Talk:nocturnavore

RFV discussion: August 2012

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nocturnavore

Ooh! Good thing we unblocked Luciferwildcat multiple times! Otherwise he might not have been able to add various pieces of unattestable bullshit! Help me out here, friends. Equinox ◑ 00:49, 8 August 2012 (UTC)

I’d expect that after having 8 out of 17 regulars voting to have him banned he’d learn the lesson: just because a certain string of characters resembles English, it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s an English word. Seriously, just find citations BEFORE you add an entry, Lucifer. — Ungoliant ^(Falai) 01:18, 8 August 2012 (UTC)

Clearly "a person who eats the night". Um -- I just looked at the recent entries - many of which are "(arbitrary adjective)(arbitrary noun)" combinations and then the plurals as well! And I kinda like "squaroid" which has essentially no recorded usages other than as a trademark <g>. I suggest that all of his recent words be examined closely. Cheers. Collect (talk) 01:35, 8 August 2012 (UTC)

FYI, squaroid was on the "Wanted" list, should I not create them? Or does someone just make those up, what's going on?Lucifer (talk) 02:20, 8 August 2012 (UTC)

"Creation" is precisely the issue. Find words on the list which exist as findable words first - the "write the definition when no one has used the word" system is a failure. Cheers. Collect (talk) 13:44, 8 August 2012 (UTC)

Like the rest of Wiktionary, anyone can add to the wanted list. You have to use common sense and make sure they meet CFI before you add entries from the list (or from any source). In this case, it's apparently a protologism coined very recently for a McDonald's ad campaign. There are no hits whatsoever on Google Books or usenet, though it may very well survive long enough to meet CFI a year from now. Chuck Entz (talk) 06:48, 8 August 2012 (UTC)

I suspect that even in the context of the McDonalds ad, the definition is wrong. -vore means a creature that eats in a certain way, so a nocturnavore is one who eats at night, not the habit of eating at night. Smurrayinchester (talk) 09:47, 8 August 2012 (UTC)

Is there any sort of evidence for this? Something that's clearly unattestable can be speedy deleted. Mglovesfun (talk) 09:58, 8 August 2012 (UTC)

Nah it's attestable on Twitter, that's it! Mglovesfun (talk) 10:04, 8 August 2012 (UTC)

Following the logic of -vore word formation, you have herbivores that eat plants (Latin herba) and carnivores that eat meat (Latin carnis), but nocturna is an adjective, not a noun. Based on other Latin compounds such as noctivaga, I would guess that the correct form would be noctivore Chuck Entz (talk) 10:48, 8 August 2012 (UTC)

Plenty of Google hits for noctivore but all in French. Nothing obvious for noctivorous. SemperBlotto (talk) 10:55, 8 August 2012 (UTC)

I wouldn't expect there to be any. I was just speculating about what a correctly-formed protologism would look like. The French term seems to show I guessed right. Of course, usage doesn't follow etymological correctness. Nocturnavore stands a much better chance of being here a year from now than noctivore. As for the rfved term, MG has already speedied it as an open-and-shut protologism- no cites anywhere. Chuck Entz (talk) 11:14, 8 August 2012 (UTC)