Wiktionary:Requests for deletion/English

Wiktionary Request pages (edit) see also: discussions
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{{attention}} • {{rfap}} • {{rfdate}} • {{rfquote}} • {{rfdef}} • {{rfeq}} • {{rfe}} • {{rfex}} • {{rfi}} • {{rfp}}

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

This page is for entries in English as well as Middle English, Scots, Yola and Fingallian. For entries in other languages, including Old English and English-based creoles, see Wiktionary:Requests for deletion/Non-English.

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.

Newest 10 tagged RFDs

tentabulge
nook
hung up on
hump someone's brains out
door close
honk honk
doll's pram
dog freak
fight one's way
Bangladesh Zindabad

Oldest 100 tagged RFDs

786
nasal vowel
fuck it up
oral vowel
adult material
smackers
not-to-scale
mathematical function program
elder
occasional furniture
instance dungeon
take its toll
Kube
stealth wealth
stem mutation
morel
abstinence
py chiminey
non-Arabic
history book
dynamics
ex-minister
be at
lavalier microphone
in conclave
square root of fuck all
adoptive mother
pro-Hamas
anti-Hamas
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
anti-Hindu
accessory before the fact
accessory after the fact
good boy
good girl
unspoken rule
unwritten rule
Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg
subbranch
Lulu
-un-
DKC2
DKC3
Nissia
mean time
foregoing
unrequited love
El Camino Real
marine toilet
quarter-
do want
do not want
because reasons
twelve hundred
December solstice
tacit collusion
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year
aluminium-27
argon-36
argon-38
calcium-45
argon-40
beryllium-9
U-235
run
queen bee
neutron radiation
biological parent
biological mother
biological father
anti-Israel
number homophone
two-move checkmate
freak
nasal consonant
aerophobia
hobosexual
digital signal processing
-faction
bank loan

January 2023

adult material

Meaning "pornography", very transparent SOP, also used for other mature content which is not pornography. - TheDaveRoss 15:58, 18 January 2023 (UTC)

• Keep, I think. Ostensibly the term means "material that is suitable for adults", but because it is really only used to refer to pornography (perhaps euphemistically) and not, say, movies and novels where the characters are adults, points to the fact that it is idiomatic. — Sgconlaw (talk) 16:03, 18 January 2023 (UTC)

  You are looking at the wrong definition of "adult," this is the sense "intended for use only by adults" e.g. "adult content", "adult movie", "adult magazine", "adult website", "adult language" etc. - TheDaveRoss 16:06, 18 January 2023 (UTC)

I would say keep. It's from sense 3 of the adjective, and sense 2 of the noun material. It may be "material suitable for adults" but it's also "material unsuitable for children". DonnanZ (talk) 18:40, 18 January 2023 (UTC)

We also have adult content, of which this is a perfect synonym. I think these should be kept because of their function as euphemisms; only one sense of adult is ever meant, even though all senses of the adjective could potentially apply. This, that and the other (talk) 22:37, 18 January 2023 (UTC)

I'm not necessarily disagreeing with you, but how far should we extend this? We could also create entries for adult bookstore, adult comic, adult comic book, adult literature, adult video, adult video game, and adult website, among others. Definition 3 of adult could theoretically be applied to any media-related noun.

I suppose the fact that these terms are euphemistic could make them less SOP, but I'm not entirely convinced. Binarystep (talk) 06:41, 19 January 2023 (UTC)

I agree with you on all but adult bookstore, which Ive just now created. I think it's good that we're taking these on a case-by-case basis. Another good example is adult beverage, because there's no other context where the word adult means "containing alcohol".

As for this discussion, I can see both sides .... I'd even say the nominator undercut his argument by stating that it's not just for porn .... that makes it less sum-of-parts and means we might just need to clarify the definition instead of deleting the page. Yet, I could apply the same logic to adult and say we should rework definition #3 to clarify that it doesn't just mean porn. For now I abstain. —Soap— 13:50, 21 January 2023 (UTC)

Side note: I found "adult drink", "adult root beer float", etc. prominently on Google. On this basis, I'm going to add another sense to the adjective at adult. Cheers, Facts707 (talk) 10:51, 2 February 2023 (UTC)

Delete all, unless any of them pass the jiffy test. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 16:35, 19 June 2023 (UTC)

• Delete per TheDaveRoss and Binarystep. Old Man Consequences (talk) 12:23, 19 January 2023 (UTC)

I haven't checked, but adult should cover this, even if it doesn't yet. Equinox ◑ 00:16, 21 January 2023 (UTC)

If someone is said to be "noted for creating adult fingmippets" and we know that a "fingmippet" is a work in some creative medium, it will be obvious which sense of adult applies. Chuck Entz (talk) 01:01, 21 January 2023 (UTC)

Delete: OK, I’m convinced so I’m changing my vote. I agree it is sufficient if the relevant meaning of adult is in that entry. — Sgconlaw (talk) 17:51, 30 January 2023 (UTC)

• Comment. Note that we also have adult bookstore, adult movie, adult star, and several more equally SOP entries in which adult means “related to pornography”. — This unsigned comment was added by Lambiam (talk • contribs) at 13:01, 2 February 2023.

The reason I felt the need to create a page for adult bookstore is that it's not sum-of-parts ... knowing what adult and bookstore mean would not tell you what an adult bookstore is. An adult bookstore, so far as I know, sells primarily sex toys, with video and books being less profitable. I worded the definition conservatively out of caution. I don't think adult movie is sum-of-parts either because, while less common, there are movies with no sex but such graphic violence that they are also restricted to adult viewers in theaters, and adult movie as presently defined does not encompass that (and I believe the current definition is correct). As for adult star .... well, few native English speakers will misunderstand the meaning, but I always think of English language learners first .... for someone with an incomplete grasp of the language, it's very easy to misunderstand this as simply meaning someone who is both an adult and a star. I still don't have a strong opinion on what to do with adult material, and I promise I wont just vote keep just because Im in favor of keeping the other three .... I'd say all four of these phrases are different from each other, really, and should be treated as such. —Soap— 22:10, 3 February 2023 (UTC)

• Keep per This, That and the other. AllenY99 (talk) 08:58, 1 March 2023 (UTC)
• Delete. This is less contoured than the examples adult bookstore, adult movie, adult star proferred by Soap; I am not convinced it must mean pornography, more like an SOP hypernym used as a totum pro parte. Fay Freak (talk) 11:40, 22 December 2023 (UTC)

Delete per nominator. Inqilābī 18:46, 14 July 2024 (UTC)

adult diaper

We recently deleted adult diaper as a sum-of-parts, likely influenced by this ongoing RFD. At first that made sense to me, but while I don't doubt it's the sum of its parts, there are other reasons why we list two-word entries. In this case, deleting adult diaper could lead the reader to believe that the little-heard incontinence diaper is actually the most common term for what adults wear, when this to me sounds like not just a medical euphemism but one that might not be understood by a listener (what other kind of diaper could there be?) Someone might recommend listing adult diaper as a collocation under adult or diaper or both, but this doesnt solve the problem .... a person on the adult page probably already knows what theyre looking for, and a person on the diaper page is still liable to think incontinence diaper is the term they want, as it's the only one we deem worthy of a separate entry. Moreover, there is still no policy regarding collocations and so anyone can delete them at any time; reducing an entry to a collocation seems to me little different than deletion. Lastly, there's a possibility of unexpected dialectal agreement here ... do people in Commonwealth countries who say nappy for the baby's garment always call adult diapers nappies as well? I wouldnt be surprised if people thought nappy sounded too cute to refer to what grownups wear, but perhaps Im wrong. In any case, I would like to restore the adult diaper page. One more thing I could add: it's possible I'm the one who created the adult diaper entry, as I was the one who added it to diaper; but if that's the case, I've forgotten about it. Best regards, —Soap— 11:53, 30 August 2023 (UTC)

February 2023

786

“[…] a lucky or holy number […]”. Tagged by Sinonquoi on 10 February (“Nonsensical entry.”), not listed. Created by Kashmiri language on 9 February. J3133 (talk) 11:21, 20 February 2023 (UTC)

Delete Abstain Keep.^{(see below for new rationale)} The numerology sense is mentioned on Wikipedia at w:786 (number) and I think it is best kept there, since to explain the significance of the number to a naive reader in a dictionary would require so much background information that it would become an encyclopedic entry. —Soap— 16:55, 20 February 2023 (UTC)

Im sitting this out for the time being, as the recent improvements to the page and the comments below have convinced me that this is a valid entry in and of itself. But I'm still reluctant to vote keep because numerology could also provide us with definitions for numbers like 19 (also significant in Islam), 616 (a variant of 666), 777 (used in Christianity), and I'm sure there are plenty of other examples. That we haven't added entries for these already makes me wonder whether we've just never gotten around to it in all this time, or whether it's best considered outside our project's scope. —Soap— 12:34, 26 February 2023 (UTC)

Im changing my vote to Keep  as this is more wordlike than 19, 616, and 777. —Soap— 14:00, 25 December 2023 (UTC)

Delete for the above reason. — Sgconlaw (talk) 05:37, 21 February 2023 (UTC)

it's ridiculous i think there was a subject here or maybe on wikipedia about how many numbers -- as numbers and not years -- should have separate entries ... delete it immediately this is just absurd ... Technicalrestrictions01 (talk) 14:00, 21 February 2023 (UTC)

Keep. The fact that this has an idiomatic meaning justifies its inclusion per Wiktionary:Votes/pl-2017-05/Numbers, numerals, and ordinals, which is further supported by our recent decision to keep 666. Binarystep (talk) 01:57, 24 February 2023 (UTC)

"A lucky or holy number" isn't a sense, idiomatic or otherwise. We don't have "an unlucky number" at 4 and 13. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 02:11, 24 February 2023 (UTC)

Delete per my comment above. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 02:12, 24 February 2023 (UTC)

Keep, since the entry has been rewritten and per the evidence below. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 00:28, 25 February 2023 (UTC)

Delete as defined. It doesn't have a meaning: it doesn't explain what it would mean if you spoke or wrote this in a sentence. Equinox ◑ 21:53, 24 February 2023 (UTC)

This book suggests it could be found in Indian Islamic books or letters as a shortening of the basmala, in which case we should definitely include it, but I don't know where to look for attestation. However, this book indicates that it is used in "truck art or other mediums vulnerable to the dirt and defilement of the outside world", in which case it may be difficult to find durably archived quotations. 70.172.194.25 00:09, 25 February 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for the pointers—I found an example in diplomatic correspondence (in translation) here: [1] though worth noting that the original (scan given on previous page) uses Eastern Arabic numerals. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 00:21, 25 February 2023 (UTC)

@Al-Muqanna: I think this is another example, in English and using Western Arabic numerals: [2] (it occurs in the front matter, definitely not a page number). This might be a similar example in Urdu: [3] (I can't see the whole page, but it seems to be at the top of page 2, so it wouldn't be a page number, and I'm not sure what else it could mean). Accordingly, keep. 70.172.194.25 00:25, 25 February 2023 (UTC)

@Equinox Keep (Change meaning to area code 786) because for example: 305, named after the 305 area code. So if you clicked on the Wikipedia link it would bring you to "Area codes 305, 786, and 645". So 786 would have a meaning. But change the "lucky number" definition because any number can be "lucky". Heyandwhoa (talk) 20:05, 24 February 2024 (UTC)

You can't say "keep and change meaning". This RFD is for the sense given. Equinox ◑ 21:08, 24 February 2024 (UTC)

March 2023

nasal vowel

SOP: "this vowel is nasal". PUC – 08:43, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

Delete' Ioaxxere (talk) 04:47, 14 October 2023 (UTC)

oral vowel

SOP: “a vowel which resonates through the mouth (because the velum closes the passage of air through the nose)”. (Auxiliary request if the outcome of the motion to delete “nasal vowel” is successful.) Fay Freak (talk) 09:20, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

• Delete both. Ultimateria (talk) 05:59, 4 September 2023 (UTC)

nasal consonant

Might as well add this too. lattermint (talk) 20:50, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

April 2023

fuck it up

fuck up + it. — SURJECTION ^{/ T / C / L /} 19:57, 6 April 2023 (UTC)

• Delete as SoP. — Sgconlaw (talk) 20:52, 6 April 2023 (UTC)
• Hmm, there is a similar entry for fuck up. Though it's not my kind of language, they seem to have (slightly) different senses. DonnanZ (talk) 16:10, 7 April 2023 (UTC)

  I don't necessarily understand SoP, but fuck up is very similar to fuck it up. it could be normal to express this on the pages, as on the page there is already a link to fuck up. i only made the page because it was requested entry, but at the same time i believe the definitions are unique (in a sense).

  i'm very new to this, so i may be wrong, but i think this definition should stay :] | 24.227.101.130 14:35, 12 April 2023 (UTC)

• Keep for the second sense. We don't have a sense at fuck up corresponding to the quotes on the citations page. (I'm not sure the second sense is defined correctly, but that's another issue)--Simplificationalizer (talk) 13:28, 27 April 2023 (UTC)
• Delete, separable verbs can have objects, in this case an expletive, in between. Fay Freak (talk) 11:55, 22 December 2023 (UTC)
• Keep. The nomination does not specify a sense of the two provided, and the second sense, "To go at something competently, usually in an aggressive or quick manner", is basically the opposite of the first, to make a mess of things. Since fuck up is usually not used to indicate competence, this is not SOP to an infix of that phrase. bd2412 T 00:34, 1 April 2024 (UTC)
• Delete The usage note claims "The "it" in "fuck it up" can be swapped out for direct objects, or removed entirely (see fuck up). ". If that's true then the problem is missing senses at fuck up, not a reason for a separate entry. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 23:28, 19 April 2024 (UTC)

• I disagree. Compare kill it: there is no specific thing you can substitute for "it". This is an idiom. Equinox ◑ 23:31, 19 April 2024 (UTC)

• The second sense is currently not covered by fuck up. I'm not sure whether it can take other objects besides it, so it should either be kept or moved to fuck up accordingly. (I agree with Simplificationalizer that its definition could be improved.) Einstein2 (talk) 21:51, 5 September 2024 (UTC)

June 2023

smackers

Rfd-sense: "(humorous slang) Money."

It's just the plural of smacker ("dollar"). Money is uncountable in this sense; smackers is not. DCDuring (talk) 22:09, 1 June 2023 (UTC)

I almost agree with that but we should rewrite the definition of smacker along the lines of the one already in Collins dictionary, namely 'a pound or a dollar' (or 'a dollar or a pound' if you like) as it can certainly refer to pounds. I remember a parody song on the radio about the divorce between Liam Gallagher and Patsy Kensit where the lyrics parodied the Oasis song 'Don't Look Back in Anger' - it went:- "Oh Patsy can wait, she wants it all on a plate and there's just no way (can't remember the next line). She wants 5 million smackers, I heard her say". Of course she did then go on to win 5 mil in the divorce settlement, I can't find that online but I'm sure I could dig up some cites with this meaning. --Overlordnat1 (talk) 22:55, 1 June 2023 (UTC)

Delete. I've found and added some cites where 'smackers' and 'smackeroonies' is used to mean pounds to Citations:smacker and Citations:smackeroonies but this word and all its variants doesn't mean money in an uncountable sense. --Overlordnat1 (talk) 14:30, 2 June 2023 (UTC)

Rfd-sense No, I often hear and call money "smackers". — This unsigned comment was added by 81.111.205.155 (talk) at 13:19, 22 December 2023 (UTC).

Moved from a new section. J3133 (talk) 14:18, 22 December 2023 (UTC)

Keep. It's used for dollars too, not just pounds, and probably could be used for any other unit of currency being casually discussed in English—if we're not accustomed to hearing about lira or rubles being called "smackers", it's probably because most English-language sources will be from countries that use dollars or pounds, or go out of their way to use the actual name of the currency instead, as a means of exoticizing the locale. But that doesn't mean that it couldn't be used. Alternatively, split the definition of smacker that attempts to cover both lips and money, and then you could delete the plural, since it links back to the singular. Really that definition should be split anyway. Just because both uses are slang doesn't mean that they're the same definition! P Aculeius (talk) 05:38, 2 March 2024 (UTC)

Delete both plural slang senses ("money", "lips") at smackers and separate the corresponding senses at smacker (+ add {{lb|en|chiefly|in the plural}}). We tend to lemmatize similar mostly-plural slang terms at the singular form (cf. Thesaurus:breasts). Einstein2 (talk) 22:04, 5 September 2024 (UTC)

elder

One who is older than another.

Respect your elders.

This sense was removed by Mechanical Keyboarder on 28 April, with the edit summary “redundant”. We still have the translation table. J3133 (talk) 06:19, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

Where it was, diff. It might have been considered redundant to sense 1, "An older person". DonnanZ (talk) 23:18, 19 June 2023 (UTC)

Yeah this is difficult. I strongly support keeping the deleted sense ... it's definitely not redundant ... but Im having a hard time explaining why. Maybe it would've been more clear if we hadnt used the word older in the deleted sense with its literal meaning and in sense 1 with its idiomatic meaning of someone who is advanced in age ("elderly"). Further complicating things is that I think elder can also be used both ways, e.g. an elder child can be six years old, but the elders of the community cannot. —Soap— 09:06, 20 June 2023 (UTC)

[:https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Mechanical_Keyboarder] shows only 53 edits. Hardly an experienced user. DonnanZ (talk) 09:55, 20 June 2023 (UTC)

My Oxford Dictionary of English has:

(one's elders) people who are older than one: schoolchildren were no less fascinated than their elders.

(one's elder) a person who is older than one by a specified length of time: she was two years his elder.

Turning to Collins, my copy says, "an older person, one's senior", before covering tribal and religious elders. Online. Collins says: "A person's elder is someone who is older than them, especially someone quite a lot older: The young have no respect for their elders.

On this basis, I recommend that the deleted sense is reinstated. DonnanZ (talk) 14:23, 20 June 2023 (UTC)

Merge senses? The definition of the first sense, “An older person”, is problematic. We give two senses for older: 1. “comparative form of old: more old, elder, senior” and 2. “elderly”. A user who is not proficient in English cannot know that in “An older person” the comparative is meant; used as a noun, elder – whether “an elder” or ”someone’s elder”, does not mean “an elderly person”. (The person referred to may of course happen to be elderly, but this is not conveyed by the term.) That said, like the deleting editor, I suspect that the intention of this definition is the same as that of the deleted sense, so instead of simply reinstating it, I think they should be merged into something unambiguous, such as “Someone who is older (than another person).”  --Lambiam 14:27, 2 July 2023 (UTC)

+1 to merging with the first sense. I can't imagine saying, of an older person, "see that elder across the way?" it has to be relative [someone's elder, my / your elder]. +sj + 20:06, 13 July 2023 (UTC)

This is really an RFV question, isn't it? I think of the YouTube series "Elders React", where the participants were referred to as elders in a non-relative sense, in the same way as the word seniors is used. Here and here are some uses of elders in a non-relative sense. This, that and the other (talk) 04:02, 30 July 2023 (UTC)

Hmm. My first reaction was that these could be merged with sense 1 as ~"An older person (especially relative to someone else)". But could they, really? Maybe the difference in what "older" means in one vs the other, as Lambiam points out, suggests it's better to keep the senses separate like this (though I would move them next to each other for clarity and redefine this one more like "(in particular) A person who is older than someone else, in relation to that person"). - -sche (discuss) 02:54, 24 August 2023 (UTC)

Keep, as the entry currently stands. But I agree with User:This, that and the other that this is an RFV question. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 18:50, 22 July 2024 (UTC)

mathematical function program

SoP. Also barely attested, but probably keepable at RFV. This, that and the other (talk) 06:48, 28 June 2023 (UTC)

• Delete, transparent (although it is unusual to refer to a subroutine as "program"). I doubt this would survive RFV; I see a use of the term mathematical function program library,^[4] but this is a program library of mathematical functions, where a program library is a collection of subroutines.^[5][6]  --Lambiam 13:52, 2 July 2023 (UTC)

July 2023

instance dungeon

Redundant to instance senses 9-10. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 23:59, 2 July 2023 (UTC)

The word instance has other meanings in video gaming, though admittedly Im thinking more about game design than game playing. (If I search Google for instance of an enemy I see people using six different game engines asking similar questions.) It does seem at least that not every instance is a dungeon in games such as STALCRAFT, so it's possible that some games prefer the longer form instance dungeon to make it clear what they mean. This is just a comment, though. —Soap— 09:44, 3 July 2023 (UTC)

There is a video-game sense of instance (which we have), but I don't think "instance of an enemy" is using that sense. In programming if you have a type of object (e.g. defined by an OOP class) then any object of that type is an "instance". Equinox ◑ 13:14, 3 July 2023 (UTC)

Okay thanks. It sounds I picked up a programming term and thought it was related to video games specifically. As for the existing senses we have at instance, yes, I saw those, and at first I thought they were too specific, but I suppose "dungeon or other area" is broad enough to cover the uses in non-RPG games like STALCRAFT. —Soap— 15:54, 3 July 2023 (UTC)

Delete, gaming is dumb and we have been decadent enough to give space to a pertinent videogaming meaning at instance even. Programming creativity always gives wiggle-room to variation. Fay Freak (talk) 12:11, 22 December 2023 (UTC)

take its toll

To me this is NISoP, as the quotations seem to me to show. DCDuring (talk) 18:32, 16 July 2023 (UTC)

• Agree this in principle could be SoP, but the relevant sense of toll is worded poorly (loss or damage incurred through a disaster), whereas the definition here does not reference a disaster per se. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 05:00, 23 August 2023 (UTC)
• I would say that the "take ... toll" pattern is in itself idiomatic enough to keep, but there are the usual doubts and problems about how to lemmatise it, given the variations possible. Mihia (talk) 22:17, 15 May 2024 (UTC)

keep. Allahverdi Verdizade (talk) 22:54, 17 May 2024 (UTC)

This sense of "toll" seems to be usable for any figurative "cost" in the form of negative effects. Phrases like "exact a heavy toll" come to mind, not to mention "pay a price". "Take" is fairly strongly collocated because it alliterates and works well prosodically with "toll", in the same way the "pay" and "price" go together. Whatever comes in between is prosodically unimportant, so it can be almost anything that makes sense. Chuck Entz (talk) 00:08, 18 May 2024 (UTC)

• Either delete take its toll or take a toll. Maybe it would be better if both are deleted and instead consolidated to something like take toll, mentioning the reflexive/impersonal sense? Besides, take its toll is basically just take a toll with a preposition.

Furthermore, petition for speedy deletion of take a heavy toll. That's like creating separate entries for e.g. taking a long break, taking a short break, etc. JimiY☽ru 06:19, 25 June 2024 (UTC)

Kube

Rfd-sense "(computing) An individual container of the Kubernetes orchestration system." Jargon specific to a particular system, not particularly relevant for a general dictionary. — SURJECTION ^{/ T / C / L /} 18:28, 17 July 2023 (UTC)

Delete Jberkel 12:54, 18 July 2023 (UTC)

Keep. Not sure why we shouldn't have jargon. The real question is whether it's attestable. cf (talk) 01:54, 30 July 2023 (UTC)

August 2023

stem mutation

Originally this entry claimed it was a synonym of apophony / ablaut, meaning an internal vowel change like get vs. got. That's trivially false: of the first 5 relevant results I found on Google Books, 3 of them were talking about consonant changes (e.g. "nominal morphology of conservative Adamawa Fula is characterised by ... nominal stem mutation based on a system of initial consonant alternation" [7]). That leaves it just defined as a change in the stem, which looks SOP. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 00:10, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

Since nobody's bitten on this so far, I'd also point out that "stem mutation" is attested in other contexts like biology for genetic mutations in a plant stem or in stem cells [8], so it doesn't seem to restrict the meaning of "stem". —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 20:04, 17 August 2023 (UTC)

• Delete * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 04:54, 23 August 2023 (UTC)

abstinence

Two strange senses here. We've got:

1. (not being RFD'd): The act or practice of abstaining, refraining from indulging a desire or appetite. (with a bunch of subsenses)
2. ? The practice of self-denial; self-restraint; forebearance from anything.
3. ? (obsolete) Self-denial; abstaining; or forebearance of anything.

These are cited to the Shorter OED, which I don't have, but don't seem to correspond to anything in the full OED, which just distinguishes self-restraint (+ subsenses) and the practice of abstaining from a specific thing. I don't see what the distinction between our senses is meant to be, nor how the third one could be obsolete. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 23:31, 15 August 2023 (UTC)

@Al-Muqanna: I agree that senses 2 and 3 seem redundant to sense 1. Perhaps the terms “forbearance”, “self-denial”, etc., can be worked into sense 1. As for the difference between senses 2 and 3, perhaps the editor was trying to distinguish between uncountable and countable senses. The better way to do this is as follows: “(uncountable) Abstaining, forbearance, or self-denial; (countable) an instance of this.” But if the senses are merged into sense 1 this is unnecessary. — Sgconlaw (talk) 01:55, 16 August 2023 (UTC)

py chiminey

Do vee vant schpellinz like zees? Also py chiminy Pinch88 (talk) 18:41, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

I think we need to consult @PseudoSkull. DonnanZ (talk) 19:35, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

Yes, it is useful, because I originally couldn't make out what it meant when I was reading a book that had that phrase in it. PseudoSkull (talk) 19:52, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

Keep if it passes CFI. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 05:21, 23 August 2023 (UTC)

I'm against including phrases like this, as I've intimated elsewhere, since in the vast majority of cases, these phrases are just eye dialect spellings of existing phrases, with no independent meaning. pasghetti is one of the few exceptions, a phrase that is used by adults to sound cute, and therefore can't be reduced to merely being a child's word for spaghetti. So I ask ... is py chiminey used by people without an accent in order to make fun of German immigrants? Perhaps it once was.

We could flood the site with hundreds more words and phrases like this so long as we can turn up three cites across the whole corpus of English literature for each one. But I'm reluctant to vote delete based on what might happen, so I want time to think some more about this. Whichever way this vote goes, it will help me firm up my opinions on the wider category of eye dialect spellings.

One more comment ... archive.org is impressing me with how powerful its search is in comparison to that of Google Books. py chiminey isnt cited now, and searching Google Books turns up mostly results about chimneys (forget about using plus signs and quote marks, as they dont seem to do much), but the new archive.org text search turns up plenty of hits for this exact phrase, so this would easily pass CFI if kept at RFD. Thanks, —Soap— 11:01, 24 August 2023 (UTC)

@Soap, this is useful to know. What specific search function are you using on archive.org? Searching books in general just returns an error for me. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 16:32, 25 August 2023 (UTC)

this link goes directly to the search results i was looking at. from the front page, use the main search tool (not the Wayback Machine) with "search text contents" selected and with the phrase in quotes. If that's what you've been doing and it returns an error, I can't help, but I notice the site is slow for me especially with large PDF's, so maybe their server resources arent as powerful as Google's and they sometimes fail to complete a search. —Soap— 18:54, 25 August 2023 (UTC)

A problem with Internet Archive is that older books are often badly OCR'd and the search function won't work there because the scanned text is garbled. That might be the problem Andrew's having. In those cases you often need to view the full scanned text, ctrl+F for plausible strings in the mess, and then plug in what you find to the search function in the main view to get the actual location. I imagine they also won't turn up in full-site searches. Google's OCR is generally better, errors are usually limited to the normal stuff like reading long s as "f" etc. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 19:00, 25 August 2023 (UTC)

Off-topic, but what's going on with the /b/ → /p/ here, it does seem weird (expected in word-final position, final obstruent devoicing). Or is it simulating aspiration, /bʰ/? Jberkel 12:25, 28 August 2023 (UTC)

English stereotypes of how a German accent shifts English sounds often seem perplexingly backwards to me; a similar case is the English use of mid to signal a German pronunciation of the (German!) word mit. It's like a cross between eye dialect and Mockney: changing words to signal "this speaker has an accent" even if that means changing the words in diametrically the opposite way to what the speaker's accent does.- -sche (discuss) 09:29, 29 August 2023 (UTC)

and one of those cites has pisness for "business", so the /b/ > /p/ thing seems like part of a pattern. There are some dialects in the Alps where all stops are devoiced, which could have theoretically provided a sound basis for the stereotype, but I think in some cases writers need to "make it wrong on purpose" because subtleties of speech don't carry over as well in writing. The fact that pisness and mid appear in the same cite suggests accuracy isnt always a priority with writing. Makes me think also of a stereotypical pan-Asian accent where L and R are always switched, meaning the speaker somehow gets them both wrong instead of merging them both into one sound. —Soap— 10:38, 29 August 2023 (UTC)

I'm leaning keep if it's attested (RFV), on the grounds that we keep all kinds of dialectally- / pronunciation- motivated respellings, and these are not predictable (indeed, as Jberkel's and my comments above indicate, it's unexpected). This is on a spectrum, IMO: on one end of the spectrum are things like Winterpeg (changing the spelling to highlight Winnipeg's coldness) that are clearly includable, on the other end is baaaaaaad (changing spelling to mark intensity / drawn-out pronunciation), which we explicitly decided to make redirects. I think this and e.g. dwagon are pretty low-importance, but still includable (and I think py... is slightly more includable than dwagon since dwagon is theowetically a systematic change, weplace all rs with w, wheweas py... doesn't seem to follow a consistent pattern). - -sche (discuss) 09:41, 29 August 2023 (UTC)

Just pointing out that baaad exists as an independent page, among many others in Category:English elongated forms. I didn't look into the history behind the category, but I figured they'd be treated as ordinary words, meaning anything with three cites passes, and that because the spelling is flexible it's not required that they all have the exact same number of extra letters. —Soap— 10:45, 29 August 2023 (UTC)

@Soap: According to Wiktionary:Criteria for inclusion § Repetitions, baaaaaaad would be a redirect to baaad (three repeating letters). J3133 (talk) 11:00, 29 August 2023 (UTC)

Thanks. I read the prior discussion just now for more context ... to be honest, that could have been deleted, but I won't poke the dragon ... and I won't worry about the elongated forms getting deleted since it seems we decided that they belong so long as they're cited, just like I'd assumed. I just misinterpreted the comment above to mean that they were supposed to be redirects to the standard spelling. This also gives me more material to add to an essay ... as I implied at the beginning of the discussion, I'm actually against including py chiminey and similar phrases, but I didnt place a vote because my objection is to the policy rather than to this individual entry, and we presumably won't be changing the policy without a long drawn-out vote in which at least two thirds of the community vote for a stricter policy. —Soap— 11:25, 29 August 2023 (UTC)

I think it actually is systematic: voicing is switched, so that b>p and f>v, etc. It's just that it's only sprinkled in for effect so it won't obscure the meaning too much, and it's in addition to the changes that the average reader of the period who didn't know German would already be aware of. This convention is used even by writers such as Mark Twain, who had studied German and knew better. In this case, by jiminy is a phrase that has never been used much in real life but was often substituted in written reported speech for tabooed oaths. It's unintelligible to modern readers because it's the intersection of two artificial conventions that are no longer used. Chuck Entz (talk) 13:35, 29 August 2023 (UTC)

While searching for evidence to support the now-failed triste, I came across this strange passage by Walter Scott that supposedly represents the speech of a Highlander: “Put what would his honour pe axing for the peasts pe the head, if she was to tak the park for twa or three days?”[9] Overlordnat1 (talk) 16:04, 29 August 2023 (UTC)

I think it is rubbish, but keep per above. It can probably be attested. But I am not convinced that this bizarre ethnic stereotype can be sensibly called a pronunciation spelling. ←₰-→ Lingo ^Bingo _Dingo (talk) 19:14, 29 August 2023 (UTC)

Delete as it is merely attempting to reproduce the idiosyncratic pronunciation of a specific speaker. — Sgconlaw (talk) 20:05, 29 August 2023 (UTC)

Delete. - TheDaveRoss 14:33, 5 September 2023 (UTC)

non-Arabic

non-Italian etc.

Not sure if we are prepared to have a plethora of lemmas of “non-X language”. We definitely haven’t finished creating entries of every language and lect names yet, and I can’t imagine the vast number of attested SoP entries that we will potentially bring forth by affixing non- to them all, a number that might be at the least as high as half of the aforesaid language/lect names; and I would strongly suggest including such terms in quotations/usexes in the relevant entry instead, as a decent way of representing such terms rather than have them as lemmas. I personally vote delete, but thoughts? We currently seem to be tolerant towards similar ethnic and national lemma like non-Arab, non-Canadian etc., but the language ones feel more weird and unnecessary. ·~ dictátor·mundꟾ 18:28, 31 August 2023 (UTC)

Most of these non + proper adjective entries (though not "non-Arabic", a recent creation) seem to be Polanskyisms reflecting his personal interest in matters of hyphenation and capitalisation, and I agree they probably don't contribute much. There is an argument, though, that non- can be affixed productively to basically any adjective, and it's not clear that the orthographic convention that it always takes a hyphen before a capitalised one should determine whether the product counts as an eligible word. There are other things that can generate arbitrary and less controversial words (like verb + -er). So I don't have strong feelings about it at first glance.

I'm not sure the "etc." in the proposal is helpful: we should define the scope of the RFD clearly and of the four you list only "non-Arabic" is specifically glossed in terms of language. Are you proposing to delete all non- + nationality entries? Does for example non-Asian count? What about other proper adjectives like non-Bayesian? —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 19:22, 31 August 2023 (UTC)

I nominated only the language entries / senses here. "Etc." indicates an exhaustive list of all “non-X language” constructions. And well, in my opinion productivity alone shouldn’t necessarily determine whether a term is suitable to have its own entry, and probably other criteria such as dating of a term may be considered as well: ”non-X language” terms are probably a rather recent coinage, whereas terms affixed with un- or dis- tend to date back to the formative period of the language itself, making the latter more legitimate as lemmas. (un- and dis- are still productive in contemporary English of course but newer coinages with un- and dis- for specific domains could always be challenged in RFD.) ·~ dictátor·mundꟾ 22:58, 31 August 2023 (UTC)

Strictly speaking, these are the correct spelling forms, and should be kept for that reason. IMO, nothing else will do. DonnanZ (talk) 16:03, 1 September 2023 (UTC)

@Inqilābī: To be clear, non-Portuguese, non-Italian, and non-Spanish are currently defined in terms of the adjectives "Portuguese", "Spanish", "Italian", not in terms of languages like non-Arabic is. Google Books shows they're not used primarily in reference to languages either (e.g., "non-Italian immigrants", "non-Portuguese European merchants"). If definition in terms of language is the reason for nominating them then it seems to be spurious in those cases. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 16:44, 1 September 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for clearing it up. Since the definitions aren’t precise, I assumed they were defined in the sense of the language. Now I am confused myself, and will leave other people to interpret the definitions while still sticking to my nomination for deleting ”non-X language” terms LOL. So per your analysis, only the nomination of non-Arabic is valid now. ·~ dictátor·mundꟾ 17:52, 1 September 2023 (UTC)

You can try googling "Arabic * non-Arabic". You might be surprised by the results. DonnanZ (talk) 17:25, 2 September 2023 (UTC)

@Donnanz: Well my personal take is that the number of citations doesn’t necessarily reinforce the legitimacy of a term that feels very SoP. Phrases as non-Arabic speakers and the like could be easily added as citations to Arabic or even non- without any loss of valuable lexicographical information from Wiktionary. ·~ dictátor·mundꟾ 08:13, 5 September 2023 (UTC)

Comment: we don't seem to be entirely consistent as far as whether we keep things like this, although we often do. Various similar discussions are Talk:non-French (deleted), Talk:non-Japanese (kept), Talk:ex-chancellor (kept), Talk:ex-pilot (deleted), Talk:ex-stepfather (kept), Talk:ex-alumna (Spanish, kept). - -sche (discuss) 18:39, 1 September 2023 (UTC)

Confusing things further, at non-English it seems the discussion and decision were about deleting the general sense and the specific language sense was left alone, whereas this discussion seems to be taking the opposite angle. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 22:13, 3 September 2023 (UTC)

Right… This time, I wanted to nominate the specific language sense instead of focusing on random senses, because the language senses feel more SoP than ethnic/national senses. ·~ dictátor·mundꟾ 08:13, 5 September 2023 (UTC)

Delete non-Arabic (the others have been struck so I suppose they are no longer being considered right now). But I would prefer something like a BP discussion about whether to have such things in general, rather than piecemeal RfDs that go different ways for different non-glossonyms. - -sche (discuss) 04:02, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

• @-sche Just such a BP discussion happened in Sep 2022 (initiated by Polansky). The result was 3 in favour of keeping them (including Polansky and myself, for transparency) and 1 in favour of deleting. — excarnateSojourner (talk · contrib) 20:44, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

Delete. Limitless and utterly predictable SoP pattern. As I mentioned somewhere else, having a definition for "non-" as a prefix conveniently means that we do not need to individually list the almost literally limitless number of combinations that mean exactly what it says at "non-". Mihia (talk) 23:49, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

• Delete all four as SoP. — excarnateSojourner (ta·co) 03:32, 14 July 2024 (UTC)

September 2023

history book

SOP; compare chemistry book, sociology book, etc. There may be an idiomatic sense out there (compare “the history books” in Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English, Longman.) but this is not it. PUC – 18:41, 2 September 2023 (UTC)

Delete as it stands, although there may be a possibility for a better entry about what future generations will see in "the history books" etc.: often it's just a metaphor for history. Equinox ◑ 18:42, 2 September 2023 (UTC)

I added a quote only yesterday, so there's something about "history books" that's idiomatic. You can't say it's plural only though. And @Equinox: I think you have butchered the def - it was better before. DonnanZ (talk) 20:32, 2 September 2023 (UTC)

Delete, SOP, man should know from his linguistics books. Actually one should know from primary school 😱 – does this mean “primary school” has an “idiomatic” sense of “primary education“? No. This is what Equinox means with “metaphor”. There are figurative senses we must not include. Somewhere the relations are too close and the margins are fuzzy, vagueness. Separate senses must be contoured. Fay Freak (talk) 22:30, 3 September 2023 (UTC)

Keep but improve the definition, and withal add a {{&lit}} sense. ·~ dictátor·mundꟾ 08:37, 5 September 2023 (UTC)

Delete per nom. There is for the history books, essentially for the book(s), but I don't think that should be handled at history book (singular), and generally less fixed metaphors involving history books are probably going to be sum-of-parts. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 21:33, 5 September 2023 (UTC)

• I think the definition provided is wrong based on the citations provided. There are history textbooks for school (which the definition suggests) and then there are general-readership books on history. I don't think that when someone refers to a sports performance as entering the history books, they mean that it will be included in school textbooks. bd2412 T 19:04, 10 September 2023 (UTC)

Maybe it could be treated as an antonym of ash heap of history / trash heap of history, and we could base our definition off of that: "A notional place where …"? PUC – 09:00, 11 September 2023 (UTC)

That particular figurative sense only works in the plural. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 09:33, 11 September 2023 (UTC)

I'm fine with moving the entry to history books if necessary. PUC – 14:12, 24 September 2023 (UTC)

I can also find the singular, google books:"entered the history book", albeit mostly in low-quality self-published books and/or books by non-native speakers. I would delete the entry as it stands ("history book" just defined as a book about history), but "history books" defined as "a notional place...[etc]" as discussed above, with "history book" as the {{singular of}} that, seems more inclusible. - -sche (discuss) 04:09, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

Keep Purplebackpack89 06:48, 23 May 2024 (UTC)

As it stands, Delete, because the whole thing could be replaced by "maths book = textbook on maths", "physics book = textbook on physics", etc. If it means something more then please let's actually see this in the definition. Mihia (talk) 21:13, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

Although the term as currently defined indeed seems SOP, I think the idiomatic usage should be recorded. I think the proposal of -sche is the most sensible: add a proper definition (+quotes) to history books and change the definition at history book into {{singular of}} + {{&lit}}. Einstein2 (talk) 21:38, 5 September 2024 (UTC)

dynamics

Rfd-sense: "Forces that stimulate growth, change, or development. The changing dynamics in international politics led to such an outcome."

I don't think this sense is plural-only—you can say for example "the dynamic of China–US relations"—dynamic#Noun just maybe needs a better gloss. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 23:48, 3 September 2023 (UTC)

Maybe—but definitely not unless any revision made to the plural-form entry is carefully coordinated with revisions to the singular-form entry, where several senses are arguably plural-only and have sample sentences where the entryword is used in the plural. — HelpMyUnbelief (talk) 18:39, 10 March 2024 (UTC)

be at

SOP. Compare "be on", "be in", etc. Ioaxxere (talk) 17:33, 9 September 2023 (UTC)

lavalier microphone

Is this SOP? You can also just call it a lavalier#Noun... we also have "lavaliere microphone" as a usex of lavaliere#Adjective (note the spelling variation). - -sche (discuss) 21:56, 13 September 2023 (UTC)

WT:JIFFY? The earliest attestation for "lavalier microphone" I can find is 1946 (in Sales Management vol. 56), "lavalier" by itself seems to be a later development (OED has 1972, I can see some in the 60s). In early sources "lavalier-type microphone" seems to be common. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 23:16, 13 September 2023 (UTC)

Keep as WT:JIFFY. I also edited the def here and at lavalier. This, that and the other (talk) 22:14, 8 November 2023 (UTC)

Are there other uses for lavaliere#Adjective besides microphones? Jberkel 13:00, 24 July 2024 (UTC)

in conclave

SOP. PUC – 14:02, 24 September 2023 (UTC)

The omission of the article is surprising, no? Isn't this part of a closed class of phrases like in force, in step, in secret, ...? (Note that, unlike in camera, in vitro, ..., this one is not Latin. That would be in conclāvī.) This, that and the other (talk) 09:04, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

Isn’t it a predictable construction when an uncountable noun is involved? I’m thinking of examples like in amazement, in horror and in joy. The main thing to make clear would be that conclave can be used in this uncountable sense. — Sgconlaw (talk) 11:27, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

Is it uncountable in any other situation though? "Conclave is ..." for example. This, that and the other (talk) 06:02, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

Delete. I don't think this construction needs an explanation, any more than "in school" or "in church" (although I note we do have "in hospital"). Still, it's just in + conclave, and it should be understandable by anyone who knows (or looks up) the meaning of "conclave" P Aculeius (talk) 05:52, 2 March 2024 (UTC)

October 2023

square root of fuck all

Tagged for speedy deletion but I feel like it should be discussed hence I've opened this discussion. User: The Ice Mage ^{talk to meh} 20:27, 8 October 2023 (UTC)

There are a few hits for things like "square root of nada/nothing/zilch", etc. Not enough to easily justify entries for them individually, but enough to show some productivity. Then there's "nothing squared" and "twice nothing"... Chuck Entz (talk) 20:57, 8 October 2023 (UTC)

Personally, I don't see any need for what is a long-winded sum of parts, one of which is potentially offensive. DonnanZ (talk) 06:30, 10 October 2023 (UTC) sum

Er, it's not a sum of parts because there is no sense at square root that applies here. Neither is offensiveness a reason for us to exclude things. You're just making stuff up. Equinox ◑ 14:36, 11 October 2023 (UTC)

Nonsense. I didn't add "vulgar" to fuck all, which means "absolutely nothing" anyway. You will probably get away with this with the quotes you have dredged up. DonnanZ (talk) 16:23, 11 October 2023 (UTC)

You're throwing ad-hominems whereas I proved you wrong with logic. Equinox ◑ 16:46, 11 October 2023 (UTC)

It'll be the heat death of the universe before @Donnanz reads WT:CFI. Theknightwho (talk) 17:31, 11 October 2023 (UTC)

Yeah, that's how CFI works?????????????????? CitationsFreak (talk) 19:06, 11 October 2023 (UTC)

Keep: not SoP (it doesn't mean "mathematical zero", and square root only has mathematical definitions). Send to RFV if we must verify it. Equinox ◑ 14:39, 11 October 2023 (UTC)

square root of nothing is also attested, as are square root of bugger all and square root of jack shit (though I only see one good GB hit). Are there others? If yes, I think the SOP argument could hold water, though I'm not sure (maybe all of these deserve entries? Or is it a snowclone?) PUC – 14:46, 11 October 2023 (UTC)

I would say add something to the square root entry on this. Not sure how to word it, tho. CitationsFreak (talk) 19:12, 11 October 2023 (UTC)

There is also the square root of sod all, but it doesn't deserve an entry. DonnanZ (talk) 19:34, 11 October 2023 (UTC)

Delete: Not a set phrase; "square root of" (or maybe "square root") is. CitationsFreak (talk) 09:04, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

• Move to something, but I'm not sure whether "square root" or "square root of" is a better location to host the definition. The problem is that grammatically "square root" is a noun, but it is used solely as an adverbial/adjectival intensifier for a noun meaning "nothing" (i.e. square root of fuck all is a set phrase except that one of the components is flexible). So I don't know how to define "square root" as a noun. We could define "square root of" as "basically; essentially" but that would mess with the parse tree. Perhaps we could move to square root of nothing and be clear that nothing is being used as a pronoun rather than an idiomatic component of the set phrase (similar to our use of one and someone in proverbs), and explain the situation in the usage notes. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 18:33, 1 November 2023 (UTC)

Can you say "square root of absolutely nothing"? "square root of jack squat"? "square root of fucking nothing"? Google says yes to all three. I say delete, add something to "square root". MedK1 (talk) 16:16, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

@MedK1 What would you propose as a valid gloss definition for square root? -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 21:33, 14 December 2023 (UTC)

Perhaps exactly what's at square root of fuck all but preceded by "{{lb|with a term meaning nothing|"? I actually think it might be best for it to be added at the usage notes section instead, something along the lines of "May be used with a term meaning 'nothing' for an emphatic synonym of nothing." MedK1 (talk) 15:03, 15 December 2023 (UTC)

adoptive mother

SOP. All translations appear SOP too. Compare Talk:madre adoptiva (Spanish). This, that and the other (talk) 10:56, 13 October 2023 (UTC)

Reluctant keep because the Japanese translation doesn't appear SOP. 養 doesn't show up by itself as a word in the dictionaries I have with me. MedK1 (talk) 01:55, 2 December 2023 (UTC)

養 is given as the Japanese translation of adoptive. Perhaps the Japanese entry simply needs expansion. This, that and the other (talk) 06:07, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

Delete if someone can confirm the East Asian translations are SOP. PUC – 14:13, 30 December 2023 (UTC)

• Delete as SoP. — excarnateSojourner (ta·co) 03:52, 14 July 2024 (UTC)

pro-Hamas and anti-Hamas

SOP Ioaxxere (talk) 04:47, 14 October 2023 (UTC)

• Delete as SoP. — Sgconlaw (talk) 04:52, 14 October 2023 (UTC)
• Delete. We must draw the line somewhere. Otherwise there is no end to it: pro-Trump, anti-Biden, pro-ISIS, anti-Taliban, ..., all are easily attested, with exactly the meaning one would expect.  --Lambiam 16:47, 14 October 2023 (UTC)

Delete per Lambiam. PUC – 17:03, 14 October 2023 (UTC)

These should easily be Speedied. AG202 (talk) 17:17, 14 October 2023 (UTC)

• Created them in good faith! We have pro-Israel and anti-Israel so we probably should be consistent, or invoke the dumb WT:COALMINE rule. P. Sovjunk (talk) 23:16, 14 October 2023 (UTC)

  Nobody doubts your good faith. The canary-in-a-coalmine rule would apply if proHamas and antiHamas were acceptable orthographic variants, but they are not.  --Lambiam 11:15, 15 October 2023 (UTC)

Hamas is the dirty word here. IMO, where there is no practical alternative, Lambiam's assertion is flawed. I can sympathise with WF in this particular case. DonnanZ (talk) 11:42, 15 October 2023 (UTC)

What does this even mean? Theknightwho (talk) 21:28, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

• Keep. Prefixes aren't words. A single word should not be considered SOP. No one would argue that a term like antifascist is SOP; the only difference is the presence of a hyphen, which is grammatically required before a capital letter to prevent camelCase. See Talk:anti-Putinism and Wiktionary:Beer parlour/2022/September § Including hyphenated prefixed words as single words. Binarystep (talk) 21:59, 11 May 2024 (UTC)

"antifascist" is quite obviously SoP. What ought to happen is that someone looking up "antiX", in the case where no non-SoP word (e.g. differently constituted word) exists, should get some kind of an auto-generated "try anti + X" hint, which will eliminate the need for us to anticipate every possible combination and create a million individual SoP entries. The same can apply to all such limitlessly reusable prefixes that may or may not be hyphenated. Mihia (talk) 22:13, 11 May 2024 (UTC)

I disagree, since a word like anti-Hamas is SoP. However, if there are enough people who write it like antiHamas, then anti-Hamas must be included (along with antiHamas.) CitationsFreak (talk) 22:34, 11 May 2024 (UTC)

We really do need to somehow move beyond this fixation that a trivial and cosmetic stylistic choice of writing e.g. "antiHamas" vs "anti-Hamas" is actually important to SoP and inclusion arguments. Mihia (talk) 22:42, 11 May 2024 (UTC)

@Mihia: While I agree with you in principle, it's difficult to draw up a rule that distinguishes SOP from idiomatic uses of affixes clearly and unambiguously enough to avoid endless argumentation and inconsistency. Even if we had one, it would still be hard to get consensus. As with most of our CFI, it's a compromise. Chuck Entz (talk) 22:43, 11 May 2024 (UTC)

Anything of the form e.g. "antiX" or "anti-X" that is deemed to have a meaning not entirely predictable from the components, including any idiomatic cases such as you mention, should of course continue to have its own individual entry. In the case of argumentation or disagreement about whether this is the case, these would have to go to RFD, just as happens now in any other SoP dispute. Mihia (talk) 23:15, 11 May 2024 (UTC)

You're just repeating Ioxxere's argument without addressing mine. There's nothing that makes pro-Hamas any more SOP than proshipper or proscience. You're treating pro- and Hamas as separate words, even though pro- is a prefix and cannot be used on its own. The only difference between pro-Hamas and a word like profascist is the presence of a hyphen, which is a requirement in English grammar because the alternative spelling of proHamas would look unusual to native speakers. This interpretation of WT:SOP effectively forbids all entries for prefixed words derived from capitalized stems. It's also the reason we have so few entries for words prefixed with ex-, despite it being one of the most common English prefixes – the prefix is almost always followed by a hyphen, which means that any resulting words are likely to be treated as "compounds" of ex- and the base stem. Binarystep (talk) 22:59, 11 May 2024 (UTC)

I feel like it is the same concept. The reason we can't have "wine-lover" is that any user could just look up both "wine" and "lover" to get the full picture. Same thing with "pro-" and "Hamas". I do not care if the distribution of prefixed words is off, as we should have a note explaining why. CitationsFreak (talk) 23:23, 11 May 2024 (UTC)

A wine-lover is a lover of wine. Someone who is pro-Hamas does not feel pro- about Hamas. I think WT:SOP works best if it's strictly applied to compounds rather than transparent single-word entries. Wiktionary purports that its goal is to include "all words in all languages". I don't see why the presence of a hyphen should change that. Sure, the meaning of pro-Hamas is obvious... but so is profascist, and I don't think most users would consider that SOP. Binarystep (talk) 23:50, 11 May 2024 (UTC)

Some one who is pro-Hamas is "agreeing with; supporting; favouring" "a militant Palestinianist and Sunni Muslim movement". It is SoP. CitationsFreak (talk) 00:08, 12 May 2024 (UTC)

Someone who is profascist is "agreeing with; supporting; favouring" "a right-wing, authoritarian, nationalist ideology characterized by centralized, totalitarian governance, strong regimentation of the economy and society, and repression of criticism or opposition". Is profascist SOP? Binarystep (talk) 00:17, 12 May 2024 (UTC)

As a single word, no. If there was only the word "pro-fascist", then it would be indeed SoP. CitationsFreak (talk) 00:54, 12 May 2024 (UTC)

profascist and pro-fascist are both single words. Prefixes aren't words. Binarystep (talk) 01:00, 12 May 2024 (UTC)

Meant that in the sense of "-ist" and "black hole" being words. CitationsFreak (talk) 01:21, 12 May 2024 (UTC)

•  Delete both as SoP. pro and anti can be used on their own (in the same way that prepositions can). This at least technically opens the door to pro-Hamas being pro (preposition) + Hamas (which I would consider, like wine-lover, to be more clearly not entry-worthy). — excarnateSojourner (ta·co) 17:13, 7 September 2024 (UTC)

• "anti-". in the sense of being opposed to something, can be applied to almost literally ANY noun, with totally predictable meaning. "anti-parking", "anti-landfill", "anti-pumpkin" ... you name it. I completely fail to see the point of creating thousands and thousands of individual entries defining "anti-X" as meaning "opposed to X" for every noun in the dictionary. Mihia (talk) 20:57, 14 May 2024 (UTC)

And, by the way, if we can somehow also eliminate the nonsense whereby it supposedly matters that three people somewhere wrote "antipumpkin", then so much the better. Mihia (talk) 22:21, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

pro-Israel and anti-Israel

Nominating these as sum-of-parts as well. — Sgconlaw (talk) 15:08, 15 October 2023 (UTC)

• Delete these and all similar. Limitless, blatantly SoP pattern. Mihia (talk) 21:02, 11 May 2024 (UTC)
• Keep. Binarystep (talk) 21:59, 11 May 2024 (UTC)
•  Delete as SoP. — excarnateSojourner (ta·co) 17:13, 7 September 2024 (UTC)

pro-Russian and anti-Russian

Also P. Sovjunk (talk) 21:22, 15 October 2023 (UTC)

 Keep at least as a translation hub. Nyuhn (talk) 13:32, 20 February 2024 (UTC)

Can you point to 3+ non-compound translations for each? I only see maybe one (Chinese) for pro-Russian though I'm not sure about the Hungarian breakdown for both. AG202 (talk) 20:28, 20 February 2024 (UTC)

• Keep. Binarystep (talk) 21:59, 11 May 2024 (UTC)

Others

Also nominating the following entries on the same basis as above. I have left out terms that have non-hyphenated forms, such as anti-Muslim and pro-Muslim. — Sgconlaw (talk) 13:21, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

anti-American and pro-American

I did notice Cebuano amboy for pro-American. DonnanZ (talk) 15:39, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

Keep ---- See this diff. In that diff, I show that the word 'anti-American' is a word according to five dictionaries. I am a deep skeptic of the way Wiktionary's Sum of Parts doctrine is enforced at present and over the past several years. I believe that the enforcement of SOP is biased against hyphenated words, and that the coverage of hyphenated words on Wiktionary is stilted and not conforming to actual usage because of a systemic preference for non-hyphenated words caused by hyper-enforcement of the SOP doctrine. I believe that the current iteration of the enforcement of the SOP doctrine is not academically sound, otherwise, the other dictionaries would exclude this word. I believe that the five dictionaries I cite are normative in including 'anti-American', and that Wiktionary is non-normative, i.e., fringe, if it excludes the word 'anti-American'. If 'anti-American' is removed as an entry as a result of these proceedings, I will attempt to bring a vote on SOP doctrine that adds another limit to the policy: that if mainstream, authoritative dictionaries include a term, that the SOP policy cannot be used to remove an entry from Wiktionary. Fight me, come at me, lol lmao even, I know kung fu, &c. --Geographyinitiative (talk) 09:44, 29 October 2023 (UTC) (Modified)

That's WT:LEMMING. Which isn't offcial policy yet. But it could be. CitationsFreak (talk) 21:38, 3 November 2023 (UTC)

• Keep. Binarystep (talk) 21:59, 11 May 2024 (UTC)

pro-Arab

• Keep. Binarystep (talk) 21:59, 11 May 2024 (UTC)
•  Delete as SoP. — excarnateSojourner (ta·co) 17:13, 7 September 2024 (UTC)

anti-British and pro-British

• Keep. Binarystep (talk) 21:59, 11 May 2024 (UTC)
•  Delete as SoP. — excarnateSojourner (ta·co) 17:13, 7 September 2024 (UTC)

pro-Indonesian

• Keep. Binarystep (talk) 21:59, 11 May 2024 (UTC)
•  Delete as SoP. — excarnateSojourner (ta·co) 17:13, 7 September 2024 (UTC)

anti-Jew and pro-Jew

• Keep. Binarystep (talk) 21:59, 11 May 2024 (UTC)
•  Delete as SoP. — excarnateSojourner (ta·co) 17:13, 7 September 2024 (UTC)

anti-Palestinian and pro-Palestinian

• Keep. Binarystep (talk) 21:59, 11 May 2024 (UTC)
•  Delete as SoP. — excarnateSojourner (ta·co) 17:13, 7 September 2024 (UTC)

anti-Slavism and pro-Slavism

• Keep. Binarystep (talk) 21:59, 11 May 2024 (UTC)
•  Delete as SoP. — excarnateSojourner (ta·co) 17:13, 7 September 2024 (UTC)

pro-US

• Personally I would keep all of these (if cited) as single words. Ƿidsiþ 08:04, 23 October 2023 (UTC)

I am inclined to agree, per my comment above. DonnanZ (talk) 10:55, 23 October 2023 (UTC)

• Keep. Binarystep (talk) 21:59, 11 May 2024 (UTC)
•  Delete as SoP. — excarnateSojourner (ta·co) 17:13, 7 September 2024 (UTC)

META

Is this a noun? Is it even English? Is it capitalised like this? So many questions. I can understand why we have an entry for meta tag, but this one is harder to stomach. This, that and the other (talk) 06:15, 14 October 2023 (UTC)

Yes, I doubt HTML tags should be regarded as words. — Sgconlaw (talk) 12:01, 14 October 2023 (UTC)

The hypertext markup language is definitely not the English language or any other natural language. It is not a conlan either; HTML has no parts of speech such as nouns, verbs and adjectives, and HTML tags do not carry meaning in the sense that words in natural languages do. HTML tags are case-insensitive; one could write <mEtA property="og:title" content="META - Wiktionary, the free dictionary"> using camel case.  --Lambiam 17:35, 14 October 2023 (UTC)

Yes, but should the "lemma" be capitalised, given that people stopped capitalising HTML tag names about 20 years ago? Thankfully, by your argument that's a moot point. This, that and the other (talk) 22:14, 14 October 2023 (UTC)

Move to Translingual, preferably as lowercase. The English section was added to an existing Finnish acronym entry in 2018 for no discernible reason. @Nicole Sharp seems knowledgeable enough on technical subject matter, but not on organizing it for an online dictionary. Chuck Entz (talk) 22:52, 14 October 2023 (UTC)

Delete. Not natural language. There are literally millions of programming keywords, tags, and API class/method names. Equinox ◑ 23:05, 14 October 2023 (UTC)

Just for the "keep everything" people (who begin with D): let's just look at "what's obsolete" (a very very short list of things that have been removed from the framework recently): DefineDynamicAssembly, ExecuteAssembly, ExecuteAssemblyByName, AssemblyHash, you may enjoy hundreds more on the page [10]. And this is just what's obsolete, in one specific software framework, at one point in time. And they don't have definitions. You may also want to investigate food colorants. Equinox ◑ 06:37, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

This user beginning with D is abstaining. DonnanZ (talk) 11:38, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

Delete. Not a word in any language.  --Lambiam 11:06, 15 October 2023 (UTC)

<marquee>Delete</marquee>. Jberkel 12:12, 15 October 2023 (UTC)

For clarity, I vote delete. — Sgconlaw (talk) 15:05, 15 October 2023 (UTC)

Keep iff there are three uses in running text. Otherwise, delete. CitationsFreak (talk) 04:28, 23 November 2023 (UTC)

If not appropriate as a mainspace entry, then you need to move all HTML elements to a Wiktionary Appendix and create Wiktionary Appendices for other computer programming and markup languages as well. These are important terms that should be defined somewhere on Wiktionary if not in mainspace. Nicole Sharp (talk) 03:39, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

We do have a sister project called Wikipedia for such things … — Sgconlaw (talk) 06:12, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

• Delete as not natural language. — excarnateSojourner (talk · contrib) 00:08, 2 December 2023 (UTC)

primiparous

Rfd-sense: "bearing a first offspring; having borne only one previous offspring", same as the senses "pregnant for the first time" and "having given birth to only one child" above. RcAlex36 (talk) 17:15, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

• I think the first sense also needs to be deleted or at least verified: a woman who just became pregnant for the first time is not a woman who has given birth to only one child. IMO only the second sense is correct, although I think it is better to define this sense as “Having given birth for the first time”. The definition of the third sense is off. Queen Hatshepsut gave birth to only one child, buy it would be ludicrous to write something like “Queen Hatshepsut was a primiparous Pharaoh”. And when María Josefa Pimentel gave birth to the second of her many children, she had borne only one previous offspring but was not primiparous. So I definitely support deletion of the third sense.  --Lambiam 16:07, 24 October 2023 (UTC)

Agreed. A woman who is pregnant for the first time is primigravid. The first sense should perhaps be "giving birth for the first time" instead. RcAlex36 (talk) 01:28, 25 October 2023 (UTC)

I thought of that, but when I read “At 10–11 months postpartum, primiparous mothers continued to be more attentive”,^[11] or “3 months postpartum, when primiparous mothers have become familiar with their infants”,^[12] the present participle is too present. In fact, all GBS hits I see for primiparous mother are about postpartum behaviour or offspring survival statistics.  --Lambiam 16:45, 25 October 2023 (UTC)

school-age

Attributive form of school age, not a real adjective. We also don't want working-age alongside working age. PUC – 13:08, 29 October 2023 (UTC)

Note that it excludes university (and probably kindergarten, if people want to split hairs). —Soap— 18:30, 30 October 2023 (UTC)

Merriam-Webster considers it an adjective, unlike other dictionaries I checked. In any case, I've added a noun alt form section since school-age is attestable outside of attributive uses. If the adjective sense is deleted, the translation table should probably be moved to school-aged. I also created schoolage (with a noun header), which seems to occur only attributively. Einstein2 (talk) 20:07, 30 October 2023 (UTC)

I don't think any purpose would be served by deleting this. DonnanZ (talk) 10:25, 2 November 2023 (UTC)

Delete the hyphenated attributive sense, following precedent. — Sgconlaw (talk) 12:45, 18 November 2023 (UTC)

fat lot of good

Noun: of no use or help

Apart from being a definition that doesn’t fit a noun, it’s definitely sum of parts: a fat lot (“little or nothing”, sarcastic) + of + good. Theknightwho (talk) 01:52, 30 October 2023 (UTC)

Shouldn't a fat lot be moved to fat lot? As the RFD'd entry shows, it can be used without the article. Yes, it's probably omitted through a process of elision, but it still seems unnecessary to include in the headword. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 04:20, 30 October 2023 (UTC)

Put together, the parts form an idiom. DonnanZ (talk) 08:59, 30 October 2023 (UTC)

Maybe redirect to "(a) fat lot". This collocation is extremely common but "fat lot" ought to explain the meaning. Equinox ◑ 11:13, 30 October 2023 (UTC)

I've heard "a lot of good that'll do" with only the context and tone of voice to convey the sarcasm, as well as substitution of things like "help" for "good". Chuck Entz (talk) 12:31, 30 October 2023 (UTC)

A more common collocation is fat lot of use, while fat lot of help is also common, so this is IMO SOP. I think a fat lot should actually be moved to a fat lot of, to be classified as a determiner (compare a lick of), to which fat lot and a fat lot can redirect.  --Lambiam 19:16, 30 October 2023 (UTC)

Redirect to either fat lot or fat lot of, since other words can replace good. I would lemmatize the form without the a since it can be omitted: Citations:fat lot. - -sche (discuss) 01:42, 1 November 2023 (UTC)

blue light

Rfd-sense:"Visible light towards the blue end of the spectrum generated by an electronic device." Is this (sense 4) actually different from the &lit sense 5? I'm not sure. Ƿidsiþ 06:25, 30 October 2023 (UTC)

Here is another sense: “Visible light towards the blue end of the spectrum produced by the light of an incandescent light source passing through a blue colour filter”.^[13] Also, “Visible light towards the blue end of the spectrum emitted by the daytime sky, caused by Rayleigh scattering”.^[14] As sense 4 is merely “Visible light having the colour of the clear sky or the deep sea, between green and purple in the visible spectrum”, without specifying the light source, I imagine we can expect many more precisely specified senses. In other words, Delete.  --Lambiam 18:56, 30 October 2023 (UTC)

Delete as SoP. — Sgconlaw (talk) 12:43, 18 November 2023 (UTC)

November 2023

acquired characteristic

SOP: "a characteristic that is acquired (i.e. "Developed after birth; not congenital")". PUC – 17:34, 2 November 2023 (UTC)

• Keep. According to the Wikipedia article, "Applying makeup, nail polish, dying one's hair, applying henna to the skin, and tooth whitening are not examples of acquired traits" (which is a synonym according to the same article). However, if a celebrity does their hair and makeup in a particular way, that can be said to be acquired + a characteristic, but not an acquired characteristic. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 23:36, 3 November 2023 (UTC)
  • I think you're suggesting this should be kept per WT:FRIED. — excarnateSojourner (talk · contrib) 00:48, 2 December 2023 (UTC)
• Delete as SoP. — Sgconlaw (talk) 04:54, 7 November 2023 (UTC)
• Keep. Strongly a fixed phrase describing concept in biology / evolutionary science. Mihia (talk) 14:30, 25 April 2024 (UTC)

@Mihia: What makes it more deserving of an entry than acquired trait? PUC – 16:48, 25 April 2024 (UTC)

We could have that too, listed as a synonym. Mihia (talk) 19:20, 25 April 2024 (UTC)

@Mihia: inherited trait (and inherited characteristic), vestigial trait, advanced trait, recessive trait, dominant trait, adaptive trait, are all phrases describing concepts in evolutionary biology. I don't see the point of creating entries for these, since they will be a rehash of what can be found in the entries of the component words. PUC – 16:12, 26 April 2024 (UTC)

Each of those would need to be considered on its own merits. However, one difference between "acquired characteristic" and, let's say, "inherited characteristic", is that it is relatively obvious that "inherited characteristic" has something to do with characteristics passed to offspring, but less obvious that "acquired characteristic" does. If you mentioned the latter phrase to someone not familiar with the subject area, quite possibly they would not understand just from the parts the specific sense that it has in that regard. This is a reason to keep it, in my opinion. More generally speaking, I feel less inclined nowadays to delete phrases purely because the meaning can in theory be obtained by selecting the right combination of senses of the different parts, and more inclined to keep strong set phrases anyway -- within reason, of course, which is a subjective judgement. Mihia (talk) 20:36, 26 April 2024 (UTC)

from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free

Feels SOP-y to me, being from the river to the sea plus the rest of the words. It's not a set phrase, either, because there are some uses with "Palestine will be free" at the front. An example of this is in the 2014 essay collection Conversations in Postcolonial Thought, in an essay by Ronit Lentin, in which she writes "This forgetting [of the element of violence that made Israel] ... is precisely what pro-Palestine demonstrators say: Palestine will be free from the river to the sea." However, I will admit that this element seems like it makes up a large chunk of the uses of "from the river to the sea". CitationsFreak (talk) 22:39, 5 November 2023 (UTC)

• Redirect to from the river to the sea, the minimal idiomatic component, per nom. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 23:38, 7 November 2023 (UTC)

  And while we're at it, I think we need to improve the definition of from the river to the sea. The current Al-Jazeera citation does not support the use of the phrase as a slogan, but rather as a literal prepositional phrase (of course, with fried-egg restrictions on which river and sea are being referred to). In fact, can we find any examples of from the river to the sea being used in isolation (without any complement) as a slogan? If so, then we should have two definitions here. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 21:47, 14 December 2023 (UTC)

Redirect. - -sche (discuss) 17:08, 20 November 2023 (UTC)

Keep as a synonym- widely used. Inqilābī 22:11, 14 July 2024 (UTC)

Al Jazeera

Encyclopedic. The article was nominated 15 years ago with no consensus. [15] The only arguments seem to be for notability, which disagrees with our policy. brittletheories (talk) 16:04, 11 November 2023 (UTC)

Keep. I've expanded the entry with three quotes that probably meet WT:BRAND. Einstein2 (talk) 18:05, 11 November 2023 (UTC)

Delete. I don't see how the quotes support any kind of inclusion. — SURJECTION ^{/ T / C / L /} 14:53, 12 November 2023 (UTC)

The quotes don't identify Al Jazeera as a television channel, see the examples at Wiktionary:Criteria for inclusion/Brand names. Einstein2 (talk) 15:54, 12 November 2023 (UTC)

Yes, they do. Humans are capable of metonymy and irony regardless of ideomaticity. You could substitute Fox News for any one of them, and that was deleted before. brittletheories (talk) 10:21, 13 November 2023 (UTC)

Good to know that I can sell videotapes of beheadings to Fox News. :)  --Lambiam 15:10, 13 November 2023 (UTC)

If Al-Jazeera is used as a stand-in for somethimg, it should be explicated. For instance:

1. (informal) Any sensationalist media that publishes offensive or shocking content.

I'm not aware of such an association. As it stands now, the article doesn't name a single figurative use of the term. brittletheories (talk) 10:09, 14 November 2023 (UTC)

I think that these cites are in reference to Al Jazeera being seen as a Muslim news source, and therefore must have beheading tapes on their newsfeed. CitationsFreak (talk) 03:09, 16 November 2023 (UTC)

Delete per the above. PUC – 12:44, 15 November 2023 (UTC)

Delete per Brittletheories, any figurative sense ought to be stated explicitly to support inclusion and I don't see an obvious one here. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk)

Keep, but rework definition to explain quotes. CitationsFreak (talk) 03:09, 16 November 2023 (UTC)

Weak delete. I'm not convinced by the cites; if a cite says someone could "talk to anybody about what she knew—even the Korean People's Army", does that make Korean People's Army idiomatic or is it still the province of an encyclopedia rather than a dictionary? I am thinking the latter. We have a lot of abbreviations of news media, like DW, BBC, MSNBC, CBS, but we don't have The Times, London Times, New York Times, Washington Post, British Broadcasting Corporation. - -sche (discuss) 17:06, 20 November 2023 (UTC)

Is there any abbreviation for Al Jazeera? Ironically, I tend to use BBC instead of British Broadcasting Corporation, and so do the BBC. DonnanZ (talk) 00:14, 22 November 2023 (UTC)

As it stands, delete per Brittletheories and Al-Muqanna. The present entry does not even attempt to provide a non-encyclopedic definition, and the quotations themselves do not demonstrate dictionary senses, only contextually suggested associations or connotations of a nature that could routinely exist for proper nouns. Mihia (talk) 23:13, 2 May 2024 (UTC)

Delete: no idiomatic use that satisfies WT:BRAND, as far as I can see. — Sgconlaw (talk) 23:33, 2 May 2024 (UTC)

Delete- sheerly encyclopedic. Inqilābī 22:06, 14 July 2024 (UTC)

I've revised the definition with a less encyclopedic tone to include "known for their in-depth and frontline reporting in conflict zones", which might be the channel's most recognized trait. Looking into the quotes again, I think the cited texts in the entry do not identify Al Jazeera as a TV channel and they require knowledge of the term to understand the intent of the authors, thus satisfying the criteria illustrated at Wiktionary:Criteria for inclusion/Brand names. Figurative usage, or being used as a stand-in for something, is not required for brand names (instead, company names have similar criteria: WT:COMPANY). Einstein2 (talk) 20:08, 9 September 2024 (UTC)

accessory before the fact

accessory after the fact

SOP of accessory + before the fact and accessory + after the fact? PUC – 16:40, 17 November 2023 (UTC)

• Keep, a very set phrase. bd2412 T 03:44, 14 April 2024 (UTC)
•  Delete accessory before the fact. It was not immediately clear to me until I read our definition how one could "assist a crime" (accessory) after the crime had been committed. — excarnateSojourner (ta·co) 17:37, 7 September 2024 (UTC)

good boy, good girl

Seems to be SOP, just that it can be used sarcastically as in the given usage example. कालमैत्री (talk) 08:39, 18 November 2023 (UTC)

Delete. (And if a good girl is a female child, how can she "stand by her man"? Sounds a bit dodgy!) Equinox ◑ 09:15, 18 November 2023 (UTC)

Not so fast. I think they are common exclamations. If so, amend and keep. DonnanZ (talk) 11:51, 18 November 2023 (UTC)

Yes, there is definitely use of both phrases as a sincere term of congratulations for a small child or for a pet, upon which the idiomatic use for adults is based. I think these pages should be expanded, but also support keeping the idiomatic usage, so my support is for adding your sense, not replacing the existing sense. —Soap— 12:52, 18 November 2023 (UTC)

As an aside, why does the nominator use an unreadable name? DonnanZ (talk) 12:00, 18 November 2023 (UTC)

@Donnanz Do you think a conspirator shall speak of his ways? कालमैत्री (talk) 15:13, 18 November 2023 (UTC)

That's a counter-question, not a satisfactory answer. DonnanZ (talk) 15:43, 18 November 2023 (UTC)

To be fair, the definition reads as "An obedient female child, or someone who behaves like one"; I presume that's the part that applies in this usex. The definition should be split imo, because I was also confused at first. PUC – 20:18, 18 November 2023 (UTC)

Keep, as I think these are plainly idiomatic. Is it not obvious that the use-example I chose describes a woman who obeys her male partner without question? And that most of us would consider such a woman to be excessively obedient? This goes far beyond the literal meaning good girl you would use to describe a five-year-old who shares their candy with neighborhood kids even when their parents didn't tell them to. Likewise, the use-example on good boy describes an adult man who avoids taking on a difficult adult responsibility, something we would never expect a literal child to handle.

I created these pages just two days ago, and I intend to add to them a lot more, but I prefer to work at a slow pace, hopping around from page to page, rather than focusing on getting a new entry to completion right out of the gate. I wasn't expecting an RFD so soon after creation. Nonetheless, the core of the content is there, and I see no reason to consider this a sum-of-parts definition. The fact that it needs so much explanation is a demonstration on its own that it's idiomatic. Best regards, —Soap— 12:32, 18 November 2023 (UTC)

I think the wording of the pages is good as it is, but if I were to break the combined definitions apart so that the idiomatic sense was defined as something such as an excessively obedient (wo)man, would we still consider this to be sum-of-parts? If so, how could a naive reader coming across the phrase good girl in a context like the above use our definitions of good (7 senses just for people) and girl (10 senses) to put together that it means an excessively obedient woman? If this is going to be another one of those "they'll figure it out from context" RFD's, I'll just say as I've said before that the people who look things up in a dictionary are precisely NOT the people who can piece out an unpredictable definition from the context it's in. We don't write for people like us. —Soap— 12:38, 18 November 2023 (UTC)

I hope you realise how pretentious and condescending you're sounding right now. PUC – 13:21, 18 November 2023 (UTC)

No, I don't. In fact, I don't think I could be condescending if I tried. But that's irrelevant ... what matters to me is .... can anyone answer my question? —Soap— 13:34, 18 November 2023 (UTC)

Delete, SOAP. What next: good husband, good wife, good doggo? PUC – 13:20, 18 November 2023 (UTC)

Can you show me idiomatic uses of those phrases? Particularly ones that are as far from a literal meaning as well-behaved child is from excessively obedient adult? —Soap— 13:34, 18 November 2023 (UTC)

The meaning of words are not idiomatic, as i said of the usage examples you have: they have been used (shallowly) in the context to taunt, to suggest excessiveness. Words like good father etc. can be used similarly.
Yes, a kid might not understand the use case, but many a satirical use cases are not always apparent.
And lastly i think red-green alliance should have been kept. कालमैत्री (talk) 15:10, 18 November 2023 (UTC)

Re good doggo: note that we have good boi. J3133 (talk) 16:28, 18 November 2023 (UTC)

Keep, but I think the example for "good boy" is really weird and should be changed. Honestly the context for the current example is unclear to me. I think a better example for idiomatic usage (use for an adult) would be something like

"I know how to cook dinner, Dave. Now be a good boy and go wait quietly with the kids." Or

"Be a good boy and give your mother a call. She's been calling every day for a week!"

something like that. AmbiguouslyAnonymous (talk) 14:02, 12 December 2023 (UTC)

Keep. I don't think these are used only in cases where it would be natural to use "boy" or "girl." Also, I think a good test for idiomaticity is if a term can be translated literally. Is that the case here? Can you say "bon garçon" to a dog or a child in French? I'm not a native speaker, but I think something like "bravo" would be more likely. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 22:46, 18 November 2023 (UTC)

But the senses don't include the use as interjection, while that should be the case only then. Have you read the entries? Your French argument is not correct, a particular phrase can be used in one language, but might sound awkward in other even with literal senses. कालमैत्री (talk) 03:43, 19 November 2023 (UTC)

To clarify my vote: Delete noun but keep as an interjection. My translation-based argument doesn't prove anything, it's true, but it is still evidence, or at least an argument for making it a translation hub. But you're right, I neglected to read the entry and based on some of the above comments, thought we were talking about an interjection sense. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 04:59, 19 November 2023 (UTC)

Seconding this: keep as an interjection. Theknightwho (talk) 14:01, 8 February 2024 (UTC)

If kept, can we add an example for a pet, most esp. dog, which, at least where I live, is a very common usage. Two policeman at a police station, one says to the other "We've been interrogating this dog all morning, and he still won't tell us who's a good boy." Mihia (talk) 22:08, 26 April 2024 (UTC)

Undeletion of ancient Greek

Deleted in 2014 with the rationale “This is a mistake not an alternative form. Hardly worth creating {{misspelling of}} entries for wrong capitalization.” Since then, there have been two sections on the talk page:

Not a mistaken form

Pace the editors above, lower-case ancient is more (not less) common when dealing with the people and adjective, with an established meaning very much more restrictive than simply the SOP of "anything very old related to Greece". Ancient Greek may be written either way, albeit it's increasingly common (as we learn ancient Greek less often) to give the name "Greek" to the modern form and instead describe ancient Greek as an all-capped thing-unto-itself.

Further, Ancient Greek is properly restricted to the Greek of antiquity. The phrase however is sometimes used (as in ISO 639) as inclusive of all Greek up to 1453, a sense where it should be lower-case (but still not SOP). — LlywelynII 22:17, 26 July 2015 (UTC)

ancient Greek

ancient Greek is definitely more common than Ancient Greek for adjectival use, which is actually the commonest use as well. See this ngram, and compare ancient Near Eastern, ancient Roman... which are also more common than Ancient Near Eastern ([16]) and Ancient Roman ([17]).

A core principle of the Wiktionary is Wiktionary:Descriptivism.

92.184.116.35 06:58, 14 January 2021 (UTC)

The Ancient Greek entry has a usage note for the noun, which correctly states, “Usually, ancient is not capitalized in this sense”, with a hidden comment linking to the Google Ngram Viewer. Both the adjective and the noun are more commonly ancient Greek. Further, MLA style states in its page “Does MLA style capitalize ancient when it precedes Greece or Greek?”, “No. We follow Merriam-Webster, which indicates that the terms ancient and classical are not capitalized when they are attached to names of languages or periods.” It is clear that this is not a “mistake”, as was stated in the RfD, and also, as mentioned above, inconsistent with having the entries ancient Roman (more common form of Ancient Roman) and ancient Rome (which is the form, e.g., Wikipedia uses) or ancient Near Eastern (“of the Ancient Near East”). J3133 (talk) 10:49, 19 November 2023 (UTC)

Undelete per nom. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 10:57, 19 November 2023 (UTC)

Undelete. Binarystep (talk) 23:54, 11 May 2024 (UTC)

Undelete. CitationsFreak (talk) 05:50, 12 May 2024 (UTC)

Undelete. --Overlordnat1 (talk) 06:08, 12 May 2024 (UTC)

Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg

Cites are for Lake Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg and not Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg. Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg not asserted to be independent of Lake Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg. Delete an entry that is not a term, but is merely a part of another term. --Geographyinitiative (talk) 01:32, 22 November 2023 (UTC)

This should be an RFV then. Equinox ◑ 09:52, 22 November 2023 (UTC)

I tried looking up some other placenames that only occur as the names of lakes and rivers, and have to admit it was more difficult than I expected. It seems that we typically just don't list these either in their bare form or with "lake" and "river" attached. The ones I did find were all used in more than one placename, e.g. Sligo, Cam, Magog, Champlain. If we move this to RFV I suppose the question would be about whether people can say Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg to mean the lake, since that is the only placename there is. I would expect that they do, though it seems at least some of the Google search results for the long name without the word "lake" are simply pages in other languages. —Soap— 11:00, 22 November 2023 (UTC)

My intent was not to search for three cites but to delete the entry without a search for three cites on policy grounds. If I brought this at RFV and wrote what I wrote above, I guarantee it would be said "take it to RFD, you bitch ass punk". I have now opened an RFV too, copy-pasting the above grounds but as a different petition. I want to run an RFD and an RFV on this term simultaneously. I would suggest closing this one and recommending RFV and closing that one and recommending RFD. --Geographyinitiative (talk) 11:19, 22 November 2023 (UTC)

Nonsense. You are saying that "Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg" alone (minus "Lake") does not exist. The way to disprove this is to find 3 cites for it. Thus RFV is the correct venue per policy. Equinox ◑ 11:22, 22 November 2023 (UTC)

I see the error of my petitions, but I am just totally unexperienced with the process. I wash my hands of both petitions and retract them insofar as I can. Please do not contact me about this. I have no ill will toward you Equinox. And what I realize is that I have never had a successful RFD before- though I have had about 5 to 10 successful RFVs. That's the page where I can have a more interesting and useful role; I really have no opinions about policy-related questions that will come up in an RFD. --Geographyinitiative (talk) 11:25, 22 November 2023 (UTC) (Modified)

@Geographyinitiative: I never saw your response at the time. However: these RFVs and RFDs are not tribunals where we seek to punish people: they are (hopefully) a way to improve the dictionary by removing low-quality material, or merging, or whatever. We have probably fought a lot, Mr Geography, but only because of disagreements on inclusion, nothing strictly personal. I hope we will continue to fight on those grounds :) Equinox ◑ 06:53, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

subbranch

Rfd-sense "part of a branch". How is this different from sense 1 ("branch that is itself an offshoot of a branch of something")? PUC – 18:31, 25 November 2023 (UTC)

If a part of a branch isn't an entire branch in its own right, it wouldn't meet the definition of sense 1. I suppose there might be a way to combine the two, but it would have to be worded differently than the current sense 1. Chuck Entz (talk) 19:01, 25 November 2023 (UTC)

I am not sure whether such “non-branches” would be called subbranches, and even if they would, is there a way to differentiate them from actual smaller branches? In any case, I think one definition line is sufficient (maybe after a bit of rewording). Einstein2 (talk) 13:39, 26 November 2023 (UTC)

Lulu

Rfd-sense. We shouldn't list given names as being from Chinese, they would either be anglicised (in which case indistinguishable from the other one listed above on the page) or transliterations (which we don't include for Chinese given names). – wpi (talk) 08:57, 26 November 2023 (UTC)

Unlike the situation in European languages, I've been told that you can use more or less any combination of characters to form a Chinese given name. Therefore just about any combination of two Pinyin syllables would be attestable as a given name. That's a theoretical 400 + 400*400 = 160,400 Chinese given name entries. Plus some people have three-syllable names. I don't think this is worth our time. However, I'm not sure how I feel about excluding one particular language's (⇒ ethnicity's?) names from inclusion. This, that and the other (talk) 10:22, 24 January 2024 (UTC)

-un-

From Wiktionary:Tea room/2023/November § Systematic element name infixes:

(E.g., as in unbiunium (“element 121”).) We have both un- (prefix) and -un- (infix), both defined as standing for the digit 1, but -bi-, which would be the infix, is a redirect to bi- (“2”), the prefix. -nil- (“0”), -tri- (“3”), -quad- (“4”), -pent- (“5”), -hex- (“6”), -sept- (“7”), -oct- (“8”), -enn- (“9”) are also redirects to the prefixes. See the RfD for -oct-, per which I suppose -un-, the only infix, should also be redirected. J3133 (talk) 09:50, 19 November 2023 (UTC)

J3133 (talk) 18:55, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

Support deletion; it should redirect to un-. 2804:1B0:1901:5FD7:6060:15B5:AFC5:BD81 13:22, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

DKC2

Donkey Kong sequels. Per Talk:HP1 for Harry Potter. Equinox ◑ 11:42, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

Support deletion for both terms. MedK1 (talk) 16:06, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

Delete both. Inqilābī 23:42, 14 July 2024 (UTC)

DKC3

Per DKC2 above. Equinox ◑ 11:42, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

Undelete hurry-furry merger

I brought this up in the Discord and in User talk:DTLHS#Hurry-furry merger but it didn't get too far. @theknightwho seemed to agree with me though! I was able to find it in a few spots[18][19] and I've both seen it used and actually used it in conversations (see the talk page message for more). So yeah, I think the deletion was clearly unfair. There's no reason to think it was coined by Wikipedia or whatever. MedK1 (talk) 20:06, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

Undelete - the reasons given for DTLHS's out-of-process deletion were "I bet it came from some dumb Wikipedia list" and "sounds like bullshit". Theknightwho (talk) 09:47, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

Recreate and send to RFV? I see plenty on the Web, not much in GBooks (though their search sucks these days). Equinox ◑ 09:50, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

The deleting administrator seemed to be in a bad mood on the day they were questioned about it and is no longer active, so I dont expect them to share an opinion here, but I agree with those above there's no reason this page should be omitted when cot-caught merger and similar pages are listed. —Soap— 12:28, 3 December 2023 (UTC)

I've undeleted it. RFV it if needed, but as long as it's attested there doesn't seem to be any RFD-reason to exclude it. - -sche (discuss) 20:14, 3 December 2023 (UTC)

This is the name of a specific entity, just like the names Hjalmar Ekdal topology, Kurgan hypothesis, Lichnerowicz cohomology, twistor theory, and so on. When should we consider such names to have become lexicalized? We are lacking a criterion.  --Lambiam 20:40, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

• Done by someone else Denazz (talk) 07:31, 4 September 2024 (UTC)

December 2023

mean time

Redundant to mean and time. A westman (talk) 16:37, 2 December 2023 (UTC)

I assume sense 2 applies here. It doesn't seem to match the definition in my Oxford and Collins, where both refer to it being the short form of mean solar time, as referred to in the entry for Greenwich Mean Time. DonnanZ (talk) 17:39, 2 December 2023 (UTC)

Keep. It's an alt form of "meantime" ("The time spent waiting for another event; time in between") which uses no sense of mean that is obvious to a modern speaker. Equinox ◑ 15:43, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

• @A westman Did you mean to nominate both senses? — excarnateSojourner (talk · contrib) 17:41, 10 December 2023 (UTC)
• Keep sense 1 (the alt form). Delete sense 2 as SoP to mean etymology 3, adjective sense 1 ("average"), which is far from being obscure or obsolete. — excarnateSojourner (talk · contrib) 17:41, 10 December 2023 (UTC)

  @ExcarnateSojourner: Sense 2 could be kept as {{&lit}}. J3133 (talk) 17:46, 10 December 2023 (UTC)

  • Oh, good point. Let's do that. — excarnateSojourner (talk · contrib) 18:15, 10 December 2023 (UTC)

    There's actually a third sense that I added recently. It is the synonym of "solar time". newfiles (talk) 05:55, 8 May 2024 (UTC)

zinc-bearing

SOP? Synonym is probably zinciferous, if we have translationsDenazz (talk) 21:41, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

Delete bear, etymology 2, sense 8 is a close fit for this use. LaundryPizza03 (talk) 12:45, 27 December 2023 (UTC)

• Delete as SoP. — excarnateSojourner (ta·co) 03:19, 14 July 2024 (UTC)

Delete as SoP. Inqilābī 20:48, 14 July 2024 (UTC)

• Kept as alt-form per WT:COALMINE Denazz (talk) 07:30, 4 September 2024 (UTC)

foregoing

Rfd-sense

Etymology 1, the adjective. This seems redundant to Etymology 2, which is the present participle and gerund of forego. Chuck Entz (talk) 19:58, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

Keep: It is a recognised adjective in Oxford and Collins, and probably others. The verb is apparently archaic, but it is also a variant of forgo. DonnanZ (talk) 00:50, 10 December 2023 (UTC)

Comment: Currently the structure is unclear.

• Et1 of foregoing is empty, but based on the definition, seems to correspond to Et1 of forego.
• Et2 of foregoing points vaguely to forego which contains two et's.

Presumably User:Chuck_Entz reads Et2 of foregoing as a reference to Et1 of forego, otherwise why suggest the deletion of Et1 of foregoing? So then we would have two et's under foregoing that are both based on et1 of forego ...and nothing for et2 of forego.

I am strongly in favour of making the etymologies explicit in the foregoing entry, rather than missing or implicit.

I am neutral on the grammatical recognition of the adjectival form.

However, I thought a noun form should be added, per Talk:foregoing#noun (sorry if that's off-topic). Or is that already covered by the gerund label?

—DIV (1.145.214.72 03:04, 14 January 2024 (UTC))

unrequited love

SOP: "love that is unrequited". I don't believe "even though reciprocation is desired" should be part of the definition. PUC – 09:38, 10 December 2023 (UTC)

• Love here is specifically romantic love (etymology 1, noun sense 2.3). If a mother loves her daughter but the daughter does not love her in return that would not be called unrequited love. Could WT:FRIED apply here? — excarnateSojourner (talk · contrib) 18:09, 10 December 2023 (UTC)

  I did find a couple of counterexamples (unrequited love of a mother for their child: [20] [21]) but they were picked out from a sea of examples that related to romantic love. I don't know what to make of it from a SOP point of view though. I'd lean keep but not strongly. In the event the term is deleted, translations should be moved to unrequited. This, that and the other (talk) 06:25, 11 December 2023 (UTC)

Many of the translations are similarly SOP (imo) and not worth entries. PUC – 20:58, 12 December 2023 (UTC)

I was referring specifically to the translations of the word unrequited in the SOP translations at unrequited love, which are not all present in the unrequited entry. This, that and the other (talk) 05:26, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

please restore adult diaper

I believe the adult diaper page should be restored, per the argument I made in August here. More succinctly, if our deletion policy is leading us to delete well-established terms as sum of parts, while continuing to list scarcely-used synonyms for those terms simply because they're not sum of parts, I think the policy needs to be reformed. —Soap— 17:05, 12 December 2023 (UTC)

You created this: entire definition was "Any diaper sized to be worn by adults". I deleted it as "Non-idiomatic sum-of-parts term: please see WT:SOP: adult Adjective: Intended for or restricted to adults rather than children due to size". I think that deletion was sound. Equinox ◑ 09:34, 13 December 2023 (UTC)

A synonym of incontinence diaper, I suspect. DonnanZ (talk) 20:05, 13 December 2023 (UTC)

Weak keep due to it being synonymous and more used than "incontinence diaper". (Maybe make it a THUB?) CitationsFreak (talk) 23:32, 13 December 2023 (UTC)

Saying "Keep" is misleading when you want to change the definition. Maybe "Recreate and rewrite"! Equinox ◑ 14:28, 14 December 2023 (UTC)

No, I think we should give "adult diaper" its definition, and replace "incontinence diaper" with "synonym of adult diaper". CitationsFreak (talk) 15:43, 14 December 2023 (UTC)

Keep as a synonym of incontinence diaper. Theknightwho (talk) 14:21, 14 December 2023 (UTC)

Saying "Keep" is misleading when you want to change the definition. Maybe "Recreate and rewrite"! Equinox ◑ 14:28, 14 December 2023 (UTC)

Support restoration as a synonym. DonnanZ (talk) 15:37, 14 December 2023 (UTC)

I can't see any difference between adult diaper and incontinence diaper from a SOP standpoint. "A diaper for adults" vs "a diaper for incontinence". There's no other sense at adult that could realistically apply. This, that and the other (talk) 23:06, 14 December 2023 (UTC)

@This, that and the other: No other sense? Just google "age play" and "adult diaper". bd2412 T 14:04, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

@BD2412 This is a good argument for adult diaper's SOPness. Incontinence diapers and role play diapers are both "diapers for adults". The term adult diaper doesn't convey anything about the reason the diapers are worn. It is sense 2 (2.0, if you will) of adult that is used in both cases. You've convinced me that adult diaper and incontinence diaper should both be deleted, honestly. This, that and the other (talk) 22:04, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

I wasn't particularly making an argument to keep. bd2412 T 22:14, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

Support restoration as synonym per what This, that and the other's words. MedK1 (talk) 01:14, 22 December 2023 (UTC)

Delete as SoP. Even though it may be a synonym of incontinence diaper, that doesn’t justify it being an entry in its own right. The words adult and diaper can be linked separately. — Sgconlaw (talk) 11:44, 22 December 2023 (UTC)

Delete, SOP. PUC – 20:50, 10 February 2024 (UTC)

I think Soap makes a really strong point; nobody ever says incontinence diaper, usually just adult diaper or something euphemistic like protection, adult brief, continence aid or whatever, and Wikt does tend to be more sympathetic towards SOP entries that are widely-accepted specialist or technical terms. But, that said, it does unfortunately fit within WT:SoP; regarding said policy's stated exception "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," I cannot confidently say that our readers will not know what adult diaper means and find any use in an entry for it. Compare disposable diaper, which is probably the second-most popular childcare-related term after diaper itself, which noticeably does not have an entry because it is also SoP despite its commonness. Instead we have synonyms like sposie. While I would actually like an entry for this simply because it is the 'correct' (most common) term, Wiktionary's rules simply do not allow for it and IMO I cannot justify a strong enough argument to confidently say that it needs one.. maybe this is ultimately a problem with Wiktionary's rules, IDK 🤷 LunaEatsTuna (talk) 17:28, 15 May 2024 (UTC)

I would support a page for disposable diaper as well, as otherwise it seems a foreign language speaker looking for the English term for it would either end up with the slang term sposie or nothing at all. —Soap— 14:10, 14 August 2024 (UTC)

I'd add that I don't see how either adult diaper or disposable diaper runs afoul of SOP. People always seem to read this policy from what I'd say is the wrong end, assuming the person looking up the phrase already has it in front of them, when we're more likely dealing with someone who wants to translate it from a different language. That person isn't going to have the phrase in front of them. But this is a longstanding disagreement I've had and I've been writing it up on User:Soap/SOP in my userspace rather than on individual RFD's, so I'll just leave the link here for now. —Soap— 14:13, 14 August 2024 (UTC)

Keep. If anything, incontinence diaper should be deleted since it's less of a set phrase. Binarystep (talk) 19:13, 15 May 2024 (UTC)

Restore: commonly used, and would be useful to keep (as a synonym). Inqilābī 21:00, 14 July 2024 (UTC)

El Camino Real

WT:NSE requires figurative senses for individual roads, but we do not have any for this one. Previously nominated as a member of cat:en:Named roads. I'm making a separate request for the Spanish term. See also #Colon Street above. — excarnateSojourner (ta·co) 23:52, 14 December 2023 (UTC)

Just for background: this was a route in California during the Spanish period connecting the missions in the region. It no longer exists in its old form, but it's symbolic of that period, and roads/highways that cover parts of the same route are often officially designated as part of it to empasize their connection to history. I think it's significant that "El" is capitalized, since it just means "the" in Spanish and it shows that the term isn't understood as the sum of its parts (I wonder if it makes any sense to have a Spanish entry at that capitalization). In fact, the term was probably not used for the modern concept during the mission period (any official route was so designated), but civic boosters in the past century or so resurrected it as a way to promote tourism by connecting their communities to what they portrayed as a romantic bygone era. I suppose it might be analogous to the Silk Road or the Royal Road, which we do have entries for, or the Appian Way, which we don't. Chuck Entz (talk) 20:55, 15 December 2023 (UTC)

Maybe we should compare Spanish camino real (camino construido a expensas del Estado) with King's highway. Oxford, for Queen's highway (published before QEII died), a mass noun by the way, says "the public road network, regarded as being under royal protection". Thus not roads owned by the monarch, although they can use them. DonnanZ (talk) 11:32, 16 December 2023 (UTC)

• Keep: Purplebackpack89 19:08, 16 December 2023 (UTC)
• Keep per Purplebackpack. DonnanZ (talk) 09:42, 15 January 2024 (UTC)

quarter-

Not grammatically a prefix. Compare -prone above. Equinox ◑ 12:40, 17 December 2023 (UTC)

I believe you're right, and we should also look at half-.

There is also Category:English terms prefixed with quarter-. Collins and Oxford don't seem to list quarter as an adjective either, just the noun and verb, but Merriam-Webster does make a brief mention of an adjective. Anyway, delete this. DonnanZ (talk) 14:27, 18 December 2023 (UTC)

Yes, I'll have my eye on half- if this one gets deleted; but, baby steps. It seems clear to me that "quarter-" doesn't morphologically merge into the following item. Equinox ◑ 18:06, 18 December 2023 (UTC)

An exception to this is cross-, which is a recognised combining form. DonnanZ (talk) 19:17, 18 December 2023 (UTC)

@Donnanz: Let's keep it brief because this thread is about quarter-, but: recognised by whom, as what? Hope it ain't the "it's not in the dictionary!" argument. An interesting counter-argument for cross- might be: if it's morphological, why must I say cross-state and not crosstate? They are separate words. Equinox ◑ 22:28, 18 December 2023 (UTC)

Crosstate seems to be a commercial invention, found in New Jersey and South Africa. Back to quarter-. DonnanZ (talk) 19:42, 20 December 2023 (UTC)

It seems like some of the words in Category:English terms prefixed with half- (e.g. halfter or halfway) seem to be legit examples of this suffix but in most of those words (e.g. half-finished or half-open) the "half" part is not grammatically a suffix. A Westman talk stalk 22:56, 18 December 2023 (UTC)

@A_westman: You can't trust the category though. Casual editors will add and remove things to/from categories based on feelings, not necessarily on grammar. You need to use strong arguments to defend or refute the membership. Equinox ◑ 00:23, 19 December 2023 (UTC)

That's kind of what I meant... A Westman talk stalk 00:32, 19 December 2023 (UTC)

Delete. Inqilābī 21:05, 14 July 2024 (UTC)

do want and do not want

SOP. A Westman talk stalk 20:37, 17 December 2023 (UTC)

Keep. They are not grammatical and would not make sense otherwise: compare my bad. Equinox ◑ 22:08, 17 December 2023 (UTC)

Some of the verb inflections given for do want are rather suspect. DonnanZ (talk) 00:30, 18 December 2023 (UTC)

Weak keep because "do not want" has an acronym tied to it. I'd absolutely say "delete" otherwise. We don't keep a special sense at am for cutesy slang like "am smol child" (where the subject is ungrammatically omitted), so I don't think @Equinox's reasoning to keep these is good reasoning. MedK1 (talk) 00:33, 18 December 2023 (UTC)

Comment. Both the etymology and the usex for do not want suggest that the term is an interjection. Is this also the case for do want? In that case, it is plausibly a back-formation from do not want.  --Lambiam 12:26, 20 December 2023 (UTC)

Delete: elision of certain words (“[I] do want [this]”) doesn’t, in my view, make these lexical terms. — Sgconlaw (talk) 11:42, 22 December 2023 (UTC)

Keep. These do not follow normal grammatical rules/patterns, so I'm not sure how they can be SOP. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 07:07, 26 December 2023 (UTC)

because reasons

SOP. We could instead put this meaning in reasons. A Westman talk stalk 18:04, 18 December 2023 (UTC)

It's actually already given as an example at because. (Saying "because X", rather than "because of X", seems to be recent net slang.) Equinox ◑ 18:05, 18 December 2023 (UTC)

Not to mention that "for reasons" is also used. So this meaning should be moved. A Westman talk stalk 22:52, 18 December 2023 (UTC)

Keep, since it refers to reasons that are "tangential, dubious or unknown", so it's not SOP. Perhaps "for reasons" is also used (I've never heard it), but I don't think other collocations are possible. Theknightwho (talk) 01:07, 19 December 2023 (UTC)

Well: "for reasons" and "due to reasons" and "owing to reasons" obey traditional grammar. "Because reasons" doesn't. Anyway, your point about the "tangentiality" is something separate. Equinox ◑ 02:01, 19 December 2023 (UTC)

The disobedience of grammar is already documented at because so I don't see the point of this. A Westman talk stalk 02:13, 19 December 2023 (UTC)

@Equinox: time to take a step back and tone down the snappiness, I think. — Sgconlaw (talk) 05:02, 19 December 2023 (UTC)

I think you pinged the wrong person... CitationsFreak (talk) 09:04, 21 December 2023 (UTC)

[22] [23] Word0151 (talk) 11:05, 21 December 2023 (UTC)

Keep. I don't think this is simply a special use of because. In my experience, it's usually said with a pause between "because" and "reasons", with the "reasons" meant to be a humorous replacement for actual reasons that one does not want to elaborate on (or that don't actually exist). So instead of telling my friend I didn't go to the party "Because I didn't feel like it", I might say "Because, reasons...", which is perhaps a way of verbalizing "Because [reasons]". Which is not an SOP phrase and not dependent on the grammar of either word involved. I'm just speculating here, but this may also be the original phrase which gave rise to the Internet slang sense of because. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 17:45, 19 December 2023 (UTC)

I’ve heard “because, NP” (e.g., “because, politicans”) used in conversations. I’m not certain what constitutes Internet slang (Facebook, TAFKAT, neither of which I use?).  --Lambiam 12:00, 20 December 2023 (UTC)

Yes that's exactly what this is an example of. "Because cozzie livs" is one I've seen/heard a few times recently where it literally just means "because of cost of living pressures". It wouldn't surprise to hear it dropped into conversation but it still originated at net-speak. 49.188.70.132 03:51, 25 June 2024 (UTC)

Delete, pragmatics with many analogues. In stream-of-conscious-like colloquial language some conventions of grammar are more frequently broken. Fay Freak (talk) 11:31, 22 December 2023 (UTC)

🐒 Word0151 (talk) 12:27, 22 December 2023 (UTC)

Delete: I don’t think the elision of words (“because [of some] reasons”) makes the phrase lexical. Another instance is “I cannot [stand this]”. — Sgconlaw (talk) 11:37, 22 December 2023 (UTC)

@Sgconlaw: Compare I can't. J3133 (talk) 13:20, 22 December 2023 (UTC)

Yup, we should nuke that one too. — Sgconlaw (talk) 13:33, 22 December 2023 (UTC)

@Sgconlaw: I created it. It is listed as an alternative form of I can’t even at Dictionary.com. See, e.g., “What's the meaning of "I can't (emotes)"” (Reddit: “It means something is extremely funny.”), “What does I can’t. mean? I saw ppl saying that below a meme, is it means laughing out of control?” (HiNative: “In the context of laughing because of a funny meme (I can’t 😭) I can’t means “I can’t with this meme/post” or “this meme/post is way too funny””), “What does I can't with you mean?” (HiNative: ““I can’t with you” in slang terms can mean that dealing with you right now is too much! This may be meant seriously or used sarcastically in a funny way depending on context.”), “What’s with “I can’t with”?” (Reddit: “Yeah, it's a slang phrase. […] It is a shortening of "I can't deal with ... " but it's taken over as a phrase. It is not technically correct usage but it has become very common.”; Grammarphobia: “You won’t find this sense of “I can’t with” in standard references, but it’s definitely out there. And if enough people use it, we may be seeing it in dictionaries someday.”). I believe it is worthy of an entry. J3133 (talk) 14:07, 22 December 2023 (UTC)

Keep but replace with link to "because", it's an example of "because {noun}" which isn't typically grammatical outside internet slang. 49.188.70.132 03:43, 25 June 2024 (UTC)

twelve hundred

sop? similarly, eleven hundred, thirteen hundred etc. Word0151 (talk) 04:36, 19 December 2023 (UTC)

Delete, yes, dumb. Equinox ◑ 04:58, 19 December 2023 (UTC)

I think WF has chosen the weakest link in the chain. There are entries for every hundred between two hundred and twenty-three hundred, including twenty hundred (for 24-hour clock), but no ten hundred for the 24-hour clock. It's pointless deleting this one without removing the others. DonnanZ (talk) 11:31, 19 December 2023 (UTC)

Delete all the number senses. WT:CFI (established by this formal vote) is clear on this: "Numbers, numerals, and ordinals over 100 that are not single words or are sequences of digits should not be included in the dictionary, unless the number, numeral, or ordinal in question has a separate idiomatic sense that meets the CFI." The numerical use of eleven hundred, twelve hundred, and so on is already explained in "Appendix:English numerals". However, I think the 24-hour clock sense can stay. I am undecided on the year sense (leaning towards delete) as this is an infinite series—we should discuss this further. It may be better to explain this in a new appendix under "Appendix:Time". — Sgconlaw (talk) 12:16, 19 December 2023 (UTC)

Convert all but the clock sense to an &lit sense. Or maybe delete. CitationsFreak (talk) 05:01, 23 December 2023 (UTC)

Entry for hundred already includes the clock sense. Why do you think these should be kept? Word0151 (talk) 05:05, 23 December 2023 (UTC)

I thought the sense said something different. Delete. CitationsFreak (talk) 05:09, 23 December 2023 (UTC)

Since the. 24-hour clock sense is already explained at hundred, delete the entire entry and all similar entries. — Sgconlaw (talk) 12:10, 23 December 2023 (UTC)

Keep the lot. DonnanZ (talk) 11:13, 23 December 2023 (UTC)

Delete all, useless. PUC – 20:36, 10 February 2024 (UTC)

non-English: Undeletion of "not English" sense

Deleted sense:

• Not English; not from England; not of English ancestry or origin.

  Synonym: un-English

Sense in entry:

• Not in the English language.

  Synonym: un-English

Compare non-Japanese, which was kept, as @-sche pointed out recently. If not as a full sense, then at least as {{&lit}}, indicating that non-English does not only refer to language. J3133 (talk) 13:05, 19 December 2023 (UTC)

Support: You can have non-English food, for example. It was a silly RFD. DonnanZ (talk) 14:10, 19 December 2023 (UTC)

Support per above. MedK1 (talk) 01:33, 22 December 2023 (UTC)

Oppose it means “not” and “English” in all senses of that word, making it SoP. Delete the entire entry. — Sgconlaw (talk) 12:07, 23 December 2023 (UTC)

@Sgconlaw: If there is no consensus for deletion of the entry itself, I assume you would not oppose adding this sense instead of having the entry incomplete. J3133 (talk) 13:04, 23 December 2023 (UTC)

@J3133: in that scenario I abstain because I do not support such entries on the whole. — Sgconlaw (talk) 13:48, 23 December 2023 (UTC)

Delete all of these non- entries. — SURJECTION ^{/ T / C / L /} 12:32, 23 December 2023 (UTC)

nonEnglish is a non-runner, in British English at least. DonnanZ (talk) 12:52, 23 December 2023 (UTC)

Obviously both senses should live or die together. I'd rather see them both die; the word is totally transparent. This, that and the other (talk) 00:52, 30 December 2023 (UTC)

• Question: how does the idiomacity of this term (or lack thereof) relate to that of un-English? bd2412 T 23:56, 30 December 2023 (UTC)

Support Binarystep (talk) 23:59, 11 May 2024 (UTC)

• Broadly speaking, I would like to say Delete as limitless SoP pattern all "non-X" that mean "non- + X". This is why we have an entry for the prefix "non", so we don't have to individually list a million different compounds that all mean exactly what it says there. However, a fly in the ointment is that I do feel that we should keep, let's say, "non-runner" (at least in horseracing and vehicle senses) even though strictly this only means "non + runner", but I cannot exactly explain why, at least not at the moment. Mihia (talk) 19:51, 16 June 2024 (UTC)
• Oppose as SoP, and delete the existing entry on the same grounds. — excarnateSojourner (ta·co) 03:30, 14 July 2024 (UTC)

December solstice

SoP. The solstice that's in December * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 04:43, 21 December 2023 (UTC)

Keep as part of a set. The explanation is good enough; from personal experience a December solstice is more preferable in NZ than in the UK. DonnanZ (talk) 10:34, 23 December 2023 (UTC)

Is the rest of the set not SoP too? * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 17:08, 24 December 2023 (UTC)