Wiktionary:Tea room/2023/August

discussion rooms: Tea room • Etym. scr. • Info desk • Beer parlour • Grease pit ← July 2023 · August 2023 · September 2023 → · (current)

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neoracism and cultural racism

According to Wikipedia, neoracism is cultural racism, which they define as "discrimination based on cultural differences between ethnic or racial groups". I am unclear of which of our senses covers this. Our first one just mentions nationality/ethnicity-based discrimination, while our third seems to be said by conservatives referring to left-wing ideas on race. [1] Is one intended to refer to that? Or do I need to make a fourth def?

[1] Our definition doesn't mention conservatives, the quotes make it seem that way. cf (talk) 03:34, 2 August 2023 (UTC)

added this to sense 1 cf (talk) 23:40, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

quicumque

Which syllable of quicumque is stressed? Based on basic Latin phonology, I think it should be on cum (the penult), as shown in the entry, but -cumque says, Terms formed with this suffix are invariably stressed on the antepenultimate. quandocumque seems to agree, but what about quicumque (and other words suffixed with -cumque)? Choclei (talk) 04:41, 2 August 2023 (UTC)

The claim about it being antepenultimate looks wrong to me, and is certainly wrong in ecclesiastical usage where it's quicúmque (and also quandocúmque etc.). The old Sounds of Latin by Roland G. Kent states, "A long enclitic might accordingly by the penultimate law become orthotone; i.e., might have an accent, as in quī-cúmque". I suspect this is misapplication of the rule about stress usually falling on the syllable before an enclitic. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 08:18, 2 August 2023 (UTC)

I've changed -cumque and the two errant entries quantuscumque and quandocumque to stress the penult per the sources I could find, the other derivatives all had it marked on the penult already. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 19:03, 2 August 2023 (UTC)

It looks like the note about antepenultimate stress in words ending in -cumque was added by GianWiki; do you remember what this was based on?--Urszag (talk) 22:38, 2 August 2023 (UTC)

Hi. I can't really remember where I pulled that out of. It was around the time when I first started editing, and made a few blunders here and there. This is likely one of them (I mean, when I—just now—read about me having added the note about words in -cumque being stressed on the antepenultimate, I thought to myself "Why would I do that?"; then it dawned on me). I believe it was just my mistake. —— GianWiki (talk) 06:12, 3 August 2023 (UTC)

Oh, thanks for the clarification! Al-Muqanna's suggestion that it was based on the rules for monosyllabic enclitics sounds plausible.--Urszag (talk) 04:35, 4 August 2023 (UTC)

Thank you, everyone, for your help! Choclei (talk) 15:59, 5 August 2023 (UTC)

earon

We define earon as the plural form of wesan, but I don't see it shown or mentioned anywhere on that page, particularly in the conjugation table. Leasnam (talk) 19:38, 3 August 2023 (UTC)

Help in creating the page, Im trying to create a bio page and quoted all factual verifiable information with neutral point. its getting rejected?

<redacted personal information/self-promotion> 223.190.81.193 12:45, 4 August 2023 (UTC)

First off, this is Wiktionary, not Wikipedia. Content about specific individuals is typically not welcome here. 37.110.218.43 12:48, 4 August 2023 (UTC)

And in case you are considering adding a bio page to Wikipedia, please first read Help:Your first article carefully, paying particular attention to the requirement of notability. A neutral point of view and providing sources for all factual information are not sufficient.

EN steeple, SA स्तूप (stūpa)?

Curious if there's any connection between these two.

Our entry at Sanskrit स्तूप (stūpa) is missing any etym section, and steeple's etymology only goes to redlinked Proto-Germanic *staupilaz, so those were dead ends. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 23:30, 4 August 2023 (UTC)

There is more for steeple at Old English stiepel, and following that takes you back to PIE. The Sanskrit on the other hand looks rather unclear. OED pronounces its etymology uncertain, and from what I can gather in the literature the Dhātupāṭha provides a verbal root for it meaning "to heap", but modern scholars tend to think that's a fictive backformation. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 23:46, 4 August 2023 (UTC)

Polybius square

What is a "visual fire telegraph", as mentioned here? I find the phrase nowhere outside of Wiktionary. Equinox ◑ 15:48, 5 August 2023 (UTC)

Would guess they just meant fire-signalling as a form of "visual" telegraphy, that's what the wp article suggests ("The Polybius square was used to aid in telegraphy, specifically fire-signalling"). Could be clearer. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 16:10, 5 August 2023 (UTC)

A bit late to this talk thread. I just wanted to share the link to WP's article on optical telegraphs, which is interesting. Semaphores and lamps and shit. Clever stuff for its day. Quercus solaris (talk) 22:17, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

Wish.com

I'm posting here not because I'm invested in the conversation or that I will likely be involved in this thread, but because the entry is tagged and no one has posted about it. You can check my talk to see a little discussion of it, but it's also in a thread that has a lot of irrelevant material, so to copy and paste a germane section with some editing to remove extraneous material:

Would an uninvolved admin please restore the previous version (noun) until 1) [someone] opens a Tea Room thread proposing changing the POS to adjective and 2) obtains consensus supporting said change. I'm rather agnostic re: the POS. I think the cites support the "noun" designation. I went with "noun" because someone in the Grease Pit discussion proposed a non-gloss definition. And non-gloss definitions tend to work better for nouns than adjectives because of the way English works. "Noun" is more in keeping with the more cautious/conservative approach the Grease Pit thread seemed to favour. If someone added an adjective sense to Twitter, Facebook, etc. backed up with cites such as "Twitter discourse" or "Facebook culture," many would object that those represent attributive noun usages rather than true adjectival usages. But I get that POS questions can be complicated and somewhat subjective. I scratched my head when someone switched old man yells at cloud from "noun" to "phrase," but I didn't kick up dust over it... [this entry] need ought to go through the process of establishing consensus...

Again, I'm not terribly invested in being in the conversation, but I'm passing it along for the community to get a consensus because it clearly needs it. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 19:14, 5 August 2023 (UTC)

Context: Wiktionary:Grease_pit#Creating_an_entry_for_Wish_dot_com. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 19:33, 5 August 2023 (UTC)

I would probably say it's an attributive noun, and that Poundland and Tesco Value should be considered such as well, but I think a solid argument can be made for the adjective header.

The standard tests distinguishing an adjective from an attributive noun (cf. WT:English adjectives) are the existence of comparative/superlative forms and the term's use in a predicative position. The problem is that, in general, any arbitrary word or phrase can appear in these positions if abstracted from its part of speech—usually indicated with quotation marks in formal writing, e.g. "that's very 'John'"—and so in practice there's a quite large grey area where an attributive noun might be used reasonably frequently in those positions. That applies to 'Wish.com' if we consider the online usage (examples taken from Reddit): "the most Wish.com shit I've ever seen", "This whole thing is very Wish.com". In that case it's reasonable to ask whether it's better to just call it a day and consider it lexicalised as an adjective. If it is an adjective, though, then I don't see the point of the sense being a non-gloss def. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 19:43, 5 August 2023 (UTC)

The comparative/superlative uses are what swing it for me. You're right that you can say "that's very John" (and I think that kind of predicative use can be done with any proper noun), but I'm less convinced that you can do that when it's placed in the attributive position ("the most Wish.com shit I've ever seen"). Maybe you can, but "that's the most John thing I've ever seen" feels awkward in a way that the previous example did not. Theknightwho (talk) 19:48, 5 August 2023 (UTC)

I disagree that "the most John thing I've ever seen" is unnatural. Maybe it's more common in certain regions than others, but I've said similar things (and perhaps that exact sentence) many times. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 10:00, 12 August 2023 (UTC)

I am not sure if it's an adjective or a noun. "That's Wish.com" gives only resluts in the form of "that's Wish.com [noun]". However, what TKW did feels like he's shoving his agenda of "Wish.com is an adjective" down Wikt's throat.

cf (talk) 22:46, 5 August 2023 (UTC)

The citations I removed are clear uses of Wish.com as a proper noun, which don't support a noun or adjective use. It's not about shoving my views down anyone's throat - it's about making sure the evidence actually supports the entry. Theknightwho (talk) 22:58, 5 August 2023 (UTC)

@Theknightwho: It would be better to segregate and add a label to explain why than to remove in cases like this where something is disputed and you want to avoid the appearance of bad faith. Chuck Entz (talk) 23:39, 5 August 2023 (UTC)

@Chuck Entz I did put it in the edit summary (repeatedly), but yes, they've been separated into a different section. Theknightwho (talk) 23:47, 5 August 2023 (UTC)

@Chuck Entz - Exactly. I make a habit of preserving pre-collected citations even if I don't use them when creating an entry/sense or personally consider them low-quality or off-the-mark. Both to respect the work done by whomever gathered them and because one never knows when they might come in handy. Certainly given that TKW and I share a fractious history, it's hard to interpret the arbitrary deletion of my work in a good light. To be perfectly frank it has an "I'm going to smash your sand-castle because I can" vibe for me. The prudent thing would have been to bring concerns regarding the chosen POS to a talk page before plowing ahead with a change that was likely to be disputed. WordyAndNerdy (talk) 00:10, 6 August 2023 (UTC)

It wasn't arbitrary, and there was a good reason for it. Repeatedly claiming I was doing it for no reason is just lying. Theknightwho (talk) 00:32, 6 August 2023 (UTC)

I didn't want to comment further, but I feel a need to add that, while comparative/superlative uses are generally a good litmus test, they aren't a fool-proof metric. Very, at least, can be used somewhat adverbially, as in "the building is very Art Deco" or "I thought the movie was very film noir." I doubt many would argue in favour of treating Art Deco or film noir as adjectives on account of such sporadic uses. Wish.com is a tricky one to POS, but I think "mostly-attributive noun" is the best fit, in that it covers all of the six gathered CFI-compliant cites. Perhaps even "proper noun," though I'd argue it's used more generically than specifically. "Adjective" creates more problems than it solves. Do you really want to open the door to adjective definitions for Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr etc? I guess there's a case to be made that Facebook can be used with the connotation of "out-of-touch" ("Facebook memes") or Tumblr as a substitute for woke ("Tumblr genders" etc.). But the precedent is against treating website names as adjectives, not in favour of it. WordyAndNerdy (talk) 20:37, 5 August 2023 (UTC)

I think the Art Deco/film noir examples fall under the type of abstraction-from-POS I mentioned above (the NYT archives also offer "It's very art deco New York in the Twenties and Thirties", with the entire phrase being the predicate). In terms of specific tests, what still sways me towards "noun" over "adjective" is that predication seems to require the modifier: "that jacket is terrible", ?"that jacket is Wish.com". To me at least it's less convincing to worry about website names as a semantic category though, it needs to be decided on syntactic merits. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 20:44, 5 August 2023 (UTC)

@Al-Muqanna The distinct meaning test applies here, which doesn't seem to apply to any of the other examples. It certainly wouldn't apply to conventional attributive uses of Wish.com, which merely mean "bought from Wish.com" or "relating to the company Wish.com" etc. It certainly couldn't be used as a conventional noun with the meaning of being poor quality, because the whole point that that quality applies to the thing it is describing. Theknightwho (talk) 21:00, 5 August 2023 (UTC)

The distinct meaning doesn't in principle apply to distinguishing between attributive nouns and adjectives, though (and so isn't listed under the relevant tests for that) since a noun can acquire a distinct meaning in attributive position without gaining the other syntactic characteristics of an adjective. Hence Vichy#Etymology 2 is basically not found in constructions like "more Vichy" or predicatively at all, despite being a distinct meaning. The fact that those do occur for Wish.com is probably more relevant. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 23:05, 5 August 2023 (UTC)

There seem to be no clear guideposts here. Some entries derived from proper nouns treat them as common nouns (Homer Simpson, Voldemort, Jabba the Hutt); some treat them as proper nouns (Sherlock, Yoda, Sherlock Holmes), though sometimes with figurative sub-senses. There's some degree of latitude in how such entries are constructed. They don't seem to be treated as adjectives, though, even when they're frequently used attributively. WordyAndNerdy (talk) 22:38, 5 August 2023 (UTC)

The proper noun/common noun issue is a bit of a tangent since with "Wish.com" there's a more specific syntactic issue at stake than just how to treat figurative senses of proper nouns. In general it's probably better to treat extended senses of proper nouns as common nouns (with reference to uses like "a Voldemort", "bunch of Voldemorts"); in contrast to adjective vs. noun though there's no general linguistic standard for what constitutes a proper noun since the category has no particular syntactic significance—and proper nouns referring to 'specific things' is some sort of general standard, but never applied consistently. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 23:05, 5 August 2023 (UTC)

To me, this looks like an attributive noun in most of the cites (and simply a noun, in others), as does Poundland and Tesco Value and dollar-store, as Al-Muqanna's first comment said. It's unfortunate that the border between parts of speech is so fuzzy (not just with adjectives, either; nouns bleed into pronouns a lot, too: we have bro and man, and dude finna add a pronoun section to e.g. dude too, or could). Some of the cites could be argued to be adjectives, but even those could also be argued to still be nouns IMO: e.g. "The most Wish.com shit I've ever seen" does not seem any different from e.g. "the most Trump thing I've ever heard". In cases where it's not clear whether something is an adjective or noun, I prefer an Occam's razor approach: "Wish.com" started as a noun (a proper noun, the name of a website), like e.g. Amazon; I would only posit additional parts of speech if there are cites that can only be explained by adding those parts of speech. - -sche (discuss) 09:18, 6 August 2023 (UTC)

Pound-shop and dollar-store would seem to be adjectives given the hyphens and the existence of the unhyphenated nouns pound shop and dollar store. Yes, some of the citations I gathered of dollar-store are unhyphenated, but there's four hyphenated uses on the citations page. Whether the unhyphenated instances therein represent an alternative formatting of the adjective dollar-store or the noun dollar store being used attributively seems like an academic question that isn't germane to the entry itself. At a certain point we've got to determine a POS for an entry and stick with it. Fragmenting an entry into multiple POS sections based on hair-splitting over cites ("that one's a noun," "that one's a proper noun," "that one's a true adjective") may satisfy a few of the nerds behind the curtain but it will also create unnecessary confusion for lay readers. I wanted one of the three "handpicked" cites featured in the entry proper to show the term being applied to an abstract concept rather than a material item that could actually (or at least conceivably) be found in a dollar store. This one was hard to attest due to the high signal-to-noise ratio. I had to manually think up phrases to search for (e.g. "dollar-store dress" and "dollar-store journalism"), and at a certain point I figured there were enough. WordyAndNerdy (talk) 14:08, 6 August 2023 (UTC)

Noun phrases are generally hyphenated in attributive position, though. That isn't to say pound-shop and dollar-store in particular are better treated as nouns, but hyphenation means little. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 16:27, 6 August 2023 (UTC)

Exactly, they're behaving just as I'd expect nouns to behave. Ironically, dollar-store seems to have even less evidence of adjectivity than Wish.com, since it's not even clear it can be graded: the hits I see for google books:"more dollar store" aren't comparative but are e.g. "drenched in more dollar-store body spray than your prom date", "real shoes—no more dollar-store flip-flops".
I don't see any risk of fragmenting entries into unnecessary POS sections, because my position is, "if there are not cites that can only be analysed as an adjective, then continue to view the word as a noun; if there are cites that can only be analysed as an adjective, then view the word as an adjective", so the only time we'd have multiple POS is if there were some cites that could only be viewed as nouns (even their 'high-end luxury' stores were basically pound shops), and others that could only be viewed as adjectives (the pound-shoppest crap I've ever seen).
Should we, I dunno, take a straw poll (with numbered !votes) and see what POS people think these kinds of words belong to? - -sche (discuss) 01:47, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

I don't think you can group the proper noun cites in with the others: they're very clearly referring to the actual site (whether metaphorically or not). Theknightwho (talk) 04:26, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

Parnell

This is somewhat contradictory.

1. A surname transferred from the given name.
2. (rare) A male given name transferred from the surname.

Which is correct? Is it referring to Petronella in the etymology? DonnanZ (talk) 15:10, 6 August 2023 (UTC)

I believe so, yes. In other words, we're saying that the modern given name Parnell isnt a continuation of the ancient Latin name Petronella, which is female, and probably wasn't much used in Britain for either boys or girls once the Romans left. The quote implies the given name took root in Ireland, as well, which was never controlled by the Romans, so there may be more history to look into, but for etymology's sake I think all we need to do is make sure readers realize that the original name was Petronella. —Soap— 06:39, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

OK, I added the qualifier (see Etymology) to the surname. That should help those confused. Cheers. DonnanZ (talk) 08:05, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

betake

Sense 6, (intransitive, archaic) To take oneself. (Can we add an example for this sense?), appears to be the same as sense 3, (reflexive, archaic) To take oneself to; go or move; repair; resort; have recourse. [from 17th c.] . The Oxford Dictionary of English does list it, although it says it is literary (nowadays anyway, and they only have the reflexive sense), so it may not be as archaic as we make out. DonnanZ (talk) 12:02, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

I agree it's better labelled literary rather than archaic, it's easy to find recent uses in newspapers. Afaik it does not have a non-reflexive intransitive use like "He betook out of the library", I cannot find any examples without the reflexive pronoun on Google Books. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 12:09, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

I should have added the Oxford def: "go to". Collins also has betake oneself: "to go, move", and an archaic sense: "to apply (oneself) to". So there could be an archaic reflexive sense, maybe like "She betook herself to make cakes". I don't know. DonnanZ (talk) 13:00, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

If the reflexive pronoun is obligatory for some senses, these should be listed under the lemma betake oneself. Currently, the reflexive senses can fail the substitutivity test: if to betake really meant “to take oneself to”, then the meaning of “Fireman Richardson betook himself to the refreshment room” should be the same as, “Fireman Richardson took himself to himself to the refreshment room”.  --Lambiam 22:25, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

There does not seem to be any consistent practice on that at the moment. Phrases like resign oneself and shit oneself are treated as lemmas but then compare the vast majority of lemmas under Category:English reflexive verbs; absent oneself is currently a redirect to a reflexive sense at absent, kick oneself simply redirects to kick without the link to the pertinent sense. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 23:57, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

In simpler non-literary and non-reflexive language "Fireman Richardson went to the refreshment room". As the event (in the quote I added) occurred in 1863, I can't tell if the writer used his own language (around 1949), or language from reports written in 1863. There is still the question of whether we need sense 6. DonnanZ (talk) 07:55, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

(@Lambiam and Al-Muqanna) Yeah, we should probably have a poll in the BP or something, about whether reflexive verbs (or at least English ones) should include oneself or not; the current inconsistency has been brought up before, e.g. Wiktionary:Tea room/2022/July#kick_oneself and the sadly low-participation Wiktionary:Beer parlour/2021/February#Separate_entries_for_reflexive_verbs. For verbs like bear where the 'object' can be only semantically and not directly grammatically reflexive (he bore his body with all the grace of youth), there is a decent case (IMO) for it being at the bare form. But for verbs that require reflexive pronouns/particles, I'm initially inclined to include the oneself. But I also understand the argument that having redirects and consolidating the content in one place (especially for polysemous verbs) might be more user friendly, and it's been argued we do that for some other languages, e.g. befinden (although IMO we should probably have redirects from the sich ... forms!). - -sche (discuss) 01:05, 9 August 2023 (UTC)

Wouldn't a redirect be better than having one entry for betake and a separate one for betake oneself? DCDuring (talk) 23:06, 9 August 2023 (UTC)

That's quite possible. I certainly wouldn't oppose systematically redirecting these. In general, I think we need to either centralize such things, or prominently link all the other places we hide definitions that of a given term, like with prominently linking cases where some definitions are at the plural, a form with the, etc. - -sche (discuss) 13:02, 10 August 2023 (UTC)

I'd favor centralization with redirects to the most important reflexive sense using {{senseid}} with other reflexive senses (if any) below it. Possible user confusion could still arise should two different etymologies be involved or should there be compelling reason to separate two reflexive definitions so that they don't appear on the same screen, but such cases should be rare. DCDuring (talk) 14:08, 10 August 2023 (UTC)

• Why is the "beteach" Etymology listed first? Beteach is a particularly bad word to use in a definition, thought it is understandable in this case, given that there a six definitions of beteach. DCDuring (talk) 23:06, 9 August 2023 (UTC)

No idea. It was added (and placed there) by Leasnam in 2012, diff DonnanZ (talk) 09:36, 10 August 2023 (UTC)

Why am I not surprised? DCDuring (talk) 12:40, 10 August 2023 (UTC)

Reordered. DCDuring (talk) 14:09, 10 August 2023 (UTC)

That's better, I think. DonnanZ (talk) 17:31, 10 August 2023 (UTC)

Normally, I'd prefer some kind of historical ordering. But in this case both rarity and definition ugliness argued to demote the beteach section. DCDuring (talk) 18:40, 10 August 2023 (UTC)

en brosse

I changed the English from noun to adverb, based on the citation given. I think this needs to be done for the French too. It's currently given as a feminine noun, but I can't find "une en brosse"! Equinox ◑ 11:32, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

The French entry should be deleted (as it is SoP regardless of PoS), it is already covered in brosse. — Fenakhay ^{(حيطي · مساهماتي)} 11:41, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

uninvited

Defined as "(rare) One who was not invited.", with the sole citation being of the plural form. Assuming I am correct in assuming that "an/one uninvited" is not attestable with uninvited interpretable as a noun, shouldn't this noun sense only appear at the plural form? It is particularly irksome that the definition leads with "one". DCDuring (talk) 13:07, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

Same applies to invited#Noun. Equinox ◑ 13:07, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

I wonder how many other cases there are of past participles being used as nouns with the singular being rare or unattestable. Is it part of English grammar that any past participle can be forced into use as a noun, more often plural that singular, just as almost any noun can be forced into uncountable use or even use as a verb? Having entries for such things seems silly. DCDuring (talk) 13:19, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

You (I think) once said the same about the -ings plurals. I think it is silly not to have such things, when they are real words in use. Equinox ◑ 13:57, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

Analysing words like метеорологичен

@Chernorizets, @Bezimenen: how should we analyse the formation of words like метеорологичен, кардиологичен, and so on? метеорология (meteorologija) +‎ -ичен (-ičen)? I see no such suffix used for other languages, so I don't know what the actual morphology of words like these is, so we can make the etymology very clear for entries like these. Kiril kovachev (talk・contribs) 18:39, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

In principle, -ичен (-ičen) = Latin -icus + Bulgarian -ен (-en). I am not sure how one should treat such mixed suffixes (half borrowed, half native). Безименен (talk) 18:45, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

Cf. Russian -ичный (-ičnyj). Nicodene (talk) 18:56, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

@Kiril kovachev the English equivalent is -ical and its etymology notes show a similar derivation pattern to what @Bezimenen has provided for the Bulgarian one. Then, meteorological is analyzed precisely as meteorology +‎ -ical. We should create a similar page for -ичен (-ičen). Chernorizets (talk) 21:33, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

Perfect, I created -ичен (-ičen), please let me know whether what I've written is valid—specifically, I don't know if 'blend' is correct in this case or not; also, I take it this is only appended to nouns, as I've written in the definition? With regard to the suffix's treatment, @Bezimenen I feel like your analysis is ideal and that we should redirect usages of this suffix to that entry so that its etymology can be displayed in one place. Hypothetically, if a word were taken from Latin that already end in -icus, though, and are adapted to Bulgarian via -ен (-en), I guess we should just analyse it as e.g. Latin cubicus +‎ -ен (-en)? @Chernorizets @Nicodene Kiril kovachev (talk・contribs) 22:38, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

Bulgarian бля́сък etymology

I was editing this word in Bulgarian: бля́сък (bljásǎk), when I read from Bulgarian Etymological Dictionary (source) that the supposed OCS origin of this word is блъскъ (blŭskŭ), but 2A00:23C7:9C97:8201:27:16EE:6741:107D informed me that the form бльскъ would give Bulgarian блъсък (blǎsǎk) and removed the OCS as the Bulgarian etymon. Now I have some questions:

1. Did I misread the BER source? ESSJa states that the OCS is бльскъ (blĭskŭ) and not блъскъ (blŭskŭ); I don't know OCS so I can't judge which is meant to be correct, and I'm guessing it's not both. It looks to me like the BER fairly clearly writes two ъ's, which can only be squared with the even-clearer ESSJa print by either the fact that I misread the BER, or that it's misprinted, or that it reflects a different word/stage in its development than I was expecting to see...
2. Does this also mean that the Bulgarian бля́сък does not in fact derive from OCS бльскъ? How am I supposed to tell that from the BER entry?
3. And if it doesn't, what is the relationship between OCS бльскъ and BG бля́сък? Why would the OCS not descend to Bulgarian, but rather the term pass "directly" from Proto-Slavic to BG?

@Bezimenen I believe you may be experienced enough to say? Kiril kovachev (talk・contribs) 17:52, 9 August 2023 (UTC)

@Kiril kovachev: 2A00:23C7:9C97:8201:27:16EE:6741:107D was me. Simply the standard spelling is with -ь-. Old Church Slavonic блъскъ (blŭskŭ) is just a doublet (after 11-12 century ь and ъ started being used interchangeably in certain environments, like in tautosyllabic environment with a sonorant). The relationship between *blьskъ ~ *bliskъ ~ *blěskъ is due to vowel mutation. Respectively, they correspond to 0-grade ~ e-grade ~ o-grade of the same root. This stems from the grammatical principles of Proto-Indo-European, where this process was productive (known as IE ablaut). That's why we have pairs such as дъх (dǎh) ~ дух (duh), сбера (sbera) ~ сбор (sbor), режа (reža) ~ раз (raz) and so on. Безименен (talk) 12:42, 10 August 2023 (UTC)

PS: Old Church Slavonic бльскъ (blĭskŭ) technically yields Bulgarian блъсък (blǎsǎk), that's why I removed it from the etymology of блясък (bljasǎk) (the two are certainly related, though, simply not in a direct way). Безименен (talk) 12:46, 10 August 2023 (UTC)

@Bezimenen OK, thanks for the clarification. But there's still one element that I'm confused about, which is that BER relates OCS бльскъ under the head of блестя, бляскам, ... etc., with a "derived term" under the same header of блясък — which is why I assumed this Old Church Slavonic term to be the parent of the Bulgarian. What's the Old Church Slavonic that actually corresponds to Bulgarian блясък (bljasǎk)? How can I read those BER entries to avoid making the same mistake again? Additionally under блъсък (blǎsǎk): is it correct to say that the Bulgarian, besides being inherited from Proto-Slavic, was also inherited from the Old Church Slavonic term listed as a cognate? Kiril kovachev (talk・contribs) 12:58, 10 August 2023 (UTC)

Technically, the vowel mutation is also an instance of grammatical derivation, that's why some dictionaries treat apophonic lemmas as derivatives of each other. I don't think Wiktionary process them in that way, though. The expected ancestor of блясък (bljasǎk) would be Old Church Slavonic блѣскъ (blěskŭ), but for some reason it's not (explicitly) attested. OCS prefers блискъ (bliskŭ) (e-grade). In the case of Bulgarian, any instance of OCS -рь/ръ- or -ль/лъ- within closed environment later becomes a syllabic -р- or -л- (like in various Torlak dialects nowadays) and eventually in standard Bulgarian, it is rendered as alternating -ър/ръ- or -ъл/лъ- (depending on the number of consonants on the two sides: e.g. върба (vǎrba) ~ връбница (vrǎbnica), гълтам (gǎltam) ~ глътка (glǎtka)). In contrast OCS -ѣ- gives Bulg. -я/е-. That's one way to find correspondences between OCS terms and their modern Bulgarian counterparts. Безименен (talk) 13:21, 10 August 2023 (UTC)

Peroxyflavin

I encountered "peroxyflavin" by clicking through random entries, as I do, and I found the given definition lacking. I then searched the Internet for relevant quotations/definitions/information, and discovered very little that could aid me in improving the page. Furthermore, ChatGPT claims to know nothing about such a term.

Should this page be deleted, or can it be improved somehow? It seems to me that related terms like riboflavin, lyxoflavin, and hepatoflavin have all received at least slightly more attention, though Google Ngrams suggests that, in recent years, "peroxyflavin" is more common than those latter two. Thoughts? Multiple Mooses (talk) 04:28, 10 August 2023 (UTC)

It is trivial to attest so no it shouldn't be deleted. ChatGPT is also not a useful source for this kind of information. Unlike the others you've listed it is a genre of compound and not a specific substance, so there's not too much to say, but I've tried to expand the entry a bit. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 08:12, 10 August 2023 (UTC)

порывисто: Definition missing or { {rfdef} } forgotten?

At порывисто there is a definition and a {{rfdef}}, and I do not know if the latter is redundant — any ideas? PJTraill (talk) 12:55, 10 August 2023 (UTC)

касис

If I have understood corretly then both of the references in “касис”, in Речник на българския език [Dictionary of the Bulgarian Language] (in Bulgarian), Sofia: Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, 2014 and “касис”, in Речник на българския език [Dictionary of the Bulgarian Language] (in Bulgarian), Chitanka, 2010 show касис as singular only, but the declension table in “касис”, in Речник на българския език [Dictionary of the Bulgarian Language] (in Bulgarian), Chitanka, 2010 gives plurals as well. Anyone know which is correct? I have only included the singular forms in the Wikt page for now. SimonWikt (talk) 15:59, 10 August 2023 (UTC)

neurosthenia

Currently there is no entry for neurosthenia. At first glance, it seems to be an alternative (although possibly archaic) form of neurasthenia (from neuro- + asthenia), characterized by a weakness of the nerves (as seen in Dunglison 1842). However, certain dictionaries treat it as distinct from neurasthenia, and define it as an excessive response of the nerves, in which case its surface analysis would be neuro- + sthenia (Gould 1894, Stedman 1914). I could not find the word in any general dictionaries. Many uses can be found in old medical books and articles, although in most cases it seems impossible to determine which sense the term refers to. Should we have two different definition lines (and etymologies) or merge them into one? Einstein2 (talk) 22:06, 11 August 2023 (UTC)

Hebei/Hubei Misspelling or Usage Note

Hey, I'm trying to determine whether I've got a Wiktionary:Misspellings or a typo and/or a usage note. Here's the deal: Citations:Hebei has a list of probably WT:ATTEST meeting cites that show that people call Hubei "Hebei" by mistake (and Hupei as "Hopei"). What does the evidence prove to you? To me, I think a usage note may be helpful, stating that Hubei is frequently confused with Hebei. Another alternative is to just add another etymology and say misspelling of|en|Hubei. Or if this is a typo, then idk if either of those is allowed. Many foreigners in Wuhan will use "Hebei" on their WeChat account by mistake. --Geographyinitiative (talk) 11:45, 12 August 2023 (UTC)

It is more likely to be straightforward confusion than just misspelling or a typo, given that people will also say it and not just write it. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 11:50, 12 August 2023 (UTC)

The possibility of confusion seems clear. I have added a link to "Hubei" at the top of the "Hebei" page- see diff. --Geographyinitiative (talk) 17:58, 12 August 2023 (UTC)