Talk:selah

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Rfd-Sense October 2015[edit]

The following information has failed Wiktionary's deletion process.

It should not be re-entered without careful consideration.

Rfd-sense "An occurrence of the Biblical word selah.". Otherwise we should include this sense for every word we have; i.e. define apple as "An occurrence of the word apple.". --WikiTiki89 19:36, 27 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Is apple actually used that way ever? As an unusual Biblical word, selah certainly is. Also, otherwise we'd be failing to document an actual word (spelled with the final s). What about the "oohs and aahs" of a crowd? A "cheery hello" from the postman? Equinox ◑ 19:40, 27 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Just wanted to point out that we have something similar at gardyloo. Smuconlaw (talk) 21:59, 27 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, apple is used that way on occasion, but I realize now that this kind of usage is more common with function words than with nouns or verbs. For example, "How many ands are on this page?" --WikiTiki89 22:50, 27 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete, because there is one "because", one "there", and one "is" in this sentence (not to mention three "ones", a "sentence", and a "mention"), but none of these get entries defining the term as an instance of the term. bd2412 T 15:54, 28 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Hello is definitely a regulation noun and not just an instance of the interjection 'hello'. This is (apparently) more like counting a picture of an apple as a distinct definition of apple. "How many apples are in that photo? None, because it's a picture". That said having never encountered the word I will abstain. But both hello#Noun and amen#Noun (which I'm not really familiar with either) need to be better defined. We're just not great at definitions in general here. Renard Migrant (talk) 16:04, 28 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think that "saying ones hellos/goodbyes" literally requires saying the word "hello" or "goodbye" (see eg "Attending wakes and dashing off postcards became part of his routine—he said his hellos with postcards and his good-byes at wakes."), which would let it pass. This on the other hand is a literal mention of the word "selah". Smurrayinchester (talk) 16:53, 28 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Hmm. What about names of letters, then? "There are three vaus in that Hebrew sentence." These would also seem to be "literal mentions" even though it isn't the word "vau", but a Hebrew letter, that appears in the text. Equinox ◑ 18:15, 28 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
That's a regular usage of the word. The definition of vau is the Hebrew letter ו and it does not have any less abstract definition. --WikiTiki89 18:39, 28 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
(Edit conflict) Well, like you say, it's not the word "vau" appearing in the text, it's the symbol (ו) represented by it, just the same as if you use aitch or full stop ("He drops his aitches." "There are three full stops in an ellipsis."). "vau" is therefore a valid noun. On the other hand, "There are two vaus in Equinox's comment" is using "vau" to literally refer to the word vau, which is an important difference. Smurrayinchester (talk) 18:43, 28 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I completely agree with Smurrayinchester. He said it better than I could have. bd2412 T 19:02, 28 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
It's not about abstract definitions; vau has a noun definition which is indisputable. Let's go non-word and go with ®. What about adding an English noun section with the definition 'an occurrence of the symbol ®' (there were ® on the page). @Equinox. Renard Migrant (talk) 12:49, 29 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I have just created isn'ts together with Citations:isn'ts as a test case, but is is obviously a slippery slope. "All words in all languages" says we ought to have an entry for isn'ts, but I have got better things to do. SemperBlotto (talk) 16:08, 28 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
But this is just evidence for the existence of such plurals. We should not define terms as instances of themselves. SemperBlotto (talk) 16:24, 28 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • This is a very slippery slope indeed. We would end up with an entry for all of the words in the corpus with an "s" added. What about instances of plural words? There are two "wordses" in this paragraph. A book on countries might have numerous "countrys". At the very least I would want some strict rule of attestation prior to creation of the entry, and would probably want to limit it to instances in natural speech ("they said their hellos"; "there were many amens") rather than purely demonstrative speech ("there are two wordses"). bd2412 T 16:36, 28 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • On a related note, "isn'ts" appears attested, but primarily as the plural of a noun form of "isn't". bd2412 T 16:38, 28 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • It is when "isn't" is being used as a noun. For example:
    • 2000, Darren O'Donnell, Your Secrets Sleep With Me, page 94:
      And not just any isn't but a certain isn't or, in reality, a whole massive group of isn'ts.
    • 2001, Terry Esau, Blue Collar God: White Collar God, page 13:
      Something that isn't can't become something that is, unless that which is precedes that which isn't. Now, the isn'ts, that's us. You and me, we used to be isn'ts.
    • 2006, Gail Godwin, Queen of the Underworld: A Novel, page 380:
      No, at this stage they want to find out who's for sale and who isn't and blow the isn'ts out of the water early in a style that will make other isn'ts reconsider.
Compare:
    • 1993, Cycle World Magazine Vol. 32, No. 1, January 1993, page 59:
      For the second straight year, the CBR900RR cops Best Superbike honors. it does so largely because of what it isn't. It isn't heavy. It isn't big. And those two “isn'ts” make the 900RR what it is-the quickest, most nimble, most highly refined...
WT:CFI suggests - but doesn't outright state - that these sorts of terms don't class as words, given that it refers to the w:use–mention distinction to decide whether a term conveys meaning. I'd argue this is covered by "This filters out appearance in raw word lists, commentary on the form of a word, such as “The word ‘foo’ has three letters,” lone definitions, and made-up examples of how a word might be used.", although strictly it's not the form of the word but its usage that's been commented on. Smurrayinchester (talk) 16:53, 28 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I wonder which is correct:- "There are no cats in this sentence." or "There is one cats in this sentence.". Or am I getting ridiculously off-topic? SemperBlotto (talk) 07:00, 29 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
This does seem a bit off-topic. It depends on what you are trying to say. First, if you are referring to the word cats rather than cats as animals, the word should be placed in italics or quotation marks. Secondly, assuming the correctness of what I just said, if what you are trying to convey is "The word cats does not appear in this sentence", then your second sentence is correct, though it would be better rephrased for clarity in the manner I suggested. Smuconlaw (talk) 10:26, 29 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete. Any word can be referred to as a word. The mere fact that someone occasionally does so doesn't justify defining words as instances of themselves. In the case of Amen, Hallelujah, Shibboleth, or Hello, the words have acquired secondary meanings as nouns, and are frequently used and widely recognized as such. If the saying of selah constituted a specific act or ritual other than merely saying the word, then there would be reason for a definition. But the mere act of saying it, even if referred to by someone else, doesn't justify a definition, no matter how notable the source. P Aculeius (talk) 16:22, 29 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Delete per Smurrayinchester. CFI requires words to be used to convey meaning (not just mentioned as in "there are two tos in this sentence"). - -sche (discuss) 23:14, 5 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep Seems that it can be considered a special case since it is so frequently discussed as a word, and hence is used as a noun that has a plural form. Sure, we wouldn't want to have to do this for every word - but there's hardly any danger of that is there? Who'd have the time? Who'd have the motivation? Not to mention, finding attestations would be difficult/impossible for 99.9999% of vocabulary. With selah(s) there are attestations.--Sonofcawdrey (talk) 00:21, 11 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
    • Yes, this is a special case: it's well known as a mystery word whose meaning has been lost, so the word itself is all there is. As for the danger of a precedent being abused: you'd be surprised. There are people out there who do things like generate hyphenated attributive forms of huge numbers of noun phrases, decade names for every decade in history, spelled-out versions of large numbers of integers, entries for every SOP technical phrase they've ever encountered in their line of work, "Derived terms" sections in suffix entries with all the words using the (very common) suffixes, "Coordinate terms" sections that are really lists of every member in large categories, dozens of translations in one language for a single animal name because the language has morphemes for gender, age, and a few other characteristics- those are just some of the abuses that I've seen. You have to realize that there some very compulsive people out there, and a few industrious ordinary people who come up with odd ideas for projects. Never underestimate the potential for generation of massive cruft on a continental scale. Chuck Entz (talk) 02:51, 11 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Wow! No Chuck Entz I did not realise that. That's amazing. And so, yes, I agree we need to be careful. (Though I did notice the other day that someone put in a bunch of fractions "one fifth" etc. - which clearly is another danger area!! ...but that got generally approved by the regular Wiktionarians who do most of the hard work around here.) Anyhow, since we already have a noun sense for selah, covering the 'pause to reflect deeply on the text', I now am leaning toward chucking the "an instance of" sense. I have struck my 'keep', and delete--Sonofcawdrey (talk) 07:28, 11 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Just looked at the entry again. If we delete this sense, the entry will still say that the origin or precise meaning is unknown, and will still indicate what it's apparently used for in the Bible. The only two citations given are just counting occurrences of the word in sections of the Bible. It's not independent of the only known source of the word; it's not used in another context. That use is self-evident from the context. So exactly how does defining "selah" as "an occurrence of the word 'selah' " contribute to its meaning? No matter how rare the word is, if it's only used in one work of literature and one or two essays that do nothing more than count incidences in that work, then no new or useful sense has been created. P Aculeius (talk) 03:53, 11 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Sense deleted: Purplebackpack89 14:01, 19 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

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