Wiktionary:Requests for deletion/English

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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This page is for entries in English. For entries in other languages, see Wiktionary:Requests for deletion/Non-English.

Newest 10 tagged RFDs

• GSK
  preparation time
  out of
  two-way travel time
  araneomorph funnel-web spider
  health nut
  People's Army of Vietnam
  Army of the Republic of Viet Nam
  Army of the Republic of Viet-Nam
  Army of the Republic of Vietnam
  

Scope of this request page:

• In-scope: terms suspected to be multi-word sums of their parts such as “green leaf”
• Out-of-scope: terms whose existence is in doubt

Templates:

• {{rfd}}
• {{rfd-sense}}
• {{rfd-redundant}}
• {{archive-top|rfd}} + {{archive-bottom}}

See also:

• Criteria for inclusion
• Page deletion guidelines

Scope: This page is for requests for deletion of pages, entries and senses in the main namespace for a reason other than that the term cannot be attested. The most common reason for posting an entry or a sense here is that it is a sum of parts, such as "green leaf". It is occasionally used for undeletion requests (requests to restore entries that may have been wrongly deleted).

Out of scope: This page is not for words whose existence or attestation is disputed, for which see Wiktionary:Requests for verification. Disputes regarding whether an entry falls afoul of any of the subsections in our criteria for inclusion that demand a particular kind of attestation (such as figurative use requirements for certain place names and the WT:BRAND criteria) should also go to RFV. Blatantly obvious candidates for deletion should only be tagged with {{delete|Reason for deletion}} and not listed.

Adding a request: To add a request for deletion, place the template {{rfd}} or {{rfd-sense}} to the questioned entry, and then make a new nomination here. The section title should be exactly the wikified entry title such as [[green leaf]]. 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, including non-admins, may act on the discussion.

Closing a request: A request can be closed once a month has passed after the nomination was posted, except for snowball cases. If a decision to delete or keep has not been reached due to insufficient discussion, {{look}} can be added and knowledgeable editors pinged. If there is sufficient discussion, but a decision cannot be reached because there is no consensus, the request can be closed as “no consensus”, in which case the status quo is maintained. The threshold for consensus is hinted at the ratio of 2/3 of supports to supports and opposes, but is not set in stone and other considerations than pure tallying can play a role; see the vote.

• Deleting or removing the entry or sense (if it was deleted), or de-tagging it (if it was kept). In either case, the edit summary or deletion summary should indicate what is happening.
• Adding a comment to the discussion here with either RFD-deleted or RFD-kept, indicating what action was taken.
• Striking out the discussion header.

(Note: In some cases, like moves or redirections, the disposition is more complicated than simply “RFD-deleted” or “RFD-kept”.)

Archiving a request: At least a week after a request has been closed, if no one has objected to its disposition, the request should be archived to the entry's talk page. This is usually done using the aWa gadget, which can be enabled at WT:PREFS.

Oldest 100 tagged RFDs

• most
  786
  nasal vowel
  fuck it up
  oral vowel
  adult material
  smackers
  not-to-scale
  Colon Street
  mathematical function program
  elder
  occasional furniture
  instance dungeon
  take its toll
  Kube
  stealth wealth
  stem mutation
  morel
  abstinence
  py chiminey
  renewable resource
  non-Arabic
  history book
  dynamics
  ex-senator
  ex-minister
  be at
  ex-serviceman
  ex-servicewoman
  lavalier microphone
  supply-side
  Hypatia
  in conclave
  leonine share
  stature in life
  stray dog
  square root of fuck all
  statically-typed language
  adoptive mother
  pro-Hamas
  anti-Hamas
  META
  pro-Israel
  anti-American
  pro-American
  pro-Arab
  pro-British
  anti-British
  pro-Indonesian
  pro-Jew
  anti-Jew
  pro-Palestinian
  anti-Palestinian
  anti-Russian
  pro-Slavism
  anti-Slavism
  pro-US
  pro-Russian
  primiparous
  school-age
  fat lot of good
  blue light
  acquired characteristic
  from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free
  by what right
  anti-Hindu
  accessory before the fact
  accessory after the fact
  W rizz
  good boy
  good girl
  unspoken rule
  unwritten rule
  hadopelagic water
  Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg
  subbranch
  Lulu
  -un-
  DKC2
  DKC3
  Nissia
  mean time
  zinc-bearing
  foregoing
  unrequited love
  L rizz
  El Camino Real
  marine toilet
  quarter-
  do want
  do not want
  because reasons
  twelve hundred
  December solstice
  ex-member
  tacit collusion
  Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year
  apple turnover
  aluminium-27
  argon-36
  

May 2021

worlds

Adverb sense. This is just sense 11 of world: "A great amount". You can replace "it is worlds funnier" by "it is a world funnier" or "it is a great deal funnier" or (I think) "it is a great amount funnier". See, for instance, [1]. This, that and the other (talk) 05:26, 18 May 2021 (UTC)

Delete per nom, but perhaps there should also be a ux with a comparative at world, sense 11. ←₰-→ Lingo ^Bingo _Dingo (talk) 16:30, 18 May 2021 (UTC)

Good suggestion; I added a somewhat silly one. This, that and the other (talk) 07:28, 19 May 2021 (UTC)

Does one imply the other? Something can be "a (good/great) deal funnier" but not "deals funnier". Equinox ◑ 00:44, 29 May 2021 (UTC)

I feel like deal is special because it no longer has that sense outside the set phrase. This, that and the other (talk) 10:48, 28 June 2021 (UTC)

We have a definition for loads, tho "a load" would suffice. DAVilla 21:40, 1 June 2021 (UTC)

Interesting point. The second comedian was a lot funnier sounds fine but The second comedian was lots funnier sounds like a mistake a child would make. Turning it around, a load funnier and a heap funnier sound strange to me. I guess what we're asking here is, is a world/worlds different to these? This, that and the other (talk) 10:48, 28 June 2021 (UTC)

Do we have any tests of "adverbness" we could use to check whether this is an adverb vs just the plural of the noun? I notice we are not only inconsistent in which plurals have senses for this kind of thing, but also inconsistent in what part of speech we say they are; tons has the relevant sense as a noun (and as plural-only, even though the singular also occurs, e.g. google books:"is a ton better than", "not a ton better than"), as does lots, whereas loads and worlds have it as an adverb. Of course, that's on top of the fact that language itself is 'inconsistent' in which words can occur in X was a foobar funnier than Y, which can occur in X was foobars funnier than Y, and which can occur in both (and which can occur in neither), which might or might not make it worthwhile to document which ones do occur. - -sche (discuss) 17:28, 1 September 2022 (UTC)

June 2021

down

(comparable) At a lower or further place or position along a set path.

His place is farther down the road.

The company was well down the path to bankruptcy.

• 1906, Stanley J[ohn] Weyman, chapter I, in Chippinge Borough, New York, N.Y.: McClure, Phillips & Co., →OCLC, page 01:

  It was April 22, 1831, and a young man was walking down Whitehall in the direction of Parliament Street. He wore shepherd's plaid trousers and the swallow-tail coat of the day, with a figured muslin cravat wound about his wide-spread collar.

Dylanvt removed this sense (adverb; Special:Diff/62754912) and moved the usage examples and the quotation to “From one end to another of (in any direction); along.” (preposition; Special:Diff/62754915). J3133 (talk) 21:42, 15 June 2021 (UTC)

Seems to be fine as a preposition only in this sense, although sometimes one of the nouns is implied: The coffee shop? That's further down [the street from here]. (possibly with a gesture). Facts707 (talk) 05:17, 16 June 2021 (UTC)

I agree that the above examples are prepositional, but there is a "static" prepositional usage, e.g. "He lives down the road" and a "kinetic" prepositional usage, e.g. "He is walking down the road". It may be possible either to combine these into one sense, with suitable wording possibly involving "or", or to split them, but the existing presentation, where e.g. "His place is farther down the road" is under the definition "From one end to another of", doesn't seem ideal to me. Cases such as "He lives further down" and "His place is further down", as raised by Facts, are tricky to handle. Mihia (talk) 19:09, 26 June 2021 (UTC)

• Does anyone have the energy to undo the out-of-process deletion and close this as no consensus? Requires readding the sense to the proper location and moving the quotations back. --Dan Polansky (talk) 18:20, 3 September 2022 (UTC)

October 2021

family (2)

RFD two adjective senses:

1. Suitable for children and adults.

   It's not good for a date, it's a family restaurant.

   Some animated movies are not just for kids, they are family movies.

2. Conservative, traditional.

   The cultural struggle is for the survival of family values against all manner of atheistic amorality.

These are attributive uses of the noun, not true adjectives (and btw the fact that one might be able to say "a very/more family restaurant" is not conclusive since e.g. one can equally say "a very New York expression" or "a more New York way to dress", and hopefully we are not going to allow an adjective sense of "New York").

However, if these attributive uses are deemed non-obvious from the general noun senses, they can be moved to an "attributive use" sense of the noun and defined there.

See also Wiktionary:Tea_room/2021/October#any_other_family and family (1) above. — This unsigned comment was added by Mihia (talk • contribs) at 10:10, 16 October 2021.

Note we have family values. Equinox ◑ 10:16, 16 October 2021 (UTC)

Lexico does include family as an adjective, with the sense "Designed to be suitable for children as well as adults." DonnanZ (talk) 09:12, 21 October 2021 (UTC)

Sense 1 is more plausible than sense 2, for which the only usex is not actually a usex of family but of family values, which as Equinox points out is a different entry, so delete sense 2. - -sche (discuss) 16:42, 5 December 2021 (UTC)

Keep sense 1. That is not an attributive use of the noun. The Borgias is a family show in the attributive-noun sense. It’s not a family show in this sense. Conversely, Monsters, Inc. is a family show in this sense but not in the attributive-noun sense. Lereman (talk) 00:30, 21 January 2022 (UTC)

Keep sense 1 per Lereman’s argument above. I don’t have any clear view on sense 2, family is non-attributive there too, to suggest otherwise is to claim that non-traditional families don’t exist but as this meaning of family doesn’t seem to exist outside of the set phrase family values then I’m leaning towards Delete. Overlordnat1 (talk) 01:12, 21 January 2022 (UTC)

Well, there's nothing to say that there can't be more than one attributive sense: one is for families and the other is about families, but the noun is the same. Likewise, one of the few things that "woman hater" (female bigot) and "woman-hater" (misogynist) have in common is that both use "woman" as an attributive noun. Chuck Entz (talk) 05:14, 21 January 2022 (UTC)

Upon deeper reflection and after looking at our family entry more closely, I think we should Delete adjective sense 1, as the same phrase family restaurant appears in noun sense 1 where an example of attributive use is given anyway. I think we should have another noun definition along the lines of ‘an immediate family consisting of a child or children and their married and cohabiting parents of opposite sex; a nuclear family’ and then not only could we move the usex about ‘family values’ there but we could include a usex or quote about the importance of the ‘family unit’. On that basis, I now say Delete both challenged adjective senses. Overlordnat1 (talk) 13:17, 21 January 2022 (UTC)

I’ve just added a noun definition consistent with the meaning of nuclear family, copied the usex to there and added another one mentioning the ‘family unit’. Ideally I’d add some non-attributive uses of this sense but it’s hard to provide quotes that unambiguously use the word this way. There is, however, the Conservative American organisation ‘Focus on the Family’ [2] which is clearly mainly concerned with nuclear families. Overlordnat1 (talk) 11:07, 27 January 2022 (UTC)

Sense 2 deleted. Sense 1 remains to be resolved. I say delete it too, like Overlordnat and others (as it's the noun, attributively). - -sche (discuss) 18:47, 5 July 2022 (UTC)

• Keep sense 1 (suitable for children and adults) per WT:LEMMING: in MW[3], dictionary.com[4], oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com[5], Macmillan[6]. And without that, "family film" could be a film featuring family; it is not clear that it means suitable for the whole family, both children and adults. --Dan Polansky (talk) 17:54, 3 September 2022 (UTC)

series

The "adjective" series#Adjective, is not an adjective, but attributive as far as I can see. Terms like pre-series, in series and series-wound all come from the noun. I suggest moving the content (including the diagram) to the noun as an attributive sense. DonnanZ (talk) 12:27, 26 October 2021 (UTC)

The given usex "You have to connect the lights in series for them to work properly" is clearly not adjectival, though it is possible to find e.g. "a series connection" (attributive argument might still apply). Equinox ◑ 13:11, 26 October 2021 (UTC)

Yes, the usex would be more appropriate at in series. DonnanZ (talk) 13:33, 26 October 2021 (UTC)

However, Donnanz, since series (noun) has 8 senses and connection (noun) has 11 senses, shouldn't we keep this, because non-electricians might not understand "series connection"? (your usual SoP logic) Equinox ◑ 20:14, 26 October 2021 (UTC)

As I said above "I suggest moving the content (including the diagram) to the noun as an attributive sense." So yes, we should keep it, but under a different heading. I could have moved it, but that would have left no content for the "adjective". DonnanZ (talk) 08:08, 27 October 2021 (UTC)

As stated, the existing example, "connect the lights in series", is obviously not adjectival. Collins Dictionary lists an adjective sense with examples "a series circuit" and "a series generator". I couldn't find any other dictionaries that do. I am sceptical that these are true adjectival uses. I think they are attributive uses of the noun. Delete, but the electronics sense does merit separate mention in the noun section. Mihia (talk) 18:20, 14 November 2021 (UTC)

• Deleted Flackofnubs (talk) 23:06, 1 January 2023 (UTC)

November 2021

get a rise out of, get a rise, get a rise from

? Hardly give rise to though, in spite of rise having sufficient definitions. This idiomaticity stuff is complicated. Reminds me of Wiktionary:Requests for deletion/Non-English#SOPs in Category:Hindi compound verbs with base verb करना, and the endless entries with Persian كَردَن (kardan) (→ what links there)– if even that is kept, how to proceed with all that?

You forgot to add these to Category:English light verb constructions, meseems. Fay Freak (talk) 21:38, 14 December 2021 (UTC)

• Delete, SOP with "rise" sense 8 (just updated by me). Facts707 (talk) 09:09, 18 January 2022 (UTC)

• Are we sure this sense of rise is used outside get a rise? We do not have any usexes or quotations to suggest so. - excarnateSojourner (talk | contrib) 05:59, 6 November 2022 (UTC)

December 2021

Undeletion of I can wait as can wait

See Talk:I can wait. I wasn't around for that RFD discussion. I think this should be kept because the SOP argument doesn't hold up (despite the last consensus). Example sentence:

Person A: "I can't wait for this movie to come out." Person B: "I can wait."

"I can wait" in this sentence does not simply mean "I am able to wait". It has a deeper meaning, more like "I am not particularly eager to do something like you are." PseudoSkull (talk) 21:45, 27 December 2021 (UTC)

Addendum: I changed the vote to put the lemma at can wait, since, though much rarer, I'm sure it's possible to say "John can certainly wait." or something similar. PseudoSkull (talk) 21:51, 27 December 2021 (UTC)

There is also, “What’s the hurry? It can wait.” If this be SOP, I’m unclear which sense of wait covers this use.  --Lambiam 12:48, 28 December 2021 (UTC)

"to remain neglected or in readiness" General Vicinity (talk) 13:05, 28 December 2021 (UTC)

I think "John can certainly wait" is unusable unless "I can't wait" or something has been said previously, because the regular sense of "wait" dominates General Vicinity (talk) 13:07, 28 December 2021 (UTC)

There's something to this, but I wonder if it shouldn't just be covered at wait. DAVilla 22:31, 1 January 2022 (UTC)

• Leaning undelete, with conditions. I think the definition that was there previously is SOP, but I think there was/is a missing gloss of the use of the phrase to mean that stalling will not be an effective tactic, e.g.: Shayla Black, His to Take (2015), p. 29: “You don't want to answer me? All right. I can wait. I've got all afternoon. How about you?” bd2412 T 23:20, 19 February 2022 (UTC)

Undelete per nom. - excarnateSojourner (talk | contrib) 00:39, 9 April 2022 (UTC)

The sense suggested for un-deletion doesn't seem to match the discussion here, I do agree that can wait is the best place for the sense discussed here, but perhaps it should just be created from whole cloth. - TheDaveRoss 18:25, 31 August 2022 (UTC)

• Undelete in the sense "I am not particularly eager to do something like you are": I made a pro-keeping argument the last time and if some native speakers above seem convinced by that type of argument, let me add my voice to undelete the entry. If this gets undeleted as can wait, I can wait should better be a hard redirect. --Dan Polansky (talk) 18:00, 3 September 2022 (UTC)

January 2022

falling

spinning

Moved out of the other RFD upon DonnanZ's request. My rationale is exactly the same one though, see my comments at #growing. Most importantly, I don't deny that these present participles can be used adjectivally (like other things as User:Vininn126 stated), I simply deem that not inclusion-worthy for these 100% transparent cases (see my comment starting with "I oppose the inclusion of these "trivial part-of-speech conversions""). Please note that we RFD-deleted #spiring by consensus already so keeping any of these makes the dictionary internally inconsistent. — Fytcha〈 T | L | C 〉 12:44, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

Delete, as per Fytcha. No one is denying they can be used adjectivally - just trying to not double mark information. Vininn126 (talk) 12:46, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

I meant completely separate listings, but this will have to do.

Definitely keep falling and surrounding. I'm not sure about the latter two at the moment, they need further thought. But I suspect not enough effort has been made by the user to study where a present participle is used, likewise for the adjective. It is far too simplistic to combine the two, and is a massive slap in the face for the many users who believe they are adjectives, and created the entries. So these RFDs deserve to fail. You shouldn't impose your own cock-eyed belief on the dictionary, it's not in the dictionary's interest. DonnanZ (talk) 13:52, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

You're claiming that we are saying they aren't adjectives. We aren't. Please read my above comment. Vininn126 (talk) 14:21, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

Then keep them as adjectives! There is absolutely no sense in removing them. DonnanZ (talk) 14:35, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

Except it's dupiclate information??? Vininn126 (talk) 14:37, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

No, it's not. DonnanZ (talk) 15:29, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

DonnanZ, I ask you to cease the bullying behavior and personal attacks towards me. I am not "imposing" anything, I am not "cock-eyed", nothing about my conduct is "worrying", nothing has "gone to my head", and neither do I think I have displayed "poor judgment" in the last couple of RFD discussions. I can't help but interpret your conduct as personal bullying towards me (likely motivated by your dislike for my RFD nominations) for the reason that there's absolutely no objective grounds for that unprovoked, off-topic, snide comment of yours made in #Big Red. Also, let me apologize for the snide reply I gave thereupon. — Fytcha〈 T | L | C 〉 14:48, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

That's rather rich. You yourself are being a bully, I feel, pushing your own PoV as hard as you can. I was accused of that once, many years ago. I am not attacking you personally, just what you believe in. What's wrong with that? DonnanZ (talk) 15:01, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

You haven't been. Many of your comments have been rather personal. Vininn126 (talk) 15:04, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

That's a matter of opinion. I will take back the comments even though they weren't meant to be personal, but I still strongly oppose the beliefs of you two and won't change my views. DonnanZ (talk) 15:27, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

I think it is time to discuss this at the Beer parlour as an issue involving general lexicographic principles, rather than by fighting this fight participle by participle – of which there are a zillion more and then some.  --Lambiam 10:16, 13 January 2022 (UTC)

@Lambiam: Agreed, will do. — Fytcha〈 T | L | C 〉 16:35, 13 January 2022 (UTC)

April 2022

coalition builder

This more-or-less refers to an app (supposedly) for building a coalition, even if the "building" is being done by outside observers talking about how such a coalition could come together. I thought about sending this to RfV, but it's SOP even if it exists. bd2412 T 06:47, 14 April 2022 (UTC)

It does seem like a marketing name and an SoP one at that. It is like calling a recipe a cook. DCDuring (talk) 19:08, 14 April 2022 (UTC)

I've actually seen a lot instances of "X builder" used to mean "tool used to build X", such as "level builders" for various video games. I agree that coalition builder is SOP, but I think we're missing a definition for builder. Binarystep (talk) 05:34, 15 April 2022 (UTC)

I have added a definition to builder, "Software that allows the user to create a certain kind of automated output". Perhaps that can be tweaked, but I think it gets the gist. bd2412 T 06:26, 16 April 2022 (UTC)

@Binarystep: Would this be a boldface delete from you on "coalition builder" or do I misinterpret your above words? --Dan Polansky (talk) 13:49, 4 January 2023 (UTC)

See my comment below. Although coalition builder is SOP, I'd rather keep it as a translation hub than delete it outright. Binarystep (talk) 23:24, 4 January 2023 (UTC)

@Binarystep: Thank you. Should both coalition builder and coalition calculator be kept as translation hubs or can one of them be deleted, presumably coalition calculator? --Dan Polansky (talk) 07:29, 5 January 2023 (UTC)

coalition calculator is less common, so it can be deleted. Binarystep (talk) 22:12, 5 January 2023 (UTC)

Compare also coalition calculator. ·~ dictátor·mundꟾ 20:53, 16 April 2022 (UTC)

coalition calculator

Same as above. SOP to sense 1 of coalition and sense 1 of calculator. bd2412 T 01:32, 18 April 2022 (UTC)

Keep as translation hub. Binarystep (talk) 11:12, 18 April 2022 (UTC)

• @Binarystep: coalition builder and coalition calculator offer the same translations, so we certainly don't need to keep both of them. The question then becomes, which one? bd2412 T 05:50, 19 April 2022 (UTC)

  I'd go with coalition builder since it's more commonly used. Binarystep (talk) 01:09, 20 April 2022 (UTC)

"coalition calculator" can be deleted, since above it says "coalition calculator is less common, so it can be deleted. Binarystep". --Dan Polansky (talk) 08:15, 6 January 2023 (UTC)

May 2022

their asses

Also my ass, your ass, her ass, his ass, their ass, your asses, all y'all's asses.

These seem SOP, the sense of ass (A person; the self; (reflexively) oneself or one's person, chiefly their body.) It is all frequently replaced with "butt" and other synonyms, which makes it less idiomatic in my view. Since it is also constructible with all of these others pronouns it becomes less and less set. - TheDaveRoss 13:07, 2 May 2022 (UTC)

Strong keep - they're pretty unique in that they're used in place of me/you/etc. as well as myself/yourself/etc. I think the only synonym is my butt/your butt/etc., and that's clearly just a euphemism. You're unlikely to hear any other synonym of ass being used this way (outside of obvious humour doing it for effect), and I can't think of any other tangible nouns which can be paired with my/your/etc. to create genuine pronouns (as opposed to intangible nouns like majesty - though we do have entries for Your Majesty among others). It's definitely not productive in any real sense.

To give an example: even though "save your ass" can clearly be changed to "save your skin", you wouldn't ever hear "get your skin over here" or "why is your skin always so late?" because "your skin" is not a pronoun (but merely a metonym used only in a specific context). On the other hand, your ass clearly is a real pronoun that can be used in any context, albeit with a somewhat modified syntax (and leaving aside whether that would be a good idea). Theknightwho (talk) 19:36, 2 May 2022 (UTC)

Delete all: ass is used here metonymically to mean one’s self, and this meaning is already recorded as etymology 2, sense 5, at that entry. — Sgconlaw (talk) 19:53, 2 May 2022 (UTC)

This isn't true, because you can't ask "why is yourself always so late?" You can ask "why is your ass always so late?" The fact it can be used in place of either you or yourself makes this blatantly not SoP, and is not covered by a definition on ass for the reason that you cannot define a pronoun on a noun entry. Theknightwho (talk) 19:56, 2 May 2022 (UTC)

I see it differently. "Why is your ass always so late?" can be analysed as "Why is your self [or your body, or your person] so late?". The fact that your ass, your self, your body, or your person can be replaced by the pronoun you doesn't mean those phrases need to be treated as pronouns. — Sgconlaw (talk) 20:03, 2 May 2022 (UTC)

yourself =/= your self. There are no situations where your ass can be used where it could not be swapped out for either you or yourself (ignoring the interjection). It's also completely unheard of to use your self in the way you have in your example, but if it were, that would make it a pronoun too, because it's referring to someone anaphorically (sense 2) and cannot be preceded by a determiner ("the/a/my/your your ass"), which together define pronoun. It's a bound term.

Exactly the same logic applies to Your Majesty, which has two cites showing it being used as a pronoun in place of you (as opposed to when it's used as a formal term of address following a statement). Again, it's about the anaphorical reference and the lack of a determiner. Theknightwho (talk) 20:23, 2 May 2022 (UTC)

@Sgconlaw None of those sound natural though… and I’d be surprised if they could be cited as well. Like no one really says “Get your body up!” unless they’re talking about a workout exercise or something, whereas “get your ass up!” is just normal usage of a pronoun. “Why is your [body/person/self] so late?” straight up does not sound right at all. AG202 (talk) 20:51, 2 May 2022 (UTC)

I don’t think this sort of substitution needs to “sound natural”. That’s a red herring, I feel. In “Get your ass up!”, ass is being used as a metonym of a person’s body or self, and thus as a noun. I don’t think it makes a difference that nobody actually says “Get your body up!”. — Sgconlaw (talk) 21:44, 2 May 2022 (UTC)

@Sgconlaw Is it though? Even at the entry written at ass, it says "By extension, one's personal safety, or figuratively one's job", so in that case it being used to refer to one's self or body is faulty. And speaking personally, I certainly don't really parse it as "your body" or "your person" for sure, for similar reasons. AG202 (talk) 21:49, 2 May 2022 (UTC)

Also the second example at their asses doesn't really align with that that well either. AG202 (talk) 21:50, 2 May 2022 (UTC)

It doesn’t seem like “one’s personal safety” or “one’s job” is the relevant noun sense here, so I’d say those senses are simply not applicable. The relevant sense is “one’s body, person, or self”. — Sgconlaw (talk) 03:32, 3 May 2022 (UTC)

Actually, the thing that clinches it is that it is impossible to use that sense of ass outside of the possessive ("my/your/their"). That means it cannot be a noun, and it is therefore absolutely not SoP. Theknightwho (talk) 20:42, 2 May 2022 (UTC)

That isn't unique to this sense, though this may be the most common example. "...don't show your face around here..." or "...keep your hands off of me..." are similar constructions. I don't think that means one's face and one's hands are necessary entries, or idiomatic. - TheDaveRoss 15:45, 4 May 2022 (UTC)

Is it productive, though? They're set phrases. Theknightwho (talk) 15:49, 12 May 2022 (UTC)

"We need to get asses in seats to keep this place profitable." - TheDaveRoss 12:17, 19 May 2022 (UTC)

Strong keep per Theknightwho. AG202 (talk) 20:48, 2 May 2022 (UTC)

Delete. Everyone is focusing on the substitutability of "ass", but it's the other half of the construction that's interchangeable: it's not just pronouns, any designation of a person can be substituted: "I want to see Joe's ass in my office ASAP!" It's just [noun, pronoun or proper noun referring to one or more individuals]+[possession] + ass. The whole purpose of the construction is to attach a vulgarity as an intensifier- you can't say "get your esophagus over here!" because "esophagus" isn't unpleasant or shocking enough. Chuck Entz (talk) 04:53, 3 May 2022 (UTC)

Yes, the first word is interchangeable because it's acting as a pronoun. The fact that a name could be put there doesn't change the fact that it can only be used in the possessive. It's also not just any intensifier - it's the only one, with a softer version as an alternative. Theknightwho (talk) 08:40, 3 May 2022 (UTC)

This is in fact an argument for keeping this in the form someone’s ass, like we find the President of the United States here referring to Richard Wellington McLaren, then supervising the Antitrust Division, by the appellation “McLaren’s ass”.  --Lambiam 10:29, 4 May 2022 (UTC)

Delete. This information could be put at one's ass. WT:CFI states that reflexive idioms should use one instead of every possible variant. Old Man Consequences (talk) 15:00, 3 May 2022 (UTC)

I would support this compared to deleting everything. AG202 (talk) 16:19, 3 May 2022 (UTC)

It makes it considerably harder to find, though, and is less intuitive to ordinary users. Theknightwho (talk) 18:41, 3 May 2022 (UTC)

I doubt ordinary or extraordinary users will use a term like “your asses” as a search term. The generic-personal-pronoun rule may be less intuitive, but that applies equally to one's fill, one's hour, one's last, and so on; is there a rationale for making an exception for this specific case?  --Lambiam 07:56, 4 May 2022 (UTC)

I equally doubt that we'll see many searches for His Imperial Majesty either, but the logic still applies. Theknightwho (talk) 15:37, 12 May 2022 (UTC)

Delete. Binarystep (talk) 03:57, 4 May 2022 (UTC)

Merge into a single entry someone's ass (per WT:CFI § Pronouns and the observations by Chuck Entz concerning Joe’s ass above) and then Delete all these with other, specific personal pronouns (but add See also someone's ass to the interjections my ass and your ass).  --Lambiam 10:45, 4 May 2022 (UTC)

Redirect (merge) to ass or to someone's ass, I think. It seems like ass is the lexical element, since the first part can be any possessive, and indeed the second part can be changed to arse (or dumbass: google books:"your dumbass over") or expanded with other words ("your guys's stupid asses"). I feel like we had a discussion about something of this sort previously, but I can't find it. Maybe I'm thinking of the inconclusive old discussion at Talk:my ass, where someone make the side point that terms like baby are sometimes used pronominally—"when baby is crying". I concede e.g. "Majesty" is also somewhat variable ("your Majesty"; "his Majesty" and "her Majesty" = "their Majesties"; in a few books even "my Majesty"), but that's still a lot less variable (*"I want the director's Majesty in my office pronto"?). - -sche (discuss) 03:20, 12 May 2022 (UTC)

Can one say something like, “We sent out six asses to reconnoitre the area. Only two came back.”? I mean, can ass be used as a pars pro toto in the sense of “person” without possessive determiner identifying the possessor of the body part? If it is obligatory, this is of lexical significance.  --Lambiam 10:11, 21 May 2022 (UTC)

Delete, mostly per Sgconlaw. Imetsia (talk) 16:02, 12 May 2022 (UTC)

Delete. My take on this is the same as Chuck Entz's. I do think my ass should be kept, however, due to its unique, separate use as an interjection. 186.212.6.138 02:51, 26 July 2022 (UTC)

Delete all except my ass which should be kept because it has uses that are clearly not SOP. This is not unique with pronouns. "John's butt" exists. Maybe create someone's ass and someone's butt and redirect them all. 172.58.171.40 16:24, 20 September 2022 (UTC)

soft a

While the pronunciation difference most likely has social significance, this is still just an SOP description of a pronunciation difference. How is this different from saying "with a schwa", "ending in a vowel" or "without the r"? Chuck Entz (talk) 14:42, 4 May 2022 (UTC)

IMO this "soft a" arose not as an SOP but as a specific contrast to "hard r". I could be persuaded otherwise. Is there any other word where "soft a" is used in this sense? (Possibles: anotha, betta, brotha, gangsta, massa, mothafucka, neighba, rappa, sucka, wanka, yestaday; betcha, cuppa, fella, kinda, shoulda, yella.) Here's an online discussion about what "soft a" might mean as an SOP and the options are not this. There is no Template:&SOP analog of Template:&lit; if there were then one might add it here as a separate second sense. Jnestorius (talk) 19:50, 4 May 2022 (UTC)

Unsure. It's true "soft a" can mean a number of things; google books:pronounced "with a soft a" has examples. I'm not sure if the counterpart sense to hard r has some kind of specificity about it that sets it apart; as Jnestorius asks, can this "-a instead of -er" sense be used of the same sound at the end of bigga or trigga, or only the n-word? But then again, even if it can't be used of bigga, I see uses in reference to e.g. Nora, so mehhh... - -sche (discuss) 08:21, 20 August 2022 (UTC)

Keep. The term exists as a counterpart to hard r, which makes it not SOP. Although there are plenty of words ending in the same "soft A" sound (such as brotha or playa), those terms aren't referred to as "the soft A" without context. Binarystep (talk) 09:03, 20 August 2022 (UTC)

toll paid

Tagged by @2602:306:CEC2:A3A0:4C98:E16F:4F6B:E6EE but not listed. On one hand, there's no reason to keep this now that burn the coal, pay the toll was deleted, but on the other hand, that term arguably shouldn't have been deleted considering the recent CFI change. Binarystep (talk) 16:25, 12 May 2022 (UTC)

• There's no reason "burn the coal, pay the toll" should have been deleted --- it is cited heavily on Internet forums. 2602:306:CEC2:A3A0:95AB:BC10:873A:BE9B 07:11, 13 May 2022 (UTC)

• Keep - this is a matter for RFV. The term should be considered in its own right. Theknightwho (talk) 14:54, 13 May 2022 (UTC)

• Redirect to pay the toll and create that entry. I note that we have burn the coal (alt form of burn coal, which is new to me and I added the literal sense). Also adding a usex to burn coal with "pay the toll" would deal with the other issue. There is a book beginning with the phrase "Burn the coal, pay the toll". Facts707 (talk) 13:59, 17 May 2022 (UTC)

Delete, this is a pretty simple construction, I am sure people also say things like "they paid the toll" and "the toll was paid" with the exact same meaning. Just because sometimes the meaning is related to one particular racist "toll" phrase doesn't make it special. - TheDaveRoss 17:12, 16 June 2022 (UTC)

Strong keep. This phrase is used in a very specific context that isn't obvious from its parts. Binarystep (talk) 09:04, 20 August 2022 (UTC)

June 2022

pedantic

Rfd-redundant "Being finicky or fastidious, especially with language." Aside from the focus on language, this seems to already be included in the first sense: "Like a pedant, overly concerned with formal rules and trivial points of learning." It is a sub-sense at best. — Fytcha〈 T | L | C 〉 12:42, 9 June 2022 (UTC)

@Fytcha I'd move this to WT:RFM, because it was created so that we don't put requests like this here. Theknightwho (talk) 13:42, 9 June 2022 (UTC)

@Theknightwho: RFM is for different pages. Merging different senses belongs here, as also evidenced by the fact that {{rfd-redundant}} links to RFD. — Fytcha〈 T | L | C 〉 13:46, 9 June 2022 (UTC)

@Fytcha That seems like an arbitrary distinction to draw, given it's the usual place to discuss whether two definitions are the same thing. Whether they happen to be on different spellings of the same word or not shouldn't change the venue. Theknightwho (talk) 13:52, 9 June 2022 (UTC)

@Theknightwho you're in danger of converting this discussion into the equivalent of an autological term. Chuck Entz (talk) 14:45, 9 June 2022 (UTC)

FWIW I do think it's...unfortunate that there are so many places to discuss redundant senses; they also get discussed at WT:RFC and I sometimes raise them in the Tea Room. - -sche (discuss) 08:25, 20 August 2022 (UTC)

The three senses all mean “as is typical for a pedant”, roughly corresponding to the three senses given for pedant, but in a different order.  --Lambiam 06:56, 10 June 2022 (UTC)

• @Lambiam Which sense of pedant are you suggesting corresponds to the sense of pedantic we are talking about deleting? pedant sense 1 does mention "vocabulary and grammar", but it is about making an excessive show of one's knowledge, not "being finicky or fastidious". - excarnateSojourner (talk | contrib) 06:44, 6 November 2022 (UTC)

  I do not see now what I then thought I saw. Now, it appears to me that sense 1 of pedant has been split over the present senses 2 and 3 of pedantic:

  excessive or tedious show of their knowledge

  → showy of one’s knowledge in a boring manner

  especially regarding rules of vocabulary and grammar

  → especially with language.

   --Lambiam 09:04, 6 November 2022 (UTC)

• Delete per nom. - excarnateSojourner (talk | contrib) 06:44, 6 November 2022 (UTC)

first-person singular

third-person plural

SOP. I had a good chuckle though when I saw that their definitions are literally the parts linked individually. — Fytcha〈 T | L | C 〉 20:54, 9 June 2022 (UTC)
Note. Someone has since rewritten the definitions, but not in a way I consider satisfactory. For one thing, these concepts do not only apply to verbs and pronouns, but also to a variety of other grammatical aspects in various languages – for example, the Turkish suffixes of possession. (This applies to our inadequate treatment of first person as well.) And IMO "the dual of the first-person form of a verb or pronoun" is meaningless; there is no such thing as "the first-person form" that has a dual.  --Lambiam 11:22, 12 June 2022 (UTC)

Delete the lot. ·~ dictátor·mundꟾ 04:14, 11 June 2022 (UTC)

I'm leaning towards keep all. SemperBlotto (talk) 11:03, 11 June 2022 (UTC)

Can you then at least suggest definitions other than the current ones, which inform those thirsting for enlightenment that second-person plural means “second-person plural” (resounding duh)?  --Lambiam 13:41, 11 June 2022 (UTC)

• My gut is that we should keep these, since we are a dictionary, and we enjoy using phrases of this sort. Also, I never knew there was such a thing as a 'first/second/third-person dual' until this discussion. bd2412 T 07:20, 12 June 2022 (UTC)

  They can be explained in an appendix, in case. There's no need to have them as individual entries. Sartma (talk) 19:19, 22 June 2022 (UTC)

  Did you know there was such a thing as a dual until this discussion? PUC – 12:45, 3 July 2022 (UTC)

  You mean in the sense of a grammatical case for precisely two subjects? I was vaguely aware of it existing, but had never heard of or thought of it being in terms of grammatical person. bd2412 T 06:04, 11 August 2022 (UTC)

• Actually, these are not just SOP (at least the duals and plurals), cf. the lengthy discussion in Anna Siewierska's Person. But before adding intricate definitions (e.g. differentiating between the 2+2 (multiple addressees) and 2+3 (single addressee plus others) use of second-person plural), is it the job of Wiktionary to serve as a dictionary of linguistic terminology? –Austronesier (talk) 10:35, 12 June 2022 (UTC)

Delete per Lambiam, until and unless non-SOP definitions are provided (per Austronesier). PUC – 14:53, 12 June 2022 (UTC)

Might possibly be useful translation hubs if nothing else. Equinox ◑ 16:51, 12 June 2022 (UTC)

Only tangentially related to this, I have just noticed that the Translation section of English we is a mess. The "exclusive" box serves as a kind of default space for a lot languages that actually do not have a clusivity distinction, while some non-clusive languages (French, German, Arabic etc.) are represented in both boxes. Maybe it makes more sense to have a main box for clusivity-neutral equivalents of English we, and to restrict the "exclusive" and "inclusive" boxes to languages which do have distinct 1p excl. and incl. pronouns? –Austronesier (talk) 18:53, 12 June 2022 (UTC)

Keep, same conviction as bd2412 + Austronesier's rationale. The definitions just need to be updated. AG202 (talk) 18:25, 12 June 2022 (UTC)

“... just need to be updated.” That’s a tall order. As pointed out above by Austronesier, whole monographs have been devoted to the topic of grammatical person.  --Lambiam 12:56, 14 June 2022 (UTC)

@Lambiam I have started trying to update them, to at least destubify them, see: second-person plural, though it doesn't feel satisfactory to me just yet. I actually also found that the fr.wikt definitions are more wordy, but do get the point across more clearly and are more open, see première personne du singulier, which I feel could be translated here well, though it would need to include more than just the pronouns, possessive adjectives, and verb forms as you've mentioned. I'm just not 100% sure of the phrasing, so I've paused for now. (Pinging @SemperBlotto as well since you've participated in a related discussion in the past) AG202 (talk) 16:58, 5 July 2022 (UTC)

You have some gall complaining about "RFDs sometimes coming down to literally opinions of editors with no policy basis", when your vote is literally just that ("same conviction as bd2412", who's talking about a "gut feeling"). Just dropping that here, though; I have no interest in getting into a debate over this. PUC – 12:57, 3 July 2022 (UTC)

@PUC Please don't drop attacks like that and then say "I have no interest in getting into a debate over this", that's just poor form. To me, this is not SOP per Austronesier's rationale. And then, this section is actually policy if you've read through WT:CFI: "In rare cases, a phrase that is arguably unidiomatic may be included by the consensus of the community, based on the determination of editors that inclusion of the term is likely to be useful to readers." which imho is what bd2412's rationale relates to. Also, as stated in my comment on the discussion, I specifically mentioned "with words being deleted", which I've gone into more detail in in my comments on WT:IDIOM not being applied as it should be. If you have genuine critiques that's fine, but please don't come for me again like this while taking my comments out of context and not being well-versed in policy. AG202 (talk) 16:02, 5 July 2022 (UTC)

I know you specifically mentioned that. You're a dyed-in-the-wool inclusionist, of course you'd complain about entries being deleted. This is the reason why I'm attacking you in the first place: you see, what I can't stand is inclusionists taking the moral high ground, presenting themselves as the upholders of reason and argumentation, when they are often the most biased of all and will grasp at every straw to support their POV - like you just did with this ridiculous clause from the CFI. But I've said my piece. Hopefully I've got it out of my system and won't bother you again. (I'm mostly staying away from RFDs nowadays anyway.)

PS: don't take it too personally, I've been rude to bd2412 too, here and here. PUC – 20:05, 5 July 2022 (UTC)

@PUC If you'd actually paid attention, you'd see that I've voted for entries to be deleted. And even if I were a diehard inclusionist, I still have not lobbed personal attacks at editors who are deletionists, and at least try to act in good faith. I'm not presenting myself as the be-all know-all with RFDs, I've archived a ton of RFD discussions even ones that I don't believe should've been deleted, and have often deferred to other editors when it comes to participating in them (@BD2412, @Fytcha, @Imetsia). The original comment in Beer Parlour came from a place of frustration, and to be honest, some entries were closed against policy, like non-Canadian, since folks did not follow or know about WT:IDIOM. You claimed that my vote wasn't in line with policy and so I provided multiple examples of policy that can align with this. If you disagree with that policy analysis, that's fine, but it's rather unbecoming of someone, especially someone who just became an admin, to openly attack and berate folks like that. It's hard for me to not take it personally when it was lobbied directly at me. AG202 (talk) 17:44, 6 July 2022 (UTC)

And honestly, my initial comment was taken completely out of context. I mentioned that line to show that we don't keep every word possible, meaning that our motto of "all words in all languages" doesn't align with what actually happens here, meaning that it should be updated. That was the whole point of the discussion in Beer Parlour. I accept that some RFDs end up that way, and have come to accept it as being part of Wiktionary as a whole. Plus see the policy that I've been strongly pushing for for months: Wiktionary:Votes/pl-2022-06/Attestation_criteria_for_derogatory_terms. If I were as "inclusionist" as you claim, I would not be arguing in favor of those terms being limited, so please at the very least make sure that you're aware of what's actually been going on before you attack folks. AG202 (talk) 17:52, 6 July 2022 (UTC)

Sorry for lashing at you like that. As I mentioned in the conversation I linked to above, RFD debates don't bring out the best in me... PUC – 21:09, 20 July 2022 (UTC)

Delete SOP + ridiculous tautological definitions... Sartma (talk) 19:17, 22 June 2022 (UTC)

See also: WT:PRIOR which maybe could apply in this instance. All the definitions, while far from perfect, are also no longer tautological. AG202 (talk) 18:19, 6 July 2022 (UTC)

Keep per AG202. Binarystep (talk) 01:06, 7 July 2022 (UTC)

Delete. I was about to nominate these myself for deletion. Benwing2 (talk) 00:29, 6 November 2022 (UTC)

deluge

Rfd-sense "(military engineering) A damage control system on navy warships which is activated by excessive temperature within the Vertical Launching System."
One thing which is certain is that deluge systems are not exclusive to military engineering, or navies, or ships. Deluge systems are used for land-based rockets for sure, and I think many other applications. What remains then is whether deluge on its own is sufficiently supported in the sense of "a system which deluges", and, if so, how many distinct senses should be here. This is perhaps more of a cleanup, but the sense as written shouldn't remain. - TheDaveRoss 15:51, 14 June 2022 (UTC)

I've just cleaned it up and added another cite for that sense; does it look better now? Whoop whoop pull up ^{Bitching Betty ⚧️ Averted crashes} 00:37, 7 July 2022 (UTC)

@Whoop whoop pull up: The cleaned up version is certainly better (though such systems are often not for fire control, but instead for sound mitigation). Both of the cites are for deluge system, so I am still not sure if deluge on its own means such systems. The term deluge system is SOP for a system which deluges. - TheDaveRoss 12:58, 28 July 2022 (UTC)

ha

The senses "An exclamation of triumph or discovery" (usex Ha! Checkmate!) and "Said when making a vigorous attack" (with some quotations) seem redundant. Or at least, all the quotations we have for the latter fit the former just as well, and the usex we have for the former fits the latter. Can anyone find examples that distinguish these senses?​—msh210℠ (talk) 20:38, 14 June 2022 (UTC)

Keep - I'm pretty sure it means the sort of thing you see in pantomime sword fights. For example, at 1:34 in this clip from Hook. Theknightwho (talk) 23:39, 14 June 2022 (UTC)

Delete. The citations under etymology 3 should go to etymology 2 sense 2. — Fytcha〈 T | L | C 〉 01:29, 7 July 2022 (UTC)

I'm not seeing your logic at all. These are two different things. The usage in the clip I linked above isn't triumphal either. Theknightwho (talk) 20:12, 9 July 2022 (UTC)

have a wank

(vulgar slang, intransitive, usually of a man) to masturbate.

SOP: have (“to undertake or perform”) + a wank (“an act of masturbation”). Theknightwho (talk) 00:53, 15 June 2022 (UTC)

Make sure it's listed in Appendix:DoHaveMakeTake and then hard-redirect to the bare noun.​—msh210℠ (talk) 10:21, 15 June 2022 (UTC)

Support msh210's suggestion. - excarnateSojourner (talk | contrib) 04:08, 24 September 2022 (UTC)

• Keep as a synonym of masturbate. Do not redirect to appendix; an appendix is unwieldy for lexicographical information. The entry does no harm and directs the reader to Thesaurus:masturbate for synonyms, and to masturbate for translations; no benefit in doing the same, just outside of the mainspace. The appendix even goes so far as to explain differences between various have an X and take an X forms from the same noun, absurd given the same information should and could be in the mainspace. The idea things are made better by moving information from the discoverable and specific-item-linkable mainspace to the less discoverable appendix space seems rather unconvincing. Label "sum of parts" if you must. Kept in RFD in 2006 by consensus per Talk:have a wank. --Dan Polansky (talk) 08:18, 24 September 2022 (UTC)

have a break

To have a short rest period from work, study, etc.

SOP: have (“to undertake or perform”) + a break (“a rest or pause, usually from work.”). No reason to keep this as a translation hub either, as take a break can do that job. Theknightwho (talk) 01:05, 15 June 2022 (UTC)

@Theknightwho: Wouldn't you advocate for the deletion of take a break for the same reason (take 33.: "To practice; perform; execute; carry out; do.")? — Fytcha〈 T | L | C 〉 01:36, 15 June 2022 (UTC)

Hmmm. Now I think about it, there are subtle distinctions in meaning here, but I can't quite put my finger on it. I favour have a break if I'm talking about a brief rest, but take a break if I mean a more significant break for an extended period (e.g. a career break). Theknightwho (talk) 01:50, 15 June 2022 (UTC)

Make sure it's listed in Appendix:DoHaveMakeTake and then hard-redirect to the bare noun.​—msh210℠ (talk) 10:21, 15 June 2022 (UTC)

Delete or redirect as msh says. - -sche (discuss) 08:35, 5 July 2022 (UTC)

List at Appendix:DoHaveMakeTake and hard redirect to take a break (moving translations to there). - excarnateSojourner (talk | contrib) 04:13, 24 September 2022 (UTC)

• Keep and soft redirect to take a break if it is a synonym. Soft redirect is better than hard redirect, offering less of a surprise. If it is not a synonym, keep and explain the difference in a usage note. Do not redirect to the appendix: these are unwieldy for lexicographical information. If there is not enough support for the preferred outcome, at least hard redirect to take a break, not to the appendix, to direct the reader to translations, and keep listing it as a synonym there. --Dan Polansky (talk) 08:06, 24 September 2022 (UTC)

knocked over with a feather

Rfd-sense: "Adjective: (idiomatic, informal, hyperbolic) surprised.

This is most straighforwardly read as past and past participle of knock down with a feather. Perhaps someone can produce unambiguous evidence of adjectivity, such comparability/gradability, distinct meaning, or attributive use. Predicate use appears identical to passive use. DCDuring (talk) 19:48, 16 June 2022 (UTC)

Delete. — Fytcha〈 T | L | C 〉 19:01, 20 June 2022 (UTC)

possession of interest

Moved from RFV. There is a selection of cites on the citations page, but it looks NISOP. Kiwima (talk) 01:51, 25 June 2022 (UTC)

This is bizarre: an old 2006 import: "The act of one caring for or one's interest over something. You are always talking about your clothes, but that is not in my possession of interest." That sentence sounds unnatural to me and I cannot easily find any comparable sentence in Google. I think it might be confusion over a sentence like "you have nothing in your possession [that is] of interest to me", which of course doesn't work with this entry lemma. Equinox ◑ 15:38, 5 May 2022 (UTC)

cited. I put a selection of what I found on the citations page. It does seem to crop up in a number of legal or quasi-legal writings. Looks a bit SOP to me. What do others think? Kiwima (talk) 21:54, 21 June 2022 (UTC)

To me, the fact that term this doesn't turn up in any legal dictionaries suggests strongly that it is SOP. Most of the collected cites seem to use it literally to mean "the fact of possessing an interest in something". The Ryan cite (which is patently not from 2022... Gutenberg has a version of that text from 1916) probably means "possessing (monetary) interest (on capital)". This, that and the other (talk) 00:59, 22 June 2022 (UTC)

Delete - none of the citations show it being used as a technical term, but merely refer to the literal possession of a (legal) interest. Theknightwho (talk) 01:57, 25 June 2022 (UTC)

Delete – it is just as easy to cite possession of intent, but this collocation too is just a sum of parts.  --Lambiam 10:18, 25 June 2022 (UTC)

Delete: not, as far as I am aware, a legal term of art. — Sgconlaw (talk) 19:23, 28 June 2022 (UTC)

• Not found in Black's Law Dictionary, the closest thing being a possessory interest. bd2412 T 21:09, 16 July 2022 (UTC)

  Definitely not the same thing, either. A possessory interest is a legal interest held by virtue of being in possession of something. On the other hand, anyone with any kind of legal interest can be described as having "possession of interest". I'd argue it's probably nonstandard, as it treats interest as an uncountable noun while using a sense that is countable (sense 5 / a yet unadded formal legal sense), but that doesn't make it special. Theknightwho (talk) 01:33, 10 August 2022 (UTC)

July 2022

ministry of education

SOP. — Fytcha〈 T | L | C 〉 11:23, 4 July 2022 (UTC)

Keep as a translation hub. ·~ dictátor·mundꟾ 14:12, 5 July 2022 (UTC)

@Inqilābī: Can you try to provide two qualifying translations then? I would be surprised if this is THUBable. — Fytcha〈 T | L | C 〉 16:18, 5 July 2022 (UTC)

@Inqilābī: The Bengali translation that you've added doesn't seem to qualify, seeing that it is শিক্ষা + মন্ত্রক. Neither does the Icelandic one: menntamál + ráðuneyti — Fytcha〈 T | L | C 〉 14:35, 7 July 2022 (UTC)

To my native ear, it is a valid compound word. ·~ dictátor·mundꟾ 08:39, 13 July 2022 (UTC)

@Inqilābī: I don't see how that is relevant here. Even if it's a valid compound (I don't doubt that), it does not qualify per WT:THUB. — Fytcha〈 T | L | C 〉 12:49, 13 July 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for showing me that page. And I had misunderstood you. ·~ dictátor·mundꟾ 16:45, 13 July 2022 (UTC)

Keep I usually treat it as a name: Translating Bildungsministerium into English depends on the specific government/country (and time). Is it Department of Education (e. g. US) or Ministry of Education (e. g. Singapore)? You could ask the same question in the reverse direction. Therefore it’s difficult/problematic to make this entry serve as a WT:THUB.

On the other hand it’s the lower-case version we’re talking about, i. e. not a name. I think ministry/department of (without education) has a certain idiomaticity to it. Although saying book department is legal, department of books makes it “obvious” we’re talking about a government entity (or similar) and not a section in a department store. However, I’m afraid an entry ministry of would not meet WT’s policies. I therefore vote to keep this entry. To be fair, all this aforementioned information could be rendered as a Usage Notes section in ministry [some {{usex}} are already there]. ‑‑Kai Burghardt (talk) 22:15, 8 September 2022 (UTC)

Delete as SoP. — Sgconlaw (talk) 15:19, 5 July 2022 (UTC)

Keep as t-hub. I see at least three one-word translations there. AG202 (talk) 15:43, 5 July 2022 (UTC)

@AG202: One-wordness is irrelevant. The Finnish and Swedish translations don't qualify per WT:THUB. — Fytcha〈 T | L | C 〉 16:05, 5 July 2022 (UTC)

You're right, I'll abstain here then. AG202 (talk) 16:10, 5 July 2022 (UTC)

• Czech ministerstvo školství is interesting since it could also have been ministerstvo vzdělání but it is the former that is most customary, the latter having a tiny fraction of the former's frequency. Does any other language have anything like that? google:"ministerstvo školství", google:"ministerstvo vzdělání". --Dan Polansky (talk) 11:44, 7 September 2022 (UTC)

Delete as SoP. - excarnateSojourner (talk | contrib) 23:55, 10 October 2022 (UTC)

• Err on the side of keeping. The Czech translation is interesting. diff shows a correction of a Bengali translation, showing that the translation may be not an entirely obvious thing. I would bet that more interesting translations can be found. As for utility via page views, this performs much better than noncholestatic.[7] If this gets deleted, the translator can use Wikidata:Q2269756: ministry of education, where the translations are not traceable to anything; here we have a chance to attest them. Also, from Wikidata, this will connect at least 8 terms of languages that form long solid compounds; this is not approved for THUB and is not so strong, but is not entirely without force. --Dan Polansky (talk) 08:50, 15 October 2022 (UTC)

critical reception

SOP — SURJECTION ^{/ T / C / L /} 20:16, 5 July 2022 (UTC)

Weak keep per the prior knowledge test at WT:IDIOM, since it’s a specific meaning tailored to the arts. Also, side note, but reception doesn’t seem to cover this as well as it should. AG202 (talk) 23:17, 5 July 2022 (UTC)

I think it is mostly sense 4 "a reaction". I agree this is probably SOP, but I won't be sad if it stays, the phrase is quite set, the concept is almost always expressed in exactly this way, and it would be very easy to misunderstand critical in the "negative" sense. Letter of the law is probably a delete, but I am not going to vote that way. Abstain. - TheDaveRoss 12:27, 7 July 2022 (UTC)

On one hand, this is SOP. On the other hand, it's a rather set phrase. But back on the first hand, reception by itself can also be used with the same meaning (if you talk about the reception of a film by critics, or critics' + reception of it, as alternatives to saying its critical + reception), as can receive (if you talk about how a film was received + by critics). Abstain for now, leaning weakly towards delete. - -sche (discuss) 15:21, 7 July 2022 (UTC)

• Err on the side of keep if only because "critical reception" as it is usually used disambiguates the adjective: it refers to reception by critics, whether positive or critical. Nor is the reception vital. This fact seems to be a part of a person's lexical knowledge. This argument is fairly weak, though. --Dan Polansky (talk) 10:43, 6 November 2022 (UTC)
• RFD-kept: no consensus for deletion (WT:VPRFD). --Dan Polansky (talk) 10:24, 4 January 2023 (UTC)

cleric in minor orders

SOP. Graham11 (talk) 04:41, 9 July 2022 (UTC)

A member of one of the four minor orders of the Catholic Church.

Keep for a few reasons:

• It passes the once upon a time test at WT:IDIOM as it’s irregular. For example, A cleric in minor orders could no longer see his vocation as a steppingstone to the priesthood. and Don Josef Galindo y Soriano was fiel ejecutor and don Francisco Galindo y Soriano the other cleric in minor orders (he also had a house on the town square).
• It passes WT:TENNIS as it’s a profession.
• It passes the in between test as it’s tightly bound.

Theknightwho (talk) 04:52, 9 July 2022 (UTC)

@Theknightwho What about it is irregular such that it would pass the once-upon-a-time test?

Re WT:TENNIS, provided that we mean profession in the sense of professional occupation (sense 2), it's more a class of professions (acolyte, exorcist, etc.) than a profession unto itself. Graham11 (talk) 05:03, 9 July 2022 (UTC)

It’s irregular because minor orders is a countable plural, which should take the definite article (“cleric in the minor orders”), but it doesn’t for some reason.

If you look at the quotations, they’re clearly using the term as the primary term for someone’s profession. In any event, most terms for professions that we have are classes of more specific professions (e.g. there are many kinds of lawyer). Theknightwho (talk) 05:13, 9 July 2022 (UTC)

What about these quotations? Some of them show the same characteristics outside of the nominated phrase. Chuck Entz (talk) 05:40, 9 July 2022 (UTC)

And also “monk in minor orders”,^[8][9][10] “prelate in minor orders”^[11] and “commendator in minor orders”.^[12]  --Lambiam 09:01, 9 July 2022 (UTC)

Hmmm - should we have in minor orders as an adjective? Or convert minor orders to a proper noun? Theknightwho (talk) 15:10, 9 July 2022 (UTC)

Technically I think in minor orders would be a prepositional phrase (like in Abraham's bosom, in broad daylight etc; it doesn't seem to meet tests of adjectivity), but AFAICT it'd be SOP as just "in" + "minor orders". I also don't see why "minor orders" would be proper noun, at least not in general, though you could capitalize it to express greater specificity and hence proper-noun-ness, like you could do with the Church or the Website or other things. (And if Talk:Church is to be followed, we could have near-duplicate entries for Everything, But Capitalized... but "church" and "minor orders" etc would still be common nouns AFAICT.) - -sche (discuss) 02:05, 25 July 2022 (UTC)

Move to a collocations section in "minor orders". To one Theknightwho's points: it's not a profession ("porter" or "exorcist" could be considered a profession, but not "cleric in minor orders", since that's just a catchall term, akin to "healthcare professional"). Andrew Sheedy (talk) 04:54, 14 July 2022 (UTC)

It is a profession, as demonstrated by the quotes. A doctor doesn't stop being a doctor just because they become a cardiologist. Theknightwho (talk) 01:42, 22 July 2022 (UTC)

I'm inclined to delete because it does seem to be a SOP catchall descriptor, and only about one-fifth at most (historically less) of all the uses of "(whatever) in minor orders", and about 1/17th at most of the various phrases "minor orders" occurs in. It's not tightly bound, indeed the parts can be scattered around a sentence, because it's just a description (and not the title of a profession, but a description of a class of professions):

• 2009, Joseph Bergin, Church, Society and Religious Change in France, 1580-1730, page 64:

  Huge numbers of pre-teenage boys were administered the tonsure, the first of the 'minor' orders, which technically made them clerics and therefore capable of holding 'simple' benefices (that is, without cure of souls).

Btw cleric in the minor orders with the also occurs. - -sche (discuss) 02:05, 25 July 2022 (UTC)

Delete as SOP (and mention as a collocation if desired). Reviving this discussion a bit: a better question is whether in minor orders by itself merits an entry, which @Theknightwho, -sche touched on above. I think in orders, meaning "ordained" (search e.g. "monk in orders"), probably does, since someone unfamiliar with church usage would otherwise need to either figure out that it refers to holy orders or scroll down to sense 13 of order to figure it out, and even then the definition given there isn't substitutable. Then, if in orders has an entry, I suspect it's harder to justify leaving out in minor orders since it's derivative of in orders and not just an ellipsis of "in the minor orders" as suggested above (the latter is used but is more obviously SOP). —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 00:21, 29 November 2022 (UTC)

God Defend New Zealand

The Call of South Africa

Per above. However, God Save the King / Queen and Star-Spangled Banner may be kept due to the presence of multiple senses in the entry (and also because the USA and the UK are the 2 most important Anglophone countries — and of course, the deletion proposal of the above terms are from the perspective of English; and so for example, French Marseillaise, Japanese 君が代, German Deutschlandlied, Hebrew הַתִּקְוָה‎ are entry-worthy from the perspective of these languages). ·~ dictátor·mundꟾ 01:54, 10 July 2022 (UTC)

I agree we should keep any that have additional senses, but I don't agree that we should have entries for national anthems based on the perceived importance of countries. Either they're lexically relevant or they're not, so I'm in favour of adding God Save the Queen/King and the Star-Spangled Banner to this as well, referring only to the national anthem senses. Theknightwho (talk) 13:20, 10 July 2022 (UTC)

• Keep all except The Call of South Africa, which is basically SOP and a purely encyclopic title and Poland is Not Yet Lost, same. The rest are either single words, or in the case of Marcha Real and O Canada, not immediately parseable as names of anthems. bd2412 T 18:13, 10 July 2022 (UTC)
• Delete unless (1) it is a single word; or (2) it has at least one sense that is not simply "national anthem of XYZ". Thus, "The Call of South Africa", "God Defend New Zealand", "Marcha Real", and "O Canada" should go. I agree with @Theknightwho that trying to determine the perceived importance of countries is inappropriate and unworkable. — Sgconlaw (talk) 18:51, 10 July 2022 (UTC)
  • I would have no idea what "O Canada" intends, and "Marcha Real" (literally "Royal March") does not name any specific country, so the fact that it is the anthem of Spain is idiomatic to the phrase. bd2412 T 00:42, 11 July 2022 (UTC)
    • @BD2412: I feel the names of national anthems are essentially more suitable material for Wikipedia, and am minded only to make the two exceptions which I previously mentioned. — Sgconlaw (talk) 04:26, 11 July 2022 (UTC)
      • I am not exceptionally attached to the two-word names. I find them idiomatic, but would not lose sleep over them if they were deleted. We might have a soft redirect from those to Wikipedia. bd2412 T 05:54, 11 July 2022 (UTC)

If we're keeping some of them, then we should keep all. I agree with Theknightwho that we shouldn't be giving increased relevance to the US & UK because they're the "2 most important Anglophone countries" (debatable). If the issue is that the others don't have additional senses, then send them to RFV. AG202 (talk) 22:40, 10 July 2022 (UTC)

Delete all for being encyclopedic. Binarystep (talk) 04:37, 11 July 2022 (UTC)

@Binarystep: I can see that for most of them, but for Hatikva and Kimigayo as single words, we should be able to parse their meaning as words here. bd2412 T 03:55, 12 July 2022 (UTC)

I don't understand how they're less encyclopedic simply because they have one-word titles. I'm aware there's precedent, since we also have pages for Thumbelina and Iliad, but that doesn't seem right to me. If these titles aren't being used as words (like Bluebeard and Godzilla), and they don't have unique translations (like Mona Lisa and Chopsticks), I don't see how they're within our jurisdiction. We don't include newer works like Rashomon or Ficciones, and I don't agree with any policy that'd give preferential treatment to older works for no reason other than their age. If anything, we should move non-lexical work titles to an appendix. Binarystep (talk) 04:29, 12 July 2022 (UTC)

@Binarystep: actually I’m happy for all names of national anthems except those that have an idiomatic sense to be deleted, including the single-word ones. We seem to be wedded to single-word entries for some reason, though. — Sgconlaw (talk) 04:34, 12 July 2022 (UTC)

@Binarystep, Sgconlaw: Unlike Rashomon, which is a made-up word without prior meaning, Hatikva and Kimigayo are actual words with prior meaning. These are transliterations from the original Hebrew and Japanese, respectively. We do, as it happens, have an entry for ficciones as a word. bd2412 T 17:15, 12 July 2022 (UTC)

I'm not referring to their uses as words, though, I'm referring to their uses as the titles of artistic works. Binarystep (talk) 22:44, 12 July 2022 (UTC)

I don't see how they can be separated out. They exist as words parseable in English because they are used as titles in other scripts. bd2412 T 19:08, 13 July 2022 (UTC)

The policy is WT:NSE; we do include many names of specific entities, which was voted on. NSE are up to editor discretion. --18:10, 22 August 2022 (UTC)

Delete the multi-word ones, at least (God Defend New Zealand, Marcha Real, O Canada, The Call of South Africa, and I would add Poland is Not Yet Lost). We don't include (relatively) modern book titles like Swift's A Modest Proposal or Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, either. Single-word ones like Marseillaise seem at least more word-like (compare Iliad). Wiktionary:Tea room/2022/June#Names_of_national_anthems. - -sche (discuss) 05:16, 11 July 2022 (UTC)

Oops, I mistakenly excluded the Polish anthem. Now added. ·~ dictátor·mundꟾ 16:23, 11 July 2022 (UTC)

Keep all. Interesting how a battery of non-U.S. terms are nominated for deletion once again while the American equivalent isn't. WordyAndNerdy (talk) 02:45, 22 July 2022 (UTC)

If these are deleted, I will immediately nominate the two arbitrary exceptions on the same grounds. Theknightwho (talk) 13:59, 23 July 2022 (UTC)

Delete all, this doesn't belong in the mainspace. PUC – 10:27, 23 July 2022 (UTC)

• Keep the single-word ones. Governed by WT:NSE, so this is up to editors. "encyclopedic content" is not a CFI rationale and does not give us any guide as to which NSE to keep and which to delete. --Dan Polansky (talk) 18:10, 22 August 2022 (UTC)

  Keep all to simplify the closure. The multi-word ones are less worthy of keeping, but no harm is done if we keep them as well, and we can per WT:NSE. Those who dislike multi-word names in a dictionary won't visit the entries by accident, seeing immediately what they are. Let this be deleted by deletionists if wished. And if we consider The Call of South Africa and its German translation Die Stimme Südafrikas, this is not a word-for-word translation since "Call" is not obviously "Stimme". Admittedly, considering translations as worthwhile would allow many names of specific entities; OTOH, if we allow Washington County without translations, then these are more lexicographically worthwhile than this county. --Dan Polansky (talk) 10:54, 6 November 2022 (UTC)

I see 5:3 delete:keep, which would be no consensus for deletion. Any more input to make the result less equivocal? (The word "encyclopedic" ought to be banned from RFD discussions as practically meaningless.) --Dan Polansky (talk) 09:10, 4 January 2023 (UTC)

Given that several of the keep votes were qualified, it makes absolutely no sense to give a numerical tally for all the terms as a whole. Your unwillingness or inability to understand what encyclopaedic content is does not make it any less relevant. You just don't understand the difference between Wikipedia and Wiktionary. Competence is required for RFD closures, and I'm sorry to say that you lack it. Theknightwho (talk) 18:01, 6 January 2023 (UTC)

The idea of "encyclopedic" content in relation to proper names is nonsense as it does not tell us which proper names to keep and which to delete. Thus, no one has ever explained why "God Defend New Zealand" is "encyclopedic" while "United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland" is not. Ideally, the words "encyclopedic" and "lexical" ought to be banned from RFDs, and substantive differentia ought to be invoked instead, until these words can be given anything resembling operational practical meaning that has anything like bearing on actual inclusion and exclusion. Until that happens, the word "encyclopedic" is just a thin veil behind which "I don't like it" is hidden, or something of the sort. --Dan Polansky (talk) 18:38, 6 January 2023 (UTC)

Song of the Three Holy Children

Apparently not a real thing - just part of Prayer of Azariah and Song of the Three Holy Children? Dunderdool (talk) 14:37, 12 July 2022 (UTC)

Send to RFV. AG202 (talk) 15:08, 12 July 2022 (UTC)

There is no doubt the term can be found used on its own,^[13] even as a book title.^[14][15][16] But is this lexical material?  --Lambiam 09:22, 13 July 2022 (UTC)

@Lambiam That wasn't the RFD rationale provided though, hence when I suggested to send it to RFV. However, seeing that it can be cited, I'd vote Keep, based on the fact that we have entries for every book in the Bible, including other books like 1 Maccabees which are also found in the Apocrypha. See also: Category:en:Books of the Bible. It would be very strange to have all of those but then delete this one (though it's up for debate on whether or not this is considered its own book, but that's another conversation). Also, the only RFD that I was able to find thus far at Talk:1 Chronicles, ended in consensus for keeping the entry. AG202 (talk) 09:45, 13 July 2022 (UTC)

Delete – encyclopedic material, not lexical.  --Lambiam 09:22, 13 July 2022 (UTC)

Delete for sure, I agree with Lambiam. Acolyte of Ice (talk) 09:24, 13 July 2022 (UTC)

• Keep per WT:LEMMING[17]. Governed by WT:NSE. Multi-word names of literary works are more liable to be deleted, unlike Lysistrata and Odyssey. The topic is covered at User_talk:Dan_Polansky/2018#Inclusion of literary works. NSE do not have clear criteria and the lemming principle is a nice ad hoc decision aid. The deletion rationale "encyclopedic material" does not refer to policy and does not explain which literary works should be kept; no discernment has been laid bare. --Dan Polansky (talk) 17:43, 22 August 2022 (UTC)

RFD-kept by no consensus. It's been almost 4 months + the {{look}} template. AG202 (talk) 02:08, 19 December 2022 (UTC)

Sorry, AG, I disagree with this. The Bible book is called Prayer of Azariah and Song of the Three Holy Children, not just Song of the Three Holy Children. Dan Polansky's argument is characteristically poor, as Merriam-Webster's entry is probably a mistake. Flackofnubs (talk) 09:28, 23 December 2022 (UTC)

Re: "Dan Polansky's argument is characteristically poor" is itself a low-quality argument: a decent criticism of argument involves identification of some part or aspect of the argument that is low-quality. Flackofnubs is Wonderfool, and on my wiki, he would be forbidden from participation in RFD process: it is a person that is banned but the user accounts are tolerated, not because editors want to tolerate them, but because if they won't, the person will keep on creating new accounts anyway and new accounts are going to be target of suspicion of being Wonderfool. --Dan Polansky (talk) 08:36, 4 January 2023 (UTC)

• RFD-kept as no consensus for deletion. I discount Wonderfool (Dunderdool, Flackofnubs). Other than that, there are two keeps and two deletes. As for policy, it leaves editor discretion (WT:NSE). The deletionists had enough time to vote delete, and did not take the opportunity. The argument "encyclopedic material, not lexical" is meaningless on the surface of it; in what sense of "lexical", what definition, is a multi-word proper name not "lexical"? A case could be made that this particular proper name should not be kept, but no serious attempt has been made to make the case. --Dan Polansky (talk) 08:42, 4 January 2023 (UTC)

RFD deleted - overriding the bad faith closure above, there is clearly a consensus to delete. Plus, "by the strength of argument", the lemming non-policy is not persuasive, as it is not relevant. And if it's really needed then I also vote delete, which makes the consensus for deletion unassailable. Theknightwho (talk) 17:53, 6 January 2023 (UTC)

There was no consensus: there were 2 keeps and 3 deletes, where one of the deletes was by Wonderfool; Wonderfool ought not count. The above is incorrect and ought to be undone. The phrase "encyclopedic material, not lexical" is meaningless, as said. --Dan Polansky (talk) 18:40, 6 January 2023 (UTC)

Please read WT:NOT. Theknightwho (talk) 18:41, 6 January 2023 (UTC)

I am not anyone's subordinate here and do not accept imperatives. All the peddlers of the "encyclopedic content" argument have to explain why United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland is not encyclopedic content, or World War II; good luck. --Dan Polansky (talk) 18:44, 6 January 2023 (UTC)

kick oneself in the ass

A redirect to kick. Not informative! Equinox ◑ 15:10, 13 July 2022 (UTC)

Delete. Shouldn’t it be kick one's ass? ·~ dictátor·mundꟾ 17:06, 13 July 2022 (UTC)

Not quite. To kick one's ass is to physically beat someone up, while kicking oneself in the ass refers to (usually verbal) self-loathing. Binarystep (talk) 07:00, 14 July 2022 (UTC)

kick oneself also redirects to kick, which seems strange given this is clearly idiomatic, and seems to only be used to refer to rebuking oneself (vs. rebuking someone else). WordyAndNerdy (talk) 07:13, 14 July 2022 (UTC)

kick oneself was changed to a redirect by @Graham11 on 5 July (“Merging contents as the term is already defined at kick using the "reflexive" label”). J3133 (talk) 10:17, 14 July 2022 (UTC)

Part of a pattern of breaking things that don't need fixing. WordyAndNerdy (talk) 19:52, 14 July 2022 (UTC)

It should have been nominated for deletion, but that seems reasonable enough. Theknightwho (talk) 16:49, 24 July 2022 (UTC)

kick one's ass is to literally or metaphorically beat oneself up. kick someone's ass is to literally or metaphorically beat someone else up. Facts707 (talk) 04:18, 29 August 2022 (UTC)

pine torch

SOP Dunderdool (talk) 15:15, 17 July 2022 (UTC)

Keep. Firstly, it’s a compound word and also a rather basic term. Secondly, there are valid translations of this word in other languages. Further, other dictionaries also keep this term. ·~ dictátor·mundꟾ 12:02, 18 July 2022 (UTC)

Yeah, but Lexico sucks even more than Wiktionary Dunderdool (talk) 12:49, 18 July 2022 (UTC)

Wiktionarians love material+object SOPs, see also Talk:mink coat. While this one should probably be kept as a THUB, the translations should be checked first; despite its composition, Japanese 松明 seems to mean torch from any of a variety of burnable materials, not only pine wood. — Fytcha〈 T | L | C 〉 16:11, 20 July 2022 (UTC)

Delete. - TheDaveRoss 12:46, 28 July 2022 (UTC)

"Yeah, but Lexico sucks even more than Wiktionary". Is this a crusade of sorts? DonnanZ (talk) 19:29, 3 August 2022 (UTC)

• Keep per WT:THUB: the translations do not appear to be compounds or the like. --Dan Polansky (talk) 19:21, 3 September 2022 (UTC)
• Keep. It's correct. Unfortunately Lexico has been taken down and replaced by Dictionary.com, a very poor substitute. DonnanZ (talk) 13:50, 22 December 2022 (UTC)

Delete, nothing idiomatic about it and I don't think it's worth keeping as a translation hub. Ultimateria (talk) 20:37, 31 December 2022 (UTC)

• RFD-kept: no consensus for deletion. The translation hub argument has some force on the face of it, e.g. via Latin taeda and Spanish ocote, but whether they are really accurate we do not know. --Dan Polansky (talk) 09:02, 4 January 2023 (UTC)

August 2022

short for

Seems SOP, same kind of for as in "English for", "German for" etc. — Fytcha〈 T | L | C 〉 13:34, 13 August 2022 (UTC)

And for short? Clearly different. DonnanZ (talk) 14:17, 13 August 2022 (UTC)

That has absolutely NOTHING to do with the discussion. Vininn126 (talk) 14:45, 13 August 2022 (UTC)

Better with a syntax or collocation template. Vininn126 (talk) 14:45, 13 August 2022 (UTC)

Delete as SoP. — Sgconlaw (talk) 18:45, 13 August 2022 (UTC)

Keep. Being allegedly SoP doesn't seem to be the real reason. Wiktionary:Beer_parlour/2022/August#Template:short_for_-_redundant? DonnanZ (talk) 08:36, 14 August 2022 (UTC)

Delete, SOP. PUC – 09:30, 14 August 2022 (UTC)

Comment – Worth noting that "short" is a noun here, which has been somewhat obscured by the fact that it's preserved in this set expression. This could (and should) be treated at short (perhaps already is, I didn't look – edit I looked, it's not); whether we need this entry as well I'm ambivalent on. Ƿidsiþ 14:18, 17 August 2022 (UTC)

I'm not convinced - seems like a predicative adjective. You might say "don't and can't are short for do not and cannot", but you wouldn't say they are "shorts" for them. Theknightwho (talk) 13:04, 18 August 2022 (UTC)

Yeah, I'm about 99% sure it's still an adjective here. Vininn126 (talk) 13:08, 18 August 2022 (UTC)

Lexico calls it a phrase, which I accept, it's good enough for me. But I take "short" itself to be an adjective, as in "short form", the short form of. DonnanZ (talk) 12:49, 19 August 2022 (UTC)

At least historically, it was a noun here. In fact one used to say "it's a/the short for…". I suppose as the article has disappeared, it's been reinterpreted as an adjective, but it doesn't entirely make sense as an adjective (to me). As you say, it's more like a stand-in for the noun phrase "short form". Ƿidsiþ 06:30, 20 August 2022 (UTC)

There are entries for short form (noun, created in 2004), and shortform (adjective) - Lexico lists the adjective short-form. The noun would probably fail COALMINE on a technicality, but it's still valuable as an entry. DonnanZ (talk) 08:44, 20 August 2022 (UTC)

• Keep, this does not seem to be an obvious construction as a sum of parts. bd2412 T 07:10, 8 September 2022 (UTC)
• Keep per above. --Overlordnat1 (talk) 07:58, 28 September 2022 (UTC)
• RFD-kept: no consensus for deletion (WT:VP). --Dan Polansky (talk) 08:49, 4 January 2023 (UTC)

purpose

Rfd-sense: The reason for which something is done, or the reason it is done in a particular way.

This sense is redundant to sense 1. I have just changed sense 1 from

An objective to be reached; a target; an aim; a goal.

to

The end for which an action or activity is done, an endeavor is undertaken, an artifact or its feature is made or an entity exists.

so it is now even clearer than it was before that this is redundant. I have checked multiple dictionaries to see whether these could be different senses, and I do not see that. --Dan Polansky (talk) 07:20, 16 August 2022 (UTC)

I doubt that you could find citations that unambiguously support each element of your rewritten definition 1. See WT:RFVE#purpose for more. DCDuring (talk) 16:26, 17 August 2022 (UTC)

The definition of the main sense now reads "The end for which something is done, is made or exists." I still maintain that the RFD-nominated definition is redundant and should be removed. --Dan Polansky (talk) 08:26, 19 August 2022 (UTC)

Deleted, uncited and redundant. - -sche (discuss) 22:35, 4 January 2023 (UTC)

While I am glad the sense is gone, my position has been that at least two delete votes are required to establish consensus, which did not happen here; the vote of the closer does not count toward that tally unless the closer voted previously. Would anyone consider posting an additional delete vote? --Dan Polansky (talk) 07:19, 5 January 2023 (UTC)

be ashamed and/or I'm ashamed

I dunno, it seems we might want to delete or merge these... Dunderdool (talk) 09:38, 18 August 2022 (UTC)

That'd be a case for WT:RFM then. AG202 (talk) 13:19, 18 August 2022 (UTC)

• RFD-kept: no consensus for deletion. The rationale is low-quality; it states no objective facts but rather some editor's subjective state; the editor being the banned person Wonderfool is an aggravating circumstance. On substance, one of the entries is a translation hub while the other one is a phrasebook entry, which explains why we have two of them and why they make sense as separate entries. (WT:VPRFD) --Dan Polansky (talk) 08:56, 4 January 2023 (UTC)

knicker drawer

Good luck convincing me this is not SOP @SemperBlotto Dunderdool (talk) 09:59, 19 August 2022 (UTC)

Keep per WT:HOSPITAL. A knicker drawer would be thought to contain knickerbockers in US English, rather than the correct definition. Binarystep (talk) 10:20, 19 August 2022 (UTC)

Would you accept pants drawer for those reasons? Dunderdool (talk) 18:26, 19 August 2022 (UTC)

Keep, I suspect it's Br. English. Every self-respecting female has a knicker drawer, I guess. DonnanZ (talk) 12:54, 19 August 2022 (UTC)

Undecided - it seems like SOP to me but I’m not sure how confusing it would be to Americans. As Dunderdool (talk) says though, we would probably need an entry for pants drawer if we keep this but also knickers drawer (as knickers, as well as knicker, can mean knickerbocker(s)) - pant drawer and underpant drawer don’t seem to be actually used though and I wouldn’t support the creation of underpants drawer, sock drawer, socks drawer, pyjama drawer, pyjamas drawer, pajama drawer or pajamas drawer as there’s no room for confusion with those phrases. Overlordnat1 (talk) 01:26, 22 August 2022 (UTC)

Delete: just because a word means something different in the US vs UK doesn't mean we need every phrase containing it. That knicker(s) and hence knicker drawer is now rare in the US is the one thing that gives me pause, since that could make it a dialect-specific phrase like banana peel ... but because that extends to any phrase containing knickers, I don't think it saves knicker drawer: blue knickers and knicker(s) sale and they wore Union Jack knickers likewise differ in meaning between the US (where they'd be little used) and UK . . . because knickers differs in meaning, knickers is the idiomatic word, not *knicker drawer or *wear Union Jack knickers. (Ditto if you replace knickers with pants: the difference in US vs UK pants doesn't make *wear Union Jack pants also idiomatic.) Hence, I disagree WT:HOSPITAL applies, going by its description ("terms that are not recognized in a different dialect although all constituents are understood") : here, it's a constituent which may not be understood correctly between dialects, the phrase is correctly understood as meaning knicker + drawer = a drawer for knickers, and insofar as they use the word knickers both would refer to a drawer specifically for knickers as a knicker drawer (unlike how they differ in whether the peel on a banana is a banana peel or banana skin), just like blue knickers are knickers that are blue and knickers that are blue would be described as blue knickers, despite the dialects having different ideas of what knickers are. - -sche (discuss) 04:37, 22 August 2022 (UTC)

Delete. A phrase like "He took a pair of knickers out of the drawer" would also have monumentally different implications in the US vs. the UK, but I don't think anyone would seriously suggest creating an entry for it. Chuck Entz (talk) 05:29, 22 August 2022 (UTC)

Comment: I suspect WF doesn't wear knickers, but this normally uses the singular form of (a pair of, pairs of) knickers, as explained at knicker, although usage of knickers drawer can be found. I think it's worth keeping as an example of that. DonnanZ (talk) 11:16, 22 August 2022 (UTC)

Keep - this refers to underwear, not just knickers. Theknightwho (talk) 19:34, 22 August 2022 (UTC)

I personally say ‘socks drawer’ to describe the drawer where I keep both my socks and (under)pants but I still don’t think socks drawer deserves an entry on that basis (though the ‘banana skin/peel’ and ‘in (the) hospital’ argument is almost convincing, so I’m still abstaining) Overlordnat1 (talk) 21:51, 22 August 2022 (UTC)

Delete as SoP. — Sgconlaw (talk) 11:53, 7 September 2022 (UTC)

• Abstain. So what does "knicker drawer" contain? It does not contain "knicker", but from knicker we learn: "(used attributively as a modifier) Of or relating to knickers." We have to navigate to knickers, and there we get "(UK, New Zealand) Women's underpants." And lemmings do not have the phrase: “knicker drawer”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.. The entry sure does a convenience service since the user does not need to click through to get to the meaning, but other than that, the case seems hard to make. OTOH, if WT:HOSPITAL is taken seriously ("Terms that are not recognized in a different dialect although all constituents are understood"), this could be a keeper, except that the part "all constituents are understood" is probably to be read as "all constituents are understood [in that dialect]", and it is not true that the constituent "knickers" is understood in the U.S. to mean woman's underwear. knicker drawer does not have a label, but if one believes the label in knickers, it probably should have one. The arguments made by -sche and Chuck have some force. But telephone box and banana peel given as examples at WT:HOSPITAL do not seem so much different from this, do they? One difference is that telephone box and its synonyms are in the lemmings (dictionaries). Is there anything like consensual support for WT:HOSPITAL or is it a case of someone editing the surviving idioms page without consensus, like so many others? --Dan Polansky (talk) 12:24, 7 September 2022 (UTC)
• RFD-kept: no consensus for deletion (WT:VPRFD). --Dan Polansky (talk) 08:53, 4 January 2023 (UTC)

Winnie the Pooh

Rfd-sense "An English children's book series and the spun-off Disney franchise, involving several anthropomorphic animals, named for the bear character." The quotes here are not a valid reason to keep it. Yes, they're references outside of the fictional context, but any series or franchise could be used this way. There are no figurative or idiomatic uses here; "Winnie-the-Pooh wallpaper" just means "wallpaper with a Winnie the Pooh theme/styling etc.", where Winnie the Pooh could be replaced by anything else. Therefore those quotes are not a reason to keep this entry. — SURJECTION ^{/ T / C / L /} 08:51, 22 August 2022 (UTC)

Sense 2 "The bear from the series, noted for his sweet, simple nature, and his love of honey" is likewise suspect. If it has appropriate figurative uses, the definition should be reworded and the reference should be detailed in the etymology section. — SURJECTION ^{/ T / C / L /} 08:52, 22 August 2022 (UTC)

Keep the literal definition. The non-literal quotations show that the literal definition can be kept. There is nothing in WT:FICTION to require us to remove literal definitions. The translations are likely to fit the literal definition. The literal definition can be expanded to indicate qualities that are likely to be picked up by non-literal uses. The literal definition still correctly matches the literal uses of the term, and those are valid uses. The requirement of non-literal use is there to limit inclusion of such terms but does not require us to abandon literal definitions. --Dan Polansky (talk) 16:31, 22 August 2022 (UTC)

The applicable text of the policy: "With respect to names of persons or places from fictional universes, they shall not be included unless they are used out of context in an attributive sense." So we need uses out of context in an attributive sense. Such quotations are in the entry, as far as I can tell, so the fictional character is already attested as required.

As for "they're references outside of the fictional context, but any series or franchise could be used this way", that argument admits the quotes meet the policy and then dismisses it anyway; it seems to be a CFI override, invoking slippery slope and apparently criticizing the policy for having a requirement that "any series or franchise" could satisfy. The policy does not require any "idiomatic" or "figurative" uses of the book series sense. The argument is made outside of the policy. --Dan Polansky (talk) 16:59, 22 August 2022 (UTC)

If the policy seriously does not prevent entries like this, the policy needs to be changed. It is completely bonkers to allow encyclopedic material, such as names of fictional franchises, on the basis that they are used in expressions like "X wallpaper". — SURJECTION ^{/ T / C / L /} 19:59, 22 August 2022 (UTC)

That part of the policy needs to be changed, then, because otherwise there's nothing stopping us from becoming a duplicate of Wikipedia. I could easily find citations for phrases like "Friday the 13th poster", "Homestuck shirt", "Peppa Pig pajamas", or "Star Wars: Episode III video game", but that doesn't make any of those titles dictionary material. Literally any work title can be used this way. Binarystep (talk) 23:36, 22 August 2022 (UTC)

This is an interesting one; it's true that virtually any media franchise can be found in phrases like "_ wallpaper", "_ poster", e.g.

• 2017 October 26, Marcia Weiss Posner, My Life in Sticky Notes: Or, How I Got from There to Here, Xlibris Corporation, →ISBN:

  […] a soon-to-be hanging on a wall, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows poster, a “Do Not Enter” sign, and sparkly plastic beads hanging from the ceiling.

If this would allow any and every book title, movie title, TV show title, etc in, then we may need to consider the spirit of the policy. Like how "no individual person should be listed as a sense in any entry whose page title includes both a given name or diminutive and a family name or patronymic", but in some countries and time periods, like Indonesia, millions of people only have single names, so technically, by the letter we'd have millions of entries defined as random non-notable specific individuals if they ever got mentioned 3x in their local paper or (since we allow online cites now) blogs, but by what the policy actually means... - -sche (discuss) 17:15, 22 August 2022 (UTC)

But as others have said, I don't think this is governed by FICTION anyway, as the name of a series doesn't originate inside the fictional universe of the series. And although it's a very popular series, its existence as a series still seems better covered in the etymology section than as a sense, so delete the challenged (book series) sense. - -sche (discuss) 00:40, 25 August 2022 (UTC)

Delete. I could find cites like this for literally any fictional franchise. The fact that a title is mentioned in a sentence doesn't mean it's being used as a word. Binarystep (talk) 23:30, 22 August 2022 (UTC)

Not sure if this helps, but I think there's another sense, borrowed from 小熊維尼／小熊维尼 (Xiǎoxióng Wéiní), where it is used as a derogatory nickname for Xi Jinping. It's probably citable using web sources (example). 70.172.194.25 23:51, 22 August 2022 (UTC)

Delete obviously, per Surjection, Binarystep and -sche. I think this is not even justified by sticking to the letter of the law of WT:FICTION because the title of a work is not a term "originating in fictional universes": nothing within the universe of Winnie the Pooh uses Winnie the Pooh to mean "An English children's book..." — Fytcha〈 T | L | C 〉 00:12, 23 August 2022 (UTC)

Assuming the work/book does not originate in fictional universes--and that seems correct--the applicable policy for the nominated sense 1 is not WT:FICTION but rather WT:NSE. Therefore, the rationale's "Yes, they're references outside of the fictional context" fails to refer to the applicable policy. I think the book sense can be safely deleted provided the fictional character is kept. The deliberation should then be about which names of literary works we keep and which we delete, but the posts above present no such deliberation, not even a hint. --Dan Polansky (talk) 07:57, 23 August 2022 (UTC)

Delete the book sense. That's encyclopaedic information. (If people say "oh, she's such a "Winnie the Pooh!" that might be different.) Equinox ◑ 08:55, 24 August 2022 (UTC)

To finalize and change my stance: Keep the book sense per WT:LEMMING: the sense is in Collins[18] and dictionary.com[19]. We do not need the sense if we keep the character sense, but keeping it does not do any harm, and WT:NSE allows keeping it. Removing it will not make the dictionary any better. LEMMING guards against overflood of multi-word names of literary works. Keep the character sense and keep it as literal sense: Collins has the literal sense and I do not see why we should not have it. This sense is not tagged in the mainspace, but is being discussed at the top as well, hence this position. --Dan Polansky (talk) 16:06, 30 August 2022 (UTC)

Delete . This is covered by WT:FICTION: With respect to names of persons or places from fictional universes, they shall not be included unless they are used out of context in an attributive sense. I'm not convinced we want the names of franchises, either. They're like brands, where they have to serve some generic purpose first. Theknightwho (talk) 18:43, 31 August 2022 (UTC)

It does not seem to be covered by it since the nominated sense is not for the name of a person or place unless one argues that the term also refers to a person sense and therefore WT:FICTION applies to another sense as well. What we want is another matter, and since the sense seems covered by WT:NSE, people may vote as they see fit without violating CFI. --Dan Polansky (talk) 07:03, 1 September 2022 (UTC)

Sense 2 is certainly covered by that line. Theknightwho (talk) 17:20, 5 September 2022 (UTC)

Sure thing. --Dan Polansky (talk) 18:46, 5 September 2022 (UTC)

• RFD-sense-deleted per consensus, the book series sense, not the bear. --Dan Polansky (talk) 09:13, 4 January 2023 (UTC)

inception flashback

This is either sum of parts with inception (sense 2 - something recursive, multi-layered) or worse, it's a sum of parts with Inception (the movie) - most of the citations use a capital I and seem to be explicitly referring to the movie. Smurrayinchester (talk) 12:18, 23 August 2022 (UTC)

Strong keep. Sense 2 of inception is a decade-old definition that most people wouldn't be familiar with, making inception flashback a non-obvious term. Additionally, if the term is actually Inception flashback, it's definitely not SOP, as the film's title isn't a dictionary entry in the first place (and is being used idiomatically). Compare Abraham Lincoln hat, Albert chain, Archie Bunker house, Buster Brown suit, Charlie Chaplin mustache, Claudine collar, Davy Crockett cap, Davy Crockett hat, Eisenhower jacket, Fanny Murray cap, Fu Manchu moustache, Gandhi cap, Hammer pants, Hannibal Lecter mask, Hitler mustache, Ike jacket, Jason mask, John Lennon glasses, John Lennon spectacles, Juliet sleeve, Kanye glasses, Little Bo Peep dress, Mao jacket, Mao suit, Mickey Mouse cap, Mickey Mouse glove, Mickey Mouse hat, Nehru jacket, Peter Pan collar, Polly Crockett hat, and Zapata mustache. Binarystep (talk) 02:28, 24 August 2022 (UTC)

If "it's a new term" makes it not SOP, then "inception + literally anything" would be a phrase. I also think there is a difference between a item named after something or someone, and the SOP naming of an aspect of a thing. You can find lots of semi-idiomatic uses of "Star Wars plot" (just look at reviews of the film Eragon for instance - "it's definitely a Star Wars plot plopped into the LOTR world") but it means "a plot like Star Wars" and users would be better served looking up Star Wars on Wikipedia. Similarly, plenty of examples of "a Metallica riff" (a riff that sounds like Metallica) or "a CSI procedural" (a police procedural in the style of CSI). I would consider these SOP. Smurrayinchester (talk) 08:47, 24 August 2022 (UTC)

If "it's a new term" makes it not SOP, then "inception + literally anything" would be a phrase.

WT:FRIED. If a term's meaning is ambiguous, it's not SOP. Additionally, there are a finite number of phrases using the word inception in this way, so we won't have entries for "inception + literally anything". We should, however, have entries for attestable phrases with this format, similar to how we have Mickey Mouse cap, Mickey Mouse glove, and Mickey Mouse hat, but not Mickey Mouse eyebrow or Mickey Mouse face.

I also think there is a difference between a item named after something or someone, and the SOP naming of an aspect of a thing. You can find lots of semi-idiomatic uses of "Star Wars plot" (just look at reviews of the film Eragon for instance - "it's definitely a Star Wars plot plopped into the LOTR world") but it means "a plot like Star Wars" and users would be better served looking up Star Wars on Wikipedia. Similarly, plenty of examples of "a Metallica riff" (a riff that sounds like Metallica) or "a CSI procedural" (a police procedural in the style of CSI). I would consider these SOP.

These terms are often more idiomatic than they seem. Take Star Wars plot, for instance. Is it referring to the franchise as a whole, or a specific work? The term only refers to plots reminiscent of A New Hope, but that's not necessarily obvious at first glance. CSI procedural is another one that should arguably be added if it's citable, since procedural doesn't mean police procedural on its own. Even if I were to concede that these specific examples are SOP, inception flashback is a bit different in that it refers to an element not present in the thing it's referencing. It'd be one thing if the term was e.g. inception dream (defined as a dream within a dream), but as it is this term is significantly more idiomatic than your RFD suggests. Binarystep (talk) 00:22, 25 August 2022 (UTC)

Two of the three cites provided are capitalized, which means that the writer was referencing the movie directly. We shouldn't have entries for Sixth Sense plot twist or Star Wars opening crawl, because the terms are transparently

"an X in the style of the X in Y". - TheDaveRoss 12:44, 1 September 2022 (UTC)

Delete. Not a set phrase as I initially believed. Binarystep (talk) 01:13, 29 October 2022 (UTC)

bathing as an adjective

Doesn't look like a true adjective Almostonurmind (talk) 12:48, 30 August 2022 (UTC)

Delete. Not gradable and not usable with become, but perhaps RFV is technically the more correct venue for this kind of inquiry. — Fytcha〈 T | L | C 〉 12:12, 2 September 2022 (UTC)

• The different adjective senses have different translations to Czech: koupající se and koupací. But is this argument strong enough? For a translator using the dictionary, this could be quite nice. I don't see the adjective in “bathing”, in OneLook Dictionary Search. dictionaries. From monolingual perspective, this is probably not worth it, but it is perhaps worth it from multi-lingual perspective. --Dan Polansky (talk) 08:18, 3 September 2022 (UTC)
  • Yeah, it's tricky when languages' parts of speech don't line up: I know there are also cases where languages have adjectives for things English only has attributive nouns for, like cork. IMO, it's probably best to treat each language in a way that's accurate to it, though. We don't relabel Chinese or Indonesian "classifiers" as nouns just because in English they'd be nouns (and English doesn't have "classifiers" as a part of speech), because in Chinese and Indonesian they are classifiers. So, for an English word, I think the parts of speech have to be based on what parts of speech the English word is attested in, not what parts of speech other languages have. Sometimes, like with cork, it's possible to mention the other languages' adjectives in the attributive noun's translation table (with appropriate qualifiers). - -sche (discuss) 11:07, 3 September 2022 (UTC)

    I think the parts of speech do line up since the adjective senses of bathing are attested in adjectival uses, so it is probably not quite like Chinese. As a grammatical category (part of speech in a sentence), not lexical, these uses are adjectival. The problem is that a participle sense is, by definition, intending to cover multiple parts of speech: that is what makes it a participle. So one can claim that a participle for bathing automatically covers noun uses and adjective uses, even plural noun uses. That is the problem: should the attested adjectival senses be subsumed by the participle or not, and what is better for the user. When an English speaker sees an adjective sense in an -ing participle, they are not harmed in anyway since they can think, oh well, an adjective, that's just the participle anyway; but a translator is helped. Two asides: 1) a participle is a Participle, not a Verb, as for part of speech since by definition it covers multiple parts of speech, which is why it is called "participle"; 2) since noun uses are called "gerund" rather than "present participle" by multiple sources, the single unified sense line should better read "gerund or present participle" or the like; e.g. M-W says that participles in English act as verbs and adjectives but does not say that they act as nouns and says that gerunds act as nouns. Some pages: Appendix:English -ing forms, Appendix:English gerund-participles. --Dan Polansky (talk) 11:55, 3 September 2022 (UTC)

As Fytcha says, this is properly an RFV question (seeking cites that are adjectival: they do not seem to exist, so an RFV would lead to deletion, but it is an RFV question because they could exist), but as it stands the first sense's only usex "a bathing child" is the verb, and the second sense's usex "Victorians changed in a bathing machine" is the noun (or gerund, for which another usex is currently under the verb header). Adding English present participles/gerunds as a separate part of speech header or at least revising the language of English present participles' definitions to clarify that they can be used in adjective-ish and noun-ish ways, is an interesting idea that might merit discussion in the Beer Parlour. - -sche (discuss) 19:17, 3 September 2022 (UTC)

We should just acknowledge that English gerunds exist. It's weird that we don't. Theknightwho (talk) 17:04, 4 September 2022 (UTC)

• RFD-out-of-scope: now in RFV. One could argue that the RFV-treatment is not based on policy, and it isn't, but as long as editors do not protest against subjecting -ing adjectives to RFV requirements not based on policy and not traced to authoritative sources, things are acceptable. Although it looks like a minor finding against the project for having an operational process that does not trace to evidence of consensus or at least authoritative sources supporting the ideas of the process. --Dan Polansky (talk) 10:33, 4 January 2023 (UTC)

September 2022

Dickens

Rfd-sense: Charles Dickens, English novelist.

I readded this sense after it was removed without process. To handle things cleanly, I am listing the sense in RFD. --Dan Polansky (talk) 07:22, 7 September 2022 (UTC)

• Keep per WT:LEMMING; governed by WT:NSE. The sense is in M-W[20], Collins[21], and AHD[22]; see also “Dickens”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.. oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com has entry Charles Dickens[23], which we do not want and have policy against. OED does not have Charles in Dickens but they do not have surname Dickens either, only mentioning the surname in the etymology of lowercase dickens; OED does not have Asia, Ontario and Germany, so it is not much of a guide for us. Having Charles in Dickens matches our long-term practice: more examples include philosophers (Plato), poets (Keats), politicians (Churchill), writers (Emerson), playwrights (Shakespeare), composers (Chopin), explorers (Cook) and scientists (Darwin). Charles is also supported by the uncodified derived-adjective principle with unknown support: there is adjective Dickensian dedicated to Charles. WT:NSE does not provide specific rules for Charles in Dickens, so we have to use uncodified rules to handle the case. Attempts to remove specific individuals from Wiktionary date back to 2010, per Category talk:Individuals, but they never went anywhere. --Dan Polansky (talk) 07:22, 7 September 2022 (UTC)

  Needless to say, it is easy to design a policy in either direction, e.g. "There shall be no sense lines dedicated to individual people in entries for surnames, and individual people shall not be mentioned on the surname definition line." And the derived-adjective principle is this: "When an adjective is derived from a proper name and the adjective definition features a specific individual or other specific entity, that entity should also be listed as a sense in the base proper name." The problem is that neither is probably supported by consensus. The result is the apparently unfair inclusionism since deletion has to overcome the hurdle of 2/3 threshold (not official, but no other one is better supported by evidence). This could be amended by passing 3/5 (60%) to be the overridable threshold for deletion. --Dan Polansky (talk) 12:57, 7 September 2022 (UTC)

  Not a single general dictionary in OneLook has Dickens as a surname: each one that has Dickens at all has Charles Dickens there. This is a systematic pattern with biographical names in general dictionaries: not at all or the specific person. Even more dictionaries have Darwin, done exactly the same way. With geographic names, we are hugely more inclusive than general dictionaries; why do we choose the opposite for biographical names? --Dan Polansky (talk) 19:18, 17 September 2022 (UTC)

  I expanded Category talk:en:Individuals with a list of 193 individuals in English surname entries. Category:English terms suffixed with -ian currently has 2,615 entries; that's the current upper limit on the individuals supported by a derived -ian adjectives. Even if it reached 10,000, that's nothing like a million biological taxa duplicated from Wikispecies in Wiktionary. --Dan Polansky (talk) 15:35, 20 September 2022 (UTC)

  For tracking, this is per User:Dan Polansky/IA § Derived-term principle and User:Dan Polansky/IA § Extrapolate lemmings.--Dan Polansky (talk) 08:44, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

• Keep, properly defining for anyone who looks this up as the lemma for something like Dickensian. bd2412 T 06:56, 8 September 2022 (UTC)

Delete. Already got a "see also" for him, by the way: that's the correct solution here. Equinox ◑ 12:29, 8 September 2022 (UTC)

The See also is a remnant of the out-of-process deletion (actually moving to See also) that I forgot to remove. The See also does not need to be there when there is a sense line. This See also solution also shows that the disagreement is in some sense really petty: the person is going to be covered anyway if one admits See also for the person, just not on the sense line. And in Mother Teresa, the person is going to be covered in some way anyway, just in the etymology; the term will have no proper noun section, which is bizarre given it is primarily a proper noun. I don't understand this fear of specific entities on the definition lines when the entities are human individuals: there is no such fear with geographic names such as Newtown. I saw no rationale for treating humans different from places. Places are on the sense lines, exceptionally notable humans can too; more generically of proper names: some specific entities are on the sense lines. We don't cover place names by saying "place name" on the definition line and then shoving the specific places to See also or Further reading. --Dan Polansky (talk) 12:54, 8 September 2022 (UTC)

Delete obviously. It's completely normal for texts to not repeat the full name of a person over and over, but that still doesn't endow the surname word with a new sense. I also reject any exemption based on notability. — Fytcha〈 T | L | C 〉 15:43, 8 September 2022 (UTC)

There is no "exemption": CFI does not forbid this case. The referents of proper names are their meaning. It is only about practicalities, to what extent to cover the meaning. "surname" is not a sense; it is a function of the word; having it as a definition line is a practical expedient, not semantics. "Dickens" used out of context, without introduction, without repetition, automatically refers to Charles, that's the point. --Dan Polansky (talk) 15:50, 8 September 2022 (UTC)

Delete per Fytcha and others above. - -sche (discuss) 18:03, 8 September 2022 (UTC)

Delete No uses except as a person's surname. DJ Clayworth (talk) 20:14, 16 September 2022 (UTC)

This person says in other RFDs that "Dictionaries should not contain proper nouns, especially ones that only refer to one thing" and "Dictionaries don't contain proper names", the former being an opinion contrary to our CFI, the latter being manifestly factually wrong. And they have 14 edits in content namespaces, and would be ineligible for a formal vote, although there is no such rigid rule for RFDs. I think votes by someone like that should not count. --Dan Polansky (talk) 11:53, 17 September 2022 (UTC)

Unsure. I added an RFD notice to Prince (the singer) but didn't list it here, I got cold feet. DonnanZ (talk) 10:36, 7 October 2022 (UTC)

Weak keep. I can't quite agree with Fytcha's reasoning above because there is an obvious difference between switching to a surname after the referent has already been expressly introduced in a text (i.e. not repeating over and over), and a surname that is well-established in use as a reference to a particular person without any prior context. Of course, the latter can apply to many people with more ephemeral fame than Dickens—so I'm not sure what a good specific criterion for inclusion would be if we need a hard-and-fast rule. If there were to be one, I think it would need to depend on a degree of perenniality and universality (or context-independence), and "Dickens" seems to be closer to "Shakespeare" in that sense than just any surname which would only be understood in a specific context, hence my leaning to keep. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 13:03, 1 November 2022 (UTC)

• RFD-kept: no consensus for deletion after several months. Those who would want to delete this would perhaps find it more productive to join forces and handle this is a matter of policy: no senses for specific entities in surname entries. They would need to hope that editors will bother to come to a vote much more readily than come to RFD, since the yield on time is better (delete a whole batch of senses, not just a single one). --Dan Polansky (talk) 10:21, 4 January 2023 (UTC)

  Undid closure - it's bad faith to say there is no consensus here for deletion (4 delete vs 2 keep + 1 weak keep). — SURJECTION ^{/ T / C / L /} 14:44, 6 January 2023 (UTC)

  While I'm here, delete. — SURJECTION ^{/ T / C / L /} 14:44, 6 January 2023 (UTC)

  I discounted DJ Clayworth, who has almost no contribution to Wiktionary (less than 50 edits in content spaces) and ought not count; that person claimed elsewhere dictionaries do not do proper nouns, a clear untruth. That gives us 3 deletes vs. 2.5 keeps. With Surjection, we get 4 deletes vs. 2.5 keeps, still no consensus per WT:VPRFD; however, the above delete with zero rationale ought to be discounted, and minimum rationale ought to be required. Speculations about "faith" are uncalled for, and closure can be contested on whatever plausible grounds; I am fine with that. --Dan Polansky (talk) 15:41, 6 January 2023 (UTC)

• On balance, delete. It is extremely common usage to refer to people by their surnames. While Dickens itself is, I suppose, a relatively uncommon surname, allowing a definition like "Charles Dickens" opens the door to entries like Kim or Smith being flooded with senses consisting solely of people with that surname. — Sgconlaw (talk) 17:28, 6 January 2023 (UTC)

special military operation

The Russo-Ukrainian War that began in 2014. That's not what it means, the meaning of a term is what the user of the term intends to convey using that term. See @Lambiam's comments in Talk:специальная военная операция for a more detailed explanation of this. Note that this also does not meet our attestation criteria; {{hot word}} absolves a term merely of the "spanning one year" criterion, not the three uses criterion. — Fytcha〈 T | L | C 〉 15:30, 8 September 2022 (UTC)

Note: the creator's definition was just "war", but all 3 citations are about the Ukraine thing, so I changed it. Pretending it is a general term for all wars is deeply disingenuous. Equinox ◑ 15:31, 8 September 2022 (UTC)

Yes, that was even more wrong, but I still think that this term is just used literally in the quotations. In the translated Putin speech, Putin does not intend to convey "I'm going to start the Russo-Ukrainian War.", he intends to convey that he is starting a special military operation (people lie and masquerade their true intentions using word games, big shock!), just like somebody who stole a phone and claims to have found it on the ground uses "I found it on the ground." to convey the literal meaning, irrespective of the fact that this is not congruent with reality. — Fytcha〈 T | L | C 〉 15:40, 8 September 2022 (UTC)

(1) I apologize if the original definition was factually incorrect. (2) I apologize if the original definition was disingenuous. (3) I apologize if the page should not have been created. (4) There are ten plus cites that speak for themselves to answer all the above points; use your wisdom and judgment. (5) I will not defend the entry's continued existence; please don't contact me about this entry as I have now moved on. I am not watching the page. --Geographyinitiative (talk) 15:46, 8 September 2022 (UTC) (modified)

I see the original defining the term as "war" as a good-faith attempt at a definition. Geographyinitiative collected some useful quotations in the entry; thanks. To me, the following non-gloss definition seems to be accurate: "An Orwellian synonym of war or invasion, so far only used in reference to the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine". This looks like a common noun. There is only one instance to which the noun phrase refers, so we have to somehow pick the salient characteristics of the instance; war and invasion seem to be fitting. The question remains whether this is enough lexicalized, turned into a fixed form. The Russian equivalent is now widely used by the Russian population and media to refer to the event, as a result of state censorship. Thus, the Russian term documents a widespread linguistic behavior rather than just one-off use by Putin. Of course, the English term is not used so much and in the same way, but it appears in translations from Russian, including subtitles of Russian videos showing Russian speakers. One quotation shows a use that is only an indirect reference to the invasion: "Beijing probably also has an eye on blunting the effectiveness of this particular mechanism so that it can’t be effectively deployed against China in the event that Beijing feels compelled to conduct its own “special military operation” against Taiwan." Is this still a transparent use of the component words, even if abusing their meaning? By knowing the definitions of the component words, we would not know that the phrase systematically refers to an instance in a way that violates the compositional meaning. Being a systematic misnomer contributes to something being lexicalized. I am inclined to keep, but change the definition to something like "An Orwellian synonym of war or invasion, so far only used in reference to the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine". --Dan Polansky (talk) 06:37, 9 September 2022 (UTC)

It could be a usage note. I think "Orwellian" is too biased and judgemental a term for a dictionary to use as a gloss; as you see, I put "euphemism" on it, since it is euphemistic, avoiding saying "war". Equinox ◑ 12:13, 9 September 2022 (UTC)

If it only refers to a particular war, that suggests it’s a proper noun, doesn’t it? Theknightwho (talk) 13:29, 9 September 2022 (UTC)

Does it? "The war that happened in the 1940s between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union" refers to a particular war, but I don't think it's a proper noun, it's just a descriptive phrase. I don't think this descriptive phrase only refers to the current Russo-Ukrainian war; some context clues must be provided/exist to signal that, e.g. saying Russia's special military operation and/or speaking about it as something happening in the present time, since otherwise Google Books has (SOP) examples of the phrase referring to other special military operations which happened decades ago, and above is a quote about a possible PRC "special military operation against Taiwan". Authors could sub in "war" or "invasion" and get the same denotative meaning across (indeed, when graffitists right now write "end the war" in yellow and blue, they do get across that they mean this particular one). I don't know how best to define it, maybe a non-gloss definition defining it as a "euphemism for a war or invasion, first idiomatically used of the Russian invasion of Ukraine"? (To some extent it bleeds into the issue we discussed in the Tea Room a while ago, that sometimes people intentionally use words wrong, Putin describes a war as a "special military operation" to be dishonest.) - -sche (discuss) 18:30, 9 September 2022 (UTC)

Correct, but special military operation doesn't have a phrasal structure, and other than capitalisation has the usual hallmarks of a proper noun. A more fitting analogy might be Civil War, which is a proper noun and defined as Any of several civil wars, taken specifically. Is capitalisation really an intrinsic part of proper nouns? If so, that feels very arbitrary.

You're also right that it could be used in other contexts, but so far it hasn't been (so far as I'm aware). Theknightwho (talk) 18:38, 9 September 2022 (UTC)

Isn't that exactly what the "Beijing feels compelled to conduct its own “special military operation” against Taiwan" cite is doing, using it for something else? It's derived from the Russian use of the phrase, but it's using it to mean "invasion"/"war", not saying Beijing is going to conduct a Chinese "Russo-Ukrainian War that began in 2014" against Taiwan. (I also question our definition's backdating of this to 2014, as a separate matter; was the term used for the Russo-Ukrainian conflict before 2022?) - -sche (discuss) 19:45, 9 September 2022 (UTC)

That's true, but you can treat proper nouns like that as well. I think Eq is right, that it's a hot word and we need to give it some time to settle. Theknightwho (talk) 21:52, 11 September 2022 (UTC)

Given the discussion above, I think maybe we should send this to RFV! But we need to be aware that this has been a euphemism in one region for something that is understood almost universally elsewhere as war. And if (the point has been made) it meant one thing when Putin said it, that doesn't necessarily mean it has the same meaning in everybody else's mouth. — Regardless this is pretty much one of the things we introduced "hot word" for (one of our better ideas). Equinox ◑ 04:30, 10 September 2022 (UTC)

Keep it somehow. If D-Day is anything to go by, that was also a special military operation during WWII, Putin's 2022 SMO is an invasion that sparked a war. DonnanZ (talk) 09:24, 11 September 2022 (UTC)

I don't see how that relates at all. The issue is that special military operation has the form of a noun, not a proper noun. Theknightwho (talk) 21:50, 11 September 2022 (UTC)

As for RFV, I don't see why it is needed: Citations:special military operation currently contains two quotations in reference to China: 2022 March 25, Latham, Andrew and 2022 September 7, Jun Osawa. A third can refer to Ukraine. This establishes use beyond Ukraine, unless one argues that this is a regular figurative use of proper names. But then, we use exactly the kinds of figurative uses to establish new senses in proper noun entries, such as in Mother Teresa. (I argued it would be better to merge the noun senses back to proper name senses, but that's not what we usually do.) So I think the sense "war or invasion" passes RFV based on two instances to which it refers, one actual (Ukraine) and another one occurring potentially in future (Taiwan). One could object that these uses are in quotation marks and that this reinforces the notion that the phrase is not implied to be used literally in reference to Taiwan; that's true, but I am not sure this is all that serious an objection. --Dan Polansky (talk) 16:16, 12 September 2022 (UTC)

Delete Has no meaning except for what is implied by the meanings of the individual words. DJ Clayworth (talk) 20:16, 16 September 2022 (UTC)

This person says in other RFDs that "Dictionaries should not contain proper nouns, especially ones that only refer to one thing" and "Dictionaries don't contain proper names", the former being an opinion contrary to our CFI, the latter being manifestly factually wrong. I think votes by someone like that should not count. --Dan Polansky (talk) 06:38, 17 September 2022 (UTC)

• RFD-kept: no consensus for deletion. Current def: "A military situation resembling a war (usually referencing the events of February 2022 in the Russo-Ukrainian War)". The def should ideally read "A war" (it does not need to resemble war; it is a war), but will be kept anyway. --Dan Polansky (talk) 10:17, 4 January 2023 (UTC)

Peaky Blinders

The name of a gang. Almostonurmind (talk) 20:42, 9 September 2022 (UTC)

It may be possible to attest Peaky Blinder as the term for a member of the gang, which has a stronger case for inclusion (being a noun). Theknightwho (talk) 20:48, 9 September 2022 (UTC)

There is already an entry, though at the common noun peaky blinder. - TheDaveRoss 21:37, 9 September 2022 (UTC)

I was on my phone and hadn't checked. Fair enough. Theknightwho (talk) 14:30, 10 September 2022 (UTC)

Delete, clearly encyclopedic and not dictionary material. We also shouldn't have entries for the Essex Football Club or the New York City Freemasons. - TheDaveRoss 21:39, 9 September 2022 (UTC)

@TheDaveRoss: But we often do, to the extent that it's even our habit and custom, e.g. Lioness (and any number of soccer/football and baseball teams). If you are convinced about this, then we need to talk policy and voting. Equinox ◑ 04:38, 10 September 2022 (UTC)

It does seem we handle players of sports teams differently than the names of sports teams (we don't, to your example, have Lionesses [as a football team] or English Women's National Football Team). It is truly a confused mess. - TheDaveRoss 12:25, 12 September 2022 (UTC)

Abstain? What if the gang had a single-word name? I know for a fact we've got at least one such term but I can't remember it (it's from 17th-18th century; it was something like "tilters" or "turners" because they allegedly used to throw people upside-down; anyone remember?)... Or more recently, what about Crip, a member of an American gang? I'm on the fence because, on the one hand, it "feels like" a brand name or a company name, how I'd want to delete Pokémon shit, but on the other hand it's sort of a word that isn't that. Hmmmm.... Equinox ◑ 04:36, 10 September 2022 (UTC)

Yiddisher, Hawcubite, Mohawk, or something older? We do also have Guelph and Ghibelline for historical factions. And Blood and Crip for modern gangs, Deadhead, Modie, Swiftie and Wholigan for fans of particular modern musical artists/groups, Bantam and Viking for sports team members, Methodist and Free Quaker for members of religious groups, Edinbronian/Edinbourgeois/Edinburger etc for people from places... if the singular Peaky Blinder is attested, it might fit our usual practice better to make the singular the lemma (for a member of the gang) and reduce this to a plural-of, but (as you said to Dave) for better or worse it does seem like we typically include this kind of thing... - -sche (discuss) 07:25, 10 September 2022 (UTC)

So, move the lemma to the singular Peaky Blinder (google books:"a Peaky Blinder"), decide which one of Peaky Blinder vs peaky blinder to make an {{altcaps}} of the other, and reduce Peaky Blinders to being a plural-of... like we do for Crip (defined) vs Crips (just "plural of..."), Blood vs Bloods, Lioness vs Lionesses, Bantam vs Bantams, Viking vs Vikings. (Unless we want to start a more general discussing about deleting all of these.) - -sche (discuss) 17:15, 10 September 2022 (UTC)

I'm on board with this. Theknightwho (talk) 21:36, 11 September 2022 (UTC)

What is the rationale which makes Lioness different from Lionesses? Crip from Crips? I agree that is how we currently operate, I just can't see why that is the case. - TheDaveRoss 12:28, 12 September 2022 (UTC)

I would guess it's because a sense for the gang at Crips would be redundant to the plural of "Crip" sense inasmuch as any English plural can be used to refer to a collective, can't it? Russians (“a Slavic ethnic group which primarily inhabits Russia”) think nuclear weapons (“a class of weapons which derives its destructive force from nuclear reactions”) are dangerous and medics (“a category of people who treat injuries”) advise not being exposed to them, but we probably don't want to add those senses to those entries because they're just restating the definition of the singular in a plural/collective way, right? (Whether we should have the singulars / any entry at all in the case of specific groups like Peaky Blinder(s), IDK, but...we do, so if we wanna stop, we should probably discuss it in general and not one entry at a time.) - -sche (discuss) 17:01, 12 September 2022 (UTC)

Hmmm - the more I think about it, the less convinced I am that we can just treat it as a simple plural, actually. With most nouns, you can't use the definite article + the plural to refer to all of them collectively, whereas you can with these: compare "the chairs" or "the people", which don't mean "all chairs" or "all people". However, "the Bloods" or "the Vikings" do have a collective meaning, because the plural is itself a proper noun. We take this to silly extremes with entries like Yoruba (which is typical of entries for peoples), which we treat as an ordinary noun that is plural only, capitalised and collective - and it also optionally takes the definite article (when referring to the people, not the language). It is completely indistinguishable from a proper noun. I assume the capitalisation is a tacit acknowledgement of that, in fact. Theknightwho (talk) 13:50, 13 September 2022 (UTC)

Yoruba is part of our longstanding difficulty with defining ethnonational groups, yes... a lot of entries have been entered as plural-only with no indication that they're also singulars (I added a cite where someone is "a Yoruba")... whether we should define them as both singulars and plural/collective (proper?) nouns, I don't know: it's been discussed before, and e.g. Abenaki currently does have both a proper noun for the nation and a section for the count noun; prior discussions are this old, short 2012 one, WT:Beer parlour/2017/June#German_vs_Germans_collectively, and WT:Beer parlour/2021/March#POS_of_words_for_"X_tribe/people,_collectively"_like_British,_Chinese,_Cheyenne,_Xhosa.
Re your point about the Bloods, I'm also unsure. On one hand, is that attaching too much importance to one situation (definite article + plural) where they sometimes(!) differ despite otherwise not differing? In "Bloods hate Crips", Bloods is collective without the, and "chairs have legs" is equally collective (and not always accurate, but that's beside the point); "three Bloods shot a man; the Bloods were later arrested" is a noncollective plural, as is "three chairs broke, the chairs were later repaired"; and "as the rivalry escalated, Bloods were shot" and "as the brawl intensified, chairs were broken" is using those words as noncollective plurals without the... so it's in only one of four situations, "use with the to mean the collective", that they'd sometimes differ, and even then, you could say e.g. "On Coruscant, conditions became so dire that the coruscantium miners rebelled" using "the coruscantium miners" (or e.g. "the technicians") as a collective plural. On the other hand, Bloods and Vikings and Abenaki and Yoruba do feel like they also exist as group names, and like the collectives may have come first and the singulars may be derivatives / back-formations... hmm... - -sche (discuss) 23:30, 13 September 2022 (UTC)

I do agree with you, but I think the situation where they differ plus the capitalisation (which is another difference) does seem to be relevant, because it’s an acknowledgment that the collective term is a name (which surely must make it a proper noun). It’s a bit blurry with, say, Vikings, but then that’s probably why vikings exists, which suggests that there is a correlation between a shift towards being a common noun and the loss of capitalisation (in those situations, anyway). I think you’re probably also right about the collective names (at least often) coming first. Theknightwho (talk) 10:23, 14 September 2022 (UTC)

• Abstain: Although multi-word proper names with no figurative use and no derived terms are less part of the core of inclusion of proper names, multi-word nicknames Orange Man, God Emperor, Pharma Bro, Korea Fish, Vegetable English, and Elongated Muskrat are included, and if we accept these, I don't see what would exclude Peaky Blinders as the name of a gang. And if we include Peaky Blinders as a plural, it would not even be a proper name any longer. I have decided to abstain since I am no longer convinced we need to include multi-word proper names with no lexicographical saving graces such as figurative uses or derived includable terms. About the pluralization: I am not sure we want to redefine Beatles as the plural of Beatle; I think we don't. It seems Peaky Blinders and Peaky Blinder should better be treated similar to Beatles and Beatle. --Dan Polansky (talk) 17:02, 12 September 2022 (UTC)
• Keep as nominated by Wonderfool (Almostonurmind), a banned user tolerated not because they are good but to avoid harm to new editor accounts resulting from search for new Wonderfool accounts. Let someone who is not a little devil renominate this if wished. --Dan Polansky (talk) 10:14, 4 January 2023 (UTC)

United Nations Economic and Social Council

National Aeronautics and Space Administration

It apparently appears in two or three dictionaries- see Further reading there. I am unclear if WT:LEMMING would apply to this case as an argument for inclusion. (My instinct is to go with the authoritative dictionaries to maintain the legitimacy of Wiktionary in the eyes of the readers.) --Geographyinitiative (talk) 14:06, 13 September 2022 (UTC) (modified)

• Keep per lemmings in the entry, although I nominated this and although they are not the traditional ones except Collins. I won't shed a tear if this is deleted since the name is kind of transparent and I would not vote keep without lemmings, but I still like the general lemming principle. We have no sound and comprehensive criteria for multi-word proper names, and lemmings help us include United Arab Emirates and World War II, for instance. We should sooner delete United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, I think; it is no less "encyclopedic" and is not supported by lemmings. Admittedly, lemmings would have us include Federal Aviation Administration, Food and Drug Administration, Federal Bureau of Investigation, North Atlantic Treaty Organization, and Central Intelligence Agency, so if you don't like that consequence, that's probably a delete from you. Later: I spoke too soon: the full name of the U.K. is supported by lemmings. Oh, well. --Dan Polansky (talk) 14:32, 13 September 2022 (UTC)

  We should not be including terms in non-LDLs just because other dictionaries have them. Theknightwho (talk) 16:26, 13 September 2022 (UTC)

  That's a normative opinion, not a fact. I have more at User talk:Dan Polansky § Lemming test, lemming principle or lemming heuristic. The lemming principle is in the spirit of Wikipedia, which depends on reliable sources, whereas Wiktionary is full of opinionated people who love to think for themselves, which is quite attractive but is not without problems. The rationale "encyclopedic" is a blanket statement of ignorance, not a statement of principle. "Quasi sum of parts" is a statement of principle, and I see it here, but I defer to lemmings. --Dan Polansky (talk) 16:57, 13 September 2022 (UTC)

  You say yourself that there is nothing lexically interesting about these and that they are "quasi sum of parts", but want to include them solely on the basis that they're included in one other dictionary (Collins). If your principle is just to blindly follow what other publications have done, then my "normative opinion" is that we shouldn't do that. The major difference between Wiktionary and Wikipedia is that Wiktionary is a secondary source, not a tertiary one; that means we generally have to curate at the point of inclusion, whereas Wikipedia has far more scope to vary the manner in which something is included, proportionally to its notability. It also leaves us in the absurd position of including some terms in a class but not others, due to the (potentially arbitrary) decisions of other publications. No thanks. Theknightwho (talk) 17:40, 13 September 2022 (UTC)

  That is not really absurd and appears unavoidable anyway. All dictionaries do it and the otherwise excellent OED is quite bad at it, with its apparently arbitrary inclusion of some proper names but not others, as per Beer parlour. One can ask: why should United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland be included while National Aeronautics and Space Administration excluded? I see no principle based on purely lexicographic concerns that differentiates the two. Do you see such a principle? And do you have sound comprehensive inclusion criteria for multi-word proper names? --Dan Polansky (talk) 17:50, 13 September 2022 (UTC)

  You not being able to see the principle does not mean that outsourcing it to other publications is a good idea. I look forward to seeing your nomination to undelete Talk:西線無戰事 and all the other novel titles that are included in the Taiwan Ministry of Education dictionary. Theknightwho (talk) 18:03, 13 September 2022 (UTC)

  No one has given us these principles, not me, not you, not anyone else, except perhaps those who say, delete all proper names or delete all multi-word proper names. Is "Taiwan Ministry of Education dictionary" a general monolingual linguistic dictionary? And a single dictionary does not count for lemmings either. Outsourcing inclusion (not exclusion) would give contributors certainty that some of the content they will create would be predictably kept. What we have now is not really consistent either, randomly depending on who shows up in the RFD. Some want United Nations excluded since all organizations are "encyclopedic", some included. The lemmings would give us includable core around which we could ponder expansion into a more uncertain territory. I have drafted some inclusion principles on my talk page, but they are not wholly comprehensive and would probably exclude United Nations, which I don't see happening. --Dan Polansky (talk) 18:21, 13 September 2022 (UTC)

  Yes, it is a general monolingual linguistic dictionary which we use very extensively, and you can see the entry here. The fact that you changed your opinion based on the inclusion by Collins alone also makes your point that a single dictionary doesn't count for lemmings irrelevant, anyway, and I shouldn't have to explain why the inevitable variability of who turns up to RFD doesn't justify doing things blindly instead.

  Let's be honest, here: you dislike the uncertainty, and would rather have an arbitrary line than a fuzzy one. If you don't trust our collective judgment in excluding these kinds of terms, then you also have no basis trusting our collective judgment in including others, either. Theknightwho (talk) 18:33, 13 September 2022 (UTC)

  The full NASA name is in Collins and Dictionary.com so that's two; it is also in WordNet, but that does not count. If one argued that Dictionary.com should not count, I could perhaps be convinced and change my mind. The count of two does matter and was required in the failed vote. Predictably administrable policies are a widely recognized good, while you seem to be inexplicably dismissive about this good. Presumably, contributors prefer to be able to predict that the content they create will be kept. The notion that we should trust collective judgment of varying groups of decision makers, who do not agree on inclusion principles among themselves and each votes according to different inclusion principles and keep changing their minds as time passes, seems bizarre. Even with lemmings, the line would be fuzzy since we would include things beyond lemmings, but there would be a secure core. I created the vote that replaced the attributive-use rule with today's open-ended uncertainty, so it is really not about me personally. The derogatory use of "blindly" has no force: our CFI for geographic names has the RFD participants do things "blindly" for them, and that was presumably the purpose of the place name policy, which seems rather arbitrary from lexicographical standpoint but does exactly that which you dismiss: let us do things in a predictable manner. --Dan Polansky (talk) 18:57, 13 September 2022 (UTC)

  Yet you do trust the "collective judgment of varying groups of decision makers, who do not agree on inclusion principles among themselves and each votes according to different inclusion principles and keep changing their minds as time passes" when it comes to the inclusion of terms not in other dictionaries, as I have already pointed out. You're just trying to sweep the fuzziness under the rug, but that doesn't make it go away - particularly as those very same points apply to the people that made those other dictionaries in the first place.

  Including things on a per-class basis is not the same as your proposal, because those are decided on the basis of what the terms refer to, while your proposal is decided on the basis of what other people have decided. That's why it's a useful signpost, but not a distinguishing characteristic. Theknightwho (talk) 19:29, 13 September 2022 (UTC)

  Sure, lemmings do not eliminate all uncertainty, just some. Better than nothing. Fuzziness remains as admitted: no sweeping under the rag given the admission. Deciding on the basis of what the terms refer to is non-lexicographic. It is not obviously better than deferring to others: both is predictable and both is lexicographically arbitrary. There does not seem to be anything lexicographical about Small Magellanic Cloud, but CFI has it included. CFI has "X County" terms included, lemmings don't. You may like the arbitrary referent-based policy better, that's up to you, that's not a matter of objective facts. You have not posted any inclusion principles and you have not even voted yet; you just ask us to trust inconsistent collective judgment. That's pretty empty handed, if you ask me. If that's the readers' and users' policy preference, I can't help it. --Dan Polansky (talk) 19:54, 13 September 2022 (UTC)

  I didn't object on the basis that LEMMINGS doesn't eliminate all uncertainty - I objected on the basis that the removal of uncertainty is not justified by implementing arbitrary rules. The fact that you say "better than nothing" actually confirms my point that you're only doing this because you want to make the decisionmaking process simpler, ignoring that it removes editorial control from users and does nothing to solve the underlying problem. That is not a good approach. It was also soundly rejected by vote (and having checked, many users had the same sentiments as me), so please stop trying to force it.

  "Deciding on the basis of what the terms refer to" is an inherent aspect of the sum of parts principle, and the basis of several guidelines at WT:IDIOM. Fundamentally, those are all "arbitrary" too, in that we've decided that they best suit the purpose of what a dictionary is for (which is a normative judgment, as you say). However, there is a clear, qualitative difference between deciding based on the meaning of a term and deciding for each individual term on the basis of whether other dictionaries have included them or not: the former is based on a property of the term itself (and the classes it fits into), while your proposal is not, and leads to random inclusion/exclusion in cases such as 西線無戰事 (which is the title of a novel) - and before you object by saying that 西線無戰事 is only in one dictionary, I am obviously not just talking about that one entry.

  It's also all very well to point out that there are other arbitrary things as well, such as who participates in RFD discussions, but that's not persuasive because (a) the decisions are not random, (b) they're governed by Wiktionary policy (unlike other dictionaries), and (c) that objection also applies to any decision we make in respect of LEMMINGS, so it's self-defeating. Theknightwho (talk) 23:38, 13 September 2022 (UTC)

  I disagree with most of the above. The SOP principle does not depend on classification of referents at all. Again, two lemmings are the minimum. I feel this is getting repetitive and unproductive. --Dan Polansky (talk) 07:01, 14 September 2022 (UTC)

  Ignoring the primary point while misrepresenting what I said about the SOP principle is not an adequate response. You very clearly have no response to the major flaw in your proposal that it allows for random inclusion/exclusion based on the whims of other publications, and just don’t want to admit it. Theknightwho (talk) 10:06, 14 September 2022 (UTC)

The so-called major flaw is a real downside. But the upside is much bigger. What we have now is whim of randomly varying amateurs; whim of the pros seems much preferable. Just recently, Bank of England was deleted while non-SOP and European Central Bank was kept while SOP. Lemmings would have prevented that. --Dan Polansky (talk) 10:29, 14 September 2022 (UTC)

There is no upside - it’s just sweeping the arbitrariness under the carpet by making it look like it isn’t, which is a point you’ve failed to address with anything other than saying what we do is already arbitrary, while ignoring the difference between inclusion on a per-class basis versus a per-term basis and the difference in outcomes that creates. Nevermind the disdain you have just shown for your fellow users, which is a whole other issue. Theknightwho (talk) 10:46, 14 September 2022 (UTC)

The upside of improved predictability and consistency is as undeniable as the downside of partial loss of autonomy and gain of certain arbitrariness (attestation is still a requirement). Wikipedia is doing fine deferring to pros for inclusion and even for fact. I have no disdain: I am as much an amateur as others here. --Dan Polansky (talk) 11:06, 14 September 2022 (UTC)

It has “certainty” in the way that including every attestable string of more than 5 characters has certainty, but that doesn’t mean we should implement it. We are also a secondary source, not a tertiary one like WP (and you must not be familiar with how hotly contested AFD can be - notability is not straightforward). I haven’t even begun with the other flaws, such as the fact that other dictionaries copy from each other (making inclusion in two often non-independent), errors, the question of historical dictionaries (and other hybrid works), propagandistic material (plenty of those in Russian from the Soviet era), the inherent biases of the authors and so on. It’s not workable, and is - to boil it down - lazy scholarship. Theknightwho (talk) 11:27, 14 September 2022 (UTC)

(outdent) The lemming principle's arbitrariness is nowhere close to as bad and off topic as "include all 5 character combinations"; that's pretty much a non-argument. The principle is obviously workable; it is not ideal, but workable. I guess Wikipedia editors are also "lazy scholars" by depending on potentially erroneous authoritative sources instead of diligently doing their original research, which is much more work than taking over sentences from sources and rephrasing them. Whether we are a secondary or tertiary source makes no difference; our being a secondary source for WDLs (not always for LDLs) does not bar the lemming principle. And we would not even depend on them for matters of fact, merely for matters of inclusion. At worst, we would scope in too many redundant entries, no error of fact. Including a million entries for all the taxa from Wikispecies is the real elephant in the room, the king of avoidable redundancy; no one ever talks about that. About dictionaries copying from each other, the way in which they wary in their coverage of proper names depending on the name one picks suggests they are not trying particularly hard to outdo each other in covering anything anyone else has; the non-independence claim does not seem to be borne out by observable facts. --Dan Polansky (talk) 11:50, 14 September 2022 (UTC)

If you agree that there are degrees of arbitrariness, then your argument that our current practice is also arbitrary falls apart, because it is self-evidently more arbitrary to include terms on a per-term basis than a per-class one. You also seem to have missed that I said that WP’s notability requirement is not comparable, because notability is hotly contested, and they don’t just include anything simply because it’s sourced. The latter would also be lazy scholarship. I also don’t care what Wikispecies is doing - another project making an error (and I make no comment on Wikispecies either way) is no justification for us making one too. Oh, and being a secondary source does bar the lemming principle, because other dictionaries are secondary sources. You realise that’s one of the things that distinguishes dictionaries and encyclopaedias, right? Theknightwho (talk) 12:13, 14 September 2022 (UTC)

(outdent) My complaint is above all that our practice is inconsistent and unpredictable since it depends on who comes to RFD and since RFD voters often state no usable criteria, instead throwing around the buzzword "encyclopedic". Our place name criteria are arbitrary, but that can be lived with; at least they are predictable. If adopted as a policy, the application of the lemming principle would be pretty straightforward and not hotly contested; in this we would differ from Wikipedia's AfD. We would at worst discuss whether a particular lemming counts, and we could keep refining our lists of accepted lemmings. Wikispecies is not making any error: it is their core business to document taxa. It is us who is making the error of avoidable redundancy to Wikispecies, which is not our lexicographical business. Right. --Dan Polansky (talk) 12:33, 14 September 2022 (UTC)

Predictability has no value if the outcome is arbitrary, and including things on a per-term basis instead of a per-class basis is a lot more arbitrary. We often self-correct mistakes, and we do not need a straitjacket like this which short-circuits productive discussion by simply deferring to people with inclusion criteria that we don’t even know. Theknightwho (talk) 12:55, 14 September 2022 (UTC)

To the contrary, rule design usually buys predictability at the cost of increased arbitrariness. To wit, the number 3 of attesting quotations is arbitrary: it could be 2, it could be 5, and it could be left unspecified and discussed on a per RFV basis. Setting it to 3 increases predictability. Any lemming principle acceptable as an approved policy would have to be overidable anyway, so there would be no "straightjacket". What about Wikispecies? Any point taken so far? --Dan Polansky (talk) 13:30, 14 September 2022 (UTC)

I have pointed out that arbitrariness is not all-or-nothing numerous times now, and you have stonewalled that every time (except when you felt it convenient when I used a ridiculous example to prove the point). It’s very clear that you are not engaging in reasonable discussion, whether you realise it or not, so I’m done here. Theknightwho (talk) 13:35, 14 September 2022 (UTC)

• @Dan Polansky (CC: @Theknightwho though I assume you already know this) The UK & UAE examples are automatically included with WT:CFI#Place names. If you’re going to argue that Place names shouldn’t be a policy, that’s a different discussion, but under our current policy, there’s a different between those and the full name of NASA. No comment at this point on the others though. AG202 (talk) 01:59, 14 September 2022 (UTC)

  Sure, but what I am investigating here are universal lexicographical principles, not those taxonomy-based arbitrary rules currently in CFI. "Exclude all multi-word proper names that name in a transparent manner", or exclude quasi-SOP names, sounds like a fine universal principle, but we do not intend to comprehensively enforce it. About the value of lemmings, let's consider the recently RFD-deleted Bank of England and the recently RFD-kept European Central Bank. The former is not quasi sum of parts (the bank serves the U.K., not England), while the latter is quasi sum of parts (it is the central bank of the EU and the meaning of European includes "of or pertaining to the EU"). The result is the opposite of what should be done, and lemmings would have prevented that. ECB was kept by near unanimity and BoE was deleted under the 2/3 threshold, so maybe it should have been kept. This happened because different groups of editors voted in the RFDs, and for BoE the deletionist ignored all the non-SOP objections and deleted the term anyway. Both terms are supported by lemmings: if both were kept, the situation would be better. One could object that we do not apply the "exclude quasi-SOP names" principle consistently, and the response would be, we mostly do except where overriden by lemmings. Dismissing lemmings would not improve the consistency all that much since we ignore the delete-SOP principle for place names; for states, this would be fine, but we include all those "X County" terms for no apparent reason. NASA is a more important organization than counties so if we include quasi-SOP county names, we can also include quasi-SOP full NASA name, together with quasi-SOP full ECB name. This leads us to classifying referents and not terms, and without lemmings, we now have to figure out which referents are large, important or powerful enough. One can also work with the lemmings principle flexibly, if one wishes: one may say that Dictionary.com does not count and that the sole Collins is not enough, and therefore NASA full name should be excluded; that's actually pretty convincing. If we had an overridable lemmings policy (overridable since otherwise it won't gain support), we could explicitly forbid Dictionary.com and make the lemming application more predictable and uniform. Without lemmings, what should be done for NASA? It is quasi SOP, but is it perhaps as prominent, notable or significant as ECB to warrant an exception? We can now ponder the principles to apply to NASA and "exclude all-SOP names" does not seem to be accepted without exception, as per ECB. One of the deleters of BoE said "the name of an institution, which in itself is not dictionary material"; to me, it is the nearly all lemmings that include United Nations, including OED, which suggest the "not dictionary material" to be blatantly incorrect. There are too many editors on the project who seem to love to arbitrate that names for some class of referents are not dictionary material even when almost all lemmings disagree. So all names of organizations are supposed to be gone, while nicknames of some individuals should be kept: that is absurd even from the point of view of prominence or importance of the referent. In any case, for those who see some value in the overridable lemming principle, NASA is weakly supported by it, and WT:NSE gives discretion to RFD voters. One may decide to require 3 independent lemmings, that's flexible; United Nations is supported by 6 lemmings. --Dan Polansky (talk) 07:01, 14 September 2022 (UTC)

Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints

These are the kind of long multi-word proper names that we probably do not want to include. There does not seem to be anything lexicographically interesting about them, and are covered by Wikipedia. Orthodox Church is perhaps more defensible. Past deleted proper names are in Category:RFD result for proper names (failed). The batch could be longer; this is a start to see how it goes. --Dan Polansky (talk) 17:57, 12 September 2022 (UTC)

• Delete as SoP and encyclopedic. — Sgconlaw (talk) 15:56, 13 September 2022 (UTC)
• Delete all as above. The only possible exception being the last one, as fundamentalist doesn’t really mean polygamous (though it is, or was, a fundament of the Mormon church). Overlordnat1 (talk) 09:14, 14 September 2022 (UTC)
• Delete all except National Aeronautics and Space Administration, per lemmings; see the discussion under the term above. More exceptions can be granted if a rationale is provided, but I currently don't see it. Deleting NASA won't be a terrible loss, as the lemming case is pretty weak, unlike for United Nations. --Dan Polansky (talk) 10:05, 14 September 2022 (UTC)

  Keep all except the army: I changed my mind. Our churches are listed at Thesaurus:church and we are not flooded by them. I thought it would be preferable to delete quasi-SOP names of organizations, but I am no longer convinced; it seems preferable to have some importance/notability criteria for them and keep some of the most important ones. Right now, we have no such criteria. In general, translation of proper names is a hard problem and Wiktionary can render a lexicographical service there. Wikidata has translations but not tracing to sources for them. --Dan Polansky (talk) 15:07, 30 September 2022 (UTC)

  I started to keep track of inclusion arguments. Those that apply here: User:Dan Polansky/IA#Wikipedia-style generosity, User:Dan Polansky/IA#Extrapolate for consistency, User:Dan Polansky/IA#Extrapolate lemmings, User:Dan Polansky/IA#Dictionary-style treatment. --Dan Polansky (talk) 10:55, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

  Another step toward complete circularity: adding links in discussions to you talking to yourself in userspace. Whatever your intention, it makes it look like you have your own CFI that you consider more important than the real one, because everyone else is too stupid to think like you do. Chuck Entz (talk) 15:52, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

  No circularity here. CFI's official WT:NSE requires editors to figure out their own inclusion criteria and arguments. Yes, I have my own CFI, and everyone who participates in WT:NSE-driven RFDs has their own CFI. There is no other way. The links serve concision. --Dan Polansky (talk) 16:06, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

Keep the Latter-Day Saints one (not SoP), the UN ones (feel relevant enough that someone would look it up, though I wouldn't be devastated if they're gone), & NASA (LEMMING). The other church ones I'm ambivalent about, and then delete Army of the Republic of Vietnam. AG202 (talk) 12:28, 14 September 2022 (UTC)

I feel the LDS one should be deleted as well since it is very long and covered by Wikipedia anyway. The implied rule behind the keeping seems to be "include all attested multi-word names of organizations that are not transparent names", but that would still lead to a huge redundancy to Wikipedia since there are so many of them. Going by length of the name seems terribly arbitrary, but it's better than nothing. Another arbitrary aid are lemmings: org name in WP & not in lemmings => out. No purely lexicographical principles to aid the filtering come to mind. --Dan Polansky (talk) 13:45, 14 September 2022 (UTC)

So now you do want to exclude things based on how many characters are in the string? This one has more value than some of the others, as it isn’t immediately obvious what it refers to, or why they differ from other Mormons. “Fundamentalist” is playing a role here. Theknightwho (talk) 13:51, 14 September 2022 (UTC)

Number of words, to be precise. Yes, it's terribly arbitrary. If we are going to include all intransparent proper names of organizations, we are heading into a major redundancy. But I am actually happy to use lemmings instead of the number of words. There has to be some additional exclusion principle, I feel. --Dan Polansky (talk) 14:01, 14 September 2022 (UTC)

I’ve had an idea: how about we consider terms on merit by discussing them, and then formulate a general policy once we can actually come up with one that isn’t arbitrary? How does that sound? Theknightwho (talk) 14:17, 14 September 2022 (UTC)

Utopian. But if you can pull it off, so much better. --Dan Polansky (talk) 14:19, 14 September 2022 (UTC)

The great thing about it is that it means we don’t implement arbitrary policies like LEMMING in the meantime. Glad you’ve come around to that. Theknightwho (talk) 14:21, 14 September 2022 (UTC)

As far as I am concerned, WT:NSE and lemmings walk hand in hand until you pull it off. --Dan Polansky (talk) 14:45, 14 September 2022 (UTC)

Delete, as with Talk:Royal Canadian Mounted Police, Talk:Soviet Armed Forces, Canadian Armed Forces, etc, the last two of which Army of the Republic of Vietnam seems directly comparable to. - -sche (discuss) 01:35, 16 September 2022 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ I think it’s time for a general discussion about organization names at the Beer Parlour again, rather than trying to deal with this one entry at a time. — Sgconlaw (talk) 05:05, 16 September 2022 (UTC)

I created Wiktionary:Names of organizations to track the subject. Precedents are listed, as well as some arguments and counterarguments. --Dan Polansky (talk) 07:59, 14 October 2022 (UTC)

I'm confused to be honest as to why the LDS church name would not be SOP whereas the Assyrian Church of the East would be. The latter is a specific denomination and does not mean either a local church province (as the Orthodox ones can be read as) or the "church of Assyrians that's in the east". Any criterion that matches one goes for the other too. I also think attestable religious denominations ought to be included in general since it's not clear to me where the line ought to be drawn between minor ones that are encyclopedic and larger ones ("Roman Catholic Church" etc) that apparently aren't. So Keep both of those at least, I'm ambivalent on the rest. (Perhaps leaning keep on the Orthodox ones too, since they also represent distinctive practices and the precedent would otherwise logically lead to e.g. keeping Assyrian churches but deleting the sister Chaldean church since it happens to be in communion with the pope, which seems troubling.) —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 14:55, 6 January 2023 (UTC)

Bank of England

I request undeletion:

• 1) This is supported by lemmings: Collins and Cambridge; it is also supported by Dictionary.com and vocabulary.com, but these are not the classic lemmings.
• 2) It is not transparently named: the bank of England is actually the bank of the whole U.K. We recently kept European Central Bank by near unanimity, which is arguably transparently named; it cannot be our intent to administer names of organizations in such a contradictory manner.
• 3) It is an important and prominent organization. This should not really matter all that much but since we have policies for proper names (place names) that are based on classification of referents, this is not entirely without force. Out place name policy leads us to include United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, long and transparently named, probably included because of the prominence of the named entity; and it is in some lemmings, although not in M-W and AHD.
• 4) If we exclude all multi-word proper names of organizations, why do we include United Nations, an organization that so far has not been deleted and is supported by very many lemmings? Is it because of the international importance that United Nations is included? U.K. is not an international organization, so why does our CFI regulate in favor of the inclusion of the full transparent name?
• 5) Other names of organizations that are reasonably short and not transparently named include Home Office, Foreign Office, Catholic Church, Orthodox Church, Salvation Army, Alcoholics Anonymous, and Tamil Tigers. Should all these be deleted, and if not, why not?
• 6) If we exclude all multi-word proper names of organizations, why do we include NATO's nickname North Atlantic Terrorist Organization? What, then, is the implied de facto policy?
• 7) We include multi-word nicknames Orange Man, God Emperor, Pharma Bro, Korea Fish, Vegetable English, and Elongated Muskrat. If we filter proper names by referents by saying that no organization shall have its multi-word name included, why are individual persons allowed to have multi-word names included? Even by the lexicographically inferior filtering by referents and not the names, this does not make sense: surely the Bank of England is much more important than individuals. Is it because these are nicknames, not official names?

Expanded after the initial post. --Dan Polansky (talk) 09:09, 14 September 2022 (UTC)

I completely agree. undelete. Especially due to the fact that England is being used to refer to the whole of the U.K here, as I argued in the previous deletion debate. Overlordnat1 (talk) 08:49, 14 September 2022 (UTC)

Undelete, I think Scotland still has its own banknotes, by the way. DonnanZ (talk) 13:43, 15 September 2022 (UTC)

Keep deleted: Non-transparency of regarding proper names is not an argument. As far as I understand the BoE was founded in 1694 England. The Act of Union 1707 united Scotland and England and the Act of Union 1800 merged this union with (today’s) Northern Ireland into the (predecessor of the) UK. The BoE could’ve changed their name but they didn’t, so it’s their problem now. Why are we supposed to remedy the situation and give them a dictionary entry? I’m not gonna address the remaining whataboutism. Please refer to specific arguments. ‑‑Kai Burghardt (talk) 00:06, 16 September 2022 (UTC)

The above states no rationale for deletion. It dismisses comparative analysis although it is indispensable. It dismisses a distinguishing property without stating any properties of its own. --Dan Polansky (talk) 07:20, 16 September 2022 (UTC)

Keep deleted, for the same reasons as when it was deleted; leave it to Wikipedia. I don't think the bank having failed to update its name and thus now having a "misnomer" makes it any more includable: lots of organizations have misleading names (e.g., think how much has been said about the extent to which the National Socialist German Workers' Party was or was not socialist or a worker's party). - -sche (discuss) 01:43, 16 September 2022 (UTC)

The reason in the RFD was "leave this to Wikipedia". This is not a proper rationale: it gives us no exclusion properties. "Name that is covered by Wikipedia" is the property following from the reason, but this is obviously no workable exclusion property, as per Ku Klux Klan or New York. The best implied property I can come up with is "A multi-word name covered by Wikipedia of an organization that has the entity type in its name even if the name is not transparent". If this is the property, it should be stated. It would exclude United Nations Organization, World Health Organization, World Trade Organization and European Union; maybe it is the intent. It could be further refined as "A multi-word name covered by Wikipedia of an organization that is not international and has the entity type in its name even if the name is not transparent"; this would exclude Democratic Party and the mentioned NSDAP. Further candidate distinguishing properties could be mentioned, but none are. All the analytical work is left for others to be done. The misnomer principle is a lexicographical one and it would be lexicographical if we include the full name of NSDAP. We currently do have its German name Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, but it may still be deleted. For German, the multi-word property is of less utility; we have Weltgesundheitsorganisation and there are going to be similar names for smaller organizations, which may lead to opposition of including single-word names of organizations. The misnomer principle is applied to multi-word common nouns to show they are not sum of parts; it is a candidate lexicographical property. To sum it up, the deleters stated no workable distinguishing properties, thereby failing to provide a proper rationale for deletion. --Dan Polansky (talk) 07:20, 16 September 2022 (UTC)

You think all exclusion properties are arbitrary anyway, so you’re asking for something without any clear idea of what it is that you want. Theknightwho (talk) 07:47, 16 September 2022 (UTC)

The above is unproductive: 1) it is obviously false; 2) it makes things personal instead of discussing substance (surely having distinguishing properties for inclusion and exclusion is generally desirable); 3) it does not advance the search for distinguishing properties in any way. Is this a start of yet another interminable not particularly productive discussion? I hope not. --Dan Polansky (talk) 09:54, 16 September 2022 (UTC)

Haha. Okay, Dan. Make sure to write another 3,000 words saying the same handful of points again - I’m sure we all need to hear it for the tenth time. Theknightwho (talk) 10:05, 16 September 2022 (UTC)

Keep deleted, name of specific entity. - TheDaveRoss 15:54, 12 October 2022 (UTC)

An obvious non-rationale: we do include some names of specific entities, many of them. Where are the distinguishing criteria? This amounts of WP's W:WP:IDONTLIKEIT. --Dan Polansky (talk) 16:24, 12 October 2022 (UTC)

Please read WT:NSE. - TheDaveRoss 17:59, 12 October 2022 (UTC)

And? Some NSE should be included, some excluded => "name of specific entity" is no sufficient ground for deletion. Without a further distinguishing mark, this is a pure whim. --Dan Polansky (talk) 18:19, 12 October 2022 (UTC)

Keep deleted until there has been a proper discussion or vote on the criteria for including or excluding the names of organizations. Dealing with the matter piecemeal is unhelpful. — Sgconlaw (talk) 18:23, 12 October 2022 (UTC)

That's a fine point. We have very few multi-word names of organizations and we should not be deleting them on a whim, one by one, with dubious non-rationales such as "encyclopedic content". We are not flooded by them, and will not be flooded any time soon. This should never have been deleted, hence I ask undeletion. My rationale is detailed above, perhaps too detailed for the taste of some. In sum: organization, important, untransparently named, lemming-supported. An encyclopedia is no translation name dictionary. Wikidata:Q183231: Bank of England has translations, but they don't trace to sources. For the reader, there is more at User:Dan_Polansky/Inclusion_arguments#Organization_names. I will note that in the vote about organizations, at least 4 opposers mentioned translations are valid lexicographical content. --Dan Polansky (talk) 18:35, 12 October 2022 (UTC)

Keep deleted. — Fytcha〈 T | L | C 〉 16:57, 24 October 2022 (UTC)

Keep deleted. Ultimateria (talk) 20:24, 31 December 2022 (UTC)

• RKD-kept-deleted per numerical consensus. Some of the votes have zero tracing for rationale. I leave here a finding against the English Wiktionary's failure to enforce the strength of argument principle, by which it is inadmissible to participate on a consensus process without tracing votes cast to arguments. --Dan Polansky (talk) 10:10, 4 January 2023 (UTC)

  As for the strength of the argument, which in general can be part of closure, I did not identify any strong arguments in the list. Two are empty; "name of specific entity" is an obvious non-argument. However, it does not seem to make sense for me to make the closure determination based on the strength of the argument since the power of those who said "keep deleted" is to undo such a closure. It follows that the only probably practicable closure is based on numerical consensus, no matter how misguided. An improvement could be made by adopting a policy: RFD votes with zero rationale shall be discounted. --Dan Polansky (talk) 11:13, 6 January 2023 (UTC)

United Nations Organization

This one is interesting. It is in OED, Collins and, less importantly, Dictionary.com. It is pretty transparently named, since it is in fact a united nations organization, unlike United Nations. Is the usage note in the entry interesting enough as lexicographical material to save the entry from being purely redundant to Wikipedia? What convinced even the proper-name-averse OED to include this? --Dan Polansky (talk) 12:52, 14 September 2022 (UTC)

• Keep. 1) Per lemmings, even the name-averse OED. 2) United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland gets a free pass despite being transparently named; is in Collins and Macmillan. Thus, we do not intend to exclude all transparent full names of specific entities. The way our CFI is currently designed, we need to consider the referents, not just the names. And if countries get a free pass, a natural extension of that would be that large and important international organizations also get a free pass despite naming transparency. Similar cases would be European Union, OECD: Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (redlink), North Atlantic Treaty Organization (recently deleted), Warsaw Treaty Organization (recently deleted), and bluelinks International Court of Justice, International Maritime Organization, International Monetary Fund, European Central Bank, and European Free Trade Association. From a purely lexicographical standpoint, the case is not so clear, but this is no worse than the full name of U.K. --Dan Polansky (talk) 08:41, 15 September 2022 (UTC)

  Updated. --Dan Polansky (talk) 12:40, 15 September 2022 (UTC)

• RFD-kept: no consensus for deletion. --Dan Polansky (talk) 10:06, 4 January 2023 (UTC)

bad

Interjection: "Used to scold a misbehaving child or pet." A lot of adjectives can be "shouted" this way; we don't have an intj at naughty, for example. Equinox ◑ 00:45, 15 September 2022 (UTC)

Delete per nom. "Interjections that are just applicable words, uttered by themselves" is a bit of a grey area, I see we have good#Interjection, but we deleted fire (because you can equally shout "bomb!" or "gun!", or "halt!" or "stop!" or "aim!"), and I'm inclined to agree with Equinox that this is just the adjective like "naughty!" or "beautiful!" or "lovely!" or "ridiculous!". - -sche (discuss) 01:25, 16 September 2022 (UTC)

I think scolding is quite a specific use (though I’d say I’m much more likely to say “bad” to a pet, whereas “naughty” seems more appropriate for a child). Theknightwho (talk) 07:45, 16 September 2022 (UTC)

You could also view it as simply an elliptical form of "you are bad" or "that is bad", as a person might mutter "...hungry, hungry...", or Vampire Willow said "bored now", omitting the subject and verb. Equinox ◑ 11:31, 16 September 2022 (UTC)

True, and there’s no change in the morphology. “What are you eating?” “Cake” is not really any different syntactically, and semantically they’re both being used in response to something. They’re just statements with obvious context. Leaning delete. Theknightwho (talk) 11:37, 16 September 2022 (UTC)

@Theknightwho: The difference is that your example uses cake as a response rather than an interjection. Most people wouldn't simply yell "Cake!" unprompted, nor would others interpret such an exclamation as "I am currently eating cake". Binarystep (talk) 09:27, 24 September 2022 (UTC)

Delete Leasnam (talk) 01:42, 18 September 2022 (UTC)

Keep. The fact that it's specifically used to scold is an important bit of context, in my opinion. You wouldn't yell "Bad!" to mean "this yogurt has gone bad" (unless you were trying to be humorous, at least). Binarystep (talk) 09:29, 24 September 2022 (UTC)

You very well might. You're near the fridge and your girlfriend is handing you things to check. "This one's okay. That one's bad. Good! Bad!" etc. It's all about context. Nothing to do with this particular word "bad". Equinox ◑ 17:52, 4 October 2022 (UTC)

Keep per above. Overlordnat1 (talk) 07:51, 28 September 2022 (UTC)

Delete. Interjections are a delicate area, since virtually any word can be used as an interjection in the right context. We don't need an interjection sense at "Dave" because sometimes people call out my name to get my attention. In this case I think it is essentially an elision of "bad dog" or "bad Susie" or whatever is being scolded. I am also skeptical of the argument that this can only be used to scold. - TheDaveRoss 16:29, 4 October 2022 (UTC)

Delete for the reason given by the nominator. — Sgconlaw (talk) 18:03, 4 October 2022 (UTC)

Err on the side of keeping: in Czech, I cannot call "špatný" or "zlý" on a child or a dog, which would be an analog. It's not terribly useful for decoding, but it does document verbal behavior that is not guaranteed to be there from the definitions alone. --Dan Polansky (talk) 09:28, 4 November 2022 (UTC)

North Atlantic Treaty Organization

I request undeletion. 1) It is in M-W as a "geographical name" and Collins; also Dictionary.com, but this is not a classic lemming. 2) The deletion discussion nomination "Not dictionary material" gives us no observable properties to work with. The name is covered by Wikipedia, but so are United Nations, Red Cross and Red Crescent. Being covered by Wikipedia is alone no reason for exclusion. 3) The principle could be to exclude all full multi-word names of specific entities, but we do not apply this to geographic entities, astronomical entities and biological taxa. All of them are covered in Wikipedia or Wikispecies. 4) We could want to delete transparent multi-word names of specific entities, but the NATO name is not fully transparent, unlike National Basketball Association, from which we know it deals with sports, whereas for NATO we do not know it is a military organization. It is semi-transparent by being an organization relating to North Atlantic Treaty. Even the kept Royal Navy is more transparent: it is a royal navy, we just don't know the country. 5) Fully transparent multi-word names of countries such as United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland get a free pass, and it would be a natural extension of that to give a free pass to names of important international organizations, and NATO is as important as countries; this would cover United Nations Organization, European Union, OECD: Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (redlink), Warsaw Treaty Organization (recently deleted), and bluelinks International Court of Justice, International Maritime Organization, International Monetary Fund, European Central Bank, European Free Trade Association, World Health Organization and World Trade Organization. From a purely lexicographical standpoint, NATO full name is not unambiguously includable, but it is no worse than the full name of the U.K. Undeleting NATO name would give a better consistency in what we do: we do consider importance of referents for human-related aggregates. 6) It was said that the spirit of WT:COMPANY is relevant, but I don't see that: this is nowhere close to being a company. And there are much fewer important international organizations than companies. 7) Whether this should be kept for translation I do not know. For Czech, the most usual term is Severoatlantická aliance, matching North Atlantic Alliance; the translations could be in North Atlantic Alliance if we had the entry. --Dan Polansky (talk) 09:35, 15 September 2022 (UTC)

Updated. --Dan Polansky (talk) 12:22, 15 September 2022 (UTC)

Undelete. The term is opaque (as Dan points out), and it also refers to something very notable. See also the discussion of § United Nations Economic and Social Council. - excarnateSojourner (talk | contrib) 20:13, 4 October 2022 (UTC)

Keep deleted. The vast majority of names of specific entities should be relegated to encyclopedias, there is not sufficient lexical value to bother including them in a dictionary. Keep NATO with a pointer to Wikipedia, people who are actually looking up "North Atlantic Treaty Organization" want an encyclopedia entry not a dictionary entry. We should also delete most of the class of entries which Dan has highlighted as blue links. - TheDaveRoss 13:06, 5 October 2022 (UTC)

People who are looking up "North Atlantic Treaty Organization" in a dictionary know what they are looking for, perhaps translations. These are in interwikis, but are not per se Wikipedia's remit. To capture the arguments: User:Dan Polansky/IA#Wikipedia-style generosity, User:Dan Polansky/IA#Extrapolate lemmings, User:Dan Polansky/IA#Extrapolate for consistency, User:Dan_Polansky/IA#Dictionary-style treatment. Or delete the full name of the U.K. and delete "X County" entries, when we're at it. --Dan Polansky (talk) 10:03, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

To get some data, I looked at page views for European_Free_Trade_Association, International_Court_of_Justice, nonadrenal, International_Maritime_Organization, nonaccrual, nonacoptic. The organizations are no blockbuster entries, getting units per day, but the nonX entries perform even worse. Whether the data is conclusive is unclear: people know to look for nonX entries in Wiktionary (it has so many of them), but they do not know to look for names of organizations (it has so few of them). --Dan Polansky (talk) 10:50, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

Keep deleted until there has been a proper discussion or vote on the criteria for including or excluding the names of organizations. Dealing with the matter piecemeal is unhelpful. — Sgconlaw (talk) 18:23, 12 October 2022 (UTC)

I created Wiktionary:Names of organizations to track the subject. Precedents are listed, as well as some arguments and counterarguments. --Dan Polansky (talk) 08:01, 14 October 2022 (UTC)

I will add that NATO is as important as European Union and United Nations. EU is political and economic but not military; NATO is military but not economic. NATO is a quasi-empire, or 1/4-empire. Since we keep EU and UNO without explaining why, keeping NATO would be very much in keeping with that, even if we delete IMF, for instance. --Dan Polansky (talk) 13:59, 15 October 2022 (UTC)

Undelete per reasons already presented. AG202 (talk) 23:45, 22 October 2022 (UTC)

Undelete, although I prefer the "Organisation" spelling. DonnanZ (talk) 16:46, 18 December 2022 (UTC)

National Auto Sport Association

This organization could be uncontroversial: it is transparently named, has the entity type in its name, is not international, and is not in lemmings. WT:NSE. Talk:National Hockey League. --Dan Polansky (talk) 11:26, 16 September 2022 (UTC)

Delete. Equinox ◑ 19:47, 16 September 2022 (UTC)

Delete - TheDaveRoss 13:06, 5 October 2022 (UTC)

Delete. Ultimateria (talk) 20:23, 31 December 2022 (UTC)

bulleted list

SOP much??? Flackofnubs (talk) 12:22, 21 September 2022 (UTC)

• Keep as lexicographically useful: allows us to say that this is more common than "bullet list", and this could be "list with bullets", but "bulleted list" is the lead. The translator may use bulleted to find a translation of the adjective, but it is the whole phrase that needs translating, e.g. into Dutch lijst met opsommingstekens. I was trying to find Polish translation and the best I could quickly find is "lista punktowana", but that is rare in Google Books; "wypunktowaną lista" also finds almost nothing in Google Books, but is used in Wikibooks. This illustrates the translator's problem: the translation is not an easy sum-of-parts job but rather requires quite some labor. And it does feel like Talk:free variable. Whether it may meet WT:THUB is unclear, though. It would be better to have a standard way to mark entries as arguably SOP for the reader, e.g. by saying "sum of parts" as a label before the definition, than deleting useful content whose usefulness is not articulated into a specific testable rule made part of policy. Policy-wise, we have WT:CFI's unvoted "In rare cases, a phrase that is arguably unidiomatic may be included by the consensus of the community, based on the determination of editors that inclusion of the term is likely to be useful to readers." --Dan Polansky (talk) 13:49, 21 September 2022 (UTC)

Delete. Impressed by Dan's verbosity but I don't see a point inside it. Equinox ◑ 17:58, 21 September 2022 (UTC)

Dan (a non-native speaker) says "it's not a bullet list", but of course it isn't, because a "bullet list" in English would be a list of bullets, not a list that has bullets. Equinox ◑ 17:59, 21 September 2022 (UTC)

Tbf we do list bullet list as a synonym of bulleted list, and I have seen it used as such. AG202 (talk) 18:05, 21 September 2022 (UTC)

Web says: "What exactly is a bullet list? The simple definition is that a bullet list is a series of items with a heading broken up by dotted points. These lists can be used for anything you need them to, whether it's as informal as an agenda or as formal as a business plan at your workplace." If this is wrong, bullet list needs to be deleted as wrong. But web search finds more places using "bullet list" as a synonym of "bulleted list"; are they all wrong? And this only reinforces the notion that we are dealing with useful lexical information here. In a RFD for the Dutch translation, we are now discussing which one is the most natural, most fitting for a Dutch speaker. This all shows this is eminently useful. One should not look at it from the standpoint of a native speaker who knows which term is most natural anyway, but rather of a non-native speaker and a translator. --Dan Polansky (talk) 18:12, 21 September 2022 (UTC)

The fact it can be either interpretation makes it plainly SOP. Theknightwho (talk) 15:10, 26 September 2022 (UTC)

Delete. Thadh (talk) 19:27, 21 September 2022 (UTC)

Is this a WT:JIFFY case at all? AG202 (talk) 22:57, 21 September 2022 (UTC)

It might.

Free variable: Consider Talk:free variable, and from linguistics, transitive verb and the content of Category:en:Verbs, 19 items. The question is what is the most natural location for the definition of these notions. It seems "bulleted" is predominantly used with "list" per google:"bulleted", so the definition in bulleted is there mostly for "bulleted list". Like "transitive verb", "bulleted list" is not syntactically fixed, and can be found e.g. in "bulleted and numbered lists". The free variable argument was sometimes accepted and sometimes rejected. We still have many free-variable terms, especially in math, e.g. continuous function. Talk:acute angle was restored via consensus, yet it is covered in acute. Talk:prime number was kept via consensus. Dictionaries sometimes define terms supported by the free-variable argument, and often don't. continuous function is less useful than bulleted list: the translations are sum of parts.

Setness: WP says "Lists made with bullets are called bulleted lists." It explicitly defines this as a term. One can say "are called bulleted." but more often does not. More at google:"called bulleted".

Synonyms: bullet list can be entered as a synonym at bulleted list, but not at bulleted.

Translation: Covered above. I'll add that I tried to find a German translation (I speak German) and failed. Some contexts use Aufzählungsliste as a contrast to a numbered list, but I don't feel confident to enter it. A German speaker could enter that as a translation if confident. An exercise for the reader: pick a language you know or are learning and try to find the best translation by considering the translation of bulleted together with "list" and see how far it gets you. --Dan Polansky (talk) 09:22, 23 September 2022 (UTC)

Keep per Dan. Binarystep (talk) 02:47, 12 October 2022 (UTC)

I will add that bulleted list is as often visited as bulleted and much more often than noncholestatic.[24] Users do find a reason to look it up. Also, Diuturno added an Italian translation and JackPotte added the French one; they cannot be expected to show up in the RFD and protect the entry from User:Wonderfool (Flackofnubs) and from non-differentiating deletes. --Dan Polansky (talk) 08:18, 15 October 2022 (UTC)

bullet list

bulleted list for send for deletion above, so I think this should be treated together. --Dan Polansky (talk) 20:52, 21 September 2022 (UTC)

• Keep: terminologically useful. Equinox even argued this does not mean bulleted list, but it seems to mean just that, and how should one know that, being a non-native speaker? This kind of entry is very useful for non-native speakers, to affirm things that have been discussed and verified to be the case, viz that it does mean bulleted list. If "bullet list" would naturally mean "a list of bullets", then this is not sum of parts. And if this gets kept and bulleted list will get deleted, we will need to host translations on a somewhat less common term bullet list, perhaps even one that is sometimes proscribed. --Dan Polansky (talk) 20:52, 21 September 2022 (UTC)
• Keep and improve definition. I have definitely seen a verbal list of important things without actual "bullets" (in the sense of typographic dots) being described as a bullet list. For example, 2011, Walt Mueller, Yesterday I Stepped Into a Time Machine: "She started to rattle off a bullet list of stuff with words and descriptors that I could never find in book"; 2016, BPP Learning Media, ACCA P1 Governance, Risk and Ethics, p. 329: "If a question asks candidates to describe or explain, a bullet list of points is not an appropriate response". bd2412 T 03:40, 28 September 2022 (UTC)

  That's just a creative figurative use of the main sense, isn't it? It could be added as a 2nd sense if lexicalized enough; are 3 quotations evidence enough of lexicalization of figurative use? I don't think "bullet list" out of context is ambiguous about whether the list is part of printed matter or part of speech: it is part of printed or written matter or displayed, etc. The broader definition would be just "list", with no differentia? To have "list" as the sole definition makes no sense.

  If the more common synonym bulleted list gets deleted, someone should restore bullet list with a definition and translations that I moved to the main entry. --Dan Polansky (talk) 07:36, 28 September 2022 (UTC)

  I think it is significant that "bullet list" is used in this idiomatic way, while "bulleted list" is not. bd2412 T 06:46, 10 October 2022 (UTC)

• RFD-kept: no consensus for deletion (WT:VPRFD). --Dan Polansky (talk) 10:03, 4 January 2023 (UTC)

isn't it so

Rfd-redundant: "Isn't it true?"

The other definition is "Isn't it that way?", but there is only one translation table. Are these two equivalent in all languages? If not, then we need two translation tables. DCDuring (talk) 16:12, 23 September 2022 (UTC)

• Keep "Isn't it true?" sense as a plain and literalist rendering, covered by TheFreeDictionary. As for the 2nd sense "Isn't it that way?", I am not sure how this is supposed to differ from the 1st sense, so maybe this one can be deleted. Or does anyone see why sense 2 should be kept? --Dan Polansky (talk) 16:00, 4 January 2023 (UTC)

carnivorous plant

Possibly SOP. GreyishWorm (talk) 08:09, 29 September 2022 (UTC)

• RFD-kept: no consensus for deletion (at least two deletes needed per my interpretation). And the nominator being banned person Wonderfool is an aggravating circumstance for the nomination. --Dan Polansky (talk) 10:42, 4 January 2023 (UTC)

  Reverted. Let there be some discussion, at least. Celui qui crée ébauches de football anglais (talk) 13:53, 6 January 2023 (UTC)

rational decision making

SOP. PUC – 22:54, 30 September 2022 (UTC)

• Delete as SoP. — Sgconlaw (talk) 12:41, 1 October 2022 (UTC)
• Delete, it is just an idea (hopefully frequent) and not a lexeme. One also reads “how to make rational decisions” etc. Fay Freak (talk) 20:54, 28 October 2022 (UTC)

Delete. Ultimateria (talk) 20:22, 31 December 2022 (UTC)

October 2022

retroactive law

SOP. PUC – 13:44, 1 October 2022 (UTC)

• Keep per WT:LEMMING. Black's Law Dictionary has an entry (in both the 1910 and 1991 editions that I have on hand), as does Merriam-Webster's Law Dictionary. bd2412 T 06:44, 10 October 2022 (UTC)
• Delete as SoP. Not sure the reference to Black's Law Dictionary is that helpful; as it is a specialist dictionary, it contains entries that we would regard as SoP for the purpose of explaining the legal principles. A parallel example would be referring to a dictionary of chemicals, which is sure to contain many SoP names of chemicals as entries. — Sgconlaw (talk) 18:28, 12 October 2022 (UTC)
  • @Sgconlaw: Why should we be less helpful to readers than the most widely used specialist dictionaries? It's not as though this is only found in an obscure dictionary of an obscure field. bd2412 T 23:44, 13 October 2022 (UTC)
    • I second the comment of BD2412. If Wiktionary doesn't include specialist words, then what's it for? Does descriptivist ideology extend only to documentation of racist neologisms? --Geographyinitiative (talk) 00:05, 14 October 2022 (UTC)

      I think that’s a specious argument. If the test for inclusion is “what a reader might find helpful”, we might as well have no other criteria for inclusion. The meaning of “retroactive law” is simply “a law which is retroactive”, and if a reader does not understand what retroactive means they can just look up that word. A law dictionary is intended to contain terms, whether SoP or not, that judges, lawyers, and law students might come across in the course of their work, so one may expect to find entries that do not meet the CFI here in such a dictionary. For example, in the 1st edition of Black’s ({{RQ:Black Law Dictionary}}) there are entries like Institutes of Lord Coke (well-known set of law books) and insurance agent.

      Also, the current definition is incorrect. Civil (non-criminal) laws can also be retroactive. — Sgconlaw (talk) 04:38, 14 October 2022 (UTC)

      If the definition is incorrect, then fix it. My point is that "law" is not some obscure field like scorpiology, and Black's Law is not an obscure dictionary. bd2412 T 19:32, 15 October 2022 (UTC)

      And my point is that a more accurate definition is "a law that is retroactive in nature", which is entirely SoP. — Sgconlaw (talk) 19:38, 15 October 2022 (UTC)

      The definition we have is very poor, I agree. Retroactive laws can do lots of other things besides making acts illegal, such as legalisation, the application of civil liability, taxation etc. It's a reasonably common term, but I don't see how it isn't SOP. Theknightwho (talk) 22:39, 19 October 2022 (UTC)

I thought retroactive law was a more natural entry to look up, but the page view data shows users are looking predominantly for retroactive.[25]. This is very different from bulleted vs. bulleted list, where the list wins[26]. On the other hand, the term is in “retroactive law”, in Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster, 1996–present. (I find their definition much clearer than ours). But WT:LEMMING requires at least two lemmings, and it requires "general monolingual dictionaries". The rationale might be that "specialist" dictionaries may tend to include encyclopedic heads? LEMMING did use to speak of specialized dictionaries, so the matter is not settled in any way. --Dan Polansky (talk) 13:34, 14 October 2022 (UTC)

Delete, SOP, as also indicated by its terrible wrong definition, showing that someone just did not know what he talks about. Law dictionaries have all kinds of magic words that are inclusionworthy there for their being often recommendable to be used in a specific context, which is the essence of collocations. Fay Freak (talk) 20:49, 28 October 2022 (UTC)

Delete, SOP. - -sche (discuss) 08:56, 4 November 2022 (UTC)

• Abstain: "law" is not even at the top of collocations at retroactive *_NOUN at Google Ngram Viewer. "retroactive legislation" would sooner be the term. This is very much unlike bulleted *_NOUN at Google Ngram Viewer, where bulleted list leads the pack. --Dan Polansky (talk) 09:11, 4 November 2022 (UTC)

Keep per WT:LEMMING. Binarystep (talk) 10:26, 4 November 2022 (UTC)

Can be deleted per consensus for deletion (4:2). --Dan Polansky (talk) 10:43, 4 January 2023 (UTC)

certain event

Sum of parts: an event that is certain to occur (though our entry is couched in the language of mathematics). Equinox ◑ 16:19, 1 October 2022 (UTC)

Delete. Not different from the every-day sense in Four hundred men work in this dizzy height, where a fall means certain death.^[27]  --Lambiam 13:07, 2 October 2022 (UTC)

@Lambiam I think it is different from that every-day sense. certain event is a probability-theory-specific term that builds on the probability-theory-specific meaning of event (which we have as etymology 1, noun, sense 7): "A set of some of the possible outcomes...". Specifically, a certain event is the set of all possible outcomes. Given our current definition, "the Sun will rise tomorrow" is not a certain event. You would have to say "tomorrow the Sun will either rise or not rise" to meet the criteria of containing all possible events. - excarnateSojourner (talk | contrib) 18:07, 4 October 2022 (UTC)

People may say that it is certain the Sun will rise tomorrow, but there are several ways in which nature might intervene. The Earth might be destroyed by an extraordinary fast moving interstellar object. Any time some nearby star may go supernova, annihilating the whole solar system. So probability theory aside, it is not a true certainty. The certainty in probability theory is mathematical certainty, like the certainty that 2 + 2 = 4 – it only exists in the mathematical model, and not in any actual setting modelled that way. That a flipped coin will show heads or tails is not a true certainty – it might remain balanced on an edge. Here, in a textbook, we find a definition of certain: “Event E is certain       E = S ”. (S is the event space.) If we want to give a definition that is specific for probability theory, it should be of the adjective certain.  --Lambiam 19:09, 4 October 2022 (UTC)

@Lambiam I agree that certain event is talking about mathematical certainty, not the more common meaning of certain. That is what I was trying to get at with the example of the Sun rising (just without using math explicitly). I also agree that listing a probability-theory-specific definition at certain rather than certain event would be appropriate, since that textbook quote you gave seems to indicate certain can be used in this sense on its own (as an adjective). So I vote to delete. - excarnateSojourner (talk | contrib) 19:56, 4 October 2022 (UTC)

Delete as SOP: whether the current senses of certain cover this or a new mathematical sense is needed, it doesn't seem to be limited to just this phrase. - -sche (discuss) 21:29, 5 October 2022 (UTC)

I haven't encountered this term in mathematical literature. Looking a bit through the attestations on Google Books though, some use it as it is defined here, to refer to the universe $\Omega$ ([28], [29]), whereas others seem to use certain event as a misnomer for what is much more commonly referred to as an almost certain event, i.e. any event with measure 1 ([30], [31]). It can easily be seen that authors who use it in the former sense are much more mathematically literate than authors who use it in the latter sense. The fact that there are two senses is also reflected in the grammatical definiteness: sense 1 is used definitely, "the certain event", whereas sense 2 is used indefinitely, "a certain event", "any certain event". I vote week keep but I would not be opposed if we said that sense 2 should not be kept because it is a misconstrual of scientific vocabulary, similar to how we don't want to have a spurious sense in a taxonomic entry just because a couple of people were misinformed. @Equinox, Lambiam, ExcarnateSojourner, -sche to perhaps reconsider in light of the new evidence. — Fytcha〈 T | L | C 〉 14:30, 4 November 2022 (UTC)

The misnoming authors may be unaware of the possibility of proper subsets of $\Omega$ that have measure $1$, but it is a philosophical issue whether non-empty events of measure $0$ can be observable, so perhaps they are not so wrong as their mathematically more literate colleagues may think. Such philosophical issues aside, I think their intended meaning is what one would expect: a certain event is an event that is certain – whether one uses these terms in their everyday senses, or with (possibly non-standard) technical senses  --Lambiam 15:44, 4 November 2022 (UTC)

@Lambiam: I think the issue remains that we first need to settle whether certain is a mathematical term on its own that exists outside the combination certain event (@-sche hinted at something): What else can be certain (in this very sense) other than a mathematical event? Absent any mathematical definition of certain, I think we are forced to keep this term. People seem to (IMO falsely) think that it is not a problem at all intermingle terms from the mathematical realm (event) with non-mathematical terms (certain, pending a new sense). While with event we mean an element of the event space which, ontologically, is a set, certain would be taken to mean any of the presently existing senses in the article certain. However, it does not appear to be coherent to directly apply these senses to mathematical sets; a set cannot be sure, this would be a category mistake. The standard interpretation for these kinds of mathematical + non-mathematical mixes is that the non-mathematical term is assumed to be associated with an implied (rigorous) mathematical definition which can then be applied to the mathematical term (like when somebody calls a set $A$ huge, they mean that there's some subjective and context-dependent cardinal $\kappa$ s.t. $|A|>\kappa$). I don't see this mechanism to be applicable here because of the divergence in explicit definitions of what it means for an event to be certain. Pinging also @Pingku who participated in the recent discussion at Talk:convergent sequence. — Fytcha〈 T | L | C 〉 22:03, 5 November 2022 (UTC)

Can certain be used with other terms than event? Certainly. An outcome can be certain: [32], [33], [34]. So can an occurrence: [35], [36], [37]. Furthermore, one can also say that an event “will occur with certainty”,^[38] or that an outcome “will certainly occur”.^[39] Outside the realm of probability theory, mathematical entities may also be called certain, for example, logical propositions: [40], [41], [42].  --Lambiam 23:27, 5 November 2022 (UTC)

@Lambiam: These uses all seem to be of a different sense though. The sense for which we want to investigate whether it generalizes to other expressions is the sense of being the sample space (which is the precise sense used in my first two citations). — Fytcha〈 T | L | C 〉 15:41, 6 November 2022 (UTC)

When applied to outcome and occurrence, these form the whole sample space.  --Lambiam 20:13, 6 November 2022 (UTC)

Hmm. I'm going to maintain my vote because both senses still seep SOP to me (in light of the textbook quote Lambiam gave above). However I have noticed that we have empty set, which by my logic should be deleted (unless it passes the rocking chair test or something). - excarnateSojourner (talk | contrib) 22:42, 4 November 2022 (UTC)

• Keep per Fytcha. Furthermore, I believe that it is the term "certain event" that is being defined, not just "certain"; the question being asked is, what is it for an "event" to be "certain"? Having the same definition in certain, of the form "of event, such that X" is less convenient for lookup. Thus, it seems to be the case of User:Dan Polansky/IA § Free variable, which is a pattern especially used in mathematics in Wiktionary: algebraic number, algebraic integer, bound variable, cardinal number, complex number, free variable, imaginary number, rational number, real number, transcendental number, open set, closed set, complete graph, and normal distribution. For each of these terms, it is possible to define them in the adjective only: "Of X, such that Y". Free-variable terms are syntactically unbound: a set is open but it is still the notion of "open set". Compare google:"distribution is normal" for evidence of unboundness. --Dan Polansky (talk) 10:21, 5 November 2022 (UTC)
• Keep per Fytcha and Dan Polansky. Indeed it is the term "certain event" that is at issue. The primary context is the formal basis of probability theory and in particular the definition of probability of an event (“subset of the sample space”). Part of the formalising process requires defining the "certain event"—the whole sample space, regarded as an event—and specifying that it has probability 1. (It can be expanded on by considering that certain events may be "impossible"—i.e. have probability 0.) The formality becomes more important when establishing the theory for infinite sample spaces of the cardinality of the real numbers, and linking probability theory with measure theory.— Pingku^dimmi 05:51, 6 November 2022 (UTC)
• RFD-kept: no consensus for deletion (WT:VPRFD). --Dan Polansky (talk) 10:44, 4 January 2023 (UTC)

uterine sibling

SOP: see uterine sense 2. PUC – 18:54, 1 October 2022 (UTC)

Delete as SoP. - excarnateSojourner (talk | contrib) 23:34, 20 October 2022 (UTC)

uterine brother

SOP. PUC – 18:54, 1 October 2022 (UTC)

Delete as SoP. - excarnateSojourner (talk | contrib) 23:34, 20 October 2022 (UTC)

uterine sister

SOP. PUC – 18:55, 1 October 2022 (UTC)

Delete as SoP. - excarnateSojourner (talk | contrib) 23:34, 20 October 2022 (UTC)

Delete all. Ultimateria (talk) 20:21, 31 December 2022 (UTC)

-otomy

This should IMHO be deleted as redundant to -tomy. All the items can be analyzed as Xo- + -tomy or X + -o- + -tomy if need be. For instance, adenotomy can be analyzed as adeno- + -tomy or aden- + -o- + -tomy if need be. To place e.g. metrotomy to multiple suffix categories, one for -tomy and one for -otomy, seems to create avoidable redundancy. See deleted Talk:-oscopy for a similar treatment. We have no -oplasty. A check in Category:English suffixes shows we do not have this all that often, relative to the total number of suffixes we could treat like that. -ocracy, and -ology are some examples of what we do have. Here, again, czarocracy can be analyzed as czar + -o- + -cracy, with no need of -ocracy suffix.

An alternative to this RFD would be to make it a matter of policy, but we have some precedent so let us see whether there is support for deletion here. --Dan Polansky (talk) 07:57, 2 October 2022 (UTC)

Delete. More examples of suffixes -oX that can be handled as just -X or if need be -o- + -X: -ogony; -ologist; -ometer; -ometry; -onomics; -onomy; -onym; -onymy; -ophilic; -opoly; -osis; -ostomy; -otic.  --Lambiam 12:55, 2 October 2022 (UTC)

The proposed treatment is in keeping with WT:MWO: It has no -ometry, -ostomy, -otomy, -onomy, and -ology. But it has -ocracy. It has -onymy, traced by Wiktionary to ὄνομα, so the -o- is not the interfix but rather part of the etymon. It has -osis. By contrast WT:OED has no -otomy, but it has -ocracy, -ology, -ologist, -ological, -olol, -ometer, and -ometry, all as combining forms. It has -osis. I propose to follow MWO for minimalist treatment. -onym is a special case, etymologically. Why MWO has -ocracy I don't know. We can investigate whether -osis is a special case as well. We can expand our suffix entries with notes that some derivations are sometimes analyzed as containing an -oX suffix but that we chose to analyze it as -o- + -X. That should do and help up avoid double suffix entries and double categories. --Dan Polansky (talk) 11:37, 16 October 2022 (UTC)

I added sources to our -o- entry. MW has speedometer as an example using -o-; AHD has acidophilic. We analyze both entries using -o-, not using -ometer or -ophilic. If we keep -otomy, some editors will invariably keep using it in etymologies, resulting in inconsistent treatment. As for whether -o- is a morpheme, that does not seem decisive: it is a "linking element". Perhaps it is "speedo-" and "acido-" that are the morphemes; it is not clear why "-ometer" and "-ophilic" should be more of candidates for morphemehood than "speedo-" and "acido-". Category:English terms interfixed with -o- has over 1,400 entries; many cases of similar analysis/etymology can be found there. However, some should perhaps be analyzed using Xo- combining forms: archaeography could be analyzed using archaeo-. --Dan Polansky (talk) 06:25, 20 October 2022 (UTC)

The entry for -o- even admits that it is not a morpheme, and you are still basing your argument on how our categorisation structure works, which is wrong. As for why it doesn't attach to speed or acid, that's because they aren't prefixes and don't behave like them. Basic stuff. Theknightwho (talk) 06:34, 20 October 2022 (UTC)

Our entry on -o- is no authority and does not even say "not a morpheme". Furthermore, so what if -o- is not a morpheme but perhaps a "morph" or "linking vowel"? It is an element of analysis. Suffix -y attaches to "skin" to create "skinny", and similarly, -o- could attach to "speed" to create "speedo-". Affixes do attach to free morphemes. Linking elements -n- and -o- are accepted in German, Czech and other Slavic compounding etymologies, avoiding the need to create combining form entries such as Wolken- for Wolkenkratzer, Bundes- for Bundestag or modro- for modrooký. Thus, modrooký = modrý + -o- + oko + -ý. What is to be avoided is duplication, not only of categories but also of suffix entries. The minimalist approach is well enough sourced to be a linguistically acceptable option. Is the proposal here that -o- should not be used in our English etymologies? --Dan Polansky (talk) 10:17, 20 October 2022 (UTC)

It’s not relevant that it doesn’t use the exact words “not a morpheme”, as it says it’s inserted between morphemes - a completely unnecessary statement for anything that is itself a morpheme. You’ve also provided nothing to suggest it is a morpheme, so we cannot assume that it is one, either. This is relevant, because it determines whether the suffixes that include it are alternative forms; evidently, they are.

The idea of avoiding duplication in alternative forms also goes against our approach everywhere else on the site, as you very well know. Given your heavy focus on categorisation, I can only conclude that this is yet another misguided attempt to sweep anything awkward under the rug when it goes against your own over-hasty analysis and attempts to pigeonhole everything based on whatever your latest category obsession is. That is a terrible approach to building a dictionary. Theknightwho (talk) 14:04, 20 October 2022 (UTC)

(outdent) 1) Search for google:"linking morpheme" finds linguistic sources using the term to refer to linking elements. They do think linking elements are morphemes. 2) The claim that it is not a morpheme is not backed up by any linguistic source so far; it is based on an uncertain inference from wording. To describe an interfix as connecting two morphemes is natural (it follows from its definition) and does not really imply it is not a morpheme. 3) If it is not a morpheme but rather a glue-like element used to link morphemes, then like glue it does not attach with priority to one of the connected surfaces. 4) If we accept "inserted interconsonantally between two morphemes", this does not imply -o- creates -oX but rather that it is inserted between X and Y to create words. This description does not imply -ometer as an intermediate product. 5) Spellings like cool-o-meter are a hint at this kind of analysis. There is no need to create -o-meter alongside -ometer to account for cool-o-meter and clap-o-meter. 6) I propose to keep analyzing speedometer as speed + -o- + -meter rather than changing it to speed + -ometer. To make sure this analysis is consistently applied, having no entry for -ometer is the most practical option: when there is no -ometer, it is not available in etymologies. I propose to follow a) Merriam-Webster, b) Wiktionary current predominant practice, c) the result of Talk:-oscopy, d) even OED to a large extent (see next point). 7) A minimalist approach is practical and would serve the readers well. Looking just at the neo-classic compounds starting with "acido-" that we have and that are in OED, we would need -ocyte, -ogenesis, -ogenic, -oleous, -olysis, -ophil, -ophile, -ophilia, -ophilic, -ophilous, -ophyte and -opore (-ophilic is the only bluelink, created in 2018, used in zero etymologies‎). Not even WT:OED has any of the forms; it has e.g. -genic. OED on "acidogenic": "acid n. + -o- connective + -genic comb. form." So even OED does not consistently and fully play the -oX game (it has -ology). My proposal: let's take the practice that we follow in all but a few cases and apply it consistently. Let's go by the Occam's razor heuristic. Let's not invent (a + (b + c)) when (a + b + c) is fine and does not prefer the former over ((a + b) + c). Let's not create a plethora of -oX forms that we never had and most of which are absent from most dictionaries, e.g. per “-cyte”, in OneLook Dictionary Search. vs. “-ocyte”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.. --Dan Polansky (talk) 07:11, 21 October 2022 (UTC)

Calling it "uncertain inference from wording" only makes sense if you're intentionally refusing to understand why I don't think it's a morpheme, as you've failed to engage with my explanation. 3 is completely false, because it ignores the option to simply model the two variants as alternative forms that depend on whether the stem ends in a consonant or vowel; you cannot argue that there are two variants of the stem, however (and examples like archaeo- are not relevant, as they are prefixes where my argument also applies). The existence of terms like cool-o-meter is also completely irrelevant, because (a) that only exists with the suffix -ometer, and (b) is riffing off the English word meter (“something which measures”). Just because you don't like the fact that acidophilia doesn't neatly fit into your model doesn't mean that you have to model the existence of a semantically irrelevant morhpeme in order to explain it. Much simpler to take the usual approach of noting that the suffixes often have phonetic variants that depend on the final consonant of the stem. An approach that is, in fact, a lot more common in linguistics than yours.

As for "taking a minimalist approach", you've failed to explain why we should only take that approach here, while we don't anywhere else on the dictionary. As someone who is usually highly inclusionist, it is one of the more glaring examples of the way you will argue totally contradictionary positions depending on what you want in any given moment (such as trying to brush any awkwardness under the rug to make categorisation easier while using the WT:LEMMING argument to argue for exclusion; the latter of which is something that you explicitly said you should not do on more than one occasion). Calling my approach (a + (b + c)) is also a pretty obvious misrepresentation of what I'm saying, too. Theknightwho (talk) 09:27, 21 October 2022 (UTC)

Maybe you could provide some external sources to support the notion that -o- is not a morpheme and that the -oX approach is more common or "usual" in linguistics. I provided sources for existence of -o- as an element of analysis (multiple dictionaries including MW and OED), sources lacking most -oX forms while having -X forms (multiple dictionaries including MW and OED), and anyone can search for "linking morpheme" to easily find academic sources online. I find my analysis compelling and well backed by sources. --Dan Polansky (talk) 10:03, 21 October 2022 (UTC)

Perhaps you could engage with the main substance of my point instead of fixating on the word "morpheme"? It just comes off as though you've only read the first sentence of my reply, because you haven't addressed my main argument(s) at all.

Continuing to use WT:LEMMING to argue for exclusion, despite explicitly saying that you would not and should not do that in the past, is not a good argument by the way. Theknightwho (talk) 10:15, 21 October 2022 (UTC)

Again, as for "An approach that is, in fact, a lot more common in linguistics than yours": if that is true, it should be easy to provide at least one external linguistic source. I am eager to learn more from external sources, to broaden the perspective. --Dan Polansky (talk) 13:12, 21 October 2022 (UTC)

Again, you're avoiding the substance of my argument. It's intellectually dishonest. I also said that modelling suffixes as having variants is more common than inferring the existence of a link - it was a general point you've not only hyper-fixated on for disingenuous reasons, but obviously misinterpreted in order to feel like you've "won". Egotistical nonsense. Theknightwho (talk) 14:56, 21 October 2022 (UTC)

Why not share with us your sources for common enlightenment? --Dan Polansky (talk) 15:34, 21 October 2022 (UTC)

You seriously want me to source the use of epenthesis with suffixes, and how it doesn't involve the creation of a morpheme? That Wikipedia article should help.

Go on then - please explain what the morpheme -o- means in -otomy. If it's a morpheme, it must have some kind of semantic value. By the way: the fact that linking morphemes exist does not inherently mean that -o- is acting as one. We even define it as an interfix, too, and interfixes are not morphemes (unlike infixes). Theknightwho (talk) 16:07, 21 October 2022 (UTC)

I don't trust Wikipedia. When a Wikipedia article is well sourced, it is possible to trace a statement to the sources it traces to. What needs external sourcing, not Wikipedia, are the claims that are subject to disagreement, e.g. "interfix is not a morpheme" or "the -otomy analysis is more common in linguistic sources". As for semantics of morphemes, cranberry morphemes have no known meaning. I played the sourcing game by tracing -o- existence to multiple external sources, by tracing interfix to multiple external sources, by creating empty morph and tracing it to multiple external sources, by pointing out to "linking morpheme", where the tracing to external sources is available in Google search. There is empty morpheme (semantics-free morpheme), but I found only two sources to trace it to. I will quote one of my sources, boldface mine: "Interfixes (also called linking elements in English and Fugenmorpheme in German) refer to the phonetic material some-times found in compound words at the constituent boundary."[43]. The source may be wrong; I don't know. If you give us an external source claiming that an interfix is not a morpheme, we will have a more complete picture of what sources are saying. Without it, we have your claim against the claim of multiple sources found by searching for "linking morpheme", and as far as I am concerned, the multitude of external sources win. I may well be wrong, the sources may be wrong, you may be right, but that's the sourcing game. --Dan Polansky (talk) 10:51, 29 October 2022 (UTC)

You have seriously (and I think disingenuously) misrepresented what a cranberry morpheme is, which is a morpheme that has an opaque meaning to speakers because it exists in fossilized constructions. You also don't seem to understand that morpheme and morph are not synonyms.

The concept of an empty morpheme is also controversial, and it also doesn't appear to be relevant here given that we can explain the presence of an -o- here as being a purely phonetic element.

Given that Wikipedia has plenty of sources, as you can already see, and the fact that you are calling a single paper that you've pulled from Google a "multitude of external sources", I don't think there's much point in continuing this discussion, as you are clearly not engaging in good faith. Theknightwho (talk) 11:39, 6 November 2022 (UTC)

Sure, let's talk about me. Good idea. Now, let's try something different. Should Wiktionary be allowed to mark up Czech word mrakodrap (“skyscraper”) as mrak (“cloud”) + -o- + drapnout in its etymology? If so, does it mean that Czech etymologies are allowed to use -o-, although it has no semantics and therefore is, allegedly, not a morpheme? --Dan Polansky (talk) 10:57, 4 January 2023 (UTC)

Keep. It is spurious to analyse the intermediary "o" as a morpheme in its own right. This is clearly an epenthetic alternative form. To delete because of categorisation issues is also totally wrongheaded - that problem is obviously possible to solve in other ways, and is an issue that exists in many languages. Plus, the idea of regulating content based on how well it conforms to our current categorisation system is the opposite of how we should be approaching things, and therefore something I will never support. Theknightwho (talk) 22:26, 19 October 2022 (UTC)

Keep per the above. AG202 (talk) 13:23, 21 October 2022 (UTC)

Delete per proponent. PUC – 11:09, 23 October 2022 (UTC)

arm's length transaction

This seems to be transparent: arm's length + transaction. DCDuring (talk) 16:32, 2 October 2022 (UTC)

Delete. I might have have thought differently if arm's + length transaction were a possible misinterpretation, but it isn't. Theknightwho (talk) 11:33, 6 November 2022 (UTC)

mysterious as time

I have never heard this as an expression, and since the meaning is simply "mysterious" it seems like it is just a standard simile constructions "as mysterious as [mysterious thing]". Search results also contained more examples of people talking about how mysterious time was, or other unrelated topics which were not using the simile at all. - TheDaveRoss 12:25, 4 October 2022 (UTC)

Delete. In Google Books Ngram Viewer mysterious as life and mysterious as death both beat mysterious as time.^[44]  --Lambiam 11:22, 5 October 2022 (UTC)

Delete per nom. - excarnateSojourner (talk | contrib) 23:30, 20 October 2022 (UTC)

let the grass grow under one's feet

Sense 2: "To settle in one place rather than moving to another". If you look at the citations, they all have a negative connotation of getting nothing done, making no progress, and thus ought to be under sense 1. Equinox ◑ 13:56, 4 October 2022 (UTC)

Delete. Not a separate sense. However, I miss in the current definition of sense 1 the aspect of failing to timely move on to a further destination, which is also present in the quotations for sense 1.  --Lambiam 11:31, 5 October 2022 (UTC)

Most of Category:en:Named roads

CFI says "roads and streets ... may only be attested through figurative use", but many of the roads in Category:en:Named roads do not appear to have any figurative senses or citations.

List 1 - Just roads

Each of these entries has a sense that just refers to one particular road in one particular place. Unless we can add figurative senses for them and cite these senses, CFI says they must go.

• Avus
• Birdcage Walk
• Bow Street
• Broomielaw
• Burma Road
• Chang'an Avenue
• Colon Street
• El Camino Real
• Fosse Way
• Glenealy
• Haymarket
• Heads of the Valleys Road
• Holywell Street
• Karakoram Highway
• Ludgate Hill
• Pall Mall
• Petty France
• Poultry
• Savile Row

 

Note: I removed Alcan from this list as I realized it is slang, not the proper name of the road.

List 2 - Neighbourhoods named after a road they contain

Each of these entries has a sense that refers to a particular road and the neighbourhood surrounding it. I thought it would be worth treating these separately, in case it could be argued that the neighbourhood counts as a figurative sense. But perhaps the fact that there are so many shows that the name of a road being used to refer to the surrounding area is just a feature of English, not something unique to these roads.

• Bishopsgate
• Canal Street
• Castelnau
• Cheapside
• Cribbs Causeway
• Herne Hill
• Knightsbridge
• Maida Vale
• Moorgate
• Peckham Rye
• Piccadilly
• Richmond Hill
• Stamford Hill
• Strand
• Tulse Hill

 

In addition to omitting terms with figurative senses like Broadway, I've omitted several others that probably deserve to be RFDed, but are not as cut-and-dry, in order to keep this as straightforward as possible.

- excarnateSojourner (talk | contrib) 07:10, 5 October 2022 (UTC)

In my reading, CFI does not quite say what you say it says. In my reading, CFI says "Most ... roads and streets ... may only be attested through figurative use", but many of the roads in Category:en:Named roads ...
On this basis, I have avoided rfd for some of these in the past: "Most" seemed to be a door to something. --Geographyinitiative (talk) 08:23, 5 October 2022 (UTC)

@Geographyinitiative The full sentence is, "Most manmade structures, including buildings, airports, ports, bridges, canals, dams, tunnels, individual roads and streets, as well as gardens, parks, and beaches may only be attested through figurative use." I read this as "Most manmade structures, including all ... individual roads and streets...", but I do see how it can be read as "Most manmade structures, which include..." - excarnateSojourner (talk | contrib) 15:50, 5 October 2022 (UTC)

I see what you're saying. First, we agree that "Most" means that there is some kind of exception. I am saying that the "Most" means that there are some special individual instances within the following categories of manmade structures that are allowable even without figurative senses (though I don't know what those criteria are). You seem to be saying that the "Most" is taking about categories or types of manmade structures, and hence there are whole categories (perhaps very limited categories) of manmade structures that are allowed as entries. Either way, I think the practical result will be somewhat similar; the real question is: What is the "Most" practically meant to allow, according to the people who wrote this sentence? --Geographyinitiative (talk) 16:00, 5 October 2022 (UTC)

@Geographyinitiative: the preceding sentence of the policy is: "All place names not listed above shall be included if they have three citations of figurative use that fulfill attestation requirements." I think it's clear that individual roads and streets can only be included if used in a figurative sense. — Sgconlaw (talk) 19:42, 5 October 2022 (UTC)

As I have read it, the sentence you quote here merely speaks to the requirements for non-manmade geographical terms (emphasizing that the non-man made geographical terms have to follow WT:ATTEST) and does not enter the question of manmade structures. --Geographyinitiative (talk) 21:14, 5 October 2022 (UTC)

@Geographyinitiative: I'm afraid that's an inaccurate reading. The list before that sentence includes the man-made structures "Human settlements: cities, towns, villages, etc." and "Districts and neighborhoods of cities and towns", so "[a]ll place names not listed above" clearly isn't restricted to geographical terms for only non-man-made things. Moreover, the vote which led to that portion of WT:CFI was specifically intended to resolve, among other things, the issue of whether street names without any figurative sense should be allowed. See, for example, "Talk:Aldersgate Street" and the other discussions linked at "Wiktionary:Votes/2021-02/Expanding CFI for place names". — Sgconlaw (talk) 21:41, 5 October 2022 (UTC)

Interesting, I will have to reread those rules and this material later on. Sorry for any confusion! I am neither for or against any position on any of these issues. This will be my final post on this issue. God bless. --Geographyinitiative (talk) 21:51, 5 October 2022 (UTC)

Ludgate Hill survived RFD before.

Muswell Hill is also a main road up to the suburb, but was never labelled as such, so the moral here seems to be to never use Category:en:Named roads, which has only 60 entries anyway. What a shame. Personally, I have been quite selective, and think most of these should survive, particularly those of historical interest - I think Fosse Way and Burma Road come into this category. Thankfully some weren't targeted. DonnanZ (talk) 09:21, 5 October 2022 (UTC)

I have added another sense to Ludgate Hill, its original sense, namely an actual hill after which the street got its name.  --Lambiam 11:10, 5 October 2022 (UTC)

I think that if a road has lent its name to an entire district or neighbourhood, it can be retained as a geographical name (with the definition altered to mention that). — Sgconlaw (talk) 11:56, 5 October 2022 (UTC)

I think there are some obvious keeps (Main Street, Wall Street) having clear figurative senses. As for the rest, the main question in my mind as to whether we should keep names of specific entities such as streets are "is there significant lexical information to be contained in the entry" (e.g. translations, etymology, usage notes). For streets there may be an etymology, though probably not a very interesting etymology (better for Wikipedia), not many will have translations, they generally aren't used in interesting ways. So I would not include most street names unless there is figurative use. I feel the same way about towns and cities, and individual people. TheDaveRoss 12:50, 5 October 2022 (UTC)

If I remember correctly, you were responsible for many surname entries. Surnames are, of course, used for place names, so the two go hand in hand. DonnanZ (talk) 13:12, 5 October 2022 (UTC)

I think they are distinct, since a surname is a "common" proper noun (shared by many entities), whereas place names are "specific" proper nouns (particular to an entity). I would say the comparison is more to the names of individuals (e.g. Lionel Messi) rather than a given name or a surname (e.g. Lionel and Messi). - TheDaveRoss 14:56, 5 October 2022 (UTC)

I think certain ones like Haymarket are probably common enough as road names that they're fine to keep (even if the etymology is pretty obvious in that particular case). Theknightwho (talk) 21:55, 5 October 2022 (UTC)

• Keep all A named road is a place just like anything else. The fact that there's a blurred line between street and neighborhood is enough for me to feel all of these should be kept. Purplebackpack89 17:04, 5 October 2022 (UTC)

  @Purplebackpack89: this was voted on ("Wiktionary:Votes/2021-02/Expanding CFI for place names") and it was agreed that "[a]ll place names not listed above shall be included if they have three citations of figurative use that fulfill attestation requirements. Most manmade structures, including [...] individual roads and streets, [...] may only be attested through figurative use." — Sgconlaw (talk) 19:39, 5 October 2022 (UTC)

Baker Street has been ignored, probably because of Sherlock Holmes, but as a street name it is quite boring. There are others which are more interesting:

Bow Street of Bow Street Runner fame, and named for its shape;

Birdcage Walk, named for royal aviaries;

Poultry, at one time full of poulterers;

and Petty France is intriguing, is petty from French petit? DonnanZ (talk) 08:56, 6 October 2022 (UTC)

@Donnanz: thing is, whether the etymology is interesting or not isn't the criterion for inclusion. I could say that Albert Winsemius Lane in Singapore has an interesting etymology, but frankly it's a really short and insignificant road. — Sgconlaw (talk) 09:01, 6 October 2022 (UTC)

There are plenty of roads named London Road, including one in my locale, but none are entryworthy. It's a case of knowing where to draw the line - the nominator of these ones is more hardline [ahem] than I am. DonnanZ (talk) 09:38, 6 October 2022 (UTC)

Keep all. I agree, this list consists entirely of names of roads that areas are named after and some of them have interesting etymologies but I wouldn’t want an entry for the London Road in Coventry not far from me, for example (or any other similarly named road). On the issue of Petty France, there’s also Petty Wales and especially Little Britain that should have entries. According to Wikipedia this phrase has been used at various times to refer to either Wales, Ireland or Brittany and it was originally an area of London before becoming a road name. I’ve always assumed that the sketch show of the same name was at least in part inspired by the street name too, though the only etymology given in Wikipedia is Little Englander + Great Britain (though we probably wouldn’t want to include the sketch show as an entry in any case). Overlordnat1 (talk) 13:24, 6 October 2022 (UTC)

Retaining Little Britain should be fine as it is a district in London. — Sgconlaw (talk) 14:15, 7 October 2022 (UTC)

Not exactly. Referring both to Wikipedia and my trusty Master Atlas of Greater London, Little Britain is a street in the City of London, but it's not a district any more. On the other hand, there is a tiny place named Little Britain (and Little Britain Bridge) in Cowley, on the west side of Greater London, almost in Buckinghamshire. There are places named Little Britain in the US and Canada, so it's still worth an entry. DonnanZ (talk) 15:35, 7 October 2022 (UTC)

@Donnanz: my mistake; it was previously a district, but that should be enough. See "w:Little Britain, London": "Historically, Little Britain referred to a small district in the City just north of London Wall, including this street." Also, according to "w:Little Britain", it is the name of a number of geographical locations in various countries. — Sgconlaw (talk) 16:32, 7 October 2022 (UTC)

I think it's fair to say that Wikipedia is not a comprehensive gazetteer of thoroughfares, nor can it be expected to be. Only the more noteworthy ones find their way in. Hence the non-inclusion of Petty Wales, which is a short street close to the Tower of London. DonnanZ (talk) 09:01, 8 October 2022 (UTC)

@Donnanz: my point is that in order to comply with WT:CFI, neither the notability of a road, nor whether its etymology is interesting, is relevant. If a term means nothing more than "this is the name of a road", then WT:CFI isn't satisfied. However, if the term also refers to a geographical location such as a district, then WT:CFI is satisfied. — Sgconlaw (talk) 10:32, 8 October 2022 (UTC)

Nobody is arguing against that loophole. 61 entries, however, is chickenfeed compared to 274 in Category:en:Roads, so on the whole CFI has usually been observed. DonnanZ (talk) 08:16, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

@Donnanz: but it is entirely appropriate for @ExcarnateSojourner to go through those 61 entries to ascertain whether the CFI have in fact been observed, is it not? Sixty-one entries can easily balloon to hundreds or thousands if not reviewed. — Sgconlaw (talk) 12:25, 10 October 2022 (UTC)

@Sgconlaw: Still 61 entries three weeks later, so no ballooning (yet). I am inclined to say keep all of these, having found another reference to the Burma Road from 1943 - "Lashio, the busy railhead of the Burma Road". DonnanZ (talk) 16:24, 4 November 2022 (UTC)

How is that relevant to the other 60 entries, though? They need to be considered individually. Theknightwho (talk) 16:26, 4 November 2022 (UTC)

That is exactly what the nominator hasn't done, hence my mass rejection of these nominations en masse, which is never a good idea. DonnanZ (talk) 16:59, 4 November 2022 (UTC)

Well the alternative is posting them one by one, which is not only very time-consuming for the nominator, but doesn't really provide any advantages. Theknightwho (talk) 17:02, 4 November 2022 (UTC)

@Donnanz: yes, I don't see the relevance of that point. We don't keep non-CFI-compliant entries just because other non-compliant entries have not been added within some arbitrary period. If entries are non-compliant they should be deleted, otherwise they act as an incorrect precedent for the addition of similar entries by editors unfamiliar with the CFI. — Sgconlaw (talk) 16:30, 4 November 2022 (UTC)

It is possible that would-be contributors have been frightened off adding to this category by this massive RFD. DonnanZ (talk) 09:19, 5 November 2022 (UTC)

If finding figurative usages is an issue, they should've been sent to RFV. I'm inclined to keep all, and as I've mentioned before, I'd really avoid these batch nominations as it's much harder to parse them and we run into the issue of partial votes and then some are on different levels than others (and it becomes much harder to archive them properly). AG202 (talk) 12:52, 10 October 2022 (UTC)

@AG202 For the record, I did get a second opinion on whether to list them here or on RFV. I do see what you mean about batch nominations though, and I will take that into consideration in the future. - excarnateSojourner (talk | contrib) 23:39, 10 October 2022 (UTC)

Late comment: Glenealy is also the name of a (now mostly subterranean) stream and the valley that runs parallel to the road, and the road appears to be named after the stream/valley, which would ultimately be named after the village in Ireland. In this case it would satisfy WT:CFI#Place names, by tweaking the definition to mention the stream/valley. Wpi31 (talk) 09:45, 26 November 2022 (UTC)

★ Pending a decision here, I am now boycotting this category. DonnanZ (talk) 15:13, 2 December 2022 (UTC)

Holywell Street

Keep based on the 1877 and 1909 citations, assuming that other similar quotes could be found. If "Holywell Street literature" was a euphemism for erotica, even used in contexts not directly related to the literal street, that seems sufficient to justify an entry. 98.170.164.88 07:37, 5 October 2022 (UTC)

Thank you for fixing my accidental removal of your reply. I think it was removed just because you added it while I had the AJAX edit box open. - excarnateSojourner (talk | contrib) 07:47, 5 October 2022 (UTC)

Keep: 1877 citation seems to be about pornography in general, regardless of "street" origin. Equinox ◑ 07:58, 5 October 2022 (UTC)

Keep. The 1877 citation does indeed seem to be about porn generally and the 1907 citation was written after 1900, when Holywell Street itself no longer existed (assuming that we take this citation on good faith that is, I’ve added GoogleBook links for the first two but can’t find the third). --Overlordnat1 (talk) 08:45, 5 October 2022 (UTC)

The third is on Google Books. The issue is that the OCR didn't detect that there are two separate columns on the page, so the text isn't easily searchable for long quoted phrases. 98.170.164.88 09:28, 5 October 2022 (UTC)

Thanks. Now added link. --Overlordnat1 (talk) 13:52, 5 October 2022 (UTC)

Keep, though it would be good to find a few more citations, and if it was exclusively used in the 19th and early 20th centuries it should be tagged. - TheDaveRoss 13:27, 7 October 2022 (UTC)

Keep provided the definition is updated so that it refers to a figurative sense rather than just the name of the street. — Sgconlaw (talk) 18:30, 4 November 2022 (UTC)

• RFD kept per consensus. --Dan Polansky (talk) 08:29, 4 January 2023 (UTC)

Savile Row

Keep this one on the basis that it's frequently used attributively. A Savile Row suit = a very fancy suit. Theknightwho (talk) 21:16, 5 October 2022 (UTC)

• Keep provided the definition is updated so that it refers to the figurative sense of the profession of bespoke tailoring rather than just the name of the street. — Sgconlaw (talk) 22:07, 5 October 2022 (UTC)

Keep: often used in contexts where the reader is expected to understand "fancy clothes", e.g. (found in GBooks) "Jesus, did you buy out Savile Row?" Equinox ◑ 22:09, 5 October 2022 (UTC)

Keep. DonnanZ (talk) 10:03, 6 October 2022 (UTC)

Keep - TheDaveRoss 13:26, 7 October 2022 (UTC)

• RFD-kept per consensus. --Dan Polansky (talk) 08:30, 4 January 2023 (UTC)

Chang'an Avenue

I was going to rfv or rfd this one myself, but before doing so I submitted 長安街 (the Chinese character name) to rfv (diff) The results with translation are seen here: Citations:長安街. I am still not fully convinced that 長安街 has a "figurative sense" on its entry page. I interpret "sense" to mean that there is a sense on entry on the page and it's figurative. (From that discussion: @Cactusləvɚ, Justinrleung) --Geographyinitiative (talk) 21:20, 5 October 2022 (UTC)

I could see those citations potentially supporting an argument that the Chinese name is worth having, but can any figurative uses be found for the English name? 98.170.164.88 05:33, 6 October 2022 (UTC)

Karakoram Highway

WT:LEMMING might include this highway because of:

• Saul B. Cohen, editor (1998), “Karakoram Highway”, in The Columbia Gazetteer of the World‎^[45], volume 3, New York: Columbia University Press, →ISBN, →LCCN, →OCLC, page 1504, column 3
  --Geographyinitiative (talk) 16:53, 7 October 2022 (UTC)

@Geographyinitiative: I don’t think gazetteers are suitable for relying on for the purpose of WT:LEMMING. By definition, a gazetteer is a dictionary or encyclopaedia of geographical names, so it will contain many more terms that an ordinary general dictionary would. Comparison should instead be made to general dictionaries. — Sgconlaw (talk) 12:20, 10 October 2022 (UTC)

I understand and accept that judgment 100%, no problem. I am not in favor of or against removing this entry; I merely present the gazetteer info as potentially relevant data. However, I wonder if the statement "Comparison should instead be made to general dictionaries." is correct in Wiktionary's circumstances. We know that "Wiktionary has grown beyond a standard dictionary" (Wiktionary:Main_Page), so maybe a renowned geographer's gazetteer does have some weight, even if it doesn't reach convincing weight in this case. --Geographyinitiative (talk) 12:26, 10 October 2022 (UTC)

@Geographyinitiative: well, WT:LEMMING is not policy, so it should be applied carefully and not in a way that is contrary to CFI which is policy. There are many specialist dictionaries out there which contain terms that do not comply with CFI. For example, one might imagine a dictionary of chemical compounds with entries that are extremely long systematic names of compounds. Such terms are SoP, and it would not be right to rely on WT:LEMMING to argue for there inclusion here at the Wiktionary. — Sgconlaw (talk) 13:04, 10 October 2022 (UTC)

Delete: no figurative sense that would enable the term to pass CFI. — Sgconlaw (talk) 18:29, 4 November 2022 (UTC)

Bow Street

Keep, as it gets used attributively in relation to the Bow Street Runners. For example, I’m seeing terms like “Bow Street agent” and “Bow Street authorities” from a quick search on GBooks. Theknightwho (talk) 17:12, 22 October 2022 (UTC)

Agreed, keep. DonnanZ (talk) 18:17, 4 November 2022 (UTC)

Delete: if the sole attributive sense is "of or relating to Bow Street", then I don't see how it passes the CFI. — Sgconlaw (talk) 18:26, 4 November 2022 (UTC)

You can find examples of "fined/prosecuted at Bow Street" without adding Magistrate's Court. DonnanZ (talk) 20:01, 4 November 2022 (UTC)

@Sgconlaw As DonnanZ says, it's attributive in relation to the former court. Theknightwho (talk) 11:26, 6 November 2022 (UTC)

I think I added the London street to the Welsh village entry as there seems to be a connection, the Welsh place was possibly named after the street. It is unusual to find "Street" in a Welsh place name, and more common in England, especially in Kent, Sole Street for example. DonnanZ (talk) 12:34, 6 November 2022 (UTC)

and the village of Street in Somerset (apparently there’s a hamlet there and a place in Ireland by that name too). — This unsigned comment was added by Overlordnat1 (talk • contribs) at 13:39, 6 November 2022.

• RFD-kept: no consensus for deletion (WT:VPRFD). The arguments made for keeping are in terms of policy, an anti-aggrevating circumstance. --Dan Polansky (talk) 09:58, 4 January 2023 (UTC)

Burma Road

I would like to keep all, as noted above, but have singled out this one in particular for keeping, for its historical interest. The attached Wikipedia article is interesting enough. DonnanZ (talk) 18:17, 4 November 2022 (UTC)

Delete, as whether the road (or its etymology) is historically interesting is not relevant for CFI purposes. — Sgconlaw (talk) 18:27, 4 November 2022 (UTC)

It is in a similar vein to Silk Road, which ironically escaped RFD by not being in this category. DonnanZ (talk) 09:28, 5 November 2022 (UTC)

Burma Road appears to be nothing but a road, whereas the Silk Road, despite its name, is not actually a single road but a network of trade routes. — Sgconlaw (talk) 20:48, 5 November 2022 (UTC)

The real point to be made here is what was intended to be a useful category has suddenly become toxic, and now there is no point in using it at all. There is an entry with a similar name which escaped as it wasn't put in the category, and it's now too late for removing the category from these entries. DonnanZ (talk) 08:34, 6 November 2022 (UTC)

• Keep: in 4+ other dictionaries (WT:LEMMING). They think this is useful for dictionary users and that they expect to find this kind of thing in a dictionary, and they may well be right; they sure have better user experience research resources than Wiktionary. --Dan Polansky (talk) 10:00, 4 January 2023 (UTC)
• Keep since there seems to be solid evidence of figurative usage: "It was Marcus's idea to create a 'Burma Road' ... from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem" [46], "the railway now stated to be a 'Burma Road' in Persia" [47], "a 'Burma Road' to Russia" [48], "provide a 'Burma Road' of supplies from America and Britain and the Empire to our sorely-pressed Allies" [49]. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 14:45, 6 January 2023 (UTC)

Closure of the batch

• RFD-kept all roads nominated as there are no votes supporting deletion of the non-singled-out items, whether on a per-item level or via summary "delete all except X, Y, Z" vote. That may not be what editors intended but that is what is revealed here on record. Should we do something else? Should I interpret the editors who voted in the singling-out sections as wanting to delete items that are not singled out? If so, editors should probably say so on record. There are at least 2 "keep all" votes. --Dan Polansky (talk) 10:49, 4 January 2023 (UTC)

  Striking out obviously premature, bad faith closure. Theknightwho (talk) 08:52, 6 January 2023 (UTC)

Enough time has elapsed. DonnanZ (talk) 09:14, 6 January 2023 (UTC)

The closure was not in bad faith, but I can see how it can be controversial. I am not sure what the best closure is, and I layed out my deliberations. The above editor did not disclose any thought or arguments. No parts or aspects of the closure were identified as problematic; that is unhelpful. --Dan Polansky (talk) 09:18, 6 January 2023 (UTC)

Dan tried to keep all roads, when there is obviously no consensus for doing so. This kind of bad faith opportunism is completely inappropriate. Theknightwho (talk) 09:21, 6 January 2023 (UTC)

There aren't any boldface deletes on any roads, and that's the problem. That's why I encourage those who want to see something deleted to actually say so on record. --Dan Polansky (talk) 09:23, 6 January 2023 (UTC)

Re: "There aren't any boldface deletes on any roads": Mistake: there are in fact 1) a boldface delete on Burma Road, 2) one on Karakoram Highway, and 3) one on Bow Street. My point was, badly formulated, that as for the roads not singled out as separate sections, there is no boldface delete on them. --Dan Polansky (talk) 10:14, 6 January 2023 (UTC)

To improve the record, I found the following keep alls: DonnanZ, AG202, Overlordnat1, Purplebackpack89, 4 of them. --Dan Polansky (talk) 09:26, 6 January 2023 (UTC)

There was only one delete vote, on Burma Road, and no voting has taken place for over a month. Theknightwho had plenty of opportunity earlier, but failed to take it. DonnanZ (talk) 09:33, 6 January 2023 (UTC)

Let it be made on record that this has the outward appearance of trolling by the known suspect. But it does not matter; someone else can close this later, and the closure is likely to be the same unless some evidence of consensus for deletion develops in the mean time. --Dan Polansky (talk) 09:43, 6 January 2023 (UTC)

None of those included in List 2 received RFD notices, which makes the task of closure somewhat easier. DonnanZ (talk) 12:43, 6 January 2023 (UTC)

Dan, it is obvious that you have learned nothing from your previous ban. If you continue to behave in the same way as you did then, I will restore it permanently. Theknightwho (talk) 13:38, 6 January 2023 (UTC)

I don't know what authority you have, but it's pretty obvious there is no consensus for mass deletion. Your obvious line is harassment, victimisation, and dislike of Dan. DonnanZ (talk) 14:09, 6 January 2023 (UTC)

It is pretty obvious that the discussion is still ongoing, and that Dan has opportunistically used every trick in the book to close as many discussions as he can on the page, which is a continuation of the sort of behaviour that got him banned in the first place. Crybullying will not work around here. Theknightwho (talk) 14:13, 6 January 2023 (UTC)

Any complaints about my conduct belong to my user talk page (proper venue), where they can receive a response, if required, or no response, if required. The above conduct falls safely under the intimidation and harassment rubric. --Dan Polansky (talk) 14:23, 6 January 2023 (UTC)

You avoided answering the authority question. Are you an admin? DonnanZ (talk) 14:28, 6 January 2023 (UTC)

Yes. Theknightwho (talk) 14:31, 6 January 2023 (UTC)

Where's the proof? DonnanZ (talk) 14:35, 6 January 2023 (UTC)

Hmm-yeah, he has a bad history of warring with Dan. Fortunately I abstained in that vote, so I can't be blamed for electing a rotten admin. DonnanZ (talk) 17:24, 6 January 2023 (UTC)

Let's be frank, here: you only dislike what I'm doing because you agree with Dan's abuse of process. He has been repeatedly warned by several admins in the last few days alone, even after coming back from a month-long block for engaging in this exact kind of behaviour.

The big difference, here, is that I'm re-opening discussions that have been closed for the wrong reasons, rather than trying to force closure of them in favour of my point of view. If you cannot see that, then that is on you. Theknightwho (talk) 18:10, 6 January 2023 (UTC)

island state

Though I am adding this here, I am abstaining, we do not currently have island nation or island country, these are all possibly SOP, but also possibly terms-of-art in which case they should be kept (or added in the case of nation and country). Thoughts? - TheDaveRoss 13:25, 7 October 2022 (UTC)

It could be ambiguous, and mean either a federal state or an island country. Lexico says "An island governed by a single autonomous body" and gives Tasmania as an example. That would presumably apply to Hawaii too, although there's more than one island. But whether independent countries, such as Fiji, are described as island states needs checking. DonnanZ (talk) 20:43, 7 October 2022 (UTC)

As far as the ambiguity between a federal/subnational or national state, that's just because state is ambiguous, no? Adjacent states or states that border the Pacific show the same ambiguity, because it's inherent in state. - -sche (discuss) 07:56, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

You can Google the island state of Hawaii / Sri Lanka / New Zealand / Japan / Malta / Cyprus / Madagascar / Fiji and get hits for all of them. DonnanZ (talk) 09:59, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

I can't tell if we're agreeing or disagreeing. 😅 What was your point in bringing up that it can be polysemous? I get plenty of results for just "the state of Hawaii / Sri Lanka / etc", too, because state itself is ambiguous/polysemous; it seems only logical that the polysemy of state continues to exist in compounds and phrases containing state. - -sche (discuss) 21:16, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

I'm not sure whether we're agreeing to disagree... DonnanZ (talk) 23:37, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

• Keep and carefully define it according to usage, and add attesting quotations showing to the reader that it refers to both sovereign countries and non-sovereign states. It may be kind of sum of parts, but pretty confusing, requiring lexicographical research to gain confidence in use of the term. And Lexico definition is wrong: a state (organization or political unit) is not an island (geographic region). And Lexico would exclude U.K., since U.K. is not a single island and not on a single island; it would exclude Japan, not a single island. The confusion is borne out by someone entering "island country" and "island nation" as synonyms, which they are not if Hawaii is an island state, unless one claims that Hawaii is a "constituent country" as "England", but that term is probably not used in reference to Hawaii. The confusion is further borne out by Lexico mistakes. As said, let us help remove any confusion from the prospective user of the term. Part of the job is played by W:Island country, which has a beautiful map (which we could have too), but WP seems to restrict the article to sovereign countries. And if U.K. is an island state, our definition is wrong: "A state consisting of one or more islands"; it should be "A state, whether sovereign or dependent, located exclusively on islands." Even that is wrong if Gibraltar is part of the U.K. so we get "A state, whether sovereign or dependent, located almost exclusively on islands." There. --Dan Polansky (talk) 10:19, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

Lexico is not wrong, it just doesn't cover all aspects. I have visited Tasmania and Hawaii, and know they are island states. Rhode Island is mostly on the mainland, and doesn't qualify. The UK doesn't qualify, it shares an island with the republic of Ireland, and Gibraltar is in the European continent; Great Britain is a large island, not a country. Indonesia, although all on islands, doesn't qualify, as two islands are partly in Malaysia and Papua-New Guinea. In my view, an island state is an island, or group of islands, not shared by other countries or federal states. DonnanZ (talk) 11:34, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

• 2016, Christopher Martin, The UK as a Medium Maritime Power in the 21st Century:

  The UK is an island state that is also a maritime globalised state whose health, wealth and stability depend upon the health, wealth and stability of the maritime-based globalised economic and political order.

• 2018, Eva Heims, Building EU Regulatory Capacity:

  As island state the UK requires large capacities to monitor its coasts and the ships calling at its ports.

I pass no judgment on whether this use is "proscribed"; I just report the use. --Dan Polansky (talk) 11:52, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

One can also think of the purpose of ranking something as "island state": one purpose has to do with defensibility of the territory. Even if U.K. is in part in Ireland and Gibraltar, it has the defensibility features resulting from "located almost exclusively on islands"; unless Republic of Ireland attacks, which seems rather unlikely. These defensibility features turned to be of huge import during WWII, obviously. This kind of notion of "island state" is useful, and is therefore a candidate meaning to be verified or falsified by usage quotes. --Dan Polansky (talk) 11:57, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

The term can be loosely applied, sure. The UK and Irish Republic are only at loggerheads over repercussions from the UK leaving the EU, which was a disastrous move. The Lexico wording "governed by a single autonomous body" is quite relevant, so my definition should be changed to "an island, or group of islands, governed by a single autonomous body, and not shared by other countries or federal states". DonnanZ (talk) 12:57, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

Lexico cannot be blindly trusted, given how they would exclude Japan as well. The def needs to address my points. --Dan Polansky (talk) 13:10, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

But Japan is autonomous (self-governing), surely? DonnanZ (talk) 13:27, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

Japan is not "An island governed by a single autonomous body": it is not a single island. --Dan Polansky (talk) 13:30, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

In English compounds of this (singular A)+B kind, the number of A can be anything. A "tomato drink" could contain many tomatoes. You'd never say "a tomatoes drink". (I can think of exceptions, like "games room", but they are unusual.) Equinox ◑ 15:41, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

Sure. I am just disputing Lexico's definition (which I quoted) starting with "An island". The term itself does not say that single island is at stake; I agree with you here. --Dan Polansky (talk) 16:09, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

Most people know that Japan has several islands under one government. DonnanZ (talk) 15:56, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

• RFD-kept: no consensus for deletion. In particular, no boldface delete, not even the nominator, although the only boldface keep is from me. Enough time has passed. (WT:VPRFD) --Dan Polansky (talk) 11:07, 6 January 2023 (UTC)

knee

"(with the verb "take") An act of kneeling on one knee, typically to acknowledge an injury or sacrifice or otherwise to show respect. After Kyle went down hard on the ice, both teams took a knee as he was carried off on a stretcher." — This is always in the expression take a knee, which has its own entry. So it should be listed as a derived term, not a sense of its own, I think. Equinox ◑ 15:54, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

Delete per nom. - excarnateSojourner (talk | contrib) 23:19, 10 October 2022 (UTC)

Delete – yes, could also be RFV, because “to take a knee” means primarily to put the knee forward etc. with some implications of what this could mean but not the act of kneeling itself, so this only works if found outside this phrase, which we have as “An act of kneeling, especially to show respect or courtesy” which makes this sense redundant so we should have a combination at least. “A blow made with the knee” should also be deleted for the same reason, @Equinox. If I gave the dog food it does not mean “food” means “eating” or “feeding”. Fay Freak (talk) 12:48, 7 November 2022 (UTC)

@Fay Freak: I'm not totally convinced that "a blow made..." should be deleted. We have the example where "Winnie gave him a knee to the jaw". This wouldn't otherwise necessarily suggest a "punch" or violent action. (Suppose I said "I gave Bob a chin to the leg." We imagine that two body parts make contact, but there isn't a suggestion of aggression.) However: if you dislike that sense, please challenge it separately. Equinox ◑ 09:53, 12 November 2022 (UTC)

@Equinox: I am not convinced either. The consideration or argument was to be made though. It is difficult to think of examples where this sense is totally necessary by reason of not being used with verbs implying movement, impact or attraction like “give” or “get”, thus containing the notion of a “blow” or similar already in the environing words, which makes this kind of an optional sense. Fay Freak (talk) 12:40, 12 November 2022 (UTC)

blown save

"(baseball) A failure to convert a save opportunity to a save."

Only other OneLook reference is UD with a very different definition.

Seems SoP to me if one knows what a save is in baseball. DCDuring (talk) 15:28, 10 October 2022 (UTC)

I think it is worth keeping specific and official stats (e.g. at bat, run batted in, shot on goal, etc.). - TheDaveRoss 18:39, 10 October 2022 (UTC)

-sis

A purported suffix, but I recognized all the members of the associated category as direct borrowings from Latin or Greek. DCDuring (talk) 22:18, 12 October 2022 (UTC)

Comment. If, as has been suggested, we analyze e.g. vitaminosis as vitamin +‎ -o- +‎ -sis, we will have plenty of late formations.  --Lambiam 15:22, 13 October 2022 (UTC)

I consider the vowel in -osis more essential (lemma-like) than the o in -otomy. This is a good place to look at how other dicts do it. There appears to be a small number of words including merisis that were formed in English and don't have the -o-. I've cleared out some bad manual categorization and redirected some links to -osis. Ultimateria (talk) 17:59, 16 October 2022 (UTC)

So keep and convert the page to a rare alternative form of -osis. Ultimateria (talk) 18:03, 16 October 2022 (UTC)

@Dan Polansky Note that your solution of deleting all forms starting with "o" would be highly unsatisfactory in this example. More evidence that there are simply two variants. Theknightwho (talk) 09:44, 21 October 2022 (UTC)

Exceptions can be made on a case-to-case basis, perhaps along the lines of Ultimateria's "I consider the vowel in -osis more essential (lemma-like) than the o in -otomy." There may be a case for keeping -osis: we would need to have a closer look at the etymology and the like. Analyzing -osis as -sis would probably not be wrong, although rather unconventional. Turning all the following redlinks blue still seems undesirable to me (for the reader, a full discussion is at -otomy RFD): -ocyte, -ogenesis, -ogenic, -oleous, -olysis, -ophil, -ophile, -ophilia, -ophilous, -ophyte and -opore. --Dan Polansky (talk) 10:17, 21 October 2022 (UTC)

@Dan Polansky So now you're positing the existence of a linking morpheme -o- and variable stems in different cases? Doesn't sound like Occam's razor to me. The fact that you're worried about creating redlinks only confirms my suspicion that the real reason for your position is still to do with how words get categorised (even if you won't admit it). Theknightwho (talk) 10:22, 21 October 2022 (UTC)

In the medical sense of an abnormal condition, -osis (as in halitosis) is a productive suffix, probably formed by reanalysis of terms like cyano- + -sis and thrombo- + -sis.  --Lambiam 16:46, 21 October 2022 (UTC)

Interesting since θρόμβωσις is analyzed as θρόμβος + -σις, and this is given in OED as well. Thus, thrombosis would more analogically be surface-analyzed as thrombo- + -sis.

OED has -sis entry, covering e.g analysis and sepsis. MW has -sis covering peristalsis. sepsis is σήπω + -σῐς, so the surface analysis involving -sis seems fine.

We do have the option of reanalyzing -osis as -o- + -sis. It would be a bold option, deviating from sources. We will have to deviate from sources one way or another in at least a limited number of cases since their treatment of -oX is inconsistent. Some cases of this reanalysis should be less controversial: cytosis is now analyzed as cyto- + -osis, but would more naturally be cyto- + -sis. There is still the weird option of cyt- + -osis. gastrosis is the same case. --Dan Polansky (talk) 18:41, 21 October 2022 (UTC)

You write, “Thus, thrombosis would more analogically be surface-analyzed as thrombo- + -sis." By talking about reanalysis of terms like cyano- + -sis and thrombo- + -sis, I implied that this was the correct etymological analysis (modulo transcription) to start with; the suffix -osis emerged from an etymologically incorrect reanalysis.  --Lambiam 10:39, 22 October 2022 (UTC)

Keep and mark as non-productive or "mostly non-productive" as far as applicable. Another non-productive affix is -ion, and it serves a useful documentation function. --Dan Polansky (talk) 10:17, 21 October 2022 (UTC)

• RFD-kept: no consensus for deletion (WT:VPRFD). --Dan Polansky (talk) 10:52, 4 January 2023 (UTC)

dash cherry

dash noun sense 9 + cherry noun sense 9. Was previously at RFVE, but the relevant sense was later added to cherry, making this SoP. This, that and the other (talk) 03:36, 14 October 2022 (UTC)

Keep per WT:FRIED. The meaning of this term is not at all obvious at first glance, even if dash and cherry both have relevant senses. Binarystep (talk) 07:58, 14 October 2022 (UTC)

A red rotating light mounted on a car's dashboard rather than the roof? Really? Is the term even used? No GBS hits for this sense.  --Lambiam 10:28, 15 October 2022 (UTC)

They're not mounted necessarily, they are used in unmarked cars and pulled out of the glove compartment in emergencies. Drapetomanic (talk) 00:06, 17 October 2022 (UTC)

The 2002 Mofina citation does imply that this is associated with unmarked police cars. 98.170.164.88 03:50, 29 October 2022 (UTC)

I don't think whether this is SOP is the issue, but whether it exists at all. I can't find a single mention in a Google Web search! Equinox ◑ 10:40, 17 October 2022 (UTC)

I can’t find anything on Twitter either. I’ve created Citations:dash cherry and added one citation mentioned in the RFV chat but I can’t access the other book to find the passage to cite and it’s debatable whether the Reddit cite counts. Seems fairly SOP anyway, so might as well delete. The citation I’ve added could always be moved to cherry to support the corresponding new sense there (where I’ve added another cite). --Overlordnat1 (talk) 13:06, 17 October 2022 (UTC)

No hits on Amazon either. I can still see this being real, but in many locations the color intended for volunteer firefighters and such is amber, not red, so if people are using red ones it would only be in certain locations (apparently Alabama allows red, for example) and therefore the expression will be geographically limited. —Soap— 14:06, 23 October 2022 (UTC)

"I can’t access the other book to find the passage to cite": Added. 98.170.164.88 03:44, 29 October 2022 (UTC)

• Send to RfV. This doesn't become an RfD problem unless the thing actually exists. bd2412 T 06:00, 22 October 2022 (UTC)
• Keep but send to RFV - I agree this isn’t obvious at all (so if it does exist we should keep it). The question of whether it does exist is a question of finding citations. Theknightwho (talk) 17:03, 22 October 2022 (UTC)
• RFV; I'm leaning towards "keep" if it's attested, but if there are a lot of "___ cherry" terms, I'd reconsider. - -sche (discuss) 03:29, 29 October 2022 (UTC)

I found two uses for "dashboard cherry light" on Google Books (and also on IA). There are also a few uses of "dashboard cherry" without "light". As for the specific form "dash cherry", I'm not sure it's attestable outside of the Mofina cites and Reddit. I'm not seeing much in the usual places. 98.170.164.88 03:57, 29 October 2022 (UTC)

• RFD-kept: no consensus for deletion. --Dan Polansky (talk) 15:42, 4 January 2023 (UTC)

most

One of the senses given for most § Adverb is:

3. superlative degree of many

As many is not an adverb, I do not believe it has an adverbial superlative.  --Lambiam 08:35, 18 October 2022 (UTC)

Isn't the usage example already covered by determiner sense 3? I don't really get the difference, if there is any. I guess that "Most times when I go hiking" is an adverbial phrase, but the word "most" itself is not being used as an adverb. 98.170.164.88 06:13, 22 October 2022 (UTC)

Indeed, its syntactical function in the usage example is that of a determiner, the same as that of many in “many times when I’m lazy”, or most in “Some people succeed because they are destined to, but most people succeed because they are determined to.” The difference is that one (determiner) is correct while the other (adverb) is incorrect.  --Lambiam 10:10, 22 October 2022 (UTC)

Would it change anything if the sentence were worded

Most times I go hiking, I wear boots.?

I was the one who added the usex, but i realize now that my sentence doesn't illustrate adverbial use. Still, I think this is possible to interpret as an adverb if we simply omit the word when, since it will then make times function like sometimes, which is an adverb. Since only an adverb can modify an adverb, I'd say that the questioned sense does exist. —Soap— 16:56, 23 October 2022 (UTC)

Here the word most modifies times, which is the plural of the noun time, sense 3.4. Adverbs do not modify nouns. The grammatical function of most times in the adverbial clause most times when is not affected by the omission of the relative adverb when.  --Lambiam  --Lambiam 19:10, 23 October 2022 (UTC)

Yeah, I'm gonna say delete. 98.170.164.88 23:58, 26 October 2022 (UTC)

round-trip ticket

SOP. 98.170.164.88 20:12, 18 October 2022 (UTC)

On the other hand, we do have one-way ticket; but this is perhaps protected by the second sense, which is idiomatic. 98.170.164.88 20:15, 18 October 2022 (UTC)

I am inclined to keep both round-trip ticket and one-way ticket in their literal senses. They are quite set, there is no other term for either item that I am familiar with. It is a bit of a weak argument, since I wouldn't advocate in the same way for some other ticket descriptors (standing room only, general admission). - TheDaveRoss 19:03, 20 October 2022 (UTC)

Isn’t open ticket opaque, compared to the (IMO fully transparent) round-trip ticket?  --Lambiam 16:32, 21 October 2022 (UTC)

I’m with you - “one-way ticket” (literal) and “round-trip ticket” seem very self-explanatory, while “open ticket” does not. The first two are certainly common collocations, though. Not mentioned here yet, but return ticket is probably borderline, as a literal interpretation might be that it’s only a ticket for the return leg; I could see a non-native speaker making that kind of mistake, and in certain specific contexts it does get used that way (“I’ve got the outward tickets, but I’ll give the return tickets to you”). Theknightwho (talk) 17:00, 22 October 2022 (UTC)

Here are three instances where, in the context, return ticket is used in the sense of a ticket as being used for the return leg of a round trip: [50], [51], [52].  --Lambiam 19:00, 23 October 2022 (UTC)

At one time return rail tickets were issued which could be torn in half, one half being surrendered at the destination, and the remaining half being kept for the return journey. Now two tickets are issued if you ask for a return ticket, one for the outward journey and one for the return journey, you pay for both at the station where you start, normally for a price less than for two one-way tickets. DonnanZ (talk) 19:01, 4 November 2022 (UTC)

If a return ticket can be used by different routes for the same fare, it can be a round-trip ticket, when one route is taken to the destination and another one back to the starting point. I did this last year from Surbiton to Guildford and back. The question is whether a round-trip ticket also applies to using the same route out and back. DonnanZ (talk) 18:39, 4 November 2022 (UTC)

I'm also inclined to keep per TheDaveRoss. AG202 (talk) 15:34, 6 November 2022 (UTC)

• RFD-kept: no consensus for deletion (WT:VPRFD). --Dan Polansky (talk) 09:54, 4 January 2023 (UTC)

benevolent tyrant

SoP. Equinox ◑ 21:41, 19 October 2022 (UTC)

Delete. Clearly SoP. - excarnateSojourner (talk | contrib) 23:18, 20 October 2022 (UTC)

Tyrants are, by definition, unbenevolent. It looks like the real problem here is that the definition needs to be rewritten. —(((Romanophile))) ♞ (contributions) 19:28, 26 October 2022 (UTC)

It's hardly the only such collocation, cf. "just tyrant" [53], "loving tyrant" [54], "kind tyrant" [55], all of which just amount to "tyrant who is X". These all have a paradoxical taste, but our own definition at tyrant already involves ruling "unjustly, cruelly, or harshly", and it's certainly possible to be "harsh but fair" or cruel in the pursuit of justice. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 19:44, 26 October 2022 (UTC)

It's possible that this was created because of the existing benevolent dictator, by the way. Go figure. Equinox ◑ 01:13, 21 October 2022 (UTC)

This is an interesting one to me. I would say that both benevolent tyrant and benevolent dictator are SoP. Also, they don't appear in Collins, Lexico, or other dictionaries. Wikipedia does have Benevolent dictatorship, which kind of implies that this is not SoP. I am pro-delete, but not 100% sure. --Geographyinitiative (talk) 23:02, 26 October 2022 (UTC)

IMO the fact that it's used interchangeably with a bunch of near-synonyms for "dictator" (the WP page itself switches to "benevolent autocrat" in the second paragraph) strongly suggests that it's just SOP. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 00:35, 27 October 2022 (UTC)

Delete as above. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 19:45, 26 October 2022 (UTC)

Delete as SoP. — Sgconlaw (talk) 11:46, 27 October 2022 (UTC)

Delete, SOP. - -sche (discuss) 03:23, 29 October 2022 (UTC)

What about enlightened despot, enlightened tyrant, enlightened absolutism? PUC – 20:41, 5 November 2022 (UTC)

The terms "enlightened absolutism" and "enlightened despot(ism)" are historical terms of art for a specific phenomenon in (primarily) the 18th century, and the use of "enlightened" to mean specifically "influenced by the Enlightenment" is rare enough that it's not listed at our entry for enlightened, so I would consider them to be a different kettle of fish to "benevolent tyrant". I've not come across "enlightened tyrant" in historiography, however, and the definition there suggests it's SOP. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 20:16, 28 November 2022 (UTC)

• Keep, erring on the side of. It is defined as SOP, though, and fails to indicate which sense of "tyrant" is meant. For one thing, I wondered how and why the phrase is used at all. Is this the rhetorical device of oxymoron or does someone think the word "tyrant" does not invoke characteristics contradictory to "benevolent"? From google books:"benevolent tyrant", it will be possible to collect some interesting quotations. The entry is worthless as is, but can become quite useful. Not all uses need to be oxymoronic given the polysemy at tyrant; some may refer to Ancient Greek tyrants, who are usurpers. Furthermore, if there is a systematic oxymoronic use of the phrase, then it is a lexicalized oxymorony, meaning non-literal speech, which could contribute to being inclusion-worthy. Not terribly strong, but still worth my keep. --Dan Polansky (talk)
• Delete. Ultimateria (talk) 19:46, 14 December 2022 (UTC)

RFD-deleted. J3133 (talk) 10:12, 6 January 2023 (UTC)

alpha version

beta version

These are all SOP - particularly given that it's much more common to hear that a program is "in alpha" or "in beta", which shows that those words are simply acting as plain adjectives on the word "version". We don't currently have an entry for pre-alpha, but it works in exactly the same way. Theknightwho (talk) 06:08, 20 October 2022 (UTC)

Weak delete. I work in this industry (occasionally): there are alpha and beta (and sometimes other) releases, and alpha and beta candidates, and just "alphas" and "betas". Same thing. It may be the case that these terms all derived from "alpha (etc.) version" (in which case we might want to keep it, as "mobile phone" despite "mobile"), but in that case I think we ought to have some strong sourcing. Equinox ◑ 01:16, 21 October 2022 (UTC)

Ambivalent on this but the OED considers "alpha" and "beta" in the software sense as clippings of alpha testing and beta testing (rather than version), which seems plausible enough since their citations for the latter go back to the 1960s. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 12:31, 21 October 2022 (UTC)

Could be a case of WT:JIFFY or similar thus, difficult to know, but maybe for parsimony as we can arguably cover the ideas on the pages alpha and beta alone weak delete. Fay Freak (talk) 20:35, 28 October 2022 (UTC)

• Err on the side of keeping: these are the headwords I would use for lookup. In Macmillan. Mark using "sum of parts" label if desired. Very good page views[56]. --Dan Polansky (talk) 13:50, 31 October 2022 (UTC)
• Delete. pre-alpha is currently a red link, btw. Ultimateria (talk) 19:38, 14 December 2022 (UTC)
• Not sure if I can vote without an account here, but as someone who looked up the word through Google and the Wiktionary definition was exactly what I was looking for (and I was very perplexed by the deletion message), I obviously want to keep this. --62.245.80.31 00:53, 19 December 2022 (UTC)

religious right

Rfd-sense, "the right for someone to practice their religious beliefs," the Etymology 1. This is SOP and a literal definition, do we really need this if it necessitates a separate etymology? This'd be like if we had a separate etymology for learning permits (plural of learning permit) to define for a phrase like, "Learn as much as learning permits!" PseudoSkull (talk) 00:02, 24 October 2022 (UTC)

Delete but replace with {{&lit}}, given the fact there is also a non-SOP sense. No need to keep separate etymologies after doing that, though. Theknightwho (talk) 16:31, 24 October 2022 (UTC)

• Keep: when an entry covers some senses, it should also cover other senses of the same term in some form. A minimum way is to invoke {{&lit}}, but explicit coverage as is seen in religious right seems better; otherwise, a non-native speaker needs to consult the polysemous right entry and figure out which of the multiple senses are meant. Picking the salient sense for the reader adds value. As before, I would find a label "sum of parts" on the sense lin perfectly fine, to make things explicit for the reader. But these are not two etymologies: the different senses of "religious right" are under the same etymology of "right". --Dan Polansky (talk) 08:50, 4 November 2022 (UTC)

That isn’t relevant to how we decide what etymology sections to use for this entry. You also seem to now be trying to include senses which you admit are SOP, which is contrary to both policy and established practice. Theknightwho (talk) 11:50, 4 November 2022 (UTC)

As for common practice, I know of no evidence to that effect. As for policy, WT:CFI: "In rare cases, a phrase that is arguably unidiomatic may be included by the consensus of the community, based on the determination of editors that inclusion of the term is likely to be useful to readers". But that is arguably not about SOP senses; I know of no policy regulating inclusion of SOP senses. Let others comment and we will decide together; my position is that the current explicit phrasing is better than {{&lit}}. --Dan Polansky (talk) 12:39, 4 November 2022 (UTC)

That is hilariously bad rules lawyering, even for you. It is trivial to see that senses are also covered. Theknightwho (talk) 12:44, 4 November 2022 (UTC)

WT:CFI: "including a term if it is attested and, when that is met, if it is a single word or it is idiomatic". No talk about senses. A search for the word "sense" in CFI did not reveal anything. Indeed, if SOP senses were excluded, there would be no use for {{&lit}} at all, but since we use {{&lit}}, there is some support for SOP senses. And if we interpret that language to cover senses (which we shouldn't), then what I quoted allows inclusion of SOP items. --Dan Polansky (talk) 12:52, 4 November 2022 (UTC)

That would be because of sense (sense 7). You and I both know you're being disingenuous in the extreme. Theknightwho (talk) 13:02, 4 November 2022 (UTC)

I rest my case. --Dan Polansky (talk) 13:17, 4 November 2022 (UTC)

Nice non-sequitur. Theknightwho (talk) 14:18, 4 November 2022 (UTC)

Arguably, the sense is not even really SOP. Since, "right that is religious" would well fit Sharia law, but what is meant by it is the right to practice a religion. The "to practice religion" part does not have the same meaning as "of or pertaining to religion" and cannot be easily derived by it. The plural "religious rights" seems less ambiguous; Sharia is not "rights" in plural. I maintain there is only one etymology. --Dan Polansky (talk) 16:14, 4 November 2022 (UTC)

The right to practice religion is not the only right which is related to religion, and not the only religious right. Being an inadequate definition should not save it.

Unless the same sense of right is being used, they have different etymologies, because the route to get to the term in question differs. The fact that it forks at the term right and not earlier is irrelevant from the perspective of how we lay out the entry religious right. Theknightwho (talk) 16:17, 4 November 2022 (UTC)

Are 6 edits to compose a single post really needed? Now to the point: What, then, is a proper definition of "religious right" that covers the right to practice one's religion and perhaps more? I for one cannot obtain it from "right" and "of or pertaining to religion". And since Sharia is not "religious right", I rest my case about non-SOP until shown otherwise. --Dan Polansky (talk) 16:27, 4 November 2022 (UTC)

So you're unable to deduce that a religious right is a right which relates to religion from "right" and "of or pertaining to religion"? That suggests a competency issue on your part, not that this term is not SOP.

The number of edits to write a comment is irrelevant. You frequently write many irrelevant things. Theknightwho (talk) 16:31, 4 November 2022 (UTC)

ex-chancellor

ex-Communist

WT:SOP: "An expression is idiomatic if its full meaning cannot be easily derived from the meaning of its separate components. Non-idiomatic expressions are called sum-of-parts (SOP).". ex-chancellor is an expression whose full meaning (former chancellor) can easily be derived from its separate components (ex- and chancellor). An English learner knows exactly what to look up when they encounter ex-chancellor thanks to the hyphen. Also, you can be ex- almost anything. Compare Talk:ex-Christian. — Fytcha〈 T | L | C 〉 13:35, 26 October 2022 (UTC)

Agnostic personally, but there are a large number of other articles in ex- that ought to be handled consistently, barring some special reason (ex-serviceman, ex-friend, ex-minister, ex-Communist, as a random sample). —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 13:55, 26 October 2022 (UTC)

@Al-Muqanna: Yes, I agree, these should be handled consistently (which means they should be deleted, see Talk:ex-Christian). I've added two more terms to this nomination. ex-serviceman is saved by THUB, ex-friend by coalmine. — Fytcha〈 T | L | C 〉 13:59, 26 October 2022 (UTC)

Keep. ex-chancellor, ex-minister, and ex-Communist are single words, and affixes shouldn't be seen as distinct "parts" since they can't exist on their own. It doesn't make sense for our rules against hyphenated compounds to apply to entries that aren't compounds to begin with.

I'd also like to note that ex- is a bit unique among English prefixes in that it almost always requires a hyphen. By treating it as a separate component, we've drastically limited its coverage compared to other common prefixes. Compare Category:English terms prefixed with ex- (92 entries) to Category:English terms prefixed with pre- (2,787 entries), Category:English terms prefixed with anti- (3,552 entries) or Category:English terms prefixed with non- (10,005 entries). Our coverage would lead readers to believe that ex- is a rare prefix, when in reality we've just been forced to ignore the overwhelming majority of words that use it. Binarystep (talk) 14:09, 26 October 2022 (UTC)

ex-chancellor, ex-minister, and ex-Communist are single words - Irrelevant, WT:SOP talks about expressions. They are expressions.

and affixes shouldn't be seen as distinct "parts" since they can't exist on their own - Patently false. People refer to bound morphemes as "parts" all the time: [57], [58] — Fytcha〈 T | L | C 〉 14:16, 26 October 2022 (UTC)

Irrelevant, WT:SOP talks about expressions. They are expressions.

And WT:CFI talks about single words being distinct from idiomatic phrases, so our policies don't seem to agree with each other. Either way, what matters here is that we've effectively banned one of the most common prefixes in English. That doesn't benefit us or our readers.

Patently false. People refer to bound morphemes as "parts" all the time: [81], [82]

Irrelevant. The fact that bound morphemes are identifiable units doesn't make them "parts" in the specific sense of a word being SOP. red door is SOP because it refers to a door that is red. On the other hand, a non-Catholic isn't a Catholic who is non. Binarystep (talk) 14:31, 26 October 2022 (UTC)

And WT:CFI talks about single words being distinct from idiomatic phrases, so our policies don't seem to agree with each other. Either way, what matters here is that we've effectively banned one of the most common prefixes in English. That doesn't benefit us or our readers. - I agree that some of the other text in CFI (not SOP!) needs revision in this regard. I disagree that including ex- SOPs benefits our readers in any way. I would argue that banning such entries is what benefits our readers because that way editors are not wasting their time on redundant entries that could better be invested in adding novel information by documenting non-SOPs.

red door is SOP because it refers to a door that is red. On the other hand, a non-Catholic isn't a Catholic who is non. - This is completely off the mark. WT:SOP states that the meaning has to not be easily derived. The meaning of non-Catholic is easily derived from the definitions given in non- and Catholic. It doesn't matter that it doesn't follow the pattern of "X that is Y". — Fytcha〈 T | L | C 〉 14:50, 26 October 2022 (UTC)

I disagree that including ex- SOPs benefits our readers in any way.

How doesn't it? Readers benefit from more complete coverage. Even if you disagree, it's not like including these entries would harm our readers either.

I would argue that banning such entries is what benefits our readers because that way editors are not wasting their time on redundant entries that could better be invested in adding novel information by documenting non-SOPs.

It's not like editors are being forced to create prefixed entries at gunpoint. Most people will continue to add unique entries, while users who want to fill out Category:English terms prefixed with ex- won't be blocked from doing so.

This is completely off the mark. WT:SOP states that the meaning has to not be easily derived. The meaning of non-Catholic is easily derived from the definitions given in non- and Catholic. It doesn't matter that it doesn't follow the pattern of "X that is Y".

At that point, you might as well just delete all prefixed entries regardless of hyphenation. It's certainly easy to figure out the meaning of a word like nonaccompanying. Binarystep (talk) 01:35, 28 October 2022 (UTC)

• Keep as single words, per WT:CFI, "including a term if it is attested and, when that is met, if it is a single word or it is idiomatic". Thus, for single words, the section on idiomaticity does not get invoked in the first place. There is more at Wiktionary:Beer parlour/2022/September#Including hyphenated prefixed words as single words. And all three items are protected by the spirit of WT:THUB: the translations are in the entries. From the linked long post, I will quote examples included: non-smoker, non-African, non-Japanese, non-standard, non-toxic, anti-alcoholic, anti-aircraft, anti-American, anti-European, anti-immigrant, anti-imperialist, anti-Jewish, anti-Putinism, anti-racist, multi-cellular, multi-directional, multi-owner, multi-paradigm, multi-player, multi-wavelength, multi-word, post-war, post-Soviet, pre-Socratic, pre-Soviet, pre-war, pro-government, re-add, re-dye, re-sort, un-English. --Dan Polansky (talk) 16:04, 26 October 2022 (UTC)

  As explained in Wiktionary:Beer_parlour/2022/October#non-French, I don't think that the sentence you've quoted shortcuts the entire CFI for attested single words. It is obvious that, for instance, the rare misspelling, typo and proper noun sections of CFI also apply to single words, so why do you think that WT:SOP, another section of CFI, suddenly doesn't apply to single words, especially considering that WT:SOP is written with language that makes it perfectly applicable to single words? — Fytcha〈 T | L | C 〉 00:41, 27 October 2022 (UTC)

  To my mind, "if it is a single word or it is idiomatic" explicitly "shortcuts" idiomaticity, while it does not explicitly shortcut the misspelling and proper noun sections. If idiomaticity should apply to single words, why say "if it is a single word" in the first place? It could just say "attested and idiomatic", like it used to. If editors really want to delete non-standard (do they?), a vote could change the text to "if it is a single non-hyphenated word or it is idiomatic." I find it inadvisable for the reasons expounded in the linked BP discussion. --Dan Polansky (talk) 07:26, 27 October 2022 (UTC)

• Does COALMINE apply? Exminister: [59], [60], [61], [62], [63], [64]. Exchancellor: [65], [66], [67]. 98.170.164.88 23:16, 26 October 2022 (UTC)

• We also have a bunch of bullshit Spanish ex- entries, like exguardaespaldas, exmercenario, exlocutor. Wonderfool probably made all of them, but was not happy about it. It would be awesome to systematically delete them. GreyishWorm (talk) 22:14, 28 October 2022 (UTC)

Delete. Equinox ◑ 18:02, 30 October 2022 (UTC)

Given the above quotations supporting WT:COALMINE, this is policy override on multiple counts: 1) the general-rule protection of single words from idiomaticity; 2) COALMINE. --Dan Polansky (talk) 10:38, 31 October 2022 (UTC)

• RFD-kept: numerically, no consensus for deletion (2:2). Strength-of-argument-wise, the policy says that "including a term if it is attested and, when that is met, if it is a single word or it is idiomatic", and that is a keep; that interpretatiton of mine is disputed above, but then, we are back to numerical consensus or its lack. --Dan Polansky (talk) 09:50, 4 January 2023 (UTC)

would rather

SOP with sense 2 of would and sense 2 of rather. You can also say "would much rather" etc. — Fytcha〈 T | L | C 〉 11:32, 27 October 2022 (UTC)

• Delete as SoP. — Sgconlaw (talk) 11:44, 27 October 2022 (UTC)
• Delete. Leasnam (talk) 07:05, 2 December 2022 (UTC)
• Delete. Ultimateria (talk) 19:34, 14 December 2022 (UTC)
• Delete, SOP. PUC – 13:04, 24 December 2022 (UTC)

November 2022

cable internet

SOP. Also translations in other languages: Portuguese internet a cabo, Romanian internet prin cablu. I'm not sure about Dutch kabelinternet as it's written without spaces. Benwing2 (talk) 20:59, 5 November 2022 (UTC)

Doesn't strike me as SOP: Fiber internet which is transmitted using fiber-optic cables does not fall under the umbrella of cable internet even though a SOP interpretation says so. — Fytcha〈 T | L | C 〉 21:08, 5 November 2022 (UTC)

Really? Cable Internet is just Internet transmitted over cables; why would it matter if they're fiber-optic or coaxial? Benwing2 (talk) 00:32, 6 November 2022 (UTC)

I agree that it doesn't make sense and that it's a ridiculous and annoying misnomer but it do be like that sometimes: [68], [69], [70], [71], [72], [73] — Fytcha〈 T | L | C 〉 03:31, 6 November 2022 (UTC)

Citizen Kane

I don't really think this makes it a...term. The cites appear to use italics to refer to the movie, and this usage of movies/games/whatever in these kinds of contexts is pretty common, for example, "Well the movie was pretty bad, but it was surely no Manos: Hands of Fate". PseudoSkull (talk) 20:53, 6 November 2022 (UTC)

The "Citizen Kanes" cite looks promising, but phrases like "the Citizen Kane of horror movies" really shouldn't count. Binarystep (talk) 02:58, 7 November 2022 (UTC)

So if I see "The movie was no Citizen Kane" somewhere I can't come here to find out what it means? Drapetomanic (talk) 07:17, 7 November 2022 (UTC)

You would be better off going to Wikipedia and learning more about the movie than a single-sentence definition can tell you. Chuck Entz (talk) 07:58, 7 November 2022 (UTC)

Same for Einstein then? Drapetomanic (talk) 14:50, 7 November 2022 (UTC)

Einstein is much more generally applied and understood independently of context, I'm not sure Citizen Kane is. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 00:25, 10 November 2022 (UTC)

Then we should look for some kind of test. Drapetomanic (talk) 07:00, 10 November 2022 (UTC)

Delete per proponent. PUC – 13:03, 24 December 2022 (UTC)

• Keep, not different from Joan of Arc Drapetomanic (talk) 17:46, 29 December 2022 (UTC)

• Keep: the non-proper-name uses (the X of, Xes) need to be covered in some way, whether via the current common noun sense or as part of proper name sense indicating what the entity is noted for. (The proper name sense in Joan of Arc ought to be restored: it was deleted using low-quality rationale.) --Dan Polansky (talk) 09:47, 4 January 2023 (UTC)

zaʻtar

The apostrophe. Pious Eterino (talk) 09:07, 7 November 2022 (UTC)

Guessing this was meant to be an ayin mark, zaʿtar. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 11:32, 7 November 2022 (UTC)

I think this should be MODIFIER LETTER APOSTROPHE ʼ instead of MODIFIER LETTER TURNED COMMA ʻ. At least this is what man uses to transcribe for instance Ottoman Turkish where for ع (ʕ) they had a glottal stop (so logically it would not only be transcribed words but ultimately incorporate thence into English sentences, typical for scholarly works in the field that can’t shy away from incorporating Arabisms and Turkisms and what ever is local to their field). Fay Freak (talk) 12:29, 7 November 2022 (UTC)

Agree with Fay Freak. Theknightwho (talk) 16:35, 7 November 2022 (UTC)

Well, either move it to use the ayin mark or move it use the modifier letter apostrophe, but the turned comma seems to be entirely wrong. - -sche (discuss) 02:30, 29 November 2022 (UTC)

run of luck

SOP. Not in lemmings; dictionary.com has an entry sourced from "THE AMERICAN HERITAGE® IDIOMS DICTIONARY". This, that and the other (talk) 00:27, 9 November 2022 (UTC)

Leaning keep. It's not transparently SOP: per the OED, at least, run of luck is specifically a series of gambling wins, the more generic use to mean any spell of good fortune (not listed at our entry) is a later transferred sense. There, it has a sub-entry as a noun phrase under luck (alongside stuff like devil's luck—mere collocations are shunted to their own separate list). We also have the very similar lucky streak. There's another more general historical aspect, since etymologically it appears that the sense of run as a series or a spell might have been generalised from its use in gambling: "run of fortune" is attested from the late 17th century, whereas the more general concept in reference to events is 18th-century. Compare etymonline. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 01:01, 10 November 2022 (UTC)

• Delete, SOP. The collocation is not reserved to gambling contexts.^[74][75][76] One can also use the synonyms streak of luck^[77][78][79], run of fortune,^{[80][81](déjà vu)[82]} and, to complete the list, streak of fortune.^[83][84][85] Furthermore, the luck can be qualified, as in run of good luck or even of bad luck.^[86][87][88] I see no reason to think that the use of run in the sense of “series of like items” originated in gambling.  --Lambiam 12:28, 11 November 2022 (UTC)

@Lambian: Just to note, my argument above was a historical one—it is obviously used outside of gambling contexts, but this now-SOP use is transferred and not the original sense according to the OED. The "series of like items" sense of run is also listed as a subsense after "spell of luck" (similar earlier attestation is to continuous and abstract referents like "the run of time" and not a discrete series). The OED is only one source, but it seems reasonable enough and I'd want another citation to feel comfortable rejecting it out of hand. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 12:47, 11 November 2022 (UTC)

I do not have access to the current edition of the OED, but the 1933 edition of the OED defines a sense of run as: “A course or spell of (good or ill) fortune, esp. in games of chance.”^[89] The first three supporting citations, which are ordered by date, are:

• 1697 John Vanbrugh Aesop: “forced to cut down his Timber, which he would willingly preserve against an ill run at dice”.
• 1759 Laurence Sterne Tristram Shandy: “as the dice took a run against him”.
• 1782 Frances Burney Cecilia: “had had the preceding night an uncommon run of luck”.

The rest contains, in order, the collocations “a good or bad run of luck at cards”, “a long run of evil fortune”, and “a run of ill-luck”. With the 1933 OED definition, “run of luck” is definitely SOP. In my opinion, this sense is actually merely a specialization of a sense defined by the 1933 OED as: “A continued spell or course of some condition or state of things”. The aspect of fortune and the role of games of chance, if applicable, are conferred by the context in each of these quotations.  --Lambiam 22:12, 15 November 2022 (UTC)

The current edition is rather more detailed, yeah, but the 1933 would then seem to in fact support that it originated in gambling, no? All of those early uses relate to gambling. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 23:23, 15 November 2022 (UTC)

Actually, the full passage containing the third quotation is interesting and seems to support the contention that "run of luck" in fact originated as a term specifically related to gambling: [90]. Note that it's introduced without prior context—the reader is expected to infer that it refers to gambling and not just any old luck—and also that it's italicised in a way suggesting that it's a term of art. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 23:39, 15 November 2022 (UTC)

These six quotations are uses of the term run. Obviously, they have been selected by Murray to support his definition, involving fortune – and a good source of discussions of fortune is provided by games of chance. So what we have here is a selection effect. Only two contain the specific collocation run of luck. We see either stand-alone uses of run or in various transparent combinations: with at dice, of luck, of evil fortune, and of ill-luck. As I said, IMO these are SOP uses of run in a more general sense. This sense of run is old enough. For example, a book from 1677 has “a run of 20 Years”,[91] viz. of the Ark residing in the house of Abinadab. Why shouldn’t one expect to see it applied to other spells or courses of something, including good or bad luck (in gambling)? The collocation “a constant run of Fortune” occurs in a book from 1694,^[92] unrelated to games of chance. Is there a reason to think this is by extension of a sense originating in gambling, instead of simply being the more general sense?  --Lambiam 18:21, 16 November 2022 (UTC)

burst out crying

Isn't this burst out sense 2 + crying? The former entry already gives a usage example with "burst out laughing". You can also say things like "burst out bawling", "burst out weeping", "burst out in tears", etc. 98.170.164.88 19:58, 13 November 2022 (UTC)

SOP. Delete. --Overlordnat1 (talk) 20:15, 13 November 2022 (UTC)

Delete as SoP. — Sgconlaw (talk) 11:36, 19 November 2022 (UTC)

Boardwalk

This is just the name of the space in Monopoly.--Simplificationalizer (talk) 13:46, 15 November 2022 (UTC)

Keep – but the definition needs to be replaced by or extended with a figurative sense. In several of the given quotations, the term clearly is used in a figurative sense. Even when not (it is not always clear without further context), these uses appear to be independent of reference to the Monopoly universe.  --Lambiam 22:24, 15 November 2022 (UTC)

• Keep: since the original sense gave rise to a figurative sense, the original should be kept as well. Some will prefer to have it etymology-only, but I don't see a benefit of moving semantics to etymology. --Dan Polansky (talk) 12:14, 4 January 2023 (UTC)

beyond repair

SoP, as pointed out by Equinox. — excarnateSojourner (talk · contrib) 23:15, 16 November 2022 (UTC)

Delete as SOP. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 23:33, 16 November 2022 (UTC)

Keep. This is a set phrase, so SoP as interpreted by the nominator is a fallacy. DonnanZ (talk) 11:51, 17 November 2022 (UTC)

There are many “set phrases” like this: beyond comprehension, beyond description, beyond help, beyond hope, beyond recognition, ... . Being a set phrase does not mean the phrase is idiomatic. In these cases, the meaning is each time IMO a transparent combination of sense 6 of beyond and that of its object, as shown in the usex for sense 6: The patient was beyond medical help.  --Lambiam 20:39, 17 November 2022 (UTC)

Hmm-yeah, I would only go for the more common ones, like this one. DonnanZ (talk) 09:07, 18 November 2022 (UTC)

I wouldn't even call them set phrases, you can substitute past (or also past the point of) as a synonym of beyond with no loss of meaning in each case so both parts are freely variable. They're just collocations. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 22:00, 17 November 2022 (UTC)

Delete – SOP.  --Lambiam 10:39, 18 November 2022 (UTC)

"beyond help" is very common; "beyond hope", "beyond forgiveness", etc. are findable and not uncommon. I would delete. Give language-users some credit. We should also finally ban Donnanz from talk pages as a tongue without a brain. Equinox ◑ 07:33, 19 November 2022 (UTC)

??? @Equinox: This comment was hardly necessary, as I tend to ban myself. But as I created this entry, I am entitled to defend it. DonnanZ (talk) 09:35, 19 November 2022 (UTC)

Delete as SoP. — Sgconlaw (talk) 11:35, 19 November 2022 (UTC)

The vultures gathering for lunch might like to look at beyond#Preposition derived terms. DonnanZ (talk) 15:42, 19 November 2022 (UTC)

"Beyond redemption" and maybe "beyond belief" (though ?"past belief" sounds odd to me) are SOP for the same reason, but other than that the blue-linked terms there do in fact look like set phrases since they're either terms of art (e.g. beyond a reasonable doubt), the second part is used in a way it isn't otherwise (e.g. beyond one's pay grade), or the first part is invariable (e.g. beyond seas). This seems like a perfect use case for the collocations subheading in any case. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 16:00, 19 November 2022 (UTC)

• Keep per WT:LEMMING: in M-W. Tag as "sum of parts" via label if wished. --Dan Polansky (talk) 09:42, 4 January 2023 (UTC)
• Delete per Lambiam. Theknightwho (talk) 18:13, 6 January 2023 (UTC)

in good spirits

Redundant with good spirits. PUC – 13:08, 20 November 2022 (UTC)

If you're that fussed, redirect it. DonnanZ (talk) 14:13, 20 November 2022 (UTC)

Doesn't even seem worthy as a translation hub. Vininn126 (talk) 19:03, 29 November 2022 (UTC)

zero-day exploit

Sum of parts. zero-day existed years before this entry. Equinox ◑ 22:59, 24 November 2022 (UTC)

Victoria Park

Rfd-sense "unit of area in Hong Kong". the plural form is definitely attestable (in fact in most cases the only form used), as in google:"Victoria Parks" site:scmp.com, but is this SoP or something similar in some way, such that it should be deleted? – Wpi31 (talk) 09:25, 26 November 2022 (UTC)

Keep. This is similar to saying how many ‘football fields’ an area is and I don’t see why we should delete either sense at either entry. --Overlordnat1 (talk) 09:39, 26 November 2022 (UTC)

The nominator added this sense to the entry, and must have had second thoughts about it. DonnanZ (talk) 09:52, 26 November 2022 (UTC)

It's because some of the Chinese equivalents were nominated for RFD, so I assumed that similarly this one may not satisfy CFI. – Wpi31 (talk) 10:03, 26 November 2022 (UTC)

We should probably keep this one then[93], though I don’t feel qualified to vote on Chinese entries myself. We should also define ‘football pitch’ to be the area of a soccer pitch, IOW a typical 1.76 acres according to Wikipedia (see[94] - this this author works on the basis that a pitch is 1.79 acres if you do the maths) and perhaps also have another sense at ‘football field’ defining the area as 1.76 acres (if such a sense can be attested of course). The current definition at football field is based on the area of an American football field (1.32 acres) --Overlordnat1 (talk) 10:19, 26 November 2022 (UTC)

We know the park exists, we need to verify this sense is used, if any quotations can be found, preferably in English. It's really an RFV matter. If some decent quotes can be added, I would keep this. DonnanZ (talk) 10:30, 26 November 2022 (UTC)

Read my first comment, it's definitely attestable. There's like dozens, if not hundreds, of uses in different constructions in SCMP (the local newspaper). – Wpi31 (talk) 11:18, 26 November 2022 (UTC)

PS: My concern is that it would imply any other place names can be used as a unit of area, provided they are attestable (e.g. Wales, as mentioned in https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-wales-46737277). – Wpi31 (talk) 11:31, 26 November 2022 (UTC)

If an article said something was ‘three Waleses in area’ then that might be a concern but I don’t think anyone says that. --Overlordnat1 (talk) 11:37, 26 November 2022 (UTC)

You can add a quote from the South China Morning Post, but independent sources are also needed. DonnanZ (talk) 11:42, 26 November 2022 (UTC)

Delete. Any locally well-known geographical feature can be used for area comparisons, like, in NYC, “the size of three Central Parks”,^[95][96] in England, “the size of three London Olympic parks”,^[97] and even “the size of four Belgiums, plus Crimea”.^[98] Likewise for volume comparisons: “the equivalent of three Lake Eries”.^[99] This does not make Lake Erie a “unit of volume in North America”, irrespective of how widespread attestible uses may be.  --Lambiam 13:45, 2 December 2022 (UTC)

dwimmer-crafty

Just used by Tolkien in that book from the year 2021(?!?!) Flackofnubs (talk) 18:05, 27 November 2022 (UTC)

Yep. Leasnam (talk) 18:42, 27 November 2022 (UTC)

 Done Leasnam (talk) 18:43, 27 November 2022 (UTC)

@Leasnam This seems rather abrupt, no RFV? No waiting a few days for any discussion about whether this should be kept as a hapax legomenon? - TheDaveRoss 16:50, 29 November 2022 (UTC)

Okay. Restored. Leasnam (talk) 18:47, 29 November 2022 (UTC)

As far as I know, WT:CFI implies that we don't include hapax legomena for WDLs, even if the hapax is from a notable work. This is written at the top of Category:Hapax legomena by language, and is confirmed by the fact that there is no English subcategory. 98.170.164.88 20:26, 29 November 2022 (UTC)

The category may be empty, but we assuredly have some. The idea that we ought to include a word which appears in three My Little Pony fanfics which will never be read by anyone, but we ought to exclude words which are intentionally included in the most-read books in the language may indicate a misalignment of policy. There is a pretty good chance someone may encounter dwimmer-crafty and be curious what it means. Policy can be wrong, and when it is we should keep the words it would exclude, or exclude the words it would keep. And perhaps fix the policy. - TheDaveRoss 21:38, 29 November 2022 (UTC)

This should be at WT:RFVE. AG202 (talk) 20:17, 29 November 2022 (UTC)

I suppose the first order of business is to RFV, although yes, if it's only used by one author it'll be deleted. We used to allow words used in only one work, but voted to remove that in 2014, see diff, voted linked in edit summary, so English terms do actually have to have been used (three whole times) and not just coined by a celebrity. If there are citations, we may nonetheless return here to RFD, because the current definition is basically "crafty in the art of dwimmer", and this works for the one cite given, and is arguably SOP. - -sche (discuss) 22:02, 29 November 2022 (UTC)

SOP is a more compelling argument to me. - TheDaveRoss 14:17, 30 November 2022 (UTC)

lol classic Leasnamism. Equinox ◑ 13:35, 17 December 2022 (UTC)

<<lol classic Leasnamism.>> lol classic Equinoxism. Leasnam (talk) 15:47, 30 December 2022 (UTC)

eat-the-rich movie

This is just a movie with an "eat the rich" theme- SOP. You can substitute any other theme/trope like "boy meets girl". Chuck Entz (talk) 06:34, 28 November 2022 (UTC)

I'm not sure those comparable. In a boy-meets-girl movie, the boy meets a girl making the meaning obvious. However, in an eat-the-rich movie the rich are usually not "eaten" (i.e punished). Calling a film "eat-the-rich" is an interpretation of the movie's meaning or message rather than describing what actually happens in the plot. Ioaxxere (talk) 15:44, 28 November 2022 (UTC)

If we're going by the definitions we have though it looks SOP: the entry at eat the rich defines it as a slogan with a particular (moral) meaning, which is what an eat-the-rich movie expresses, rather than as an idiomatic synonym of punishing the rich. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 15:58, 28 November 2022 (UTC)

If this entry is deleted, “eat the rich movie” (whose contents I moved to this entry) probably should be too. Is there a way of adding it to this request so that they can be considered together? Graham11 (talk) 04:17, 29 November 2022 (UTC)

From a little searching, I think "eat-the-rich" can occur attributively before other nouns (e.g., attitude, message), with a similar meaning. 98.170.164.88 07:14, 29 November 2022 (UTC)

Delete, SOP. Ultimateria (talk) 19:22, 14 December 2022 (UTC)

Delete: we do have eat the rich and this "movie" definition is a movie of the same type. We don't create "robot movie" for Terminator, etc. I really wonder what is wrong in people's heads that makes them create stuff like this. Probably massive narcissism and total lack of exposure to literature and dictionaries. We should punish and delete with extreme prej. Equinox ◑ 13:37, 17 December 2022 (UTC)

bed-fasts

Listed as a plural of an adjective, lol. Pointed out by Aabull2016. The adjective was originally listed as a noun when it was created by Aabull. — excarnateSojourner (talk · contrib) 03:18, 29 November 2022 (UTC)

There seems to be a noun sense of bedfast that we don't have since searching for "bedfasts" on Google Books turns up a lot of stuff about manufacturing them. Not sure if it also takes the hyphenated form, hard to search for that specifically. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 16:12, 29 November 2022 (UTC)

@Al-Muqanna: See Citations:bedfast. 98.170.164.88 08:43, 1 December 2022 (UTC)

That's useful, thanks. I found this website with a definition of the hardware piece that seems to match that on other places ([100], [101]) so I've added it as a noun sense, and since your citations attest it as hyphenated this should be kept. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 12:43, 1 December 2022 (UTC)

• Kept as noun form. Ultimateria (talk) 19:21, 14 December 2022 (UTC)

just a number

SOP. PUC – 19:31, 29 November 2022 (UTC)

Delete. Yes, I think it's SoP now that I've clarified the def to state that it has to be a number (e.g. age or weight, but not hair colour). Equinox ◑ 07:38, 6 December 2022 (UTC)

Delete. Ultimateria (talk) 19:19, 14 December 2022 (UTC)

December 2022

proxy abuse

SOP, repeatable pattern: proxy can be combine with a plethora of other nouns and it just means "somebody else does it in your stead". — Fytcha〈 T | L | C 〉 04:20, 1 December 2022 (UTC)

I first assumed this referred to the abusive use of online proxies, and I’m not sure I’d have guessed this meaning without some obvious context. That being said, “abuse by proxy” is by far the more common term for this anyway, and the top results for “proxy abuse” do indeed refer to the misuse of online proxies. At best, this entry is misleading. Theknightwho (talk) 14:03, 2 December 2022 (UTC)

In either sense, “abuse by proxy” or “abuse of proxies”, the term is IMO SOP.  --Lambiam 18:26, 4 December 2022 (UTC)

Delete, this is proxy being used attributively hence SOP. Ioaxxere (talk) 04:48, 12 December 2022 (UTC)

Delete. Ultimateria (talk) 19:17, 14 December 2022 (UTC)

similar in spirit

Sum of parts: similar +‎ in spirit (sense 2). This, that and the other (talk) 23:35, 4 December 2022 (UTC)

Delete. Very SoP. Equinox ◑ 07:42, 6 December 2022 (UTC)

Delete or make into a redirect. Ioaxxere (talk) 04:46, 12 December 2022 (UTC)

Delete, no redirect needed. Ultimateria (talk) 19:16, 14 December 2022 (UTC)

＃IStandWith

Although this is Oxford's "word of the year", it's not much of a "word", is it? Merely a trending topic in the news. We would not generally include Twitter hashtags as entries. (There are zillions of them, by the way: #notallmen, #notinmyname, #blackgirlmagic, etc. etc.) Equinox ◑ 09:45, 6 December 2022 (UTC)

Delete: I agree. It’s not used in any idiomatic sense, and so is SoP. — Sgconlaw (talk) 13:00, 6 December 2022 (UTC)

Delete. Binarystep (talk) 13:39, 6 December 2022 (UTC)

Small comment, but this word actually came in third; the word that won was goblin mode. AG202 (talk) 00:17, 9 December 2022 (UTC)

Delete, this is clearly just three separate words mashed together by the fact that hashtags can't have spaces. Ioaxxere (talk) 19:30, 11 December 2022 (UTC)

Also just added stand with, which has surprisingly stayed uncreated up till now. Ioaxxere (talk) 20:23, 11 December 2022 (UTC)

But you made it cheaply and lazily, calling things "obsolete" that may not be. I guess it's a start? Equinox ◑ 13:33, 17 December 2022 (UTC)

@Equinox I copied the labels from the OED. Unless someone finds a recent quotation for these senses I think "obsolete" is a fair description. Ioaxxere (talk) 20:52, 17 December 2022 (UTC)

@Ioaxxere Not surprisingly--do you have any reasons for considering an actual phrasal verb? Or is it just a verb with a preposition? Andrew Sheedy (talk) 02:23, 13 December 2022 (UTC)

It depends on which terminology you are using for "phrasal verb": some consider "prepositional verbs" to be a subset of phrasal verbs, whereas others don't. In any case, stand with falls into the same grammatical category as run into and look after. The preposition combines with the verb to create a new, distinct meaning. Megathonic (talk) 19:49, 23 December 2022 (UTC)

Delete. SOP. --Overlordnat1 (talk) 00:26, 13 December 2022 (UTC)

Delete. - TheDaveRoss 19:34, 13 December 2022 (UTC)

Delete. More generally, I think we should treat interior capitals the same as spaces or hyphens. Vox Sciurorum (talk) 10:38, 15 December 2022 (UTC)

Undelete legitimate rape

This was somewhat surprisingly speedy deleted but if we look at Citations:legitimate rape then the two 2012 citations and the 2015 citation are independent as only one of them mentions Todd Aikin, so I propose we restore the article on that basis. --Overlordnat1 (talk) 00:26, 13 December 2022 (UTC)

I feel like the discussion would probably have to centre on whether the term has a non-SOP meaning rather than the independence of the citations. If the gloss is just "a genuine, legitimate act of rape" like the Citations page has it then it's presumably SOP and the fact a politician once used the term doesn't seem like it's lexically significant. Incidentally I would probably remove the 2016 one there since it looks like it's "legitimate (rape victim)" and not "(legitimate rape) victim". —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 01:04, 13 December 2022 (UTC)

Unless there are some cites provided which show that this isn't SOP I don't think we should undelete. The "term" was notable because it was patently offensive (in what scenario is rape "legitimate", or "illegitimate" for that matter) in addition to the offensive context (if a woman is actually raped her body will magically reject a pregnancy, so no women who become pregnant as a result of rape have actually been raped). Really it is just SOP in the manner it was initially used. - TheDaveRoss 19:39, 13 December 2022 (UTC)

It was considered notable enouh to be named the American Dialect Society's most outrageous word of the year in 2012 [102]. I agree it's borderline but its probably no more SOP than regret rape, the phrase uses sense 3 of legitimate (genuine) rather than sense 1 (legal) after all. Of course rape is never legal but the very fact of it's illegality may perhaps lead to confusion in the minds of some people who hear the phrase. --Overlordnat1 (talk) 02:15, 14 December 2022 (UTC)

I agree with Al-Muqanna and Dave, I'm not seeing a basis for undeletion at this time, as it looks SOP. One might say it's not a legitimate dictionary entry, or at least people have legitimate arguments that it's not something a legitimate dictionary would include as a legitimate lexeme. - -sche (discuss) 22:07, 14 December 2022 (UTC)

Keep it deleted. Legitimate definition 3, "authentic, real, genuine", covers it. Vox Sciurorum (talk) 10:36, 15 December 2022 (UTC)

Keep deleted. Ultimateria (talk) 20:20, 31 December 2022 (UTC)

neutroclusion

Tagged (as assumed misspelling), not listed. Equinox ◑ 19:31, 15 December 2022 (UTC)

Keep. See for example here, here and here. In each case the term neutroclusion occurs in combination with mesioclusion and distoclusion. The first reference states explicitly that the names of these diagnostic conditions are formed with the ending clusion; I suspect this is the coining publication. The selection of that ending is unetymological (occlusion is not ob+ *clusion) but apparently deliberate. The variant neutrocclusion is less common.  --Lambiam 03:14, 16 December 2022 (UTC)

Keep per Lambiam. Binarystep (talk) 22:26, 16 December 2022 (UTC)

If kept, please note the points above, regarding non-standard spelling and reasons for it. Equinox ◑ 13:32, 17 December 2022 (UTC)

• RFD-kept: no consensus for deletion. The nominated spelling is more common and even if it were ranked as a misspelling, we do keep common ones per WT:CFI#Misspellings, so no valid deletion ground identified. --Dan Polansky (talk) 14:39, 4 January 2023 (UTC)

  Striking the above closure, because the required month has not passed. Theknightwho (talk) 18:15, 6 January 2023 (UTC)

  As per RFD header, "except for snowball cases". It follows early closure is possible in snowball cases. Since the nomination has no plausible ground for deletion (common misspellings are kept anyway), and since there is also clear numerical consensus, there is snowball's chance in hell that this will be deleted, and therefore, the closure is in keeping with policy. Anyone who does not want to play little games like the above can reclose this, or alternatively, it can wait here for one more month; no problem. --Dan Polansky (talk) 18:30, 6 January 2023 (UTC)

  Lol. Theknightwho (talk) 18:39, 6 January 2023 (UTC)

Unsupported titles/Square bracketed sic

It is "sic" in square brackets. The brackets are not part of the word. Equinox ◑ 09:45, 16 December 2022 (UTC)

Delete per nom. It's also not correct to treat it as an alternative form of sic since the square-bracketed one can't be used in every situation where the plain form can—which is just a consequence of what square brackets mean. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 15:16, 16 December 2022 (UTC)

If it could, we would have a recursion problem... Equinox ◑ 17:34, 16 December 2022 (UTC)

Delete. This entry seems rather strange to me, it's no more justifiable keeping this than it would be creating round bracketed sic (which I don't propose doing). --Overlordnat1 (talk) 15:35, 16 December 2022 (UTC)

Delete for the reasons above. — Sgconlaw (talk) 17:28, 16 December 2022 (UTC)

Delete per the above. PUC – 12:53, 24 December 2022 (UTC)

cringe-inducing

It induces cringe (for which we have an entry already). Compare (real phrases I have found in Google Books search) "sorrow-inducing", "terror-inducing". Equinox ◑ 13:29, 17 December 2022 (UTC)

Delete. Ultimateria (talk) 20:20, 31 December 2022 (UTC)

ABC News

Not sure whether this is subject to WT:BRAND, WT:COMPANY, or, for that matter WT:FICTION. DCDuring (talk) 16:26, 18 December 2022 (UTC)

Delete. Equinox ◑ 09:25, 20 December 2022 (UTC)

Delete. Very difficult to see how "ABC News" could satisfy the last paragraph of WT:BRAND, and I don't see any plausible way WT:COMPANY could apply either. The initialism listing at ABC#Proper noun is enough. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 09:40, 20 December 2022 (UTC)

Delete. Ultimateria (talk) 20:19, 31 December 2022 (UTC)

• Keep. WT:BRAND would be for RFV; speculating what would happen there is epistemically inadequate. WT:COMPANY is essentially defective, lacking superficially plausible rationale, and not voted-on. The dictionary will not get better by deleting the entry. --Dan Polansky (talk) 09:38, 4 January 2023 (UTC)

Delete per Al-Muqanna. Theknightwho (talk) 14:39, 6 January 2023 (UTC)

but then again

Given as "alternative form" of then again, but seems a rather grammatically different beast, and SoP. Equinox ◑ 09:25, 20 December 2022 (UTC)

victory

I do not see how this is an interjection. Equinox ◑ 10:54, 20 December 2022 (UTC)

Just want to point out it's in the OED. — Sgconlaw (talk) 13:48, 20 December 2022 (UTC)

Stuff like this seems pretty interjection-y to me: "They were poor, but they were rich in faith, and when they died they shouted, 'Victory, victory!'" [103] "In the severest moments of the death-struggle, there was no intermission of the cry. 'Victory, victory, victory,' was still repeated." [104] "when in the rear of the army, and he heard the cannon, far from being frightened […] he cried, Victory! Victory!" [105] etc. Inclined to keep. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 14:36, 20 December 2022 (UTC)

Then freedom is also an interjection: [106], [107], [108].  --Lambiam 22:31, 21 December 2022 (UTC)

In a hortative sense (as in your example 3, or a Braveheart caricature) I think "freedom" can be usefully defined as an interjection, yeah, with similar reasoning for "victory". The second example I am ambivalent on, I don't think that use is generically different from saying "A man!" when you see a man and the like—I selected the "victory" examples specifically because they're cases where it is not just an observation of a victory. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 00:15, 22 December 2022 (UTC)

If this is an interjection, I am going to an interjection sense to pwned, and headshot. Fay Freak (talk) 03:42, 1 January 2023 (UTC)

And goal (football cheer) and walkies (calling to a dog) and loser (shouting an insult) and and and Equinox ◑ 23:02, 1 January 2023 (UTC)

Here’s another one for our growing collection of interjected nouns: success.^{[109][110][111]} And then there is waiter.^[112]  --Lambiam 20:41, 3 January 2023 (UTC)

Lovely. These are all unambiguously interjections syntactically: the question is which ones merit inclusion in a dictionary as such. The OED thinks victory does. The problem with the slippery slope idea is that we already have a good number of interjection lemmas that can be dismissed on similar grounds as any of these, e.g. (picking some random examples) apologies, condolences, battle stations, newsflash, checkmate, heads. So we might want to think about what the actual test(s) for inclusion are for an interjection, rather than simply stockpiling examples (of which we already have plenty)—unless it's just about lemmings. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 20:51, 3 January 2023 (UTC)

Good point. Are there any formal linguistic tests for interjections? — Sgconlaw (talk) 21:06, 3 January 2023 (UTC)

I guess it's not really something like that hinges on fine points of grammar like the participle vs. adjective discussions that people enjoy having: if you're shouting out a word by itself then it's an interjection by definition, even if it's also some part of speech (these are called "secondary interjections" in the literature). The question's just what the point of listing it as one would be. FWIW I don't get the conniptions about listing stuff like walkies or freedom or whatever as interjections if they're attestable and someone cares enough to add it, we're not short of space. The one category I'd probably exclude is "vocatives" or generally just exclaiming because something exists/happened (goal etc, and imo checkmate). I won't die on the hill of victory anyway, it just might be worth having a beer parlour discussion or something. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 21:19, 3 January 2023 (UTC)

outside a window

Probably not a valid WT:THUB, see Talk:outside a window. — SURJECTION ^{/ T / C / L /} 14:32, 23 December 2022 (UTC)

Delete, SOP. PUC – 12:51, 24 December 2022 (UTC)

This isn't a noun in English. It would be a prepositional phrase, which can function as either an adjective or an adverb. 70.172.194.25 20:27, 26 December 2022 (UTC)

• Does it have an idiomatic meaning? If not, delete. --Hekaheka (talk) 01:04, 31 December 2022 (UTC)

  It's certainly not idiomatic in English, but as a THUB it doesn't have to be. I can't speak for the translations. Justinrleung, who speaks Chinese, seemed to side with Surjection in the above discussion, which may mean there is nothing special about "outside a window" in Chinese as compared to e.g. "outside a door". The Finnish, Japanese (first), and Vietnamese translations seem SOP, as they link to their individual components. So that leaves potentially Korean and Japanese (second). Those still look SOP to me, though. 70.172.194.25 01:13, 31 December 2022 (UTC)

  As you must know better than me, the Finnish translation, ikkunan ulkopuolella, is also non-idiomatic; compare oven ulkopuolella.^[113]  --Lambiam 20:26, 3 January 2023 (UTC)

blow this joint

SoP: blow = leave a place, joint = place. We have both. (If kept, we need to consider the choice of entry title: can't you also "blow THAT joint", or "the new joint", etc.?) Equinox ◑ 19:57, 23 December 2022 (UTC)

One can find "blow the joint", "blow the scene", "blow this burg", "blow this chicken coop", "blow this dump", "blow this place, "blow this pop stand", "blow this popsicle stand" "blow this scene", "blow this taco joint", "blow this taco stand", "blow this town". A number of informal or belittling descriptions of where one is can be substituted. Chuck Entz (talk) 23:54, 23 December 2022 (UTC)

bend of the arm

Unneeded translation hub since elbow pit exists, and the term "bend of the arm" is rather opaque anyway as people have pointed out at Wiktionary:Tea room/2022/December#bend of the arm. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 21:11, 23 December 2022 (UTC)

It appears to be a poor translation of armveck by the entry's creator, crook of the arm is much better. But that is SoP to some. DonnanZ (talk) 19:43, 26 December 2022 (UTC)

charcoal drawing

Previously deleted. SOP Flackofnubs (talk) 12:39, 25 December 2022 (UTC)

Where's your Christmas spirit? DonnanZ (talk) 10:29, 26 December 2022 (UTC)

self-drilling screw

As it stands, this is self-drilling + screw. We probably should keep one and delete the other, or expand one. Flackofnubs (talk) 18:35, 26 December 2022 (UTC)

A synonym of self-tapping screw. DonnanZ (talk) 20:24, 26 December 2022 (UTC)

Not quite a synonym, more context provided from WP. Keep anyway. DonnanZ (talk) 12:49, 27 December 2022 (UTC)

These kinds of technical terms have exacting, often even safety-relevant, distinctions, the collective system making the individual terms more inclusionworthy than their trivial technical nature would suggest, thus are beneficial to collect. Perhaps Wonderfool should discern it with a real job, but I may also be projecting. Weak keep. Fay Freak (talk) 13:58, 31 December 2022 (UTC)

• RFD-kept: nominated by a banned person. --Dan Polansky (talk) 09:35, 4 January 2023 (UTC)

  Nope, sorry, you can't do that. Flackofnubs (talk) 10:17, 5 January 2023 (UTC)

Tough. DonnanZ (talk) 18:29, 5 January 2023 (UTC)

• Delete, and I’m striking out the obviously bad faith attempt to close this. Theknightwho (talk) 08:45, 6 January 2023 (UTC)

This is a vendetta against Dan. So my conclusion doesn't count? DonnanZ (talk) 17:54, 6 January 2023 (UTC)

No - I am preventing Dan (and you, given you're now engaging in the same behaviour) from abusing RFD to get what you want. Theknightwho (talk) 18:04, 6 January 2023 (UTC)

What is evident is that for any of Dan's keep votes you go out of your way to vote delete. Is that rational behaviour? DonnanZ (talk) 18:43, 6 January 2023 (UTC)

Bevis Marks

A street in London. I remember similar entries being contentious. Perhaps you'll enjoy debating the entryworthiness of this particular one Flackofnubs (talk) 00:16, 28 December 2022 (UTC)

Keep in the absence of any deletion rationale beyond trolling. Equinox ◑ 13:19, 31 December 2022 (UTC)

I guess this avoided the mass nomination above by not being in Category:en:Named roads (I've added it). —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 16:30, 31 December 2022 (UTC)

This may have been the red rag that enraged the bull. DonnanZ (talk) 22:33, 1 January 2023 (UTC)

Delete: has no figurative meaning, and so does not comply with "Wiktionary:Criteria for inclusion#Place names". — Sgconlaw (talk) 17:00, 31 December 2022 (UTC)

Reading between the lines, WF is, out of devilment, only interested in sparking a debate without being concerned about whether it is deleted or not. So, as Equinox guessed, WF has given no good reason for deletion. Therefore, Keep. DonnanZ (talk) 21:55, 31 December 2022 (UTC)

Speedily deleted. I'm afraid that is an insufficient argument for keeping the entry in view of the extremely clear policy previously adopted. If it is felt that the policy should be changed, feel free to start a discussion or vote. — Sgconlaw (talk) 22:09, 31 December 2022 (UTC)

Another admin needs to Speedily undelete Sgconlaw's poor decision. DonnanZ (talk) 22:30, 31 December 2022 (UTC)

• Unstriking. Let @Sgconlaw undo his process violation and undelete the entry. The RFD process has not finished, and editor discretion trumps policy, per long-term practice. Per WT:CFI, "In rare cases, a phrase that is arguably unidiomatic may be included by the consensus of the community, based on the determination of editors that inclusion of the term is likely to be useful to readers." The quoted sentence was supposed to be voted on, but one way or another that did not happen; anyone? See also User:Dan Polansky/IA § Policy override if you are so inclined. The most formal tangible evidence for editorial discretion I know of is Wiktionary:Votes/2014-11/Entries which do not meet CFI to be deleted even if there is a consensus to keep. --Dan Polansky (talk) 09:34, 4 January 2023 (UTC)

Doesn’t look like a community consensus to keep the term will form, it’s only you gaming to see whether you can create a different appearance of consensus after waiting five days with no one voicing disagreement. WT:CFI says “Most manmade structures, including … individual roads and streets, … may only be attested through figurative use.” So Sgconlaw’s decision to delete this random-ass streetname, too insufferable even for Wonderfool (though him to give deletion rationale was expected), is correct. Fay Freak (talk) 09:44, 4 January 2023 (UTC)

It is not a "process violation" (nor a "poor decision"—on what basis?). There is a clear policy—"Wiktionary:Criteria for inclusion#Place names"—that was arrived at through a formal vote which was called specifically to resolve the issue of, among other things, road name entries, and this is an entry that is not in line with that policy. It is not the "unidiomaticity" of the entry that is the issue; the entry is a road name that has no figurative meaning and so does not comply with the policy. There is little point in editors engaging in formal voting on policies if the matter has to be relitigated for each entry. By all means start another formal vote to amend the existing policy if that is what is desired, but until that has been done the policy stands. — Sgconlaw (talk) 11:35, 4 January 2023 (UTC)

It is a process violation since policy does not trump consensus: if it did, Wiktionary never would have had hot words before they were approved, yet Wiktionary did have hot words. The same is true of translation hubs: using your logic that policy trumps consensus, Wiktionary would not have had translation hubs before they were finally formally approved years later, and yet it did have them. Therefore, the common-law principle (as opposed to statutory law) establishes that consensus trumps policy, not the other way around. Your view that CFI overrules consensus is further refuted by the 2014 vote I linked to. You ought to unstrike this nomination, undelete the entry, and let the sovereign of the English Wiktionary decide, which is we the editors, not CFI, per arguments just presented. --Dan Polansky (talk) 11:53, 4 January 2023 (UTC)

No. Please start a new formal vote to amend the existing policy if that is desired. It makes no sense that policies formally voted on (especially one as fundamental as WT:CFI) can simply be ignored in this way. (@Chuck Entz: as a long-time admin, feel free to advise on this.) — Sgconlaw (talk) 12:53, 4 January 2023 (UTC)

You pretend you did not read a single word of mine, as per lack of specific response. Unacceptable. --Dan Polansky (talk) 11:58, 4 January 2023 (UTC)

"Please start": I am not anyone's subordinate here and do not accept any commands or imperatives; you ought to desist from using this phrasing going forward. --Dan Polansky (talk) 12:03, 4 January 2023 (UTC)

@Dan Polansky: obviously it is a suggestion, not an order. If you do not desire to start a formal vote, then don't. — Sgconlaw (talk) 12:53, 4 January 2023 (UTC)

It is an imperative. A suggestion: "It might be a good idea to do X"; "you may want to do X", and the like. (What's new about consensus? Still 50%-majority, by the "usual" meaning of it, as you say?) --Dan Polansky (talk) 13:11, 4 January 2023 (UTC)

Put differently, Sgconlaw closure is an attempt at an anti-constitutional revolutionary coup, where the constitution, like the Britain's one, is an unwritten one and involves long-term established practices of which ample evidence is on record spanning years. --Dan Polansky (talk) 11:58, 4 January 2023 (UTC)

As for "Doesn’t look like a community consensus to keep the term will form": I see 2 boldface keeps. And consensus to keep does not need to form; consensus to delete needs to form. Speculations about process outcomes are no substitute for a process. --Dan Polansky (talk) 12:09, 4 January 2023 (UTC)

Whether Bevis Marks is worthy of inclusion or not, I feel Sgconlaw's behaviour here was irrational and uncharacteristic, and the decision, which goes against usual RFD procedure, should be reverted. DonnanZ (talk) 12:38, 4 January 2023 (UTC)

We have used speedy deletions before, for example, for self-evident "attributive form of" definitions for hyphenated compounds when they are clearly against policy. — Sgconlaw (talk) 12:51, 4 January 2023 (UTC)

But in the case you quote, there were no boldface keeps, so speedy was at least plausible. Of course, per long-term text in the RFD header, a RFD discussion should be open for at least a week, but that was changed via a coup in 2021 or 2022 (I don't remember which year). By contrast, here, you deleted an item over two boldface keeps. --Dan Polansky (talk) 13:15, 4 January 2023 (UTC)

No substantial reason contrary to WT:CFI has been provided for the "keep" votes. Claiming that the nominator has not provided a sufficient reason for deletion isn't enough when it is clear that the entry violates CFI. — Sgconlaw (talk) 15:21, 4 January 2023 (UTC)

You still keep on pretending to have not heard a single word of mine. I showed the common law to be that consensus trumps policy, not the other way around, and you did not address that. An entry that clearly does not meet CFI can be kept if there is consensus to do so; thus, an entry that met the hot word standard was kept even when CFI did not cover the hot word standard. And the reader does not need to trust me on that; it is all on record. --Dan Polansky (talk) 15:35, 4 January 2023 (UTC)

Delete or keep deleted or whatever per Sgconlaw. — SURJECTION ^{/ T / C / L /} 15:30, 4 January 2023 (UTC)

Keep Deleted. I would note that speedy deletes are allowed, though I wouldn't have done so myself in this case. As for Dan, everything he says can be discounted by his own precedent of doing so to WF: like WF, he is a formerly-banned user who likes to play games. @Dan Polansky: you were blocked for a reason, and you don't seem to have learned anything. Please stop being contentious and disruptive. You're on very thing ice here: IMO you shouldn't be closing anything that's not an obvious snowball slam-dunk. You are not RFVE's Supreme Court. Chuck Entz (talk) 16:00, 4 January 2023 (UTC)

LOL: I prefer Dan to WF. But I don't want to give him a swelled head. DonnanZ (talk) 16:22, 4 January 2023 (UTC)

I was blocked in 2022 for fabricated reasons, as I documented on my talk page. There was talk about "POINTING", where there was obviously none. As for closing RFDs (not RFVs) today, I am closing them in keeping with approved policy, and I have years-long history of uncontested closures of RFDs, and the only closures that were contested were in 2022 by a certain editor who likes to pick fight with me; the closures I made were then reclosed to the same effect as I did. I recommend anyone to review the closures I made today and examine them on policy substance to see whether there is any issue with them; I believe there is none. Also, since I have not seen Chuck Entz do any RFD closures for years (not even the other editor who likes to attack me), we have no idea what kind of closures Chuck Entz would like to see, or the other editor. "RFVE's Supreme Court": again, not RFV; more inaccuracy from Chuck Entz. --Dan Polansky (talk) 16:47, 4 January 2023 (UTC)

"like WF, he is a formerly-banned user who likes to play games": to liken me to Wonderfool in any way is a top of insolent rudeness from Chuck Entz. --Dan Polansky (talk) 16:48, 4 January 2023 (UTC)

Keep deleted. Theknightwho (talk) 08:42, 6 January 2023 (UTC)

(weak) Keep deleted - this should've been kept open for a bit longer to see if idiomatic uses could be found but I can't see it passing if it is reopened. The unusual name and etymology of this street name, relating to the mark(boundary) of land owned by the abbots of Bury St Edmunds and not, as one might suspect, a Jewish surname (Marks/Marx) along with the historical significance of the street means that it would be a shame to keep this deleted but that's just the way it is. --Overlordnat1 (talk) 12:03, 6 January 2023 (UTC)

FWIW I would support having an appendix space for compiling etymological info for toponyms that don't pass CFI (though it would probably need its own looser CFI). Place name dictionaries that focus on etymology are a thing, much like thesauruses. For my own part, I vote keep deleted. While I think Sg's decision was probably hasty, this is not a significant street in London and it's unlikely on the face of it that there is any figurative use, and nobody has suggested one. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 12:18, 6 January 2023 (UTC)

January 2023

batch edit

"An edit of multiple items at the same time, or in sequence." This is SoP, similar to a "batch rename" or a "batch deletion", etc. etc. I assume someone added it just because it's (sometimes) a wiki term. Equinox ◑ 23:07, 4 January 2023 (UTC)

Delete, sum of parts. Fay Freak (talk) 09:12, 5 January 2023 (UTC)

fart out

Tagged but not listed. Flackofnubs (talk) 10:14, 5 January 2023 (UTC)

Keep - it’s generally used idiomatically, I feel. Theknightwho (talk) 14:51, 6 January 2023 (UTC)

aorist tense

Just attributive aorist + tense. Not comparable to future tense, past tense since the latter have trans-linguistic meanings whereas "aorist tense" is just "the tense(-aspect) of the aorist", whatever that implies in a given language (perfective in Ancient Greek, habitual in Turkish, etc). —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 12:47, 5 January 2023 (UTC)

Relevant precedent: we deleted Talk:relative future tense, too. - -sche (discuss) 17:54, 5 January 2023 (UTC)

benevolent tyranny

“government of a benevolent tyrant.” benevolent tyrant was RFD-deleted (“A tyrant who rules through benevolence.”) J3133 (talk) 10:21, 6 January 2023 (UTC)

Delete, SOP. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 12:19, 6 January 2023 (UTC)

enlightened tyrant

“Synonym of benevolent tyrant” benevolent tyrant was RFD-deleted (“A tyrant who rules through benevolence.”) @Al-Muqanna wrote in the discussion, “I've not come across "enlightened tyrant" in historiography, however, and the definition there suggests it's SOP.” J3133 (talk) 10:21, 6 January 2023 (UTC)

enlightened tyranny

“Synonym of benevolent tyranny” (“government of a benevolent tyrant.”) J3133 (talk) 10:21, 6 January 2023 (UTC)

Delete both per my comment that J3133 mentioned. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 12:19, 6 January 2023 (UTC)