't just sports that take place in that sort of ring.

I disagree that the specific bird ring sense is redundant to the general circumscribing object one though. A ring around a birds leg is used to uniquely identify that bird for various reasons, this is not true of any other sort of ring that I can think of.

Regarding the verb senses, I disagree that any of them can be merged. Thryduulf 23:11, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

I can't see the verb senses being combined in any way. But both should be expanded a bit.--Dmol 23:53, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

I think that deleting senses usually laughable for us in a common polysemic word like this. For ety 1, MW3 has 28 senses for the noun + 14 subsenses, 10 + 2 for the verb. For ety 2, noun 6 + 2, 14 + 4 for the verb; for a grand total of 80 senses. It seems as if we should figure out how to make sure we have all the main senses covered and context-labelled, and grouped and sequenced so they provide mutual support. DCDuring TALK 00:29, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

A boxing ring is not always circular; to quote w:Boxing ring, "A boxing ring is the space in which a boxing match occurs. A modern ring, which is set on a raised platform, is square with a post at each corner to which four parallel rows of ropes are attached with a turnbuckle." On the other hand I believe that circus rings are generally circular, or at least round, in shape. -- Visviva 06:34, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Bird rings are not always round pieces of metal. Their main purpose is to identify, not to be round. -- Algrif 16:05, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Don't they always sit around something, though?—msh210℠ 18:39, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

They usually do, but they can come off and are still rings. I presume (but don't know) that before they are applied to a bird they are neither ring-shaped nor enclosing anything. Although it is possible they have a different name before they're applied, my guess is that this is not the case. Thryduulf 19:15, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

I believe the bird sense is also specifically UK, as indicated by the Wikipedia article. At least, in the US I have always heard these referred to as "bands." -- Visviva 04:05, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

That's evidence enough for me for a UK tag. Thryduulf 13:13, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

soviet

Adjective sense: "pertaining to a soviet." Seems like just attributive use of the noun? -- Visviva 01:52, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

I have provided 3 citations of the comparative use of soviet, some capitalized. They support a different sense. If there is enough evidence for a different sense of the uncapitalized form that truly forms a comparative, then it might be kind to users to keep the attributive sense, both for the distinction and for a kind of etymology. DCDuring TALK 14:18, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

I have provided 4 quotations with adjectival use that does not seen like attributive use of the uncapitalized form and moved the cites of the capitalized form to Soviet. I think they make a case for keeping the RfD's sense and for some other sense(s). I have added one, but it doesn't reflect all usage. It is tedious to cite because Google's basic search doesn't separate cap from non-cap forms and there are vastly more uses of the capitalized form, used as a noun, used atributively in the same sense as the noun, and used in adjectival senses more distantly derived from the noun or from "Soviet-style". DCDuring TALK 14:59, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for that. To me, the citations you added seem like an alternative capitalization of Soviet (and as such worthy of retention). But I would still argue that the tagged sense be deleted, inasmuch as it is not an adjective. If this is noted, and it probably should be, it should be as a usage note under the noun. -- Visviva 00:36, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

I don't have very strong feelings on the point. My thinking is that, if we have one sense that merits entry (meets CFI), then we may serve our users best by including senses that would not otherwise meet CFI but might confuse the user. If the sense that meets CFI is only an alternative spelling, I don't know. But I have been thinking that we need to include gloss-like entries where possible for links that are targets of alt sp, past of, pre part, etc., unless doing so would be misleading or excessively lengthy. Save'em the clicks, I say. DCDuring TALK 01:50, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Agree in principle -- that information should be available on the page -- but think we need to be fairly strict about what actually qualifies as a distinct sense. -- Visviva 01:42, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

We don't yet have enough citations, either. I'll have to try something besides b.g.c. It may just be an alternative spelling, I'm not really sure that it is all that common, although I limited my search to use in comparatives or adverbially modified without quotation marks. DCDuring TALK 03:49, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

• Delete rfd'd sense. No evidence of use except as attributive use of noun. DCDuring TALK 18:12, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

recognized components

This was added by a bot from an article somewhere (not Wikipedia). Is it any more than a sum of parts? Dbfirs

It was probably created from the singular. That singular was deleted by SB, leaving this orphan. Would you like to put the singular form through RfD on these grounds? It lookls like it is some vocabulary used in the UL process for electrical devices. DCDuring TALK 20:49, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Searching on '"recognized component" UL' gets 75 raw b.g.c. hits. It certainly isn't SoP because it relates to a specific important approval process which is probably essential to allowing goods to become salable in the US. I don't much care about the plural, but the singular should be a keep, or rather a restore and rfc. DCDuring TALK 20:56, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I suppose the "recognized by the US Government" sense might be worth recording (just) - but isn't this officially Recognized Component Mark? Dbfirs 22:31, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

UL is a not-for-profit funded by the insurance industry. It seems to be used commonly more or less as entered. There mere fact that there is an official definition doesn't necessarily mean that much, unless actually usage "wants" to conform to that definition. People don't spend a lot of time making sure that trade-mark and service-mark appear every place the mark holder would like them to, nor are we obligated to uphold their trademark. In any event, I will restore the singular and edit it into shape for our consideration. DCDuring TALK 23:58, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

bridal wear

bridal (sense 1 "of or pertaining to a bride") + wear (noun sense 1 "clothing") = bridal wear ("clothing worn by a bride") = sum of parts. Thryduulf 21:12, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

Weak keep. Bridal wear can also mean lingerie but this is different from the intended meaning. Maybe needs another definition. Search google images for a few examples. (Purely for research purposes, of course).--Dmol 22:19, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

PS, There are also regional and cultural differences in what the term means, even within the same country. We might think of bridal wear as white flowing silk, but to someone else it is bright coloured saris or a kimino.--Dmol 09:08, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

It could also be the erosion that happens as a result of wedding day stress ;) --EncycloPetey 14:58, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

But that definition of (deprecated template usage) wear says "in combination". Why isn't it bridalwear? DAVilla 05:30, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

I think that most sum of parts combinations can be melded in a few ways: x y, x-y, xy. This does not overcome the SOP issue. -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 05:44, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

If this is to go, then wedding cake, wedding dress and wedding ring are also in danger zone? Hekaheka 09:49, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

bowdacious

This is hardly a common spelling of bodacious - almost all the first 2 pages of web hits are mentions (including Wikionary), of those that are uses only a fraction appear independent of the first one. 21 books hits, the ones I can see are roughly 50% mentions. A Google groups search returns a whopping 6 results, only 4 of which are independent and one of the others might be a use. Compare this to 230,000 groups results for "bodacious". Thryduulf 16:34, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

Could you remind of the difference between an alternate form and a misspelling? Or eye dialect and misspelling? I thought I knew based on prior experience with other entries here, but I'm losing confidence. This isn't eye-dialect because eye dialect would be "phonetic" throughout ("bowdayshus")? It's not an alternate form because .... ? DCDuring TALK 15:30, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

hwyl

Sense 5 seems to be just a special case of sense 3, but I don't speak Welsh, so I cannot judge accurately. Dbfirs 23:30, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

Don't you think they mean proselytizing or proselytising ? DCDuring TALK 23:51, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

I think they're distinct. I read sense 3 as being a character trait epitomised by non-conformist preachers, whereas sense 5 is the name of a method of prosthletising employed by preachers (who may or may not be non-conformist). Only senses 2 (fun) and 4 (sail) are listed in my (basic) English-Welsh dictionary so I am not sure. Thryduulf 23:54, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps this will shed some light on it. I didn't realize that all five senses were in some way part of the same meaning. Another meaning seems to be personal "state", although that might be an abstraction of mood. GTTR. DCDuring TALK 01:29, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

Unfortunately I can't see a preview of that book (it is not unknown for different regions to see or not see different works on bgc), so I can't say one way or another. Thryduulf 01:56, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

I can't see the book either, but I accept the shade of meaning, so I've removed the rfd and corrected the spelling (which is what brought me to the entry in the first place). Thanks. Dbfirs 21:29, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

I am distressed that the two of you can't use the link. Any thoughts on why? Browser related? Does this problem arise in entries? I thought that I could paste a link and thereby provide all the context anyone would need for our more stringent attestation test. If I can't, ..... DCDuring TALK 01:07, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

From past experience of this (sometime last year), it is almost certainly a region thing. Dbfirs and I are both in the UK, whereas I believe you are in the USA or Canada. The most likely explanation for the difference is Google being cautious over copyright issues. Thryduulf 01:47, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

‘Writers very often mystify matters by using words that are not intelligible to their readers. Some with the air of classical knowledge will tell us that “hwyl” is an “affiatus;” and a good many readers will ask, “What is an affiatus?” They may as well aver that “hwyl” is a kind of atmospheric disturbance cause by windmills. It is mere rhetorical enthusiasm. It is a nautical metaphor. “Hwyl” is a “sail;” and when the Welsh say that a man is in a good “hwyl,” they mean that he is moving along or enjoying himself immensely, navigating gloriously on a sea of good feeling. When a man enters into a discussion of a subject enthusiastically, he is said to be “sailing” into it, which is exactly the Welsh idea of “hwyl.” It is somewhat akin to spread-eagleism in politics. The Welsh word “hwyl” is used  generally in a good and, par excellence, in a religious sense. There is, however, one peculiar characteristic of this hwyl which is especially Welsh. This is the peculiar cadences of the Welsh preacher when he is on the high sea of inspiration, when in a grand breeze and with all sails spread, he moves majestically to the goal of his sermon.’ —Ruakh_TALK 02:01, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

en zo voorts

For correct spelling see: here Jcwf 23:53, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

April 2008

internet block

Internet-block

SoP.—msh210℠ 18:50, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

It isn’t the sum of the parts. The sum of the parts could means, for example a physical barrier which prevents a user plugging a computer into a modem. That could also prevent a user accessing the Internet.

An Internet block is a specific type of computer programme. Barbara Shack 19:09, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

Note also that among the first 31 Google Books results for internet-block, just one (by Guthrie) seems to be with this meaning, and it has a capitalized initial I. The rest have commas between the words, or the like, or refer to a block of IP addresses. The remaining five Books results are invisible to me.—msh210℠ 19:15, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

I've capitalized it and added a hyphen. Is it OK now?Barbara Shack 19:27, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

It still seems to me, at least, to be a SoP. Others will have their say on that issue, and, doubtless, some of the regulars here will disagree with me. As to whether it's attested (which is what the Google Books results are for), we still have only one result (and it has no hyphen, incidentally; I'm not sure why you added one); can you find more? But attestation is an issue for Requests for verification, not here; and if the consensus here is that this term is not a SoP, then I will recommend moving the discussion to that page for an attempt to find attestation.—msh210℠ 19:32, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

This fails just like and for the same reason that virus checker, virus scanner, and spam blocker all fail, they are simply SoP names of types of programs. An internet-block is software which blocks the internet, a virus checker is software which checks for viruses. There is no information beyond what is contained in the name which requires definition. - [The]DaveRoss 20:35, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

Move to RFV or delete. If I thought this phrase were real and always had this meaning, I wouldn't be ready to call it SOP, but I don't, so I am. :-) —Ruakh_TALK 22:37, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

Move to RfV to see if some orthography for this has the meaning given: roughly, "selective user-computer internet-site blocker". This longer phrase would seem to be SoP. The phrase in question doesn't quite seem that way because it would seem to me to allow for governmental blocking software not installed on user machines, complete blocking of the open internet while allowing access to intranets, etc. Or am I missing something? DCDuring TALK 15:27, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

The way I've used the term, an internet block is not a program, it is a sequential set or IP adresses (usually specified by a mask). RJFJR 19:23, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

Delete - rubbish. Παρατηρητής

Family Feud

If the show meets CFI it needs to be split out, but I do not think it does. --Connel MacKenzie 07:35, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

Even an inclusionist like me thinks it should be removed. SemperBlotto 07:19, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

I don't understand why these things, which regularly survive based on citations, are pushed into RfD instead of RfV. Is it because they can be deleted more quickly? The Proper Noun needs its own entry. The show is used allusively often and attributively on occasion. Why the bias against pop culture? DCDuring TALK 11:53, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

Most of the bias against "pop culture" is due to incessant spam from the various media outlets - media outlets that in turn try to get a name out there any way they can - even if it mean crap loading here. (I'm not saying that is necessarily the case here; I'm answering your more general question.) All reasonable dictionaries prohibit product and company names, for many other reasons. But being on the internet, we are a finer target - reasonably, we absolutely should take a much harder line than major print dictionaries. Ans a much harder line than we currently do. --Connel MacKenzie 11:04, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

I've put the proper noun where it belongs. DCDuring TALK 12:01, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

RFV (or just keep per citations:Family Feud).—msh210℠ 19:14, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

The citations on citations:Family Feud are not idiomatic, referring to actual television show (ex: "watching the new Family Feud"). As such, delete.--TBC 13:31, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

A few of them are idiomatic, in particular 4 and 5, as one can't simply replace Family Feud with another game show and still be able to convey the same meaning. Carolina wren 21:54, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

head

"Front of a queue" sense. Isn't this just the "foremost part" sense? Does anyone ever say "you can go to the head" when they mean "you can go to the head of the line"? -- Visviva 07:38, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

"At the head of the queue" and "go to the head of the queue" are the most common formulations, "come to the head of the queue" is rarer. When the context is firmly established as being the position in a queue, you could say "You can go to the head" or "I'm at the head", but in both cases I would use either the word "front" instead of "head" or include the word "queue". In other words, delete sense. Thryduulf 11:01, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

Can we look at some of the other senses, too, and the rfc, while we're at it? These multi-sense words are killers. Grouping can help a bit. Some of the entries with contexts are closely associated with a more generic sense, more figurative with more concrete (e.g. pus/crisis).

1. 2nd sense "any round object". A ball or sphere is not automatically a head.
2. The sense for hammer/axe head is worded to include striking tools so the business end of a lacrosse stick needs to mentioned separately and other non-striking tools and other implements that have parts called heads that are not included.
3. It doesn't seem to have a good sense for head of lettuce, cauliflower, etc.
4. The sense for nail doesn't seem to include screw.
5. Anyone who is willing to take this on should go to the head of the class. DCDuring TALK 01:29, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

1. No, but many round masses are called heads. I have replaced "any" with "a"; is that sufficient?

2. I'm not really familiar with lacrosse terminology, but my understanding is that the rationale for this is similar to the rationale for the guitar sense; it refers to not to the business/top/working end of the stick, but to a very specific part of the stick. As for other tools, I'm sure it's true, but examples would be helpful. Some, like "head of a rake," might be covered by the principal-operating-part sense; or the striking-tool sense might need to be reworded to encompass all hand tools.

3. I guess it depends on whether a seed/flower head and a lettuce head are basically the same thing. My first inclination when reorganizing the defs was actually to put the lettuce example under sense 2; i.e. a head-shaped lump of lettuce, not a capitulum of lettuce -- but other dictionaries seem to disagree.

4. Huh? Why not? The definition mentions screws, and people talk about the heads of screws all the time.

6. I'd be surprised if the pustulent-abscess and crisis senses have any connection; it seems more likely that it is derived from the tendency for the head of the abscess to become round and swollen with pus. -- Visviva 08:34, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

I'm so sorry. I hadn't looked at the edit history. Wow! This is so much improved that I feel like I'm just quibbling, but quibble we must:

1. I'm not so sure that a round mass not connected to something to make a non-round whole would be said to have a head. The comet usage example is an illustration. Maybe it just has to say "part" in the def.
2. Too bad "business end" is too idiomatic for defining vocabulary. It seems almost a synonym for some of the senses of head.
   1. The ball-carrying part of a lacrosse stick is the business end. The stick is used (within the rules) for carrying the ball and for holding it while throwing it.
   2. Not just hand tools, but power tools, including industrial ones, also often have heads.
   3. MW3 has 11 subsenses for the sense closest to this (75+ subsenses for "head" as a whole).
3. I had never known the word capitulum; MW3 uses it as a subsense for an undefined sense, the other half of which is the head-of-lettuce sense.
4. I think I need another monitor so I can see what I'm writing about while I'm writing. I seem to misrember things. (ie, screw/nail). Huh, indeed.
5. You are the usage example for head of the class.
6. I recently got that crisis/abscess relationship from some non-authoritative, but credible source (Crystal or Pinker, I think). They didn't offer any support for the assertion. It seemed to give me a litte aha moment.
7. Is a well-head ever referred to as the head of a well?

Having a long, single-level list of senses made me use my printer to try to hand-make a hierarchy. A two-level (even three-level hierarchy, as in my MW3) is a little bit of a help in grouping somewhat related definitions. Why is that not done here? The use of "#" allows it technically. DCDuring TALK 11:09, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

7. Seems so. [2] But this is arguably covered by the "topmost part" sense. -- Visviva 12:21, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

Maybe we should move this discussion back to RfC. Regarding subsenses, I was thinking about the same thing and put together one possible mockup at User:Visviva/head. I agree that this leads to much improved readability, but a) MediaWiki's handling of ## seems less than ideal (it's confusing to have multiple "sense 2's"), and b) if this were going to be implemented on more than an experimental basis, it would require thorough community discussion and a revision of WT:ELE, particularly since some additional fiddling with indentation rules is required. -- Visviva 12:21, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

RfC seems like the right forum. I'm going to collect prior discussions about subsenses and put the links on a user page somewhere. DCDuring TALK 13:47, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

Regarding MediaWiki's handling of ##, it would be ideal to have senses labelled as 6, 6.1, 6.2, 7, etc. I would assume that doing this will require a mod by a developer to allow this behaviour to be set on a per-project basis rather than being js or css hackable?

If it does require a developer mod, then we will need to show overwhelming support to have any hope of anything being done this side of 2012. Where do we have the discussion about this? Thryduulf 16:01, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

Actually it is CSS-hackable; MediaWiki just generates <ol> and <li> tags for the list and leaves the rest to the browser. Not sure how feasible it is to have one level numeric and one level alphabetic (which IMO would be ideal), but there must be a way. -- Visviva 00:16, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

The options described at http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS21/generate.html#propdef-list-style-type are supported by most halfway-modern browsers (though IIRC not IE 6); something like ol > li > ol { list-style-type: lower-alpha; } would do what you describe (as would just ol ol { list-style-type: lower-alpha; }; the former would only affect ordered-lists that are immediate children of ordered-list elements, while the latter would affect any ordered-list that's a descendant of another). I have no thoughts how to do what Thryduulf describes, barring JavaScript that finds them, sets their list-style-type to none, and inserts the right pattern at the beginning of their content — though that would have the down-side of moving the list markers inside the list. To keep the list markers outside the list and do this would be even more complicated. All told, a great thought, but probably not worth it. —Ruakh_TALK 00:37, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

What I currently have here seems to implement Thryduulf's suggestion fairly well, at least on FF/Windows; however, it may cause undesirable effects with other types of lists. -- Visviva 04:14, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

Oh, wow. One of these days I should re-read the CSS 2.1 spec; I had so completely forgotten that those properties even existed, to the extent that they don't even look familiar! At least, I should re-read it before the next time I decide something is impossible. :-P   Anyway, good work. :-)   Something like this would be even better:

ol { counter-reset: subitem }
ol > li { counter-increment: subitem }
ol ol > li { display: block }
ol ol > li:before { content: counters(subitem, ".") ". " }

since for the top-level it would retain the benefits of actual list style (e.g. the ability to have list-style-position be outside, as it is by default; we can halfway-simulate this with something like ol > li { text-indent: -1.5em }, and maybe we should do so for the nested lists if no one can think of a better way, but for the outer list there's no need).

—Ruakh_TALK 11:55, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

This would have to go to BP and Vote, I'm pretty sure. There has, unsurprisingly, been discussion of this: Wiktionary:Beer_parlour_archive/2007/May#subdividing_definitions and Talk:quaint, for example. There are probably other discussions, but I'd rather someone selected a good one that they were involved in rather than me trying to determine the quality and import of something I wasn't involved in. It's worth a review of the prior discussion before we reopen it to see if the issue looks different this time. There also might be something else we could do that was less dramatic to improve the definitions for long, basic, highly polysemic words. We seem to be a little light on guidelines, let alone policy, in this area. There are a few examples of subsenses for particular words. Widsith has been a reasoned advocate of subsenses. Most of the ongoing head additional-sense discussion is back at rfc. DCDuring TALK 17:39, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

tincidunt

This does not appear in my Classical dictionaries, but that does not mean it isn't a word in New Latin. The problem is that many of the 206 Google cites (linked on the page) are dubious. One of the cites I looked at was otherwise in German, with (deprecated template usage) tincidunt in the middle of it. Many others I looked at seem to be books about software packages, but written in Latin!? I am very confused by all this. Do we have a neologism here? A protologism? Or soomething else? --EncycloPetey 15:55, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

• This is not in my Latin dictionary either - and I can't even figure out what verb is might be a form of. SemperBlotto 16:24, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
• Every bgc result (IINM) is in a lorem ipsum. (There must be some software used by all these authors that generates a lorem ipsum including the word tincidunt.)—msh210℠ 19:15, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
  • So do we delete this, or keep it, since so many books have it, but with a note that it's not a word and has no meaning?—msh210℠ 16:09, 19 March 2008 (UTC)
    • I'm don't think it meets the current CFI, except perhaps for the “general rule” that “A term should be included if it's likely that someone would run across it and want to know what it means.”^link Indeed, that seems to be the reason this entry was created: an anonymous editor found it in lorem-ipsum text generated by a certain lorem-ipsum–generating Web site, and despite knowing the purpose of the site, seemed to believe that it was a real word (which does make sense, seeing as the original lorem ipsum was a corrupted version of an actual Latin text, and one might well expect words in lorem-ipsum text to be real Latin words). So, move to RFD and ponder the nature of meaning. :-) —Ruakh_TALK 23:44, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Preceding is from RFV. Please continue discussion here.—msh210℠ 21:39, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

• Keep. to be nice to users who might not be familiar with lorem ipsum, as Ruakh suggested. DCDuring TALK 14:56, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

  There is at least one other way of being nice, so I take back my keep vote until the finessing more-or-less within-the-rules approach suggested below is evaluated. DCDuring TALK 11:43, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

Keep, as it is used and someone may want to find out what it means (or in this case refers to). sewnmouthsecret 15:04, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

• Comments. (1) It's obviously meant to look like Latin (especially considering the text always found around it). But it's not Latin. If we keep this, what language header do we use? (2) and what part of speech? (3) I suspect that there are many other terms in tincidunt's class: non-words that are frequently found in lorem-ipsum text. If we keep this, presumably we'll keep all such.—msh210℠ 22:29, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

  The lorem ipsum entry calls "lorem ipsum" an English noun. It does not have any attestation.

  Perhaps we could finesse the problem. Perhaps we could include "text" including "tincidunt" (not now present in the entry) in the "lorem ipsum" article. That way at least the search engine would lead a user to a place that gave an explanation. (BTW, it would be nice if we could also find at least one real usage example for "lorem ipsum" as a noun. It would also be nice if we had some discussion there about the term on its talk page.) DCDuring TALK 00:39, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

  I have found a few cites of "lorem ipsum" being used as a noun for attestation. I have also found a short nonsense quote in which it is used with "tincidunt", which I have inserted in the lorem ipsum entry. Once the article gets re-indexed, it should direct search to that entry as well as "tincidunt". That would make our decisions about "tincidunt" and the precedent it might set a little easier. DCDuring TALK 01:05, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

  A search for "tincidunt" would find the cited noun entry "lorem ipsum", which is used in English. DCDuring TALK 11:43, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

  I would have thought one of the key points of lorem ipsum is that it is ==Translingual== . -- Visviva 15:22, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

  I wouldn't object to such altering of lorem ipsum. I was just interested in whether we could stick to the form of our practice about PoS and citation, preferably both for lorem ipsum and tincidunt. We seem to be able to do it for lorem ipsum under one of English or Translingual header. I see how by finesse to include in search "tincidunt" and many other frequently occuring pseudo-words without having to have new entries for them, but I don't see how they can be entries under our existing rules. Nor do I particularly want to if search would take a user to an informative lrem ipsum entry. DCDuring TALK 15:59, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

  Well, I think that "lorem ipsum" itself is probably a valid English term, but that the words (or word-like objects) which occur in lorem ipsum passages are best regarded as translingual. IMO the same arguments that apply to having entries for nonsense Hangul sylables that have never been used to convey meaning -- which the community recently decided was desirable -- would apply at least as strongly to lorem ipsum words, which at least are used for some purpose. Given the structure of Wiktionary, I would say that if we are going to cover such words in mainspace, they should each be given their own entry. If not, they could simply be listed in Appendix:Lorem ipsum. -- Visviva 09:59, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

  An appendix is only useful if you know what you are looking for or at least realize that are appendices to search. It's one drawback to citation space. There are many more users who don't know than who do. DCDuring TALK 11:16, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

  Fixed formatting slightly (my goof). Fair enough, but if these are worthy of mainspace inclusion -- and they certainly do provide some user value, if only to let the user know that this is not a real word -- I think they really do need their own individual entries. -- Visviva 14:04, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

• I don't, because they're never used as words. They're nonsense text that appear in a single, specific (albeit widely circulated) "text". The text is in pseudo-Latin, which is not a language and has no ISO code. The individual "words" are never used in Latin nor in any other language I know of. --EncycloPetey 15:35, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

  I don't see how that would make them any worse than random Hangul syllables which are never used to convey meaning, but which the community unanimously decided were desirable because someone might want to know that they are not words (or something like that). At least there is plausible reason to think that someone might actually imagine that tincidunt (et al.) are words, and need to be disabused of the notion. -- Visviva 10:37, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

  The differences are: (1) Hangul syllables are used to assemble words. So, just as we have entries for the letters of the Roman alphabet, we have entries for Hangul syllables. (2) Hangul syllables have a language header; tincidunt does not because it is not used in any language. --EncycloPetey 18:06, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

  Good point, EncycloPetey (15:35, 20 April 2008 (UTC)). All the cites are from the same widely distributed lorem ipsum. So they're not independent, right?—msh210℠ 18:21, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

• Delete. Failed search leads to [[lorem ipsum]], which addresses my sole concern, also possibly the similar concern expressed above by User:Sewnmouthsecret. DCDuring TALK 21:40, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

tío materno

Sum of parts. Spanish, like English, has no word especially for maternal or paternal relatives. Dmcdevit·t 05:03, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

Delete, I guess, except that it seems silly to delete it as long as we still have maternal uncle. —Ruakh_TALK 12:50, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

tío paterno

Sum of parts. Spanish, like English, has no word especially for maternal or paternal relatives. Dmcdevit·t 05:03, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

How else would you know that it doesn’t simply mean a "fatherly uncle"? —Stephen 20:32, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

abuelo paterno

Sum of parts. Spanish, like English, has no word especially for maternal or paternal relatives. Dmcdevit·t 05:03, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

R.E.M.

American-rock-band sense. —Ruakh_TALK 11:41, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

From a help-the-normal-user perspective, I've never understood why such a sense is a bad thing. Maybe we could make the sense line slightly more informative and include a link to the WP article. DCDuring TALK 11:59, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

Delete sense - it's purely encyclopedic. bd2412 T 02:26, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

Keep. Proper, yes, but still part of the English lexicon. DAVilla 06:13, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

Delete sense - purely encyclopedic. --Jackofclubs 17:38, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

maternal uncle

Sum of parts: useful only as a place to hang translations. (Unlike some editors, I'm not thoroughly opposed to having such a place in cases like this where a lot of languages make this distinction; but if we're going to do that, the entry should be structured so as to make that clear, and it should only include the translations that rightfully hang there. A lot of the translations we currently list are either catch-all words for "uncle", or equally-SOP translations.) —Ruakh_TALK 12:54, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

Is it really sum of parts? A genealogically naive user might assume it means "mother's uncle." -- Visviva 13:02, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

Or a matronly uncle. —Stephen 13:24, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

Keep. Not sum of parts. No combination of maternal or uncle will define the term without ambiguity.--Dmol 14:16, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

Necessary, and desirable, in English. Translations which are SOP should have their component words wikilinked separately. Widsith 20:46, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

So, question: would y'all argue that since (deprecated template usage) maternal brother isn't already taken as a genealogical term, it might indeed indicate a mother's brother, or to a motherly brother? It's true that (deprecated template usage) maternal has multiple senses, but I believe that (deprecated template usage) maternal <relative> has only one, and various examples of this fact are all SOP. —Ruakh_TALK 03:57, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

No, I would say that "maternal brother" can only mean a brother who is quite motherly. At any rate, it is pretty confusing to interpret it any other way. More to the point, it is an almost non-existant phrase, whereas maternal uncle is a very common collocation, and furthermore is idiomatic in the sense that this is the most natural way to express the concept in English. Widsith 05:41, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

Well, all the b.g.c. hits I can find for "maternal brother" use it to mean "brother with whom ego shares a mother" only... however, a web search for "maternal brother"+"mother's brother" turns up a number of sites which appear to treat these phrases as synonymous. (For example, on a professor's course-notes website, "He notes in European stories the maternal brother is good and the father's brother is evil." [3]) This does seem to indicate that "maternal" can be polysemous even when applied to relatives, at least when the author is not paying strict attention. Personally, if I encountered "maternal brother" out of context, I wouldn't be sure which way to interpret it, if only because the notion of distinguishing siblings by shared parent is rather foreign to me. -- Visviva 06:00, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

Oh yeah, good point. You could obviously have a maternal brother and a step-brother. Widsith 06:31, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

So if I may paraphrase: there's a strong tendency to interpret (deprecated template usage) maternal uncle as "uncle on one's mother's side", just as there's a strong tendency toward that interpretation of (deprecated template usage) maternal <relative> in all other cases. (Is that fair to say?) That doesn't sound like a ringing endorsement of the term's non-SOP-ness. —Ruakh_TALK 21:17, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

Weak delete. --Bequw → ¢ • τ 23:15, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

Keep. IMO reasonable doubt exists as to compositionality, and the value of this and related terms as translation-hangers adds some weight in favor of keeping. -- Visviva 14:49, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Harry Potter terms

I presume all the other wonderful Harry Potter coinages/meanings abide by the same policy?

• sieppi, seeker, quidditch, kvicken, dunkare, Voldemort, metloboj, tragač, אתה־יודע־מי ,הוגוורטס, Hogwarts, מוגל, Muggle, mugglare, Mudla, מחפש ,קווידיץ׳, metlobal

And probably a few others. For some of them RfD/RfV has already been placed. --Ivan Štambuk 13:04, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

From an above discussion, these should all be looked into and decided upon individually, most can be deleted without prejudice. - [The]DaveRoss 23:42, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

Yes, but save sieppi. I have already deleted Harry Potter -sense, but the word has other meanings in Finnish. Hekaheka 20:45, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

(deprecated template usage) מחפש (m'khapés) is not just a Harry Potter term; it should be fixed rather than deleted. —Ruakh_TALK 03:25, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

quidditch is now a real sport. That will pass RFV or RFD. I imagine Muggle would pass, as well. sewnmouthsecret 20:49, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

Of course these terms shouldn't be deleted outright if they aren't just HP terms. - [The]DaveRoss 21:12, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

Native Californian

Seems strictly SoP. DCDuring TALK 11:30, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

Keep. This isn't SoP, it's just incorrectly defined. It's a state-level equivalent of Native American. It refers not to those born in California, but to the indigenous people present in the region of the state before the arrival of Europeans, and to the descendants of those people. --EncycloPetey 13:05, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

You want to keep an incorrect sense on the grounds that there might be a real sense? I challenge the entry as it is. I've never heard of the usage you suggest. It is certainly plausible, but needs to be cited. If it is actually used as you say, we will have to keep the SoP meaning to clarify the distinction in use. I'd like see in what context it is used. DCDuring TALK 14:38, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

Actually, I agree (or disagree, depending on how you look at it) with both of you. I would say that anyone trying to use the term "Native Californian" in the why it's defined would probably be considered wrong, so SoP isn't the issue ("native Californian" seems better), and the term is commonly used to refer to indigenous Californians. At the same time, I find it confusing, or even annoying, when people say "keep" for a bad sense, just because another attestable sense for that word exists. You don't really mean that you want to keep it, you mean "delete-it-but-oh-by-the-way-it-should-be-replace-by-this-meaning." In any case, I have deleted that sense, but oh by the way, I replaced it with EP's, and cites for it. :-) Dmcdevit·t 20:44, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

The problem is, a lot of admins don't give helpful deletion summaries, so a later reader (potential contributor) coming across a deleted entry is likely to think that we've rejected the sense they're thinking of. If there's not consensus to keep any of the currently defined sense, but there is consensus that the term has a real sense that warrants inclusion but that no one has added (for whatever reason), then I'd either (1) change the def to a {{substub}} or (2) delete the entry with a deletion summary that makes clear the need for a better entry. But either way, thanks for side-stepping that by adding the right sense. :-) —Ruakh_TALK 00:08, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

Or maybe not. Someone born in California is a native Californian, but not Native Californian, I suppose. Edited the article using entry on "Native American" as a model. Hekaheka 20:37, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

Grr, I just edit-conflicted you on the article, and the again here. I just put my version of the article in instead of yours; no hard feelings I hope. ;-) Our definitions were essentially the same, I just added citations for the senses. Dmcdevit·t 20:44, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

SoP sense has been deleted. Entry is now beautiful. It never occurred to me that this is what the phrase meant. In the northeastern US the state names aren't used that way. "Native New Yorker" just doesn't seem likely to be what a Native American from the Six Nations (Iroquois) would call themselves.

Does "Native Californian" merit a usage note or something to distinguish it from "native Californian"? DCDuring TALK 01:12, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

A usage note does seem in order for this entry. I expect that one reason that Native Californian is used, but that the construction is not used for other US states, is that (1) California is highly isolated geographically from surrounding, so indigenous peoples seldom migrated across what later became state borders, (2) there is a highly charged political issue concerning recognition of tribes and their lands in this state, (3) Native Arizonan, Native Oreganian, et.c just aren't as euphonious. --EncycloPetey 21:40, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

This entry is now lacking and misleading. The SoP sense filled the gap between the common meaning of the term and the relatively rare meaning (that we now currently have a definition for.) If the intent was to describe it in a usage note, that never happened. While Hekahaka's observation might be more correct than the common use, most bumper stickers will have the "N" capitalized. Even if pedantically it should be a small "N", it is instead capitalized, normally. Rejecting how the term is commonly used, for the sake of political correctness, seems directly opposite to Wiktionary's purpose. Furthermore, I see only two citations for each of the rare forms, not the requisite three. --Connel MacKenzie 19:24, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

If it makes you feel better, you seem to be wrong: the first few pages of google books:"native californian" and google:"native californian" are almost entirely in the sense we define. (Incidentally, this continues to be true if we ignore the uppercase-N hits.) —Ruakh_TALK 00:48, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

Delete, not useful in any way. Mglovesfun 14:28, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

Keep, certainly no less useful than Native American. -- Visviva 14:54, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

Striking. As noted above, the offending sense has been removed. Connel's objection is noted. —Ruakh_TALK 19:51, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

May 2008

-scribe

Characterized as a suffix. It is not. It is a "combining form", which we do not normally allow as an entry AFAIK. DCDuring TALK 18:12, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

Delete Actually, this is not a combining form nor a suffix (at least in the examples cited). This is simply a Latin verb (scrībō) which is the etymon of a number of English words. Unless someone can find some words which are the result of an English suffix "-scribe" this really needs to go. -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 18:41, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

If it were a combining form, would we keep it? Are you suggesting that this should be an RfV? DCDuring TALK 21:20, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

Weak keep. This combining form has meaning to English speakers; just about every combination-word that I thought to Google, including (deprecated template usage) [http:／www.google.com/search?q=omniscribe omniscribe] and (deprecated template usage) [http:／www.google.com/search?q=retroscribe retroscribe] and (deprecated template usage) [http:／www.google.com/search?q=angloscribe angloscribe], had hits. I couldn't find any that seem to meet CFI; but they suggest to me that (deprecated template usage) -scribe itself might be worth including. (Of course, it would need to be fixed — firstly, to change "suffix" to "combining form", per DCDuring, and secondly, to make clear that the terms in the "Related terms" are just that, and not derived terms, per Atelaes, lest we give readers the wrong idea.) —Ruakh_TALK 23:59, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

Delete. First;y, this isn't a suffix; it's a Latin root word. A suffix is an ending tacked onto a root, not a root itself. Nor is this an English combining root, well, at least not in the examples given. Each of those comes from a Latin source word formed from a preposition + (deprecated template usage) scrībō. That is, the combination was made in Latin, and the resulting combination was then transmitted into English. --EncycloPetey 00:39, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

This feels like the type of entry that should be well understood by English speakers, in which case there may be productive evidence that it has entered the English language. That is, it might be possible to find neologisms that were formed with an understanding of what this combining form means. But you're right that without that, it isn't an English term. DAVilla 05:57, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

have a bathe

Sum of parts. Thryduulf 18:30, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

Delete DCDuring TALK 19:16, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

Semper added have a bathe and have a bath. He wrote that the former means to "immerse oneself in the sea" and the latter "to wash oneself in a bath". If this is correct in whatever dialect, then I'd keep both to illustrate the difference, and use {{see}}. Can someone confirm this distinction?—msh210℠ 17:36, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

I would never use "have a bath" to mean "immerse oneself in the sea", and using "have a bathe" to mean "wash ones self in the bath" rather than "have a relaxing soak in a bath" would be unusual ("have a bath" can mean the primary intention is either to get clean or to relax, and neither precludes the other as a side effect) - i.e. one can "bath" only in a bath, but one can "bathe" in either a bath or in the sea (or in any other body of liquid). So, yes there is a distinction, but to me though it is entirely that between the verb "bath" and the verb "bathe". Thryduulf 18:43, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

Added content at bathe, including UK noun sense. -- Thisis0 21:17, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

have a bath

Sum of parts. Thryduulf 18:32, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

Delete DCDuring TALK 19:16, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

See my comment above s.v. #have a bathe.—msh210℠ 17:37, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

Keep, this doesn't mean "own a bath". "bath" doesn't even have a verb entry at this time, quite rightly IMO. Kappa 08:48, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

?? If you'll take a quick look at google books:have, you'll notice that (deprecated template usage) have usually doesn't mean "own". Even if you restrict it to google books:"have a", not one of the top ten hits means "own". Also, you seem to believe that in the phrase "have a bath", (deprecated template usage) bath is a verb? If so, then that belief is mistaken; if not, then sorry, but I don't understand what you're trying to say. —Ruakh_TALK 14:40, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

I've just added the verb sense to (deprecated template usage) bath, supported by three citations spanning 17 years. Thryduulf 10:41, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

Keep per fancy dress test. Sounds awkward to Americans. DAVilla 05:48, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

B. splendens

This is illustrative of a type of abbreviation common in botany and zoology. It is a context-dependent abbreviation. The meaning of B. would vary according to what genus was being discussed. I would assume that such entries should be deleted on sight or moved to the spelled-out entry name if it does not already exist. Please advise on any better course of action. DCDuring TALK 16:07, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

• Weak don't know. E. coli should be acceptable though, and several more widely used ones. SemperBlotto 16:12, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

  Thanks for reminding me. I wouldn't have deleted that one - almost no matter what was said here. DCDuring TALK 18:25, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

Agree with SB. There are a few which we should keep. E. coli is one and C. elegans is another, but that's all I can think of. No one says (nor writes) H. sapiens or M. musculus, and Drosophila always just goes by its genus for some reason. I think anything besides the above two should be shot on sight. -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 17:44, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

OK. If I come across any marginal cases, I'll check b.g.c. for use outside of technical literature or bring them here. DCDuring TALK 18:25, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

My experience is that the abbreviations are only used routinely for model organisms whose genus name is long and hard to spell. So, you'll see E. coli and C. elegans instead of Escherichia coli and Caenorhabditis elegans. But each of these is ambiguous, since there is an Entamoeba coli (gut parasite of some note) and Calochortus elegans (a flower). For Drosophila and Arabidopsis, the genus name is used instead. And, as Atelaes has noted, no one bothers to abbreviate Homo or Mus, perhaps because the names are so short anyway. Likewise Zea mays isn't abbreviated.

There is at least one other model organism whose name is regularly abbreviated, and that is S. cereviciae (Saccharomyces cereviciae), or "brewer's yeast". It's abbreviated name deserves an entry as well. --EncycloPetey 19:56, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

Disagree with Atelaes. Check each for cites without context and keep. (A valid cite, imo, would be, e.g., a journal article entitled "Bright red B. splendens", even if its text/abstract starts "Betta splendens...".)—msh210℠ 19:20, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

Well, that's the trick. Quite frankly, you could probably cite just about any such abbreviation. That does not mean that anyone except for the twenty or so people working on the species actually understand it. -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 20:16, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

I hope I don't correctly understand what you are saying. As I understand it, an implication would be that we should have a sense of "fish" that corresponds to each genus, species, and subspecies of fish for which we could find a use of the word fish that was referring to that type of fish.

This is not idle or facetious. I would expect that I could find a few senses each for "A. palmata", "A. palmatus", "A. palmatum", "B. palmata", etc. I'm certainly not going to cite them myself and would be inclined to RfV each instance. I was trying to make our lives easier, not harder. DCDuring TALK 20:10, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

I think that the test should be if the abbreviation is used in non-technical publications without expansion on several occasions spanning at least a year; news articles would be good sources of these I suspect. Off the top of my head I'd say that E. coli and C. difficile should have entries, as should the latter's even more abbreviated form C. diff. Thryduulf 20:19, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

Makes sense, DCDuring. Do you think, then, that we should have splendens, #{{non-gloss definition|a species name in various genera}}?—msh210℠ 20:22, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Excellent. Should we have a tag and/or category for these as "International Scientific Vocabulary" ISV? Are ISV Translingual taxons descendants of the Latin adjectives? DCDuring TALK 20:35, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Well, we have {{taxonomic name}} as a categorizing context tag, and it seems appropriate to these. To answer your second question, it seems that those which are actual Latin words will usually (and in each case presumably) be descendants of the Latin; of course, not all fall into that category.—msh210℠ 20:50, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

But they are not standalone names, nor would WP let me call them Translingual.

Semi-relevant newbie question, are the things findable through http://scholar.google.com "durably archived"? Conrad.Irwin 19:29, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

As durably archived as it gets. Now, that's not to say that they necessarily meet CFI; that's a whole nother conversation. But, yes, very durably archived. -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 19:52, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

We seem to deem them to be. IMHO, the hard part is getting access if not affiliated with a subscribing institution. In practice, I rarely find useful material-in-context from Scholar, much more from b.g.c. DCDuring TALK 20:10, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

I suppose that, in order to avoid misleading the user, we should include all the possible senses of each abbreviation. Thus, based solely on the woefully incomplete coverage of Wikispecies, we should have at least one sense each for Buchnera, Buchanania, and Beaufortia, as well as for Betta. DCDuring TALK 20:35, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

We run into the problem then of all the taxonomic synonyms, obsolete combinations, and nomina nuda that have ever appeared in publications. This is a door best left closed. Having the entry on Wiktionary would add nothing that couldn't be better handled by a good search on Wikispecies. --EncycloPetey 21:34, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

Hear, hear. Or even a search for splendens on Wiktionary. DCDuring TALK 21:42, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

Delete (per EP and nomination) along with the various similar entries that have been created over the last couple of days for the sole purpose of gaining points in the Christmas Competition. -- Gauss 22:17, 11 December 2008 (UTC)

Delete per Gauss. By the way here is the "Christmas Competition list" in case we do delete these: N. g. salvini, R. gularis, R. chavin, N. caspica, A. anarthros, E. aenea, Y. ysypo, K. kieneri, R. dunni, N. nivalis, P. potens, Z. zorro, C. kachetica, D. lyelliana, N. nomurai, R. thomana, T. timens, S. salatis, R. varini, H. koreana, K. kachuga, N. tigrina, M. minimus, D. gelus, D. diraspes, L. siamica, N. sipedon, I. justi, L. varians, L. pacari, R. nereis, R. scita, X. tyrrhea. Sorry if I overlooked one or two. And as there are quite a few among these which are only "defined" by a red-linking Latin full name, I would think it prudent on the part of those who had contributed such to do something about it. You know who you are. --Duncan 18:54, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

{{look}} was inserted today by Duncan. It's still a strong delete to me. These are all abbreviations of scientific names of species that are presumably never used outside their scientific context. -- Gauss 21:39, 14 February 2009 (UTC)

Delete Christmas competition terms. I am guilty of a few of them, and admit that I would have never considered them passable under CFI (I wanted to win, that's the reason mine are there!) --Jackofclubs 17:41, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

꿈을

Noun + particle. We're still down on these, right? -- Visviva 12:07, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

We keep declined forms in other languages. I say keep. —Stephen 14:59, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

But as I'm sure you know, nouns don't technically decline in Korean, any more than they do in Japanese; they simply take a range of particles. Just as English has no possessive case, Korean has no accusative case. -- Visviva 15:39, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

Delete if I understand correctly that the particle attaches to a noun phrase or other nominal, and not necessarily to an individual noun. (Otherwise no vote: I see no obvious benefit to such entries, but no obvious harm in them, either, and am happy to let y'all sort it out at Wiktionary:About Korean.) —Ruakh_TALK 00:39, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

Japanese, like Chinese, Thai, and Khmer, does not use word spaces, so it is debatable whether the postpositions and particles are suffixes or separate words. Most authorities treat them as separate words. In Korean, they are suffixes, exactly like the case endings in Turkish, Mongolian, and Finnish. If it were not for the traditional parsing of Japanese as noun+postposition, these Korean words would probably be considered noun cases. And while having terms such as 꿈을 does no harm, on the other hand they are useful because they yield a useful result when you search for them. If you don’t know Korean and search for 꿈을, and if the only entries are for 꿈 and 을, you would not know what the word meant. —Stephen 15:27, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

This last is a valid point; I've been vaguely thinking that we should have a standard usage note (or sidebar, or something) that notes the more frequent (and semi-irregular) particles, so that the 꿈 entry would also appear prominently in searches for 꿈이, 꿈을, 꿈과, etc. On the one hand, AFAIK Korean grammarians are unanimous in regarding particles (조사) as separate words. The standard South Korean orthography (한글맞춤법) specifically notes particles as an exception to the principle of words being separated by spaces. Samuel Elmo Martin and others even write them as separate words; thus in Yale, this would be transliterated as kkwum ul. So for us to treat something like 꿈을 as a word would be a serious exercise in OR. On the other hand, our target audience cannot be assumed to be familiar with the finer points of Korean grammar, so a templated usage note seems to me like the best approach. -- Visviva 09:45, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

Delete. We treat Korean particles as separate words, consistent with standard Korean grammar, so this is just a multiple word phrase with no linguistic value beyond the sum of its parts. Rod (A. Smith) 20:21, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

I hate you people. If it looks like a word it should be treated like a word. It's just mean to say "Oh sorry, technically it's not one word according to standard Korean grammar, come back to wiktionary after you've learned it". It's even worse than screwing people on English possessives, at least the 's gives a visual clue. Kappa 10:19, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

It's bad to be mean, but it's also bad to be wrong. Ideally we can find a way to be neither. To this end, I've created {{ko-usage-particles}} and added it to 꿈. Does this address your concerns?

FWIW, I was once of the same opinion regarding the major Korean particles (see the early revisions of Template:ko-noun), but was eventually persuaded of the error of my ways. -- Visviva 10:24, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

A search for 꿈을 only finds that page, it does not find the 꿈 page. The only way to get to 꿈 from "꿈을", if 꿈을 is deleted, is if you know enough about Korean and Korean grammar to try dropping the last syllable when searching. This puts Korean generally out of reach to most Americans. —Stephen 00:39, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

Here's my input. As someone who knows nothing about Korean, I have to say that the difference between 꿈을 and 꿈, or rather the lack thereof, is thoroughly confusing. When does one use a particle, and when not? How many particles are there, and how many attach to this word? (Abstain of course.) DAVilla 05:41, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

buried treasure

Treasure which has been buried; sum of parts, not obviously idiomatic. What was this doing on Wiktionary:project-wanted articles anyway? Is there another meaning? -- Visviva 03:47, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

By my lights, a figuratively buried figurative treasure wouldn't warrant an entry, but perhaps someone thinks so. DCDuring TALK 03:56, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

I added the term. It has both a literal set phrase sense and a figurative sense. The literal concept of buried treasure evokes images of pirates and piracy, and of treasure chests. This connotation is not inherent in the sum of "buried" + "treasure". The figurative sense shows up in sources like these: [4], [5], [6], [7], [8], [9], [10]. --EncycloPetey 04:34, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

Buried treasure has at least two idiomatic meanings. 1) A reference specifically to pirate treasure, even out of context—as in, treasure specifically buried by a stereotypical (mythical) pirate, and found with a treasure map (!), as popularized by Treasure Island and probably all pirate fiction since. 2) Like treasure trove, "buried treasure" is also used to refer to any valuable find, uncoviering something that was hidden, buried or not, as in "The best place to look for buried treasure is the library." [11] Dmcdevit·t 04:58, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

Well, buried#Adjective can also have the meaning "hidden, concealed." So the figurative sense doesn't seem obviously non-compositional to me. And I have to dispute the association with pirates; a cursory check of b.g.c. shows all sorts of references to buried treasure in pirate-free locations like New Mexico, Oklahoma, and the Sri Lankan interior. (I was rather surprised to find that w:Buried treasure focuses on pirates, as I would have expected more general coverage of the topic.) Seems like this can be (and is) used pretty freely in any relevant sense of "buried" or "treasure."

IMO those who write of "the buried treasure of Jean Lafitte" and "the buried treasure of the Kandyan kings" are using this collocation in exactly the same way. But I could be persuaded otherwise -- is this ever used out of context to refer to specifically to pirates -- that is, where it is not obvious in context that the treasure would have been buried by pirates? -- Visviva 05:15, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

I don't care if you delete the article. However, "treasure" has so many different connotations (treasure can mean something different to each person - i.e. gold/goal/knowledge/etc.) Yet, with this definition, I used the common type relating to pirate, and have included a reference to Wikipedia since I retrieved the idea for the definition from there. miranda 05:39, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

Thank you for your work. I don't mean to disparage this contribution in any way (although I realize it probably seems that way). The entry was quite well-composed, and you are to be commended for filling an open request.

To respond to your point, I guess it's the very fact that "buried" and "treasure" can have so many meanings that bothers me -- as far as I can tell, looking at the various uses on Google Books, "buried treasure" can have any of those meanings. That would seem to make it non-idiomatic. -- Visviva 12:54, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, the stuff between the lines makes it worth keeping. DAVilla 06:28, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

OK, I realize that there is a connection between pirates and buried treasure. But is there a connection between the word "buried treasure" and pirates? I wouldn't normally make the connection myself, unless I happened to be on a seacoast somewhere. For example, if my cousin were searching for buried treasure in Indiana, I would assume that an outlaw or a miser was involved, not a pirate. -- Visviva 12:54, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

But in that case, you've added context information by specifying geography. In the absence of other context, I think first of the stereotypical image of a pirate's chest. --EncycloPetey 13:54, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

yadda

Entry only says "See yada yada yada". There is no definition and no support as an independent word in the entry. It is not even splled the same as the target entry. --EncycloPetey 15:18, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

It's clear from b.g.c that both "yadda yadda yadda" and "yada yada yada" are amply attested. It doesn't need support as an independent word, if it did then all our "alternative spellings" entries would be bad. It's common sense, that if someone is wondering what "yadda yadda yadda" means, there's a good chance they'll look up just "yadda". As for whether yadda redirects to "yada yada yada" or "yadda yadda yadda", that's academic. Probably the only reason the entry wasn't just an auto-redirect, is the good possibility "yadda" could mean something in another language. Language Lover 18:28, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

But the entry for yadda is labelled "Interjection". It is not an interjection, and it is not a word. --EncycloPetey 21:01, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

Ok I went and rewrote it to be self-contained. If it's not an interjection, is it a particle? In any event, it's most definitely a word. Language Lover 05:48, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

Which definition of (deprecated template usage) word applies here then? None of our current definitions apply to this item. It doesn't work as a particle, either, because particles are typically appended to an existing word, phrase, or clause, rather than strung together to assemble a "word". And let me make it clear that I am not being facetious in pursuing this case, but am taking it quite seriously. I believe that it will make a nice reference point for other such situations, so good discussion is to be valued. I know where I stood at the beginning of this discussion, but do not know yet where I will stand at its conclusion. --EncycloPetey 17:34, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

Um, the one labelled 'linguistics' applies perfectly well. Maybe it's a US thing and you're UK or Australia or something? Language Lover 18:26, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

Nope, I'm US. (see blow) --EncycloPetey 17:50, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

Well, it doesn't quite fit that sense, because it doesn't "have a particular meaning"; it's part of a larger phrase that has meaning, but on its own it seems that it doesn't. (That's kind of an iffy criterion; does (deprecated template usage) a have a particular meaning in “Veo a ella”? Words don't always have meanings, per se, and sometimes just have grammatical roles. But either way, (deprecated template usage) yadda doesn't seem to have either one.) —Ruakh_TALK 21:09, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

As Ruakh has pointed out, either we have a problem calling this a word, or our current definition of (deprecated template usage) word is inadequate. --EncycloPetey 17:50, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

When we first wrote this back in early 2006, there was a question about punctuation as well as about how many yadas. It was decided then to put the main entry at yada yada yada and to add redirects from some of the common permutations such as yada yada. —Stephen 06:37, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

Not sure if three is any more correct. Two yaddas gets a good number of hits. One yadda? Send to RFV. DAVilla 05:27, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

Keep somehow. I agree that this needs to be done better, but it looks like a word, and even a native English speaker would assume it was a word if (s)he didn't know better. Incidentally, however we decide to format this non-word-that-warrants-inclusion-anyway, we might want to use the same approach for misspellings. —Ruakh_TALK 21:09, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

Not to spoil this as a test case, but yaddas are not always found in sequence. I've added some cites illustrating this, based on which I believe we should keep the entry. Also added another POS, but that might be dispensed with; it seems that, much like certain expletives, this can fill pretty much any grammatical role. Maybe we need a ===Placeholder=== POS. -- Visviva 17:31, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

کله کیر

It has been at requests for verification before but does not appear to be verified. The English definition has been removed by 64.62.138.100 (talk) but I reverted and decided to nominate it for deletion, unless it can be verified it should be deleted. 86.152.210.92 01:30, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

The fundamental meaning is correct, but the question is the semantic level. Literally it says "prick head", but I don’t know if it is used only in a vulgar sense or also in medical jargon. —Stephen 06:28, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

scene kid

Is this SoP? Basically a "kid" participating in a popular cultural "scene". DCDuring TALK 22:20, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

Doesn't feel sum of parts to me, though I'm not sure why. In any case, this would be sense 10 out of 9 for scene; no definition specific to music is present in that entry currently. -- Visviva 17:02, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

I think this is pretty much accurate...— This unsigned comment was added by 91.106.12.38 (talk) at 18:22, 14 July 2008.

-ostomy

I think the proper suffix is -stomy (making a hole). The "-o-" is added for euphony. Should we have this as a full entry, redirect, not at all, or what? DCDuring TALK 01:44, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

Oh no, not this again. I get a headache just looking at that discussion. Agree that this should be a soft redirect to -stomy; -ostomy may (or may) not be a "real" suffix, but we cannot assume that either users or contributors will be aware of this. -- Visviva 16:58, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

-o- is incidental. The real problem to me was that the more correct suffix -stomy wasn't an entry. I don't want to waste folks' time on this. I suppose having an extra "erroneous" suffix really doesn't matter much since suffix entries are rarely used to support or validate usage (which would be new word coinage). The words will be coined by influence of past practice and, now, the emergence of the word ostomy.

MW online has -stomy, not -ostomy. I'd expect the same from most dictionaries that have suffixes. DCDuring TALK 17:49, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

I think it would be useful to have this as a misspelling of/misconstruction of -stomy entry with a usage note explaining the -o-. Thryduulf+

Likewise for the OED, but the OED has both -logy and -ology, which seems like an identical situation. Similarly for the Collins Concise I have at hand at the moment. Since the business of infixation is opaque even to most native speakers, including many contributors here, I'd say we should have both such forms for every suffix (though the -o- form should preferably be a soft redirect with usage note, per Thryduulf). -- Visviva 06:26, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

on me

As in "I'm paying". SoP if we have the right sense of on, which would take any noun phrase in this sense. Or am I missing something? DCDuring TALK 01:22, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

It’s a common idiom. If you didn’t already know what it meant, you wouldn’t guess the meaning from on + me. The beer is on me sounds logically as though I’m wearing the beer. —Stephen 02:59, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

Definitely a useful expression for a non-native speaker, adds value, SoP or not. --Hekaheka 03:40, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

But the phrase is not "on me". It is "on NP", where NP could be "me, "you", "him", "them", "us", "Uncle Sam", "the house", "the company", "my wife's family", any personal name, etc. How many of the forms would we need as either headwords or usage examples to capture enough of the searches? On the house should make it on its own merits. I have entered the relevant sense of on. DCDuring TALK 04:18, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

In which case I think this should be treated as an idiom and redirected to on somebody.

I don't object. All the pronouns should redirect to on someone or on somebody. (Do we prefer "someone" over "somebody") The same effect is accomplished by including all the different likely forms (all those using pronouns) as alternates, usage examples, or citations (in principal namespace). And that still doesn't fully address all the forms. I suppose that if someone searches for a term that has a space in it, we could generate some kind of help screen that informs them of our someone/body/thing lemma format for such entries. DCDuring TALK 15:58, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

Are we obliged to included some reference to all the non-idiomatic possible meanings of "on someone" in the entry to "reduce confusion" by showing the contrasts? Is this really an idiom ? To me it is just a meaning of on that is not necessarily in a language learner's experience. DCDuring TALK 16:09, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

• Delete, but it would be nice to have a Phrasebook entry for it's on me. -- Visviva 06:00, 31 May 2008 (UTC)
• Delete SoP. If we keep, then move to on someone with redirects from on me et al.—msh210℠ 17:58, 2 June 2008 (UTC)
• Keep, probably as a redirect to on somebody (or on something?). Conrad.Irwin 17:10, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

• Delete The financial responsibility sense of "on" is a modest extension of the the general responsibility sense of "on", which is, in turn, a reasonable figurative extension (along the lines of "burden of responsibility") of the more physical senses of "on". How many senses of "on" would we want reflected in the "on somebody" and "on something" entries? We would need to make sure that a user didn't think that the financial responsibility sense was the only one that could connect "on" and a person (or other financially responsible entity) That would essentially mean duplicating much of on. I don't see how we can include this without being compelled to include almost any slightly unusual or regionally restricted figurative use of any preposition with its object. Why should we bother having the preposition entries themselves? DCDuring TALK 18:13, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

• Keep as a set phrase, but determine the most common form (on the house, on him, on her, on their tab, on someone, etc.) and soft-link the others to it (probably this one, as on the house is distinct.) --Connel MacKenzie 01:00, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

• Move to be on someone/body. DAVilla 05:03, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

• Yuk, nasty. In that case, we could have "be in something", etc. In any case, "be on someone/somebody" excludes the possibility of phrases like "this is on the company" ( = the company is paying for this). This is just a special sense of the preposition "on", which is where this sense belongs — something like "to be paid for by (the person, people, organisation, etc, following "on") as a treat, rather than by someone else or jointly". Not my best attempt at a definition, but it's something like that. "On the house" is good to keep ("house" has a special meaning here, so this is idiomatic), but on + pronoun needs to be deleted. — Paul G 12:52, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

The last sense of on#Preposition is currently:

1. Paid for by.

   The drinks are on me tonight, boys.

   The meal is on the house.

Does this need improvement? Or an extra sense? The more general meaning is something like "burdening". For example, "the responsibility for cleaning up the mess in on her." Note the usage examples include the most common objects. on the house is fairly idiomatic though. If we can make "on" good enough, perhaps we can get this to a delete consensus. DCDuring TALK 15:08, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

Keep. The entry at on is quite clearly sufficient. BUT, the Phrasebook argument is strong enough for this entry to be kept for that purpose alone. IMHO. -- Algrif 15:36, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

Added Phrasebook category. Category has fewer than 100 English entries. DCDuring TALK 16:03, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

wait for

(From RFV)

---

I can see nothing but a sum of parts, wait and for Goldenrowley 03:53, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

---

We don't have that sense of for, and I'm not sure how it would be written. Waiting for someone does not necessarily mean to wait on that person's behalf; you might even be waiting for someone on someone else's behalf ("my boss asked me to wait for his daughter.") -- Visviva 06:10, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

---

I am not sure I understand the comment, two of the definitions of "for" apply after "wait":

1. for =Supporting (opposite of against).

   I wait for you to love me

2. for = Because of.

   I wait for love

Goldenrowley 19:09, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

Abstain. I believe that the relevant sense of (deprecated template usage) for is one that we don't yet have — something like this:

1. Used to construe various verbs.

   Don't wait for an answer.

   What did he ask you for?

   He was convicted for murder. (We currently have this as an example for the “Because of.” sense, but that can't be right, as “He was wrongly convicted for a murder that never happened” is perfectly standard.)

   I'm looking for my friend.

— but that's no reason to keep wait for. On the other hand, in my experience we're pretty arbitrary about which verbs we take as phrasal and define on their own, and which ones we define at the main verb entry; if we expect our readers to be able to predict this, we might as well give up now on ever having readers. —Ruakh_TALK 19:58, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

An experienced Wiktionary user will try multiple approaches, knowing by experience that we are often inconsistent. A new user is more likely to type in "wait for" (or "wait") than "for", IMO. I am not yet certain that we have fully and accurately defined the senses of "wait for". DCDuring TALK 20:24, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit conflict]

IMO those are not the right senses of "for".

1. In the first example the emotional content has introduced the idea of support, but that is not common and not relevant to the meaning at hand. For example, in the sentence "I am waiting for the other shoe to drop." the "support" notion does not apply in any way.
2. In ordinary language "cause" usually doesn't refer to a goal or an event in the future, but rather something from the past. "I am waiting for my hanging for my love." shows two sense of "for", the first is the sense that had been missing and the second is the cause sense.

"Wait for" is roughly synonymous with "await". MW3 shows 10 major senses and 18 subsenses of "for". There are obvious parallels among the senses, derived from a basic spatial metaphor applied in various ways, but they are distinguishable. DCDuring TALK 20:06, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

I agree delete. This is just sum of parts, with (deprecated template usage) for leading off a prepositional phrase in the examples above. --EncycloPetey 20:17, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

• I think keep, myself. How would you know how to translate it? wait for is a single transitive verb in many (most?) languages. Widsith 20:52, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

I am afraid if we go down the route to say we cannot define "for", then we will have to make entries for things like "hold for", "stop for", etc. I think the word "for" is a word that links the word "wait" with the reason for waiting.. just as it links many other words to their reasons. Goldenrowley 22:29, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

I disagree. To me, wait for sounds obviously more idiomatic than "stop for". The point is that, despite having a transitive verb await, the natural way to express the idea in English is to use an intransitive verb (wait) with a preposition. This is quite unlike the situation in other languages. It is not a matter of "not being able" to define for, but rather that it is more appropriate and helpful to consider this to be a compound verb. Widsith 08:53, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

For me that's not the issue. We ought to have both the appropriate senses for "for" and whatever phrasal verbs or idiomatic expressions use "for". In gray-area cases I favor being nice to naive users by including more likely-to-be-searched terms both as headwords and elsewhere, in alternative forms, usage examples, and usage notes. DCDuring TALK 23:36, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

Weak delete, and wait on too. If we delete, we need a usage note s.v. wait.—msh210℠ 17:46, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

• Delete, and improve the definition of for. My rule of thumb on deciding whether something is a phrasal verb or just a verb followed by a preposition is whether it can be felicitously passivized. In this way, wait for is very different from, say wait on, which is definitely a phrasal verb. "Yesterday I was waited on by a very good-looking waiter" is perfectly grammatical, but ???"Yesterday I was waited for by a very good-looking customer" sounds quite odd. (It's still better than *"The store was gone to", though, so maybe it's slightly more phrasal than go to, which is definitely SOP.) Angr 17:57, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

• wait for cannot be translated by looking up wait and for, because the two words are translated by a single word in most other languages. Using two words is idiomatic English, not to mentiona a common set phrase. Why not have it? Widsith 20:32, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

• I don't know if I agree with your premise. The correct way to translate (deprecated template usage) wait for is to look up (deprecated template usage) wait, find its translation, and see what preposition the translation is construed with. For example, the Hebrew translation of (deprecated template usage) wait is (deprecated template usage) חיכה (khiká), so you'd look that up, and find that in the relevant sense, it's construed with (deprecated template usage) ל־ (l'-). Problem solved. Unless you're saying that most languages use different words for (deprecated template usage) wait for as for bare (deprecated template usage) wait; but I don't think you are, and if you were, then it seems like we'd need the translation of (deprecated template usage) wait for at wait in order to prevent confusion. —Ruakh_TALK 22:49, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

• Er...I'm not sure, until that Hebrew page is created, how clear that will be. From what you are saying, though, I think that case is less confusing than translations which do not take any preposition at all. The French word attendre for instance — to me the defs wait (intransitive) and wait for (transitive) would ideally be on separate lines and link to separate English entries. The English word wait can be used with different prepositions – for, until, about, around, on, up — all of which effectively create very different "indirect" verbs, some transitive and others in-. Now while this can be dealt with through good preposition information at wait (the current entry is nowhere near, btw), I don't see why it's not more helpful to make common collocations such as wait for pages in their own right. As well, if not instead. Widsith 17:16, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

• While I appreciate Widsith's valient efforts to find a perfect translation of words from other languages into English, the primary purpose of English Wikipedia is to define English words and phrases, not to fit what other languages have (that we do not) or to force the translations into English. For example we load English idioms here, we do not load English translations of French idioms (just because they can be translated). That having been said, "wait" implies we are waiting "for" something, in most cases. I never hear anyone "wait from" anything. Goldenrowley 03:57, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

  I don't see how anything I've suggested interferes with this "primary purpose" you are talking about. But whatever, I'm done. Widsith 06:29, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

Delete with explanation at wait, and possibly splitting translations (if we still do that). DAVilla 06:44, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

I was about to delete this, but is there anything salvageable (movable) among the translations?—msh210℠ 19:28, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

A sign that something is merely SoP is if it translates literally and nicely into numerous other languages. I don’t know of another language that has this particular construction. English "wait for him" becomes in German "warten Sie auf ihn" (not "warten Sie für ihn"). In Spanish, I’d say "espéralo" (not "espera para él"). In Russian, "ожидайте его" (not "ждите для него"). It’s idiomatic. Keep. —Stephen 22:32, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

(Further to the above) Also, this phrase can be tricky, because it has different meanings (wait for him vs. wait for him to do something...German "warte auf ihn" vs. "warte, dass er etwas tut"), and the sense "wait for him" has at least two subsenses (await his imminent arrival vs. wait part of a lifetime until he returns from duty or is released from captivity, with an eye towards marriage). —Stephen 23:17, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

On the flip side, one can also say "he waited three hours for her", or "he waited three hours for her to finish", so even if we keep [[wait for]], won't we have to duplicate all its information at [[wait]]? —Ruakh_TALK 23:30, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

In the interest of keep the entry for wait of reasonable size, wouldn't it be desirable to have the wait for usage notes and examples separate from any such for wait? Something terse, but not hidden under show/hide, at wait that pointed to wait for would provide users the needed trail to follow. I know that size of entry is not a linguistic consideration, but it is a meaningful practical one for users if we want to give them OED-type depth of information. We haven't solved the problem of how to do that with single large entries. DCDuring TALK 23:53, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

As a staunch supporter of phrasal verbs, I have stayed away from this discussion because I am not convinced it is really phrasal. But following through the debate it is clear that 1. it is borderline phrasal for a number of reasons (although "he waited three hours for her" is a demonstration of non-phrasal status), and 2. trying to put all those usage notes everywhere would be anything but useful!!. So on the grounds of practical utility for the users, I think we should Keep this entry, with usage notes in the entry itself. -- ALGRIF talk 16:13, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

June 2008

cosmocrat

Five redundant definitions, to my mind. What does anyone else think? Conrad.Irwin 23:25, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

IMO, rfv for each sense, given the long history. Either it's truly citable or the senses need to be merged so that there are enough cites to cover the overlapping senses. So far there are some uses, but the citation effort seems to have been misdirected. Perhaps the OED is citing some obscure theological sources that have not been scanned and are not readily available to us. DCDuring TALK 00:34, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

The OED Online gives only two cites for (deprecated template usage) cosmocrat proper — this one from 1820, which capitalizes it, and this one from 1870, which does not (though the OED Online transcribes the latter cite a bit differently from what you see on b.g.c. — it omits the word (deprecated template usage) just — so there may be more to the story). Also, in the same entry, it gives one cite each for (deprecated template usage) cosmocratic, (deprecated template usage) Cosmocratores, and (deprecated template usage) cosmocrators. —Ruakh_TALK 02:06, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

I have a rather different mix of citations of uses in "modern" histories that use the word in closely related, mostly non-divine ways. One sense is something like cosmopolitan bureaucrat, another is the B-School "masters of the universe" sense, another is ancient imperial divine king (Nero, Augustus, Pompeii), and a more divine sense, which gets its citations as much from Tantra as Christianity, though they may be separable. Some are a bit mention-y, but not purely so. The senses certainly show a lot of relatedness. DCDuring TALK 03:40, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

Delete/Merge. The senses listed for "Deletion" look redundant to me. I don't see anything in any of the supplied citations to warrant these additional "senses". --EncycloPetey 19:06, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

• Keep - each definition adds meaning and depth to the word. The definitions are individually different and each is correct. None of the definitions should not be deleted or merged. WritersCramp 02:06, 21 June 2008 (UTC)

• Move to RfV. Probably not possible to cite all, but worth a shot. DCDuring TALK 02:19, 21 June 2008 (UTC)

WritersCramp has done some merging. It looks good to me now, but if someone wants to, the citations page can be rearranged to match. DAVilla 06:34, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

CL

rfd-sense Prefix for Canadair aircraft models. We have government aircraft prefixes, but not DC, as in DC-3, for the fabled twin-prop. DCDuring TALK 20:47, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

I'm clueless about the topic, so please bear with me. By "we" do you mean Wiktionary? Can you give some examples of "government aircraft prefixes" that we include? What are CL and DC instead? (Canadair used to be nationalized; would that make its prefix a government one, at least during that time period?) Why does this distinction bear on inclusion here? (I'm not saying that it doesn't, I'm just really clueless about this). —Ruakh_TALK 00:28, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

The Imperial Wiktionary we, yes. Both are arguably "private". If government enterprises are exempt from our rules on things like trademarks and such, do we have to keep track of shareholdings to know whether an item should be included? How much government ownership would get an entity over the hump? I really hope that government ownership will be a red canard.

DC stood for the Douglas Commercial, Douglas being Douglas Aircraft, the leading commercial aircraft company until Boeing came from their second position at the onset of the jet age. DC-3 through D-10 were their model numbers. The MD-80 is a descendant of the DC-9. US military prefixes are abundant. There are many, many naval ones, ranging from USS, to CVN, similarly for armored vehicles and helicopters. Surprisingly the Air Force hasn't gotten very many of their designations in. I don;t know about the government equipment designating prefixes. Our standards for abbreviations might allow them. The manufacturers' designations seem different to me. Mind you, I'd think we'd be better to have more trademarks, place names, etc. in Wiktionary, but rules is rules. DCDuring TALK 00:57, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

So are "CL", "DC", etc. assigned by some external authority, or is it just something the manufacturers do? If the former, I'm inclined to think of it as a meaningful and neutral unit that may be worth defining here; if the latter, I'm inclined to think of it as low-grade spam — not a big deal, but not something we'd want to encourage. —Ruakh_TALK 02:59, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

And, thanks for explaining so patiently. :-) —Ruakh_TALK 03:04, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

Manufacturers. The manufacturer's don't care enough to spam us. But there are plenty of fans for all kinds of boys' toys, especially "heavy metal". I have not been immune to the fascination of some of this. The two-letter airline codes (now augmented by additional codes), the three-letter airport codes, military equipment designations, .... Lists galore. The idea that we limit ourselves to product and brand names that convey more meaning than what they directly designate seems like a good idea, if we are going to exclude brands and company names. I'm not so clear whether we have drawn the line in the same place for abbreviations. It probably warrants some clarification of how our existing standards apply to determine if we need more. I see a lot of low-quality material in abbreviations. Not every government program and agency really merits inclusion of its abbreviation. I haven't seen terribly many RfV challenges to it. I don't find most of the abbreviations on Ullman's not-counted list to be worth fixing. I also don't think we should swamp the RfV/RfD with challenges without clarifying CFI for abbreviations. DCDuring TALK 04:19, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

artificial_grammar

rfc hasn't elicited good def in one year. DCDuring TALK 09:09, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

The only usage I know of means "bit of made-up language" (a severely reduced, ad hoc construction as opposed to a complete constructed language such as Esperanto or Ido). Made-up language tests are sometimes used to test language-learning ability. The U.S. Government used to use these tests to qualify applicants to the Defense Language Institute. See w:Artificial grammar learning. —Stephen 14:21, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

Looking at th WP stub article and the first 2 pages of the 600+ raw b.g.c. hits, it seems SoP to me, but similar phrases have passed RfD. DCDuring TALK 15:54, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

I've replaced the definition and removed rfc, but it still looks SoP to me. DCDuring TALK 16:18, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

I don't see this as SoP any more than artificial intelligence. Since it is used attributively in artificial grammar learning, it should satisfy CFI. I'll try to find a more thorough explanation, since the current definition seems somehow lacking, but I can't articulate quite why I think that. --EncycloPetey 16:37, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

Yes, the current definition simply defines grammar. artificial grammar means "small bit of made-up language, used for testing language-learning ability". —Stephen 17:05, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

July 2008

drift

rfd-sense: "The material left behind by the retreat of continental glaciers. It buries former river valleys and creates young river valleys. The Driftless Area, a geographical area of North America, was unglaciated for the past 510 million years. Mass noun." Should this be a new entry or is it too encyclopedic? DCDuring TALK 23:39, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

Keep it, but remove that part about the Driftless Area (which does make the definition sound a bit encyclopedic). There's no need for a new entry.--♠TBC♠ 02:42, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

epicaricacy

This has previously failed with several spelling variations in the past. Resubmitted again without citations, this is a shoot on sight, still, right? Perhaps if more admins paid attention to it... --Connel MacKenzie 21:17, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

See also Wiktionary:Tea_room#epicaricacy. delete This hasn't yet been shown to meet CFI, despite considerable efforts by several people. We should keep the citations page though, as it does contain useful information. Conrad.Irwin 21:30, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

• I am ambivalent about this one, but to be fair it's not true to say that it is "without citations". They are on the Citations:epicaricacy space. Widsith 12:45, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

It has three cites. It certainly can't be shoot-on-sight. How are the cites unsatisfactory? Groups is going to make many of these words rarely (never?) used in print more likely to find some real usage in durably cited media. DCDuring TALK 20:36, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

posthumous execution

There was previously an RFD request on this, but it was withdrawn. I'd like to restore the request, as I think the term is SOP: for example, google books:"posthumous public execution" also gets a few hits, and google books:"execution of his corpse" gets one, and the related google books:"executed posthumously" gets a good number. Also, the current definition makes it sound like this has nothing to do with the normal senses of (deprecated template usage) execution, but as w:Posthumous execution makes clear, the term is used specifically when the body is "executed" in a way that would actually be used for execution — hanging, beheading, crucifixion, shooting, etc. All told, I think this is simply a less-common sense of (deprecated template usage) execute and (deprecated template usage) execution that's missing from those entries, together with a clarifying adjective, and not a phrase unto itself warranting inclusion in a dictionary. (I'm open to contrary opinions, however.) —Ruakh_TALK 14:58, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

How strange. Ammended execution. DAVilla 06:27, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

Keep. It's not really execution, but as the definition says, "ritual desecration" . Almost idiomatic in that sense. I'd even say it is a set phrase, although of course there are other similar phrases that can mean the same thing.--Dmol 06:27, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

Pokemons

The correct plural is Pokemon (or the official spelling, Pokémon), no? Teh Rote 21:20, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

Incorrect, but still quite common. Weak keep as a mis-spelling or non-standard spelling.--Dmol 21:27, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

From what I gather, Pokemons is a tongue-in-cheek "Engrish" way of referring to Pokemon. Not sure whether or not that merits inclusion, though.--TBC 21:35, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

Keep per Dmol. Circeus 23:41, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

I might say delete since from my experience (I am a fan after all) this is just an example of "being stupid to be funny" which is comparable to what is done in the following extract from a Will and Grace (the sitcom) script

WILL: [TO GRACE] Hi. [TO PUPPY, PUPPY-TALK VOICE] May I bite your snoots? May I bite your snoots from loves?

GRACE: Please stop pluralizing everything.

WILL: But he's so cutes!

GRACE: Look at mes. I can't believe you are still playing with the puppy. You've been home for 3 hours, and you haven't moved. --50 Xylophone Players talk 20:01, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

300 googlebooks. RJFJR 21:17, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

DAB

Translingual section (transliteration of a cuneiform sign). If I remember correctly, we don't do transliterations unless native speakers use them. Could be wrong, but I think all the native speakers died well before Latin characters were invented, so..... -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 06:40, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

Not sure. I seem to remember a discussion about extinct languages regularly written in transcription in scholarly works. I think it was a discussion about Egyptian hieroglyphics or perhaps Coptic, but I can't locate it. Anyone else remember something of this that might help locate the discussion? --EncycloPetey 08:09, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

I don't know if this is relevant, but we're currently using transliterations for a number of ancient languages whose scripts are not yet unicode supported, such as hieroglyphics and the Tocharians. However, it is my understanding that this is a temporary measure, until those scripts become supported. -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 08:14, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

Keep Yes, it is typical for Akkadian, or Assyro-Babylonian cuneiform signs to be Latinised and I doubt strongly that the questionmark appearing as ("the Cuneiform sign ? ") could ever be comprehensive for anyone. There are transition rules and lists with original and Latinised signs, but in none of the two or three I had seen were the cuneiform signs digitalised, but instead rendered with the help of images, which are the only sensible way (hitherto) for Akkadian, Ugaritic and Eblaite and since original cuneiform signs are absent from Unicode (now and in foreseeable future) and the Latin correspondence is the only wise to reach the original source (in digitalised texts, printing books is another matter) besides .png, .tiff or whatsoever images, I oppose the deletion. Bogorm 22:31, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

Delete Cuneiform is present in Unicode, in all it's glorious varieties of signs as they evolved merged to the same code points which should in theory be handled at the font-level (imagine Phoenician and Greek alpha and Latin 'a' all to be handled at font-display level!!) But it will take a lots of time until all the switches inside the {{Xsux}} get proper font support. Ugaritic is also present at unicode (see Appendix:Ugaritic abjad). The policy is to write languges in original script, and creating dozens of ===Transliteration=== redirects for every phonetic transcription of 𒁳 that was reconstructed to be used for writing languages in 3 different families (IE, Semitic and Sumerian which is language isolate) would not be reasonable, as the 𒁳 is already reachable by using usual search on DAB [12] --Ivan Štambuk 23:16, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

I do not know about which Unicode you are talking, but my OS based on UTF-16 is displaying but questionmarks and I do not dare to know what happens to the users with OS relying on UTF-8, but if you speak of some imaginary UTF-256, yes, perchance the Akkadian and Eblaite cuneiforms may be included there. As for now, leaving the reader with the questionmarks alone and with not image represantation would be too merciless. In addition, Burmese alphabet, wherever I come across it in Wikipedia, is too rendered as questionmarks and I am sure that if Unicode does not comprise a living language spoken by 40 000 000, one should be far more cautious in what concerns ancient ones. Bogorm 08:40, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

Bogorm, you have already established on numerous occasions that you cannot see (or cannot see properly) a great number of scripts that others can. Thus, I think that the fact that you cannot see something is not great evidence that no one can see it. However, with the pending discussion concerning transliterations, I think we should hold off on deleting this. Inasmuch as I would very much like to see this entry go away, if the community decides that transliteration entries are something we want........then I have no power to stop them......much to my chagrin. -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 09:00, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

I am using a quite modern operating system(from the current decade), live in a European Union state and cannot see this rare, advanced and complicated scripts. Have you ever thought that readers of Wiktionary with even older software should not be repelled from Wiktionary, that in India and Africa there are innumerable users of Windows 98 or Windows 95, when no Unicode was in question at all and that they deserve at least a little bit of mercy from self-conceit users from developped countries (not all of them are such, hopefully you neither) ? Transliteration entries for languages outside Unicode (UTF-8) should at any cost be preserved in order to show understanding for the mentioned users and because one ought not to embrace any innovation and to impose it on others. Bogorm 09:09, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

I can only pity users of Win9x and other non-Unicode OSes. There are several free and Unicode compliant cuneiform fonts available on the Web, one trivial search query away, for anybody to use. There should probably be some kind of appendix discussing these "obscure fonts", where to get them and how to install them, on language-specific basis, and this was already partially discussed in BP for some Old Persian entries. One special problem with cuneiform is that it cannot be really "transliterated" as one sign had lots of (reconstructed) phonetic values in various languages it was used, so what gives DAB more prominence than DIB, not to mention akkadian sequence of dib, dip, dab, dap, tib, tip, ṭib, ṭip listed in the entry? Search on transliteration cupled with the keyword of "cuneiform" or "sumerian" yields proper-script entry immediately, usually as the first search result, so it shouldn't be out of reach of anyone willing to utilize his brain cells instead of figuring out how to copy/paste Akkadian.otf to his %WINDIR%\Fonts folder.. --Ivan Štambuk 10:37, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

point of the compass

I'm not really into what goes as "sum of parts" and not, but for me this really looks like a noun being the sum of its parts. --Eivind (t) 15:55, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

Huh? It's not a literal sharp point on a drawing compass; it's one of the 16 cardinal directions marked on a navigational compass. The definition could certainly be improved, but it's not merely SoP. --EncycloPetey 16:44, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

I would agree .... except that we already have compass point. How about a redirect, if you don't want to delete? -- Algrif 16:48, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

Well, no-one said "point" is a "sharp point". "Compass point" is one of the definitons for "point", therefore I reckoned "point of the compass" must be the sum of its parts. --Eivind (t) 16:57, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

Once one is talking about a compass, then isn't the specific sense of "point" obvious and, therefore, isn't it SoP? DCDuring TALK 17:19, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

Either keep as is or redirect to compass point. You can’t translate point of the compass into other languages simply by the individual words, you have to look up the specific phrase (or compass point). —Stephen 17:27, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

To answer DCDuring's "point". :-) It is useful to distinguish the various meanings of N,S,E, and W. They can be geographical, magnetic, or compass points(for instance). So, although your argument is thought provokingly good, the term compass point is still needed, as there are situations where the compass has not been mentioned. However, I am behind you all the way if we are talking about point of the compass -- Algrif 18:00, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

• delete or redirect (it's not a set phrase in the way that compass point is). Ƿidsiþ 12:49, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

redirect or keep. Point does mean 'a direction,' as in a 'point of sail,' but it's usage appears to be extremely rare in English outside of idiomatic usages. Yartrebo 02:20, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

No one seems to disagree with a redirect, so done. 72.177.113.91 21:08, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

Someone should've though. undone. This could be kept as a set phrase, it does no harm. Conrad.Irwin 21:18, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

We do redirect for some idiomatic expressions, e.g. my/your in place of one's. I don't actually agree with the redirect here, it just seemed to be the consensus. 72.177.113.91 05:39, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

Redirect. —Ruakh_TALK 03:28, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

Ɂ

Not an IPA letter, but used in some Canadian languages. There's already an article at the correct title ʔ. -- Prince Kassad 19:26, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

My list calls this a "capital letter glottal stop". If it is used in some languages, it certainly should be kept and explained. Or at the very least, redirect it to ʔ. —Stephen 17:14, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

It's discussed at w:Glottal stop (letter), which confirms it is a valid glyph. Other IPA letter with capital variant are ɛ (Ɛ, Latin epsilon), ɑ (Ɑ, Latin alpha) and ə (Ə or Ǝ, the schwa). Circeus

August 2008

bound to

Both of these seem to be direct consequences of the adjective senses of bound#Etymology 1 and possibly misconstructions. Should they be redirects to the section of bound? DCDuring TALK 18:31, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

They need entries, as previously discussed (somewhere), because of the use as an alternative to must in the sense of logical conclusion, where there could be ambiguity with must meaning obligation. The phrase is always in a form of be + bound + to followed by the bare infinitive. It forms part of the modal series. -- Algrif 16:55, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

What I viscerally dislike is the incorporation of what I have learned is a part of the infinitive ("to") into this entry. I find it OK to occasionally split an infinitive in usage, but not to so do in a headword. To me, this is a bit different from phrasal verbs because the prepositions are not part of a PoS as to is part of the infinitive. Without the "to", neither entry would have value, unless we start adding entries for passives (if that is a valid way of interpreting "be bound").

I have an old idioms book that shows "bound to" and "be bound to" at "bound", but I vastly prefer the way Longman's DCE presents it at "bound" with context-like notation indicating the required infinitive, something like what we now have at bound#Adjective. I can't see any reason not to have that at "bound", whatever is decided about these entries. If we help 2 users per entry per year, I'm down with it. DCDuring TALK 17:33, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

I wouldn't rely too much on gut reactions. Modal verbs, which is what we are considering here, are normally followed by the bare infinitive. (Example at the start of this paragraph.) So, just as ought to = should and both are followed by the bare infinitive, this is a case of be bound to = must also followed by a bare infinitive. A typical modal structure. The example given at bound Adjective is particularly good one to demonstrate why we need to use be bound to (unique sense; logical conclusion) to avoid the confusion with must (sense; obligation)

I suspect my gut reaction reflects the response of many users. I offer my gut in lieu of any other evidence about user response. My gut is not much cluttered with linguistic knowledge, therefore more qualified in its ignorance to speak for our purported anon user (if that is our target user). ;-) DCDuring TALK 12:56, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

• They are bound to come into conflict eventually. cf: They must come into conflict eventually.
  I have no problem with leaving the entry at bound Adjective, but to eliminate be bound to is to eliminate the most probable search entry, and leave a verb usage of bound hidden away as an adjective, where it is difficult to find, even when you know it is there.
  To summarise; 1) bound is not a modal verb and as a verb it does not mean must. 2) Bound to is not a modal form, it means tied up with rope to a chair, or stuck to something with glue, and does not necessarily mean must (logical conclusion). But the entry is as it is as the result of a previous discussion about this. I disagree with the result, but that's life on the Wikt! The only way to show bound as meaning logical conclusion, equivalent to a disambiguation of must is the entry be bound to. I refer you to any decent grammar book you care to chose on this one. -- Algrif 12:26, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

• I don't think users can be assumed to convert to lemma form for search. Usage examples including the forms of "[be] bound to" would very substantially address the need for users to find the correct entry for "bound" (or the other entries - at least if our search worked a little better. What about "seemed bound to" and its synonyms? I offered Collins DCE's approach precisely because they are a dictionary (albeit a grammatically sophisticated one) rather than a reference grammar book. I think that we need to find ways of presenting sophisticated ideas that represent the best understanding of language and present it so that it is useful for the target user. These entries seemed to me to be a waste. I suppose they might help someone, but they led to neglect of providing useful information at bound. We may just need to have multiple locations for the information and hope that search will find one of them for a user. DCDuring TALK 12:56, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

  PS, I am unable to locate the previous discussion of this. DCDuring TALK 13:00, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Can't find it either, even though I participated. It was probably a sub discussion. I'll try to find it for you later. I think the entry be bound to should stay, and is useful, for all the reasons I've mentioned. I do not agree that looking up bound is going to get anyone anywhere near the correct meaning of the phrase be bound to = logical conclusion, unless there is is a link from one to the other, of course. And I must question the idea that these entries are "a waste". A waste of what? On that basis, we can have a spree with be able to, have to, ought to, going to, etc. That aside, I am working (using the term very loosely ;-)) on a Modal appendix. The term will be there also, along with some other similar phrases that are used modally. I believe modals are such an important part of English. Native speakers take them for granted, forgetting that they express so much more than just the surface. -- Algrif 14:05, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

"Waste" was my initial reaction. I appreciate the points made, including Widsith's below. I will work to make sure that the component words also contain clues about the phrasal senses, but will be much more selective in my challenges for less usual, long-standing phrasal usages like this. I wouldn't have done so if there were a discussion or a link to a discussion on the entry talk page. Our search engine doesn't even support our needs, let alone our users.

Also, would it make sense to include an explicit etymology section in such entries pointing to the best section of the main component words' entries? I find the logic of language evolution more economical of thought and memory than grammar rules. DCDuring TALK 14:36, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

• The fact that it includes "part of the infinitive" is just a reflection of the way it is used, ie often with the following verb only implied. Consider "Do you think she'll come tonight?" "Oh yes, she's bound to." Ƿidsiþ 14:13, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

• But consider also "She's bound". The usage, whether you care to think of it as "bound" + "to infinitive", or "bound to" + "bare infinitive" is a modal use of the word which is only apparent in that exact structure. It is much clearer if the term "bound to" is considered as what it is, a modal, and as such, is followed by the bare infinitive. Grammar is "invented after the fact" in an attempt to put order to something that is basically disordered. So this is just the kind of rule that has less exceptions if you consider the phrase + bare infinitive to be a typically modal construction. And from experience working with learners of English, the expectation is just this. Learners check out phrases such as ought to rather than ought. going to rather than going. And so on. -- Algrif 15:04, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

• My view is that we should delete the content at bound to but keep the page and refer people to the appropriate section of bound. To me it seems weird to have "bound to" listed as an "adjective". What about "delighted to", "happy to", "obliged to" etc.? Are these all adjectives? Where does it end? Matt 20:31, 12 August 2008 (UTC).

Which is why, in the end, the preferred entry is be bound to, because it is a verbal entry representing a modal verb usage. This entry has nothing in common with the standard "adjective + to inf", because of it's modal sense. -- Algrif 12:41, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

I definitely see where you're coming from, but since "seem|seems|seeming|seemed bound to", "look|looks|looking|looked bound to", etc. are so well attested, I don't think that's ideal. (Not the end of the world — we could create redirects to [[be bound to]], with appropriate usage notes — but not ideal.) —Ruakh_TALK 15:44, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

I forget the correct term for these state verbs that can substitute be. Later edit. linking verbs. But that argument applies to nearly all the be + something entries. seems (etc) able to, seem (etc) as cool as a cucumber, and so on. I have often wondered what, if anything, could be done about that. -- Algrif 16:28, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

Having an entry for verbal "be bound to" makes more sense to me than calling "bound to" an adjective. I confess I didn't notice that "be bound to" was also listed as a part of this deletion request. But is there a fundamental difference between "be bound to" and "be delighted to", "be obliged to" etc.? Or should there (ideally) be separate entries for all these? Matt 20:57, 14 August 2008 (UTC)~.

There is a fundamental difference, yes. I am delighted to attend is a simple SoP statement. I am bound to attend does NOT mean that I have been tied up before attending, nor does it mean that I have made any promise, or any of the other meanings of bound. It means that MY OPINION is that IT IS LOGICAL that I will not miss the function. In other words, it is a modal verb in effect (similar to must), and as such, is not "adjective + to infinitive" and therefore is not SoP. -- ALGRIF talk 09:51, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

Well, indeed, it doesn't mean "tied up"! But I don't have any problem parsing "I am bound to..." with "bound" as an adjective meaning something similar to "sure" (a seemingly reasonable extension of its literal meaning). In fact, both Collins and M-W online dictionaries explain the "bound to" usage under adjective "bound". I agree, though, that there doesn't seem to be any other way to use "bound" with exactly this adjectival meaning. Matt 20:43, 17 August 2008 (UTC).

Personally speaking, I don't even think that this adjectival definition is valid. One day (not now) I will argue the case more forcefully. For the moment, just worth noting that "a bound noun" and "this noun is bound" never have the sense under discussion. The same goes for "a bound to noun" and "this noun is bound to" (where the "to" becomes a preposition, doesn't it?, if we are talking about entry "bound to"). It would be interesting to compare how these other dictionaries deal with be able to, by the way. -- ALGRIF talk 11:07, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

mozy

Just a misspelling of mosey. A OneLook search comes up with no hits for this sense. I don't think it even qualifies as nonstandard. -- WikiPedant 05:27, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Delete. google books:"mozy|mozying|mozies|mozied along" gets only 3 hits, compared to 665 for google books:"mosey|moseying|moseys|moseyed along". —Ruakh_TALK 17:56, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

Delete - we can not afford wasting resources for misspellings made by uneducated people. And the misspelling of a slang word goes forsooth too far. Bogorm 22:38, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

Keep. Is it in use? Yes. Is it citable? Yes (see Ruakh's link above). Is it rare? Yes. But 574 Google web hits, ~ 100 blog hits, and ~ 15 group hits show me that it certainly exists. sewnmouthsecret 20:11, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

We don't include rare misspellings. —Ruakh_TALK 23:14, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

It's not that I want or don't want to keep this term; I just want things to make sense logically. Per CFI, this term is OK to keep as long as it is cited. There is nothing that states we do not include rare misspellings. A term should be included if it's likely that someone would run across it and want to know what it means. People may run across it. It is attested and used in permanently recorded media.

Furthermore, when searching b.g.c. for "mozy", it yields 688 hits.

The first 6 pages of hits alone allow one to expand to 5 different adjective senses on top of the verb sense (which I shall add).

Point is, one can't pick and choose which words stay or go because one feels a word is a misspelling, especially when CFI says nothing about it. sewnmouthsecret 15:57, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

There are four spellings: mosey, mozey, mosy, mozy, approximately in that order of frequency on bgc. We should be relieved that mosie and mozie aren't also in use in bgc material. "Mozy" might (barely) be attestable basede on bgc hits, but most hits are not for the verb or anything else that we are likely to feel compelled to have an entry for. "Mosy" is sometimes a last name or a nickname or a scanno. If we don't have explicit standards for what makes something a misspelling or an alternative spelling, the four forms would seem to have equal standing under our policies. "Mosey" is the only one of these that is in the OneLook dictionaries, suggesting that other dictionaries can find a rationale for excluding such forms. At least one "z" form would be good inclusion, because a user might well type "moz" in searching for the word as heard in a movie or speech. "moz" would yield mozey if we troubled to enter that more attestable form. DCDuring TALK 16:39, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

Our standards are CFI, which don't spell out how to handle rare spellings that may or may not be misspellings. As far as a word's standing, that's why we have tags such as {{rare}} and {{archaic}}, among others. As is often stated, we are not other dictionaries. We can include anything that meets our criteria, which, per CFI, this term does. sewnmouthsecret 17:06, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

I'm confused. Your comments seem to be at variance with Wiktionary:Criteria for inclusion#Misspellings, common misspellings and variant spellings. —Ruakh_TALK 18:39, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

I think these criteria are fine as far as they go (not far, IMHO). It would be helpful if we had explicit criteria for when something was definitely an alternative spelling or definitely a common misspelling (or even just definitely common or definitely a misspelling). We could still leave a big gray area for what is not so definite. DCDuring TALK 19:37, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

Some of the adjectival senses just added to the entry by Sewnmouthsecret seem OK albeit obscure, although I wish s/he had provided a supporting quotation for each. But to suggest that this is a valid alternative spelling of the verb mosey is not credible for me and I still think that we should delete the verb sense. (Pet peeve: Except for slang bordering on nonstandard and words of very recent vintage, I think that it is inappropriate to rely solely or even heavily on g.b.c. hits or blogs. We should rely on writers and sources which are credible exemplars of English usage, which is why I'm biased toward recognized literary sources, academic journals, and prominent news outlets with good standards like Time magazine or the NYT.) -- WikiPedant 21:42, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

My issue here is this: it seems to me that this is a valid alt spelling of mosey. To say it is not credible for you is to say your opinion is to delete it. I would support deleting it if there was no evidence of use, but there is, no matter how obscure. Opinion should not dictate keeping or deleting a term. To be biased towards any given publication is an unnecessary bias, as new terms, alternate meanings, etc. show up in less recognized sources and are often the bastions of language transformation. I will add supporting quotations for all adjective senses, and I will add quotations for the verb sense as well, as the quotations were already linked to above. sewnmouthsecret 20:38, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

The citations Sewnmouthsecret has added for the verb are probably adequate to justify retaining that sense, for now. But I wonder whether this rather thin set of citations may be the result of sporadic misspellings or typesetting errors by the authors or printers. (Such things do happen, and they do not really constitute legitimate alt spellings.) I'd particularly like to get my hands on a couple editions of that Zane Grey novel to see if they all really say "mozy". -- WikiPedant 01:21, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

Delete, the citations only show that it's an error. Mglovesfun 14:32, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

hasn't one

Over at WT:RFC#hastn't one, user:86.134.55.120 has suggested this be deleted. I have no strong opinion either way, but I've brought it here anyway. Thryduulf 00:07, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

Eek, tag questions! While these are limited in number (they are all of the form auxiliary verb + ["not"|"n't" +] pronoun) there are still a huge number of these, and I'm not convinced they belong in Wiktionary. — Paul G 11:36, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

Idiomatic, keep. Useful and interesting once it gets cleaned up. —Stephen 01:19, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

In what way is this idiomatic? It is a simple negative question, tagged onto a statement, asking for someones personal opinion. In other words, a simple question. We might as well put ¿O no? as an idiom in Spanish, mightn't we? (He asked, using a tag question) -- Algrif 12:37, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

If it were not idiomatic, then you should be able to translate it directly into other languages, such as Spanish "¿no ha uno?". And it’s use is not so simple for someone learning English as a second language. I believe the article mentions this in regard to "doesn’t one". —Stephen 15:22, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

Somewhere round about lesson 9, Eng L2 learners are taught tag questions. They are questions tagged on to a statement. To allow this entry means that all the following are also OK. am I , aren't I , are you , aren't you , is he , isn't he, are we , aren't we, are they , aren't they , followed by all the positive and negative combinations with do , have , can , could , shall , should , ought , will , would , may , might , must , need , dare. This is a grammar entry, isn't it?. Make an appendix by all means. It would be a good idea, wouldn't it? But we don't really need all those entries, do we? And anyway they should be followed by a question mark, shouldn't they? -- ALGRIF talk 17:52, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

servabo fidem

This is sum of parts in Latin, and seems to have been added principally because it is a motto used by a US military regiment. This does not strike me as being worthy of inclusion in a dictionary. --EncycloPetey 03:00, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

For someone who is not versed in Latin grammar, it would probably be very difficult to divine the meaning of servabo fidem from servabo and fidem. If we delete servabo fidem, then we need to put real definitions in servabo and fidem, not just a technical grammatical description and link to the lemma. —Stephen 19:58, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

How will adding such definitions help? The form servabo has mutliple meanings, just as the lemma form does. Drowning the entry for servabo with all the possible definitions will not make translation any clearer for someone not versed in Latin grammar. This information would be better included on Wikiquote or Wikipedia. --EncycloPetey 20:26, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

That is why it is better to keep servabo fidem. —Stephen 21:12, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

By your reasoning, we should have an entry for every sentence and phrase found in the corpus of Latin literature. Reductio ad absurdum --EncycloPetey 21:54, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

Every common or important phrase. My reasoning does not envelope every sentence and phrase, it only includes those phrases that you think are SoP. SoP only works in a language that you know how to put together. servabo fidem is SoP for people who know Latin or at least know another language with similar grammar, but it is not SoP for most Americans. Therefore, if the only reason for deleting it is SoP, then keep it, because for most people it’s not. —Stephen 01:36, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

But that reasoning would argue for every sentence/phrase. In order to understand any of them, you might need to know some basic things about Latin. -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 05:32, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

So you think that every common or important phrase includes not only e pluribus unum, but also "I prefer to add a little extra salt to my broccoli when my mother comes for a visit"? If that’s what you think, then you don’t understand what I’m saying. —Stephen 12:23, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

When you say, "For someone who is not versed in Latin grammar, it would probably be very difficult to divine the meaning of...", that applies to nearly every sentences or phrase. The bit about only important phrases and sentences may have merit. There will certainly be people who want to know what e pluribus unum means without having to figure out Latin grammar. But, I am hesitant to accept such a thing, as I don't think a clear boundary can be set. -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 20:01, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

Delete. SOP. The meaning seems fairly discernible from the parts. -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 21:48, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

Keep. Coming in to this discussion not knowing what the phrase meant, I first looked up servabo and then fidem. Although the basic idea comes across fine, someone wanting to know what it meant would not be able to get an actual translation without including the phrase. sewnmouthsecret 19:56, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

So, would that mean you'd want to have entry for Cuius ducit filiam? --EncycloPetey 02:27, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

Well, after looking up cuius, ducit, and filiam, I gather it means who/what/which X daughter, X being ducit. So, for right now, I would say include it. sewnmouthsecret 13:58, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

Keep. I don't know how I feel about the "common or important phrase" criterion, and I don't know how common or important this really is (~150 b.g.c. hits); so, I'm erring on the side of keep. —Ruakh_TALK 02:15, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

This phrase isn't idiomatic in the slightest. It's (deprecated template usage) servabo + (deprecated template usage) faith. It's no more idiomatic than comedes pavonem. --EncycloPetey 02:34, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

When I look up servabo, it has watch over, maintain, protect, keep, guard, save, preserve, and store for meanings. When I look up fidem, it has faith, belief, reliance, confidence, and trust. So, if I were looking up the phrase word-by-word, I could conjecture that it could mean I maintain confidence, or I watch over trust, or I guard confidence. That, to me, is idiomatic. sewnmouthsecret 13:58, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, I caught that, thanks. :-)   —Ruakh_TALK 02:36, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

...and you noticed that the b.g.c. hits were all of the form "the motto of X is..." and not one of the b.g.c. hits I saw was in a Latin context? They were all books in English, and the vast majority then immediately told the translation. Such citations are usually deemed not to meet the requirements of CFI. --EncycloPetey 02:53, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

The fact that they're used in an English context is a major reason I didn't vote delete. Certainly a phrase found only in Latin texts will only be understood by people who understand Latin grammar; but this has been the motto of various groups and persons in English-speaking countries, and contrary to your experience, I found many examples on b.g.c. that used/mentioned the phrase without providing translation. Relevant specialized dictionaries (dictionaries of mottoes, and dictionaries of classical quotations) do include the phrase, and while I realize that their considerations are in one regard different from ours (since they don't have entries for the constituents), they're also in one regard the same (since they're directed at English-speaking readers who would have difficulty assembling the constituents anyway). —Ruakh_TALK 10:49, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

as for reductio ad absurdum, see also decus et tutamen nemo me impune lacessit and wth all sorts of other mottos like non inultus premor and w:Category:State mottos of the United States & fluctuat nec mergitur & labor omnia vincit & semper fidelis & non pro nobis laboramus & de oppresso liber & so on and so on and so on... 128.252.121.54 18:05, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

air sport

"any recreational activity performed in the atmosphere" Appears in no OneLook reference word except Wiktionary and Wikipedia. Seems SoP to me unless there is another definition. DCDuring TALK 23:56, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

This needs redefinition, not deletion. All terrestrial sports are performed "in the atmosphere". Basketball is not an "air sport" even though players' bodies may lose contact with the ground. Shooting ducks is not an "air sport" even though the bullet may hit the duck in the air. To my understanding, air sports are those that involve some means of human-powered flight, either as the sport in itself (stunt flying, balloon racing) or as a platform from which to perform (skyboarding or skysurfing, group skydiving). bd2412 T 01:41, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

Your understanding would fit with the WP stub article, but also with what one might expect the words to mean, just as we don;t think of an airplane as merely a plane (surface) in the air. Give it your best shot. That other dictionaries don't have makes it more important that we do a good job. It might be a valid category, but I wonder whether it is often used and whether anyone wouldn't instantly guess the meaning. DCDuring TALK 03:33, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

Consider, for example, someone who doesn't speak English. Might be easy for you to guess, but for everyone? I'll work on it - at some point. bd2412 T 03:42, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

Well, we do have watersport (I don't know about defn. 2. But since SemperB put it there, I assume it is correct.) -- ALGRIF talk 10:56, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

I don't see a second definition. Single words (former compounds that are spelled solid, like "watersport") are thereby not subject to challenge as SoP. I believe that compelling an English learner to construct the possible meaning of such a collocation is reasonable. It is misleading to treat it as if this were a true idiom. It is the kind of term that is most useful for someone who runs a business serving those who enjoy these activities, such as the apparent spammer w:Airways Airsports. Perhaps it would be useful to put this through RfV to get the cites that would support a meaning, which could then be assessed as to whether it was SoP or not. DCDuring TALK 11:59, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

Re: your last sentence: Unfortunately, this never happens. Citing is a fair bit of effort, and editors aren't always motivated to do it in the best of cases, let alone cases of the form, "Let's see if we can get someone to add three quotations for this. Once we've done that, we can decide whether to delete those quotations. Afterward, we can come up with other ways to waste editors' time." :-P   —Ruakh_TALK 13:25, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

easy target

Sum of parts, no? Teh Rote 21:07, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

Not quite. It is not the target itself that is easy, but rather that the target is easy to hit, and it's not always a literal shooting at the target. This seems worth keeping along with easy mark and sitting duck. --EncycloPetey 21:13, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

Our current definition says "easy to be made fun of", which is not the only sense of "easy target"; bgc shows, in its first twenty hits, maybe one or two in that sense. (Note that "an easy target for barbs" in a quotation is not a citations for the sense we have: if "for barbs" is added, then "an easy target" alone doesn't mean "easy to be made fun of".) I think we should delete as SoP the sense EP seems to be referring to above ("an easily hit target"). I also think we should delete as SoP the sense we have, as the "for barbs" part is implied by context rather than being part of the meaning of "easy target".—msh210℠ 21:27, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

I deleted it a bit fast. I have now added it again, but with my own definition. Feel free to improve. SemperBlotto 21:32, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

Kept. 72.177.113.91 20:50, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

• Note: target page easy target is still tagged. --07:00, 12 February 2009 (UTC)
• Note: target page easy target is still tagged. --07:00, 20 February 2009 (UTC)
• Note: target page easy target is still tagged. --07:01, 28 February 2009 (UTC)
• Note: target page easy target is still tagged. --07:01, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

short cut

rfd-sense: A very short rendition, or snippets, of a film or play, as used in a coming attraction or promotional video.

IOW, (deprecated template usage) short + (deprecated template usage) cut. DCDuring TALK 10:34, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

Delete.—msh210℠ 20:21, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

Not the primary sense of cut, so keep. Would be a stronger keep if the stress is on short. 72.177.113.91

Category:Sinhala language

There are 2 separately named categories for this language- Category:Sinhala language and Category:Sinhalese language. The first has no content, so it should be deleted to avoid confusion, or move everything into the other category. Nadando 21:38, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

Delete --EncycloPetey 21:39, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

Keep, and rather delete Category:Sinhalese language or change {{sin}} to "Sinhalese." I'm undecided as to which is better. -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 21:27, 22 August 2008 (UTC)

This language has a 2-letter ISO code of si, for which we have the template {{si}}. The templates should certainly match, but currently they do not. Template {{si}} says "Sinhalese" while {{sin}} says "Sinhala". --EncycloPetey 22:34, 22 August 2008 (UTC)

damakzevki

Definition poor. Seems like spam for a Turkish domain. DCDuring TALK 21:12, 22 August 2008 (UTC)

clocked out DCDuring TALK 18:25, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

arcuate-decurrent

Describes mushroom gills that are in the shape of an arc (arcuate) and run down the stem (decurrent). Couldn't be much more SoP, IMO, but some seem to take that as a dare. DCDuring TALK 00:13, 23 August 2008 (UTC)

clocked out DCDuring TALK 18:25, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

areolate-cracked

Having a pattern of block-like areas areolate similar to cracked dried mud. cracked SoP DCDuring TALK 00:21, 23 August 2008 (UTC)

clocked out DCDuring TALK 18:27, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

-manship

No. There is no such suffix. The combining forms listed here are from ...man + ship, not from ... + manship. — Paul G 08:32, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

By what criteria does one evaluate the "existence" or, more importantly, includability in Wiktionary of a suffix? DCDuring TALK 10:59, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

Good question. Do we have criteria for this? The question is also begged by entries such as workmanship or craftsmanship. Are they derived from + -man + -ship or from + -manship? A craftswoman, or craftsperson displays good craftsmanship. But this does not give rise to craftswomanship or craftspersonship. -- ALGRIF talk 12:25, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

The words evolved from adding "-ship" to (deprecated template usage) craftsman etc. The word appeared and stabilized before there was a regular word (deprecated template usage) craftswoman in English. I think a good avenue for exploring this is the word (deprecated template usage) sportsmanship, since the hypothetical root (deprecated template usage) sportsman is not a common English word. --EncycloPetey 23:42, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

Actually, both (deprecated template usage) craftswomanship and (deprecated template usage) craftspersonship do exist. Also, (deprecated template usage) sportsman is, in fact, nearly four times more common than (deprecated template usage) sportsmanship (also consider (deprecated template usage) (un)(deprecated template usage) sportsmanly &c.). I believe an essential criterion for the inclusion of an affix ought to be (by analogy with the “idiomaticity” criterion that we have for words) that its meaning cannot be reduced — in a sum-of-its-parts fashion — to its constituent affixes; in the case of (deprecated template usage) -manship, unless it can be shown that there exist at least three words ending in (deprecated template usage) -manship whose (deprecated template usage) -man æquivalents do not exist, then I believe it should be deleted. † ﴾^(u):Raifʻhār ^(t):Doremítzwr﴿ 23:14, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

• Easily done: gamesman, one-upman, brinkman (but gamesmanship, one-upmanship, brinkmanship). Keep. Cheers! bd2412 T 00:27, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

• gamesman;
• one-upman (though this is probably by back-formation); and,
• Google Books, unfortunately, refuses to recognise (deprecated template usage) brinkman as anything other than a surname; “a brinkman” yields results chiefly for people named “A. Brinkman” and technical terms named after people bearing that surname (e.g., a (deprecated template usage) Brinkman medium); the world book dictionary lists it, but the results page is blank; nevertheless:

  «Threatening to sue unless something is repaired is a brinkman’s move, as lawsuits hurt everyone involved — except the lawyers. On the seller’s part, the willingness to risk “no sale” can be a brinkman’s move.» — [13];

  «His record shows he is a brinkman. I think he should clearly understand now he is at the brink and he must now seek a settlement.» — [14]; and,

  «But this doesn’t make Galileo a martyr, only a brinkman. When it came to actually dying for ideas, Galileo wasn’t having any.» — [15].

• † ﴾^(u):Raifʻhār ^(t):Doremítzwr﴿ 00:54, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

• The recency of your hits indicates a back-formation, which would necessitate "-manship" having existed before brinkman was derived from brinkmanship. bd2412 T 03:40, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

• Also, not easy to get a citation for a freestanding suffix, but:
  • 1996, Steven H. Gale, Encyclopedia of British Humorists: Geoffrey Chaucer to John Cleese, p. 874:

    Summary Stephen Potter is best known for his gamesmanship theory, a cunning, psychological tactic used to best a competitor, on or off the field. His basic "-manship" principle was later incorporate to include many everyday events.

• And, there is no "exams-man", but :
  • 2004, Jonathan Silverman, Suzanne M. Kurtz, Juliet Draper, Skills for Communicating with Patients, p. 102:

    This exams-manship history is decidedly different from the focused history that we are talking about in this chapter...

• Cheers again! bd2412 T 00:47, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

(deprecated template usage) Examsmanship is valid, considering [16], [17], and [18]. The citation for (deprecated template usage) -manship alone is rather interesting; it should be added to the entry. † ﴾^(u):Raifʻhār ^(t):Doremítzwr﴿ 01:05, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

Keep per Algrif and BD2412. All of BD2412's (deprecated template usage) -shipless examples do seem to meet the CFI, but they're certainly far less common than their (deprecated template usage) -shipped counterparts, and IMHO seem to be backformations. google books:"her chairmanship" makes google books:"her chairship|chairwomanship|chairpersonship" look like Taíno, even though google books:"she was chairman" is not far ahead of google books:"she was chair|chairwoman|chairperson". Also, it seems to be a fixed expression, so to speak: (deprecated template usage) -manhood, (deprecated template usage) -manity, and (deprecated template usage) -manness are all almost nonexistent. —Ruakh_TALK 00:47, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

Regarding this last point of yours: That doesn’t prove that (deprecated template usage) -manship is one suffix. Due to the esoteric (descriptive) rules of English morphology, certain morphemes are simply naturally prædisposed to be affixed by this or that affix; for example, the (deprecated template usage) en- -en words, as far as I know, form nouns exclusively by the suffixation of (deprecated template usage) -ment, whereas the (deprecated template usage) -less words are almost always suffixed with (deprecated template usage) -ness when nominalised — this doesn’t mean that (deprecated template usage) en- -enment* and (deprecated template usage) -lessness* are English affixes. † ﴾^(u):Raifʻhār ^(t):Doremítzwr﴿ 02:46, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

That's true, but it's an additional reason to keep the entry, just as we keep fixed series of words. (I won't argue that all such fixed sets of suffixes should be included — for one thing, they're not constituents — but taken together with the other arguments, I think it makes a stronger case. Or maybe not.) —Ruakh_TALK 03:07, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

• One more note, the 2002 World Book Dictionary entries on brinkmanship and conmanship present the respective etymologies of the words as "brink + -manship" and "con + -manship". Although this is a citation to a dictionary, it is not to the dictionary's definition of the word, but to the use of -manship as a suffix. bd2412 T 00:53, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

  “(deprecated template usage) Brink + (deprecated template usage) -manship” I can believe, but I reckon they’re wrong with (deprecated template usage) conmanship (which is far more likely to be “(deprecated template usage) conman + (deprecated template usage) -ship”). I get your point though; however, it is not absurd to argue that they’re wrong in according suffixship (  ;-) ) to (deprecated template usage) -manship. † ﴾^(u):Raifʻhār ^(t):Doremítzwr﴿ 01:16, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

  But wouldn't that be prescriptivism on our part, to decide that a use in print is 'wrong'? Also, I have found another such use in the nifty Rice University Neologisms Database:

  • Quippmanship n.
    The ability to produce a catchy soundbyte, witty remark, or clever turn of phrase. The art, skill, or ability to create a catchy soundbyte, witty remark, or clever turn of phrase. Formed by an unknown word formation process.
    [affixation; formed from 'quip' + 'manship']
    "So far most of our intelligentsia have been more eager to explain what this war is not than what it is. Yet the conflict is not a hash-it-out in the faculty lounge, nor a brainstorm over a headline in the newsroom, nor flashy quippmanship in a political d" -From a NationalReviewOnline editorial by Victor Davis Hanson, on Fri Nov 7, 2003.

  Cheers! bd2412 T 16:25, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

Here’s the deal: I don’t personally object to this entry’s existence. Nevertheless, I believe the principle I outlined above is a good one; what do you all say? As for the entry, I think (deprecated template usage) examsmanship and the direct use count as two of the requisite three citations, so I’m sure we can find another (deprecated template usage) -manship word that lacks a (deprecated template usage) -man æquivalent; perhaps in one of these three lists… † ﴾^(u):Raifʻhār ^(t):Doremítzwr﴿ 01:22, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

• I think the fact that another dictionary uses it as a word-forming suffix should at least count for a citation. bd2412 T 01:41, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

  I disagree (although I’d be open to debate on that, if it is explained to me their reasoning for specifying those etymologies); we don’t consider as citations the fact that a word is listed as a headword in a dictionary. Neither do I think that appearance in an etymology counts as a “use”. † ﴾^(u):Raifʻhār ^(t):Doremítzwr﴿ 01:50, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

  It is exceedingly difficult to find uses of suffixes in the wild. How would you prove that -ist or -ally exist? We don't accept existence as a headword in a dictionary as proof of existence, but the writers of a dictionary would be more, not less qualified in using a word in its natural form, and not as a definition. bd2412 T 03:47, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

  First of all, whoever wrote that entry isn't actually using the suffix, only mentioning it; it's equivalent to the full sentence, “(deprecated template usage) Quippmanship^[sic] is formed via affixation from (deprecated template usage) quip and (deprecated template usage) manship”. Further, it's not a durably archived word list. So it might be usable as a reference, but not as a quotation. (Not that we need quotations for affixes, anyway, provided we have quotations for the words they form.) Secondly, looking through that page, nothing about it suggests that all of its writers are particularly knowledgeable about these things; for example, one of them describes (deprecated template usage) Quick Outtie as a blend of (deprecated template usage) quick and (deprecated template usage) outtie, and another describes (deprecated template usage) Queasishness as the result of zero-derivation because (s)he thinks that (deprecated template usage) -ness is a verb-forming suffix. It's like urban dictionary, where some contributors know a lot and others just act like they do. (On average I'd imagine they know more than the typical urban dictionarian, since they're submitting these entries for an English-slash-Linguistics class, but overall they're clearly not reliable.) Our CFI don't say enough about affixes; I think it's obvious that we can't expect them to be attested detached-ly, since that would be basically impossible (and counterproductive, since that would be a very unrepresentative set of quotes if we managed to find them). —Ruakh_TALK 14:58, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

  Actually my last comment was about the 2002 World Book Dictionary, which is an actual print dictionary. bd2412 T 17:57, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

  Oh, sorry, long discussion, got confused. So, it is reliable and durably archived — but still a mention. —Ruakh_TALK 19:00, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

  My fault, I threw two different thoughts up at the same time there. But the larger point is that it is virtually impossible to find use of a suffix alone in a format that is not simply a mention (try to find such a citation for "-istic", "-faction", or "-atory" ). And yet we include (and must include) suffixes. bd2412 T 19:47, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

  Yeah, I think we're basically in agreement. Your reasoning seems to be "it's not possible to find uses of such affixes, ergo our quotations for them will have to be mentions", whereas mine is "it's not possible to find uses of such affixes, ergo we can't require quotations for them", but that's a tiny difference, in the grand scheme of things. :-)   —Ruakh_TALK 20:08, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

Keep. Whether it's its own indecomposable suffix or a combination of two suffices is academic, subjective and irrelevant. When two separate words are put together to form a new one, the new word warrants an entry; why should suffices be any different? Language Lover 03:09, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

graph cycle

SOP, and not even particularly common. ("Cycle of a graph" actually gets almost as many Google hits as "graph cycle".) —Ruakh_TALK 00:50, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

front wall

Someone had marked these for speedy deletion, obviously inappropriate. I'm listing them here, although I personally do not see why they should be deleted. __meco 12:49, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

Definitions refer to squash. The phrases seem to be used also in handball, rooms, houses, properties, etc. So if we keep this we'd have to change our definition to "the back|front|side wall of anything" rather than "the back|front|side wall of a squash court" — and it's SoP. Delete.—msh210℠ 20:45, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

Keep. On seeing them here, I instantly knew they were about racquetball. As it turns out, I "knew" wrongly (they were about squash), but I do think we should keep the squash/racquetball sense. We can put something like this:

1. The wall at the front of a room or building.
2. Specifically, the wall at the front of a squash or racquetball court, which the ball must hit after each stroke before it hits the floor.

—Ruakh_TALK 23:17, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

Even if we keep this, I don't see that those are two senses. Why not combine them into

1. The wall comprising all or part of the front boundary of a room, building, squash or racquetball court, or other enclosed or partially enclosed area.

?—msh210℠ 19:25, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

They're not two senses, exactly, except that one is a term of art used with a precise and well-defined sense that's hyponym-ish to the other. It's like how at [[set]] we include the math sense, even though that's just a special case of the more general sense. —Ruakh_TALK 22:34, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

I guess so. (See also the two senses of free: "Unconstrained" and "(mathematics) Unconstrained".  :-) ) Weak keep.—msh210℠ 22:07, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

Delete, pointless entries. Mglovesfun 14:33, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

疯狂英语

'Crazy English', the brand name of an English teaching method. I can't see a good reason to include this, as it has not developed any wider usage beyond being a brand name. Pistachio 16:07, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

hobo

Not a "real" adjective. No comparative or predicative use, AFAICT so far. DCDuring TALK 19:44, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

Attributive use of noun, still. DCDuring TALK 01:47, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

Move to RFV or delete. —Ruakh_TALK 02:03, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

$x$-American entries and $x$-born entries (ex: Sicilian-American, American-born Chinese)

"SoP" entries. Sets a bad precedent for thousands of similar entries (ex. Korean American, Cuban American, Mexican American, and so on). --TBC 22:22, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

keep Submit for RfV just like anything else. There are usually important as preferred alternatives to usually non-SoP pejoratives. Usage notes alone on each subject would warrant their inclusion. I would suggest that we should have at least one attestable non-pejorative demonym (?) for every ethnic grouping for which we have a pejorative demonym. DCDuring TALK 22:41, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

Delete American-born Chinese and British-born Chinese; keep Sicilian-American and African-American. I'll see if I can dredge up the classic Nelson Mandela quote using "African-American" where an idiot American reporter "corrected" him about the term and Mandela explained that the black people of Africa were not actually African-American. African-American in particular is not sum of parts, since it is not used to refer to Americans of North African descent or to white Americans of South African descent. --EncycloPetey 00:42, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

I don't think that these ought to be treated en masse, as EP's views suggest. There may be very different merits for each. I often find that the effort of citing the entries leads to an adjustment of the definitions that clarifies the usage of the terms. DCDuring TALK 01:08, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

That logic doesn't really apply to the [[[Sicilian-American]] entry, but I can see why the African-American entry isn't completely SoP. If it's necessary, I'm for separating this request, as per EP's comments.--TBC 02:42, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

Separate these, per above. Otherwise, keep African-American per EP's Maghreb comment, and delete all the rest unless a good argument is made for any.—msh210℠ 22:04, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

Sequoyah

We don't normally have entries for specific people, even if their name is the origin of other words (a link to their article on the 'pedia normally suffices). Is this one a special case? Thryduulf 20:13, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

Keep, Otherwise we lose Hercules, Zeus, etc. We keep names, we simply do not keep collocations of names which specify certain people (e.g. Isaac Newton). Even if there is only one person who has a name, we still keep it. -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 20:47, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

Keep - It's also the origin of the words sequoia and Sequoia. If it is also a given name (used by other people/figures) then it has merit on those grounds as well. --EncycloPetey 23:26, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

Famous Buildings and Monuments

• Angkor Wat
• Twin Towers 2
• Colossus of Rhodes
• Great Pyramid of Giza (was previously nominated before; result was no consensus)
• Golden Gate Bridge (was previously nominated before; result was keep)
• Hanging Gardens of Babylon
• Lighthouse of Alexandria
• Mausoleum of Maussollos
• Statue of Zeus at Olympia
• Temple of Artemis

CFI explicitly states that entries like "Empire State Building" should not be included. I don't see why this shouldn't apply to other famous buildings and monuments as well. The rationale that these entries should be kept because translations exist doesn't make much sense, since that would merit the inclusion of all famous buildings (including the Empire State Building). --TBC 23:54, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

Keep some, but delete others. Should be an RFV matter, primarily. If any of the above are or have been used in an idiomatic comparative sense, those should be kept. bd2412 T 01:40, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

WP:BP would have been a better place for this actually, since this is more of a discussion on policy (CFI) and it's applications to specific entity entries. That's besides the point, though.--TBC 18:28, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

Procedurally, Golden Gate Bridge does not belong here at all, having passed previously. I have put it in RfV, to determine whether there are citations that might support its inclusion. Perhaps Angkor Wat would get citations that made it includable. The others especially would appear to be candidates for {{only in|Wikipedia}} entries. Alternatively, move individually to RfV, wait a month (or two or three) for the absence of citations to become apparent, then they will be deleted. It seems extremely implausible that a four- or five-word building name would have quotations that would satisfy us. Even the three-word names seem unlikely. I could more easily see us keeping nicknames for these entities, like Golden Gate, Colossus, and Hanging Gardens or hanging gardens. DCDuring TALK 11:14, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

So what if it's been nominated before? Consensus changes, there's no policy that prevents an entry from being RfD'd again. Anyhow, deleting the full names and keeping nicknames sounds like a good idea.--TBC 18:19, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

The process and general civility are what keep a wiki from descending into chaos. The clear trend in our policy is toward selective inclusion of entries like this that have some attributive meaning, which is not going to be ascertained in the RfD process. We have separate processes because they involve different kinds of effort and process. Incidentally, if what you want is to change policy or discuss whether we are actually adhering to policies, that would belong in WT:BP (horses for courses). DCDuring TALK 18:57, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

WT:CFI mentions attributive use, which might be deemed to imply that such entries have to be usable as adjectives. I think the actual meaning of attributive is a bit broader, which possibly should be explicitly included in CFI. For example, Threadneedle Street refers to the Bank of England (which in turn refers to UK monetary authorities and policy) and Wall Street refers to the US financial markets. The White House, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Capitol Hill, the Pentagon, Number 10, Broadway, Fleet Street all seem to mean more than the places referred to, whether or not they are used as adjectives (and whether or not we have them as entries yet!). I would not expect most of the places in this RfD to meet the attributive test. It is possible that we would want to broaden CFI to include such well-known places, which might emerge from this discussion and the discussion of Golden Gate Bridge on RfV. DCDuring TALK 15:46, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

When there are specific translations into other languages for a given building or monument, definitely keep. —Stephen 12:36, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

The translation criterion is not part of any policy, AFAICT. Would the undocumented criterion mean that any SoP translation would warrant keeping the name of the great building or monument ("GBM")? I don't really see why we couldn't be gazeteer, albeit possibly a very selective one. We could provide a service even just by offering pronunciation of place names. DCDuring TALK 13:12, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

Dictionaries are the principal tool of my professional trade, translation. Encyclopedias are used for information such as lengths, widths, dates, and histories. Dictionaries are primarily for definitions, capitalization, spelling, grammatical information such as tense and gender, and translations. Few paper dictionaries have definitions as well as translations and grammatical notes, but a book of definitions is a dictionary, and a book of translations is a dictionary. What I mean is, no one paper dictionary encompasses all that a dictionary can be, but some dictionaries are for definition (American Heritage, Random House), and some dictionaries are for translation (Vox, Larousse, Cassell, Langenscheidt). Among paper translation dictionaries, there are also different types, due to the physical limitations of a paper book: there are general dictionaries, medical dictionaries, transportation dictionaries, petroleum dictionaries, etc. General translation dictionaries try to include important proper names such as Empire State Building, Eiffel Tower, Slovakia, etc. Some translation dictionaries, mainly those that use a different script or exotic language, try to include other important names...e.g., Chinese has special specific translations for important names such as Richard Nixon and Jimmy Carter, and a good one lists them.

Since Wiktionary is not limited to definitions à la American Heritage, but includes translations and grammatical info as well, it should fulfill the duties not only of definition dictionaries but also of translation dictionaries, and translation dictionaries, depending on speciality, have entries for names such as Angkor Wat, Golden Gate Bridge, and George Washington.

This is why User:A-cai wrote the definition for the common term 成龙 (chéng lóng), which can only be translated by looking it up in a dictionary. Then someone who doesn’t use Wiktionary for translation purposes deleted the page. —Stephen 13:40, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

This discussion does not really belong here, it belongs at the BP. It would seem to need a vote to be a valid defense of any particular entry. A vote usually needs prior discussion if there is any potential for disagreement. I have already seen disagreement on this point without resolution. QED. If there is an ongoing discussion at BP, the possible deletion of these specific entries would be held in abeyance. There seem to be two issues which have a little overlap: 1. criteria for inclusion of places and fixed physical structures and 2 the translation criterion for inclusion of SoP and other entries. DCDuring TALK 15:25, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

I believe there was some discussion of this on BP, but it didn't result in anything conclusive. That's the problem with BP; discussions last for a week or less before they're forgotten in favor of another issue. --TBC 03:52, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

If we have something interesting to say about the name (some etymology, regional variations, not-simply-transcribed translations), we should keep the entry (as we exist to describe words). If we have nothing to say about the word (though I doubt this is often the case if we are trying hard enough), replace it with {{only in|{{in wikipedia}}}} and let Wikipedia describe the entity that the word describes. Conrad.Irwin 23:55, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

September 2008

hold one's urine

From RFV:

< mutante_> can hold_one's_urine really be a noun?
< LinkyC> http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/hold_one%27s_urine
< Amgine> I... don't think so. I've never ever heard that phrase.
< Dvorty|gone> hold it might be used idiomatically that way, but I don't think that one is really used as such.
< LinkyC> http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/hold_it
< Dvorty|gone> And it looks like the page only shows up on cleanup lists and categorizing pages: Special:WhatLinksHere/hold_one's_urine
< mutante_> change Noun to Verb ?
< Dvorty|gone> mutante: yes, and then RFV/RFD the whole thing.  I don't think it's really used that way that much.

Mutante 16:12, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

Out of context this sounded odd to me, but I checked b.g.c.; google books:"held his urine" gets 110 hits, and when I look through them, in context they sound quite natural to me. I'll add a few to the entry. —Ruakh_TALK 16:43, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

Cited. —Ruakh_TALK 17:09, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

What was the entry before? Seems painfully sum-of-parts and wildly uncommon. In what way is it a set phrase or idiomatic? Move to RFD and delete. --Connel MacKenzie 00:56, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

RFV passed. Tag will be removed forthwith. Not striking this section, so it won't be bot-archived, and can be moved to RFD per Connel.—msh210℠ 21:11, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

• Not set phrase, not common phrase, not idiomatic, not a recognized phrase, only sum of parts - but only then, in a very restricted context. --Connel MacKenzie 01:06, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

Keep. Regarding its commonness: google books:"hold|holds|holding|held my|our|your|his|her|its|their|one's urine" gets 662 hits, which isn't half bad given its fairly limited context. Regarding its sum-of-parts-ness: I see how you could think that, but I think you're mistaken. Note that the term was originally defined here wrongly, and as far as I can tell, no one suspected the right definition until I actually added a few quotations, and looked through other b.g.c. hits, and the correct definition became clear. (The definition originally given would have been accurate for (deprecated template usage) hold it in, though.) I think that if native speakers can't accurately guess the meaning of a phrase, that suggests that the term is not sum-of-parts. Regarding its restricted context: Odd, I'd have considered that a reason to keep the entry, so that we can elucidate that context. —Ruakh_TALK 14:04, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

No consensus: kept.—msh210℠ 20:11, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

Excuse me? There is no justification for keeping this. It is not a set-phrase, is not idiomatic, is sum-of-parts in the restricted medical context cited; but not a medicinal-specific phrase, just nonsense. Delete. --Connel MacKenzie 17:36, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

flengja með belti

This is a clear sum of parts, has no idiomatic meaning. Therefore, it should no more exist than an English entry of “spank with a belt”. – Krun 23:57, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Clear rationale. delete --Jackofclubs 18:47, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

ojo

I put this up for rfv a while back but I didn't get much satisfaction. IMO we don't need this at all. Also if this "passes" rfd then please see to the deletion of youkoso(which is only a redirect) and youkai. Discuss--50 Xylophone Players talk 11:42, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

Keep. We certainly need the entry page for the Spanish definition if nothing else. Angr 13:14, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

PalkiaX50 is referring specifically to the Japanese section. Don't worry, no one's going to delete the entry as a whole, just possibly remove the Japanese section. —Ruakh_TALK 13:38, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

The Japanese looks very good to me, very useful, and makes finding the correct meaning and kanji easy. As discussed previously, it should be kept. —Stephen 17:55, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

*sighs* But is this not just something like (N.B. this is hypothetical) if you were to put troop at troupe (if troupe wasn't a word)--50 Xylophone Players talk 21:00, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

I know almost nothing about Japanese, and nothing about how it's Romanized, but if accent marks are necessary, then why shouldn't this be deleted (and replaced with {{also}})?—msh210℠ 19:15, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

Xbox

Trade name of a product, no attributive use. Robert Ullmann 04:55, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

cited, IMO. (Should have been RfV'd.) DCDuring TALK 00:55, 5 November 2008 (UTC)

Agreed, and would pass on 2007 Tyree, 2008 French, and probably one of the other quotes although I haven't investigated them. DAVilla 04:35, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

BitTorrent

Another one. Robert Ullmann 04:59, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

Note that the sense at torrent is fine, but should refer to WP. Sense at tracker doesn't look like a separate sense at all. Robert Ullmann 11:54, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

Shouldn't this entry be modeled on [[Ethernet]]? Are there any facts that would make that impossible? DCDuring TALK 15:44, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

got it

Is this worth keeping? If so, it needs serious work. --EncycloPetey 20:20, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

I don't like it. It's just an elliptical form of "I have got it", and we have "to understand" under get. This would open the floodgates for phrases like "done it" (task) and "seen it" (film). Equinox 20:47, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

I think got it is worth keeping at least in phrasebook, in the sense of "now I understand." All these warnings of floods and slippery slopes never seem to pan out. I don’t recall any entry that ushered in a flood of nonsense. The only slippery slopes I’ve seen have been in regard to deleting articles, not writing them. —Stephen 22:35, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps if it was classed as an interjection Got it! it could be a good solution that would keep all floodgates secured for the time being. -- ALGRIF talk 11:48, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

Reclassified as interjection. Seems like it needs a {{non-gloss definition}}. DCDuring TALK 11:57, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

Careful. This is a pro-sentence (standing for "I have got it") not an interjection. — Paul G 14:12, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

Another reason for my dislike: consider the question "Be nice to her -- got it?". "Got it?" is a phrase on equal standing with "Got it", but here the omitted pronoun is "you" and not "I". Or consider "It's none of your business -- get it?", which has a different tense. To me, these possibilities reinforce the idea that it's just got+it, can be inflected any old way, and isn't a special form requiring separate definition. Equinox 13:47, 27 September 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure it's a pro-sentence so much as a sentence with ellipsis. Would you consider “Going to the store; want anything?” to be a pro-sentence standing for “I’m going to the store; do you want anything?”? —Ruakh_TALK 14:05, 27 September 2008 (UTC)

If we are to have this entry, what is its relationship to get it? It seems as if it is just an inflected form. I don't know about the value of "get it" as an entry. The meaning-in-use just seems to be pragmatics, a worthwhile subject in an Appendix, and perhaps worth having a usage note or example for, perhaps an important subject for WikiGrammary. DCDuring TALK 14:58, 27 September 2008 (UTC)

It seems to me that this should just be a {{past of|[[get it]]}} entry, like getting it and gets it are. The entry at get it has four idiomatic and one literal definition, so that seems highly valuable to me (I just looked it up to see what state our entry was in). Thryduulf 13:23, 27 November 2008 (UTC)

I agree with Thryduulf.—msh210℠ 20:05, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

Keep as an inflection entry per Thryduulf, linking to Phrasebook per Stephen. --Duncan 20:16, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Agree with Thryduulf's points. Keep as inflected form of get it. DCDuring TALK 20:20, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

How's [[got it/temporary]]?—msh210℠ 20:29, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Great. An illustration of why we sometimes need some content for "form of" entries. If we have the usage note, we are inviting translations. I suppose the existence and nature of the translations might be facts that would lead to a constructive evolution of the entry. Perhaps it needs two "trans-see"s? DCDuring TALK 21:15, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Ay, it looks good. I propose two translations glosses like this, however, for I can't see what "trans-see"s would link to. --Duncan 15:51, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

OK, then. Move along. Nothing to trans-see here. DCDuring TALK 16:31, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

twisted in knots

I don't doubt that this phrase can be used, but is it an authentic idiom or set phrase worthy of a dictionary definition? Seems more like just an unremarkable SoP construction using established senses of "twisted" and "knot". -- WikiPedant 05:24, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

delete Might be good in a usage example at knot or twist. DCDuring TALK 20:26, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

Hmmm. Is "in knots"/"in a knot" an idiomatic intensifying adverb? Not sure how a figurative sense of "knot" appropriate to twisted in knots would be written. DCDuring TALK 20:39, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

Idiomatic? No, I wouldn't think so, not anymore than "in pieces", "by steps", or "in thirds". A knot can be any hard lump, such as having one's muscles in knots, which is figurative. --EncycloPetey 20:44, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

We don't have that sense. DCDuring TALK 23:11, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

KEEP. Its idiomatic... most in America (US) understand that people who say it do not think their stomach is LITERALLY in a knot just that it feels that way. Also a non-native speaker would never guess "anxiety" ^confused and busy^ from the sum of parts. Goldenrowley 03:32, 8 October 2008 (UTC) For record I have a small problem with the sense of "confused" but its well-known phrase for anxiety. Goldenrowley 03:40, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

October 2008

on course

purportedly an idiom. But see course#Noun. DCDuring TALK 03:25, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

Oops. Sense (among others) seems to be missing at course. DCDuring TALK 03:30, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

Gallo

This time around, I'm adding the first English definition too - a brand of Californian wine. --Jackofclubs 12:14, 18 October 2008 (UTC)

:This one should perhaps be RfV'd as a brand name that might have enough attributive use for inclusion. DCDuring TALK 19:01, 18 October 2008 (UTC)

It has already passed RfV. What grounds for reopening? DCDuring TALK 19:04, 18 October 2008 (UTC)

How did it pass RFV? Two of the quotations clearly identify it as alcohol. We could use one other. DAVilla 07:50, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

semisweet chocolate

Sum of parts? Conrad.Irwin 01:00, 24 October 2008 (UTC)

Has a specific regulatory meaning in the US: w:Types of chocolate#United states. -- Visviva 03:42, 24 October 2008 (UTC)

I hate to ask, but as applied to chocolate, doesn't (deprecated template usage) semisweet have a specific regulatory meaning in the U.S., and doesn't (deprecated template usage) semisweet chocolate mean simply “chocolate that is semisweet”? —Ruakh_TALK 05:49, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

Seemingly not a regulatory meaning, but I'd agree it has a colloquial one. Seems like a SoP to me, but, then again, I'm not in the food (or food law) field.—msh210℠ 17:48, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

Hm, that link is dead (viz, was temporary). My intent was to show that the part of the Code of Federal Regulations that deals with food labeling refers to "semisweet chocolate" but never just "semisweet". Search for "semisweet" at http://www.gpoaccess.gov/cfr/ .—msh210℠ 19:03, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

political label

A term used to categorize people based on their political beliefs or tendencies. SoP, IMO. DCDuring TALK 15:46, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Assuming that the current definition is correct (I've never heard of this term before), this is not sum of parts. The intuitive meaning is that it is a means of organizing something to do with politics, but the stated meaning says implies stereotyping and negative connotations. Also, using 'label' to mean a group is not common as it usually. Perhaps someone else knows more about the term, but I would be hesitant to delete it. Yartrebo 06:05, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

accumulation of degrees

SoP. Extracted from derived terms at accumulation. DCDuring TALK 15:26, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

I'd like to see examples of this to be certain. The definition seems more warped than a straightforward explanation of the meaning would be able to account for. DAVilla 08:13, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

November 2008

derivatives market

SoP. [[derivatives]] [[market]] DCDuring TALK 10:53, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, and these probably too: stock market, money market, futures market, commodity market. They are all listed as related terms under financial market. Maybe that should go as well? --Hekaheka 17:24, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

Hmmm. "Derivatives market" is in no OneLook dictionary. All the others are in multiple dictionaries. I think that in the case of the ones that are in other dictionaries there are definite non-SoP aspects with regard to the items on the market. Eg, the stock market sells more than stock and not all kinds of stock. In all cases the dictionary terms seem to refer to the markets that have publicly advertised prices set at least daily. The term derivatives market seems to refer to any market on which any derivative is traded, including the infamous credit default swaps. The "financial markets" seems to some kind of personified aggregation, to judge from the media. DCDuring TALK 18:08, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

The reason for derivatives market not being in other dictionaries may be simply that it is a newer phenomenon. I don't see any fundamental difference with, say, futures market. --Hekaheka 06:57, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

Some of the markets seem to differ from those we have included: currency market, gold market, overnight funds market, options market, securities market, Eurodollar market, swaps market, swap market, commodities market. (Bond market could be added to the blue links.) Some are old, some are new, some are red, some are blue.

This is the definition shown: "A market where various financial derivatives are bought and sold." I rest my case. Further, I doubt that an accurate definition could be provided that was not SoP. DCDuring TALK 12:45, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

The definition is far from perfect, but that wasn't my point. The point is that the term itself is not materially more SoP than the others that I mentioned, nor is it necessarily less SoP than the red links which you listed. The definitions for money market and commodity market simply list examples of what is traded and futures market repeats the definition of a financial future and combines it with the word market. Both "improvements" can be easily done for the definition of derivatives market. --Hekaheka 13:38, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

We cannot run this process relying on hypothetical definitions. We need to assess what we have. I have been reviewing our business, finance, management, and economics. If I can improve an SoP definition, I try to do so. I can't for this one. Perhaps someone else can. If no one can come up with a definition that is not sum of the parts and not encyclopedic, then it ought to be deleted. DCDuring TALK 15:47, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

• Keep. Strongly agree with User:Hekaheka on this one. Obviously in widespread use, not sum of parts; colloquially it has enormous connotations beyond the literal meaning. But withing the finance industry, the meaning is probably more specific than we should guess at. Not sure how this could ever be construed as sum-of-parts at all. --Connel MacKenzie 15:07, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

• This is not RfV. If it has connotations, let them be laid out as a non-gloss definition. If we don't have anyone who can do it, perhaps it can't be done. If we can't recruit anyone with more expertise and experience in this field than I have, then we may not have the ability to make good on the "all words in all languages" claim in this area yet. DCDuring TALK 15:47, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

curry

Adjective. Attributive use of noun, I think, though def. is not exact match. DCDuring TALK 00:27, 5 November 2008 (UTC)

• The use of the word curry in the West Indies is different from that in the Indian subcontinent. It always comes before the noun (e.g. curry goat) and seems to be used as an adjective. The dish seems to use different spices (I am not an expert, only having eaten curry goat once (and survived)). SemperBlotto 08:44, 5 November 2008 (UTC)

That raises the question of a split in the etymology. DCDuring TALK 10:33, 5 November 2008 (UTC)

thousand one

I'd rfc'd this, but EP suggested deletion and creation of an Appendix on number-word formation. I agree, though I am not sure that anyone would ever use the Appendix. The entry definitely seems SoP to me. DCDuring TALK 19:56, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

Native English speakers might not use the appendix, but there are lots of fiddly spelling and hyphenation issues for English names of cardinal numbers that non-native speakers would find very useful to have an explanation for. There is also grammar to consider, since these words can function kind of like adjectives (but are not comparable) and kinds of like nouns (but the "plural" forms aren't used the same as the singular). --EncycloPetey 00:43, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

I don't and didn't doubt the utility of the information. I doubt only that it would be found, except by a user being given the link, probably in response to an inquiry. We would need to have a very explicit and elaborate effort to provide hooks for such content. Right now I suspect (are there any facts?) that new users never find appendices that contain what they need. DCDuring TALK 11:15, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

2 cents..I try to put an appendix link under See also, or Usage notes, or whatever is the most useful placing. That way, the user will find the info. In this instance, "See also" in the entry number, and perhaps in specific entries such as one and hundred etc. -- ALGRIF talk 17:40, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

Should we have a suggested layout for number words (and similar classes of entries, like letters, numbers, symbols) that contain such items as these links? Are there particularly good examples of any of these? We also by now must have guidelines about criteria by entries of the various kinds are to be excluded or included. I have had trouble finding them. Or do we just leave it bots and existing RfV/RfD? DCDuring TALK 18:03, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

The templates I set up for {{cardinalbox}} and {{ordinalbox}} were designed to clearly display an Appendix link in cases where an appropriate appendix exists. There are examples on the talk page for {{cardinalbox}} of what this looks like. --EncycloPetey 17:25, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

Oh, and in answer to the other part of your question, Equinox went through the ordinal number entries and standardized/expanded them a few days ago, so you can look at entries for words like twelfth for examples of how they might be done. This doesn't, of course, include the additional problem of coordinating all the various numerical script systems that might be included, since ordinals aren't developed to that level yet the way that the cardinals are. --EncycloPetey 19:30, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

Fantizi

See the tag in the entry for more, but also I can understand having ti to show how ignorant people often fail to indicate the critical tonal differences between the pronunciation of two things that would seem to be pronounced in the same way but surely we do not need full word "improper Pinyin" entries.--50 Xylophone Players talk 12:45, 9 November 2008 (UTC) re-signing...50 Xylophone Players talk 16:30, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

from on high

= [[from]] + [[on high]]. DCDuring TALK 01:20, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

Definitely not, since in Webster's Dictionary (ref in the article) it is written: From high, from on high, from a high place, from an upper region, or from heaven., therefore on is dispensable. Bogorm 16:17, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

That's why we have on high as an entry. It is a set phrase or a relic of an earlier, more general way of constructing meaning. From, as a preposition, can be used with numerous words and phrase, both modern and antiquated. DCDuring TALK 16:28, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, delete, SoP.—msh210℠ 07:58, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

No, keep - the fact that both from on high and from high are possible and have a different meaning from the expected, refutes the supposition about "from + on high" and makes me disprove this proposition. Bogorm 11:37, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

The 1828 dictionary entry provides a long list of usage examples with adverbs, like "on high". The multiple forms on the same line are broadly parallel, not definitions of "from on high". They present the long list as an extended usage note for "from". DCDuring TALK 13:15, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

Delete per nom. I'm trying to see Bogorm's POV, but I really think that "from on high" means "from" + "on high". The fact that "from high" means the same thing might (or might not) be an argument for a "from high" entry, but it is not argument for "from on high". (The reference to Webster's confuses me. By my reading, Webster's is glossing "from high" as "from on high, from a high place, from an upper region, or from heaven". I'm not sure why that would be considered an argument for "from on high" but not for "from a high place", "from an upper region", or "from heaven".) —Ruakh_TALK 00:53, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

Strong Weak keep since on high is an adverb and cannot be combined in this way under regular grammatical rules. DAVilla 07:26, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

And why isn't it marked as an adverb? (On high I mean.) DAVilla 07:28, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

Keep. I was previously ambivalent about the issue, but DAVilla's argument has swayed me. --EncycloPetey 02:16, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

I don't understand the substance of the elliptical argument. Is DAVilla saying that from on high is different from from above? Is he saying that "from above" should be an entry? DCDuring TALK 03:38, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

I would say that from above deserves an entry, but we might also need a usage note at from, since it does not follow the usual rules expected of prepositions. The word from can take objects that are adverb/prepositions of direction, and by that I mean the object (when not a noun) must be a word usable as both an adverb and a preposition as well as indicating direction. That said, not all such combinations with from ought to have entries, since some of them have no truly idiomatic meaning. DAVilla's argument swayed me, but only because the combined expression is also idiomatic. Yes, on high as a separate component has the same idiomaticity, but I can't see how to easily explain at the entry for from that it is one of the preposition/adverbs of direction usable with that word. --EncycloPetey 03:54, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

All of this seems to result from there being no grammatical PoS assigned to "on high", which shows only the "Idioms" header. It would seem to be a noun (like "here" and "above"), rarely used as a subject. DCDuring TALK 11:09, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

Hadn't considered that. I also found "from on board..." common in Google books. Not sure what to make of this right now. DAVilla 04:18, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

Keep. Common and ambiguous enough to merit an entry. Think of the foreigners! bd2412 T 17:01, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

quieten down

= [[quieten]] [[down]]. Synonym for quiet down. Note also that transitive use "to quiten (something/someone) down" is not defined. DCDuring TALK 18:06, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

Huh? What sense of down is this? No, this seems very much like a phrasal verb to me, which we keep. I'm curious to know what Algrif thinks, though.—msh210℠ 22:36, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

There are two senses from MWOnline not shown at down#Adverb that might apply:

1. to or toward a lesser level, degree, or rate (3rd sense of 9)
2. to a state of less activity (7th; less likely).

MWOnline has 17 senses, subsenses, and sub-subsenses of down as adverb. We have 5. DCDuring TALK 23:48, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

Cambridge dictionaries mark this as a phrasal verb, as do the Collins. They all state that the meaning is equivalent to quieten and that the preferred US usage is quiet and quiet down. I have added to the entry, even though it is still "rfd", BTW.
Phrasal verbs with down are difficult to determine, as are phrasals with up. They often have the same meaning (as this example under discussion), but there is a subtle distinction, which makes the teacher in class shout "Quienten down at once!" rather than "Quienten at once!", for instance. It's a bit like why we say "Fill her up", rather than "Fill her", at the petrol station. Possibly it's "degree", the idea of "completeness". -- ALGRIF talk 11:21, 27 November 2008 (UTC)

Keep, phrasal verb. --Duncan 20:21, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

December 2008

Nnewi South

IMO this is an encyclopedic, not a dictionary entry (WT:CFI#Names of specific entities); also it tempts me to create Nnewi itself for the Xmas Competition Game 3 ;-).--Duncan MacCall 12:10, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

ever since

• Moved from WT:RFV. DAVilla 19:32, 6 December 2008 (UTC)

Is this worth having as a separate entry? It is an intensifier + since in each of its three PoS incarnations, afaict. Other dictionaries seem to have "ever" in usage examples at since. DCDuring TALK 19:23, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

Move to RFD and/or delete.—msh210℠ 18:11, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

I agree with DCDuring (talk • contribs), dictionaries do see to use "ever" in examples with since, as common practice. Cirt (talk) 07:09, 7 December 2008 (UTC)

I had put this on RfV to give this at least 30 days for someone to come up with citations that show a meaning for one or more of the three PoSes that was not essentially "since (intensified)". DCDuring TALK 16:14, 13 December 2008 (UTC)

I don't see how it's intensified. Using just since in some cases seems just plain awkward. Keep regardless. DAVilla 01:16, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

Which PoS are you referring too? I didn't think of any examples that seemed awkward without "ever". DCDuring TALK 02:03, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

The adverb particularly. Without ever it just sounds too formal. For the other two I'm not sure if it's an intensifier or something else. Saying "ever since" seems to establish a causal link moreso than just "since", which more or less establishes a timeline but does not hint that the two parts are more fundamentally related. I'm sure in some cases, though, it really is just an issue of intensification. Or is the relation I pointed out just another form of intensity? Anyways ever since as a conjunction runs off the tongue more easily at the start of a sentence. That at least seems like use without stressing anything. Also note that it distinguishes this meaning from the other definition of since as a conjuction. 67.9.175.207 08:39, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

altruistic filicide

I doubt that the two definitions (no citations) given are accurate. I believe that the accurate definition is murder of one's child for altruistic reasons (eg, for the good of one's other [and possible future] children). Speculating about the particular reasons in advance of those reasons become an inherent part of the phrase in usage is at best encylopedic, IMO. DCDuring TALK 19:28, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

Comment. I think google books:"altruistic filicide" definitely supports sense #1, though it's not exactly the most common expression in the world (and many hits set off either the whole phrase, or just the word (deprecated template usage) altruistic, in quotation marks). That said, this might be encyclopedic entailment: people simply don't seem to murder their child for other people's good. (See e.g. this hit, which gives a classification of filicide by motive; its altruism category matches our sense #1, but none of the other categories would cover any other sort of altruistic motive. —Ruakh_TALK 20:49, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

Speculation about motivation is one of the faults of the definition. Potential "beneficiaries" of a filicide might include a spouse, one's other living children, one's not-yet-born children, one's community (smothering the child whose noises might betray a group is the ethics-classroom case). None of these can be excluded from the basic meaning of the component words. I don't think there is usage that suggests that this term is usable without quotes, except in a way that is SoP. Incidentally, one can define altruism in terms of one's genes instead of one's self to get a more limited potential set of beneficiaries for "altruism". And BTW, fairy tales about evil step-parents seem to be true. An analysis of murders by parents of children showed that adopted children and step-children occurred at a rate 20-50 times higher than of "natural" children. DCDuring TALK 21:37, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

Re: "Speculation about motivation is one of the faults of the definition": Well, that's the question, isn't it? If the term means sense 1, then it's not speculation about motivation, but rather an accurate description of what the term means (whether or not it's an accurate description of the actual motivation). —Ruakh_TALK 22:09, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

gadfly

Definition of horsefly appears to be a duplicate of previous. DAVilla 04:53, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

Merge.—msh210℠ 22:56, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

civilization

"Communal understanding" sense. The example given seems to apply to sense 1, and I'm having a hard time thinking of a more suitable one. -- Visviva 02:27, 19 December 2008 (UTC)

Agree. Also senses #5 and #6 could be combined. --Hekaheka 22:28, 19 December 2008 (UTC)

Well, I had split 5 and 6 per the anon's comment on the talk page, which I found persuasive ... one can use "civilization" to refer to sophisticated modern life, without preferring it ("I don't much care for civilization"), but one can also use "civilization" to refer to a particular society without regard to its level of sophistication ("I'm so glad to get away from the city and back to civilization"). I don't see any way to cover both of these under a single definition. -- Visviva 02:10, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

Adjusted. The latter is used sarcastically to say that another group is not part of civilized society, or I guess literally if one really believes that another society does not have civilized rules. DAVilla 08:55, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

Deleted. And I also deleted the sense of "countries" since Western civilization is not the members of NATO or the G8 summit. DAVilla 08:55, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

Much better, thanks; that needed someone with fresh eyes. BTW, I have added another sense just now ("the quality of being civilized"), which I assume to be non-controversial. -- Visviva 09:47, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

Before this change is buried it needs to be fully resolved by merging some of the translations and marking most as TTBC. 72.177.113.91 07:48, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

True... but before we do that, let's make sure we really want to erase the "stage" vs. "system" distinction. These do seem kind of distinct, though I'm not sure if/how to best separate them. -- Visviva 11:01, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

Can you give examples of how you would draw the line? To me it seems to refer to both the people and the system simultaneously. DAVilla 08:46, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

YLSer

Rather scant evidence of usage even on the Web; certainly nothing in Books or Groups. I have to wonder whether the creator would have felt it worth creating if not for the Christmas game (to follow ammoniumyls). Equinox 17:59, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

You're quite right in that I wouldn't have created it if not for WT:FUN. There are a handful of questionable entries in WT:FUN. However, with 3 decent hits on Google Groups this terms could just squeeze in. --Jackofclubs 13:46, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

All three are on user-created Google groups, not Usenet groups. Can we use those as "permanent sources", when the groups can be deleted at the creator's whim? Equinox 13:51, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

If they can be, then I'd say no. As a side note, we don't need permanent sources (do such exist?) but merely durably archived ones.—msh210℠ 19:16, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

RFV.—msh210℠ 19:16, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

War on Terrorism

POV; SoP. Same likely life and dictionary value as war on poverty, War on Poverty, war on drugs, etc. DCDuring TALK 20:13, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

Delete. I don't think the lifetime is necessarily a factor, but in my view it's encyclopaedic. Equinox 22:23, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

Delete. Bogorm 17:45, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

Keep (and submit to RFV, I suppose). It's not SOP, as it refers to a specific war on terrorism, not any old war on terrorism (and also not the general war on terrorism that includes all specific wars on terrorism).—msh210℠ 19:13, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

Keep - Idiom, same as: World War One, World War Two, World War III, Cold War, Falklands War WritersCramp 17:32, 3 January 2009 (UTC)

Keep per Msh, although I wish this logic would have applied to Vietnam War. Any chance we could revisit that vote? DAVilla 07:28, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

The only issue I would have with using the generic "Vietnam War" is which one? Vietnam has had many many wars! Reference WritersCramp 22:47, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

Exactly. There have been many, yet you and I know which one Vietnam War refers to. Yeah, it's in an encyclopedia because you can get a lot of information on it, but "which one?" is a very basic question. If somone would be likely to run across it and want to know what it means, that's why it belongs in a dictionary. DAVilla 08:15, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

War on Terror

Same as above. DCDuring TALK 20:16, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

Delete as for the one above. Equinox 22:24, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

Delete. Idem.Bogorm 17:46, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

Keep per my comments on War on Terrorism.—msh210℠ 19:13, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

Keep - Idiom, same as: World War One, World War Two, World War III, Cold War, Falklands War WritersCramp 17:32, 3 January 2009 (UTC)

Not exactly the same, because those are accepted names for wars in history. This isn't a specific war (it's a policy) and the term often has overtones of propaganda. Equinox 08:02, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

Keep and stronger than above. This is not set to stop terror but terrorism. DAVilla 07:30, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

go apeshit

Synonymous with go postal, go crazy. Go + adjective structure wouldn't seem to warrant an entry. Looking up the adjective should get users what they want. DCDuring Holiday Greetings! 18:34, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

I think I agree with you. I immediately thought of go ape (where ape, unlike apeshit, is not used without go) — but, according to our entry at ape, it can be used that way ("we were ape" in an example sentence, albeit a fabricated one). In any case, if this goes, go ape should go as well. Equinox 21:08, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure I agree with myself on this either. There is currently a discussion about off the deep end/go off the deep end (TR?). I'm thinking that "go" + new adjective/sense leads to free-standing new adjective sense, leads to gradable/comparable adjective sense, but that the "go" form may remain very common, possibly overwhelmingly so ("go ballistic", "go postal", go/get medieval). DCDuring Holiday Greetings! 21:20, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

liberation army

SoP.—msh210℠ 20:04, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

Delete. I think this is only noteworthy in the names of specific armies, and those are for Wikipedia. Equinox 20:50, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

Delete as sum of parts, only noteworthy as part of name (capitalised), to follow on from an abreviation such as INLA--Dmol 01:53, 31 December 2008 (UTC)

Not sure how this one should go just yet. Lots of Google Book hits for "a liberation army" so it's "noteworthy" even apart from proper names. There could be some credibility to keeping it in that the name of an army is supposed to convey the literal meaning, but the effect of that is the type of army which is formed, one that contrasts with a mercantile army. Could use some more heads on this. DAVilla 07:10, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

The usage note makes an important point. Useful article, keep. —Stephen 05:59, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

Delete. Stephen has a point about the usage note, but that belongs on (deprecated template usage) liberation. --EncycloPetey 18:24, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

January 2009

機巧童子ウルティモ

Name of a specific manga series. 50 Xylophone Players talk 12:34, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

Delete. Not an encyclopaedia. Equinox 08:00, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

I think these are popular with a lot of young people. Entry is concise. Keep. —Stephen 05:57, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

Heh, I know that (:-) I have ten volumes of manga myself so far. It's not just kids either; I mean NHK ni Yōkoso is X-rated AFAIK 50 Xylophone Players talk 16:53, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

Judging from the 102 Google hits, this is either misspelled or not very popular. -- Visviva 12:31, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

Delete per WT:CFI#Names of specific entities. -- Visviva 12:31, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

Comment. Being the name of a cartoon does not automatically disqualify the term.

Not being a Japanese speaker I have to abstain. DAVilla 06:27, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

It was over translated. Moved to 機巧童子ULTIMO, which is the correct way to write it. —Stephen 12:35, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

melt into

This doesn't seem like a real phrasal verb to me and there aren't any objective criteria for determining such either, afaict. DCDuring Holiday Greetings! 00:01, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

I agree, it's not a phrasal verb. The "into" is a preposition that takes an object, or else is an adverb when the object is unstated. There's a difference between "The blue melted into the purple" and "The child ate up the information." In the first case, the prepositional phrase makes sense as a prepositional phrase. The latter sentence, which has a phrasal verb, cannot be parsed as having a prepositional phrase "up the information". Likewise, one can say "The child ate the information up," but one cannot say "The blue melted the purple into." --EncycloPetey 00:08, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, EP. That helps. But, I get the feeling that what you describe would be a sufficient condition for "phrasal-verbity", but not a necessary one. Am I wrong? Should I just lie down until that feeling goes away? DCDuring Holiday Greetings! 18:54, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

Delete because melt into doesn't suggest anything that melt + into doesn't. Equinox 00:31, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

Move sense 2 to RFV; if it passes, then keep. I know of no other intransitive use of (deprecated template usage) into — the intransitive counterpart is always (deprecated template usage) in — I find it really hard to believe that are speakers for whom "the ice melted into" means "the ice melted", but if there are, then (deprecated template usage) melt into certainly warrants coverage.

If sense 2 fails RFV, then weak keep, because there are still idiomatic senses, like in this quotation (via google books:"melted into a chair"):

• 2004, Julia London, Highlander Unbound, Simon and Schuster, ISBN 978-0-7434-8868-6, page 122:

  Ellen pushed away from the door, drifted toward the couch, smiling, and melted into a chair, burrowing deep into the cushions, hugging herself as she thought of the bold man who had just left her sitting room.

As you say, it's not a phrasal verb, but it still seems like an idiom.

—Ruakh_TALK 00:45, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

I would say the idiom is in (deprecated template usage) melt, not in "melted into", since she could have "melted from fatigue". --EncycloPetey 01:01, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

It seems that way to me. There are lots of varieties of figurative melting, most of which seem to occur either with or without prepositions, let alone with "into". One could "melt" "over the arm of the chair", "onto the floor", "under the blankets", "away from the advancing forces". More troubling to the RfD is "melt into" in a sense of "become". "In a moment, the brave soldier melted into quivering protoplasm." This would seem to possibly be a copula, albeit with a semantically limited range. "Brittle melted into gooey." DCDuring Holiday Greetings! 18:54, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

Not a copula, since it requires a preposition. I don't see this as any different from "The company closed as a successful experiment." It is the preposition (deprecated template usage) into that carries the sense "producing, becoming", which is already given in that entry. --EncycloPetey 21:11, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

In the second example the putative preposition "into" was followed by an adjective, which is why I thought it was possible that it was a copula. One would have to infer a noun that was "understood" (a word from grammar classes long ago) or that "gooey" was functioning as noun. I'd be surprised if there were no scholarly work on the concept of "phrasal copulae". ;-)) DCDuring Holiday Greetings! 23:36, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

But there are plenty of examples of adjectives functioning substantively, and it's easy to fabricate examples: "The rich turned into the poor." "The happy bled into the sad." "Light dimmed into dark." In all of these situations, one quality is transforming or grading (deprecated template usage) into another. By definition, it's not a copula if there is a conjunctive word in addition to the putative copula. --EncycloPetey 23:46, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

It is not as easy to fabricate examples with bare adjectives, which would seem to be the minimal requirement for a copula. I was careful enough to avoid any determiner before "gooey". I'm not trying to be difficult: I just want to make sure that I've pushed this as far as it can go or have somebody buy me a really good English grammar (either cgel or the previous best one) to shut me up or raise my quality of discourse. DCDuring Holiday Greetings! 00:32, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

There is nothing about a copula that requires a bare adjective, or any adjective at all. A copula can work with any subject complement, whether adjective, noun, noun phrase, or any nominative compound construction. --EncycloPetey 04:35, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

Yes, but the bare adjective test is a potential test for discriminating. A bare adjective cannot be a substantive, can it? A preposition cannot "take" a non-substantive, can it? DCDuring Holiday Greetings! 12:05, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

In fact, a bare adjective can be substantive: "Meek wins." And a preposition can take a non-substantive (sort of). However, the prepositional object becomes a substantive automatically, in every case I can conceive: "She wrote the book on clean." ... even when the object is an adjective. --EncycloPetey 19:57, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

I agree. NOT a phrasal verb, for all the above reasons. The definition should be at melt. -- ALGRIF talk 18:57, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

If necessary RFV second sense, which seems more like a mistake than anything, or just delete along with everything else. Not a phrasal verb, idiomatic meaning is for melt. DAVilla 04:42, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

make clear

Same as above. DCDuring Holiday Greetings! 00:07, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

Delete the transitive sense; it's just making something clear (SoP), no better than make unhappy or make worthwhile. I don't understand the intransitive one (is it an error?). Equinox 00:39, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

It seemed erroneous to me but English often surprises me. I put in the intransitive tag to clarify and distinguish. If you can suss out some other reading, good on ya. DCDuring Holiday Greetings! 11:01, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

So sussed. :-)   —Ruakh_TALK 14:45, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

Merge into clear. (Specifically, make clear distinguishes two very different senses of (deprecated template usage) clear that clear lumps together very vaguely as sense #5.) —Ruakh_TALK 14:45, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

Weak delete. Reflexive sense could possibly be at make myself clear. Not sure that it works in any other person. DAVilla 06:12, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

Mais si ! The first person singular is admittedly the most common, but other persons and numbers get well over a thousand b.g.c. hits, even without considering variants like "make oneself quite clear" (which gets another several hundred). —Ruakh_TALK 19:39, 24 January 2009 (UTC)

Weak keep reflexive sense only. DAVilla 07:30, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

mainstream media

Sum of the parts (deprecated template usage) mainstream + (deprecated template usage) media. --EncycloPetey 21:06, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

The definitions given don't seem quite right, but this is used in the blogosphere in a way that I would consider non-SOP. Fox News, for example, is part of the MSM, but it is hardly mainstream. -- Visviva 13:56, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

google:"fox news" "mainstream media" suggests that some speakers consider Fox News to be MSM, while others do not. Notably, Fox News itself does not seem to consider itself MSM: <http://wonkroom.thinkprogress.org/2008/05/28/fox-news-blames-mainstream-media-for-recession/>. This suggests to me that "the mainstream media" means basically what its parts suggest: parts of "the media" that are "mainstream", for some value of "the media" (newsmedia, entertainment media, etc. — but not so much novels, academic journals, etc.) and some value of "mainstream". —Ruakh_TALK 22:49, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

The sense that I'm thinking of is basically synonymous with "corporate media," i.e. media outlets in which access is controlled by corporate gatekeepers (thus, it would include a blog run by Fox or MSNBC, but not an independent blog with identical content and viewpoint). This does not mesh with any sense of mainstream that we have. Unfortunately, while this would be easy to cite in non-durable media, it is difficult to find in the other kind. I suspect Kos's book would be good for a cite, but I just lost my copy in the bathroom of a Costco (long story), and it's not searchable on Amazon or b.g.c. Will poke around a bit. -- Visviva 01:46, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

delete. There may be subculture-specific meanings, but I think they are beyond what a dictionary can readily covey. For example, "mainstream media" is certainly not usually pejorative in its use, except among those who don't like mainstream media. In any event, most of the meaning is in the components. DCDuring Holiday Greetings! 15:47, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

Delete per DCDuring. First sense is SoP; second sense is the same SoP with a particular subcultural sneer, like "Oh, ew, he listens to mainstream music". Equinox 16:17, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

I’m not sure of the meaning of mainstream media, so keep. Does it mean radio, TV and newspapers as opposed to samizdat, bulletin boards and word of mouth...or does it mean the major networks and corporations such as ABC, NBC, A.H. Belo, Chicago Tribune, and Time-Warner as opposed to the Fort Worth Star Telegram? Or perhaps something else? —Stephen 23:47, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

Seemingly (from the numerous senses we have), all of the above and then some. So delete.—msh210℠ 20:02, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

But only one of those at any given time. Weak keep. 72.177.113.91 20:35, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

little boy

Given that little girl has been deleted, this should probably follow suit. -- Visviva 07:42, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

Delete DCDuring Holiday Greetings! 10:43, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

Delete. See also the "little girl" discussion.—msh210℠ 18:06, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

Hmm… But should (deprecated template usage) little girl have been deleted? Can this sense of (deprecated template usage) little be used to modify any noun other than (deprecated template usage) boy, (deprecated template usage) girl, (deprecated template usage) child, (deprecated template usage) kidm &c.? If it can be used widely enough, then both (deprecated template usage) little boy and (deprecated template usage) little girl ought to be deleted.
Also consider the similarly-used (deprecated template usage) small boy, (deprecated template usage) small girl, &c.; are they idiomatic? If so, they ought to be created; if not (because this sense of (deprecated template usage) small can be used to modify a broad enough range of nouns), then the additional sense ought to be added to the entry for (deprecated template usage) small, per the resolution to the (deprecated template usage) little girl RfD. † ﴾^(u):Raifʻhār ^(t):Doremítzwr﴿ 20:01, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

Little also modifies lamb in a nursery rhyme. At least I think it means "young" there not "small in size". And one of the example sentences we have for it is "Did he tell you any embarrassing stories about when she was little?".—msh210℠ 21:54, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

Can one attest "little boy/girl" as definitely meaning "young" and not "small"? I think not, but perhaps it should get its 30 days on RfV. DCDuring Holiday Greetings! 23:12, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

We sometimes use other dictionaries to support meanings. I think there is a case here to state that most/all main dictionaries include little = young. Another example we could use is My little sister. where little = younger. If we accept this defenition into little, then this entry becomes definitely SoP. -- ALGRIF talk 14:20, 15 January 2009 (UTC) I really should have looked at the entry for little before writing this. Doh. Algrif.

I think little boy refers to a fairly specific age-range and should be kept. I don’t know if the age-range varies with the country. I would say that in the U.S., a little boy is a boy between the ages of 2 and 10. It belongs in the category that incluces teen, teenager, young man, adolescent, baby, toddler, youngster, pre-teen, pre-schooler, old man, etc. —Stephen 23:34, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

I agree. little boy and little girl (as well as petite fille and petit garçon in French) should be kept. They are set phrases. But, of course, not little boat, little bird, etc. Lmaltier 18:13, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

Forgive me if I'm being pedantic. But doesn't the "growth chain" logic mean we can allow puppy, little dog, adult dog (or adult dog)? Ditto for all the other animals I can think of. And, yes, including little bird. -- ALGRIF talk 12:06, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

But I think that little dog, adult dog or little bird are not set phrases at all (except little bird with its special meaning). Lmaltier 20:38, 9 February 2009 (UTC) Similarly, jeune fille should obviously be accepted, not jeune chien. Lmaltier 20:43, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

I see four deletes (Visviva, DCDuring, Algrif, and myself) and two keeps (SGB and Lmaltier). I don't feel qualified to delete this on such a slim majority of which I'm a member, so I'll leave it and hope someone else deletes it.  :-) —msh210℠ 17:09, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Delete per little girl --Duncan 20:26, 25 February 2009 (UTC).

playright

This is not an acceptable alternate of playwright according to the OED, nor can it be found in any other dictionary source. Thanks. -Sketchmoose 15:43, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

• No - it is a totally different word. the OED has this (under "play") - playright n. Obs. an author's proprietary right of performance of a musical or dramatic composition. SemperBlotto 15:50, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

keep. At worst this entry needs the obsolete legal sense. The RfD once more raises the question of what makes a spelling a misspelling vs. an alternative spelling and may also raise the queston of what makes a misspelling a "common" one. There are many current uses of the term in edited works where "playwright" might be preferred by some (like me). In any event, no speedy deletion. DCDuring TALK 17:22, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

I have inserted "common" misspelling and given it an "rfd-sense" tag to take advantage of any attention this entry may have so far received to get more attention to the alternative/mis-spelling question. DCDuring TALK 17:30, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

This is fine with a proper definition. Before, all that was there was "alternate spelling of playwright" which is simply not correct, and I had never heard of it used in the "proprietary rights" sense so I didn't know to correct it to that (nor was it turned up in any of my dictionary searches, presumably due to its obsolescence). Thanks for looking in to it. -Sketchmoose 22:41, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

It may well go back to being an alternative spelling based on being fairly common in edited works. DCDuring TALK 23:02, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

This is weird... When I search for "a playright" to filter out most (but not all) of the legal uses, I get 0.5% of the hits for "a playwright" on the web (~548,000:~2,500). But when I switch to Google Books, "a playright" jumps to 9% (5,420:504). Forcing the issue [19] brings this down to 374, or 6.9%, which is still astronomical. Only a small fraction of those seem to be legal uses; scannos don't seem to be a factor. WTF? Is the web suddenly better-proofread than print? -- Visviva 02:29, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

I believe that all(?) Google searches for "playright" will count hits for "play right" and "playright", though only the latter are emboldened. I have taken to doing separate "playright -play-right" and "-playright play-right" searches to get what I thought I was getting with searches for "playright" and "play right" alone. I also get significantly different results for "playwright" and "playwright -play-wright". DCDuring TALK 12:28, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

The problem with that is that it also throws out any pages that have, for example, "play" and "right" in addition to "playright" (as will often be the case in a discussion of the legal concept).

Google's handling of quotes has been a little inconsistent lately, but the "+" operator seldom lets me down. If you're suspicious of the results from a simple quoted search, you can for example search for '+playright "a playright"' to make sure that all searched pages actually have the word in question, not just an approximation. (That search actually gives me the same results as above, at this writing.) -- Visviva 14:40, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

Just to make clear the effect of the search methods as I understand it:

"AB" yields hits of "AB" and "ABs" (and includes "'A-B'" (and perhaps ""A-B"" etc)), but emboldens only "AB"

"ABs" yields hits of "ABs"

"A-B -AB" yields hits of "A-B" "A B" (as well as "A/B" "A>B", etc) without AB on the same page.

"AB -A-B" yields hits of "AB" without "A-B", "A B", and their fellow travelers on the same page.

I have not examined all of the possibilities raised.

Because I haven't yet found documentation of this, I suspect that Google is:

1. not committed to keeping it working just this way and in every search domain;
2. not desirous of providing much evidence to SEOers who game their system; or
3. not desirous of facilitating searches that are more resource-intensive. DCDuring TALK 12:21, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

Also "a+playright" gives me many times more hits than "a-playright", which gives the same as ""a playright"". DCDuring TALK 12:32, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

On the digression which generated the methodological subdigression, I get 880K web hits and 5500 bgc hits for "a-playright"; 596K (66%) web hits and 536 (10%) bgc hits for "a-playwright", more in line with expectations. DCDuring TALK 12:32, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

carnival

Sense 5 = "A ritual reversal of a social hierarchy". Makes little sense to me and suggests no meaning of "carnival" that I know. -- WikiPedant 04:30, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

That refers to what the annual festival Carnival is about. It's more of a description of the spirit of the Catholic carnival festive season than a definition. --EncycloPetey 18:18, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

IP in IP

This entry hasn't been salvaged seen its RFC in October. Suggesting an RFD discussion to see whether this can stay. --Jackofclubs 18:14, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

Keep now that it's cleaner. Conrad.Irwin 18:23, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

family

1. rfd-sense: adjective - Related to the family.

   The dog was kept as a family pet.

   For Apocynaceae, this type of flower is a family characteristic.

Seems to be an attributive use of the noun. --Dan Polansky 15:10, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

Move to RfV. The usage examples are consistent with attributive use. But I think that this forms a true comparative and therefore should be presented as an adjective too. It would be worth citing as adjective. DCDuring TALK 15:51, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

Keep and expand definition, but delete these cites. Family has a meaning of having traditional values, being conservative, even old fashioned - for example "family values". The examples are clearly wrong, and are attributive uses of the noun.--Dmol 09:55, 24 January 2009 (UTC)

Messerschmitt 109, Focke-Wulf 190

User:Sawbackedeagle added these in good faith before he was aware of the CFI. While we have (and probably should have) the likes of Messerschmitt, I think that these very specific designations are probably no-nos. (Compare Xbox and Xbox 360.) Equinox 00:02, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

Move to RfV. It is not very hard to find attributive use of Messerschmitt 109 (with "pilot", "squadron", for example). It would thereby meet our standard for such entries. Focke-Wulf 190 might also. DCDuring TALK 00:59, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

Where are you seeing that in the CFI? Seems to me at first glance at least that these are not idiomatic, nevermind whether they're attested (in attributive use or otherwise).—msh210℠ 19:59, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

I has thinking that these are product/brand names, like Concorde. Mind you, I am not sure that the collocations do qualify. DCDuring TALK 20:11, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

I would recommend that we delete these, but keeping (or creating) the individual parts such as Messerschmitt and 109,, and Focke-Wulf and 190. There is a tendency for the company name to indicate these models if no other context is mentioned. The numbers were commonly used on their own. A more likely method is to use the common abbreviation such as ME 109 etc.--Dmol 05:34, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

Agreed, delete (or move to ME 109/FW 190). Not idiomatic regardless of whether they can be attested, much like Xbox 360. DAVilla 06:26, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

Move to the abbreviated forms per DAVilla. Cheers! bd2412 T 16:57, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

steam engine

Redundant senses, would normally steam ahead, but am I missing something? DAVilla 06:21, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

To me the definitions 1,2 and 4 are variations of the same theme. They could all be combined into this:

1. An engine that converts thermal energy of steam into mechanical energy, especially one in which the steam drives pistons in cylinders.

Turbines should not be completely excluded from "steam-enginehood", since they utilize the same physical phenomenon (work produced by expanding steam) as "true" steam engines, and many sources, including Wikipedia, count them as steam engines. --Hekaheka 21:19, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

Possibly, yes. However, if some people would use steam engine to mean something that is specifically a piston engine and never a steam turbine, then 1 and 2 should be left distinct. DAVilla 07:46, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

They're not truly distinct, but they are different. The first definition only applies to something applied with external steam, like a steam hammer. The second only applies to a piston engine (special case of first definition or a restricted sense of the 4th). The third is a locomotive only. The fourth is the general definition, and includes the boiler and applies to steam power generation and everything. So I don't see that any of it is redundant, although a casual look may suggest that. But they do appear to be all in use.Wolfkeeper 12:51, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

Could this use cleanup? If not, some examples. DAVilla 07:28, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Pidgin English

Huh? If this is kept, it needs some serious work. However, I think it should not be kept, as it is clearly SOP (that is, unless it refers specifically to some particular English pidgin). -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 06:27, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

Delete as SOP, but the definition is inaccurate anyway. PE is a general term for the many English-based pidgins (about 20 or so). Even if corrected, it's still SOP. --Dmol 01:42, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

But isn't "Pidgin English" the origin of the term pidgin? I thought it originally referred specifically to the Chinese-English pidgin. See e.g. w:Pidgin#Terminology. I'm still not sure if it meets CFI -- the OED's cites mostly spell it Pigeon English -- but SOP doesn't seem quite right when the sum precedes the parts historically. -- Visviva 02:06, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

It seems necessary to have the original Pigeon English then, and so this entry would at least need to be an alternative spelling. It doesn't matter to me which is the main entry, quite frankly. For clarity we should probably give Pigeon English the original meaning, if that differs from the current (and refer to Pidgin English if the meaning has extended under the older spelling as well). DAVilla 07:39, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

by committee

1 SoP; 2 tendentious definitions. DCDuring TALK 01:30, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

Sense 1 is either redundant or wrong, AFAICT. I mean, committee proceedings aren't necessarily protracted, and if I said "it was done by committee" I wouldn't necessarily mean that it was done slowly. If the entry is kept in some form, we should include the truly SoP sense (currently lacking), since "by committee" usually just means "by committee".

I would merge senses 2 and 3, though I'm not sure of the exact wording. -- Visviva 07:53, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

ok what do you think of the entry now? -- Thisis0 19:22, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

I like it. The wording could be more concise, but I think these are both senses that we should have. -- Visviva 15:29, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

Weak keep for sense 2. I think it could be (and has been) used humorously when there's clearly no actual committee involved. Sense 1 feels like SoP. (Actually, when a word or phrase has a non-literal meaning, like sense 2 here, people often seem to put the obvious literal meaning as sense 1. I'm never sure about that: do we have to spell out a clear sum of parts merely because there's a secondary sense that isn't the same thing?) Equinox 22:26, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

I could have no greater hope for this term than it be defined by committee. DAVilla 06:19, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Hahaaahaaaha!!! :D -- Thisis0 17:22, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

by sail

See sail#Noun sense 2. DCDuring TALK 01:34, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

These do seem quite SoP-ish. Still, I'm of the opinion that, if reasonable people can disagree about whether a phrase for which we have an entry is sum of parts, we should keep the entry. That is, I would rather have 100 well-formed entries for phrases that might be sum of parts than miss 1 entry for a phrase that is not sum of parts. Polywords and proper nouns are the two greatest gaping holes in our English coverage, and no-one will ever bother to work on them if each entry is liable to be deleted.

This entry and the two following were created by two intelligent, reasonable editors, and were nominated for deletion by another intelligent, reasonable editor. To me, this seems like prima facie evidence that reasonable people can disagree as to whether these phrases are suitable for inclusion. Thus, without any actual consideration of the merits, I will happily vote keep.  :-) -- Visviva 07:44, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

Keep per Visviva. —Ruakh_TALK 15:41, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

Then we should change WT:CFI, which does not read that way. If we want to continue to increase the quantity of English entries there is literally no end to what we can achieve by exploiting the combinatorial explosion of compound and multiword entries. As more and more corpera are deemed durably archived attestation can be less and less of a barrier. I would be happier if we worked on entry quality, especially for highly polysemic words, and on Proper nouns than pushing in the direction of non-idiomatic collocations. DCDuring TALK 16:04, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

To put it another way, if I might: the editors who created these entries are familiar with CFI, and from what I have seen I am reasonably sure they would not deliberately flout Wiktionary's standards. Thus, I am inclined to assume that they could/would/did compose a reasonable argument in favor of the idiomaticity of these phrases. It is not too hard to see how such an argument would run; I would say the argument is relatively strong for by accident and somewhat weaker for the others. But where there are grounds for reasonable dispute over whether something is or is not idiomatic, it only makes sense to err on the side of inclusion. IMO this isn't a matter of CFI itself -- no one is questioning that phrases that are indisputably sum of parts should be deleted -- but of our implementation of CFI. Implementation naturally varies depending on practical concerns; specifically, I think the actual threat of the project being flooded with sum-of-parts phrases is quite small compared to the threat of our being overrun with protologisms or brand-name spam. -- Visviva 16:38, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

I would vastly prefer a "rule of law", largely because it allows us to be more welcoming of contributions by non-experts. That means to me statute, not precedent (especially not hard-to-find precedent). Still less does it mean rule by judges.

I, too, believe that some prepositional phrases are close to idiomatic (eg, by accident, though I'm not sure why). I am not at all convinced that the de facto rules that seem to be emerging are desirable. In particular, I am troubled by the rule that a phrase combining two low-frequency (in the unsupported opinion of one or three senior contributors) senses of common words makes an includable collocation. I am bothered that it seems to lead to the failure to include senses at the individual word level (eg, sail and steam). The problem is particularly pernicious for prepositions, where missing senses may be used in many phrases.

I would be very surprised if adding these "multiwords" and "phrases" helped us in the slightest in our competition with the other on-line dictionaries. DCDuring TALK 18:53, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

I agree that it doesn't have much effect on our competitiveness, but then not all contributors are motivated by competition with other dictionaries, and their contributions are no less valuable for that. Personally, I'm not very concerned by other dictionaries' competition, although I do look forward to the day when we flatten them... as we will, unless something flattens us first.

Back to the point at hand, I'm not sure if you're objecting to 1) the assumption that the creators of these articles would make plausible arguments in their defense, 2) the principle that if a plausible argument can be made for non-compositionality, the entry should be kept, or 3) both. I can understand the objection to 1) -- it is a bit ad hominem -- but I only meant it as a time-saving device. I mean, why wait for an argument to actually be made, when it can so easily be foreseen? ;-) My intent with 2) is actually to reduce the amount of arbitrariness in these decisions. When an RFD is decided solely on the (often rather erratic) judgment of the (often very small sample of) editors who weigh in, many entries end up being deleted/kept that might have had the reverse outcome if the discussion had happened a month earlier or later. This is untenable, and ends up discouraging useful contributions and contributors. So IMO this sort of "reasonable doubt" principle actually reduces the weight of our "judges" (if you will) vis-a-vis our "law."

At any rate, I didn't mean to drive this particular discussion so far off-course. Perhaps we could discuss this further on the BP. -- Visviva 15:26, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

I think the rub with these terms comes in the bent or method through which you want to define them. When certain phrases have an idiomatic meaning, do you want a separate noun sense at the main word (sail ...5. A sailing vessel or vessels. We traveled by sail.) or take it as an idiomatic phrase by defining '(deprecated template usage) by sail'... [or both... the breadcrumb theory?]. For (deprecated template usage) accident (below), you would at least have to add at least one more idiomatic sense to the main word (accident ...5. Chance; fortune; lack of intention. I ran into an old friend by accident.) In cases where the idiomatic sense exists only in the phrase, it should have an entry, which as far as I can tell is true for that specific sense of accident, and this sense of sail. Can anyone think of any other uses where the specific idiomatic sense of these main words exist in other phrases, or alone? It would be a good way of understanding the way each of these break down on a sense level, and if any of them have uses outside the phrase. -- Thisis0 18:56, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

I don't think (deprecated template usage) sail means sail-boat so much as sail-power. A person can go by sail, which means he's on a sail-boat, but a boat can also go by sail, which means it is a sail-boat. In days of yore, a single boat might travel sometimes by sail, and sometimes by steam, depending on circumstances. I don't think that's very common any more, but this b.g.c. hit for "using sail" suggests both (1) that it does still happen and (2) that the exact words "by sail" are not necessary to evoke this sense. And that's ignoring variations like "by solar sail" and "by steam or sail" which have the "by" and the "sail" but don't put them together. (All of which are arguments for deletion; my "keep" vote is based entirely on the Visviva Principle.) —Ruakh_TALK 20:09, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

Idiomatic phrases are not necessarily fixed. A pin in an enormous stack of hay; rain felines, canines, and pachyderms; have your retirement cake and eat it too. DAVilla 06:59, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

I suppose I am a breadcrumbian, with a further belief in "all senses for all words". My particular sect would favor three kinds of breadcrumbs, but view advocacy of the fourth as heresy. The favored ones are:

1. senses at each component word for every sense of the word used in any idiom (indeed any collocation). This would include senses for the current existence of which we had no evidence except in phrases that are currently idiomatic;
2. idioms; and
3. usage examples, which provide a natural means to get a user searching for a common collocation to an appropriate entry.

My disfavored fourth class of breadcrumb, non-idiomatic collocations, is the one that seems wasteful. It can be positively harmful if its presence leads to neglect of the others. DCDuring TALK 16:53, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

Keep. Well I can't of course speak for all non-natives, but I myself see very few things more unuseful, nay, counterproductive (because confusing) for a non-native than lists of senses which appear in only one or two set phrases under separate definitions for the word, rather than under their own headings (cross-referenced with the word's heading of course). Moreover, it increases the danger of the warning "only in this phrase!" being omitted, thus leaving the user under the delusion that the definition is applicable generally (adding an example sentence doesn't solve this at all); and with respect to prepositional phrases (probably some others too) it's bound to make even the Translations tables much less user friendly, as many easily translatable phrases would be turned into intranslatable definitions. --Duncan 18:42, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

Keep (with minor reservations) I disagree. I believe that entries that are eligible for Category:English prepositional phrases are extremely useful and not at all confusing. Many (not to say all) Eng L2 learners are encouraged to investigate and learn these idiomatic preposition + noun (phrase) collocations. BTW, I hope this Category answers your above question, Thisis0. Nearly all prepositional phrases are adverbial or adjectival and somewhat idiomatic, such as by accident below, (which is why DCDuring is having trouble seeing what makes it different). Phrases such as by sail, rail, road, air, sea, etc I believe should have an entry, as their meaning is idiomatic despite being easily understandable. Whereas phrases such as by car, train, boat, bike, plane, etc. should be catered for under by as these are non-idiomatic SoP's. -- ALGRIF talk 16:34, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

Delete. This is standard use of by (by car, by horse, by boat, by ferry, by jet) with a metonymic use of sail to stand for the whole boat. --EncycloPetey 16:47, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

Precisely, it's always metonymic, not literal. Keep. DAVilla 06:59, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

So which is literal: "by road" or "by car"? "by train" or "by rail"? "by ship" or "by sea"? Travel statements using "by" use metonymic nouns as a matter of course. --EncycloPetey 16:39, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

by steam

See steam#Noun sense 4,5. DCDuring TALK 01:40, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

Which you just added. Please exemplify in a phrase that does not use "by". DAVilla 06:02, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

• 1845, Frederick Knight Hunt, The Rhine: Its Scenery, and Historical and Legendary Associations [a/k/a The Rhine Book], reprint, ISBN 1421266377, page 5,

  The traveller who decides upon visiting the Rhine will do well to take steam to Antwerp.

—msh210℠ 17:24, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Note, though, that take steam seems to have been an idiom meaning be tugged or something like that. So maybe that's the idiom being used in the quotation I just posted, and it's not an example of "steam" (per se, in the senses required).—msh210℠ 17:33, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

scare quote

I think this is only used in the plural, relevant content should be moved to scare quotes. H. (talk) 18:57, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

google books:"scare quote" gets 72 hits, so even if we decide to put the entry at "scare quotes" (which does seem reasonable), we need some sort of redirect for "scare quote". —Ruakh_TALK 19:49, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

Keep per Ruakh's hits.—msh210℠ 19:24, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Keep and add etymology. Please do such basic research before making a formal nomination for deletion in the future, accompanied by a question whether the word or term is actually in use. 24.29.238.60 20:11, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Keep. Should have been an RfV. cited. DCDuring TALK 02:34, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Kept.—msh210℠ 16:34, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

February 2009

tough it out

We (now) have tough out. Most objects can appear before or after "out". "It" may the only word that must appear before "out". This seems like a usage note/example issue. DCDuring TALK 00:04, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Delete for the reason given. I feel we should also do something about see through and see it through. Equinox 00:07, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Change to redirect. I agree -- the correct form of entry is tough out, specified as a transitive verb. I'd classify tough out as an idiom and would make tough it out redirect to it. -- WikiPedant 03:34, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Redirect to tough out. What WikiPedant said. —Ruakh_TALK 04:20, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

I don't see how it could be termed an idiom, though perhaps it is. It just seems like "out" used adverbially. "Tough" as a verb is just rather rare without "out", although it seems to be used with "up" to be synonymous with "toughen up". DCDuring TALK 12:10, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Redirect per WikiPedant.—msh210℠ 19:26, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

What is it? Keep. DAVilla 05:56, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

It is (rather obviously, I thought) the situation to be braved. Would you want entries for stop it! and it is raining? Equinox 22:49, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

How is that obvious? Where in the example is "the situation to be braved" given as an antecedent?

For stop it, yes. The other is a construction already noted at it. 72.177.113.91 20:17, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

once-removed-in-law

Apparently somebody's invention. Watch out, because the words do occur in this order on Google Books/Groups, but not as the single adjective suggested here. Equinox 23:48, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Delete. Even if real, it would just be sum of parts. Whatever hyphenation is used, "first cousin once removed in law" is "[first cousin once removed] [in law]" not "[first cousin] [once removed in law]". -- Visviva 00:03, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

Delete per Visviva. 72.177.113.91 20:09, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

Delete with extreme prejudice. SemperBlotto 08:26, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

hang

Sense "(transitive) To place on a hook" redundant with previous "(transitive) To cause (something) to be suspended". I mean, it's a subset of the previous, but I don't think anyone uses "hang" to mean "place on a hook, to the exclusion of suspending it by other means": no one would say "I said to hang it, not to suspend it, so why didn't you put it on a hook?".—msh210℠ 23:27, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

Delete. Equinox 21:33, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

lol, agree with msh; delete. 50 Xylophone Players talk 21:42, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

Delete per nom, unless it can actually be cited -- which, per nom, seems quite unlikely. -- Visviva 12:01, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

I asked you to hang your coat, so why is it still hanging on the chair?

Keep. DAVilla 12:45, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Fwiw, the sense was added in this diff.—msh210℠ 20:21, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Merge definitions. --EncycloPetey 17:32, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

txtspx

Supposed "rare" plural of txtspk. Apparently not attestable. Equinox 20:53, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

Agreed, delete; this is just too rare for Wiktionary ATM. I’ve removed the (deprecated template usage) txtspx plural link from the lemma’s inflexion line. FWIW, (deprecated template usage) txtspks is also vanishingly rare; it may just about be attestable. † ﴾^(u):Raifʻhār ^(t):Doremítzwr﴿ 12:05, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

mackinaw shirt

SoP mackinaw (material) + shirt. Similarly,

1. mackinaw coat
2. mackinaw jacket.

--Bequw → ¢ • τ 06:23, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

Well, a mackinaw coat or a mackinaw jacket isn't just a coat or jacket made of mackinaw fabric, it's specifically a heavy, double-breasted jacket. Never heard of a mackinaw shirt though; delete as defined. -- Visviva 08:05, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

Delete as defined.—msh210℠ 17:43, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

rate adjustment cap

SoP.—msh210℠ 21:36, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

delete No, wait! How is the user supposed to know it's not a type of headgear? DCDuring TALK 23:07, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

As a non-financial-type person, I would have had no idea that this referred to a limit on one day's rate adjustment, rather than over (say) the entire period of the loan. If the definition is correct, I would be inclined to keep the entry as more specific than the sum of its parts. -- Visviva 03:07, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

No, no. As with almost any long-term contract, there are unsurprising conventional intervals at which the rate on an adjustable-rate mortgage (ARM) or other variable-rate loan can be adjusted: monthly, bi-monthly, quarterly, semi-annually, annually, biennially; possibly starting after some initial period. A very large business loan might have more frequent adjustments. It is just a "cap" on the amount of the "adjustment" of the interest "rate". There is plenty of business jargon to include, but I can't see this. DCDuring TALK 04:18, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

If some mortgage broker told me "this loan has a rate adjustment cap of 2%" without further explanation, I would probably assume that applied to the lifetime of the loan, rather than a single adjustment period. That would be a rather serious, perhaps bankruptcy-inducing, mistake.

That said, I'm not sure the definition is strictly accurate; "rate adjustment cap" is quite rare in use, and about 90% of the time it appears with some modifier ("annual", "period", "lifetime", etc.) which makes the specific meaning clear. I suspect the remaining cases would be clear from context. On the other hand, it seems clear that we should have an entry for adjustment cap, which is fairly common, and clearly has a more precise meaning than the sum of its parts. Compare google:"a rate adjustment cap of" (1 hit) and google:"an adjustment cap of" (28 hits). Perhaps this entry could be redirected to that one? -- Visviva 04:46, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

asciibetical order

Sum of parts: ASCIIbetical order. (Or is somebody going to suggest that they thought this "order" was a command barked by an ASCIIbetical general?) Equinox 22:33, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

delete. Even our less-than-excellent search would find asciibetical. DCDuring TALK 16:43, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

Actually it wouldn't. But that seems like a BP or GP matter. DCDuring TALK 16:48, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

Delete.—msh210℠ 16:58, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

alphabetical order

Per asciibetical order RFD above. You can (and people do!) order by practically anything, e.g. numerical order, ASCII order, ANSI order, Unicode order, Hebrew alphabetical order... Equinox 22:36, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

But can't this be used specifically to mean the standard human-readable alphabet sequence (A,a,B,b), as opposed to asciibetical order and other technically "alphabetical" sequences? I mean, asciibetical order is alphabetical, but it specifically is not what is meant by "alphabetical order". -- Visviva 17:03, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

Yes ("data is sorted in ASCII collated order rather than alphabetical order"), but that's still a matter for alphabetical versus asciibetical; the fact that it's an order is still SoP, isn't it? By the above token it seems we should also have alphabetical sort and asciibetical sort; alphabetically arranged and asciibetically arranged, etc. etc. At some point we have to give the reader credit for being able to put two words together. Equinox 17:23, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

(edit conflict):

IOW, even so, isn't the distinction/semantic relation in each case entirely in the adjective alone? DCDuring TALK 17:27, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

It should be kept, as a set phrase (but probably not the other phrases mentioned above). And how could you guess what alphabetical order means from alphabetical and order? It seems impossible, you can guess that the order is related to the alphabet, that's all. Lmaltier 17:33, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

Keep In English, we usually use alphabetical order to mean in the order of the English alphabet, and not of just any alphabet. At the very least, we need this entry with a usage note to indicate such. The "alphabetical order" of Hungarian, Estonian, and even Spanish will throw many English speakers. Additionally, as Lmaltier notes, this is more than sum of parts. Alphabetical means "pertaining to the alphabet", but alphabetical order means that items have been sorted in sequence according to their initial letter. This is more information than is contained in the components. --EncycloPetey 17:30, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

But the same initial-letter implication is equally true for constructs like alphabetical listing, alphabetical sort, alphabetical catalogue, alphabetical index... do you support such entries as well? Equinox 17:40, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

No. An alphabetical listing is "a listing that is alphabetical". An alphabetical index is "an index that is alphabetical". But alphabetical order is NOT merely "an order that is alphabetical". Part of the reason for that order has so many meanings, but part of it is the slight idiomaticity and use as a set phrase. The correpsonding meaning of alphabetical is a back-sense from alphabetical order (as Visviva notes below). --EncycloPetey 17:48, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

Then how is this — { Hebrew, Cyrillic, English, Spanish } — not an "alphabetical listing"? It's a listing of alphabets! Equinox 17:53, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

It would be an "alphabet list", not an "alphabetical listing", except for the fact that (deprecated template usage) Cyrillic is a script, not an alphabet. There is more than one alphabet in the Cyrillic script, and these don't all include the same letters. --EncycloPetey 16:57, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

EP seems to believe that, for multi-word entries that include even one polysemic word, the potential for confusion among benighted users is sufficient to warrant inclusion, even though this is not to be found in WT:CFI. Until such time as this criterion is in WT:CFI, I would have thought such argument would be a mere make-weight, not determinative. DCDuring TALK 18:05, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

You neglected to read this sentence in WT:CFI (under Idiomaticity): "Compounds are generally idiomatic, even when the meaning can be clearly expressed in terms of the parts. The reason is that the parts often have several possible senses, but the compound is often restricted to only some combinations of them." Since this argument is in CFI, I assume your position is now to support inclusion. --EncycloPetey 06:00, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

I may be wrong, but I've always thought of the "alphabetical" in phrases like "alphabetical sorting" as being derived from alphabetical order, and basically meaning "of, pertaining to or following alphabetical order". That's certainly the way the concepts are structured in my benighted little brain; whether it corresponds to the actual historical derivation I don't know. -- Visviva 17:42, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

Of the nine OneLook dictionary entries I looked at 4 had only the "order" sense and the balance had the two senses that our entry now has (thanks, EP). No other dictionary includes alphabetical order as a related/derived term, though it appears in a few of the usage examples. I think that does indicate that most lexicographers view it as SoP/non-idiomatic. DCDuring TALK 18:05, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

To make clearer what I mean: in an alphabetical order, you give priority to the first letter then, if needed, to the second letter, etc. This is essential to the meaning of alphabetical order, and cannot be deduced from alphabetical, nor from order. Lmaltier 07:20, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

Right. The list

a I am an be he is we are has she the was you been have they were

is ordered according to the sequence of the alphabet, but is a numerical rather than lexicographical ordering. The question is if alphabetical conveys this information. If one of its definitions should include the idea of established orderings, then this term could be deleted'. On the other hand, a lot of these collocations would make great phrasebook entries. DAVilla 12:17, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Even beyond that, in English alphabetical order for surnames, Mc / Mac is treated separately from M, so there is actually more than one alphabetical order in English, one of which does not follow the sequence of the alphabet. --EncycloPetey 07:25, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

Delete.—msh210℠ 16:58, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

glitch

Rfd-redundant. Video game sense seems to be some kind of special case of first sense or an idiosyncratic usage, but I leave this to specialists in this context. DCDuring TALK 17:21, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

Not sure. Look at the example sentences. Whether they are typical and reasonable I don't know, but if so it seems (for the noun) we can "perform a glitch", as though it's a technique or skill; for sense 1 we would say something like "cause a glitch". Same applies to the verb, where we have "glitch into" and glitching appears to be a deliberate process or action rather than a momentary tweak. Equinox 17:27, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

If we had citations of real usage in that sense, I could agree. I was hoping that someone could vouch for the usage. DCDuring TALK 14:50, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

Did you even look? http://www.google.com/search?q=%22he%20glitched%22&sa=N&hl=en&tab=pw gives lots for just one form, http://www.google.com/search?num=50&hl=en&safe=off&q=%22he+glitched+into%22&btnG=Search has really precise examples. The old form of the word was used to reference a thing that malfunctioned, now is used to reference a person doing a specific action. --Connel MacKenzie 02:20, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

rate of climb

• SoP ? -- ALGRIF talk 12:37, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

Technical term, set phrase. —Stephen 14:25, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

• Keep per Stephen. Has very specific denotation, seeming to meet the fried egg prior knowledge test. -- Visviva 18:03, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

What about [[rate of climb indicator]]?—msh210℠ 18:34, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

What difference does it make that it is a technical term? Because the set phrase test has not been operationalised, it seems to amount to the opinions of admins, more or less a Vote.

How many phrases don't meet some reading of the fried-egg test? That test is so undemanding that we could probably dispense with any other test of idiomaticity. Perhaps the test should be either one- or two-sided polysemy: If one word in a two-word collocation qualifies the other and one/two are polysemic in some context then the collocation is eligible for inclusion in all senses that are attestable.

In a sports context and in an aviation context this has different and obvious SoP meanings. I'll bet it has further meanings in geriatrics and in animal behavior, which would be equally obvious in context. DCDuring TALK 19:28, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

What is the sports meaning? I don't see it in a check of Google News, which is generally a gold-mine for such terms. The archives do have a handful of hits used in reference to numbers ("the rate of climb in Boeing's stock price", wow that takes me back), but these can readily be understood as metaphorical references to the aviation term. Regarding technical terms, the fact that it is part of the standard aviation lexicon is both an important fact about usage -- a fact which is a) verifiable and b) cannot be deduced from the sum of parts -- and a very important consideration for translators: any language will have multiple ways of referring to the speed at which something rises, but only one term will be correct for "rate of climb". It is this last which is most important to Stephen, I think, as his approach to Wiktionary emphasizes its role as a translation resource. I normally part ways with Stephen on this, but in the case of a term that is as seemingly fixed and important as this one, it is a worthwhile consideration IMO.-- Visviva 12:01, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

The concept of rate of climb comes up a lot in flying manuals, accident reports, etc. So? If this were so clearly of lexicographic interest, then one would expect some dictionary or glossary in OneLook to include it. Well, exactly two do so: Wikipedia and Wiktionary. (Perhaps we should automatically include any Wikipedia article title.)

Meta: It is only too clear that different Wiktionarians come to widely varying views as to which terms are idiomatic or otherwise worthwhile. I would venture that your judgment is no more or less arbitrary than any of ours; whatever conclusions we as individuals reach will be wrong some percentage of the time. If the reasonable doubt criterion seems too lax -- and it will certainly let some sinning words go free -- what do you propose in its place? If we do not err on the side of inclusion, should we then err on the side of deletion, smiting every entry that cannot immediately and positively prove its worth to the project? Would that not in fact hinder our already-glacially-slow progress toward building a complete dictionary of all languages? -- Visviva 12:01, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

I am very inclusionist on individual words. Multiword headwords are my concern. I look for readily comprehensible rules that are less based on judgment. Else we descend into votes on many entries. If translatability is a criterion, let it be voted and documented. If polysemy of component words is a criterion, let it be voted. If the fried-egg test is central to inclusion, let the test be documented and the limits of its application found. Common law needs to be made comprehensible by simpler statute from time to time to let the younger folks be judges and attorneys. Where are the solons who are willing to face this? DCDuring TALK 12:48, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

Strong Keep. This is a set term within the aviation industry, and is the only term used for this meaning. This is one of the attributes that aircraft are compared against each other, and is used as part of the term "rate of climb indicator". --Dmol 22:25, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

If it is a term specific to an industry or profession, then it should be kept. (I withdraw my SoP request). I believe we have already debated to a conclusion the issue of professional terminology. The problem is that this decision is not reflected in CFI (yet). -- ALGRIF talk 14:14, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

Well, being a technical term is something that ought to be verifiable, but the evidence is mixed. The one English-English dictionary of aviation that is available for preview on Amazon doesn't have an entry; neither do any of the online glossaries I checked. Interestingly, said dictionary does have an entry for "rate-of-climb indicator" and also for "rate of yaw". This is puzzling, as I'm not sure how "rate of yaw" would be any less SOP (to an aviation specialist) than "rate of climb"... On the other hand, the Elsevier English-Russian Dictionary of Civil Aviation does include "rate of climb", along with the importantly non-synonymous term rate climb.[20] So this would seem to fall into the large category of technical terminology that is mostly useful for translation purposes. We have yet to entirely straighten out our approach to such terms, but their inclusion in printed bilingual dictionaries is prima facie evidence of inclusionworthiness. See also our online competitors: LEO, Naver et al. -- Visviva 05:29, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

Keep, set phrase for the industry. DAVilla 12:47, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

nested illustration

SoP.—msh210℠ 22:31, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

So, does it mean an illustration that is nested in a paragraph? That is, surrounded by the text on three sides? If it means something else, then it isn’t SoP. —Stephen 21:31, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

No, it actually means an illustration that is sitting in a birds' nest. Fair enough, then, I guess we should keep it.—msh210℠ 21:42, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

I don't think this is likely to be easily attestable. 11 raw Web hits: 3 to WMF; 3 to the same patent; 1 Groups; 2 mentions. DCDuring TALK 23:14, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

Keep per Stephen. DAVilla 11:45, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Delete unless cited per DCDuring; appears to be either a protologism or just plain wrong. -- Visviva 11:55, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

hippie movement

SoP, like feminist movement, antiwar movement. Even its creator wasn't sure about it :) Equinox 18:14, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

I dunno. Not all "hippie" "movement"s are the "hippie movement" (fried egg). Meets the oh-so-rigorous two-sided polysemy test. The eight senses of "movement" have to be laboriously checked to see how they correspond with the two senses of "hippie", requiring as many as 16 efforts to construct phrasal meanings and compare to the user's source or intended meaning. Although there isn't a WP article with the exact title, there is w:History of the hippie movement. It's also a whole populated (99 members, 7 subcategories) category on Wikipedia. No question as to its attestability. I'm sure it would meet the single-word translation test in a quorum of languages. Doesn't it seem like a set phrase to you? DCDuring TALK 19:45, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

This isn't an attack on you by any means, but IMO that's ridiculous. Suppose I speak of "castle walls", a very common phrase; well, it's not the sense of "castle" as in "move the king in chess", so do we need an entry for that? How about "lentil soup"? Well, it's not the figurative sense of "soup" as in primordial mess, so we need an entry. "Cow's milk"? Because the cow isn't an ugly woman. Just madness. Equinox 22:41, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

I am interested in discovering some rules that would allow us to include worthwhile multi-word, not obviously idiomatic, noun-noun phrases. This entry is as good a single test case as any as to what entries we find worthwhile and what rules might permit them. As far as I can tell it doesn't meet any of our idiom criteria, but it does meet all of our proposed relaxed criteria that have been bruited. I really don't know what folks think about this one. It seems not harmful and neither useful nor useless to me. DCDuring TALK 00:24, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

It puzzles me that you can say this doesn't meet any of our idiom criteria just after saying that it meets the fried egg test. -- Visviva 05:00, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

But it isn't technical, unless nostalgia or sociology count. DCDuring TALK 19:51, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

History isn't a technical field? -- Visviva 05:00, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

There are many movements in which hippies participate, even today, yet there is no longer a "hippie movement". Thus, as DCDuring notes, it is significantly more specific than the sum of its parts. Note that it is also generally the hippie movement; if it weren't usually written in lower case we would not hesitate to treat it as a proper noun. By the same token I think a useful definition could be written for "feminist movement" and possibly even for "antiwar movement" (though that one is trickier). All that said, the entry as written is not particularly helpful. Neutral. -- Visviva 05:00, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

Frankly, I thought that I had mispoken when I said that it had met the "fried egg" test. I sometimes think there is a difference between the "fried egg" test and mere one-sided polysemy. Nobody has found it necessary to clarify this for me. But one narrow reading of the "fried egg" test would require:

1. two distinct attestable uses of the term, eg:
   1. "egg that is fried" (SoP) and
   2. "an egg that is shallow fried" (whatever that means, I think a photo might be necessary at the entry).
2. the more common one (2) being a subclass of the other, and
3. the sense of the modifier (shallow-fried) as used in the phrase not attestable with other nouns.

Is this what the "fried egg" test means? DCDuring TALK 11:59, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

That is basically my reading of it, yes; the key thing being that a fried egg is not strictly fried+egg for any combination of senses. Thus, there is no risk of the reductio ad absurdum to which the polysemy criterion is subject (per Equinox above), which means we can dispense with shades of gray: something either meets the fried egg test, and therefore merits inclusion, or it doesn't. But interpretations of the test seem to differ from one Wiktionarian to the next. This is not particularly surprising; how often do more than two Wiktionarians agree on anything?  :-D -- Visviva 12:28, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

The [[fried egg]] vs. RfD nom decision is a bit hard for me to grasp in part because the definition is/was worded using the UK term shallow-fry. I'm still not sure I know what (deprecated template usage) fried egg in its non-SoP and non-golf sense really means. Is the picture right? Or does the term just exclude deep-fried eggs?

Assuming the Visviva/During reading of the "fried egg" test is the sense of the entire court, then don't we have to attest that "hippie movement" is actually used in some other way(s), using the just the applicable senses? DCDuring TALK 12:53, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

My understanding comes from w:Fried egg: "Scrambled eggs, though fried, are not considered 'fried eggs'." That is, I take the "fried egg" test to apply when the resulting term is more specific than its parts, even if you choose the right senses for the parts, provided that this specificity is linguistic (the term could logically have other meanings, but doesn't) rather than natural (there's only one item that could be described by the term, and it just happens to be fairly specific).

The problem is that (deprecated template usage) fried egg then fails the "fried egg" test, because one of the senses of (deprecated template usage) fried is "(deprecated template usage) Being a fried egg. / He always ate his eggs fried, never scrambled." We were missing said sense until just now, but that's a fact of Wiktionary, not a fact of English.

—Ruakh_TALK 14:16, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

I think it would meet the Visviva/During interpretation, because the sense of "fried" at fried is "fried egg"-specific. Of course, as currently defined at [[fried egg]], it is SoP because scrambled eggs and omelets are shallow-fried. The test can't be that all fried eggs are "shallow-fried", not "deep-fried". If we are going to rely on the "fried egg" test right, we need to make sure that the case is accurate and well written. Is the correct definition: "An egg, fried, with an unbroken yolk."? DCDuring TALK 16:34, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

first cousin three times removed

Sum of parts, potentially infinite set. -- Visviva 04:48, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

• I agree. Delete SemperBlotto 08:40, 22 February 2009 (UTC)
• Delete. Endless permutations, all SoP.--Dmol 08:57, 22 February 2009 (UTC)
• Keep. Looking at the translations at first cousin once removed and first cousin twice removed it seems likely that by abolishing this entry we also lose the connection to other languages which go into more detail using idiomatic terms which cannot be derived from a simple scheme such as the English. We should at least retain the present level of detail. __meco 09:06, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

  I was about to cite maternal uncle as a counterexample, but then I noticed that a) that RFD is still open, b) there is no apparent consensus to delete, and c) I myself voted "keep" for roughly the same arguments presented by you and Lmaltier. Huh. :-o -- Visviva 09:31, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

  Still, I find it implausible that there are many (if any) languages for which this is a useful translation-hanger. Most languages will either use gender and direction-specific terms (as German does) or more generic terms (for example, in Korean the same word would be used for a first cousin thrice removed as for a second cousin twice removed or a third cousin once removed). Kinship terminology is extremely idiosyncratic, and one-to-one correlations are the exception rather than the rule. Once we get away from very basic terms (perhaps including "maternal uncle" and the like), it seems like it would be more useful to have a set of "language X kinship terminology" appendices. -- Visviva 01:13, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

  Also, note that first cousin once removed and first cousin twice removed currently make completely specious distinctions between "senses" for the sole purpose of organizing translations. I thought that was something we specifically don't do. -- Visviva 01:27, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

• Keep. Sum of parts? Which parts? Personally, I had no idea of what this phrase could mean (it looked like vandalism). For potentially infinite sets (e.g. numbers), the easy solution is to require the inclusion of a few quotations as examples, for each page created, in such cases (when somebody insists and wants to include them). Lmaltier 09:15, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

Very hard to understand this phrase, even for native speakers. Keep (and improve the definition). —Stephen 18:07, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

delete until cited. It's hard to understand mostly because kinship is of diminished importance to us. It is "technical", like a "N-barrel carburetor". And it is subject to exponential increase: "X-cousin, Y-times removed". I wonder whether it is citable outside of specialist literature. DCDuring TALK 18:45, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

Delete for want of any mechanism to represent these infinite sets properly. I don't see how "three times removed" is any more defensible than "third root" (i.e. cube root), and both could take any numerical value. Equinox ◑ 21:55, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

It’s not an infinite set. Standard terms are first or second cousin once removed, twice removed, and three times removed. I’ve never heard of one more distant than that and certainly nothing from five all the way to infinity. —Stephen 00:15, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

How are they "standard"? Who mandates this standard? If I mentioned my "first cousin four times removed", you would presumably know what I meant, and equally (though you might raise a disbelieving eyebrow) if I mentioned my "first cousin ten times removed". You can slot any number in there. The fact (if it is a fact!) that "three" is attestable and "four" isn't doesn't seem terribly material, but perhaps I just need to re-read CFI. Sigh! Equinox ◑ 00:24, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

Everything up through "eight times removed" is readily attestable. The dropoff in frequency is surprisingly linear. It looks like anything about 10 would be impossible to cite, so perhaps this set is less infinite than I feared. -- Visviva 01:12, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

Data points. There are two Books and one Scholar citations for "seventeenth cousin twice removed" (albeit some with a comma and some without), and three Books citations for "five hundredth cousin" (albeit some with a hyphen and some without).—msh210℠ 21:40, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Delete, not helpful in any way. Mglovesfun 02:37, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

Statue of Zeus at Olympia

Single geographic entity, encyclopaedic; compare Eiffel Tower, Nelson's Column (but also Grand Canyon, Great Pyramid of Giza). Are we a bit schizophrenic about these? Equinox ◑ 22:06, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

Keep, since this is one of the seven wonders of the world, why otherwise maintain Category:Wonders of the world. All outside this category needs to be deleted. 7 entries are not so much after all. Bogorm 22:16, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

Keeping something because it belongs to a category seems like backwards reasoning. If the category only contains encyclopaedic items, then the category is fallacious and should not exist either. Equinox ◑ 22:21, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

Grand Canyon?? Is this an artificial object? Wherefore did you list it? Bogorm 22:17, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

Whether the item of touristic interest is artificial or natural does not matter. I meant that these things are single specific entities that people might visit, and not useful as general abstract terms. Equinox ◑ 22:21, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

The distinction is that there are exactly 7 prominent artificial monuments which every person who is knowledgeable in history knows by heart, and innumerable myriads of natural remarkable places (Grand Canyon, Angel Falls...) who are not known in their entirety even by the most skilled and conversant georapher simply because of their number. Bogorm 22:38, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

"Everybody" knows the 1×1 to 12×12 multiplication tables by heart. That isn't an argument for inclusion. Equinox ◑ 22:45, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

One of the original wonders of the world. Definitely Keep. —Stephen 00:07, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

Addition: I would like to draw people's attention to WT:CFI#Names_of_specific_entities, which appears to say that we officially must not include this. It's far too long for any sane person to use attributively. Equinox ◑ 00:27, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

This should just go to RfV to attempt citation in attributive use. Let its advocates find some attributive use and insert it appropriately. DCDuring TALK 00:46, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

Delete unless cited in attributive use. Any translations that have accumulated can be conveniently stored in an appendix. Since these issues straddle the line between RfV and RfD, a separate RfV is not necessary IMO. I think we should delete Category:Wonders of the world as well; that is an encyclopedic category if ever there was one. Some members deserve inclusion on their own merits, but some -- such as this -- do not. -- Visviva 01:22, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

Delete. Despite what above commenters might have you believe, the term "Statue of Zeus at Olympia" was not one of the original wonders of the world. Indeed, from what I understand, no terms made that list. —Ruakh_TALK 00:40, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

Keep. No good reason was given for deletion. CFI may not allow it, but CFI needs to be reworked as it does not allow France either. I fail to see the problem with including specific geographic entities, and the Grand Canyon is a perfect example. This term is no different. It's not even sum of parts. Olympia undoubtedly has many statues of Zeus, but this refers to a specific statue of Zeus that no longer exists. DAVilla 11:35, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Delete unless attested in attributive use. This does not fit the categories of Proper nouns that we keep per WT:CFI#Names of specific entities. If we don't like the exclusion of such a term, the remedy is to change CFI, not ignore it. DCDuring TALK 15:06, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Empire State Building

WT:CFI#Names_of_specific_entities This is specifically listed as an example of something we should not include. Genius. Equinox ◑ 00:30, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

The problem is in WT:CFI. It's been cited in attributive-type use, mostly with citations of "an Empire State Building". See the citations page. DCDuring TALK 00:42, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

Oops, my fault. The example at WT:CFI prompted me to have a look, and so I compiled citations:Empire State Building (I see I was too lazy to format them correctly). I don't know if they're all suitably attributive, but all invoke the reader's understanding of what an Empire State Building is. Also, the theme of building one out of toothpicks seem to be pretty common. Never thought of updating the guideline after that. —Michael Z. 2009-02-23 01:24 z

I'm a little unclear as whether the "an Empire State Building" citations have won acceptance as indicating attributive use. I think they should. I have just cited Eiffel Tower with great ease using http://corpus.byu.edu/. It allows a search for a word or phrase followed by a particular PoS, eg "Eiffel Tower" followed by a noun, to find attributive use as an adjective. DCDuring TALK 01:40, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

I believe they have always been accepted as such, in that no entry with a sufficient number of such citations has ever been deleted. This is as it should be IMO; whether considered strictly "attributive" or not, such citations show that there is something useful for us to document, beyond the simple encyclopedic facts. Keep as cited, and let's mention its use as a byword for a large, impressive structure in the entry. -- Visviva 15:10, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

Delete. Unlike the precedent one this is no wonder of the world. Bogorm 14:33, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

"Membership in the set of wonders of the world (ancient, modern, or natural)", is not a member of the set of criteria for inclusion, but is in the set of red herrings with respect to inclusion. DCDuring TALK 14:48, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

superwomans

Plural of superwoman. Perhaps in French! Equinox ◑ 16:11, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

You're right, it's attestable in French... Lmaltier 22:01, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

Quel dommage... The word looks so foreign for the French language. I hoped that it will be deleted. Bogorm 22:05, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

Not if it's attestable. (Unless the Académie Française bribes us enough.) However, I'm only challenging this word in English. Equinox ◑ 23:50, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

human being and some translations thereof

SoP? Internoob 23:38, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

Haha, even I wouldn't call SoP on human being. I'd say it's quite a "fossilised form"; you wouldn't talk about an "animal being" or a "mammal[ian] being" unless you were making some strange philosophical point, so I think these two words in this sense are indivisible. I have not looked at the translations, however. Equinox ◑ 23:46, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

Agreed. I corrected the Czech translation. --Duncan 15:54, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

English not SoP, per Equinox. Hebrew translation is currently okay. Are you concerned about any languages in particular, Internoob?—msh210℠ 16:45, 25 February 2009 (UTC) 15:36, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

It does not seem to me to be quite old enough (1751 per MWOnline, 1750 or earlier per me) to be fossilised. I'd rather that such a term be reserved for 500-year-old terms. In this particular case the individual words have their separate meanings in the multi-word term. I could not find before 1800 any use of "human" as a noun. So "being" was used as a synonym for "person" ("perfon").

So why do we want to include it? What test of idiomaticity does it meet? If it does not meet any such current test and we wish to keep it, there may be a gap in out criteria for inclusion.

I think it meets our tests for inclusion because "a living human being" does not mean exactly the same thing as "a living, human being" and still less "a human living being". An applicable test would seem to be the "In between test". Perhaps others at WT:IDIOM also apply. DCDuring TALK 18:19, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Would google books:"human or nonhuman|other|animal being" tend to argue against successful application of the in between test?—msh210℠ 21:34, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

I don't know. I guess there are at least three versions of such a test (as applied to two parts of a putative single entry:

1. Ultra-strong version: Nothing can ever appear between the two parts in question (any sense).
2. Strong version: Nothing can ever appear between the two parts without changing the sense.
3. Weak version: conjunctions can introduce other parallel terms in between without changing the sense.

I think (deprecated template usage) human being meets the "strong" in-between test above. I think most of the instances in the search would be of the adjective use of (deprecated template usage) human + "being", from which the "person" sense of the combined term has derived. A fallback position would be the weak version of the test. DCDuring TALK 21:58, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

I had in mind the translations that translate litterally as 'human being', like French, Dutch and Portuguese, for example. Internoob 02:51, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

I'm going to be more specific.

• lidská bytost
• menselijk wezen
• être humain
• essere umano
• ser humano (Spanish and Portuguese)

Internoob 03:08, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

I can't say anything about the other translations, but what Equinox and DCDuring said about human being applies to lidská bytost as well. --Duncan 15:36, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

And être humain. It's just the set phrase for this. When you hear human being, you don't (I think) parse it mentally as "oh, this is a being, and it's a being that happens to be human". It's practically a semantic unit. P.S. As I googled the French one, I coincidentally hit upon this: "Ce que l'on entend par la locution être humain me paraît également différent de être qui est humain." (What one understands by the phrase human being seems different to me from being that is human.) Equinox ◑ 20:40, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Strong keep, you can't say that a human being is just a human that's being, and être humain is a very specific phrase as well, I'd strongly ask that it be kept. Mglovesfun 02:34, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

Although I personally feel that human being should have an entry, our CFI (and WT:SURVIVOR) do not seem to warrant such inclusion. Delete.—msh210℠ 15:36, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

dummy node

1. Definition is wrong: a dummy node is not a "programming technique"; it is a node. 2. Sum of parts. It's a node (any kind, in any data structure) that is a dummy. We can also have (in various other data structures) dummy elements, dummy keys, dummy values, etc. ad infinitum. Equinox ◑ 20:29, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Delete. 63.95.64.254 04:07, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

graphics engine

Again, sum of parts. Even the definition says nothing more than "an engine that does graphics". We can also have a physics engine, a music engine, a conversation engine, etc. ad infinitum. Equinox ◑ 20:48, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

• Keep idiomatic - there is no physical engine. --Connel MacKenzie 19:57, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

That is irrelevant. Look at what engine means in computing terms. Anything of this kind can be a ___ engine. You might as well argue to keep car engine because there is no engine in the computing sense. Equinox ◑ 22:15, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

The fact that car engine should also be a valid entry here is irrelevant. Again, the premise of nominating this only because it can be sum-of-parts is an error. That alone is no justification for deletion. Even if that ill-conceived notion had currency, this specific case goes far beyond that. The term graphics engine is idiomatic. That alone, is reason enough for it to be kept. --Connel MacKenzie 13:03, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

I think physics engine might be worth having because it's a bit abstract, but I'm not sure if there's a good enough reason to keep graphics engine, as common as it is both in the programming world and the video game world. "Technical term" isn't convincing to me, seems like a cop-out in this case. Certainly the other examples are not inclusion worthy. 63.95.64.254 04:04, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

tool-assisted speedrun

SoP: it's a speedrun (playing through a video game as fast as possible) where the player is assisted by the use of tools (such as the ability to rewind to a previous point when recording, or something that handles jumping or firing automatically — it can be any tool). Equinox ◑ 21:19, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Delete. 63.95.64.254 03:34, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

video game cartridge

A cartridge on which is stored a video game. SoP. Compare Nintendo cartridge, Atari cartridge, software cartridge, microdrive cartridge. Equinox ◑ 21:22, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Delete.—msh210℠ 21:38, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Delete. A cartridge is more than just a container when it comes to video games; it's understood to be a game itself. However, this use has a line at cartridge that would make the meaning clear. It will be rewritten to incorporate the definition to be deleted. DAVilla 13:36, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

video game industry

Oh good grief. SoP; cf. textile industry, steel industry, packaging industry. Equinox ◑ 21:26, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Clear delete. Coulda {{delete}}d this one in my opinion, nd had I seen it first I would have deleted it, but since it's here already I won't.—msh210℠ 21:37, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

To expand a little, automotive industry, film industry, software industry and chemical industry belong to the same series, but what about light industry and heavy industry? Cottage industry and smokestack industry look like clear keepers to me, but industrial strength and industrial output are SoP-ish. --Hekaheka 22:48, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Wow, thanks for posting those. I had no idea we had such a collection of them. I agree with you on cottage and smokestack, which seem to be idiomatic terms for particular kinds of industry; the rest just look like SoP for branches of trade. Equinox ◑ 22:52, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

I agree with Hekaheka et al about all except "industrial-strength", which uses "industrial" in a sense of "greater than household/consumer/retail", which I don't think it has with other nouns. In attributive use it is virtually synonymous with heavy-duty. Several other real dictionaries (MWO,AHD,RHU,WNW,cOED) have "industrial-strength". Only the OneLook dictionaries that follow WordNet have the various industries. DCDuring TALK 00:03, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

I also agree that industrial strength should be kept. I don't think I paid attention to those last two posted by Hekaheka at the time. Equinox ◑ 00:06, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

light industry and heavy industry might be keepers on a similar "misnomer" principle. The terms are used in ways that are impressionistic with respect to the base meanings of the adjectives and are out-and-out vague, but have widespread usage as if people knew what they meant. One or two other general OneLook dictionaries have them. DCDuring TALK 00:20, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

Delete automotive industry, software industry, chemical industry per Equinox' original nomination of video game industry. The film industry is the industry that makes films, not the industry that makes film, but delete anyway, I think. Keep cottage industry, smokestack industry, industrial strength, industrial-strength as idiomatic.—msh210℠ 00:27, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

Delete uncommon sub-strata of a larger industry, not used as a set phrase. Since it is uncommon and sum-of-parts and obscure, delete. --Connel MacKenzie 19:55, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, pretty obvious meaning, no objection to deletion. DAVilla 13:36, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

Deleted. —Ruakh_TALK 19:55, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

automotive industry, software industry, chemical industry

Per user:Msh210 and others above, including me. Feel free to split this section if you think the various terms need separate discussions. Equinox ◑ 21:26, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

delete all. Encyclopedic. DCDuring TALK 23:36, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

Keep - as they refer to real things, that, say, a politician might refer to as a whole (accurately or inaccurately.) --Connel MacKenzie 19:53, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Bit of lint I found under my big toe refers to a real thing. Equinox ◑ 22:16, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Well, I'm happy for you, I think. But your intended-to-be-humorous phrase isn't used widely in the English language, while these are. Further, they each are inseparable parts that refer to a specific (widely understood) thing. --Connel MacKenzie 13:07, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Delete all. X + industry = the industry involved with the making of X. bd2412 T 23:34, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

I don't feel compelled to delete these, but at the same time I don't see any reason not to. Note that this is not blanket endorsement. The film industry for instance is not involved in the manufacture of film but in its production as media. 63.95.64.254 03:28, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

let's go

Sense 2: "Hurry up, be quick." I think that's an implication: "let's go [literally: let us depart, let us be on our way); I am ready to go; hurry up so that we can go". I don't think it's an actual sense of the phrase. As a footnote, if sense 2 fails, then sense 1 no longer merits an entry because it's SoP, like let's eat; here, its literal meaning is only useful to contrast with the less literal sense 2. Equinox ◑ 21:21, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

But it's missing the sense of I suggest we start (any activity) asap. As in Let's get on with it. -- ALGRIF talk 14:31, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Again, let us go (the sense of go that means start). Let's begin. Equinox ◑ 22:20, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Actually, given the huge number of senses of the word go and the limited extent of let's go I think this makes it less than SoP and something quite specific. Egyptian pyramid perhaps? -- ALGRIF talk 17:18, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Ugh. That argument suggests we should have go to the shops because go doesn't mean "a player's turn in a game" and shops doesn't mean "turns in to the police". Equinox ◑ 00:18, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

No, it does not, because a pragmatic assessment of go to the shops would easily suggest the correct meaning of go. 63.95.64.254 03:23, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

Go is not used in the most obvious sense, so this is a keeper, and a strong one at that since let's go is commonly used as a command when it's more about "you" than "us". 63.95.64.254 03:23, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

Keep, not just the sum of its parts. Mglovesfun 02:31, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

whackage

Supposedly some kind of free-for-all video game. The word does appear on Usenet (though not to any extent in Google Books), but it does not seem to have this sense at all. Mostly it seems to mean whacking or snipping (removing posted content to make a reply smaller). Equinox ◑ 00:25, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Probably doesn't belong on Wiktionary, but should be listed on WT:RFV. 63.95.64.254 02:27, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

romaji (Japanese)

As the entry says, misspelling. But merely being a misspelling does not warrant an entry. Needless to say, it is not listed in the first five Japanese dictionaries at hand, nor do their corresponding entries at rōmaji say anything about "common misspellings":

1. Nihon Kokugo Daijiten
2. Daijirin
3. Daijisen
4. Shinmeikai Kokugo Jiten
5. Meikyō Kokugo Jiten

Should be removed. Bendono 09:30, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

We’ve discussed this issue several times. It isn’t a misspelling, it’s an alternative spelling. The macron is difficult to type for most people and it is common to use ou, ô, or simply o instead. Keep Japanese romaji with a link to rōmaji. But if you consider it to be a common misspelling, we do keep common misspellings with links to the correct spelling. Keep in either case. —Stephen 09:44, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

If anyone can show that this is actually used in writing Japanese (outside of the limited contexts in which all languages are occasionally transcribed into another writing system), then that would certainly change the debate. But so far no such evidence has been presented even for the legitimate romaji forms (despite a great deal of bloviating from people whose opinions I would normally respect), let alone for these debased ones. -- Visviva 09:54, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

I will have to disagree about being alternative spellings. However, I will agree that typing diacritics can be difficult for some. Redirects (or See...) are generally frowned upon here, but I would support them for the purpose of usability.

If my original comment was not clear, the corresponding ろまじ and ロマジ for which this romanization gives as romaji are equally unattested. Bendono 10:12, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Delete this and any similar cases. The English entry (which should sail through RFV) ensures that anyone who lands on this page will find the information they need , whether directly or indirectly. The farce of "romaji" entries is bad enough without including ad hoc forms that don't even comply with the standard romanization scheme. If we keep this, I should get to upload 10 different romanizations for every Korean word. -- Visviva 09:54, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

That’s fine for this particular case, but most of these are Japanese only and do not have English entries. Native Japanese-speakers know the spelling and know how to type not only the kanji and kana, but also the romaji...but English Wiktionary is not for them, it is for native English-speakers, few of whom can type kanji or kana, and most of whom don’t know how to type macrons or even when a macron should be typed. The spelling without the macron is to make it easier for English-speakers to access the Japanese words that they are interested in. We should keep all the spellings without macrons just as we do with Latin and Old English.

Korean now has a very nice standard transliteration that uses no diacritics and that anybody can type, and that is enough to make Korean accessible. Likewise, there is no need to have any of the other many spellings that many Japanese words can have. We don’t need roumaji or rômaji, lomaji, loumaji, and so on. Having the one common spelling that most English-speakers use, which is romaji, is quite enough. —Stephen 10:54, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

I could agree with that, but only if I was convinced that the others would be removed. If a specific policy were enacted which did away with diacritics altogether, and only allowed for non-diacritic entries, then that would be something. However, while I know little about Japanese, I think that there would be some folks who would disagree with that. Note that Latin and Old English do not lack macrons and such in entry titles to make them easier to find, but rather because they are an academic convention which did not exist in native writings. -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 11:12, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

'Delete, per Visviva. This is completely untenable. -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 09:57, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

black person

Sum of parts. —Ruakh_TALK 22:33, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

• Deleted (also white person) - brown person, yellow person etc have not yet arrived. SemperBlotto 22:44, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Yellow person just called to say he's on his way. Traffic in Asia is terrible. Equinox ◑ 22:45, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Why the quick trigger? Where are the usual inclusionists? This is both common and meets the "fried egg" test. In addition, it is applied mostly to people whose skin color is not black and to a fair number of people whose skin is fairer than persons deemed to be "white people". It therefore meets the "misnomer test". I don't know whether "brown person", "yellow person", red person", "pale person", and "tan person" would be includable, but white person almost certainly would be also.

Did I miss another e-mail about another unstated change in WT:CFI? DCDuring TALK 23:42, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Consider black man, black woman, black community. Any sense you have mentioned above needs to go at black, since it isn't only applicable in the phrase black person. Equinox ◑ 23:45, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

We will see about those other entries when the time comes. I might argue that in the case of community we have attributive use of the noun "black". I would like to know why this does not merit inclusion as idiomatic under the "fried egg" test. For that matter, it would seem to meet the "in-between" test. It is not easy to say "black angry person" rather than "angry black person". See WT:IDIOM. It should go without saying that I find it to be a "set phrase", though that term is not germane to any decision in accordance with our rules or guidelines. DCDuring TALK 00:35, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

I'm not so sure that it passes the "in-between" test; adjectives tend to go in a certain order, and the fact that "angry" tends to precede "black" doesn't necessarily make "black person" a set phrase. google:"black deaf person", google:"black elderly person", and google:"black young person" all get a fair number of hits (though with "elderly" and "young", the reverse order does get more). More importantly, as Equinox says, there's nothing special about "person"; "black" can have this sense whenever its subject is one or more people, regardless of what noun or pronoun is used (John is black, she is black, black American, black woman, black poet, black student, black Christian, etc., etc., etc.). —Ruakh_TALK 04:27, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

I think the sense should be included at black and white, for the above reasoning. It would also take care of black / white + American / African / European etc. -- ALGRIF talk 14:27, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Seems to me a yellow person would be a different case. You could say of a black or white person that he or she is black or white. But I have never heard of someone referring to an Asian person as being "yellow" (e.g. "the first yellow astronaut"). I suspect that use would be offensive. bd2412 T 23:32, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

• Yallow, oh my yallow, oh my yallow gal. Yellow Gal, Ledbelly.(means a lighter shade of brown) -- ALGRIF talk 10:25, 3 March 2009 (UTC)
  • Yep; but as with the other cases, this needs to be a definition of yellow, if it isn't already. Angr 18:09, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

P.S. white person and white people are probably eligible for the same keep or delete. Equinox ◑ 00:19, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

in case of fire

SoP; means nothing beyond literal interpretation; just a common clause (but I would hesitate to say "idiomatic"). Compare best before, use by, if all else fails, when in doubt. Equinox ◑ 22:40, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Best before is just a recommendation, not a statement that after that date the manufacturer takes no responsibility for possible consequences of using the product? --Duncan 00:34, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

"The best before date is a quality indication used by the manufacturer to indicate that the food will be, assuming correct storage has been maintained, at its best before a certain point or date [after which it may still be sold but] the quality of the food may begin to deteriorate. For example a carbonated drink may begin to loose its 'fizz'. A retailer may commit an offence if the food deteriorates significantly to the point where the food may become unfit for human consumption [but] retailers are not required by law to inform consumers that food is being sold beyond its best before date..." [21] (Readers: note that best before is not the term being RFDed here.) Equinox ◑ 00:44, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

I see. I didn't know it wasn't the same as use by, the equivalent of which is required by law in my country for every food, whether "highly perishable" or not. --Duncan 18:15, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

I have the oddest feeling that I have seen this in idiomatic use, meaning "in case of any sort of calamity", but it would be exceedingly hard to verify. Delete without prejudice. -- Visviva 04:44, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

This might be useful as a phrasebook entry, come to think of it -- it's certainly something a person traveling in a foreign country would want to be able to understand. Of course, it currently lacks any translations, so this is not actually a rationale for keeping (yet). -- Visviva 04:50, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Delete; no idiomatic usage. --EncycloPetey 16:31, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Keep - SoP on its own is no reason for deletion. But in the sense that this phrase cannot work if any of its constituent parts are removed, implies it is an idiom, despite the literal meaning. --Connel MacKenzie 19:49, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Not sure what you mean, Connel. Neither can "I ate two hot dogs" work if any of its constituents are removed.—msh210℠ 16:28, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Delete per Visviva (04:44, 1 March 2009 (UTC)).—msh210℠ 16:28, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Keep. Someone could think it meant "Don't risk using the elevator because there could be a fire" which is not what in means. Shoof 13:40, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Keep as phrasebook entry or delete. At the very least this is a sum of in case of + fire with no additional meaning. in case of seems grammatically awkward because of the omission of the, but I don't think this is the only instance where that would be so. 63.95.64.254 03:10, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

Delete, however in case of seems perfectly acceptable to me, but we don't need every conceivable noun to follow it. Mglovesfun 14:25, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

tennis player

soccer player, baseball player, basketball player, tennis player

SoP. If not, we would expect to have one of these entries for every sport, which is sheer insanity. P.S. I realise they may translate to single words in other languages, but that doesn't force the existence of English entries; the translations from those other languages need only be broken into multiple links. Equinox ◑ 22:46, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Basketball player and tennis player have previously passed RFD, on the basis that in common use they refer specifically to a professional player of the sport. The same reasoning would presumably apply to soccer player and baseball player. I am slightly less convinced of this reasoning than I was the last time around, but still don't see any pressing need to delete; the set of entries to which this argument applies is quite small. -- Visviva 04:42, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Keep. As Visviva has noted, we've been through this discussion twice before (at least). Without new reasoning or a change in policy, there is no need to go through this discussion again. --EncycloPetey 16:30, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Keep per EP.—msh210℠ 16:25, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Keep per EP. Perhaps we could file a copy of the last discussion on the talk pages of the three or four most common entries? -- ALGRIF talk 17:09, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Please do (or preferably a link, to avoid partial duplication), or else this will come up again and again. I had no idea that a person who plays basketball non-professionally wouldn't count as a basketball player (and I think that's ridiculous and wrong, but I will yield to consensus). Equinox ◑ 00:22, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

Keep all. Master P plays basketball, but failed to become a basketball player. bd2412 T 20:17, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

All kept. 63.95.64.254 03:01, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

chess player

This is a profession, too, and so are poker player, ice hockey player, volleyball player, handball player and probably also cricket player, bridge player and even curling player. We are also missing all sporty professional drivers such as rally driver, formula driver, racing driver, bicycle driver and so on. I don't think anybody needs them, but here they are, free for scoring. --Hekaheka 19:04, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

• Wouldn't we use chess master for this? I don't think one is considered professional until reaching this kind of general acclaim. I'm not sure that a player of poker is in fact a professional. When winning, some would call themselves that, ... but, really, a profession??? Cricket uses cricketer, so "cricket player" is out. (Howzat!). A "bicycle driver(sic)" is called a cyclist. It's all a very grey area, full of slippery slopes. But, I lean towards a (real) job description as being worth considering seriously as an entry. I already have had tacit support for entries such as bank manager precisely because it is a job description, (In charge of, rather than being just any old section manager who happens to work in a bank). -- ALGRIF talk 14:13, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

Ok, I was too quick with some of the terms. Bicycle driver is a stupid non-native speaker's error, but bicycle racer also appears to be used of professionals. Chess master refers more to one's skills level than professional status, and there are lots of citations to be found of professional chess players (w:Robert Wade (chess player)). Poker player is clearly a profession, just google "professional poker player" to get convinced. My son knows a poker player who recently moved from Helsinki to Las Vegas in order to be able to devote to his profession. Cricketer is widely used, but words "professional cricket player" can be found e.g. on BBC's web pages and I would not be so sure of it being "out" if some other players are "in". My real point was to challenge the wisdom of including SoP's on the grounds that they happen to be someone's job title. And I really don't see why bank manager should be excluded if football player is acceptable. Because it is so clearly a profession? --Hekaheka 06:39, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

IMO it's significant that one has to specify "professional chess player". For example: if I were to ask you "What do you do?" and you replied "I'm a basketball player," then assuming you were reasonably tall and athletic, I would assume that you meant that was your job. On the other hand, if you replied "I'm a chess player," I would probably follow up with "no, I mean what do you do for a living?" That would be the case even if you had the classic chess-player appearance and physique. :-) So in this case I don't see any reason to believe that "chess player" is anything more than "person who plays chess." The same would apply to "poker player" et al. -- Visviva 06:47, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

September eleventh

And here we are. Tagged for speedy by Equinox, but doesn't seem obvious to me. The floor is open. -- Visviva 14:52, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Seems clearly idiomatic to me. Probably verifiable, too, though (a) I haven't checked and (b) that's a question for WT:RFV.—msh210℠ 17:47, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, on second thoughts, and having considered Fourth of July, I'll withdraw this one. Equinox ◑ 21:03, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Jesuses

Beating a dead horse here, the comments in the previous discussion indicated the offensiveness of this form is obvious (all but one contributor.) The one contributor that removed all indication of the offensiveness of this form marked the previous discussion as closed, which I believe is very bad form.

Again, since this form cannot survive on Wiktionary with any indication of being offensive, the entry itself should not remain.

--Connel MacKenzie 19:44, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Delete - all arguments have been enumerated in the archived discussion on Talk:Jesuses, no reason for this entry to remain. The uſer hight Bogorm converſation 19:51, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Keep. I'm not particularly convinced that the noun (deprecated template usage) Jesus really meets CFI, but: (1) we just had an RFD discussion; (2) it was open for more than nine months; (3) you participated in that discussion, including in the week after I said "I'm closing this after a week"; and (4) you don't seem to be giving any new reasons, but rather, simply repeating your previous points. In other words, I'm not voting "we should have this entry", but rather "we should accept the results of community discussion for a reasonable amount of time, unless new issues arise". —Ruakh_TALK 19:56, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

The comments I see in that discussion, (except yours) agree it is obvious it is offensive. But your edit to it removed any trace of accurately describing this word form, as such. If someone in this community agreed with your removal, they didn't speak up. Doesn't sounds like "accepting the results of community discussion" to me. --Connel MacKenzie 20:00, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

First of all, Connel, a number of people have agreed that the term is not, in and of itself, offensive. For example, BD2412 added one of the quotations, using the edit summary "add wholly non-offensive plural use". And I was not the first one to remove your bogus additions; Widsith was.

Second of all, your analogy is specious. There was an RFD discussion, that clearly reached the conclusion that the entry should be kept. You are refusing to accept that conclusion. By contrast, there has not been a discussion on whether the context labels you added (“Template:offensive”) and usage note you added (“This mis-construction cannot be used without purposefully offending Christians; the mere suggestion of more than one is heresy.”) should be included. If you would like to start such a discussion, you are more than welcome to. But I can't imagine you really believe that the community would support the note.

Third of all, when I removed the usage note (because it was blatantly wrong), I left you a comment on your talk-page that read in part, "perhaps you can help craft an accurate context tag and/or usage note". You ignored that, and instead began to push for the entry's deletion. So, as far as I can tell, you would only be willing to keep the entry if it had exactly the usage note that you put there. Is that indeed the case?

—Ruakh_TALK 20:34, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

No, I am not concerned with the wording, only that a usage warning appear. --Connel MacKenzie 02:57, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

The apt usage notes can be called blatantly wrong only from a non-Christian point of view. They are true for every Christian (at least for every Catholic and Orthodox) and since they concern exclusively Christianity and the blasphemy which this plural form presents, non-Christian views are to be considered irrelevant. The quæstion is: does the Christian part of the community agree that the plural form is purposefully offending them (I certainly do) and that the usage notes are sound rather than: does everyone agree... Exactly if there were the usage notes: Lotus Sutra is considered apocryphal for Theravada Buddhists it would not be up to Christians to decide whether to remove or add such a usage note on Lotus Sutra, but to Theravada Buddhists. The situation is the same here. The uſer hight Bogorm converſation 21:19, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Well, I'm a Christian, and (as I said below) I don't consider a single one of the examples currently on the page to be offensive. None of them suggests that there was more than one Jesus of Nazareth, and none of them is either heretical or blasphemous. That's not to say the word couldn't be used in an offensive/heretical/blasphemous way, but it is clear that the word "Jesuses" is not in and of itself offensive, heretical, or blasphemous. Angr 21:27, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

I think the most convincing solution would be to write a letter to Congregatio pro Doctrina Fidei and if they express the same concern as in the usage notes we are discussing here, to keep them. Probably not everyone would agree, but for me that would be an incontrovertible criterium. The uſer hight Bogorm converſation 21:41, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

I don't think that's either a viable or a desirable solution. CDF is responsible for Roman Catholic doctrine, but (1) this issue is not restricted to Catholics, and (2) this isn't a matter of doctrine anyway. Angr 21:50, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Do they speak English? And anyway, the context labels claimed that it was "intentionally incorrect", and the usage note claimed that it couldn't "be used without purposefully offending Christians" (emphases mine). Those are claims about the person using the word, not about the person hearing it; so unless you're saying that the CDF uses the word (deprecated template usage) Jesuses, and that you want to ask them if they do it to be incorrect and offensive, their opinion isn't quite relevant to these claims. —Ruakh_TALK 22:52, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Keep, and none of the examples provided in the article at least is offensive, so it while it can be used offensively (like virtually every word), it isn't necessarily offensive. Angr 20:36, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Keep. I have a box of Jesuses in my desk drawer right now, and I know of no one who is the least bit offended when I bring them out. bd2412 T 23:27, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Keep, the idea that we would remove an entry because someone finds it offensive is absurd. While the entry may well benefit from some contags and usage notes, the ones inserted by Connel were rather over the top. -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 23:55, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Keep. I have added a usage note, the wording of which should be discussed on Talk:Jesuses not here. Conrad.Irwin 13:17, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Keep. Recent RFD showed keep, and I agree with the reasons anyway.—msh210℠ 16:16, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Keep, passed RFD, if offensive to some then that is not a reason to remove. I doubt it needs ANY usage notes to this effect at all.--Dmol 10:52, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

IMVHO, the real "blasphemy" is the production of "plastic Jesuses on a cross" and displaying images of how our saviour died as if it were something to boast about! But the word itself is OK. Without it, how else could I denounce that aforementioned real blasphemy? It is a word in current use. It should be in the dictionary. Keep. -- ALGRIF talk 10:20, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

• For the record, the box of Jesuses in my desk are not crucifixes, they are just serenely standing there (and their feet light up when you press a button). bd2412 T 20:16, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Keep. I was astounded when, while in the military, I learned that some people in the northern U.S. consider the word Jesus offensive, and that if you say it in their presence, you could have your face slapped. In the South, Midwest, and West, there is nothing offensive about it. More recently, I’ve heard of Hispanic men being savagely beaten because their name was Jesús. It’s all very odd to me. It reminds me of the Bizarro world in Superman comics, where everything is backwards. I suppose that if somebody finds it offensive, they probably won’t be looking it up here. If they are offended by it, they already know they are offended and don’t need to be reminded. —Stephen 19:48, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Keep. Satanism is heretical and offensive to many Christians, that does not make it an offensive word. Ƿidsiþ 20:24, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Kept still/again. —Ruakh_TALK 20:12, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

uncountably

Intensifier sense: "a particularly vast number". Same as sense 1 ("too many to be counted"), even if figurative. Equinox ◑ 00:38, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

Consider some examples of usage:

"as uncountably many as grains of rice in a dinner bowl."

Template:quote-news

Template:quote-news

Template:quote-news

Template:quote-news

I think these illustrate a fairly vague intensifier use of the term, though something less specific than the RfDed sense or possibly a sense like "too impractical, boring, or gauche to count". DCDuring TALK 01:17, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

I dunno. Compare unplayably: you might call an old computer game "unplayably slow for a modern impatient gamer", and of course it wouldn't literally be slow to the degree where it was impossible to play. That's just typical hyperbole, not a separate sense. Equinox ◑ 18:30, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

dentrifice

I created this entry on 4-3-09 mistakenly spelling it dentifrice (which already had an entry) - now of course, I cannot delete the entry - could one of the Editors do this for me please?

('Dentrifices' is a branded pharmaceutical product whoch does not merit an entry in Wiktionary)

Many thanks

Jonthescribbler 14:39, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

Deleted. —Stephen 14:41, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

You can put {{delete}} on articles you created yourself in error, since they don't need a discussion/consensus. Equinox ◑ 23:55, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

infinite recursion

SoP, not idiomatic. (Note: I also just removed a secondary computing sense, since the first sense says it all for computing as well.) P.S. Is this a reasonable sort of RFD nomination? Connel has been remarking (1, 2) that SoP isn't sufficient as a nomination, whereas quite a few such RFDs went ahead before without question. Where I say that, I do also mean to suggest that it's not idiomatic (cf. CFI's "this is a door" example). Equinox ◑ 21:01, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Since this is a technical term I think it should be kept. I found SB's computing definition much more informative than the generic definition that remains. If it were just the generic definition that were required then of course, delete it, but being a technical term the other makes it worth keeping. DAVilla 02:45, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

Even though it's just a recursion (usual computing sense) that happens to be infinite? Whether you're a programmer or not, these two words together are still an adjective qualifying a noun, just like recursive loop, infinite loop, recursive method — not an inextricable two-word phrase. The description might have been useful encyclopaedically but that's Wikipedia's area. Equinox ◑ 02:50, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

I'm reconsidering. DAVilla 13:25, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

black people

Per black person. Equinox ◑ 23:42, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Gone. DAVilla 13:29, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

secret/sacred

Not apparent to me that the given citations are anything other than "secret and/or sacred", which would be sum of parts and not plausibly idiomatic. But perhaps this does have a specific use in the Australian context? -- Visviva 18:23, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

Hyphenated form seems somewhat common: [22] This caught my eye in particular (from the Charlesworth book): "The term 'secret-sacred' is well known in the literature on Aboriginal Australia and is used to designate either men's or women's religious knowledge." Equinox ◑ 19:15, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

Citations:Fonzie

This page had been marked for speedy deletion (and even deleted in fact) but I've changed it to RFD. Everyone here knows who Fonzie is and I think a term that everyone knows should be part of a dictionary. (Hopefully some day we can agree to include terms that not everyone knows as well, and then the dictionary would be useful to us and not just unborn generations.) Anyways I don't see what harm a citation does. (It gives support as an out-of-context use, not literally as a unit of measure.) Keep. DAVilla 13:23, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

I don't have much of an opinion on this. However, comparable terms (popular nicknames for specific proper nouns from reality and fiction) might include things like Madge (the singer Madonna in UK tabloids), Jacko (the singer Michael Jackson — we have this generically for Jackson), Termie (Terminator robot from the film and video game series), and Corrie (the soap opera Coronation Street — we have this one). Equinox ◑ 18:27, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

Keep. Bizarre that this was deleted; the whole point of creating the Citations: namespace was to have a safe place to accumulate evidence for future entries. If this was just a collection of random uses of the name "Fonzie", I could see the merits of deletion; but the one quote currently there is clearly relevant to an eventual entry, as any such entry would want to mention the name's use as a byword for coolness. -- Visviva 06:56, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

So what about somebody creating the entry? Having read the citation and the WP article I still only understood what's it meant to mean after reading Visviva's last words. --Duncan 11:20, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

Definite keep. I was going to use the term Fonzie touch as supporting evidence, but have found that it was deleted. It was one of my original entries, and it was definitly cited. How can I contest the deletion. Do i list it here, or is that a tea room thing.--Dmol 21:48, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

See Wiktionary:Requests_for_verification_archive/July_2007#Fonzie_touch. It could always be re-created with citations, but the citations that were in the entry just didn't meet current standards. I'd be happy to restore it to user-space if you want to continue working on it. -- Visviva 02:04, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Yes, please recreate and I'll have another look at it. Thanks.--Dmol 05:44, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Fonzie touch recreated with new cites. --Dmol 08:28, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

magnifys

Seems like a computer error which created this page, which has led to fr:magnifys and ar:magnifys. Seems like a straightforward request to me. Mglovesfun 02:27, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

Deleted, bad TheCheatBot entry based on old version of magnify which incorrectly used {{en-noun}}. Should we let FR and AR know? -- Visviva 06:51, 8 March 2009 (UTC)