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WT:RFV

May 2023

accordion

Latest comment: 4 days ago5 comments4 people in discussion

"(figurative) A set of items (concepts, links, or otherwise) that can be packed and unpacked cognitively, or their representation as a set of virtual [computer science?] objects. See also telescoping." There is nothing in GBooks for e.g. "accordion of ideas" or "accordion of concepts". Equinox ◑ 13:39, 30 May 2023 (UTC)Reply

"accordion of memories" or "memory" has a sufficient number of independent hits on GBook ([1]; [2], in an extended metaphor; [3]; [4], in an extended metaphor; [5]). This probably can't be considered as a lexicalised metaphor, though, and I'm not sure if this is what the editor who added the sense had in mind. 蒼鳥 _{fawk. tell me if i did anything wrong.} 16:23, 30 May 2023 (UTC)Reply

Century 1911 has an adjective sense: "Resembling in its folds the bellows of an accordion: as, an accordion camera (one that is extensible), accordion skirts, etc."

I take this to be attributive use of a figurative sense of the noun "Something having folds or being extendable as an accordion." DCDuring (talk) 23:28, 10 January 2025 (UTC)Reply

I wonder if "accordion camera" and "accordion skirts" are really primarily referring to extensibility, or simply to the similarly pleated appearance, in which case they might not belong to the same sense as the "accordion of..."-type cites. Assuming for a moment that they are the same sense, how's this? There are enough "accordion of..." cites to hold the sense up even without the "skirt" and "camera" cites (if we move/remove those). I was not sure whether "accordion of memories" et al. should really be taken as attesting a separate sense, as opposed to the phenomenon that anything can be used in a metaphor, but I must admit phrases with other instruments, like "violin of memories" and "piano of memories", do not seem to get any hits, and other dictionaries have had (semi-)comparable senses, as noted above... - -sche (discuss) 15:24, 4 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

If there is no objection: RFV-passed. - -sche (discuss) 02:48, 10 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

June 2023

atheist

Latest comment: 11 days ago25 comments9 people in discussion

Rfv-sense "(proscribed) A person who does not believe in any religion (not even a religion without gods)". This could be a really interesting sense for atheist if it exists (three cites). I'm trying to imagine how to look for it- something about communists in China throwing off Confucianism or something? Really interesting one. Don't dimiss it out of hand, because I think have seen this discussed before. I found something close to this in Taiwan: [6] "Taiwanese-American hip-hop singer Stanley Huang's (黃立行) new album has triggered protests from the religious community because the title song is about atheism, a Chinese-language daily reported yesterday. […] It's not clear who has been offended by the tune, but most Taiwanese are Buddhists or Daoists. A small number are Christians, Muslims and atheists." Here's an atheist discussion on the topic of Taoism [7] --Geographyinitiative (talk) 14:24, 10 June 2023 (UTC)Reply

It seems to me that this is the way a lot of people use the term. Whenever you see "atheist" listed alongside "Buddhist" and "Christian," is this not the adjectival analogue to this sense? I would reword the definition, though. Rather than "A person who does not believe in any religion" (because it's not a lack of belief that religions exist), I would say "A person who is not an adherent to any religion" or something along those lines. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 18:41, 10 June 2023 (UTC)Reply

@Andrew Sheedy I think you're saying that atheist can be a synonym for nonreligious, is that right? If so, where do we find cites for that? I think it is possible. --Geographyinitiative (talk) 22:09, 10 June 2023 (UTC)Reply

@Geographyinitiative: I added a couple cites. Do you think they fit the definition and are clear enough to be distinguishable from the other senses? If so, I'm fairly confident I can find more like them. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 22:54, 10 June 2023 (UTC)Reply

For my money, the 5 cites at the citation page more clearly prove that 'atheist' can mean 'non-religious', not just 'someone who doesn't believe in a God/deity', than the 2 you've actually added as they starkly contrast atheists with religious people who don't believe in God (such as Buddhists and Jains). In any case, I don't think any of the senses we have are at all uncommon or merit the label 'proscribed' - they're just hard to disambiguate. Based on those 5 cites alone let's call this cited. --Overlordnat1 (talk) 00:19, 11 June 2023 (UTC)Reply

Beliefs in deities do not exist, the definitions miss what actually happens. Gods cannot be conceptualized and accordingly have no seat in anyone’s mind. Were it otherwise, we would have to speak of medically relevant delusions (the psychological fact of persistingly adhering to an idea in spite of it being incompatible with empirical data), but the intuition here is correct that it is factually inappropriate to pathologize. They are indeed indirect references to what someone, a particular group, demands in a behaviour throughout man’s life. You would be yourself an autist if you assumed that people actually mean what they claim.

Nowadays in developed countries those who continue to practice religion have a general awareness that they are phoneys, but it works. So contrary to how discourse makes it appear, choice of religion is secondary to previously fostered social convictions. The occurrence patterns of religiosity, i.e. communication that indicates allegiance to a god of choice, have been studied in their environments with the observation of their being “determined by the need to moralize others and ultimately by the level of social trust (i.e., what people think of others’ level of cooperation)”. Consistent with this observation, that everyone is directed towards in practice, Wiktionary already defines the particular sense of “belief” in question as “religious faith” and the sense of “faith” as “a religious or spiritual belief system”, probably not even circularily referring to the same sense of “belief”: the system character is substantial, the religiosity or spirituality accidental. Hence, religion is the adherence to a cult, by definition structured around supernatural entities. You can thus define an atheist as someone not believing in a cult, i.e. the value systems espoused by it. Do you really think that people are that decided about particular meaning restrictions as provided in our dictionary entry atheist when they use the word? The proscribed sense, which comes to the mind of @Andrew Sheedy as that of the lot of people and thus attains the greatest support of usage as opposed to mention that deliberates about the term, is with this footing the only sense, the rest is theology, to be rejected as partisan instead of descriptive.

Consequentially, freedom of religion is incorrectly comprehended as someone’s freedom “to carry out any practices in accordance with those beliefs”, since people don’t even causally act on beliefs which don’t exist, and such specific provisions cannot be a mere general power of competence on religious grounds. So in spite of the more popular definition, containing a confused causality, the minority definition in legal literature is more accurate, according to which freedom of religion is only freedom to perform ritual acts, exercitium religionis and devotio domestica, which has been defined since the Peace of Westphalia. E.g. of this legal literature calling it thus restricted: Johannes Hellermann (1994) “Multikulturalität und Grundrechte – am Beispiel der Religionsfreiheit”, in C. Grabenwarter, editor, Allgemeinheit der Grundrechte und Vielfalt der Gesellschaft: 34. Tagung der Wissenschaftlichen Mitarbeiterinnen und Mitarbeiter der Fachrichtung „Öffentliches Recht“‎^[8], Stuttgart: Boorberg, pages 129–144; Gerhard Czermak, Eric Hilgendorf (2018) Religions- und Weltanschauungsrecht‎^[9], Berlin: Springer, →DOI, margin numbers 131–134. While it is in any legal opinion that religion as opposed to weltanschauung is distinguished by making reference to deities or at least transcendental reference, so I repeat that belief in a deity is accessory to religiousness and the distinction in our entry nonsensical. Fay Freak (talk) 09:33, 11 June 2023 (UTC)Reply

@Fay Freak You write: "The proscribed sense, which comes to the mind of @Andrew Sheedy as that of the lot of people and thus attains the greatest support of usage as opposed to mention that deliberates about the term, is with this footing the only sense, the rest is theology, to be rejected as partisan instead of descriptive." Would this mean that mean that the other senses are religious terminology within Abrahamic religion? I don't propose Wiktionary should label them that way, but I feel that's what the implication of your statement would be, perhaps. --Geographyinitiative (talk) 12:31, 11 June 2023 (UTC)Reply

Fay Freak, I don't mean to be harsh, but can you try making your point more succinctly? Beyond the philosophically and sociologically dubious claims and the off topic commentary, what lexical point are you trying to make? I don't know what your intentions are and it could well be that you mean very well, but be aware that you often come across as just trying to show off how smart you are and it's exhausting to wade through the cruft to decipher what's of actual value for the rest of us. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 18:52, 11 June 2023 (UTC)Reply

@Andrew Sheedy: I pointed out that so-called religious beliefs or beliefs in deities are embedded in religious systems and accessory to them, which are themselves accessory to habituations of humans to social conversation and thus what persons believe in is not actually gods but religions which bring their points, about what men should do, forward by the figure of gods. If people claim they ascribe truth to their god it is actually to manipulate people in the desired direction as they believe in the commandments and recommendations structured around the particular god figure and thus ascribe truth to them; value judgments and factual claims are treated the same in general language: Fact–value distinction. And perlocutionary speech acts also use to look exactly the same as any statement. The gods a religion has are just brand variations: Like if I like to wear A Bathing Ape because of the qualities and fits and designs and flex and attitude transmitted by items etc. I believe in that ape and the A Bathing Ape® and BAPE logos and their powers—what does that even mean? It is a breviloquence for what I exactly believe in, that this is the top brand to wear. Religion is also presented in the demeanours of people like clothing, rather than being believed by anyone only in its naked main character. Hence “A person who does not believe in any religion” is the only definition of atheist. Because people don’t believe in gods, as only symbolic for the complete religion. It wouldn’t make sense to say, e.g., I believe in the Christian God, without ascribing some traditional properties to him which then serve as a guideline to behaviour and then make an ingroup and outgroup; and even if you believe in only some kind of God then you have an ingroup of religious people and outgroup of nonreligious people, people see similarities between him who believes in a god and them who don’t: as this is still a distinction in how people operate, it was a requirement to be categorized as gottgläubig to be in the SS.

You could instead add a particular language rule, gloss or usage note, to “believe” as applied to the brands created by religions, but then the “true” linked in its first definition “to accept as true” has enough diverse meanings. If people believe in this or that god, they accept his system as “genuine; legitimate, valid” or “fair, unbiased”. So don’t people comprehend gods as “conforming to the actual state of reality or fact”? In spite of being meaningless due to facts and reality never being some otherworld, which itself would have to be interconnected with the real world, the idea pops in, only to reinforce the religion by motte and bailey; in no case the alleged beliefs in gods are exclusively in them without even their religions. The quotes given for the “belief in god” senses of atheist can easily be analyzed as “somebody who does not support, i.e. consciously furthers the practical effect of, the religion of a particular brand having the god X”. And agnostic is someone who is doubtful or uncertain what he does of religious teachings. Fay Freak (talk) 21:08, 11 June 2023 (UTC)Reply

As Andrew implied above, this is unhelpful gibberish that just makes a long page longer. Nobody is going to get any meaningful information out of that. Equinox ◑ 23:19, 11 June 2023 (UTC)Reply

@Equinox: I make the claims extra-easy for Equinox: Nobody is advancing deities without religion. When arguing something with reference to gods specifically vs. their religions, adherents of them play motte and bailey. Ultimately the goal is to further or reject a religion. If the context of quotes is broad enough we may witness this lack of the former meaning in each individual case. Why is a Christian according to Wiktionary one who “believes in Christianity”, a whole religion, or one “who seeks to live his or her life according” to the founder’s church while an atheist can be one merely rejects any deity of the religion? This distinction is contradictory and contrafactual—an atheist is conceptualized by the language community as someone who does not ascribe to a religion even if people aren’t that explicit about it as I can. People aren’t that exact and speak in figures. (Elaborated in detail.)

So we should change the definitions of “atheist” to e.g. after our current structure “A person who does not ascribe [or adheres] to a religion”; subsense strict: “one who rejects all religions”, broader sense: “one who doubts whether he should follow one”, loose sense: “one who is unaware of the reality of religions”, uncommon sense “a person who does not ascribe to a particular religion (but may ascribe to another one)”. Religions are supported like football clubs. They all believe very much in their teams. And because they have been so pervasive, we have this term for outsiders. Fay Freak (talk) 09:58, 12 June 2023 (UTC)Reply

You're still doing it. Equinox ◑ 05:54, 17 June 2023 (UTC)Reply

As an aside, what the heck is going on with the translation tables (the ones that have a bunch of translations, not the ones I just added). I added a qualifier to the first one (so that it corresponds to a definition), but the second doesn't have a corresponding sense. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 17:58, 14 June 2023 (UTC)Reply

I figured it out and (hopefully) fixed it. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 19:57, 14 June 2023 (UTC)Reply

The current citations, except for perhaps the Taipei Times one, do not seem to unambiguously support this sense to me. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 11:57, 17 July 2023 (UTC)Reply

@Al-Muqanna Which other sense(s) do you think they could fall under? Note that Buddhists are atheists in the sense of not believing in a god, yet they are listed alongside atheists in a couple of the current quotes. Or do you think there's a better way of wording the definition that captures this sense better? Andrew Sheedy (talk) 17:26, 17 July 2023 (UTC)Reply

@Andrew Sheedy: Buddhists in most parts of the world do in fact "believe in deities or gods", as sense 1 has it—see the whole wp article on Buddhist deities—so listing atheists alongside Buddhists is not proof of much. Sense 1 also fits fine for the Beaman and Seidman quotes. I don't think there's anything wrong with the wording of the sense if it can actually be verified, but as far as I can tell what the quotation selection actually seems to be getting at atm is atheist meaning "an opponent of religion" (rather than just not believing), but since opponents of religion in general will almost by definition be atheists according to sense 1 anyway that's quite hard to disentangle as a separate sense. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 17:43, 17 July 2023 (UTC)Reply

@Al-Muqanna: I see your point, though from my (admittedly limited) studies of Buddhism, my understanding is that those aren't deities or gods in the normal sense of the word, making the Wikipedia article a bit inaccurate. What the definition is trying to capture is the sense in which atheist is often used as a religious category, on par with "Christian" or "Buddhist". Many people would find the list, "Christians, Hindus, Muslims, and people who believe in gods" a bit incongruent (one would expect "and other people who believe in gods"), but not the list, "Confucians, Taoists, Buddhists, and atheists," which suggests that for many people, "atheist" means not so much "person who does not believe in a god", but rather, "person whose religious beliefs are that there is no god". Note that the capitalization of "Atheist" in the 2002 quote supports the understanding that "Atheism" is a category of religious belief on par with Buddhism, rather than simply describing one aspect of religious belief, which could equally be applied in the strict sense to Buddhists. You may however be right about the two most recent quotes. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 18:29, 17 July 2023 (UTC)Reply

Hmm. This is tough, because it's believable to me that some people think of the word in this way, basically as a synonym of none(?), but I have to agree with Al-Muqanna that few if any of the current citations support it: I see no reason to take the 1766 "a Heathen or Christian; an Atheist or religious Person, a Papist or a Protestant" cite to be using anything but the usual sense (1), and likewise nothing about the 2002 or 2014 or 2015 Seidman or 2019 cites suggests anything but the usual sense to me. It's not as if relatively aggressive atheists like Jillette think of deityless superstition as being great and only deity-having superstition as bad, so AFAICT "many atheists [are] antireligion" is an accurate statement [for at least some definitions/interpretations of 'many'] using the usual sense of the word and posing no lexical problems.
I wonder if this would be better handled as a usage note, that some people think of religion as meaning belief in one or more gods and therefore think of atheism and religion as mutually exclusive...? (Or perhaps that is a cop-out and we should either cite the sense or remove it.)
I note that a corresponding sense is present at atheism and either needs to be cited or RFVed. More generally, I wonder if we would be better off trying to centralize things, so either atheist defines itself in terms of atheism and points people to go find all the definitions there (hopefully someone can come up with something better wordsmithed than "one whose view is atheism"!) or vice versa. - -sche (discuss) 15:55, 30 November 2024 (UTC)Reply

I'm having trouble understanding it the way you and Al-Muqanna see it, to be honest. "Religious person" and "theist" are not synonyms. Some religions do not involve believe in gods (like many forms of Buddhism--just google "do Buddhists believe in a god"). So any citation that draws a direct contrast between atheism and religion, as opposed to atheism and theism is clear evidence (IMHO) of atheism being used to mean "a non-religious person" as opposed to "a non theist". Otherwise, Buddhism would not be contrasted with atheism, because that would be nonsensical. The citation that says "most Taiwanese are Buddhists or Daoists" but "A small number are Christians, Muslims and atheists" is nonsensical according to sense 1, since Buddhists are atheists in that sense.

The same thing applies when you have a census or a survey and it asks you your religion/religious beliefs. Often, "atheist/-ism" will be an option, alongside various religions (including Buddhism). Yet theism is just one facet of religious belief, which is not shared by all religions. So the fact that the word "atheism" is used in contrast to these means that it is used to refer to non-religiosity as a whole. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 01:15, 12 December 2024 (UTC)Reply

@-sche If you still don't see my point, maybe we could send this to RFD? We might have better luck achieving a consensus if we start a new discussion from a different angle. And then hopefully more people would weigh in. I'm convinced that I've cited the sense in question. Not to mention that I've encountered dozens of annoyed atheists online trying to convince religious people that sense 1 exists, not just sense 3! So I'm a bit bewildered that people are questioning sense 3. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 01:22, 12 December 2024 (UTC)Reply

atheism

Connected to the preceding:

I doubt that "(obsolete) Absence of belief in the One True God, defined by Moore as personal, immaterial and trinitarian (thus Islam, Judaism and unitarian Christianity), as opposed to monotheism." is distinct from the sense right before it, viz. "absence of belief in a particular deity, notwithstanding belief in other deities",
and the sense "(sometimes proscribed) A rejection of all religions, even non-theistic ones." is just the -ism version of the -ist sense RFVed above, so has the same issues and should (AFAICT) be handled similarly, i.e. either cited or removed or perhaps made a usage note.

- -sche (discuss) 16:01, 30 November 2024 (UTC)Reply

I don't like the wording of the "One True God" sense, and I have no reason to believe it's attested, but I think it is distinct from the "particular deity" sense because the "One True God" sense additionally requires belief in certain properties of that deity. The "particular deity" sense can't call unitarianism a form of atheism, whereas the "One True God" sense does. McYeee (talk) 21:12, 11 December 2024 (UTC)Reply

Comment: FWIW, I know an agnostic on the CBB (a conlanging forum I frequent) who has his religion on his Indian ID card listed as "atheist", because "agnostic" isn't one of the options India recognizes on its ID form. Khemehekis (talk) 23:25, 2 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

I would say that censuses and ID cards worded with ‘religion’ on them with ‘atheist’ as an option are sloppily worded but nonetheless go to show that ‘atheism/atheist’ has long been contrasted in many people’s minds with religious belief, whether than involves a belief in a God or Gods or not. That fact and the great many quotes we already have on the citations pages mean that there should be absolutely no doubt that these senses exist. The only dodgy sense is the overly precise one talking about ‘trinitarianism’. Perhaps a more general sense of ‘the lack of belief in the existence of a particular God or Gods or the tenets of a particular religion’ could be supported, though such a sense would seem to me to be a pedantic way of saying that a lack of belief in a God or gods is impossible as God exists as a CONCEPT in the minds of the religious even if not in reality. I shall remove this overly pedantic and specific sense that no one likes for now but we really should’ve passed the other senses a very long time ago. Overlordnat1 (talk) 07:12, 3 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

July 2023

Hospital Emergency Codes

Latest comment: 10 days ago9 comments4 people in discussion

(code black, code blue, etc)

code black • code blue • code brown • code grey • code orange • code pink • code red • code silver • code white • code yellow

These codes are defined as US and Canada, however there is certainly not the degree of standardization that this implies across all of these codes. Some, code blue for example, are quite standard in the US (and Canada?), but most of the others vary in meaning from hospital to hospital or at least regionally. If these are actually universal in Canada we should probably remove the US label from many of them, and either add regional meanings or define them more generically. - TheDaveRoss 17:03, 3 July 2023 (UTC)Reply

More info at Hospital emergency codes, which makes it clear that the US does not have standards, and Canada has standards by province, many of which are shared. - TheDaveRoss 17:09, 3 July 2023 (UTC)Reply
@John Cross looks like you made the template, do you have some expertise to share here? - TheDaveRoss 17:10, 3 July 2023 (UTC)Reply

I agree, but this isn't something that lexico-nerds at RFV are going to do. How can we determine the meanings from actual documentation, to be placed into References sections? (Perhaps we should call Luciferwildcat back from the ninth circle of emergency healthcare... hahah...) Equinox ◑ 17:07, 3 July 2023 (UTC)Reply

I'm unsure what it would be best to do here; as you say, some so commonly have a certain consistent meaning (Citations:code blue) that it makes sense to record it, while others seem to have no set meaning (code black has four definitions so far), and yet... is that a sign we should generalize code black's definition to e.g. "A hospital code, signalling any of various situations, varying from hospital to hospital"? Or that we should keep every attestable definition? Or that it's not idiomatic at all? Colour codes are also used by e.g. police, prison guards, and others, so is having four definitions at code black like having definitions for every institution's meaning of level four (e.g. "a security level indicating a heightened threat", "a security clearance level granting access to...", "a pay grade equivalent to...", etc), i.e. something we don't/shouldn't do? - -sche (discuss) 08:55, 4 July 2023 (UTC)Reply

This reminds me a bit of my idea a few years ago to create a page for category five, which can mean a very strong hurricane, but which must surely have quite an array of other meanings in other industries. And surely more so for the smaller numbers. —Soap— 21:05, 5 July 2023 (UTC)Reply

As it has had no cites for over a year, and I did not spot any (which looked to be using any of the medical senses we listed in a lexical and idiomatic way), I have deleted code black's four definitions; I have also deleted code pink's two definitions as uncited (when I searched, I could only find the capitalized organization name Code Pink); the other codes remain to be dealt with. Deleting any which still don't have cites would allow us to sidestep the issue, though it would not really solve the issue. - -sche (discuss) 15:45, 25 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

Code white exemplifies what OP (and I) said, that most of these have no set meaning, as these books use it for disparate things. And this defines code silver as an active shooter, not merely a weapon being seen. - -sche (discuss) 15:51, 25 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

I couldn't find any relevant uses of "code orange" in the sense we gave (and can find mentions of a variety of other definitions); it's been uncited for over a year, so: RFV-failed. It's the same with "code grey": of these four uses-and-mentions, one means fog, one means weather (such as a hurricane), one means "plane wreck, earthquake, bombing" and one is opaque. As OP said, most of these seem to have no set meaning. - -sche (discuss) 02:51, 4 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

oversit

Latest comment: 1 year ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Two more dubious senses from the very large set given here. One is "to grasp, comprehend; to understand"; the other is "(archaic) to overstay, outstay, overlinger". Entry probably also needs more glossing to indicate that this isn't a normal word used by many people. Equinox ◑ 11:02, 9 July 2023 (UTC)Reply

I've added a few quotes to Citations:oversit a while ago but I'm not confident enough to sort them by sense. Some of the citations (e.g. 1834, 1890, 1907) seem to support the "overstay" sense, although I am not completely sure. Einstein2 (talk) 20:05, 28 August 2023 (UTC)Reply

dominus vobiscum

Latest comment: 1 year ago5 comments3 people in discussion

Couldn't find any convincing non-mention, non-code-switching examples: this is also just referring to the actual words "dominus vobiscum", not the name of some longer prayer, so I'm sceptical there are uses of this in English. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 19:18, 14 July 2023 (UTC)Reply

How do we treat other formulas from non-English languages, especially from ceremonies? Do we keep them only if they are transliterated? DCDuring (talk) 21:38, 14 July 2023 (UTC)Reply

I highly, highly doubt this is used as an interjection in English, as the entry claims. There are some borderline nominal uses:

1875, Sir Adolphus William Ward, A History of English Dramatic Literature to the Death of Queen Anne, page 19:

Again a Dominus vobiscum and a prayer, whereupon the offertorium (offering), and, accompanied by further ceremonies, the consecration; […]

1953, Pius Parsch, The Church's Year of Grace:

Each Dominus vobiscum cries out to us: your nobility, O Christian, stems from Christ's dwelling within you, from the fact that you are a Christ-bearer and a Christ-bringer.

It might be worthwhile having an entry for this use, but certainly not for the interjection, which is quite simply Latin, regardless of what language the rest of the liturgy/prayer might be in. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 22:37, 14 July 2023 (UTC)Reply

Also, I might note that the entry should be at Dominus vobiscum. Dominus in this context always refers to God and hence would pretty well always be capitalized. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 22:42, 14 July 2023 (UTC)Reply

On English—both of the above are in italics in the originals that I've found, FWIW ([10], [11]). This is the same sort of thing as e.g. the court "who ... lived on a vive le roi" in Wollstonecraft ([12]) which I don't think can be taken as an example of "vive le roi" being an English phrase either. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 23:33, 14 July 2023 (UTC)Reply

ponderosa

Latest comment: 6 months ago3 comments3 people in discussion

Rfv-sense "social, lime or get together where planning or issues are discussed". Jberkel 16:17, 15 July 2023 (UTC)Reply

This is the top sense on Urban Dictionary, where a much-upvoted entry from 2017 claims the word was coined by Jackie Christie from the US TV show Basketball Wives. Here is Jackie herself giving a definition. Looking on Google, a better definition would be "a conversation, in the context of Jackie Christie's participation (or lack thereof) in said conversation"... This, that and the other (talk) 02:40, 18 August 2023 (UTC)Reply

The synonyms are problematic too. "social event" and "mixer" have been added as synonyms, but those are more like parties held for fun. I don't see how "planning or issues are discussed" at a mixer. 2A00:23C5:FE1C:3701:49D0:1ABA:3934:4EBA 20:15, 5 November 2024 (UTC)Reply

aquan

Latest comment: 1 day ago6 comments5 people in discussion

Rare/nonstandard if it exists. — SURJECTION ^{/ T / C / L /} 10:38, 30 July 2023 (UTC)Reply

Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes (1605)

Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift (1726)

The Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan (1678)

You are right, it is extremely hard to find reliable sources that use this word, but in these books I remember distinctly reading it. I cannot find any modern examples, but I do not know whether this is grounds for rejection. I am unsure and new to Wikitionary, so feel free to remove it if necessary. 60.241.90.170 07:40, 31 July 2023 (UTC)Reply

In that case it may be an archaic term and we do document those, just with the appropriate labels. — SURJECTION ^{/ T / C / L /} 10:20, 31 July 2023 (UTC)Reply

Although barring a funny Cervantes translation if it was actually in books as prominent as those it would have been in Webster 1913 and imported already. I can't find any evidence of its existence, and there's no potential Latin etymon *aquanus either (of course we instead have aquatic < aquaticus). —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 12:05, 31 July 2023 (UTC)Reply

It seems to see limited use in science fiction as the name of a water-based race or species, for instance:

2020, Thomas Parrott, “To Catch a Thief”, in Charlotte Llewelyn-Wells, editor, KeyForge: Tales from the Crucible, page 155:

One of the patrol enforcers, "hubbers" as they were known, that were bustling about stopped to give a sympathetic burble. They were an aquan, living in a pressure suit that kept them suspended in water.

(The English translation of) a Japanese sci-fi novel Daiyon kanpyōki (Inter Ice Age 4, 1959) by Abe Kōbō also apparently uses it, judging from the various literary critiques.

We would need a third cite independent of Abe's text and its critiques. This, that and the other (talk) 11:13, 8 December 2023 (UTC)Reply

This fails Pious Eterino (talk) 22:22, 12 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

pyment

Latest comment: 1 year ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Newly added sense 2: "spiced wine". The editor claims it is the older/true usage, but it does not agree with Google Books results for the word. — On the other hand, I just noticed that the alt form piment has a different definition matching this challenged one... hmmm...? Equinox ◑ 16:33, 31 July 2023 (UTC)Reply

"Piment" and "pyment" are recognized variants of each other. Both the OED and the Middle English Dictionary have their entries under the "piment" spelling, but "pyment" is also common. See Chaucer, "Miller's Tale": "He sente hire pyment, meeth, and spiced ale". OED defines "piment" as "A drink composed of wine sweetened with honey and flavoured with spices", and lists the variant spellings "piement", "pimente", "pyement", "pyment", and "pymente". The definition of "mead with grape juice" does not appear in my copy under either "piment" or "pyment", but the OED cites the earliest example of the "spiced wine" usage as 1225, so it's reasonably old. I would bet that the mead-and-grape-juice definition (which was new to me, I had to google that) is a derivative of the original idea of a spiced wine sweetened with honey (still honey + grapes, just the other way around). NowhereMan583 (talk) 21:12, 2 December 2023 (UTC)Reply

August 2023

ignorantia juris non excusat

Latest comment: 1 year ago10 comments6 people in discussion

I doubt it's English. I would keep this under a Latin header. P U C – 19:58, 12 August 2023 (UTC)Reply

Yes, the variation in the Latin wording and the definition suggest it SOP, so delete. (German Unwissenheit schützt vor Strafe nicht is idiomatic colloquially with marked syntax in contrast.) Why would it be a dictionary entry from jurist usage? The law determines what “excuses” in detail. There can only be an idiom with those that are remote from legal knowledge, but they will hardly say in English these Latin words, meaning that no quotes will suffice. Fay Freak (talk) 21:14, 12 August 2023 (UTC)Reply

It's a common legal maxim which will be found from time to time in English legal texts, but I don't know if that's enough to justify having a separate English header for the term. — Sgconlaw (talk) 21:53, 12 August 2023 (UTC)Reply

I think our current treatment of Latin expressions - to the extent that we have a coherent policy - is not optimal. That an expression is used in running text in English (even unitalicised) is not enough; it's still Latin, and felt as such. Imo we should only have a Latin header, and maybe create a new section where we'd mention in which modern languages the expression is frequently used. It'd be a bit comparable to the descendants section. P U C – 12:23, 13 August 2023 (UTC)Reply

Any "short" expression derived from Latin can readily become part of the English lexicon. One issue is how "short". Four syllables seems to be per say sufficiently short. Eleven seems ipso facto too long. Another question is whose lexicon: the man in the street or the men talking in a courtroom? That English has the adage ignorance of the law is no excuse, which we might include as a proverb or merely as a collocation, means that there is little reason for normal speakers to include this expression in their lexicon. But those in the legal profession may include Latinate expressions to signal to their clients, opponents, and judges their superior education. However, only occasionally and whimsically do we include expressions solely for their pragmatic function. DCDuring (talk) 17:14, 13 August 2023 (UTC)Reply

ignorance of the law is no excuse is arguably SOP, but ignorantia juris non excusat is not (in English). As ever, the question is whether terms are citable. Theknightwho (talk) 17:17, 13 August 2023 (UTC)Reply

Most people believe that ignorance of the law is a pretty good excuse, were it not for the existence of the oft-repeated adage. SoPitude is why we would only include it as a proverb or as a collocation (probably under ignorance). DCDuring (talk) 18:29, 13 August 2023 (UTC)Reply

"Ignorance of the law is no excuse" could definitely be considered a proverb but the meaning is so transparent I'm not sure what the benefit of an entry would be. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 19:12, 13 August 2023 (UTC)Reply

If it's indeed lexicalised I think it belongs here, no matter how transparent it is. And I'm looking for a place to gather translations: French nul n’est censé ignorer la loi, German Unwissenheit schützt vor Strafe nicht, and probably others. P U C – 19:53, 13 August 2023 (UTC)Reply

The law itself does not take the expression too literally: "The Lambert decision explicitly recognized this fair notice requirement as an exception to the general rule that ignorance of the law is no excuse". "The U.S. Supreme Court, however, by a 5-4 majority opinion written by Justice Douglas, held that Ms. Lambert's due process rights were violated because she was not notified about a registration requirement that she could not be reasonably presumed to know existed. In this case, ignorance of the law was a legitimate defense."

IOW, the US Supreme Court believes that the principle expressed does have significant exceptions, ie, that it is not literally true. DCDuring (talk) 22:27, 13 August 2023 (UTC)Reply

rontosecond

Latest comment: 4 days ago3 comments3 people in discussion

Could be one of those terms that get coined but haven't been actually used (Edit: apparently the prefix ronto- is a new one so this hasn't gained currency yet). lattermint (talk) 14:08, 18 August 2023 (UTC)Reply

Failed - might need making into "only in" Vilipender (talk) 07:38, 1 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
It would make more sense taking ronto- to RFV or RFD on the basis of rontosecond being deleted (or perhaps it should be simply speedily deleted). Overlordnat1 (talk) 14:57, 10 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

heartburn

Latest comment: 1 year ago6 comments3 people in discussion

Rfv-sense Synonym of annoyance. Really? Theknightwho (talk) 01:10, 20 August 2023 (UTC)Reply

Cited and added a gloss to clarify. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 17:02, 3 September 2023 (UTC)Reply

To be picky about it, I think heartburn is the discomfort or pain resulting from an annoyance. IOW, I don't think it is substitutable for any definition of annoyance, at least in most of the citations. DCDuring (talk) 18:42, 3 September 2023 (UTC)Reply

Seems perfectly substitutable to me except for "have heartburn" (since one would simply say "I'm annoyed" rather than "I have annoyance"). —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 19:02, 3 September 2023 (UTC)Reply

Surprisingly, no OneLook dictionary has a figurative sense for heartburn. Perhaps OED does. The base sense refers to discomfort and not cause. Do our definitions of annoyance cover both the feeling and the cause? They do so imperfectly at best. I don't think we usually are willing to rely of users being able to infer meaning from metonymy. If we would our polysemic entries could be much shorter. DCDuring (talk) 19:22, 3 September 2023 (UTC)Reply

I disagree with the plausibility of the distinction you're trying to draw, I think. The metaphor drawn by this use is between the psychological state of annoyance (which is a kind of discomfort) and the physical discomfort felt from heartburn (another kind). It's not at some remove from the state itself. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 19:28, 3 September 2023 (UTC)Reply

pilled

Latest comment: 1 year ago4 comments3 people in discussion

Slang: "In a state of believing, especially from evidence but not necessarily." Evidently intended to capture the red pilled, blue pilled, etc. Internet concepts, but is it actually used alone? Equinox ◑ 21:56, 22 August 2023 (UTC)Reply

Probably the same thing as -pilled but without the hyphen. Ioaxxere (talk) 23:30, 22 August 2023 (UTC)Reply

That is not morphologically a suffix (I see it's your entry): I think that was created in error. But it's another story. In general, entire words attached to other words are not "suffixes": a greenfly is not "green" suffixed with "-fly", but rather a compound. Your "-pilled" is more likely something like "red pill" + "-ed". Equinox ◑ 05:41, 23 August 2023 (UTC)Reply

Ehh... I remember this discussion coming up before at some point in connection with blends (last year?). I'm not sure what you mean by morphologically not a suffix. The dividing line between a word that forms compounds and a lexicalised suffix is fuzzy in general. -gate for political scandals is definitely a suffix now and not just a novel recoinage from Watergate every time it's used, for example, but that was a process. The citations already at -pilled suggest a similar process going on, and I've personally seen stuff like "brunchpilled" without any intention of referring to a "brunch pill" or a generic verb "to brunchpill". Note that they're adjectives—they take "more", "very", predication "is ...". So -pilled is probably fine as is IMO. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 09:18, 23 August 2023 (UTC)Reply

centimate

Latest comment: 13 days ago3 comments3 people in discussion

To take a certain size of sample. Etymologically sound, etc., but doesn't seem to be in real use. If I search in Google Books, I mostly find stuff about "decimating" (i.e. killing 1 person in 100) but at the smaller scale. Not about sample sizes. Equinox ◑ 05:39, 23 August 2023 (UTC)Reply

I added the first quotation that turned up from a credible-looking source (and which handily indicated a definition within the quotation); I have to admit I was a little surprised at the statistical usage — I'd been expecting a meaning closer to the decimate concept, in its most common usage. (By the way, if the statistical meaning is accepted, then definitions at decimate may also have to be tweaked?)

It sounds like you're happy to keep the term, but want to change the definition(s)?

Meanwhile, Einstein2 added a citation for yet another meaning (to divide into hundredths).

—DIV (1.145.8.61 12:37, 28 August 2023 (UTC))Reply

Failed Vilipender (talk) 07:38, 1 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

September 2023

the house always wins

Latest comment: 4 days ago7 comments5 people in discussion

Rfv-sense: 3. "An unavoidable, usually unpleasant scenario that is inevitable in the long run that hopelessly cannot be overcome in the end, regardless of various actions that can mitigate or delay it in the short term." Firstly, this isn't the definition of a proverb, it's an overwrought noun phrase. If there's a proverb sense here it's also not familiar to me: something like "we need to clean up the bathroom eventually—the house always wins" comes off as a bit weird.

I think there is a missing figurative sense or scope here though: afaik it's also used broadly to suggest that something is rigged to benefit some person or group, which isn't covered by the limited wording of sense 2. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 22:53, 7 September 2023 (UTC)Reply

It reminds me of what we're calling Ginsberg's theorem on Wikipedia ... a metaphorical restatement of the laws of thermodynamics in the form of a card game ... you can't win, you can't break even, and you can't quit the game. (The zeroth law was added in later.) And I saw something similar in a popular science book about entropy, though I can't find it now. There are a few websites using the phrase the house always wins as a metaphor about entropy. But a metaphor isn't a definition, I suppose ... I'm not really sure if we can use this or not, ... it just seems to me that the metaphor need not always be a complaint about human affairs, it can simply be a restatement of natural law. —Soap— 00:13, 8 September 2023 (UTC)Reply

@Soap: Yes, it occurred to me that people can use it in reference to things like death and entropy, with a vague idea of anthropomorphising the force they're talking about (you can't cheat Death). What I would do, I think, is change sense 2 to refer to things being systemically rigged or biased more generally than just one specific point about economics, and have a third sense with a second, even further extension to things like natural laws without any actual people involved. I think the RFV'd sense is probably just missing the point a bit. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 00:21, 8 September 2023 (UTC)Reply

If sense 3 is to be kept, it shouldn’t be defined as a noun. — Sgconlaw (talk) 04:45, 8 September 2023 (UTC)Reply

What a dreadful set of definitions. DCDuring (talk) 08:48, 8 September 2023 (UTC)Reply

How's this? - -sche (discuss) 01:26, 3 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

RFV-resolved by improving the definitions? - -sche (discuss) 03:06, 10 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

bête de scène

Latest comment: 1 year ago4 comments3 people in discussion

Is this really used in English? The single quote is very mentiony. Btw, what's a good translation for this? Need a gloss for German Rampensau. Jberkel 21:07, 11 September 2023 (UTC)Reply

Perhaps English just lacks a good counterpart. I see animal metaphors with Fr bête de scène, G Rampensau, and Du podiumbeest. English usually uses "animal" for this, e.g. party animal instead of *party beast. But I've never heard of anything like "stage animal" or "show animal". I used showman just now to translate a quote on the podiumbeest page, but I think t's suboptimal and only used that because we had had no bolded word at all before that. Perhaps the lack of a good Eng translation is why we might be using the French words. —Soap— 14:09, 12 September 2023 (UTC)Reply

I should I didnt mean to imply that the three animal terms above are also synonyms of each other. And I also wonder if we're elaborating a bit too much with our English definition ... even if we do find the required three cites, will they really all have such a specific definition? I'm really fond of the "feral player" phrasing but it doesn't seem quite believable to me. —Soap— 14:26, 12 September 2023 (UTC)Reply

English is a little bit pickier, selecting particular animals for such expressions, like show horse/showhorse, which I've heard used metaphorically, a;beit with a different meaning. Feral player uses feral, not a good definiens in metaphorical use, just as metaphors are not usually good definitions. Our normal users would probably benefit more from a non-gloss definition if we don't have a good gloss expression and can't come up with a long-form definition. DCDuring (talk) 18:47, 12 September 2023 (UTC)Reply

underfriction

Latest comment: 4 days ago4 comments3 people in discussion

The linked Wikipedia article suggests that this is a noun adjunct in the phrase "underfriction wheel" rather than a standalone noun. There are no Google Books hits for the would-be plural "underfrictions".

I propose updating and moving to underfriction wheel. — Paul G (talk) 06:24, 13 September 2023 (UTC)Reply

Although mostly used attributively, the term exists outside the mentioned phrase: [13], [14], [15] etc. There are also uses which predate the 1918/19 patent of Miller, so a second sense might be needed: [16], [17], [18]. Einstein2 (talk) 01:32, 3 November 2023 (UTC)Reply

How's this? - -sche (discuss) 02:37, 4 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

I'm calling this RFV-resolved if there are no objections: I changed the definition and added three cites that use "underfriction" without following it with "wheel" (plus one which does). - -sche (discuss) 03:04, 10 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

whorenalist

Latest comment: 1 year ago7 comments5 people in discussion

— SURJECTION ^{/ T / C / L /} 06:07, 18 September 2023 (UTC)Reply

Cited. --Overlordnat1 (talk) 08:07, 19 September 2023 (UTC)Reply

Definition needs work: currently, "a reporter or journalist whose viewpoints change frequently". What's whorish about that? I don't think we mean someone who learns new things (e.g. science journo) and adapts their views. Surely it must mean one who doesn't properly study and respect their subject, or is amenable to bribes, etc. Equinox ◑ 13:29, 19 September 2023 (UTC)Reply

The definition's not the best, that's true. Perhaps we should copy the definition at presstitute instead, or list it as a synonym of that? --Overlordnat1 (talk) 13:32, 19 September 2023 (UTC)Reply

Science journos learn things? —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 22:55, 19 September 2023 (UTC)Reply

You have to really whack it into their heads. Drop an apple. Equinox ◑ 19:44, 25 September 2023 (UTC)Reply

The current definition line might refer to the analogy between changing viewpoints and sexual partners. However, I don't think the quotations at Citations:whorenalist support such a definition. I am not sure whether it can be considered synonymous to presstitute or just a general derogatory term for a journalist disliked by the speaker. Einstein2 (talk) 19:36, 25 September 2023 (UTC)Reply

October 2023

grithbreach

Latest comment: 1 year ago2 comments2 people in discussion

This entry needs some help; if we can cite it it might be better classed as historical; otherwise moved to Middle English. OED has one non-dictionary ModE quote from 1598 in Stow's A Survey of London:

The charter of King William the Conqueror, exemplified in the Tower, englished thus: "[...] Know ye that I do giue vnto God and the church of S. Paule of London, and to the rectors and seruitors of the same, in all their lands which the church hath, or shall have, within borough and without, sack and sock, thole and theam, infangthefe and grithbriche [...]"

Maybe I'm failing to correctly parse this quote but it looks to me like Stow has grithbriche as a privilege William gave the servitors, which doesn't match the sense we give. I've also foud it used in a close translation of an OE text. Any other ModE quotes? Winthrop23 (talk) 14:42, 10 October 2023 (UTC)Reply

I have put a selection of modern English quotes on the citations page. It looks to me like Stow is referring to the fines arising from enforcing this law (definition 2). Kiwima (talk) 23:06, 10 October 2023 (UTC)Reply

ring-a-ding

Latest comment: 1 day ago6 comments4 people in discussion

Adjective meaning "perfect". Equinox ◑ 19:19, 14 October 2023 (UTC)Reply

cited Kiwima (talk) 02:46, 15 October 2023 (UTC)Reply

The string of letters has been cited, but what specific meaning the cites intend is not obvious to me. - -sche (discuss) 21:23, 22 December 2023 (UTC)Reply

Agreed. Meaning is unclear. ringding seems to be an alternative form, now added. Equinox ◑ 13:32, 19 May 2024 (UTC)Reply

I might archive this and let Wiktionary:Tea room/2025/May#ring-a-ding handle figuring out the meaning. - -sche (discuss) 02:27, 4 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

RFV resolved (the definition has been ammended due to the Tea Room chat). --Overlordnat1 (talk) 10:12, 13 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

it wasn't only only

Latest comment: 1 year ago5 comments2 people in discussion

— SURJECTION ^{/ T / C / L /} 06:25, 16 October 2023 (UTC)Reply

The phrase may seem odd to most people outside Norway, but various variations of the phrase have been used in non-racing contexts by a fair few people:

It is most commonly used in informal codeswitching among Norwegians, but there have been sporadic cases of people using it while speaking English. Dandelion Sprout (talk) 07:27, 16 October 2023 (UTC)Reply

To the extent I rapidly learned the RFV system this morning, I have now also cited 3 quotes on-page instead of the previous 1, with the 2 new ones being from English-language pages as well. Dandelion Sprout (talk) 08:24, 16 October 2023 (UTC)Reply

I highly doubt it's used to convey any sort of meaning but that it's simply a catchphrase (or a meme if you prefer). — SURJECTION ^{/ T / C / L /} 09:14, 16 October 2023 (UTC)Reply

I wouldn't go as far as to call it a simple meme, but even I admit it's hard to describe the exact meaning of it. The core meaning fits very well with "easier said than done", but with a kinda playful tone, sometimes (but not always) one that makes fun of/with broken English or an undertone of "If you use this phrase, you're from Norway". I suppose I can agree it's an in-joke, but it's an in-joke that around 3.5mill people are into (of a population of maybe 5.2mill). Dandelion Sprout (talk) 13:22, 19 October 2023 (UTC)Reply

November 2023

day by day

Latest comment: 10 months ago8 comments7 people in discussion

Rfv-sense "one day at a time". Going by the usage examples this is not an adverb but an adjective (if it's an adverb used attributively, are there non attributive uses? And should it be spelled day-by-day? Is it synonymous with day-to-day?). I'm also not sure the gloss is accurate. P U C – 18:05, 11 November 2023 (UTC)Reply

Added song lyrics, which I think are from a hymn. I'd say that counts as two cites but also think this should be easy to verify both by its sense and by its meaning, and we won't need to count both the song and what it was derived from. Agree that the current use examples are adjectival and I wouldnt use them that way. —Soap— 10:02, 12 November 2023 (UTC)Reply

Probably at least partly borrowed from Godspell. It's not quite a hymn, though it gets as close as a piece from a Broadway musical can get. Chuck Entz (talk) 03:54, 13 November 2023 (UTC)Reply

@PUC: Generally, hyphens are used in adjective position, not in adverb position. "She grew little by little; it was little-by-little growth." Equinox ◑ 13:58, 12 November 2023 (UTC)Reply

We have attempted to dispense with multi-word entries ("MWEs") for hyphenated forms where there is a full entry for the term without hyphens ("MWE-h"). This comes up most frequently where the MWE-h is a noun and the MWE+h is the noun in attributive use. Hard redirects seem to me to address the need to protect those who search for the MWE+h from the overwhelming confusion they suffer when confronted with the failed-search page, though they still need to deal with idea that a noun can be used attributively. DCDuring (talk) 14:37, 12 November 2023 (UTC)Reply

Send to RFD. You can have "hour-by-hour" or "hour by hour", "second-by-second" or "second by second", "epoch-by-epoch" or "epoch by epoch", ..., so this is a grammatical construction, not a set expression. This, that and the other (talk) 03:20, 13 November 2023 (UTC)Reply

One can also have step by step, brick by brick, customer by customer, voter by voter, etc. By does not work with as many nouns as after, but with many. We have a "reduplicative" sense for after. Other prepositions may also occur in multiple reduplicative expressions, though fewer, eg layer on layer, row on row, luff on luff (naut.), loser on loser (poker).

I doubt that this a good RfD candidate. See “day by day”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.. DCDuring (talk) 18:15, 13 November 2023 (UTC)Reply

In which case, should the contested sense be retained and labelled "as an attributive adjective, usually hyphenated"? Voltaigne (talk) 22:31, 23 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

December 2023

virtually

Latest comment: 1 year ago6 comments2 people in discussion

Rfv-sense: 2 mathematics definitions defining the supposed adverb more as an adjective (or perhaps just hand-waving instead of defining), without cites, without references, without any support from any OneLook source, with not very helpful usexes:

(algebra) Of a substructure of finite index.
virtually indicable
(topology) Of a covering space of finite index.
virtually Haken

We should be able to do better. DCDuring (talk) 23:50, 10 December 2023 (UTC)Reply

Perhaps @User:Msh210 can help. DCDuring (talk) 00:07, 11 December 2023 (UTC)Reply

Thanks for the ping, DCDuring. I've added two cite for each sense and don't have time at the moment to add a third. (Nor to check the CFI to see whether my cites are good ones. As you're no doubt aware, I've been fairly inactive of late; in particular, I haven't kept up with changes to the CFI.) But there are plenty more cites in math papers for each sense, and neither should be deleted.—msh210℠ (talk) 20:10, 23 January 2024 (UTC)Reply

@User:Msh210 Thanks for responding. You'll be getting the occasional ping for undocumented or incomprehensible (to me) math definitions. Some definitions seem to rely too much on specialized definitions of highly polysemic terms. In the above index is an example. The others seem okay. I don't know whether this index def. covers it: "A raised suffix indicating a power". Even if it does, it does not nicely substitute into the definitions given. DCDuring (talk) 20:46, 23 January 2024 (UTC)Reply

DCDuring, I've added an {{lb|en|algebra}} sense to [[index]] and adjusted these definitions of [[virtually]] slightly. I think it's okay now. Please let me know if you disagree.—msh210℠ (talk) 22:58, 23 January 2024 (UTC)Reply

My eyes now glaze over at coset, but that seems unavoidable. DCDuring (talk) 23:13, 23 January 2024 (UTC)Reply

vagitate

Latest comment: 5 months ago7 comments3 people in discussion

This might be unconventional, but I want to request verification of a specific citation for this word. I saw that the OED cites Sir Walter Raleigh's History of the World, the same as we do, but the OED gives the quotation as "Before the vse of the Compas was knowne, it was impossible to nauigate athwart the Ocean." Perhaps an older version of the OED entry quoted this sentence with "vagitate", but it was since corrected? In any case, the scan of this book at archive.org clearly shows "navigate", which also seems to make a bit more sense in the context. But I want to make sure I'm not missing something that might save this quotation. If anyone wants to look into the other citations, that would also be welcome, since they're pretty obscure and I'm not entirely sure Ian Edge is using it in the same sense or even with the same etymology as the others. Some are also missing page numbers, which would be nice to have.--Urszag (talk) 02:55, 14 December 2023 (UTC)Reply

I saw something similar when I filed the RFV for endizen. During the preparation of the NED (OED 1st edition) someone must have misread, miswrote or mistyped endenizen as endizen, and the NED ended up with a hapax entry for this verb, which persists in OED Online to this day. However, OED Online has apparently undergone an automated (?) process of updating quotes to reflect the original texts, so that the only supporting quote for the endizen entry actually uses the word endenizen. The same thing has probably happened with vagitate. Unlike endizen, though, this term has a more plausible etymology, which means others have taken it up.

I removed the Raleigh and checked the other quotes:

The Beckett is a legitimate quote, but I've got no idea what he's talking about. The quote certainly doesn't unambiguously support the given definition, I'll say that much.
The 1982 text uses "vagitating" but this was changed to "vegetating" in a 2003 republication. The 1982 text uses quotation marks to imply this is a quote from Marx, but the 2003 edition removes the quotation marks.
The 1987 text seems legitimate. Given the similar subject matter and point of view expressed, I had a suspicion that the 1982 and 1987 texts may have been by the same author, but a list of texts by D.N. Dhanagare doesn't mention any work on Buddhism.
The law text is a little baffling. Here is the broader context:
Paul Matthews complains that when the Cayman Islands legislature defines a form of ownership from which humans are absent, it is trying to "Call Sunday, Monday". Anthony Duckworth sums up his rebuttals in a final salvo:
"We will not mind greatly if Mr Mathews says that a STAR trust is as anomalous as a charitable trust, as strange as a discretionary trust, as weird as an unadministered estate, as bizarre (or nearly so) as a trust for unborn persons."

These are all instances when English chancery doctrine would allow that some or all of the equitable ownership has disappeared into thin air. Duckworth's point is that the STAR trust merely generalises these English instances. The crucial difference, however, is that in all but one of these English situations, the equitable ownership reappears within at most eighty years: the discretion is exercised, the estate is administered, the unborn vagitate. The exception is the English charitable trust which, like the STAR trust, can exist for ever.
Here, the word seems to be intended to mean "be born".

I would note that these citations were probably obtained from Quiet Quentin using the default Google Books metadata. PSA to RFVers: please check the metadata before adding a quote - if you don't, you are liable to (a) get the publication years totally wrong, (b) attribute the work of a contributing author to the editor of an edited book, or (c) miss out the author info entirely when it is findable with reasonably easy searching. I know all this takes a little more effort, but it makes the dictionary that much better. This, that and the other (talk) 06:16, 14 December 2023 (UTC)Reply

I agree that the "Marx had characterized" cite is most likely a misspelling/typo of a different word and not this word (like e.g. the few books that have reconditing as an error for other editions' reconditioning); "stagnant, unchanging, vegetating" makes more sense there than "[they are] stagnant, unchanging, not stagnant, and changing positions a lot". The "unborn" cite seems to intend a connection to vagina ("come out of the/a vagina"?) rather than to vagus, and E. Barry, Samuel Beckett and the Contingency of Old Age (2016), takes Beckett's use to be connected to connected to birth too ("just as Malone fears that he may have “vagitated [given the birth cry] and not be able to bloody rattle”"), so I think we are left with just one cite that is plausibly for the given etymology/meaning, but two cites that might support a "give the birth cry"-related meaning, as it happens. - -sche (discuss) 15:20, 14 December 2023 (UTC)Reply

@-sche @Urszag It occurred to me that, since Beckett's work was translated from French, the word's sense can be pinned down more firmly. According to [19] (you may need to log into Internet Archive and borrow the book for 1 hour), this passage is a translation of "Avoir vagi, puis ne pas être foutu de râler". The word vagir (“to wail, as a baby”) has been translated as vagitate to maintain the resemblance to vagina. We are to link vagitate to vagitus and vagient, and ultimately to Latin vāgiō.

So we need to go cite-hunting for the "wail" sense I guess... This, that and the other (talk) 00:45, 15 December 2023 (UTC)Reply

Oh interesting! I had no idea Samuel Beckett wrote that first in French and then translated it to English.--Urszag (talk) 01:06, 15 December 2023 (UTC)Reply

The "My head spins like the vagitated gears of a drunken kaleidoscope" cite is ... odd. I confirmed that the edition Google has digitized does have the italicized word vagitated spelled sic. On one hand, is this an error for another word like google:"agitated gears" or "variable gears"? On the other hand ... the text is odd — the next sentences are "Triptic may be an annex, albeit a distant one, of the Alamüte-Megalopolis, but I'm uncertain everywhere ... an empty vessel ... a king's ransom ... a three-legged bitch. The Telos-5200 cruises down the lining of my metal-trousers, conforming to the bent posture of my leg and fastening down its length. It sticks into my groin on recharge like I always imagined hot pokers might feel if carried on the wings of bluebottle flies that live in the folds of an octogenerian's crotch. As I droop in the setting sun, dreaming of the Big Dipper, the ovoid Pox Roman burns into my retina, a memory, recalled from glimpses of recalled posters. Aries is ascendant now, and like Moses, I feel horns mistranslated on my head. The dim, incommoded peacekeepers barter their way around the grafts and chasms that form the looped, meandering people-weave outside "The Tertiary Panel" maingates. In a sense they appear human, but then, in a sense, doesn't everyone ... " — so it's possible the author did pick the ghost word out of a list of obscure words, and while we might need to tweak the definition because "the wandered gears" doesn't sound right, "the randomly moved gears" works, I guess. If this is real, it's apparently a ghost word (originated as an error in the OED). - -sche (discuss) 20:36, 16 December 2023 (UTC)Reply

Sense 1 is firmly attested. Sense 2, however, has only 2 cites. This is somewhat problematic, as Samuel Beckett's work is quite prominent and the entry might not be properly comprehensible if sense 2 is not included. I want to leave this open to see if any further evidence can be found for sense 2, but also to decide how to present the entry if sense 2 is not attestable. This, that and the other (talk) 03:18, 15 November 2024 (UTC)Reply

trust

Latest comment: 1 year ago2 comments2 people in discussion

The etymology for it seems to be unsupported by the major dictionaries (and one newssite) and the link used to justify the change the etymology is now a dead one. A westman (talk) 19:40, 14 December 2023 (UTC)Reply

I assume you're talking about the links in the edit summary from 2 September 2022, which said "see https://www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/documents/1554/07_Dance_1803.pdf and https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1467-968X.12148_02". But I'm confused, because neither of these links is dead. They should be added as citations.--Urszag (talk) 21:32, 14 December 2023 (UTC)Reply

buntlings

Latest comment: 1 year ago3 comments2 people in discussion

Cant term. I can only find it in dictionaries. There is also a nautical term with this spelling, as well as some kind of bird - both are probably forms of bunting. This, that and the other (talk) 00:54, 18 December 2023 (UTC)Reply

I found two cites in 20th century historical novels which are referring to petticoats, but they are (curiously enough) both in a nautical context. This, that and the other (talk) 01:17, 18 December 2023 (UTC)Reply

The bird sense is definitely an alternative form of bunting. Some of the birds called buntlings in 19th century books wouldn't be called buntings today, but that says more about changes in ornithology than in the language. Chuck Entz (talk) 01:47, 18 December 2023 (UTC)Reply

belirt

Latest comment: 1 year ago4 comments3 people in discussion

Equinox ◑ 01:25, 18 December 2023 (UTC)Reply

Apparently Middle English and Scots. Leasnam (talk) 04:30, 18 December 2023 (UTC)Reply

Some others:

https://www.google.com/books/edition/Old_English_Drama/arkvAQAAMAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&bsq=belirt

https://www.google.com/books/edition/Dictionary_of_Early_English/enmvCwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=belirt&pg=PA89&printsec=frontcover

https://www.oed.com/dictionary/belirt_v?tl=true A Westman talk stalk 17:10, 18 December 2023 (UTC)Reply

For the most part I could only find it in old texts (17th century) and dictionaries on GB for early English and "Scottish" (that's what the book called what is presumably Scottish English or Scots)

Found mention(s) at [20]https://www.google.com/books/edition/On_the_Fromth_of_the_Lifekin/t2UoAgAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=belirt&pg=PA335&printsec=frontcover]. A Westman talk stalk 16:47, 18 December 2023 (UTC)Reply

sobby

Latest comment: 1 year ago2 comments1 person in discussion

I think sense 2 at sobby is actually a mistake for soggy. Can we find cites that unambiguously demonstrate this meaning? If not, do other dictionaries, particularly the OED, list this meaning? Even if our cites are actually mistakes by the authors, I'd be satisfied that the word does exist if we can at least find it listed in another dictionary. —Soap— 20:39, 20 December 2023 (UTC)Reply

Thanks for adding a third cite, Ioaxxere, but how do we know what it means? I was originally thinking of making this a Tea Room post instead of an RFV, because I could see myself looking at a dozen cites and still not being satisfied, since few if any of these cites are going to use the word and then define it for the readers. —Soap— 21:00, 20 December 2023 (UTC)Reply

hufu

Latest comment: 5 months ago2 comments2 people in discussion

A lot of the supposed quotes are references to brands or mentions. — SURJECTION ^{/ T / C / L /} 09:29, 29 December 2023 (UTC)Reply

We should put a humorous tag on it, not cos cannibalism is funny. P. Sovjunk (talk) 18:59, 1 December 2024 (UTC)Reply

underlook

Latest comment: 8 months ago4 comments2 people in discussion

Five verb senses for this extremely rare word! I'm not sure we could find three convincing cites for any one of the senses. Equinox ◑ 23:31, 31 December 2023 (UTC)Reply

(Also the sole current citation (from 1906) is not using the word, but inventing a nonce word to explain the etymology of "suspect".) @Leasnam Equinox ◑ 00:18, 1 January 2024 (UTC)Reply

OED has only the senses "to look at from below" (the wording of our sense 2 needs checking based on any available cites - looking underneath a thing is not the same as looking at that thing from below) and "to fail to notice as a result of looking too low" (both direct parallel to overlook). The other senses are very questionable. This, that and the other (talk) 07:02, 1 January 2024 (UTC)Reply

I added various cites I found in Google Books. It's sometimes quite difficult to know exactly which shade of meaning is meant. I suspect some of the senses could be merged. This, that and the other (talk) 10:42, 6 September 2024 (UTC)Reply

January 2024

hypertapping

Latest comment: 1 year ago4 comments3 people in discussion

Found this in requests for definitions. I can find no uses. Kiwima (talk) 19:41, 3 January 2024 (UTC)Reply

The term is typically used in relation to Tetris speedrunning. Mentioned here, here, here, and here. Netizen3102 (talk) 20:26, 4 January 2024 (UTC)Reply

Note existence of related entry hypertapper. Equinox ◑ 19:17, 6 January 2024 (UTC)Reply

And now hypertap. Equinox ◑ 07:35, 11 January 2024 (UTC)Reply

Abraham suit

Latest comment: 10 days ago4 comments1 person in discussion

Abraham sham

Abram sham

do Abram

Abraham work

Abram work

As with go on the Abraham suit: it is hard to find uses, but searching is impeded by many irrelevant hits of the two words happening to be near each other. - -sche (discuss) 00:45, 4 January 2024 (UTC)Reply

Failed Abraham suit. I can't find any uses, and mentions give varying definitions. - -sche (discuss) 03:19, 3 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

Failed do Abram. (Eventually probably need to RFV Abram, for its old criminal slang senses.) - -sche (discuss) 15:41, 4 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

I can't find uses of Abraham sham and can only find one use of Abram sham. - -sche (discuss) 15:41, 4 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

backstory

Latest comment: 1 year ago4 comments2 people in discussion

Sense 3: "A prequel". — Sgconlaw (talk) 19:15, 10 January 2024 (UTC)Reply

Comment: feels Anglish-y, y'know? CitationsFreak (talk) 22:00, 10 January 2024 (UTC)Reply

Not sure I know how to respond to that. It is a sense listed at Dictionary.com, but I can't say I've heard the word being used that way before, hence this request. — Sgconlaw (talk) 22:18, 10 January 2024 (UTC)Reply

I meant that it feels like a word that was made-up to use only native English. CitationsFreak (talk) 23:16, 10 January 2024 (UTC)Reply

fat-soluble

Latest comment: 1 year ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Rfv-sense "that tends to accumulate in the adipose tissue of the body", as distinct from sense 1 "Soluble in lipids, and in organic solvents / dissolving easily in fat". P U C – 11:45, 24 January 2024 (UTC)Reply

That is how it is used of pharmaceuticals. The inference from sense 1 to that sense is not one that normal people make. DCDuring (talk) 18:29, 24 January 2024 (UTC)Reply

chicken-eater

Latest comment: 1 year ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Sense 1: "A pollotarian." That's not just anyone who eats chicken; see entry for the special dietary meaning. (Sense 2 could use citations too, of course...) Equinox ◑ 09:07, 25 January 2024 (UTC)Reply

I'dn't've

Latest comment: 1 year ago2 comments2 people in discussion

I see 1 GBooks hit. Equinox ◑ 22:26, 25 January 2024 (UTC)Reply

There are quite a lot of web hits saying variations of "I hear this a lot but I don't think I've ever seen it written", and that matches my experience - I've certainly heard it, almost certainly used it, but never written it and don't think I've seen it written outside Wiktionary and discussions of English contractions. I'm not up-to-date on how we handle such terms though? Thryduulf (talk) 03:32, 23 February 2024 (UTC)Reply

you'dn't've

Latest comment: 1 year ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Nothing in GBooks. Equinox ◑ 22:26, 25 January 2024 (UTC)Reply

February 2024

Cossack

Latest comment: 1 year ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Rfv-sense "(derogatory) A mercenary; a regular or irregular soldier used to oppress a minority, such as in anti-Jewish pogroms; a police officer, particularly one used in strike-breaking; a violent thug." Removed out of process by IP in Special:Diff/77847941. — SURJECTION ^{/ T / C / L /} 22:36, 2 February 2024 (UTC)Reply

cumber-world

Latest comment: 1 year ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Middle English. This form does not seem to be attested (see MED); the c. 1412 quotation uses Modern English spelling. J3133 (talk) 13:49, 6 February 2024 (UTC)Reply

fee

Latest comment: 1 year ago9 comments4 people in discussion

Rfv-sense: "An additional monetary payment charged for a service or good, especially one that is minor compared to the underlying cost."

Underlined portions were added is two anonymous edits in late 2022 and seem unwarranted. I also doubt that the term fee is used for charges for goods rather than for professional services or for privileges. I have added two definitions similar to what other dictionaries have as their only senses, which fit with my experience. DCDuring (talk) 04:49, 12 February 2024 (UTC)Reply

It seems okay to me: you might book a flight and have smaller additional charges added to it, like a "late booking fee" or a fee for an optional in-flight meal. Equinox ◑ 20:26, 13 February 2024 (UTC)Reply

But "late booking" is certainly a privilege. Maybe "in-flight meal" too, though I would like to see examples of that usage. I'm sure we could find instances that fit quantitatively, just as I could find many instances that fit the definition of medium-sized as "of the smallest available size of a packaged good". DCDuring (talk) 21:56, 13 February 2024 (UTC)Reply

BTW, Wiktionary's definitions for fee are featured at “fee”, in OneLook Dictionary Search., with the definition in question offered at the top of the list. I'm so proud. Not. DCDuring (talk) 22:00, 13 February 2024 (UTC)Reply

"What was the fee for your flight?" sounds weird to me; I would expect "cost/price of". Fees are typically small/optional "bolt-ons". Maybe it's British usage. Equinox ◑ 22:05, 13 February 2024 (UTC)Reply

To me too. Also, I don't pay a fee for my groceries, car, gasoline, etc. Is a flight a "privilege"? Are admission fees all small bolt-ons? License fees? Professional fees certainly aren't. I had added a few collocations for the two definitions I added. Economists call everything a price, not a fee, charge, tip, gratuity, toll. But I can't speak to what usage is outside US off the top of my head. DCDuring (talk) 23:42, 13 February 2024 (UTC)Reply

Also, the use of cost in "especially one that is minor compared to the underlying cost" goes against the grain for me. Even worse, the NP "underlying cost". "Underlying" what? As an economist I learned that costs were of production and prices were what customers paid or what sellers asked. DCDuring (talk) 23:53, 13 February 2024 (UTC)Reply

I don't think laypeople observe such a distinction between cost and price. Moreover, the type of privilege for which a fee applies, as it is generally understood, doesn't correspond to any sense at privilege, so we need to make the definition more specific.

I came up with these two senses which cover most of it, and which broadly match lemmings:

An amount charged in return for permission to do something, especially something ancillary to the purchase of a product or service.
late fee, booking fee, entry fee, membership fee, drivers' license fee, television license fee
A fixed rate or price charged for (chiefly white-collar) professional services.
lawyers' fees, tuition fee, bank fees

Also, in my mind, the term has mildly negative connotations, which ought to be mentioned somewhere in the entry. (In general we do a poor job at mentioning connotations.) This, that and the other (talk) 00:28, 15 February 2024 (UTC)Reply

Consider an advertisement for a business that claims "no hidden fees".

In this case, it does exactly fit this definition. 68.1.207.26 10:52, 31 March 2024 (UTC)Reply

methanolic (noun)

Latest comment: 4 days ago3 comments3 people in discussion

All three citations use the form methanolics. So they confirm methanolics as a noun, but do not confirm noun use of methanolic. For all we know based on those three quotations, typical usage might be "Compound X is one of the methanolics," rather than "Compound X is a methanolic". (Consider the case of the study of linguistics, which comprises many topics ...yet we don't talk about studying *"one linguistic".) —DIV (1.145.19.119 10:09, 17 February 2024 (UTC))Reply

Not a valid analogy. Linguistics is uncountable but (the) methanolics is plural, a set of countable things. Equinox ◑ 19:11, 17 February 2024 (UTC)Reply

OK, the homographic adjective makes searching tedious (e.g., both of these could be adjectival) but I have added two cites where methanolic (singular) is clearly a noun; this is a third if accurate, but I can't see the snippet to confirm that Google has OCRed it correctly. Nonetheless, the later two of the three plural cites (which confirm that this can be a noun) seem to be using a regular plural of which methanolic is the expected lemma form, so I'm inclined to hit this with a "chiefly in the plural" and pass it. - -sche (discuss) 04:17, 10 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

book length

Latest comment: 1 year ago2 comments2 people in discussion

"Any long or extensive document, publication or printed matter." P U C – 23:42, 22 February 2024 (UTC)Reply

@Mynewfiles any evidence for an unambiguously nominal use? This, that and the other (talk) 10:42, 31 March 2024 (UTC)Reply

Rackmanism

Latest comment: 4 days ago3 comments3 people in discussion

Misspelling or a variant? The word is Rachmanism, after the name of the landlord Peter Rachman. — Paul G (talk) 06:47, 26 February 2024 (UTC)Reply

Perhaps by confusion with rack rent, "an excessive rent". Equinox ◑ 14:48, 26 February 2024 (UTC)Reply

In the absence of evidence that it's an accepted (or particularly common) spelling, I have labeled it a "misspelling". It's easily cited. RFV-resolved? - -sche (discuss) 04:33, 10 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

March 2024

solifaction

Latest comment: 11 months ago2 comments2 people in discussion

"The production of gold". Appears to be a real term, however, meaning "converting coal into synthetic solid fuel". [21] Ioaxxere (talk) 22:26, 10 March 2024 (UTC)Reply

Someone found a source. Don't recall if that's where I got it. kwami (talk) 23:21, 9 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Techspressionism

Latest comment: 8 months ago6 comments4 people in discussion

word was coined by an artist to describe his work. Term is not used reliably. WomenArtistUpdates (talk) 23:20, 11 March 2024 (UTC)Reply

@WomenArtistUpdates There are three book quotations supplied in the entry, which appear on their face to support the inclusion of the term (WT:CFI). Are you asserting that these quotations are not independent or otherwise somehow unsuitable? This, that and the other (talk) 00:35, 12 March 2024 (UTC)Reply

Hi This, that and the other, Yes I am asserting that the quotes are from unreliable sources. Artists describing their own work as a style. “Oz Van Rosen Featured In Group Show At The Whiteroom Gallery”, in The Southhampton Press - interview. "Goldberg will give a brief introduction to Techspressionism" “Mountain Monday’s presentation on ‘Art, Technology, and Emotion: Techspressionism’”, in The Sierra Sun - Not reliable. Churnalism. Thanks for considering deletion. --WomenArtistUpdates (talk) 00:54, 12 March 2024 (UTC)Reply

@WomenArtistUpdates Here at Wiktionary we don't have a notion of "reliable" sources as such. That is a Wikipedia concept. The fact that Van Rosen described her own work as Techspressionism isn't important for lexicographical purposes. What matters is that (a) she used the word, and (b) this use has been recorded in what appears to be a durably archived source (I can also find it in this print magazine).

Having said all that, it would be ideal to find some stronger attestations of this word, and I am not at all sure that this will be possible. The only available Google Books result is already in the entry, and the Google Scholar papers are low-quality and possibly not durably archived for our purposes. Issuu looks like the most promising source, but I haven't investigated closely. This, that and the other (talk) 01:09, 12 March 2024 (UTC)Reply

Hi This, that and the other, I appreciate the clarification on the lexicographical usage being a criterion. Would these be considered additional relevant attestations?

WIRED - https://www.wired.com/2014/10/if-picasso-had-a-macbook-pro/

PBS - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NVYs5cz_0-I

Southampton Arts Center - https://www.southamptonartscenter.org/techspressionism

27 East - https://www.27east.com/arts/techspressionism-a-global-movement-with-local-roots-1933155/

East Hampton Star - https://www.easthamptonstar.com/arts/2022421/expressive-technology. Thank you, Colin Goldberg // Scribe1791 (talk) 01:33, 12 March 2024 (UTC)Reply

The user who created it was called "Techspressionist", usually a bad sign! 2A00:23C5:FE1C:3701:21A5:52EA:1986:CA72 20:35, 7 September 2024 (UTC)Reply

spring

Latest comment: 1 year ago3 comments3 people in discussion

Transitive, figurative: "to surprise by sudden or deft action." This cannot be the "spring a surprise on somebody" sense, because you don't surprise a surprise. Here we must be springing a person. Equinox ◑ 04:06, 13 March 2024 (UTC)Reply

It was added in diff; @LlywelynII, can you help cite it?
It was initially as a 'supersense' covering what are now the following two senses, which were initially given as one subsense of this: "To come upon and flush out; (Australia slang) to catch in an illegal act or compromising position." That Australian sense does have cites where you "spring him". But now that "To come upon and flush out." has been separated into its own sense, I'd also like to see more cites of it, frankly; the one cite currently provided seems mentiony and it's unclear that it's using "spring" as opposed to treating "spring a plant" as an idiomatic phrase. - -sche (discuss) 16:24, 16 March 2024 (UTC)Reply

All would've been OED. Like you pointed out, there are already abundant cites for the subsenses here. If y'all disagree with their particular wording or my paraphrases of them, esp. of the supersenses, that's fine. We're our own thing and you can rephrase/reorganize to your liking. — LlywelynII 03:18, 17 March 2024 (UTC)Reply

pentacle

Latest comment: 8 months ago3 comments2 people in discussion

For sense 4, which describes a hexagram (or Star of David).

While there are indeed pentacles on the Wikipedia page with six-pointed stars (and one on our entry too), I dont believe that pentacle is the term for the star in the drawing, but rather the term for the drawing as a whole.

We probably should add a new sense, perhaps a subsense of the first sense, describing a handheld object used by occultists that most often features a star design, often but not always with a five- or six-pointed star. —Soap— 09:51, 16 March 2024 (UTC)Reply

How would the proposed new sense differ from that of a talisman? --Lambiam 17:24, 18 March 2024 (UTC)Reply

I've been too busy lately. I'd like to clarify that the new sense would be categorically a subsense of the first, whether we list it as such or not, so it's already covered. We just don't have it in detail. Anyway, I still think sense 4 may have been a mistake. —Soap— 20:11, 28 August 2024 (UTC)Reply

ayy

Latest comment: 11 days ago8 comments4 people in discussion

In regards to the "alien" sense. This seems to refer to a 2012 meme, but I couldn't quickly find evidence of usage beyond a) referring to the meme itself, or b) as in, "aliens would say 'ayy lmao'". The possibility that it's synonymous with "alien" seems farfetched. Polomo47 (talk) 04:02, 18 March 2024 (UTC)Reply

Seems to be an in-term mainly in certain online game communities, especially XCOM and Terra Invicta. There are sporadic uses elsewhere, such as this fic which doesn't seem to belong to those universes. This, that and the other (talk) 08:52, 31 March 2024 (UTC)Reply

failed+deleted TypeO889 (talk) 23:09, 3 April 2025 (UTC)Reply
Not sure about this. The entry has been changed since last year, and ayy lmao has been created. This makes me think the entry is more more reasonable, and there is a reasonable amount of usage on Reddit, Twitter and such. Seems reasonable for it to be citable (durably, even). Polomo47 (talk) 05:06, 4 April 2025 (UTC)Reply
@Polomo47 well, WF was justified in closing this after more than a year with no action, but if there's new info, feel free to reopen (or even better, find and add the cites!) This, that and the other (talk) 08:24, 4 April 2025 (UTC)Reply
Yes, I will try to look myself. I made the request months before I started to actively edit the project, so I didn’t have the know-how then. Promptly forgot about it. Polomo47 (talk) 10:14, 4 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

I added another web cite, so it now has two, but it doesn't seem to be common. For example, "the ayys" seems to have been used just 5 times on Bluesky (plus once more in the other, aye, sense), and Google finds only 17 pages of results for "an ayy" of which most are other senses or other languages. - -sche (discuss) 04:16, 3 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

Seems like we can't do "durable", then. And if it's not that common, then it seems "widespread usage" is also off the table. Just recalled that the cites on ayy lmao are all from 4chan, so maybe the common usage is restricted to that website. Polomo47 (talk) 04:19, 3 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

Hindiyyah

Latest comment: 1 year ago1 comment1 person in discussion

This entry currently has three senses:

country of India
(historical) official name of Mughal Empire in Arabic language.
Al Fatawa Al Hindiyyah: A 17th century book of Hanafi jurisprudence, compiled in Sultanate Al Hindiyyah during the reign of emperor Aurangzeb.

I can't find any evidence for the first or third, the second (as written) is not English by definition. Theknightwho (talk) 19:39, 24 March 2024 (UTC)Reply

underroot

Latest comment: 1 year ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Dig or burrow beneath; undermine. I think this definition may have been a guess. There is not much for "underrooted", "underrooting" etc. in GBooks but it seems to refer to inadequate root formation (of plants): see underrooted. (I moved the citation there from underroot since it cannot mean "undermine"!) Equinox ◑ 10:54, 25 March 2024 (UTC)Reply

I found very little support for the existing definition. One cite (on citations page) could support a metaphoric version of that definition (to undermine), but only one. I did add some clearly supported definitions, and put some other citations on the citations page. Kiwima (talk) 04:30, 26 March 2024 (UTC)Reply

rejerk

Latest comment: 1 year ago4 comments2 people in discussion

"Internet slang: To begin participating in a circlejerk again." Equinox ◑ 19:21, 26 March 2024 (UTC)Reply

@Ioaxxere I see you've added some. (Is Reddit actually valid for citations now? I can't keep up.) I see a mixture of transitive and intransitive (i.e. I am rejerking, vs. a topic is being rejerked) so apparently there is more than one sense. Equinox ◑ 08:52, 28 March 2024 (UTC)Reply

@Equinox: We do on a case by case basis. I would

Support accepting the Reddit quotations as rejerk and its abbreviation /rj are actually pretty widespread across a variety of Reddit communities. Admittedly, the term is pretty much never used outside Reddit, so I would understand if others decide to delete it. Also, thank you for adding the other sense! Ioaxxere (talk) 13:21, 28 March 2024 (UTC)Reply

@Ioaxxere: Still got the issue that the citations with "it was rejerked" and "rejerk that shit" are transitive uses, so the definition "begin to participate" does not fit. Equinox ◑ 15:48, 28 March 2024 (UTC)Reply

aristonaut

Latest comment: 1 year ago3 comments3 people in discussion

A rich person who has flown to outer space. Equinox ◑ 15:46, 28 March 2024 (UTC)Reply

Could be an emerging word, in view of current technology, but I don’t find it at all. @Sbb1413, recently having created it, have you heard it somewhere? Fay Freak (talk) 15:59, 28 March 2024 (UTC)Reply

When I first heard the term, it was already a very popular term in space exploration, as rich people like Bezos and Branson were flying in space with their own money. Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs) 18:40, 28 March 2024 (UTC)Reply

Kharkiv

Latest comment: 1 year ago3 comments2 people in discussion

Prigogine

Torino

Mr. Spock

Ovechkin

Schrödinger

Names of asteroids in English. Einstein2 (talk) 18:30, 30 March 2024 (UTC)Reply

Three comments to make here:

It's worth reminding everyone that there is no figurative use requirement for names of asteroids, as they fall under the exemption for "minor planets" at WT:CFI#Celestial objects. We only need to find three uses, even if literal.
Surely these entries should be moved to Translingual. As I understand it, these are the official, worldwide names of these celestial bodies.
Do cites where the name is preceded by the systematic number count towards attestation of the name alone? To take one example, the entries 257261 Ovechkin and (257261) Ovechkin are not eligible for inclusion under our policy, but one could argue that any usages of these systematic names count as usages of Ovechkin, the number being a non-lexical element.

This, that and the other (talk) 04:52, 31 March 2024 (UTC)Reply

Cited Mr. Spock with three literal uses in books. This, that and the other (talk) 04:59, 31 March 2024 (UTC)Reply

from dawn to dusk

Latest comment: 18 days ago4 comments3 people in discussion

Rfv-sense "(temporal location) At daytime." Maybe this is very common and I'm just forgetting the obvious way it's used, but at the moment I'm only calling to mind the other sense, "(duration) From sunrise to sunset." - -sche (discuss) 05:27, 31 March 2024 (UTC)Reply

In contrast, I'm confused by the definition "from sunrise to sunset". Dawn, as typically defined, starts a bit before sunrise, when the sky starts to lighten. Is "from dawn to dusk" anything more than a SOP expression anyways? I would interpret it as just meaning exactly what it says.--Urszag (talk) 23:42, 2 April 2024 (UTC)Reply

from dawn till dusk is common enough too. Even from dawn until dusk, if you like. Any reason why we would have the "to" version but not the others? Mihia (talk) 20:41, 20 April 2024 (UTC)Reply

No objection from me to simply deleting it as SOP. Someone added "(idiomatic) All day." but AFAIK any phrase denoting this timeframe, like the others you mention, can have that meaning or implication: "They slaved away from sunup to sundown", etc. Perhaps there are interesting translations or some other reason to keep one or more of these phrases. - -sche (discuss) 23:32, 25 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

April 2024

counterdisputation

Latest comment: 1 year ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Chuck Entz (talk) 01:01, 1 April 2024 (UTC)Reply

I have added three cites, but one of them is hyphenated, and the other two occur at line breaks, which means the authors might also have intended them to be hyphenated. Kiwima (talk) 03:07, 1 April 2024 (UTC)Reply

malasapsap

Latest comment: 1 year ago2 comments2 people in discussion

A tree of the Philippines. Tagged by DCDuring but not listed. This, that and the other (talk) 21:48, 2 April 2024 (UTC)Reply

... of species Pterocymbium tinctorium. Lots of snippets, mentions, and verbatim repeats of the surrounding text. But used in reference to trees of different genera (eg, Ailanthus, Gyrocarpus, ), not necessarily synonyms. Apparently a Tagalog word, but we don't have a Tagalog entry. DCDuring (talk) 22:31, 2 April 2024 (UTC)Reply

full circle

Latest comment: 1 year ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Rfv-sense: "(Taixuanjing tetragram) 𝌇". "Full circle" is evidently the name of the tetragram, but I'm not sure if this is worthy of a definition in Wiktionary. Is this an RFV or RFD argument? Now that I've asked myself, I'm not sure. Anyway, here it is. This, that and the other (talk) 01:38, 3 April 2024 (UTC)Reply

goods and sales tax

Latest comment: 1 year ago1 comment1 person in discussion

If this was the name of an actual tax somewhere in the world, you would expect to find plenty of evidence for it, as taxes are a much-discussed topic in published literature. However, most of the online uses refer to taxes in countries where the initialism GST expands to "goods and services tax", making this name a misnomer. If this term is only used as a misnomer, we should say so in the definition.

The only 20th-century uses in Google Books are Australian statistical publications, which are apparently using the term not to refer to a specific tax, but to the various goods taxes and sales taxes in place across the country, in which case the term is SOP. This, that and the other (talk) 07:19, 3 April 2024 (UTC)Reply

GST

Latest comment: 1 year ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Rfv-sense: "Initialism of goods and sales tax. (state of Victoria in Australia, formerly in Canada)". As above. It's worth noting that I'm from Victoria and have never heard of this, although given the introduction of a federal Goods and Services tax in 2000, it would be before my time if it did exist. This, that and the other (talk) 07:26, 3 April 2024 (UTC)Reply

suprasensual

Latest comment: 1 year ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Sense 2: "masochistic". In GBooks I can find for example "masochistic suprasensual play" but this does not mean they are synonyms: on the contrary, the use of both words together suggests they are not (or else such use could be redundant). Equinox ◑ 12:23, 6 April 2024 (UTC)Reply

So the confusing thing here is that "suprasensual" is the word Leopold von Sacher-Masoch invented to describe his own sexuality. I think the quote here means something like "suprasensual in Masoch's sense". I can find plenty of cites, but the majority are analysing Masoch's writing (mainly Venus in Furs) or Deleuze's essay about Masoch:

2001, Kriss Ravetto, The Unmaking of Fascist Aesthetics, U of Minnesota Press, →ISBN, page 220:
While in Pasqualino's sexual imagination woman represents suprasensual sexuality, promising excessive pleasure, his actual sexual coupling with the commandant, this monumental image of woman, transforms into the opposite of sensuality, becoming what Deleuze calls supercarnal, that is, sadistic and cruel.
2020, Jonathan Faiers, Fur: A Sensitive History, Yale University Press, →ISBN, page 182:
Severin, the European nobleman in Venus in Furs who desires to be enslaved to a woman, describes himself as a suprasensual person.

Smurrayinchester (talk) 09:15, 26 April 2024 (UTC)Reply

exponential

Latest comment: 11 months ago6 comments4 people in discussion

Rfv-sense: Sense 2 "(mathematics) Expressed in terms of a power of e."

Is this unambiguously attestable as distinct from sense 1 "Relating to an exponent."?

Reading this definition closely, I don't think this sense can be attested separately from sense 1, or at least I haven't seen and haven't succeeded at finding any such uses. On the other hand, I think this sense is trying to get at a different use of "exponential" which we currently don't cover: probably something like "of or relating to the [natural] exponential function."

To give just one concrete example, in the study of Lie groups, there is a particular map called the "exponential map" (notated

\operatorname {exp}

); when Lee (in Introduction to Smooth Manifolds) defines the exponential map (a rather abstract definition involving no exponents), he offers the following comment on its name:

The results of the preceding section show that the exponential map of GL(n,R) (or any Lie subgroup of it) is given by $\operatorname {exp} A=e^{A}$ . This, obviously, is the reason for the term exponential map.

Other examples include "exponential order" (in asymptotics; almost always defined in terms of a [natural] exponential [function]); "the exponential series" (the series expansion of the exponential function); "exponential window" (in statistics; [a function] almost always defined in terms of a [natural] exponential); etc. Of course we also have "the exponential" or "an exponential" for

e^{x}

and

e^{ax}

(as function), respectively.

Part of the reason these senses are muddled is that when mathematicians are dealing with the class of functions of the form

a^{bx}

(which is rather often), it doesn't really matter what

a

is--in fact, without any loss you can always force

a

to be e just by scaling

b

by

\log _{a}(e)

. Winthrop23 (talk) 19:46, 10 April 2024 (UTC)Reply

I would say that base e can be mentioned as a particular important special case of the general principle, either on the one definition line, or as a subsense. However, is present sense #1, "Relating to an exponent", supposed to be only the mathematical sense, or could it conceivably apply to any other senses of "exponent"? If the former, it should be labelled as such. In the mathematical sense, I'm not clear whether "expressed in terms of a power (of anything)" is usefully distinct from "relating to an exponent or exponentiation". This distinction, if it exists, exists irrespective of the base, I suppose? Mihia (talk) 13:16, 20 April 2024 (UTC)Reply

(Replying to Winthrop as well) I think I agree with both of you. I think def 1 (Relating to an exponent) can refer to the non-math meanings of exponent too, so we'll have to look to the present defs 2 & 3 for the maths definitions. Leonhard Euler, standing on the shoulders of Newton and others, is arguably the best-ever mathematician and (like Newton and da Vinchi) a good engineer too. (We engineers also love him because Euler is homophonic with oiler.) As an example, he derived the equation

e^{i\pi }+1=0

, in which he had invented the concept of e, had invented the name for the Newtonian concept of i and popularised the use of π for its Ancient Babylonian concept (previous use by a Welshman and an Englishman had been ignored). e is a fantastically useful number for use in many proofs, since it simplifies many formulae -- which is why, along with log (or log₁₀) and exp on a math calculator, you will find ln (or log_e) and e. So yes, exponentiation is often done to base e, but certainly not always. I suggest altering #2 to read "# (mathematics) Expressed in terms of a power of a base, often 10 or e". Def #3 should then be left as is, since it makes a reasonable attempt to explain the effects of its use in non-mathematical jargon which, with the help of its example sentence, it achieves. No one ever mentions that, between exponential exponential growth 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256... and exponential decay 256, 16, 4, 2, 1.4, 1.2, 1.1, 1.0 [to 1 dec place] lies exponential constancy, where the exponent is 1 and so the value never alters 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2.... And those who think exponential means something is of growing severity might also be confused that exponential decay starts by "falling off a cliff" then gradually levels out, never quite crashing. --Enginear 02:34, 16 May 2024 (UTC)Reply

I made that change to #2, and also added a couple of examples. Mihia (talk) 23:14, 16 May 2024 (UTC)Reply

I'm gonna say now that sense 2, the mathematical sense about "expressed in terms of a power", is verified, and I have transferred the "RFV" label to sense 1, the generic "Relating to an exponent" sense, so the goal now is to find examples (mathematical or otherwise) that fit sense #1 but are not sense #2. I have also tried to work the word "exponent" into def #2, so that if #1 is removed, the entry will still prominently mention that word, so as to illuminate the connection. Mihia (talk) 17:40, 17 May 2024 (UTC)Reply

yappuccino

Latest comment: 1 year ago2 comments1 person in discussion

"(slang) A long rant that serves no purpose." I can see some Web hits along the lines of "I did not order a yappuccino" (perhaps used when your barista is too talkative?). But seems like a protologism. Equinox ◑ 17:12, 11 April 2024 (UTC)Reply

The given references do not necessarily seem to use the word with the definition given. Equinox ◑ 18:35, 11 April 2024 (UTC)Reply

cream in the can

Latest comment: 1 year ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Does this exist outside of The Broadway Melody? Binarystep (talk) 13:35, 13 April 2024 (UTC)Reply

insisture

Latest comment: 18 days ago6 comments3 people in discussion

Shakey-only? P. Sovjunk (talk) 13:09, 18 April 2024 (UTC)Reply

Plural seems to be findable in GBooks. Equinox ◑ 22:12, 19 April 2024 (UTC)Reply

failed P. Sovjunk (talk) 13:08, 26 December 2024 (UTC)Reply

The Google Books hits for the plural seem to be either scannos where one column's "insist" and the next's "-ure(s)" are combined by the OCR, or else mentions (not uses). I can however find, and have added, one hardly-intelligible Joyce-related cite of the singular, one cite discussing Shakespeare, and one old newspaper cite in which the word might just mean ~insistance, insistentness. There are probably enough cites to support a somewhat wishy-washy ("x, or y, or z") definition. Works variously define the word as "continuance", "persistency; regularity; method", "fixed position". - -sche (discuss) 04:42, 27 December 2024 (UTC)Reply

Alternatively, we could consider that since the cites don't all support one clear meaning, it might not meaningfully meet CFI... - -sche (discuss) 22:50, 26 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

OK, if we accept "Valla explains insisture and course for the planets thus" as a use (and as independent of the cite of Shakespeare himself), and if we accept that Shakespeare, Valla and The Photographic News can be grouped together to support one frankly lumpy definition ~"fixedness; insistence", this is cited; otherwise, this indeed fails. - -sche (discuss) 22:12, 26 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

musth

Latest comment: 8 days ago7 comments6 people in discussion

Can't find musth by itself to refer to the animals, seems to always come with "elephant", "bull", "male" or something Justin the Just (talk) 14:45, 22 April 2024 (UTC)Reply

I found two uncertain possibilities in GBooks, but the snippet view is so stingy now that you can't really see enough to cite unless you are able to progressively guess further words and include them in your search:

* 1967, Natural History (volume 76, page 42)

*: […] the musths. It is common knowledge among handlers that male elephants have periodic fits of madness and that they are extremely obstreperous and dangerous at these times. A male in such a condition is called a musth elephant […]

* 2006, Lisa Karen Yon, An Investigation of the Adrenal and Gonadal Hormones of Musth in the Bull Elephant (page 12)

*: […] musths are those with more pronounced physical and behavioral characteristics (more and longer lasting TGS and UD, more displays of aggression).

Equinox ◑ 15:48, 22 April 2024 (UTC)Reply

The 2006 one starts with "(or more intense)" Justin the Just (talk) 18:33, 22 April 2024 (UTC)Reply

You can read the whole 1967 quote at IA here. I think it's a valid cite of the "elephant in musth" sense, but the second one is not. This, that and the other (talk) 09:57, 24 April 2024 (UTC)Reply

The meaning of “the first officer told us about the musths” in the 1967 cite can well be, “the first officer told us about the periods of aggressiveness male elephants undergo from time to time”. --Lambiam 04:30, 27 April 2024 (UTC)Reply

I think this fails RFV; even if we take the 1967 quote to mean an animal rather than the time period (which, I agree with Lambiam, is questionable), that's only one cite. Everything (else) I can find means the period, not the animal itself per se. - -sche (discuss) 22:42, 26 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

@-sche: I have found the 1967 quote at the Internet Archive. It's not crystal-clear, but I think it is referring to the period, not the animal. — Sgconlaw (talk) 17:26, 6 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

disgorgement

Latest comment: 1 year ago2 comments2 people in discussion

On old English maps (i guess, based on Buache or before him) there are given "disgorgement of the ice", meaning that there is no ice or that there is a passage in the ice sheet of Antarctica. It is correct use of this word? — This unsigned comment was added by Tollef Salemann (talk • contribs) at 16:09, 28 April 2024 (UTC).Reply

@Tollef Salemann: I don't think it's correct to define it as a passage. It probably means that the ice has been discharged from the area in question just as food is disgorged from someone's throat or stomach, so it's just a use of sense 1. — Sgconlaw (talk) 21:27, 28 April 2024 (UTC)Reply

kimnel

Latest comment: 1 month ago3 comments3 people in discussion

Rare as hell. this quote is perhaps usable. OED has an entry I can't read. There's smatterings of old alt-sps like kymnele in Middle English too P. Sovjunk (talk) 07:03, 29 April 2024 (UTC)Reply

@P. Sovjunk: I can tell you there are quite some up to the 19th century, enough so they cut it off, though varying in spelling and normalized in Webster 1913, metathetical n←→l to what we lemmatize kemelin. Fay Freak (talk) 21:36, 29 April 2024 (UTC)Reply

Failed TypeO889 (talk) 23:04, 28 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

May 2024

labimeter

Latest comment: 10 months ago2 comments2 people in discussion

+labidometer P. Sovjunk (talk) 17:49, 3 May 2024 (UTC)Reply

Added two quotes to Citations:labimeter. Einstein2 (talk) 17:28, 25 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

impeachmentworthy

Latest comment: 11 months ago12 comments5 people in discussion

What a Germanic/Anglish mouthful. Can anyone cite it? If this fails, then impeachment-worthy will also fall to the might of WT:COALMINE. Equinox ◑ 18:04, 12 May 2024 (UTC)Reply

Needs to be moved to impeachment-worthy then gain-evaluated. I suppose that'd make things a bit heppener, wouldn't ye say ? Leasnam (talk) 19:30, 12 May 2024 (UTC)Reply

It's not gonna heppen! Equinox ◑ 19:39, 12 May 2024 (UTC)Reply

You think this is "Anglish" ? yep. you're right. im so busted. Leasnam (talk) 20:08, 12 May 2024 (UTC)Reply

Not going to say anything as your track record speaketh for itself. Equinox ◑ 20:37, 12 May 2024 (UTC)Reply

LOL Leasnam (talk) 23:30, 12 May 2024 (UTC)Reply

Wouldn't that be something like behindrancedworthy? Theknightwho (talk) 20:49, 12 May 2024 (UTC)Reply

Yeah yeah yeah I know "impeachment" has Romance connections. But trying to run things into one long German-o-word is belikelike. Anyway, don't shoot the messenger. (Now someone's gonna yell about my "nonX" adjectives. I can't stop ya. But that's a totally different phenomenon.) Equinox ◑ 20:53, 12 May 2024 (UTC)Reply

I cited one definition ("(of an act) Of such character as to warrant [the actor's] impeachment."). I did not find any support for the other 'of a person' sense. I could not cite any sense of the challenged form. DCDuring (talk) 21:49, 12 May 2024 (UTC)Reply

A use from the US congress??; the rest I could find are online sources: 2 blogs 1 2, a forum 3, and several X's posts 4 (though many are just hashtag-based). [Saviourofthe] ୨୧ 20:04, 15 May 2024 (UTC)Reply

btw, just a handful of Twitter posts refer to the (of a person) sense (like 3 or 4), the majority refers to (of an act). [Saviourofthe] ୨୧ 20:12, 15 May 2024 (UTC)Reply

I'd have thought that the second sense would have found more use. DCDuring (talk) 21:06, 15 May 2024 (UTC)Reply

Sol III

Latest comment: 11 months ago3 comments2 people in discussion

The planet Earth.

Tagged by @197.29.245.78 but not listed. Binarystep (talk) 19:45, 15 May 2024 (UTC)Reply

Cited. Also I added the science fiction tag as it seems to be used chiefly in that genre: more examples included in the The Oxford Dictionary of Science Fiction. [Saviourofthe] ୨୧ 20:39, 15 May 2024 (UTC)Reply

Worth noting that the rest of "Sol" planets would be a bit harder to attest Sol I, Sol II, Sol IV-Sol X, and very likely chiefly used in science fiction. [Saviourofthe] ୨୧ 20:45, 15 May 2024 (UTC)Reply

Proto-Japonic

Latest comment: 4 months ago4 comments3 people in discussion

How is this adjective sense controversial? We can easily compare it to Proto-Indo-European, which is plainly accepted. Kiril kovachev (talk・contribs) 15:03, 18 May 2024 (UTC)Reply

@Kiril kovachev The usage example is a pretty straightforward attributive use; it's just obscured by the fact that the names of languages/families often resemble adjectives. Theknightwho (talk) 06:13, 21 May 2024 (UTC)Reply

@Theknightwho I'd argue it's the contrary for words like this: the -ic ending is directly based on the Latin adjective ending -icus, and "Proto-Japonic" as a noun is just short for "Proto-Japonic language", i.e. the adjective sense is really the essential sense of the word, with the noun sense being just a nominal use of the adjective. Even if the nominal use is more common, the adjective should still be considered a proper sense of the word, if not the main sense. Kiril kovachev (talk・contribs) 12:16, 21 May 2024 (UTC)Reply

but we have phrases like in proto-Japonic, in Chinese, etc. Can other adjectives do that? How should we classify sentences such as she was dressed in green ? I honestly dont know. —Soap— 22:30, 4 January 2025 (UTC)Reply

seicont

Latest comment: 11 months ago4 comments3 people in discussion

Scots. I was unable to find the spelling seicont on A Dictionary of the Older Scottish Tongue or Scottish National Dictionary. YukaSylvie (talk) 02:28, 21 May 2024 (UTC)Reply

It can easily be found in Google Books (google books:"seicont") but both uses there postdate our entry and the uses on Scots Wikipedia. I wonder if Embryomystic can remember what the source for the creation of this entry was.

In any event, even if this is attestable, it should be moved, perhaps to saicont. This, that and the other (talk) 10:40, 23 May 2024 (UTC)Reply

It is in the dictionary on Scots Online. I disagree with you with regards to moving the page, but if we do that, seicont should certainly be kept as an alternative spelling. embryomystic (talk) 07:23, 24 May 2024 (UTC)Reply

Yes, sorry, I meant moving the primary form and keeping this as an alt form. The fact that so few attestations are available tends to suggest this is not the primary form. This, that and the other (talk) 10:20, 28 May 2024 (UTC)Reply

June 2024

holiday pay

Latest comment: 11 months ago3 comments3 people in discussion

The, supposedly limited to the UK, sense "a basic wage paid to an employee while they are on holiday. It can be paid for as many weeks holiday as an employee is entitled to, although an employee can spread their complete holiday entitlement over the whole year."

At least in the Netherlands it doesn't work like that. It's just a monetary bonus, you can spend the money however you like, no need to go on vacation. (see vakantiegeld) w:en:Holiday pay doesn't describe the sense we have here either. Ping @Donnanz who created the page and wrote this sense. — Alexis Jazz (talk) 12:12, 1 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

@Alexis Jazz: That's the way it worked when I was in employment. I retired in 2012. If you don't take any holiday entitlement, you may lose it, it depends on your employer and contract. Self-employed people don't get holiday pay. I'm not sure if anybody on a zero hours contract gets holiday pay, according to Zero-hour contract they can. Some firms close down for two or three weeks in the summer, when everyone has to take their holiday. Apparently different countries have different laws. DonnanZ (talk) 16:38, 1 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Nowadays, in the UK, as far as I would understand the term, "holiday pay" generally simply means that employees continue to get paid in the normal way when they take their (statutory) holiday allowance, whenever in the year this may be, not necessarily (and in practice usually not) contiguously. (No doubt some employers try to wriggle out of paying this entitlement in various ways. There are also potentially complications around determining what is someone's "normal pay" if they are not paid a fixed wage or salary, e.g. they work varying numbers of hours.) Mihia (talk) 23:56, 1 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

tanto

Latest comment: 11 months ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Rfv-sense A knife blade shape/style comprising well-differentiated front and longitudinal edges, somewhat reminiscent of a chisel but with an angled front allowing for an acute-angle point.

I'm not really sure whether this is actually distinct from the primary definition (A traditional Japanese small sword or knife; often used as a secondary weapon to a katana.), if I'm honest. Of the dictionaries I've checked, only the OED has a relevant entry for tanto, and they only give the Japanese sense.

According to our entry, both senses can be pronounced /ˈtɑntoʊ/, but the sense I've RFV'd can also be pronounced /ˈtæntoʊ/, but I find this distinction dubious because /ɑ ~ æ/ in free variation is common with terms like this. I get the impression this second sense is trying to draw a distinction between traditional tanto and other knives crafted in a similar style, which would explain why it's the only one given the less "authentic" pronunciation. Perhaps I'm being too cynical, though.

Theknightwho (talk) 20:01, 11 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

surburbanite

Latest comment: 4 months ago2 comments2 people in discussion

An IP pointed out on the talk page that this is a misspelling, and I changed it to such. The quote is real - but how common of a misspelling is it? — SURJECTION ^{/ T / C / L /} 18:50, 14 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Here is the Ngram chart, showing there is one instance of "surburbanite" for every 200 instances of the true spelling. Does anyone remember what our threshold is for considering something a "common misspelling"? This, that and the other (talk) 05:01, 8 January 2025 (UTC)Reply

autem

Latest comment: 10 months ago6 comments2 people in discussion

"a church", "married". Failed RFV in 2013, was re-added later without cites, but maybe it's citable now? I haven't managed to find anything, searching for "an autem", "the autem" (which finds only mentions of the Latin word, saying the autem appears in one edition but not another, etc), "to autem", "in autem", "autems", "is autem" (for the "married" sense), "got autem", "get autem" (the results are all just Latin)... the one hit for "autem building" is an OCR erroneous combination of two unrelated columns, one Latin and one English... - -sche (discuss) 02:16, 15 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

@-sche I've added 5 cites for the "church" sense, though I'm only confident the 1610 cite is a genuine, period use. It's not very clear from the passage what "could not […] keepe his Autem" means, but there's a load of other thieves' cant there (e.g. upright man, hooker etc.), and the same book glosses "Autem" as "the Church" later on, so I'm pretty sure it's something like "could not […] go to church [without getting robbed]". The 1837 cite from Rookwood is clearly an intentional archaism/dialecticism, while the 1823 slang dictionary uses it in a usage example for a different term - go out (“to mug”). Both are passable, I guess. The other two are pretty mention-y, as they directly state what the word means, but they're probably worth keeping since they're the only mentions I could find that weren't simply lists of thieves' cant ripped from older dictionaries, or where it's used as part of a compound. The 1566 cite is also valuable as the earliest known recording of the term, too. Theknightwho (talk) 02:07, 19 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Re-reading it with a fresh pair of eyes, I don't think the 1610 cite fits after all, as I think it's being used to mean "wife" as a clipping of autem mort (i.e. it's "could not […] keepe his Autem [wife] or doxie [girlfriend] sole unto himself"). Theknightwho (talk) 11:25, 19 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Ah, alas, I think you're right. "Autem is over" looks alright, though, and "autem ken" is OK as long as autem ken is not a term in its own right (which it seems it is not; at least, we don't have an entry). - -sche (discuss) 23:02, 19 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

@-sche I think it is (Greene's treats it as another form), but I'm inclined to say it's fine, because "autem" clearly has to mean "church" since ken just means "house". How about if we add the label "chiefly in compounds"?

I suspect we probably want to add "clipping of autem mort (“wife”)" as a second sense, but I can find nothing to support it meaning "married" that isn't simply a dictionary entry claiming as much. I suspect it's probably real, as the circumstantial evidence is quite strong for this term having been both widespread and polysemous in the criminal underworld, but sadly the direct evidence simply isn't there. Theknightwho (talk) 20:56, 20 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

I considered suggesting this earlier, but as far as citing "church", we could perhaps also look through the various terms like autem cackle tub, autem quaver tub and autem quaver which have failed, and see if it would work to use their cites for this, iff / as long as we don't also have entries for those things. (IMO we can't use the same citation of "autem ken" to support both an entry "autem ken" and an entry "autem", but as long as we don't have autem ken, autem quaver, etc, we could plausibly use cites of those things for this... but it does mean that if we ever become able to cite those things, it pulls the rug out from under this...) - -sche (discuss) 23:49, 20 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

pâro

Latest comment: 10 months ago3 comments3 people in discussion

Defined as “The feeling that no matter what you do, it is always somehow wrong—as if there’s some obvious way forward that everybody else can see but you.” and supposedly countable, with the plural pâros. 0DF (talk) 16:32, 15 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

This looks like nonsense but paro and the variants paro’ and para appear in various British and Irish rap songs (as can be seen by searching at genius.com), most notably in the song ‘Ketamine’ by the Dublin band Versatile, and we already have a French entry under paro. Of course the definition should simply be ‘paranoid’ and the etymology should just be ‘clipping of paranoid’. There's also this example of a NY rapper using the term[22] Overlordnat1 (talk) 00:24, 16 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Word comes from the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, and the words appear in the Tumblr post that describes it. CitationsFreak (talk) 05:56, 17 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

espace

Latest comment: 4 months ago2 comments2 people in discussion

“(obsolete) Space.” According to the OED (which is the reference in the entry), only recorded in Middle English. J3133 (talk) 16:54, 18 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

It seems like this spelling only just survived into Early Modern English. Various uses in EEBO, the latest of which is this 1608 text, but I'm not too sure what is going on there (the word "space" is used everywhere else, and there is a footnote which could be read as indicating that "espace" has a special meaning). Some others: [23] [24] [25] This, that and the other (talk) 04:50, 8 January 2025 (UTC)Reply

surname

Latest comment: 10 months ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Rfv-sense 5 (Scotland, obsolete) A clan.

This comes from the OED, but the OED's definition of "English" is somewhat broader than ours; this is partially reflected by the fact that the user who added this back in 2013 used the first citation in the OED's list, which dates from 1455, which pre-dates the year we usually use to mark the start of modern English (1500) by quite some way. We're a bit flexible about it, but 45 years is too much in my opinon, so I've removed it as invalid.

The OED also include citations from 1508, 1553–4 and 1565, but they read like Scots to me, which is the other issue here. I've got no objection moving this to Scots if needs be, though. Theknightwho (talk) 21:46, 19 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

The DSL has a bunch of "Scots" cites (mostly 1500s but with some from as late as the 1680s). Most of their cites are sco, but similar to the OED (in the other direction), they seem to have included some English as well... unfortunately, despite the DSL's assignment of the cites to this sense, it seems hard to be sure they are actually this sense (it seems possible to read them as meaning the name, instead), e.g. "The Lord Lovet called Fresell [i.e. Fraser] … A surname esteemed honest and very hardy", "Jockies who go about begging, and use still to recite the sluggornes of most of the true ancient surnames of Scotland". - -sche (discuss) 22:33, 19 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

whoremonger

Latest comment: 10 months ago1 comment1 person in discussion

I am skeptical of the second definition, wherein the word is a synonym of pimp. I can't find this second definition in any of several dictionaries I've checked. This accords with my own personal understanding of the term, by which it can only mean someone who purchases the services of prostitutes (i.e., a john), and not one who sells them. Brusquedandelion (talk) 20:14, 20 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

beside

Latest comment: 1 month ago4 comments3 people in discussion

Rfv-sense "not relevant to". Does this exist outside of the term beside the point? Seems to be a very straightforward extension of sense 3 ("besides; in addition to"), where besides is being used to mean "other than; except for; instead of". This also explains the (now uncommon) alternative form besides the point. Theknightwho (talk) 07:46, 21 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Marginally. I can find a few cites where people say something is "beside the subject", "beside the topic", "beside the focus" of what they're saying. - -sche (discuss) 16:52, 21 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Also "beside the mark", a run-in in Century 1911, which is closer to the metaphor of aiming at a target and "beside the question".

We are deficient in contemporary citations of beside and besides, excepting those just added by -sche.

Among OneLook references only MWOnline has "not relevant to" as a definition. They also have three subsenses of sense 1 without an explicit sense: "by the side of"; "in comparison with"; and "on a par with". Their def. 3 is "besides". MW seems to have taken a revisionist stance, trying to bring the definitions closer to their conception of contemporary meaning. In contrast other OneLook dictionaries are similar to MW 1913.

Interestingly, Century 1911 has seven definitions, three marked as obsolete, none of them "not relevant to". The four:

"at the side of; near" (cf. our 1. "next to; at the side of")
"over and above; distinct from"
"apart from; not connected with; not according to"
"out of; in a state deviating from"

Definition three seems closest to our def. 2 "not relevant to", esp. "not connected with".

Our def. 3 "besides; in addition to" does not closely correspond to any of these. I don't think def. 2 at besides: "Other than; except for; instead of." works very well for beside.

Has the meaning of beside the point become more pejorative than beside the mark/question/subject/topic/focus, more reminiscent of "missing the point/mark", "off the mark"? If so, MWOnline's and our separate "not relevant to" is distinct from a definition like "not connected with". DCDuring (talk) 18:09, 21 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

I've added some more cites, but this sense often bleeds into sense 3 and it's possible they should simply be combined, like: "Besides; in addition to, and (sometimes) not relevant to." - -sche (discuss) 00:31, 23 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

vingtillion

Latest comment: 4 days ago5 comments4 people in discussion

— SURJECTION ^{/ T / C / L /} 12:32, 25 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Looks like a mistake for vigintillion by someone unfamiliar with viginti (I don't know how else you could get "ving-" from "viginti-"). I've often wanted to create "vigintipede" as a synonym for the house centipede, which obviously has many fewer than a hundred legs (and regularly just about twenty), but the top results from Google are all about a very long bicycle... P Aculeius (talk) 12:25, 6 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

Influence from French, perhaps? Indeed, google books:"vingtillions" finds some French hits, as well as one repeatedly-reprinted/quoted English work (originally by Lovecraft? or in his mythos) using the phrase "they preserve a dreadful secret, that untold vingtillions of aeons ago...". Actually, on archive.org I can also find this related book containing the line "...before it sank millions of years ago, or Xoth vingtillions of years before..."; depending on whether or not we consider two(?) authors writing in the Cthulhu mythos universe to be independent, we have one or two Cthulhu cites. And 1940 February, Thrilling Wonder Stories v. 15, n. 02], page 83, says "The dinosaur Trachodon had 2,000 teeth, and when one dropped out, another grew in its place. . . . The vingtillion is the largest number usually given a name? It consists of a one followed by sixty-three zeros. . . .". And 1944-5, Loretto Rainbow, page 215, says "When I am told that between 3 and 4 there is a numerical value that cannot be expressed in whole numbers or decimals, that map-makers need never use more than four colors, that a vingtillion represents the number of grains of sand that Archimedes long ago calculated as sufficient to fill what he believed to be the universe, I just make polite noises". I think this is actually cited? But is another spelling more common? - -sche (discuss) 19:20, 13 September 2024 (UTC)Reply

I found two hits in French on Google Books, and three others that all seemed to be based on Lovecraft. Looks like you found more. The French sources I found weren't scannos, as I thought they might be, and they predate Lovecraft. One instance could be a typo, but the other was clearly deliberate. Cassell's French Dictionary reminds me that vingt is twenty in French—so it seems like "vingtillion" might be a French variant of vigintillion. However, it's clear from both of the French sources on Google Books that the same number is meant. The source you quote above with "a one followed by sixty-three zeros" seems to confirm this in English. Obviously Lovecraft and some of the others are using it in the sense of "an unimaginably large number" rather than a precise mathematical value; his phrase "untold vingtillions of aeons ago" was repeated verbatim in all of the other hits. Obviously the age of the universe was not even estimable when Lovecraft was writing. But it's reasonable that the rare "vingtillion" could have occurred alongside the rare "vigintillion" which is considered standard today. So I guess it's a legitimate, perhaps obsolete variant originating in French. P Aculeius (talk) 22:50, 13 September 2024 (UTC)Reply

RFV passed. --Overlordnat1 (talk) 14:46, 10 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

softstem rush

Latest comment: 7 months ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Rfv-sense softstem bulrush (Schoenoplectus tabernaemontani). The only unambiguous mentions that I found were actually referring to soft rush (Juncus effusus), a plant which is similar enough that I'm not currently comfortable trying to determine whether any of the mentions that lack a taxonomic name could be referring to the bulrush instead. One source is unambiguous in using "Softstem Rush" that way; but since it repeatedly uses "Soft-stem Bulrush" in the surrounding sentences, I'm not certain whether it was intentional. Qwertygiy (talk) 00:55, 26 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

I have added two cites for "soft-stem rush" referring to Scirpus validus, which is a synonym of Schoenoplectus tabernaemontani. DCDuring (talk) 22:10, 30 September 2024 (UTC)Reply

swivel-eyed

Latest comment: 10 months ago1 comment1 person in discussion

swivel eye

Rfv-senses to do with squinting; removed out of process by Special:Contributions/John7Appleyard. — SURJECTION ^{/ T / C / L /} 12:04, 26 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

shipbreach

Latest comment: 10 months ago2 comments1 person in discussion

rfv. I hate to do this, but is it only present on Robert Steele's edition of Bartholomew Anglicus' work? The second quote is erronously attributed Robert M. Torrance, but it turns out it also comes from Robert Steele's 1893 edition, as shown in Torrances's own book. So, are there three independent citations for this word? --[Saviourofthe] ୨୧ 13:51, 26 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Also worth noting that there is a 400 years gap between the last Medieval English instance of the word (shipbreche), and Steele's 1893 book, which would indicate that "shipbreach" is some kind of learned borrowing (and modernization) rather than an inherited word. [Saviourofthe] ୨୧ 14:00, 26 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

morrot

Latest comment: 15 days ago3 comments3 people in discussion

Like marrot Zebres rouges (talk) 20:13, 29 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

This would definitely pass as Scots, since the name comes from the Firth of Forth. As English, there are a couple of unambiguous uses by Scottish writers here and here, a mentiony use here and several mentions such as this one and this one. The English sources all refer to a population of Common guillemots that winters in Scotland and was once considered a separate species from the population that breeds there. The Scots ones seem broader. At any rate, most of the sources are from at least a couple of centuries ago, with more recent ones citing the older ones. Chuck Entz (talk) 02:45, 30 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

failed. None of those links spell it morrot. --90.174.2.14 08:28, 29 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

July 2024

agua frescas

Latest comment: 10 months ago1 comment1 person in discussion

@Gluepix marked this as {{d|It is pluralized as aguas frescas in the vast majority of attestations; very rarely is the form agua frescas used in comparison.}}

I could find quite a lot of hits on Google, and the ngram also suggests that it is used, despite being an order of magnitude less frequent than the "correct" plural. Being "rare" doesn't mean that it isn't attested.

--kc_kennylau (talk) 23:08, 9 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

myography

Latest comment: 9 months ago4 comments4 people in discussion

Rfv-sense 1: OED says nope Newfiles (talk) 21:53, 14 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

Funny, my OED says yep. Cited. P Aculeius (talk) 00:21, 15 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

Could you add the citations to the entry then? Overlordnat1 (talk) 18:27, 15 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

I have tentatively folded the senses together as "The scientific study of muscles, typically via myographs." and added three citations (quotations). I am not sure the previous two senses could be distinguished from each other. (I could be wrong.) - -sche (discuss) 12:49, 17 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

Jewish

Latest comment: 27 days ago5 comments5 people in discussion

Rfv-sense "Yiddish". Definitely missing a few labels at least. Ioaxxere (talk) 14:18, 15 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

It's hard to find pure cites. IMO, a reference in US-based writings to Jewish newspapers refers to Yiddish newspapers, but that is a probability based on the empirical fact that there are/were hardly any Hebrew newpapers in the US and those that existed had relatively few subscribers. See

Category:Jewish newspapers published in the United States on Wikipedia.Wikipedia . WP articles about these newspapers do not always state in what language they are written, but, unless stated otherwise, one might assume they were written in English. DCDuring (talk) 15:52, 15 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

Yiddish newspapers are Jewish newspapers, so the fact that a Yiddish newspaper is referred to as “a Jewish newspaper” does not imply that Yiddish is a sense of Jewish. Deer are animals, and here a deer is referred to with the term “animal”, but animal does not have a sense deer. A usable attestation should take a more explicit form such as “he spoke Jewish” or “written in Jewish” while the language referred to cannot be Hebrew. It is more difficult to think of usable attestation forms for the cultural sense, since, as for newspapers, Yiddish culture is also Jewish culture – but not necessarily vice versa. --Lambiam 22:21, 17 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

To be clear, the RFV'ed sense is the adjective, not a noun (so "he spoke Jewish" doesn't count towards citing it). I have in fact cited the noun sense though, fairly unambiguously, I think. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 01:50, 18 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

Struggling to find good cites, but this sense surely exists (I've heard it in reference to grandparents' speech), probably influenced by any number of foreign languages where "Jewish" and "Yiddish" are the same word. I don't have the patience to sort out literal English translations of foreign-language passages; for example, the passage "They speak Jewish [i.e., Yiddish] and have created their own literature. A whole slew of Hebrew and Jewish [Yiddish] papers and journals is being published." is a translation of a 1912 German essay; perhaps searching similar phraseology can help find viable attestations, like see (and many from around the first quarter of the 20th century, as since then the accepted glottonym has shifted):

"The Jews of London and of the United States, who, to escape the persecutions to which they are subjected in Poland and Russia, abandoned their native country, have formed associations among themselves in their new homes; they have organized societies calling themselves "Jewish-speaking groups," and as such have gained representation at the labor congresses. They speak a jargon which is a mixture of German and Hebrew, and not only employ it in their daily intercourse, but even publish their party organs in that vernacular and print them in Hebrew characters." [26]
"Jewish-speaking Christian missionaries invaded a thickly Jewish section in Brooklyn for the purpose of winning souls to Jesus.… In the course of a heated argument one of the missionaries grabbed a Hebrew Text Book and turning to a chapter in Isaiah exclaimed "Read what your own history says!" And to interpret into English the particular passage which he translated from Hebrew into Jewish would read something like this…" [27]
[28]
"Mr STARNES Do you speak Russian? Mr DAVID LIMONSKY No, sir; I do not speak Russian. Mr STARNES Do you speak Polish? Mr DAVID LIMONSKY Yes, sir; I speak Polish. Mr STARNES And you speak Jewish, do you? Mr DAVID LIMONSKY Yes, sir; I speak Jewish. Mr STARNES And you also speak German, do you? Mr DAVID LIMONSKY No, sir; I cannot speak German. Mr STARNES But this man spoke to you in Jewish? Mr DAVID LIMONSKY Yes, sir; he did. Mr STARNES What was his name? Mr DAVID LIMONSKY It was Heimie." [29]
[30] a bit prescriptive, a bit descriptive…
[31] memoir

Hftf (talk) 23:24, 16 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

eruginous or aeruginous

Latest comment: 17 days ago3 comments1 person in discussion

Rfv-sense: pertaining to (reddish-brownish) copper rather than (green) copper rust.
I noticed we had entries for both eruginous and aeruginous, and in the process of trying to check which spelling was most common (apparently aeruginous? per Ngrams, but maybe something is skewing Ngrams?), I couldn't find cites of this sense in either spelling, and it doesn't seem like it would be expected based on the etymology (Latin aerūginōsus (“rusty”)). - -sche (discuss) 18:38, 31 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

However, I see the OED does have "eruginous" defined as "Partaking of the nature or substance of verdigris, or of copper itself" and does cite a remark by Browne (1646) about "ferreous and eruginous earths" and a remark by Harvey (1666) about "an adust stibial or eruginous sulphur", which could be this sense. - -sche (discuss) 18:51, 31 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

Nope, I found the work by Browne, which is: "artificial copperas ^{8 [read copper-rust]} [...] is a rough and acrimonious kind of salt drown out of ferreous and eruginous earths, partaking chiefly of iron and copper; the blue of copper, the green most of iron." Harvey's meaning is not clear (reminds me of the also-opaque quote we have at æruginous), but various copper-sulfur compounds are blue/green (others are black), so AFAICT no quote clearly indicates a separate sense pertaining to (reddish-brown) copper instead of verdigris, and such a sense would not be expected etymologically, so I think this fails. (Maybe a combined sense like what the OED has would work.) - -sche (discuss) 16:39, 27 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

August 2024

snagger

Latest comment: 21 days ago4 comments4 people in discussion

Rfv-sense: A person, generally one with a background in construction or civil engineering that reviews properties to find issues, faults and fixes to be remedied by the construction company before the client buying the home moves in (Republic of Ireland). --Svartava (talk) 03:36, 14 August 2024 (UTC)Reply

Cited and cleaned up. Smurrayinchester (talk) 07:39, 14 August 2024 (UTC)Reply

@Smurrayinchester We probably want a corresponding sense at snag. It falls under "a problem or difficulty with something", but it's more specific than that, as they're issues that prevent a development from being deemed complete (i.e. they get in the way of the developer being able to hand it over to the buyer). Also, I'll have a think about reviewing the definition given here for snagger, because it's also used in commercial property development, and I don't think it's any less common in the UK than it is in Ireland. Theknightwho (talk) 19:31, 18 August 2024 (UTC)Reply

An argument could be made that the sense of "snag" is just a trivial specialization of a generic figurative sense of snag. What is different about snagger is that it is not a specialization of "one who snags", using the agent suffix -er, but "one who finds potential snags" (in closing the sale from the seller and realtor PoV OR in the buyer getting getting the sound property ostensibly being offered). It is possible to view the meaning of -er as similar to the Variety -er. DCDuring (talk) 23:04, 22 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

texter

Latest comment: 4 months ago3 comments2 people in discussion

Sense: “(Australia) A marker; a felt-tip pen.” Removed by @BenAveling: see Talk:texter (“Citation needed. Texta has this usage, I don't believe texter is used for this.”) J3133 (talk) 10:43, 19 August 2024 (UTC)Reply

As an Australian, I've never seen this spelling. (The usual spelling is texta.) But I guess it's plausible. This, that and the other (talk) 04:19, 20 August 2024 (UTC)Reply

Difficult to search for by itself, but we can look for the collocation texter pen ("texta pen" is not uncommonly heard in Australian primary schools and family households). I find that on this website and in this book, and also in this book which deals with the Australian context but is clearly a speciment of NNSE. This, that and the other (talk) 09:29, 24 December 2024 (UTC)Reply

bikenap

Latest comment: 22 days ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Tagged but not listed. Doesn't seem restricted to the Philippines. There is also bikenapping, which may have a stronger shot at attestability. This, that and the other (talk) 23:55, 19 August 2024 (UTC)Reply

Failed Lfellet (talk) 19:33, 22 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

first

Latest comment: 8 months ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Rfv-sense adverb (Southeast Asia, Hong Kong, nonstandard) Now.

The entry gives a reference for this:

Nury Vittachi (2002) “From Yinglish to sado-mastication”, in Kingsley Bolton, editor, Hong Kong English: Autonomy and Creativity, Hong Kong University Press, page 213: “Another word with what is apparently a direct translation is the word 'first', which is 'sin' in Cantonese. The two words do seem to have largely identical meanings, except 'sin' also carries the meaning 'now'.”

It's not totally clear from this passage, but I think it's saying that English first is used as a direct translation of Cantonese 先 (sin¹) in all senses, including the additional sense "now". However, it would be good to see some actual use. Theknightwho (talk) 12:40, 28 August 2024 (UTC)Reply

alterhuman

Latest comment: 21 days ago4 comments4 people in discussion

This entry used to simply be defined as Synonym of otherkin, but was expanded by new user Wanderingdrake. This user wrote at the Grease Pit that they personally identify with the term and felt the definition failed to accurately reflect the way the term is used in the community. Perhaps the real problem is the definition at otherkin is too vague. In any event, it would be good to see some citations (WT:") to assist in verifying alterhuman, especially the very specific sense 2. This, that and the other (talk) 11:12, 29 August 2024 (UTC)Reply

Wanderingdrake also deleted a citation because s/he didn't like it. Should probably be restored. 2A00:23C5:FE1C:3701:C92F:A444:8ECC:C889 09:45, 31 August 2024 (UTC)Reply

I am confused as to what @Wanderingdrake means. It seems like a synonym for otherkin, at least going by our definitions. Wanderingdrake defined alterhuman as "an opt-in label and umbrella term for identities that are not considered typical to the human experience" and later added the examples "otherkind, therianthropes, phytanthropes, celestials, soulbonders, spiritual mediums, and plural systems".

However, our definition for otherkin says pretty much the same thing: "A person who claims or believes that their soul, essence, or identity is non-human" i.e. everything he listed above; otherkind, therianthropes, phytanthropes, celestials, soulbonders, spiritual mediums (save maybe for plural systems?). So, it sure seems like a synonym? Either way, it is good to meet a fellow alterhuman, @Wanderingdrake. LunaEatsTuna (talk) 10:06, 31 August 2024 (UTC)Reply

AFAICT, there is no consistent difference between the scopes of the two terms, at least as far as their use by the communities referred to above (and in the way WD defined), so I have simply undone WD's changes so that this entry is once again simply defined as another term for otherkin. It might be possible to cite and add an unrelated sci-fi use of alterhuman to mean ~"altered human" (like an augmented human or a cyborg), e.g. 2017, Nick Bentley, Contemporary British Fiction, […] in a variety of science fiction and cyberpunk novels that explore the marginalized position of cyborg, posthuman and alterhuman identities. - -sche (discuss) 04:13, 23 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

September 2024

arachnidial

Latest comment: 21 days ago3 comments3 people in discussion

Rfv-sense: anatomy, relating to the arachnidium. Is there such a thing??? Denazz (talk) 16:33, 4 September 2024 (UTC)Reply

Yes, there's a Wikipedia article on it[32], though I'm not sure if this is the right adjective to describe things that relate to arachnidiums/arachnidia or not. --Overlordnat1 (talk) 03:29, 5 September 2024 (UTC)Reply

We have [[arachnidian]], which, in contrast, seems readily attestable: [[33]]. DCDuring (talk) 23:41, 22 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

irrespectively

Latest comment: 8 months ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Rfv-sense "Corresponding to exactly 2 items in the opposite order they were listed." Ioaxxere (talk) 03:07, 6 September 2024 (UTC)Reply

I know from experience this word is used this way on rare occasion, usually when they accidentally list the corresponding items in the opposite order. May be colloquial but I wouldn’t know how to go about providing hard evidence the word is used this way. But trust me it is. 104.35.197.130 14:43, 9 September 2024 (UTC)Reply

sui generis

Latest comment: 7 months ago9 comments3 people in discussion

Rfv-sense as an adverb: By itself; of its own.

Given with the usage example It is nothing to worry about sui generis, but in context of the other factors it's alarming indeed., as a synonym of per se.

This sounds strange to me; I've only ever heard the legal sense, which is an adjective. Theknightwho (talk) 05:47, 8 September 2024 (UTC)Reply

To me, too, it seems like an adjective. Why do law dictionaries call it a noun? DCDuring (talk) 23:28, 8 September 2024 (UTC)Reply

@DCDuring It can also refer to something that is sui generis in legal contexts. Theknightwho (talk) 01:30, 9 September 2024 (UTC)Reply

No dictionary except for legal dictionaries call sui generis a noun. The legal lexicographers must have a reason for calling it a noun. What is the reason? Is it short for "a thing (law, decision, situation) that is sui generis". Or, better, where are the cites? DCDuring (talk) 01:46, 9 September 2024 (UTC)Reply

A few cites (of the noun) for you:

2013 June 29, Bimal K. Matilal, A. Chakrabarti, Knowing from Words: Western and Indian Philosophical Analysis of Understanding and Testimony, Springer Science & Business Media, →ISBN, page 100:
It is word-generated knowledge or knowledge by testimony ( K. T. for short ) – a sui generis.
2020 May 21, Michael R Licona, The Resurrection of Jesus: A New Historiographical Approach, Inter-Varsity Press, →ISBN:
Prior to the 1990s a large segment of New Testament scholarship maintained that the Gospels represent a sui generis, that is, a genre unique to them. This sui generis was viewed as a type of mythology.
2021 October 5, Sze Ping-fat, Carrier's Liability under the Hague, Hague-Visby and Hamburg Rules, BRILL, →ISBN, page 124:
Insofar as none of these approaches has ever been formally overruled by the highest Court of the land, the law of deviation remains an area of controversy and is practically treated as a sui generis - that is, as a law quite distinct from the general law of contract.

These look like adverbial cites:

2003, Canada. Parliament. Senate. Standing Committee on Social Affairs, Science and Technology, Délibérations Du Comité Sénatorial Permanent Des Affaires Sociales, Des Sciences Et de la Technologie:
They came up with a program that the federal Minister of Agriculture and his provincial colleagues agreed was a good and appropriate approach to handling that particular problem. They did it sui generis.
2014 August 7, Jonas Ebbesson, Marie Jacobsson, Mark Adam Klamberg, David Langlet, Pål Wrange, International Law and Changing Perceptions of Security: Liber Amicorum Said Mahmoudi, Hotei Publishing, →ISBN, page 5:
Another possibility is that the council acted sui generis and expressed a one-off view on the facts with no precedential significance.
2015 December 31, Llewellyn Howes, Judging Q and saving Jesus - Q’s contribution to the wisdom-apocalypticism debate in historical Jesus studies., AOSIS, →ISBN, page 62:
The refutation of Kleinliteratur conceptions enabled Kloppenborg to do away with the idea that Q was created sui generis, which, in turn, enabled him to compare Q with other ancient literature (Kirk 1998:35–36, 64).

Smurrayinchester (talk) 12:38, 10 September 2024 (UTC)Reply

Thanks. DCDuring (talk) 14:48, 17 September 2024 (UTC)Reply

Added to defs. in entry. DCDuring (talk) 14:53, 17 September 2024 (UTC)Reply

@DCDuring The reason it's used as a noun in legal contexts is because it's a convenient shorthand for "something that is sui generis". Outside of law, it's not a term that people use very often. Theknightwho (talk) 02:19, 17 September 2024 (UTC)Reply

@Smurrayinchester There is also a plural form, sui genera ([34]), though it mostly seems to see use as a declined adjective. Theknightwho (talk) 02:31, 17 September 2024 (UTC)Reply

Itzcuintlipotzotli - a nice cryptid critter from medieval Mexico

Latest comment: 8 months ago1 comment1 person in discussion

We already have itzcuintli and its cognates. I propose adding this guy: itzcuintlipotzotli, aka „yzi-cuinte potzotli", „itzcuintepotzotli”, „ytzeuinte porzotli", „itzeuinte potzotli”, „itzcuinte-potzoli” (all from Nahuatl, here is the proof) - the most developed (by me) references are now in its plwiki entry, e.g. Desmond Morris, Dogs: The Ultimate Dictionary of over 1,000 Dog Breeds, Trafalgar Square Books, 2008, page 590, ISBN 978-1-57076-410-3, or its 19th century versions:

John Richardson etc., The museum of natural history; being a popular account of the structure, habits, and classification of the various departments of the animal kingdom: quadrupeds, birds, reptiles, fishes, shells, and insects, including the insects destructive to agriculture, New York, J. S. Virtue, 1877, page 60 : "Of the three different species of Dog included by Fernandez, in History of the Animals of New Spain, ... the generic name Alco, Button, rejecting at once the hairless Dog, identical with the Bald Turk of the Old Continent, admits readily the species called Ytzcuinte potzotli — a Dog, short-necked in an unusual degree, and humped in shape, with silky hair ... "

Frances Calderón de la Barca (quite famous and popular in her days), Life in Mexico 1843 : "Hanging up by a hook in the entry, along with various other dead animals, polecats, weasels, etc., was the ugliest creature I ever beheld. It seemed a species of dog, with a hunch back, a head like a wolf, and no neck, a perfect monster. As far as I can make out it must be the itzcuintepotzotli, mentioned by some old Mexican writers.... " Zezen (talk) 23:34, 11 September 2024 (UTC)Reply

dymaxion

Latest comment: 7 months ago3 comments2 people in discussion

Adjective: "Able to use technology to maximize the use of resources." I'm sure Buckminster Fuller used it, but did anyone else?

We also have Dymaxion, somewhat gauchely defined as "A structure or device that is dymaxion in nature" - a better def would be "(attributive) A name applied by Buckminster Fuller to his inventions.", but perhaps we can do better than that. This, that and the other (talk) 05:04, 17 September 2024 (UTC)Reply

RHU (via InfoPlease} has: "noting or pertaining to R. Buckminster Fuller's concept of the use of technology and resources to maximum advantage, with minimal expenditure of energy and material."

It still needs cites, though they should be findable in discussions of Fuller's works. DCDuring (talk) 14:43, 17 September 2024 (UTC)Reply

The two problems with the dymaxion entry are the adjective POS and the lowercase "d". I can find occasional references to some of Fuller's inventions spelled with a lowercase "d" (dymaxion house, dymaxion car) but these uses only support dymaxion as an alternative case form of Dymaxion and nothing further. This, that and the other (talk) 22:49, 17 September 2024 (UTC)Reply

gegagedigedagedago

Latest comment: 6 months ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Needs to pass the 3 independent uses criteria of WT:CFI. AG202 (talk) 21:39, 17 September 2024 (UTC)Reply

And the alt form gegagedigedagedaoh. 2A00:23C5:FE1C:3701:BDC1:47AD:61BB:811D 18:58, 19 October 2024 (UTC)Reply

absence makes the heart go yonder

Latest comment: 5 months ago3 comments3 people in discussion

Rfv-sense

This was added as a synonym of absence makes the heart grow fonder, but all I can find are quotes that mean quite the opposite, or are at best ambiguous. Can we find any clear support for this interpretation? Kiwima (talk) 22:14, 19 September 2024 (UTC)Reply

Seems unlikely. absence makes the heart grow fonder belongs in the etymology. Could this kind of rhyming derivation be worth an etymology category? DCDuring (talk) 15:17, 20 September 2024 (UTC)Reply

I agree. If this phrase were used in the place of "absence makes the heart grow fonder", it'd be erroneous. It almost feels like an eggcorn for that other phrase, if used in that sense. ScribeYearling (talk) 09:03, 17 November 2024 (UTC)Reply

srirachi

Latest comment: 7 months ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Rfv-sense

This entry was such a mess that it was hard to figure out what to do with it. If I understand it correctly, it was originally supposed to be an alternative plural of sriracha, and thus an alternative form of srirachas. A quick look at Google books shows it to be used in the singular, possibly as an alternative form of sriracha. I made this an rfv-sense because it's obviously in use, and I don't have the time or energy to sort out the usage. I have no problem with this ending up as cited or resolved, and will be happy to withdraw my nomination if someone who has looked at the usage thinks I should. Thanks! Chuck Entz (talk) 20:37, 21 September 2024 (UTC)Reply

beastlihead

Latest comment: 7 months ago4 comments3 people in discussion

Just Spenser? Denazz (talk) 12:17, 23 September 2024 (UTC)Reply

Pretty sure OED has numerous cites for this one. Will check again later. This, that and the other (talk) 13:14, 23 September 2024 (UTC)Reply

NED has a cite from Browne's Britannia's Pastorals: "Peregall to nymphes of old, From which their beastlihed now freely start." The modern OED also includes a curious quote from the 3 January 1887 edition of the New Mississippian, which is hard to find (anyone have access to Newspapers.com?). This, that and the other (talk) 03:47, 9 October 2024 (UTC)Reply

I can find a use in Ford's Christian Repository which is probably(?) this sense, although I'm not certain. - -sche (discuss) 05:29, 9 October 2024 (UTC)Reply

helios

Latest comment: 7 months ago3 comments2 people in discussion

I was looking for an etymology or a different attestation for this term, but as an internet friend of mine pointed out, it would be easiest to interpret this entry as a faulty interpretation of the plural helioses, which might equally well be the plural of heliosis. This interpretation would have the advantage that heliosis has the meaning "exposure to the sun" according to LSJ, which is much closer to a meaning 'solarium' than just plain helios. One further argument is that the authors of the quotations on helioses also used solaria, not solariums, implying they were knowledgeable enough about classic languages and especially proper plural formation.
Chuck Entz, you reversed the edit, is this enough justification? — This unsigned comment was added by Suryaratha03 (talk • contribs) at 15:08, 24 September 2024 (UTC).Reply

@Suryaratha03: Let's see how the rfv plays out. As for the revert: you just removed Etymology 1 and left Etymology 2 hanging. That was bad enough, but this is a cooperative project: someone took the trouble to find the quotes and do the data entry a couple of years ago, and you just obliterated it without explanation. You may be right and it may be a misinterpreted plural of heliosis, but even then, this is an English entry and English doesn't have to follow Latin grammatical rules. It might even have developed a new singular in the same way that pease (plural, peasen) gave rise to pea. The key is whether anyone can find usage of the alleged singular. By the way, your ping didn't work because you forgot to sign your post. Chuck Entz (talk) 04:41, 25 September 2024 (UTC)Reply

I didn't delete the quotations, I moved them to heliosis because I think that is the correct lemma form. As for the Etymology 2, I will personally adjust that should the move be confirmed. Looking at google books, heliosis is very often used for Ancient sun-therapy and once possibly for a sunroom ( [35], though the context: "practiced by the Greeks in the "Heliosis" or resting places" makes me think it's either a typo or a qualifyer of 'places'). As far as I can see it looks worse for plain helios though (no relevant results for "helios" + "solarium"/"sunroom"/"sun parlor"). The problem at root in my opinion is actually that the idea that the Ancient Greeks had any kind of named sunrooms is actually some kind of misconception derived from a line of citations that leads to no classical or archaeological source. Even Latin solarium just means any part of the house exposed to the sun, mainly the flat roof. In that case its dubious whether a few citations, solely in the plural, warrant a dictionary entry. If anything, the meaning "Ancient Greek practice of sunbathing" would be justified, though it usually only occurs with an added explication anyways
Suryaratha03 (talk) 19:41, 25 September 2024 (UTC)Reply

October 2024

waffle hole

Latest comment: 6 months ago2 comments2 people in discussion

I can't really find uses that are not referencing the line from Shrek (which doesn't really count as an attestation for an "anus" sense). Einstein2 (talk) 23:55, 1 October 2024 (UTC)Reply

I've added one.[36] TDHoward (talk) 20:16, 5 November 2024 (UTC)Reply

Birminghamize

Latest comment: 7 months ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Only the 1856 quote supports the sense (looking up the 1986 quote, there's a footnote that explains that Birminghamize here means "Reform Ireland's local government along the same lines as Birmingham's"), and I can't find any use of it by other authors. Every Google Books seems to be quoting Emerson. Smurrayinchester (talk) 06:47, 2 October 2024 (UTC)Reply

We could probably attest this if we generalised the meaning a bit to ‘to do or say in a Birmingham/Brummie manner’ - the ‘make ersatz’ meaning is after all a specific subsense of that based on offensive stereotypes. Compare Birmingham screwdriver, in fact there are some websites claiming that Birmingham had a reputation for minting fake coins at the time of Emerson too. Overlordnat1 (talk) 08:09, 2 October 2024 (UTC)Reply

body-ody-ody

Latest comment: 4 days ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Entry says it is Internet slang for flattering (adjective). Every other website says it's a drag queen thing, meaning showing off a feminine-looking body (or something?). And probably a noun. 2A00:23C5:FE1C:3701:9DA8:7B66:71F9:5846 14:52, 7 October 2024 (UTC)Reply

Fsiled Vilipender (talk) 10:49, 10 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

enchiridion

Latest comment: 3 months ago5 comments4 people in discussion

Rfv-sense "a dagger". there is a reference for this sense, but does it actually pass CFI? ragweed theater _{talk, user} 20:31, 8 October 2024 (UTC)Reply

Milton was probably just playing with the term's etymological meaning, "that which is held in the hand". (Actually he more likely knew that the word was used to mean "dagger" in Ancient Greek.) Century and OED don't include a "dagger" sense. This, that and the other (talk) 03:05, 9 October 2024 (UTC)Reply

I was able to read The New World of Words by Edward Phillips and John Kersey 1720 as digitized by Google Books. And it was right there: ..."also a Dagger". Cmbaugher (talk) 20:53, 28 January 2025 (UTC)Reply

@Cmbaugher: citation in a dictionary isn't enough for a term to pass RFV; there need to be at least three independent uses of the term in texts. — Sgconlaw (talk) 22:20, 28 January 2025 (UTC)Reply

yes, the edition of Areopagitica cited in the entry also mentioned The New World of Words. this is still a mention though, not a use, like Sgconlaw said. also note that The New World of Words, like most early dictionaries and glossaries, contains its fair share of dictionary-only words that would not meet the CFI here ragweed theater _{talk, user} 22:23, 28 January 2025 (UTC)Reply

subconscious

Latest comment: 6 months ago3 comments2 people in discussion

Rfv-sense "partly conscious," distinct from "not accessible to the conscious mind." The latter sense was labeled "dated." What do people think of that? Do you agree with what wikipedia has to say about the usage of subconscious and unconscious (w:subconscious)? Should that sense maybe be split into a technical usage and a colloquial usage? —Caoimhin ceallach (talk) 21:13, 12 October 2024 (UTC)Reply

‘Dated’ seems a strange tag to me. Perhaps professional psychobabblers don’t use the word ‘subconscious’ any longer but the general public do. I’ve also never personally used or encountered ‘subconscious’ as, essentially, a synonym for semiconscious. I’ve made a few adjustments to reflect this, we might also consider merging the translation table for ‘partially conscious’ at subconscious and the one at semiconscious. —Overlordnat1 (talk) 09:32, 16 October 2024 (UTC)Reply

I think that's a good idea. —Caoimhin ceallach (talk) 10:48, 16 October 2024 (UTC)Reply

wurbagool

Latest comment: 5 months ago4 comments2 people in discussion

This does appear to exist (although very rare). However, I think we have the wrong continent and probably the wrong taxonomic name too. This, that and the other (talk) 08:54, 13 October 2024 (UTC)Reply

Ping our taxoboffins @Chuck Entz, DCDuring This, that and the other (talk) 09:59, 20 November 2024 (UTC)Reply

The RfV question remains, but the entry was wrong about the links and the continent. If it fails RfV, the content should be moved to one of the attestable vernacular names. DCDuring (talk) 13:05, 20 November 2024 (UTC)Reply

this Google Books search shows attestability. It seems dated or even obsolete. It looks to be derived, possibly, from Malayalam. DCDuring (talk) 13:14, 20 November 2024 (UTC)Reply

monster

Latest comment: 6 months ago7 comments5 people in discussion

Verb sense: "(informal, British, transitive, intransitive) To punish, reprimand or intimidate. "Get the hell out of here!" Dante monstered when Santa approached the high school carolers." — Added by an American. I've never heard of it in British usage. The usage example does not look British either ("Santa" would be Father Christmas; "carolers" would have two Ls). 2A00:23C5:FE1C:3701:580C:F1AF:B902:5AA6 10:53, 13 October 2024 (UTC)Reply

We might need help from the creator here, @Flame, not lame. They credited "Oxford Languages" - not sure exactly what resource this refers to. OED has two transitive senses marked "originally Australian", one which essentially means "to harass", and the other which roughly corresponds to this sense, although the meaning is closer to "demonise". This, that and the other (talk) 11:06, 13 October 2024 (UTC)Reply

I searched "monster meaning" on Google when I was 15 and it showed the dictionary. As a verb, it defined monster as an informal British verb for criticize or reprimand. The example sentence stated, "Mother would monster me for getting home late" as in indicator monster is a transitive verb. The bottom of the default dictionary on Google states Oxford Languages is their source. Flame, not lame 💔 (Don't talk to me.) 11:13, 13 October 2024 (UTC)Reply

I am American, so I am not perfect at British vocabulary. Flame, not lame 💔 (Don't talk to me.) 11:14, 13 October 2024 (UTC)Reply

@Flame, not lame thanks for that, that's very helpful. Needless to say, Oxford is a reputable lexicography provider, but my cursory searches are really not turning up any evidence for this sense. Maybe Kiwima will be able to find something. This, that and the other (talk) 11:46, 13 October 2024 (UTC)Reply

@This, that and the other Is this not just the same as sense 3 ("to harass")? As a Brit, I have never heard this. Theknightwho (talk) 00:44, 30 October 2024 (UTC)Reply

I’ve not come across this either but ‘monster’, especially in the phrase ‘monster it’ or ‘monster them’ can be easily found online used by British and Australian authors to mean ‘do well at’, ‘do well against’, ‘defeat’ or ‘succeed in’. I'm also seeing 'monster him/her' meaning 'defeat him/her', 'monster' meaning 'devour/demolish' in culinary contexts, also 'to turn a truck into a monster truck', 'to drive a monster truck over' and 'to strike with monstrous force' or 'move forcefully'. There are interesting results if you search for 'monster one's way' and 'monster it over'. Overlordnat1 (talk) 09:03, 1 November 2024 (UTC)Reply

annoy

Latest comment: 7 months ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Rfv-sense "(intransitive) to be troublesome." I find an intransitive sense in some dictionaries but I can't actually think of a true intransitive use. I think the adjective annoying doesn't count. Nor do the contexts in which you can use almost any transitive verb with an implied object, like "Don't annoy!" ("Don't disturb!") or "Mosquitos are designed to annoy." ("Some people just love to humiliate.") Rather, is it actually possible to say something like "The dog's howling annoyed all night long"? —Caoimhin ceallach (talk) 12:06, 13 October 2024 (UTC)Reply

ara ara

Latest comment: 5 months ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Rfv-sense. — This unsigned comment was added by Polomo47 (talk • contribs) at 19:30, 13 October 2024 (UTC).Reply

https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/ara-ara ScribeYearling (talk) 08:52, 17 November 2024 (UTC)Reply

manclaiming

Latest comment: 7 months ago3 comments2 people in discussion

— SURJECTION ^{/ T / C / L /} 20:51, 13 October 2024 (UTC)Reply

has cites on Twitter. it would pass if we say in a vote that it does. probably hasnt caught on much outside social media —Soap— 21:33, 13 October 2024 (UTC)Reply

Possibly coined by the writers of a blog called Shakesville (one writer, Melissa McEwan, writes "Today in Manclaiming" as if it's already an established term). But since it's so simialr to mansplaining it may have been coined more than once, and McEwan's uses of it are about fashion and don't seem so angry. —Soap— 21:58, 14 October 2024 (UTC)Reply

householdstuff

Latest comment: 6 months ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Franken-entry that can't decide whether it is English or Middle English. This, that and the other (talk) 07:12, 16 October 2024 (UTC)Reply

Seems like it should be both—Johnson’s dictionary has 3 cites for (Early) Modern English, and the MED has one for Middle English. — Vorziblix (talk · contribs) 01:40, 14 November 2024 (UTC)Reply

cheese up

Latest comment: 6 months ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Four senses, all very rare at best in Google Books. I couldn't find anything for these two: (i) "(intransitive) To become cheesy (overly dramatic, emotional, or exaggerated)"; (ii) "(transitive) To make (someone) smile". Beware scannos of "cheered up". 2A00:23C5:FE1C:3701:BDC1:47AD:61BB:811D 14:33, 19 October 2024 (UTC)Reply

aranga

Latest comment: 6 months ago6 comments2 people in discussion

Discussion moved from WT:RFDE.

Arangas, a least in Russian, is the singular, not plural, also used in official documents (well, kinda, official, but like museum documents and news), also massively in different kinda stories. Can not find so much ethnographical material with usage in Russian or English. The -s ending is anyway not plural. Tollef Salemann (talk) 17:21, 16 October 2024 (UTC)Reply

@Tollef Salemann are you arguing that the word doesn't exist? Or that the plural is wrong? Either way, those issues are for WT:RFVE. This, that and the other (talk) 21:47, 16 October 2024 (UTC)Reply

aranga doesn’t exist, because arangas is the singular. What is aranga I don’t know. What plural is for arangas I also don’t know. But it is RFD for aranga, not arangas. Tollef Salemann (talk) 07:12, 17 October 2024 (UTC)Reply

"doesn't exist" → needs to be dealt with at RFVE. This, that and the other (talk) 01:46, 25 October 2024 (UTC)Reply

It's actually easy to find this (in italics) in English texts [37] [38] [39]. The Buryat word for the concept is аранга (aranga) according to https://buryat-lang.ru/. This, that and the other (talk) 08:24, 25 October 2024 (UTC)Reply

Nice! I never knew that Buryats had this concept. Tollef Salemann (talk) 09:58, 25 October 2024 (UTC)Reply

meow button

Latest comment: 6 months ago5 comments4 people in discussion

2A00:23C5:FE1C:3701:756A:CAA2:165E:E801 18:50, 27 October 2024 (UTC)Reply

replying to IP, I added quotations from Twitter. Juwan (talk) 07:16, 28 October 2024 (UTC)Reply

One is a dead link (404), the TheKervAlt tweet. Not durably archived? 2A00:23C5:FE1C:3701:3DE6:D319:85F9:3589 10:31, 28 October 2024 (UTC)Reply

it's not a dead link, I can access it just fine. this might be because Twitter is a horrible platform and may hide NSFW posts if you are logged out. viewing these on an archive works, but the Internet Archive is still down and read-only. if you know any other archiving solutions, please post it and I can archive these properly. Juwan (talk) 19:43, 28 October 2024 (UTC)Reply

Never had a Twitter account in my life. However, Wiktionary had its "hot word" policy for words that popped up quickly. I'm not sure it was intended for words where a Google Web search finds about 20 results, all referring to the same initial tweet. -- (Funny Eqx story) My client had their Twitter account permanently blocked (and like Google there's no way to actually contact them and restore it) because the social-media intern set the "age" to 20 years, meaning "our organisation has existed for twenty years". Twitter immediately decided "you must have been underage when you set up the account then" and banned it forever. VERY funny. I've been telling them "nobody uses Twitter any more anyway, for political reasons" but... yes, they shouldn't listen to my marketing ideas, in the same way I don't allow marketing to edit my program code. 2A00:23C5:FE1C:3701:89DB:E713:C8BF:E57E 21:25, 29 October 2024 (UTC)Reply

transmove

Latest comment: 4 days ago4 comments4 people in discussion

Only Spenser — This unsigned comment was added by 85.48.185.210 (talk) at 07:47, 29 October 2024 (UTC).Reply

Just dumping a bunch of cites here for now, as it's clear that Spenser's sense is not the only one in use. I found this NNSE use (note "ovarian circle" instead of "cycle", and the "percentege" misspelling, as two NNSE hallmarks just in this small snippet) and something here. An old use and some poem. Another Japanese NNSE use potentially, a chemistry use. That's about it in GBooks. Need to sort these later. This, that and the other (talk) 09:46, 30 October 2024 (UTC)Reply

I added three additional (poetic) uses including the Catholic one TTO mentioned, and labelled it as such. I changed the "obsolete" tag to "largely obsolete", but it's possible it should just be changed to "rare" or "uncommon" or something. - -sche (discuss) 14:34, 27 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

RFV passed. --Overlordnat1 (talk) 14:43, 10 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

transpass

Latest comment: 17 days ago3 comments3 people in discussion

3 definitions. forthglide listed as a synonym is also suspect — This unsigned comment was added by 85.48.185.210 (talk) at 07:56, 29 October 2024 (UTC).Reply

Probably legit. OED and Century have it, with two senses each. Century cites John Gregory (1665) Notes and observations upon some passages of Scripture and this poem. I think "pass away" just means the same thing as "pass by" in this context, as opposed to being a direct reference to death. This, that and the other (talk) 09:35, 30 October 2024 (UTC)Reply

Cited sense 3. - -sche (discuss) 14:52, 27 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

nomen nescio

Latest comment: 6 months ago4 comments2 people in discussion

This is not English. Our sense line would hardly persuade you otherwise:

(Latin phrase) See the Latin section for definitions.

At best it's Translingual. Of the four cites, two are italicised and three are mentions. This, that and the other (talk) 04:03, 30 October 2024 (UTC)Reply

Lots of Latin phrases are used in English, and this is one of them. I'm finding various examples on Google Books where it's used as a stand-in or substitute for a person of unknown (or concealed) name, or as the name of a hypothetical person in examples (besides the ones where it's just defined, but not used, which come up first). Will try to add some citations in the next couple of days if nobody beats me to it (feel free, I may not have time tomorrow or Thursday). P Aculeius (talk) 05:24, 30 October 2024 (UTC)Reply

Okay, well, look for French and German (etc) results too. You may well find it's Translingual. This, that and the other (talk) 09:03, 30 October 2024 (UTC)Reply

Since I'm not fluent in French or German, I'm not likely to be able to find and sort out mentions from uses. I'm just saying that you can't infer a phrase not having a meaning in English because it's Latin, which is what the first two lines appear to say. It's not clear from reading your post whether the discussion of the cites relates to "at best it's translingual" or what grounds there are for that assertion (which, to be clear, I am not attempting to refute). My reply only concerned its use in English, because that's the reason it's here, and that's the only language (besides Latin) that I'm able to verify its use in. P Aculeius (talk) 13:42, 30 October 2024 (UTC)Reply

November 2024

trifling

Latest comment: 17 days ago4 comments4 people in discussion

Rfv-sense: (African-American Vernacular) Of suspicious character, typically secretive or deceitful; shady.

No. I disagree. It generally means lazy / work averse. — This unsigned comment was added by 2607:FB90:8DA5:849E:AC39:C1B7:6911:ED6 (talk) at 00:33, 1 November 2024 (UTC).Reply

Your def is a better fit for the given quote. Needs to be confirmed with further evidence. This, that and the other (talk) 10:18, 1 November 2024 (UTC)Reply

I first encountered this online in the delightful phrase "trifling niggah". I was interested to encounter it again recently in Julius Lester's (Afro-sympathetic) 1980s or '90s retellings of the Brer Rabbit stories. 2A00:23C5:FE1C:3701:1DDE:A582:20BE:E3BB 00:28, 16 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

I agree the current definition is wrong. I am not sure whether the actual meaning of the term, as used in the way we are discussing, is distinguishable from the other two senses, "of little importance" and "idle, frivolous". - -sche (discuss) 14:54, 27 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

spook

Latest comment: 4 months ago6 comments4 people in discussion

Rfv-sense A hobgoblin. Not in the OED.

I have a feeling this is intended to refer to hobgoblin (“a source of dread, fear or apprehension; a bugbear”), but that isn't what springs to mind when I read "hobgoblin" in isolation, as it's a figurative use of the term, so if that is the case then this definition needs improvement. However, if it truly is intended to refer to hobgoblin (“small, ugly goblin that makes trouble for humans”) then it definitely needs some citations. Theknightwho (talk) 21:35, 1 November 2024 (UTC)Reply

The reference to a hobgoblin is present in Webster Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged originally published in 1993 and reprinted by Könemann (page 2204).-- Carnby (talk) 22:14, 18 December 2024 (UTC)Reply

Webster's Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged. Merriam-Webster, 1993, p. 2204.

Bartlett's Dictionary of Americanisms (1859), "Spook. (Dutch). A ghost; hobgoblin. A term much used in New York." Webster's New International Dictionary (1911) gives: "A spirit; ghost; apparition; specter; hobgoblin." In these two, the words are treated as synonymous; for some reason the Wiktionary entry separated "hobgoblin" into its own sense when it was created back in 2005. OED (1919) gives fewer synonyms: "A spectre, apparition, ghost."

I haven't added any examples yet because I'm not sure whether "hobgoblin" should be folded back into the main sense. It's also a bit difficult to figure out how to tell whether "spook" describes a hobgoblin other than by searching for the two together. But I find: The Optical Journal, vol. XI, No. 6, "Tales of an Optician: In the Form of a Man" (1903): "Nevertheless, it was such a relief to find he was not a ghost, hobgoblin, spook, spirit, apparition, or some such airy substance..." Arthur Kent Chignell, An Outpost in Papua (1911), "Peter, in the afternoon, when he came to me with a cut finger, explained that it was all the fault of a Dau (devil, ghost, spirit, spook, hobgoblin, what-you-please)." Tom Stoppard, in "Shipwreck" (2002) has Turgenev playing with Karl Marx' suggestion of the phrase "the ghost of Communism" by replacing "ghost" with "phantom", "spook", "spectre", "spirit", and finally settling on "hobgoblin". This is of course too early to have been influenced by Wiktionary, so it appears to confirm that all of these words can be considered synonymous, even though for many of us "hobgoblin" instead calls to mind an imp, rather than a ghost.

There are likely other and perhaps better examples; I came up with these three in the first three pages of Google Books results. But I'll wait to add them until I have an idea whether to recombine "hobgoblin" with the first sense, since we may not need so many examples for each synonym. P Aculeius (talk) 00:06, 19 December 2024 (UTC)Reply

I think the underlying issue is whether hobgoblin should be used as a definiens in this entry (or possibly any entry). It was apparently a synonym in the US of one sense of spook. Maybe it still is a synonym of one current definition. An even deeper issue is whether we should use as definiens any term that currently has multiple common definitions. DCDuring (talk) 00:22, 19 December 2024 (UTC)Reply

I'm not sure that gets us anywhere; not only is it a possible meaning of "spook" explicitly given in numerous sources (if we include the many dictionaries that say it is, as well as those that seem to use it as such), but all of the other terms seem to be defined by reference to each other: "ghost", "spirit", "spectre", "spook", "apparition", "phantom"—and nearly all of them have multiple common definitions. And I think that no matter what verbal contortions we resort to, any particularly useful definition of "spook" is going to depend on other words that have different possible interpretations. The fact that the best dictionaries all do so would seem to make this inevitable. P Aculeius (talk) 02:26, 19 December 2024 (UTC)Reply

Where it could get us is a differently worded definition or, better, placement as one of the synonyms of the first definition of spook.

At least some dictionaries don't define their words with synonym clouds: I think Webster 1913 does so the most. We should place hobgoblin where various thesauruses (not ours, however) place it: as a synonym of ghost, spook, and other members of the cloud. It could be slipped right in under def. 1 of spook. DCDuring (talk) 04:11, 19 December 2024 (UTC)Reply

next next hour

Latest comment: 6 months ago3 comments3 people in discussion

"(Philippines) The following hour after the subsequent hour." Do people even say "next hour"? 2A00:23C5:FE1C:3701:B977:C884:A1B0:2E60 10:24, 4 November 2024 (UTC)Reply

There are many lects in Anglophonia. DCDuring (talk) 17:19, 4 November 2024 (UTC)Reply

(RFDing based on next next was another option. But this one I can't find even when I search filtering by site:.ph on Google.) 2A00:23C5:FE1C:3701:1A1:860C:900E:E6C7 20:05, 4 November 2024 (UTC)Reply

magnet play

Latest comment: 6 months ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Rfv-sense - the sexual sense. I don't think this is a term. I can find references to "magnetic play", but not "magnet play". Kiwima (talk) 01:01, 5 November 2024 (UTC)Reply

fpoon

Latest comment: 5 months ago4 comments3 people in discussion

Not in GBooks. A few joky Internet uses, nothing serious. 2A00:23C5:FE1C:3701:49D0:1ABA:3934:4EBA 19:51, 5 November 2024 (UTC)Reply

Any chance that the author was confused by the appearance of "ſpoon" in older printed works? Someone unfamiliar with 'long-s' would likely mistake it for an 'f', and perhaps assume it to be a hybrid instrument, like a spork (which evidently dates from a later period; the name seems to be twentieth century). I suspect occurrences of "fpoon" in Google Books from around 1800 or earlier would usually be scannos for "ſpoon". P Aculeius (talk) 00:58, 10 November 2024 (UTC)Reply

I've added one. TDHoward (talk) 20:45, 15 November 2024 (UTC)Reply

Not sure that the first two citations are either independent or uses of the word: they are both examples of how spoonerism doesn't work in real life—both pointing out that "spoon and fork" are spoonerized as "foon and spork", not "fpoon and sork". Which makes them hypothetical examples of a phenomenon that is also explicitly said not to occur. And the fact that they both make the same point about the same combination of words—nine years apart—suggests that they arise from a common source, although neither is available to me, even in snippet view, and in neither case is the author of the article cited. It seems likely that they have the same author, or that the first was used as a source by the second. I'm also not sure that the third citation counts as a use either: it is simply an example of someone intentionally blending the two words as a joke. What we don't have is an example of somebody using a "fpoon" or finding one in a drawer: these three citations are two examples of making up a word for the purpose of demonstrating how they make it up, but never using it. P Aculeius (talk) 15:20, 16 November 2024 (UTC)Reply

car mileage

Latest comment: 11 days ago5 comments4 people in discussion

Rfv-sense: The amount paid by one road for the use of cars of another road. Kiwima (talk) 20:11, 8 November 2024 (UTC)Reply

Yeah, I read that and was like, WTF? Whalespotcha (talk) 21:33, 8 November 2024 (UTC)Reply
I think the rail and auto labels are reversed. Railroads in the US, pay each other for the use of their railcars. Something similar must happen among the railroads of the EU and wherever there are interconnected systems. DCDuring (talk) 21:54, 8 November 2024 (UTC)Reply
Or both labels should be for rail transport. DCDuring (talk) 21:57, 8 November 2024 (UTC)Reply

Mysteryroom strikes again... yes, they are clearly rail cars and rail roads. I've fixed the definition. 2A00:23C5:FE1C:3701:F57D:AA4A:497:5681 15:51, 3 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

declinate

Latest comment: 6 months ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Rfv-sense synonym of "decline" (in the grammatical sense). Zacwill (talk) 17:56, 10 November 2024 (UTC)Reply

It's out there, but perhaps rare enough to be regarded as an error. I've added two. 2A00:23C5:FE1C:3701:1051:7725:5B14:15EF 19:46, 10 November 2024 (UTC)Reply

deck

Latest comment: 1 month ago3 comments3 people in discussion

Euphemism for "dick", i.e. penis. 2A00:23C5:FE1C:3701:1051:7725:5B14:15EF 21:50, 10 November 2024 (UTC)Reply

~~passed~~ as a pronunciation Speaking, pretty widespread --90.174.2.65 06:53, 5 April 2025 (UTC)Reply
- Nope, this needs cites. Also needs to be moved to its own etymology if kept. This, that and the other (talk) 11:25, 5 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

WTFO

Latest comment: 6 months ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Rfv-sense "(slang) walk the fuck out". — SURJECTION ^{/ T / C / L /} 16:08, 11 November 2024 (UTC)Reply

go

Latest comment: 4 months ago9 comments4 people in discussion

Rfv-sense of go being Clipping of go to the. in the UK. I've heard multiple British people say "go [place]". This is attested since 2018 and does not appear to be used by immigrants. I, a Canadian, always say "go to the [place]"/"go to [proper noun]'s" except for "home". I've seen Americans teach "go [place]" to be bad grammar, but I can't find anywhere including on Wiktionary saying this British construction exists.

Can this be said in a formal British workplace/court/interview?
Do other verbs allow omitting "to the"?
Is this construction transitive, i.e. is the "[place]" a direct object or an adverb?

76.71.3.150 12:47, 12 November 2024 (UTC)Reply

It's informal and I can't think of other verbs that allow this construction off-hand. I'm not sure about your last question, it's unlikely that someone would say 'I'm going big shop' or 'I'm going really big shop' instead of 'I'm going shop' if that's what you mean. It was surprisingly hard to find evidence of this quite commonplace informal use of 'go' online but I did find the following Australian website[40] (I'm gonna go shops on Monday arvo) which demonstrates that this is found in Australia as well as Britain, at least occasionally.--Overlordnat1 (talk) 08:05, 13 November 2024 (UTC)Reply

I would have never thought of "?I'm going shop" because the "I'm going shopping" I say blocks that. I do agree I've never heard it with adjectives / adverbs / other words in the middle. Compound words are a related grey area like the "going steakhouse" I just saw.

This might be similar to the "he tended bar" construction. "He tended bars" is 72.25x rarer, while "going pubs" is 8.24x rarer on Google. To me, the second word becomes uncountable, but the data isn't conclusive.

Nevermind my last question. Some things that follow verbs "are not customarily construed to be the object" even if they're not prepositions, but in this case "pub" is seemingly used as an adverb. In this case, I found the following tests to determine the construction is transitive:

"I went pub" → "*the going of pub by me" but "I built a house" → "the building of a house by me" (test for direct object, distinguishes the rfv-sense from the sense "(transitive, colloquial) To enjoy. (Compare go for.)")
"I went pub" → "*I am pub" but "I seemed upset" → "I am upset" (test for subject complement)

I added your Australian quote. The source saying "Sometimes key words can be left out, such as ‘to’ or ‘the’, which makes it sound lazy." implies other verbs allow this construction but I can't find attested quotes either. 76.71.3.150 23:24, 13 November 2024 (UTC)Reply

As a Victorian I've never heard this. Maybe the sentence in that primary school slide deck is a weird NSW-ism, or belongs to some emerging sociolect I'm not familiar with. But I'm dubious. This, that and the other (talk) 09:16, 22 November 2024 (UTC)Reply

I'm also dubious, particularly about the "UK" tag. In England, I don't hear people saying that they are going to "go pub" or "go shops", not in ordinary language, not even colloquially. The citations that we presently have are from low-quality sources and seem to me to be somewhere between lazy (or possibly deliberate) abbreviated writing and just plain bad English. I expect we could find instances of "staying hotel" or "living USA" or "arrived the airport" or any other kind of broken English or telegraphese. It doesn't mean that we have to recognise it in the dictionary. However, if other people feel that "go pub/shops/etc." definitely does exist at a sufficiently established level of usage, then fair enough. Mihia (talk) 18:15, 12 December 2024 (UTC)Reply
It’s a very real phenomenon. We already have entries for go toilet and go potty and it’s easy to find hits using a Google Advanced Search for ‘go Tesco/Sainsbury’s/Asda/Morrisons’ too. Overlordnat1 (talk) 11:22, 13 December 2024 (UTC)Reply
"Go toilet" and "go potty" are baby-speak though, and Google hits exist for almost any broken English or telegraphese phrase that you care to type in. Is this "go pub", "go shops", "go Tesco" thing something that you have personally heard significant numbers of British people saying? Mihia (talk) 15:13, 13 December 2024 (UTC)Reply
Yes I have. Overlordnat1 (talk) 09:51, 16 December 2024 (UTC)Reply
Well, fair enough, perhaps I need to get out more ... you know, get out pub, get out shops, that kind of thing ... Mihia (talk) 15:45, 16 December 2024 (UTC)Reply

kilo-metre

Latest comment: 6 months ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Discussion moved from WT:RFDE.

There's no point in having this page even with the {{no entry}} template on it. The template claims, "Some information about this term is available in Appendix:SI units", but that's not true; the appendix only lists the actual spellings kilometer and kilometre. —Mahāgaja · talk 16:08, 9 November 2024 (UTC)

I think kilo-meter might be relevant to this as well. 2001:BB6:B84C:CF00:4996:ED56:2800:E202 12:40, 10 November 2024 (UTC)

RfV If this were to pass RfV, it could be created as an alternative form. Here's what you get from a Google Books search Purplebackpack89 20:42, 11 November 2024 (UTC)

Yes, a question for RFV. If the term exists it should have a proper form-of entry. If it doesn't it should just be deleted. I'll move it there. This, that and the other (talk) 01:07, 13 November 2024 (UTC)

Not too easy to search for thanks to end-of-line hyphenations. There are also some "primer" type texts that spell out "milli-gram(me)", "kilo-metre" etc when first introducing the terms, then use the single-word form throughout the remainder of the text. This, that and the other (talk) 01:14, 13 November 2024 (UTC)Reply

prolegalism

Latest comment: 6 months ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Seeking quotes, given that a definition was requested. I found two not very enlightening quotes, and nothing else. Kiwima (talk) 04:36, 14 November 2024 (UTC)Reply

According to my psychic powers, the second one is a scanno involving a repeated line:

professional and industrial class founded upon wealth and

legalism. That again is yielding to the rule of [the] pro-

legalism. That again is yielding to the rule of the pro-

letariat, founded upon work and association.

The non-busted text can be found at [41], in which no prolegalism is to be found. This, that and the other (talk) 04:59, 14 November 2024 (UTC)Reply

wolven

Latest comment: 5 months ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Rfv-sense "One who is wolflike in appearance or character". Ultimateria (talk) 00:01, 18 November 2024 (UTC)Reply

Seems to be from a specific fiction series: "Blood and Ash" and "Flesh and Fire" by Jennifer L. Armentrout. So should not be included. 2A00:23C5:FE1C:3701:FC:ACA7:543A:629 18:33, 18 November 2024 (UTC)Reply

schediasm

Latest comment: 5 months ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Jotting sth down. Confuse not with abbbr schediasm. P. Sovjunk (talk) 09:09, 20 November 2024 (UTC)Reply

Found in [42] [43] [44]. Need to properly cite This, that and the other (talk) 01:36, 8 December 2024 (UTC)Reply

inflect

Latest comment: 5 months ago3 comments3 people in discussion

"To influence in style. No other poet has inflected me in style as much as Milton." The phrase "inflected me in style" cannot be found in Google (except for this Wiktionary entry) so it is at best a poor usage example. I doubt the sense exists at all. 2A00:23C5:FE1C:3701:E4C3:4992:FA7C:740B 11:37, 23 November 2024 (UTC)Reply

It's hard to find much even for "inflected me", other than obvious errors, typos and rubbish, probable correct/intentional uses of the "curve towards" sense, or dubious examples from low-quality sources. Could be a blend of "influence" and "affect", I suppose, possibly deliberately coined, perhaps independently on occasions, or accidental mixing up of words. Also, if the word itself means "to influence in style" then it seems unnecessary to say "No other poet has inflected me in style". Mihia (talk) 22:05, 25 November 2024 (UTC)Reply

Added 5 years ago by @Tooironic, who is still with us. This, that and the other (talk) 13:46, 27 November 2024 (UTC)Reply

deliver over into

Latest comment: 5 months ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Doesn't make sense to me, as defined. You may e.g. deliver over a captive to the guards, but not "into" the guards. 2A00:23C5:FE1C:3701:E4C3:4992:FA7C:740B 15:32, 23 November 2024 (UTC)Reply

You can deliver over something into the hands of someone, though. Or into custody, etc. But this is just sum-of-parts: deliver + over + into. I note that we don't have "deliver over", presumably since it's transparently sum-of-parts, and the only reason we have "deliver over to" is because the same user created both of them simultaneously. There will be plenty of hits for these on the internet, but none with any other meaning. I think both of these should probably go to RfD instead of here. P Aculeius (talk) 18:48, 23 November 2024 (UTC)Reply

preverb, prenoun

Latest comment: 5 months ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Those words are real grammatical terms, but "preverb" is used for a large variety of languages, much more than the definitions in the articles, and "prenoun" does not appear to be specific to Algonquin languages. 87.88.150.15 22:39, 23 November 2024 (UTC)Reply

sea crow

Latest comment: 15 days ago6 comments4 people in discussion

7 birds. Good luck P. Sovjunk (talk) 11:31, 26 November 2024 (UTC)Reply

Some definitions are ascribed to the Orkney Islands, one to Ireland. There are also fish referred to by this name.

The avian definition could possibly could be saved by combining into a single definition: "(mostly regional) A sea or coastal bird, variously ...". There is more hope for the gunard definition. DCDuring (talk) 15:31, 26 November 2024 (UTC)Reply

The various species attributions could be relegated to Usage notes or even the talk page. DCDuring (talk) 15:42, 26 November 2024 (UTC)Reply

May I point out that the jackdaw is not a sea or coastal bird anyway. You get them anywhere. Mihia (talk) 15:59, 26 November 2024 (UTC)Reply
As the usage seems mostly regional or even context-dependent, it is still plausible that birds capable of flying to Iceland, the Faroes and even North America might be called sea crows. This collocation is close to being SoP, as some two-part vernacular names can be. DCDuring (talk) 16:14, 26 November 2024 (UTC)Reply

I think I've cited the hyphenated form sea-crow in reference to gulls, cormorants, and choughs. This poses an interesting problem: overall, the spaced form seems more common, but for any specific sense, it seems (so far!) like the hyphenated form is more common. It might be best to make the hyphenated form the lemma, and because so many cites are ambiguous, it might be best to start with a definition like "Any of various sea-birds." and then put the attested specific definitions as subsenses...? - -sche (discuss) 00:37, 29 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

December 2024

commotrix

Latest comment: 17 days ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Possibly just a dictionary word. Wikiuser815 (talk) 15:00, 4 December 2024 (UTC)Reply

Failed Vilipender (talk) 22:15, 27 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

peam

Latest comment: 17 days ago4 comments3 people in discussion

"Deliberate misspelling of peak." I've personally never seen this, and there's no quotes. -saph668 (user—talk—contribs) 17:45, 4 December 2024 (UTC)Reply

I’ve seen a lot of people use it, and I use it sometimes as well. Probably the main source of it is this gif 2607:FB90:E823:1344:98BD:9124:92BF:A2E5 17:47, 1 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

Linked the wrong gif. Its this one 2607:FB90:E823:1344:98BD:9124:92BF:A2E5 17:50, 1 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

Failed. Gifs don't count as citations Vilipender (talk) 22:15, 27 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

adrop

Latest comment: 3 months ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Created on the basis of a mistaken quote (the original text had ‘adrip’, not ‘adrop’), but could it be citable nonetheless? There seems to be another alchemical sense, too, that we currently don’t have, so any quotes that can be found should be checked for what sense exactly is being used in context. — Vorziblix (talk · contribs) 00:47, 6 December 2024 (UTC)Reply

Found and added one. 2A00:23C5:FE1C:3701:A9A6:8F1F:C512:66C7 13:46, 1 February 2025 (UTC)Reply

block-ornimint

Latest comment: 3 months ago4 comments3 people in discussion

@Saph668, Sundaydriver1 have a difference of opinion over whether this is entry-worthy. Bringing it here for resolution. This, that and the other (talk) 09:53, 7 December 2024 (UTC)Reply

Merge with block-ornament. I moved it back since I didn't think trying to normalise it was good practice but looking now the Westminster Gazette may be the only place where this spelling is found. -saph668 (user—talk—contribs) 14:01, 7 December 2024 (UTC)Reply

If it is only found once, we should delete this entry. This, that and the other (talk) 12:38, 13 December 2024 (UTC)Reply

"Ornimint" is eye dialect, suggesting an East End Cockney or such. The same kinds of spelling are common in Dickens. 2A00:23C5:FE1C:3701:A80F:6E3D:D9E4:21B1 09:47, 10 February 2025 (UTC)Reply

whally

Latest comment: 15 days ago4 comments4 people in discussion

Only Spenser — This unsigned comment was added by 90.166.201.185 (talk) at 10:13, 7 December 2024 (UTC).Reply

Alternative form of wally (“(of eyes) unusually pale, etc.”)? There are more quotes at that entry. — Vorziblix (talk · contribs) 03:11, 8 December 2024 (UTC)Reply

Compare Talk:whall.

OED only has whally; it somehow misses wally in this sense. Alongside Spenser there is a quote with "whalley eyes".

Hard to search for owing to the surname and place name. This, that and the other (talk) 05:24, 29 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

I tracked down two more cites, but someone ought to check the metadata: Google Books (in one case) and Archive.org (in the other) assert 1900s dates for books that look, just from the way the text is printed onto the page, centuries older. Is this term obsolete, in this spelling? - -sche (discuss) 05:59, 29 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

serrous

Latest comment: 4 months ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Just Browne P. Sovjunk (talk) 19:47, 7 December 2024 (UTC)Reply

I found several quotes where "serrous" refers to a saw-toothed shape or motion, and added them to the entry; I am confident enough to say that IMO this is adequately verified, but I will defer to others to close this RfV. Most hits on Google Books are typos/scannos for "serious" or "ferrous", and it also seems to be an alternative spelling for serous. I was not able to tell if "serrous iritis", an eye disease, relates to the saw-toothed meaning. P Aculeius (talk) 13:44, 15 December 2024 (UTC)Reply

serviceage

Latest comment: 4 months ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Just Tasso, whose translator spelled it wrong...ſeruiceage P. Sovjunk (talk) 19:51, 7 December 2024 (UTC)Reply

I don't see how it's misspelled; that's merely an older typographic convention, where 'u' and 'v' are not distinguished. This dictionary has two uses in Tasso, one of which did not come up on a Google Books search, and a second meaning in William Fulbecke, which also did not appear in my search, and which I did not search for separately, since I did not think it would go toward verifying the current entry. I also saw a few 20th century agricultural uses, where it seems to refer to hiring male livestock for breeding, but these were snippet views and possibly from newsletters, and again would not go toward verifying the entry as it stands. Perhaps I'm mistaken and these can be used somehow. P Aculeius (talk) 16:57, 15 December 2024 (UTC)Reply

i got 2 phones

Latest comment: 15 days ago7 comments7 people in discussion

Entry title most likely misspelled. Also, I feel that the two senses should be merged, if we can find evidence that people actually say this. CitationsFreak (talk) 20:25, 8 December 2024 (UTC)Reply

All of this user's entries need urgent attention. 2A00:23C5:FE1C:3701:4CA0:A52A:7027:A02D 17:39, 10 December 2024 (UTC)Reply

floptoker

Added by @Duke of slang. — Fenakhay ^{(حيطي · مساهماتي)} 20:44, 8 December 2024 (UTC)Reply

Also see:

Of these I doubt floptoker (I don't even think that's spelled right) or floptok meet CFI. -saph668 (user—talk—contribs) 23:34, 8 December 2024 (UTC)Reply

None of these look like protologisms to me, and while seemingly absent from 'durably archived' media, I think that they could pass according to wt:ATTEST's 'clearly widespread use' criterion. This is one of those requests that would have had @Ivan Štambuk a little up in arms. (((Romanophile))) ♞ (contributions) 22:10, 14 January 2025 (UTC)Reply

All of this user's contributions are suspect, so I'm linking them to this discussion. See Duke of slang. Ultimateria (talk) 21:36, 14 January 2025 (UTC)Reply

I left a comment on the user's talk page (detailing other problems I noticed), deleted one malformed entry, and issued a short block. The user's other entries indeed need to be reviewed. - -sche (discuss) 00:47, 29 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

mint choco

Latest comment: 5 months ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Never heard of it. No GBooks hits for "mint choco is" or "love mint choco". 2A00:23C5:FE1C:3701:F9AC:CC62:6541:2A8E 17:58, 9 December 2024 (UTC)Reply

We have choco as a shortened form of "chocolate". Most probably "mint choco" has been used or said somewhere. However, just because "choco" is short for "chocolate", it doesn't IMO mean that we need to separately include the "choco" version of all phrases involving "chocolate". By the way, isn't mint chocolate SoP anyway? Mihia (talk) 10:14, 11 December 2024 (UTC)Reply

leatherwear

Latest comment: 6 days ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Sense 2: "polymer material made to look like natural leather". Seems odd that the -wear suffix would be used when it doesn't mean clothing. 2A00:23C5:FE1C:3701:F9AC:CC62:6541:2A8E 20:26, 9 December 2024 (UTC)Reply

Failed Vilipender (talk) 18:48, 8 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

ware

Latest comment: 5 months ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Rfv-nautical sense vb — This unsigned comment was added by 90.166.159.127 (talk) at 13:46, 10 December 2024 (UTC).Reply

One possible: "Stand by to in all studding-sails, and to ware to the eastward." [45] Mihia (talk) 17:06, 11 December 2024 (UTC)Reply

Two more possibles on the same page at [46].

warence

Latest comment: 5 months ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Mentions. — This unsigned comment was added by 90.166.159.127 (talk) at 14:43, 10 December 2024 (UTC).Reply

I added a mention and three uses from a. 1500 to 1857, with 19th century ones referring to 16th or 17th century texts. It appears to be quite obsolete. Cnilep (talk) 04:49, 11 December 2024 (UTC)Reply

big back

Latest comment: 5 months ago2 comments2 people in discussion

2A00:23C5:FE1C:3701:4CA0:A52A:7027:A02D 15:57, 10 December 2024 (UTC)Reply

I've heard in use before. CitationsFreak (talk) 20:38, 10 December 2024 (UTC)Reply

market

Latest comment: 15 days ago5 comments4 people in discussion

RFV-sense "a grocery store".

Never heard of it where I live (in England), not in the normal sense of a single-entity store or shop. If verified, we should ideally label where, when and/or by whom this sense is used, Mihia (talk) 23:04, 10 December 2024 (UTC)Reply

I think this is somewhat common in the US (usually to mean "supermarket" or occasionally "green grocer"), but it turns out to be hard to search for as political economics texts seem to crowd out more "homely" usage. Cnilep (talk) 05:06, 11 December 2024 (UTC)Reply

Even if we can't find actual citations, I think confirmation by AmE speakers that it is in use will be plenty good enough to verify. Probably then we should also label it AmE. Mihia (talk) 09:59, 11 December 2024 (UTC)Reply

AHD has "1a A store or shop that sells agricultural produce: bought vegetables from the corner market." That accords with my idiolect. I don't know about general applicability of market to a supermarket. I suspect that people would accept that a supermarket or grocer was not the same as a market ("produce market"). There is a grade of stores that differ in the portion of their sales that are of produce rather than other grocery (and other) items. Probably people differ in where they draw the line between a (produce) market and a supermarket or grocer.

I don't hear greengrocer being used in the US.

Google Ngrams does not help much with separating market ("grocery store") from other senses of market. Comparing shopping at the supermarket|market|grocery store|grocery in Google Ngrams US English corpus shows them being used almost equally, with shopping at the supermarket much more common from the 1950s through the 1960s, becoming less common that the others.

Inspecting uses of shopping at the market finds most to be in non-US contexts or by apparently non-US authors.

FWIW, according to Google Ngrams, in US, comparing grocer,grocery store,grocery,greengrocer,green grocer,produce market,supermarket:

grocer was by far the most common in the 19th century.
grocery store accounted for nearly half of the total uses of grocery in 2022.
grocery/grocery store are much more common than greengrocer/green grocer/green-grocer/produce market combined.
greengrocer, green grocer, and green-grocer combined have become more common than produce market.
From 1950s until very recently, supermarket was more common than grocery store. DCDuring (talk) 16:08, 11 December 2024 (UTC)Reply

The entry seems to have been changed and untagged, and now has a definition "Any physical store selling groceries, such as a grocery store or convenience store." with one cite; I think this matches my understanding, that "market" can sometimes refer to a physical store that sells groceries and may or may not also sell non-grocery goods. I added two more cites of this sense to Citations:market, more can be found at google books:"at her local market" (if you read in order to see which refer to a grocery store / supermarket vs e.g. a farmer's market). RFV-resolved? - -sche (discuss) 01:01, 29 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

mds

Latest comment: 2 months ago11 comments3 people in discussion

(Stenoscript) Abbreviation of merchandise and related forms of that word (merchandising, merchandised, merchandiser, etc.)

We have a number of stenoscript abbreviations at Cat:English stenoscript abbreviations but I am dubious that they can be attested according to WT:ATTEST. Let's start with this one. This, that and the other (talk) 01:51, 11 December 2024 (UTC)Reply

@Kwamikagami Please respond to this, and see also Wiktionary:Grease_pit/2025/February#badly_formatted_stenoscript_entries (sorry, this should have gone in the Beer parlour). We need to be able to attest them as well as clean up the headers; otherwise they will be removed. Benwing2 (talk) 00:08, 11 February 2025 (UTC)Reply

As you noted at the Grease pit, 'put[ting] each POS under its own header ... could get unwieldy.' Indeed, especially with abbreviations that cover multiple words, and especially with ones that are also words in normal English orthography, where having multiple stenoscript entries would unduly dominate the page. But there's also the problem that many of these substitute for simple letter sequences, and not all of those correspond to affixes, or at least not consistently to affixes, and in those cases I don't know what POS we would use. But that's a matter of layout, and I agree that 'possibly we should make an exception here.'

Attestation is a more difficult issue. I occasionally come across stenoscript abbreviations in manuscript form, and I thought it would be useful if they were covered here on Wikt where they'd be easily accessible. They're certainly notable in terms of use in the real world, but finding multiple attestations in digital format will be more difficult.

If that's not feasible, what about an appendix? kwami (talk) 01:44, 11 February 2025 (UTC)Reply

There are multiple hits on Gbooks for mds., but as an abbreviation in normal English text, not as stenoscript. An example is here. It is spelled out explicitly, and as mds without the period, here, though for 'merchandise' only, not for all the meanings it has in stenoscript. That abbreviation dates back at least to 1856 and so was evidently borrowed into stenoscript, but I also see the reverse, stenoscript used in abbreviated English manuscript. kwami (talk) 01:48, 11 February 2025 (UTC)Reply

@Kwamikagami An appendix would be fine; we routinely create appendices for terms that won't pass WT:CFI but people consider notable for some reason. See for example Appendix:Star Wars derivations, Appendix:Star Wars/protocol droid, Appendix:A Clockwork Orange, etc. Benwing2 (talk) 01:58, 11 February 2025 (UTC)Reply

How do readers find things in these appendices? I picked a red link from the Star Wars appendix, lado azul da Força, and when I pasted it into the search box I didn't get any hits. The appendix entry didn't show up. Even where under the search results where it says, 'See whether another page links to lado azul da Força,' the appendix didn't show up even though it does link to it. [You'd have to select 'Namespace: Appendix', and how many readers are going to know to do that?] So if they don't have their own entries, and don't show up on search, what's the point of having them at all? kwami (talk) 02:10, 11 February 2025 (UTC)Reply

Well, appendices can be categorized and found that way, and a link to the appendix could be included in the article on the word Stenoscript. But regardless of that, if these terms can't pass CFI, they don't belong. From Wikipedia's article on Stenoscript, it seems like this system was never very popular, so I would not be surprised if they can't be sufficiently attested. Benwing2 (talk) 03:01, 11 February 2025 (UTC)Reply

I was thinking how someone who came across stenoscript abbreviations in papers they found -- say financial records they inherited -- could look it up. They might not know it was stenoscript, esp if it was just the occasional abbreviation rather than full stenoscript that would obviously be something distinct. Sure, if they heard of stenoscript and wanted to check it out, they could look it up on Wikipedia. But what if they just came across pn or mds and wanted to look it up -- where would they go if not Wiktionary?

I remember stenoscript being offered in adult ed classes in the US in the 1980s, alongside piano and macrame and ballroom dance and self-defense classes. So it wasn't exactly obscure. kwami (talk) 03:28, 11 February 2025 (UTC)Reply

@Kwamikagami Were you able to find attestations of any stenoscript words so as to make them pass CFI? Benwing2 (talk) 06:27, 18 February 2025 (UTC)Reply

No. I haven't had time to spend on this, but I doubt I'd be able to find much apart from instruction guides. kwami (talk) 06:33, 18 February 2025 (UTC)Reply

I could easily believe that mds would be used to abbreviate merchandise in various contexts, although the "stenoscript" aspect seems like more of an etymological detail rather than a context label - the abbreviation is not being used in the context of stenoscript. The verb abbreviation and abbrevation of less common terms like merchandiser seem more doubtful to me. This, that and the other (talk) 03:20, 18 February 2025 (UTC)Reply

patterning

Latest comment: 1 day ago4 comments2 people in discussion

Rfv-sense: "An assault [...] deliberately filmed to be shared on social media."

This is a hot sense from 2022. I suspect that it may have been used by educators or the like at the time, but not so much by the youths whose behavior it is supposed to refer to. I found a handful of uses in print between June 2022 and May 2023. Do editors in the UK use/know it? Cnilep (talk) 02:31, 11 December 2024 (UTC)Reply

Compare MLE pattern up, which I gather is used for something like "punish, put in one's place". Cnilep (talk) 02:37, 11 December 2024 (UTC)Reply

‘Pattern’ can have that meaning when appearing on its own, not just when followed by ‘up’ with the result that ‘patterning’ is the participle/gerund form and basically means ‘assault’ (though not necessarily one that’s filmed or recorded in any way). We could source these definitions for ‘pattern’ and ‘patterning’ from British rap songs at genius.com. I've just added some stuff to pattern and pattern up, more to come! --Overlordnat1 (talk) 18:10, 20 January 2025 (UTC)Reply

RFV failed as the three quotes are mentions rather than uses. Actual uses, which are now covered at pattern, can refer to assaulting or humiliating someone but it doesn't necessarily involve posting the attack online (so it's not really the same as happy slapping). --Overlordnat1 (talk) 11:07, 13 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

pretense

Latest comment: 5 months ago4 comments3 people in discussion

An act of pretending; a false or simulated show or appearance; a false or hypocritical assertion or representation.
He visited the king under the pretense of friendliness.

"Lady Little", the title that she used, was just a pretense.
Affectation or ostentation of manner.
She was a plain-speaking woman without a hint of pretense.
Intention or purpose not real but professed.
with only a pretense of accuracy
An unsupported claim made or implied.
- 1899 September – 1900 July, Joseph Conrad, chapter II, in Lord Jim: A Tale, Edinburgh, London: William Blackwood and Sons, published 1900, →OCLC, page 9:
  He was gentlemanly, steady, tractable, with a thorough knowledge of his duties; and in time, when yet very young, he became chief mate of a fine ship, without ever having been tested by those events of the sea that show in the light of day the inner worth of a man, the edge of his temper, and the fibre of his stuff; that reveal the quality of his resistance and the secret truth of his pretences, not only to others but also to himself.
An insincere attempt to reach a specific condition or quality.

Possibly I'm just having a mental blank about this word, but I am struggling to see as many distinct senses as we (and in some cases even more so) other dictionaries list for it. Even sense 2, which I added myself, is arguably just a "false show or appearance". But what about senses 3, 4 and 5? Can we come up with examples that do not actually on inspection simply mean "a false show or appearance", per sense 1? I don't see how the existing examples achieve this. Mihia (talk) 18:27, 11 December 2024 (UTC)Reply

Def. 2 is distinct by reason of uncountability.

I'd expect some definitions to be of neutral phenomena and others of negative ones, though an "especially" or "usually" might make one def. cover both.

MWOnline has four definitions (of 7) that have one-word synonyms: pretentiousness, pretext, make-believe/fiction, simulation. These are not synonyms of each other.

Google Ngrams has the following nine "adjectives" as the most common ones directly preceding pretense: false (nearly twice as common as the other eight combined), mere, such, little, other, fraudulent, hypocritical, slightest, only. The plural adds various, specious, frivolous, plausible.

I'm not sure whether this means that pretense is intrinsically neutral and needs a negative adjective or that pretense is usually used in cases where the negativity warrants extra emphasis. DCDuring (talk) 20:21, 11 December 2024 (UTC)Reply

"false pretence", also "false pretences", is very much a set phrase, and I would expect it to be conspicuously common. Nowadays the word "false" seems strictly unnecessary (I can't think of any modern neutral or positive uses), but apparently this phrase dates back hundreds of years, so I suppose it is possible that at one time there could be a "true pretence", or perhaps it was always strictly redundant and just used to reinforce falseness. I really don't know. There is certainly, as I alluded to in my post, no shortage at all of multiple different definitions of this word in different places, but what I would like to see at Wiktionary are examples that actually illustrate the alleged differences between our senses in a clear way, so that definitions of one sense can't just as well be substituted into examples of another. And, in particular, modern examples that on inspection are not essentially "false or simulated show or appearance". This is what I am struggling to come up with. Thanks for reminding of the countability issue. Sense 1 is (or should be) actually both countable and uncountable. I'll address that. Mihia (talk) 21:45, 11 December 2024 (UTC)Reply

I am having difficulty separating senses 3, 4, and 5 from sense 1; they all seem to be slight variations of it. P Aculeius (talk) 15:00, 12 December 2024 (UTC)Reply

tract of land

Latest comment: 4 months ago11 comments3 people in discussion

Sense: a woman's breast. And the associated plural; I'm not sure whether I need to tag that as well. I believe this is a misunderstanding of a sketch in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, where the ruler of the swamp castle is trying to persuade his uninterested son to go through with an arranged marriage. He says, "she's got huge... [gestures as though holding a large pair of breasts] ...tracts of land!" But I don't think that he's using "tracts of land" as a metaphor or euphemism for "breasts".

There are two issues here: 1) is the character using the phrase "tracts of land" to mean breasts, and 2) has the phrase entered general usage with that meaning? There is a second definition in the entry, but it is literal and sum-of-parts; not sure if that needs to go to RFD if this sense is deleted.

As for 1): I think the editor misinterpreted the line. It's unclear to me which of three interpretations—all jokes for the viewer—should be placed on the line, but in none of them do the words "tracts of land" refer to breasts. A) the father is about to say "breasts" or some equivalent, but changes his mind and instead refers to her literal tracts of land. B) because he knows he cannot refer directly to her breasts, he gestures in such a way that his son should understand that, while he can only mention her literal tracts of land, she also has huge breasts. C) he only ever meant to refer to literal tracts of land, but the gesture was meant to mislead the viewer into thinking that he was going to say "breasts" or some equivalent.

As for 2): irrespective of whether my assessment of the scene is correct, has the phrase entered general usage to mean "breasts"? There are (predictably) many internet references to it, but all or nearly all refer directly to the Monty Python sketch. A search on Google Books for "her tracts of land", which I would expect to find if writers use the phrase to mean "breasts" reveals only references to literal tracts of land. For that matter, scanning 25 pages of results for "huge tracts of land", I still found only references to literal tracts of land. Not even one trashy novel! I'm almost surprised by that; but then, I don't think that anyone would understand such a metaphor without being familiar with the Monty Python sketch. As a metaphor for breasts, as opposed to a visual gag, the phrase is rather clunky, and I do not imagine there is any significant usage that does not refer directly back to the film. P Aculeius (talk) 14:57, 12 December 2024 (UTC)Reply

I can readily find examples of this:

And everyone was too busy staring at her tracts of land to actually ring it up.
You can see him glance straight at her...tracts of land...right before he goes in for the embrace.
Big-Breast Pride: She is rather proud of her...tracts of land.
Her lower body seems scaled up, and her tracts of land do not really hang like sacks of fat
You can see him glance straight at her...tracts of land...right before he goes in for the embrace.
I think some of the fat from her butt was taken and given to her tracts of land during her transformation

... and I could go on. On this basis, I don't see why we shouldn't keep, but we could consider whether to make the plural form the primary entry. Mihia (talk) 23:54, 16 December 2024 (UTC)Reply

But are people really using this, or just referring over and over to the Monty Python sketch? You can find lots of random internet content, but how much of it is actually citable to published sources? The film is almost fifty years old, but the most likely collocations found zero hits in Google Books. And it's so awkward that nobody would understand what it means without somehow pointing baffled readers to Monty Python. Are there any good sources that are completely independent of Monty Python? Because the entry has been tagged requesting examples for more than three years, and there's still nothing there. P Aculeius (talk) 01:08, 17 December 2024 (UTC)Reply

What would you consider to be a use "completely independent of Monty Python"? I mean, how would you recognise this if you read it or heard it? Mihia (talk) 15:08, 17 December 2024 (UTC)Reply

I would only exclude uses that mentioned Monty Python, the specific skit, or the actors therein. DCDuring (talk) 16:22, 17 December 2024 (UTC)Reply

I would also only search for usage in publications after the airing of the skit (c. 1975). DCDuring (talk) 17:09, 17 December 2024 (UTC)Reply

I might be wrong, and stand to be corrected if so, but I got an impression that P Aculeius was looking for something more than this – looking to exclude cases where the speaker was "mentally referring to" or "thinking of" the sketch, even though it is not explicitly mentioned, but I don't know how it is possible to tell, short of actually contacting them and asking. I mean, you could say the same about e.g. bucket list or other phrases that have an exact known origin. Were the people quoted in our citations of bucket list "thinking of" the film when they used the phrase? Does it disqualify the entry even if they were? Mihia (talk) 19:40, 17 December 2024 (UTC)Reply

I think what we want are citable uses where the author provides no indication that he or she is alluding to the scene in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, and relies on the reader to understand that "tracts of land" means "breasts" without any other clues. If the author has to explain what he or she means by alluding to Monty Python, including clips, stills, or more extensive quotes from the movie, then the phrase isn't idiomatic. I didn't find any obvious examples in books, and a general search turned up clips, memes, or random message board posts, most of which relied on the reader to recognize the exact joke from Monty Python. I didn't see anything that looked citable. Maybe someone else will have better luck, and the entry can be verified. P Aculeius (talk) 20:01, 17 December 2024 (UTC)Reply

My examples above "should be" absent explicit reference to Monty Python (that was the intention!). I'm not sure where we stand at the moment on "random" Internet mentions. These were apparently sufficient in the recent case of "go = go to the". Personally I believe that we should accept these, provided that the source is not just "rubbish", e.g. bad or broken or non-native English, "telegraphese", etc., which can be a value judgement. I think that these sources are most likely to throw up words and phrases that readers will not understand and will wish to look up in the dictionary, and hopefully ours, if we include them, rather than UD. Mihia (talk) 20:24, 17 December 2024 (UTC)Reply

And they may be fine, but I don't know where any of them are from, so I can't really comment—except one of them looks like it might be from TVTropes, which is a lot of fun to spend (or waste!) time reading, but I don't think it's citable. I may be wrong! P Aculeius (talk) 20:52, 17 December 2024 (UTC)Reply

I've had time to look over the citations for "go = go to the", and there are five: two from Twitter, two from Reddit, and one from a pdf file produced for a school. I would not have thought these counted as durably archived sources, though a search of the Beer Parlour brought me to a 2022 debate about whether certain sources were allowable, which ended with no consensus about either Twitter or Reddit (of the two, Twitter seemed to have more support).

With no consensus, I suppose there is no formal obstacle to using them if they can demonstrate that "tracts of land" is understood to mean "breasts" without any context pointing to Monty Python. That said, I would not regard them as particularly good sources, because I do not know whether they are durably archived or whether the hundreds of billions of tweets that have been tweeted will still be available—and searchable—in another five or ten years (particularly as they can be edited and deleted, along with the accounts that posted them, at any time). I know even less about how Reddit works. And I have no confidence at all in what is basically the electronic version of an anonymously-authored school worksheet.

I'm not a policy warrior, and I'm not making it my mission to eliminate quotes from sources I don't feel are very good. I just think that we ought to be searching for sources that demonstrate lexical use, other than by an insular community of people who've all seen the same movie. P Aculeius (talk) 03:46, 18 December 2024 (UTC)Reply

white eel

Latest comment: 2 months ago3 comments3 people in discussion

— SURJECTION ^{/ T / C / L /} 18:32, 12 December 2024 (UTC)Reply

I added a reference to the article since the article didn't have one. — This unsigned comment was added by 73.216.182.68 (talk) at 15:11, 13 December 2024 (UTC).Reply

Delete I think it's arguable that the original Polish term biały węgorz could be reasonably attestable (cf. the Polish Dancing Cow lyrics), though Google search only returns mentions from the Polish term, indicating that it did not enter the English lexicon.廣九直通車 (talk) 03:50, 25 February 2025 (UTC)Reply

aftercast

Latest comment: 5 months ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Rfv-sense throw of dice — This unsigned comment was added by 90.166.195.17 (talk) at 17:56, 13 December 2024 (UTC).Reply

While I have read some commentators pointing to a connotation of dice throws in the use of this term by John Gower or Gerard Manley Hopkins, it does not seem to be part of the denotative meaning - rather, it looks more like definition 2 (a consequence). Kiwima (talk) 02:22, 14 December 2024 (UTC)Reply

agrom

Latest comment: 4 months ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Mentions — This unsigned comment was added by 90.166.195.17 (talk) at 18:47, 13 December 2024 (UTC).Reply

Was able to find one instance that I think would count as a use, amid dozens of definitions in various dictionaries and medical references. Also a lot of hits for other things beginning with agro-. A bit surprised I did not find more uses in literature pertaining to Indian medicine; perhaps someone else will have more luck. P Aculeius (talk) 20:22, 15 December 2024 (UTC)Reply

Wheel of Fortune

Latest comment: 4 months ago4 comments2 people in discussion

Jeopardy

This is an RFV of the sense "A television game show where word puzzles are solved by filling in the missing letters". The sense was previously discussed 17 years ago, but only two editors participated substantively. The sense requires quotations which are, among other things, not "about any person or group specifically associated with the product or service" or "about the type of product or service in general", and do not "identify the product or service to which the brand name applies, whether by stating explicitly or implicitly some feature or use of the product or service from which its type and purpose may be surmised, or some inherent quality that is necessary for an understanding of the author's intent": WT:CFI. The quotations currently in the entry all seem to refer to the American game show. — Sgconlaw (talk) 18:32, 16 December 2024 (UTC)Reply

I don't think we should try to capture TV shows under WT:BRAND - I mean, yes, there is commercial value in the intellectual property of Wheel of Fortune as a trademark and as a concept, but that doesn't make Wheel of Fortune a "product or service".

In any event, we should still exclude the names of TV shows, but it's really an RFD question. See the recently concluded RFD for Friends (bottom of the page at Talk:Friends). This, that and the other (talk) 08:26, 17 December 2024 (UTC)Reply

...although having said all that, it may be possible to find evidence of figurative use of this name... This, that and the other (talk) 08:28, 17 December 2024 (UTC)Reply

@This, that and the other: Well, let's see first if any figurative uses can be located. I've also added Jeopardy to this nomination. — Sgconlaw (talk) 18:40, 21 December 2024 (UTC)Reply

apomecometry

Latest comment: 2 months ago3 comments3 people in discussion

Limited use. One in a weird poem, awkwardly rhyming with Mahometry. — This unsigned comment was added by 90.166.195.18 (talk) at 08:05, 18 December 2024 (UTC).Reply

~~Failed~~ Father of minus 2 (talk) 12:23, 3 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

I was looking into this - will comment soon. Long story short - it may be citeable as -metrie. This, that and the other (talk) 20:25, 3 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

textbook fear

Latest comment: 2 months ago12 comments4 people in discussion

— SURJECTION ^{/ T / C / L /} 10:08, 19 December 2024 (UTC)Reply

Send to RfD. This appears to be nothing more than shorthand for "a textbook case of" fear, i.e. "fear in its basic definition", which seems like the sum of its parts. Nothing in the entry suggests that it is in any way idiomatic, and I do not think there is anything to search for. It might make sense as a gloss of "bibliophobia", but that does not seem to be how it is defined. P Aculeius (talk) 12:07, 19 December 2024 (UTC)Reply

As far as I can understand it, the distinguishing feature of this sense of "textbook fear" is supposed to be that you hear or read about something being difficult/dangerous/frightening and fear it only for that reason. So, for example, if you often encounter spiders in your house, and you are terrified of them, you might have a "textbook fear" in the sense that it is a "classic" fear described in textbooks, but it wouldn't be "textbook fear" in our sense because you originated it yourself. Whether this is a clear and valid distinction, and, if so, whether it is a property of the word "textbook" or solely of "textbook fear", I do not know. (By the way, our definition seems poorly worded. The phrase structure seems not to be totally coherent.) Mihia (talk) 13:41, 20 December 2024 (UTC)Reply

I cleaned up the formatting, but I'm very skeptical. I look forward to any citations that show support for any non-SoP definition. This smells to me like someone misinterpreting standard attributive use of textbook. If enough people misinterpret textbook as it seems from the RfVed definition, there should eventually be citations that support a further extension of the meaning of textbook. I wouldn't think that fear would be the only noun modified by such an extended sense of textbook, so, even if this collocation is cited, we should see whether there are other collocations that show the same extended meaning of textbook.

At textbook#Adjective we have: "Having the typical characteristics of some class of phenomenon, so that it might be included as an example in a textbook.". DCDuring (talk) 14:50, 20 December 2024 (UTC)Reply

On the subject of textbook#Adjective, I added an example there, "Well done everyone, the tree fell exactly where we planned. That was textbook", partly to try to bolster the case that this is truly an adjective (which is ambiguous in many of the existing quotations), but then it struck me that our existing definition, that you quoted, does not exactly capture this kind of usage. The "tree felling" example does not describe something with "typical characteristics" so much as something "done exactly correctly, in the way that a textbook might describe". Do you think we are missing a sense? Or is it all part of the same sense? Mihia (talk) 15:27, 20 December 2024 (UTC)Reply

The predicate-use example helps. BTW, some other dictionaries use classic as a synonym. Maybe we could broaden the current definition, perhaps "typical or ideal"? DCDuring (talk) 15:53, 20 December 2024 (UTC)Reply

Also, ", so that it might be included as an example in a textbook." does not really define the term, but rather explains the (obvious?) sense development. DCDuring (talk) 16:19, 20 December 2024 (UTC)Reply

In the end I found it difficult to broaden the definition in a way that appealed to me, so I made a separate definition. Anyone who prefers to merge them, please go ahead. Mihia (talk) 18:32, 20 December 2024 (UTC)Reply

I can't distinguish senses 2 and 3 under "textbook", as they seem to be describing exactly the same thing. That said, I haven't tried to merge them, so I can't really comment on how difficult it is. But to return to "textbook fear", I fear we still haven't escaped the textbook use of "textbook" as an adjective. It still seems to be a textbook example of a phrase that means nothing more than the sum of its parts. P Aculeius (talk) 20:45, 20 December 2024 (UTC)Reply

Returning to the RFV, I think it might be difficult to find examples that we can be certain are meant in this alleged special sense rather than the general "textbook" sense. I had a quick trawl of Google results, and found some that could be read as our sense, but all of them could be read in the "normal" sense too. Perhaps someone else might have more luck. Mihia (talk) 21:33, 20 December 2024 (UTC)Reply
Let's just give it its 30 days here. We can then RfD it and have our debates there, if necessary. DCDuring (talk) 21:41, 20 December 2024 (UTC)Reply
I added a new sense at textbook:

(figuratively) Learned from, or as if learned from, a textbook, as opposed to personal discovery or experience.

He has a textbook understanding of company law but no practical experience of litigation.

Perhaps even if "textbook fear" does exist in the RFV'd sense, this definition might just about cover it? (I think there is a slight question about whether all the senses at textbook#Adjective are truly adjectives, but that's a different discussion.) Mihia (talk) 21:38, 2 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

here

Latest comment: 2 months ago2 comments2 people in discussion

This place; this location.
Here is where I met my spouse twelve years ago.

An Alzheimer patient's here may in his mind be anywhere he called home in the time he presently re-lives.
(figuratively) This point or stage, visualised as a location.
I'd like to continue my story, but here is where I must stop.

I've done as much as I can; you'll have to take it from here.
(abstract) This time, the present situation. (Can we add an example for this sense?)

RFV sense 3 as distinct from sense 2. It already had a request for examples; I can't think of any. Mihia (talk) 21:53, 20 December 2024 (UTC)Reply

Perhaps the countable use seen at e.g. here? That may be what was meant by the (abstract) label. This, that and the other (talk) 07:41, 25 February 2025 (UTC)Reply

scourage

Latest comment: 4 months ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Rfv-sense:

The act of scouting or skirmishing

I see a lot of errors for scourge (typos? misspellings?), so it's possible this is just buried in there somewhere. Chuck Entz (talk) 18:17, 21 December 2024 (UTC)Reply

shirl

Latest comment: 4 months ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Rfv-sense To slide. Excrement Voider (talk) 22:56, 21 December 2024 (UTC)Reply

Found two quotations listed in OED, and added. Was able to see one of them and elaborate on it. A third was from a glossary, so I left it out. There are probably more published uses, but a Google search was swamped by people named "Shirl" and "Shirley", the words "shield", "shields", "shielded", "Stirling", "shearling", etc., and if the word is dialectic then genuine uses may be less likely to have been digitized and indexed searchably. Maybe someone else will have better luck. P Aculeius (talk) 05:36, 22 December 2024 (UTC)Reply

throw lathe

Latest comment: 4 months ago1 comment1 person in discussion

throw (by itself) exists in this sense, but the term throw lathe seems to only exist in dictionaries and one particular encyclopedia entry that appears many times in GBooks results. This, that and the other (talk) 10:40, 22 December 2024 (UTC)Reply

throw

Latest comment: 4 months ago5 comments3 people in discussion

Rfv-sense: "The flight of a thrown object" as distinct from "The distance travelled by something thrown" and various other senses in the entry. It is not in OED, Century or Webster. It was added in 2003 by Dvortygirl with the usex "a fast throw", which does not seem to support the sense as defined. This, that and the other (talk) 11:16, 22 December 2024 (UTC)Reply

A throw itself seems more like sense 1, the act of throwing. The "distance" sense gives as an example the expression, "a stone's throw", which really does relate to distance. I'm not sure whether the sense here is or isn't an example of sense 1, since "a quarterback's throw" seems to be the same thing, but at the same time in the example here, "a fast throw" seems to refer to a thing with qualities besides merely the act of throwing: the path of a thrown object, or other qualities associated with the traveling object. Perhaps some rewording is in order. P Aculeius (talk) 00:46, 23 December 2024 (UTC)Reply

I agree that "a fast throw" is not quite "a fast act of throwing", and also there are examples such as "his throw reached the boundary", where it is again not really the act that reaches the boundary. It could be quite hair-splitting to try to reflect this in the definitions, perhaps. On another point, I question whether the single idiom "a stone's throw" justifies a whole sense "The distance travelled by something thrown". I'm not even totally convinced that "throw" in itself means a distance even in that expression. Or are there other examples? Mihia (talk) 15:27, 24 December 2024 (UTC)Reply

I think you're right, it's the idiom that confers the meaning of 'distance'. It's not really a meaning of the word 'throw'. P Aculeius (talk) 22:42, 24 December 2024 (UTC)Reply

There are cutesy variations, such as "a pebble's throw" when referring to proximity to a beach, but I think this kind of thing hardly counts as different. Mihia (talk) 22:43, 24 December 2024 (UTC)Reply

morpho-syntax

Latest comment: 3 months ago3 comments2 people in discussion

Rfv-sense "grammar". is this really a separate sense from sense 1? the morphosyntax of a language naturally is (part of) the grammar of that language, and i doubt the word "morphosyntax" is ever used to include other aspects of a grammar e.g. phonology. also see the rfc for this word. ragweed theater _{talk, user} 14:36, 23 December 2024 (UTC)Reply

@Ragweed-theater it's worth noting that this sense originally read "More formal term for grammar in a linguistic sense". I guess what they meant was, what the lay-person calls the "grammar" of a language is called its "morphosyntax" by linguists. How do we express this? Perhaps using {{synonyms}} with a qualifier or {{near-synonyms}} on sense 1? This, that and the other (talk) 00:07, 14 February 2025 (UTC)Reply

thank you for the cleanup! I've added grammar as a near-synonym to morphosyntax, with a qualifier directing the reader to the usage note there, and added a usage note for grammar. hopefully this is sufficient, and the sense in morpho-syntax can be removed ragweed theater _{talk, user} 16:43, 14 February 2025 (UTC)Reply

ammo-

Latest comment: 4 months ago4 comments2 people in discussion

only derived form given is ammophilous. (what is the CFI for affixes? i couldn't find it in the guidelines. i apologize if i missed something obvious.) ragweed theater _{talk, user} 23:03, 23 December 2024 (UTC)Reply

We could definitely do with some clearer guidance from CFI here (not only on this topic). At a minimum, if we can't find three English terms that start with this prefix, it can be summarily tossed. This list contains some obscure biological terms which need further investigation. This, that and the other (talk) 09:17, 24 December 2024 (UTC)Reply

thank you! it would be really nice if we can have an official guideline on this.

it seems to me that a "three (presumably verification-passing) words that use the affix" criterion is potentially too strict-- for example, say there is a combining form abc, for which we find three formations (say abc-ic, abc-phobic, and abc-form, or something like that). now let's say every one of these terms is seemingly a one-off formation. in this case none of the three derived terms would pass verification, but i do believe abc itself should pass: its productivity is basically on par with a full word that is attested three times. ragweed theater _{talk, user} 23:02, 24 December 2024 (UTC)Reply

back to ammo- (“related to sand”): a search in OED does not turn up anything relevant other than ammophilous. ammodyte < ἄμμος (ámmos, “sand”) + δύτης (dútēs, “diver”) should be considered a wholesale loan from Ancient Greek ἀμμοδύτης (ammodútēs, “sand-burrower”) or Latin ammodytēs (“id.”). out of the wiktionary lemma list, ammotrechid (“solifuge of the amily Ammotrechidae”), although ultimately < ἄμμος (ámmos, “sand”) + τρέχ- (trékh-, “run”), should be regarded as a loan from (scientific) Latin Ammotrechidae and coined there. similarly goes ammoxenid (“spider of the family Ammoxenidae”), though i'm not entirely sure of the meaning of the name-- "sand-wanderer"? besides these, ammoidin points to Ammi, and almost everything else goes back to Ammon in one way or another (via ammonia or ammonite).

to sum up, there seems to be no intra-English use of the suffix ammo- (“related to sand”) besides ammophilous, or at least the OED and en-wikt data do not represent such use. ragweed theater _{talk, user} 23:08, 24 December 2024 (UTC)Reply

again

Latest comment: 4 months ago2 comments2 people in discussion

4.2. I ask again, I say again; used in repeating a question or statement.

Again, I'm not criticizing, I just want to understand.

4.3. Here too, here also, in this case as well; used in applying a previously made point to a new instance; sometimes preceded by "here".

Approach B is better than approach A in many respects, but again, there are difficulties in implementing it.

9. Moreover; besides; further.

1835, John Herschel, A Treatise on Astronomy:

Again, it is of great consequence to avoid, etc.

RFV sense 9 as distinct from 4.2 and 4.3. As far as I can tell, the sole present example (Herschel) is either 4.2 or 4.3 (not certain which; full context at [47]). Mihia (talk) 10:24, 24 December 2024 (UTC)Reply

I can't really say the first two are distinct, but I concur that the third one is not a new meaning. P Aculeius (talk) 22:39, 24 December 2024 (UTC)Reply

throw (2)

Latest comment: 4 months ago3 comments2 people in discussion

The distance travelled by something thrown.

a stone's throw

Presently the only example is an isolated idiom in which it is doubtful anyway that the word "throw" itself means "distance travelled". I'm not convinced that this is enough to justify the claimed sense. Is there any better basis on which to keep it? Mihia (talk) 14:40, 25 December 2024 (UTC)Reply

@Mihia I'm not sure if you have access to OED Online, but it offers a range of cites for this sense. Some of these have been there since NED (sb2 sense 6): [48] - we could very easily copy these cites if wanted. This, that and the other (talk) 23:28, 25 December 2024 (UTC)Reply

There does seem to be variety or productivity in those quotes. Perhaps this usage has now largely collapsed around "stone's throw" as a special idiom, so that reference to other projectiles can seem to be merely a conscious variation of this to modern speakers, at least in the pattern "a X's throw". As far as "throw" itself truly meaning "distance" is concerned, as opposed to the whole idiom or expression conveying the idea, it did occur to me that many other words could be used in the same way. We could say "within the hop of a frog", "within the jump of a flea", "within two tumbles of a louse", "within three bounces of a beach ball", etc. Does this mean that "bounce" is "a distance bounced", "tumble" is "a distance tumbled", and so on and so forth? And does "in two shakes of a lamb's tail" make a "shake" a measurement of time?

I see that Oxford Learner's Dictionary gives "a javelin throw of 57 metres" as an example of sense "the distance that something is thrown". I think that this is going too far. Surely this is just "X of measurement" pattern, like "an ascent of 1000 ft", "a whale of twenty tons", or anything else. Mihia (talk) 20:05, 30 December 2024 (UTC)Reply

basto

Latest comment: 4 months ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Ace of clubs. It is any clubs card in a Spanish deck — This unsigned comment was added by 2A02:C7E:2069:C800:742A:66C8:9B14:8272 (talk) at 19:57, 25 December 2024 (UTC).Reply

yield (2)

Latest comment: 4 months ago2 comments2 people in discussion

(finance) Profit earned from an investment; return on investment.
(law) The current return as a percentage of the price of a stock or bond.

2013 July 6, “The rise of smart beta”, in The Economist, volume 408, number 8843, page 68:

Investors face a quandary. Cash offers a return of virtually zero in many developed countries; government-bond yields may have risen in recent weeks but they are still unattractive. Equities have suffered two big bear markets since 2000 and are wobbling again. It is hardly surprising that pension funds, insurers and endowments are searching for new sources of return.

RFV "law" sense. Is there really such a sense distinct from the finance sense? The existing example does not appear to demonstrate so. Mihia (talk) 20:43, 25 December 2024 (UTC)Reply

The "law" label is implausible to me.

Yield is sometimes an amount, sometimes an annualized rate (as % of either face or market value) in finance, easily cited if necessary (I would assert widespread use.). It is generally a 'yield' of money on money. As an amount it could easily be combined with definitions that applied to timber, crops, fish, effort, labor, etc. DCDuring (talk) 20:24, 26 December 2024 (UTC)Reply

beat the dust

Latest comment: 4 months ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Rfv-sense To take in too little ground with the forelegs, as a horse. Not clear what that actually means — This unsigned comment was added by 2A02:C7E:2069:C800:742A:66C8:9B14:8272 (talk) at 09:08, 26 December 2024 (UTC).Reply

I would understand it to mean that the horse's pace is too short, except that I don't understand why it would be only the forelegs. I mean, if the rear legs made more ground than the forelegs, then they would overtake the forelegs and the horse would get in a terrible tangle. Perhaps it is more visible in the forelegs, or just because the forelegs lead? A number of mentions of this in dictionaries of horsey things, e.g. [49] [50] [51], apparently more or less copied verbatim one from another. Mihia (talk) 16:00, 26 December 2024 (UTC)Reply

formula

Latest comment: 4 months ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Rfv-sense "(especially religion) A formal statement of doctrine". if i'm reading the context right, the "formulae" in the one quote we have now doesn't seem to refer to "statements of doctrine", but the set phrases and/or structural elements (the specific ways one should say the prayers, etc.) in the rituals. it would then correspond to the primary sense listed in the OED: "A set form of words in which something is defined, stated, or declared, or which is prescribed by authority or custom to be used on some ceremonial occasion"-- which is a sense we happen not to have at the moment. ragweed theater _{talk, user} 20:44, 28 December 2024 (UTC)Reply

I would simply rewrite this sense along the lines in OED—and reorder the senses a bit accordingly. P Aculeius (talk) 21:57, 28 December 2024 (UTC)Reply

blenk

Latest comment: 1 month ago2 comments2 people in discussion

3 verbs — This unsigned comment was added by 2A02:C7E:2069:C800:5D7F:F594:1763:3351 (talk) at 08:31, 29 December 2024 (UTC).Reply

There are quotes out there. I say we combine 3 definitions, which is kinda lame, but less lame than deleting this whole things. Vilipender (talk) 20:10, 10 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

abgregation

Latest comment: 4 months ago7 comments2 people in discussion

Only one use available. This, that and the other (talk) 02:52, 30 December 2024 (UTC)Reply

Not in the original OED; very hard to search for due to the large number of hits for abnegation and abrogation with indistinct 'n' or 'o'. P Aculeius (talk) 20:17, 30 December 2024 (UTC)Reply

I didn't find any stray hits or scannos when I searched, just loads of old dictionaries. Did you search for "abgregation" in quotation marks? This, that and the other (talk) 09:16, 4 January 2025 (UTC)Reply

No, but I'm not aware that enclosing a single word in quotation marks would produce any different results; I did a general search and then narrowed the results to occurrences in books. As far as I know, quotation marks are used to enclose a string of words to produce an exact match, so they should make no difference to a single word. And if occurrences of abnegation or abrogation have been misindexed as abregation, then they ought to appear whether or not you enclose abregation in quotation marks; I don't know how doing so would eliminate hits for words that have erroneously been indexed with the same spelling. P Aculeius (talk) 15:19, 4 January 2025 (UTC)Reply

@P Aculeius oh, I think you have been searching for the wrong word. This one has two Gs. This, that and the other (talk) 22:45, 4 January 2025 (UTC)Reply

So I have. begins self-flagellation P Aculeius (talk) 00:15, 5 January 2025 (UTC)Reply

I cannot find any instances of "abgregation" besides dictonaries, of which there are many. OED says "apparently never used" (1888), and Johnson said "rarely used", but any examples would have been included in OED. Not a word I would really expect in more recent times, unless someone was being deliberately florid. P Aculeius (talk) 00:35, 5 January 2025 (UTC)Reply

soyned

Latest comment: 27 days ago2 comments2 people in discussion

some scannos for joyned, Middle English P. Sovjunk (talk) 22:47, 30 December 2024 (UTC)Reply

Failed Vilipender (talk) 22:14, 17 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

furry

Latest comment: 15 days ago5 comments3 people in discussion

Rfv-sense 4: "(informal, slang) Someone who is sexually attracted to anthropomorphic animal characters." Added a month ago by an IP here; removed by another IP today.
As I understand it, the question is: if someone does not identify with an anthropomorphic animal character or have a fursona (i.e. is not a furry in senses 2 or 3, which at present seem ill-distinguished), but is attracted to furries, does that make that person a furry? It seems possible. - -sche (discuss) 06:12, 31 December 2024 (UTC)Reply

That's how I understand the term, yeah. Would be hard to cite (how do you prove someone doesn't have a fursona?), but I did find these:

2020 September 25, Kathy Merlock Jackson, Kathy Shepherd Stolley, Lisa Lyon Payne, Animals and Ourselves: Essays on Connections and Blurred Boundaries, McFarland, →ISBN, page 245:
While members of the fandom seem to use " fandom " in a formal capacity explicitly to describe particular interest in forms of art, it is also used less formally to refer to all members of the furry community regardless of artistic involvement and commitment to a fursona.

2021 August 26, Jessica Ruth Austin, Fan Identities in the Furry Fandom, Bloomsbury Publishing USA, →ISBN, page 57:
24 per cent of respondents of the 1,011 results did not have a fursona at all. This shows that having a fursona is still in the majority but it opens up questions as to why a significant minority do not have them but still consider themselves a Furry.

Smurrayinchester (talk) 20:48, 1 January 2025 (UTC)Reply

Let's go to good ol' Furscience:

"...one-third of furries say that sexual attraction to furry content is a motivator of their participation ... while certainly a motivator for some furries, it is not the primary motivating factor for most furries..."

I think the error made by the editor was that they defined "furry" as meaning "someone sexually attracted to [furry content]". That is just not what the word means, any more than "animal" means "something with fur, long ears, and retractable claws". Simply, a "furry" is as in senses 1, 2, and 3, and senses 2 and 3 include a whole host of interests.

I vote removal of sense 4 as incorrect and unsubstantiated.

Robert.Baruch (talk) 02:32, 2 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

You make a good point about "animal". It seems reasonable that what is currently sense 2, "member of the furry fandom", could include someone who was a fan of (and particularly attracted to) furries, but it seems like the meaning of "furry" is still "member of the furry fandom (in any capacity, whether by having a fursona or being attracted to one)", rather than that "furry" ever specifically means only "someone attracted to...", i.e. that a speaker would use "furry" only for "someone attracted to..." and would not consider other members of the fandom to be "furries". (Like how some people use "animal" to mean "any non-human animal" and would not include humans, while other people use "animal" to mean "any animal (including a human)", but no one uses "animal" to mean "a human specifically (to the exclusion of non-human animals)", so defining animal as "human", a la our sense 4 of furry, would be a misunderstanding.) Smurrayinchester's cites seem to bear this out, remarking that a minority of furries don't have fursonas (but a majority do), including them all as "furries", rather than using "furry" to mean only the fursonaless minority.
I suggest reorganizing the entry either like this or like this (merging what are currently senses 2 and 4, and putting "someone who has a fursona" and "fursona" next to each other, rather than sticking another sense in between them like our entry currently does). - -sche (discuss) 16:47, 2 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

How's this? - -sche (discuss) 01:11, 29 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

January 2025

airgasm

Latest comment: 4 months ago1 comment1 person in discussion

RFV of all senses

The free-fall one is potentially citeable (I found two, plus a mention), the skydiving sex one is obvious vandalism, and the facemask one seems to be a joke during the pandemic that was mentioned but never actually used as a word. Smurrayinchester (talk) 23:05, 2 January 2025 (UTC)Reply

cacotechny

Latest comment: 3 months ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Appears in wordbooks mostly — This unsigned comment was added by 90.174.3.144 (talk) at 08:54, 3 January 2025 (UTC).Reply

It turns up in this strange text, which I find rather difficult to make sense of. Also in the Stratford Monthly [52] = [53]. This, that and the other (talk) 04:26, 10 February 2025 (UTC)Reply

bluet-eyed

Latest comment: 4 months ago2 comments1 person in discussion

Only used in one poem by Wallace Stevens from what I can see, and even in that one poem it's not clear what it means (the next word is hands, so the poem actually says his jigging bluet-eyed hands). The first hit on archive.org at first appears to be a second use, but this is simply a book of poetry quoting the Stevens poem. —Soap— 21:56, 3 January 2025 (UTC)Reply

i see now that its actually the [women] came for his jigging, bluet-eyed, [their] hands [outstretched] so the sense is presumably as we say it is after all, but i still see only one use of this. —Soap— 22:01, 3 January 2025 (UTC)Reply

carpetmonger

Latest comment: 1 month ago3 comments2 people in discussion

Rfv-sense gallant. Used by Shakespeare. Instinct tells me this should be sexual. — This unsigned comment was added by 90.174.2.25 (talk) at 11:55, 4 January 2025 (UTC).Reply

Our second nounal sense of gallant is ‘seducer’ so I see no contradiction here. The definition could be slightly reworded to make the meaning more clear though, I suppose. Overlordnat1 (talk) 23:21, 7 January 2025 (UTC)Reply

There’s not much independent of the bard (‘quondam carpetbaggers’ appears in Much ado about nothing here[54]) on Google Books. This book[55] uses the phrase ‘carpet-monger, or Primrose Knight of Primero’ to refer to a libertine and it seems to be written by Thomas Nashe but others list the whole of that phrase as being from the Merry Wives of Windsor (I couldn’t find it here[56]). There are also snippet views of other authors possibly using the word with this meaning here[57] and here[58]. Overlordnat1 (talk) 23:03, 9 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

cephalotomy

Latest comment: 4 months ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Rfv sense of using a certain tool to carry out a certain gruesome medical procedure. Note to potential RFVers, a strong stomach is required! I couldn't face checking the quotes, it makes me uneasy — This unsigned comment was added by 85.48.186.84 (talk) at 09:49, 6 January 2025 (UTC).Reply

It's an old medical term (this is Webster 1913 after all), and looks citable, but it's for a procedure that we almost certainly don't do anymore. It was apparently common in classical times for a stillborn baby and was in use until early modern times. It seems there were 84 cephalotomies performed in Wurtemberg between July 1821 and July 1825, which makes it seem like a pretty busy place, considering that there were only four cephalotomies performed in the Prague Clinic between 1789 and 1811. —Soap— 19:29, 10 January 2025 (UTC)Reply

hold one's pee

Latest comment: 4 months ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Sense 3: "To hide the effects of one's drunkenness; to convincingly behave as though sober while drunk." 2A00:23C5:FE1C:3701:E1D1:5689:6B17:5A15 01:40, 8 January 2025 (UTC)Reply

May have been a mistake by the creator assuming that since pee is a euphemism for piss, it can stand in for that word even in the sense of alcohol. Either that or they just didnt think it through. I agree this seems unlikely and wouldnt really know how to search for it. Calling alcohol piss requires a speech register that just doesnt overlap much with the situations where we'd want to use a euphemism. —Soap— 23:13, 10 January 2025 (UTC)Reply

anthropophuism

Latest comment: 4 months ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Scant uses are available, but surely not enough to sustain two senses. I suspect the real sense is more nuanced than "human nature". This, that and the other (talk) 13:07, 8 January 2025 (UTC)Reply

slipskin

Latest comment: 4 months ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Rfv adj sense. Only Milton? There's a creature called slipskin too, which we're missing. TypeO889 (talk) 17:07, 8 January 2025 (UTC)Reply

entermewer

Latest comment: 2 months ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Just Browne Father of minus 2 (talk) 23:43, 12 January 2025 (UTC)Reply

also spelled intermewer. Those together would get 3 solid quotations. --85.48.184.181 08:53, 17 February 2025 (UTC)Reply

raise to the ermine

Latest comment: 4 months ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Rfv-sense "To add ermine to someone's coat of arms"

Can't find any citations of this, which seems like an overly literal reading of the phrase. Every hit is metaphorical and refers to the ermine robes won by lords and judges. Smurrayinchester (talk) 09:40, 14 January 2025 (UTC)Reply

debris

Latest comment: 4 months ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Sense 3, "The ruins of a broken-down structure." Must be distinct from main sense 1, "Rubble, wreckage, scattered remains of something destroyed." Other dictionaries (Chambers, Merriam) do not seem to distinguish, and in my experience debris is small pieces, never large components like castle ruins. 2A00:23C5:FE1C:3701:E1CB:650D:44C7:C96 17:05, 14 January 2025 (UTC)Reply

provenial

Latest comment: 17 days ago2 comments2 people in discussion

— SURJECTION ^{/ T / C / L /} 07:14, 16 January 2025 (UTC)Reply

Failed Vilipender (talk) 22:17, 27 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

clap someone's cheeks

Latest comment: 15 days ago4 comments4 people in discussion

Not mine. Father of minus 2 (talk) 16:24, 16 January 2025 (UTC)Reply

There is also (already) clap cheeks, which is mine.... Leasnam (talk) 17:23, 16 January 2025 (UTC)Reply

If not a joke listing (with "Not mine" meaning "don't clap WF's cheeks" and not "this entry isn't by me"), note that we have clap cheeks already. The only thing I really see missing from the latter are 2 more cites and a figurative sense by extension, meaning "to beat someone handily (e.g. at a game)". Hftf (talk) 05:13, 17 January 2025 (UTC)Reply

The definitions listed seem incorrect. I would simply redirect this to clap cheeks. - -sche (discuss) 01:12, 29 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

symbolful

Latest comment: 6 days ago2 comments2 people in discussion

2 hits in Google Books- both false positives. Chuck Entz (talk) 23:49, 19 January 2025 (UTC)Reply

Failed Vilipender (talk) 18:51, 8 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

benthoses

Latest comment: 3 months ago3 comments2 people in discussion

Of the attestations I could find for this supposed plural form of benthos (which I could count on one hand), all appear to be possible errors by writers for whom English is not their primary language, and all dictionaries I have consulted do not cite a plural form.

Hermes Thrice Great (talk) 03:56, 20 January 2025 (UTC)Reply

The obvious joke is that this is about hoses that are bent. Just on a whim, I checked for benthose, and there are at least a few hits for that as another spelling of benthos. That raises the question as to whether benthoses is the plural of benthos or benthose. Chuck Entz (talk) 04:32, 20 January 2025 (UTC)Reply

"Benthose" also appears to be a surname in West Virginia >_<

Hermes Thrice Great (talk) 11:24, 22 January 2025 (UTC)Reply

ginkyoes

Latest comment: 14 days ago3 comments3 people in discussion

Supposedly a plural form of ginkyo. Two search results on Google, one of which is from Wiktionary itself. Gelasin (talk) 18:49, 20 January 2025 (UTC)Reply

Failed Vilipender (talk) 23:42, 15 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

For the record, this[59] was the only page independent of us that I could find in which this word appears. --Overlordnat1 (talk) 12:19, 30 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

tartan (etymology 2)

Latest comment: 3 months ago1 comment1 person in discussion

"A kind of long covered carriage". Appears in some 19th-century dictionaries (e.g., [60], [61], [62]), some citing "Simmonds", but I see no actual use. — Sgconlaw (talk) 22:33, 20 January 2025 (UTC)Reply

snippack

Latest comment: 1 month ago3 comments3 people in discussion

Old Shetland name for common snipe. Just mentioned in some bird-dialect books. Father of minus 2 (talk) 22:03, 21 January 2025 (UTC)Reply

I found one cite. OED for more? Google offers a Cornish natural history without preview. DCDuring (talk) 19:23, 12 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

Alas, AFAICT the OED doesn't have this and the EDD says only that it's also written "snippock" (the last vowel being merely a schwa), with no cites. - -sche (discuss) 23:06, 13 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

soothness

Latest comment: 28 days ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Tagged + unlisted since 2023 Father of minus 2 (talk) 22:53, 21 January 2025 (UTC)Reply

Failed Vilipender (talk) 23:42, 15 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

sorbition

Latest comment: 3 months ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Old glossaries only Father of minus 2 (talk) 23:34, 21 January 2025 (UTC)Reply

Found in the plural here in EEBO, and also in this journal on plant diseases (where it presumably means "absorption"). More searching required. This, that and the other (talk) 23:59, 21 January 2025 (UTC)Reply

pingeon

Latest comment: 3 months ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Variant of pigeon. 2A00:23C5:FE1C:3701:BCD3:14D1:4199:AD20 01:54, 22 January 2025 (UTC)Reply

machete

Latest comment: 3 months ago1 comment1 person in discussion

"To hack or chop crudely with a blade other than a machete." Like: I macheted my sausage with a dinner knife? Can't find real citations in GBooks. 2A00:23C5:FE1C:3701:88F4:DA9A:6206:1B9E 01:37, 23 January 2025 (UTC)Reply

Shanbeh

Latest comment: 3 months ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Created by a certain User:Liggliluff. This appears to be just a transliteration of the Persian word for Saturday. I can't find clear citations that use this in English and aren't mentions. Benwing2 (talk) 02:41, 23 January 2025 (UTC)Reply

firststringer

Latest comment: 3 months ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Judging by Google Books, only the hyphenated form first-stringer exists. 2A00:23C5:FE1C:3701:88F4:DA9A:6206:1B9E 03:54, 23 January 2025 (UTC)Reply

sakai

Latest comment: 3 months ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Is this English? The one quote provided certainly doesn't instil confidence. Not sure how to search for it really. This, that and the other (talk) 10:12, 24 January 2025 (UTC)Reply

dejeration

Latest comment: 1 month ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Only one use found 85.48.186.106 19:54, 24 January 2025 (UTC)Reply

Three in EEBO: [63] [64] [65]. Yes, they used -i- but they didn't always distinguish i and j then, so we should count these cites towards the -j- form. This, that and the other (talk) 01:18, 10 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

deporture

Latest comment: 11 days ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Apparently a misspelling of departure, actually 213.143.50.55 05:35, 27 January 2025 (UTC)Reply

Failed +quote-kept Vilipender (talk) 11:45, 3 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

derdoing

Latest comment: 28 days ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Only attested in Spenser's work 84.78.18.236 07:22, 27 January 2025 (UTC)Reply

Failed+quote-kept Vilipender (talk) 00:03, 16 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

devenustate

Latest comment: 11 days ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Only appearing in participle form devenustated, to where it would be moved in the event it fails RFV--213.143.50.46 06:29, 28 January 2025 (UTC)Reply

Failed +quote-kept Vilipender (talk) 11:45, 3 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

sullen

Latest comment: 3 months ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Rfv-sense "Lonely; solitary; desolate". Had an "archaic" label, but an IP recently removed it. This sense has three quotes... but they're all Middle English. — SURJECTION ^{/ T / C / L /} 13:31, 28 January 2025 (UTC)Reply

vector

Latest comment: 3 months ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Rfv-sense: "The way in which the eyes are drawn across the visual text. The trail that a book cover can encourage the eyes to follow from certain objects to others."

A very wordy and specific definition, but "vector + eye tracking" or "vector + book cover" don't seem to turn anything up. Just a lot about vector graphics and the sense 2 vector encoding of eye co-ordinates. Smurrayinchester (talk) 14:37, 29 January 2025 (UTC)Reply

Google search https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=vector+The+way+in+which+the+eyes+are+drawn+across+the+visual+text throws up several pages with content that seems related to this. "book cover" might be slightly over-specific but otherwise it might hold up. Mihia (talk) 00:31, 1 February 2025 (UTC)Reply

disaventure

Latest comment: 18 days ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Apart from Spenser, I can't find any non-Middle English quotes --84.78.16.213 07:46, 31 January 2025 (UTC)Reply

Failed, kept quote Vilipender (talk) 23:35, 25 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

disaventurous

Latest comment: 18 days ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Only found in Spenser --84.78.16.213 07:49, 31 January 2025 (UTC)Reply

Failed, kept quote Vilipender (talk) 23:35, 25 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

discourtship

Latest comment: 18 days ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Only Jonson --213.143.50.98 15:07, 31 January 2025 (UTC)Reply

Failed, kept quote Vilipender (talk) 23:35, 25 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

disespouse

Latest comment: 18 days ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Only Milton, only past participe --213.143.50.98 15:40, 31 January 2025 (UTC)Reply

Failed, kept quote Vilipender (talk) 23:35, 25 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

February 2025

grip

Latest comment: 3 months ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Two noun senses:

(figurative) Assistance; help; encouragement.
(figurative) Someone who is helpful, interesting, admirable, or inspiring.

Added here along with corresponding verb senses. The verb senses failed RFV in 2022 and were deleted here. Mihia (talk) 20:12, 1 February 2025 (UTC)Reply

see-through fence

Latest comment: 4 days ago2 comments2 people in discussion

=chainlink fence? Tagged in August2024 Father of minus 2 (talk) 10:42, 2 February 2025 (UTC)Reply

Failed Vilipender (talk) 10:52, 10 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

CU46

Latest comment: 3 months ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Unlisted Father of minus 2 (talk) 11:33, 2 February 2025 (UTC)Reply

alligator

Latest comment: 1 month ago3 comments3 people in discussion

Rfv-sense binder of tress Father of minus 2 (talk) 11:33, 2 February 2025 (UTC)Reply

? The sense in the entry is "One who binds or ties." - nothing to do with tress. OED has it so it should be real. This, that and the other (talk) 10:43, 8 February 2025 (UTC)Reply

I searched around but have not managed to find anything. The OED's only "cites" seem to be two mentions/definitions in other dictionaries or glossaries. - -sche (discuss) 17:03, 2 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

away

Latest comment: 3 months ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Rfv-sense come on, go on Unlisted Father of minus 2 (talk) 11:34, 2 February 2025 (UTC)Reply

carindery

Latest comment: 3 months ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Unlisted Father of minus 2 (talk) 11:35, 2 February 2025 (UTC)Reply

siddow

Latest comment: 16 days ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Unlisted Father of minus 2 (talk) 11:36, 2 February 2025 (UTC)Reply

Failed Vilipender (talk) 22:17, 28 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

motornapping

Latest comment: 3 months ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Unlisted Father of minus 2 (talk) 11:37, 2 February 2025 (UTC)Reply

qcepo

Latest comment: 22 days ago3 comments3 people in discussion

Unlisted Father of minus 2 (talk) 11:38, 2 February 2025 (UTC)Reply

More likely Peruvian Spanish, possibly from local language. DCDuring (talk) 17:13, 2 February 2025 (UTC)Reply

Failed Lfellet (talk) 19:42, 22 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

commorse

Latest comment: 30 minutes ago3 comments3 people in discussion

Unlisted Father of minus 2 (talk) 11:39, 2 February 2025 (UTC)Reply

I found a second cite but it's by the same author. Also, some works interpret this as meaning "compassion, pity" instead of "remorse". - -sche (discuss) 17:12, 2 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

Failed Vilipender (talk) 21:51, 14 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

tidy

Latest comment: 4 days ago7 comments5 people in discussion

"A tabletop container for pens and stationery. a desk tidy." This is actually desk tidy and I don't think it's ever just called "a tidy". 2A00:23C5:FE1C:3701:D461:2CF4:88FD:F4D1 08:30, 3 February 2025 (UTC)Reply

if we rewrite the definition a bit we can probably come up with a sense that covers the use of tidy in desk tidy, cable tidy, sink tidy and hair tidy. ragweed theater _{talk, user} 14:34, 3 February 2025 (UTC)Reply

I had a go at a new def. Could be better still, I suspect. This, that and the other (talk) 09:21, 8 February 2025 (UTC)Reply

OK, but if it's never a "tidy" alone, then the sense must be marked with something like "in combination". 2A00:23C5:FE1C:3701:1070:8DBC:498C:45B1 20:54, 12 February 2025 (UTC)Reply

good point, though see the 19th-century quote i've just added (taken from OED) ragweed theater _{talk, user} 18:32, 14 February 2025 (UTC)Reply

I’ve added two quotes where ‘tidy’ is used alone to refer to a desk tidy, in one instance, and a sink tidy, in the other, though in both cases the full terms had already been used. Someone else has already marked ‘tidy’ as being used in combination in the meantime anyway. Let’s call this cited. Overlordnat1 (talk) 07:01, 1 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

RFV passed. --Overlordnat1 (talk) 14:35, 10 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

Corinthian

Latest comment: 3 months ago1 comment1 person in discussion

rfv-sense for "Horse show-class in which contestants are members of a formal hunt and wear its livery, as opposed to appointment show-class."

rfv-sense for "A small tubular wafer used in desserts" (if real, probably from the wafer cookies brand named Corinthians, in which case refer to WT:BRAND) ragweed theater _{talk, user} 10:50, 3 February 2025 (UTC)Reply

sprod

Latest comment: 22 days ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Young fish Father of minus 2 (talk) 11:30, 3 February 2025 (UTC)Reply

Failed Lfellet (talk) 19:44, 22 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

rizzonomics

Latest comment: 3 months ago5 comments4 people in discussion

No quotes and seems like a shitpost. - saph ^_^^⠀talk⠀ 04:06, 4 February 2025 (UTC)Reply

I found many usages on social media such as this YouTube video, but this was the only non-social media use I could find: The University of Arizona website. Ca (talk) 09:07, 4 February 2025 (UTC)Reply

There’s also ‘rizzology’ which would probably be just as hard to durably attest if we had an entry for it. Overlordnat1 (talk) 11:12, 4 February 2025 (UTC)Reply

Weirdly enough, rizzology proved attestible through print cites. WordyAndNerdy (talk) 06:48, 7 February 2025 (UTC)Reply

Wow! Great work citing that. Overlordnat1 (talk) 00:53, 8 February 2025 (UTC)Reply

dispunct

Latest comment: 6 days ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Rfv-sense adjective. Only used in Jonson's work. The verb might fail RFV too --85.48.184.44 19:28, 4 February 2025 (UTC)Reply

Failed adj +kept quoteVilipender (talk) 22:09, 8 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

half-fish

Latest comment: 3 months ago6 comments3 people in discussion

Another obscure salmon word Father of minus 2 (talk) 21:46, 4 February 2025 (UTC)Reply

If verifiable, the definition might be (obsolete), since we now know that different species of salmon have different growth cycles, and I think even within the same species some may grow faster than others. In other words it wouldnt be a useful term. —Soap— 12:52, 7 February 2025 (UTC)Reply

GNU reports this as "Prov. Eng." and Century 1911 (earlier years?) had it (labelled "Local, Eng.", with "Willughby" as source) before MW 1913 had it. OED? Francis Willughby (1635-72) was, among other things, an ichthyologist and linguist. His Historia Piscium (1686) was written in Latin and his journals are lost, so it is unclear whether he actually used the English word half-fish. OTOH Google Books has many reference works with half-fish with this definition and many books about fish or fishing have mentions of the term, often citing Willughby/Willoughby, but at least as often using the same wording without citing him. Many of the mentions refer to the term being used in Yorkshire, by fishermen on the river Ribble. The term is one in a sequence (yr. 1: smelt; yr. 2: sprod, yr. 3: mort; yr. 4: forktail; yr. 6 et seq. salmon. At Wiktionary only smelt lacks the salmon definition. DCDuring (talk) 18:26, 7 February 2025 (UTC)Reply

The NED has a single cite from John Ray, a correspondent of Willughby, which also seems mentiony. The English Dialect Dictionary has the same cite. DCDuring (talk) 19:18, 7 February 2025 (UTC)Reply

Okay so it looks like it's a term for a four-year-old specimen of a species that typically matures after five years. If this stays, I want to write a usage explaining why it wouldnt b e appropriate to use for other species. —Soap— 22:27, 8 February 2025 (UTC)Reply

I think the word only in the definition could cover that. DCDuring (talk) 15:30, 10 February 2025 (UTC)Reply

distasture

Latest comment: 6 days ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Only in Speed, or French 85.48.184.198 08:09, 5 February 2025 (UTC)Reply

Failed +kept quoteVilipender (talk) 22:09, 8 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

bing chilling

Latest comment: 3 months ago2 comments1 person in discussion

Rfv-pronunciation. --ChemPro (talk) 12:37, 5 February 2025 (UTC)Reply

I guess its verb is pronounced as /bɪŋ ˈt͡ʃɪlɪŋ/, whereas its noun is pronounced as /bɪŋ t͡ʃɪlˈɪŋ/ with the stress on the second syllabyle of chilling. --ChemPro (talk) 15:00, 5 February 2025 (UTC)Reply

heterocrinally

Latest comment: 3 months ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Apparent error, only in one single paper by NNES. The etymology is also nonsensical. 2A00:23C5:FE1C:3701:E4C0:8321:7D29:10A0 18:25, 5 February 2025 (UTC)Reply

i do agree that this probably isn't passing CFI, but what makes you think that the use here (assuming this is the paper you mean) is an "apparent error", or that the etymology is nonsensical? the word is clearly intended to mean "in a heterocrine manner" in that paper since it's used besides paracrinally and autocrinally ragweed theater _{talk, user} 12:26, 6 February 2025 (UTC)Reply

whiteheaded

Latest comment: 3 months ago1 comment1 person in discussion

"Of the skin, having or consisting of many whiteheads." One Google Web hit only for "whiteheaded skin". Anything like "whiteheaded pustules" actually means "having a head on it that is white" i.e. apex. 2A00:23C5:FE1C:3701:E4C0:8321:7D29:10A0 19:42, 5 February 2025 (UTC)Reply

xenophile

Latest comment: 1 month ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Sense 2: "A person with an interest in celebrating people's differences." Needs to be distinct from the other, likelier sense: "A person who has a love of foreign people and culture." 2A00:23C5:FE1C:3701:E4C0:8321:7D29:10A0 19:54, 5 February 2025 (UTC)Reply

It's been there since 2005, so I speculate that this might just be a leftover of the then-common practice of entering multiple ways of wording one definition as multiple definitions. - -sche (discuss) 17:40, 2 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

pain in the ass

Latest comment: 3 months ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Rfv-sense "causing discomfort or frustration". This needs quotes, and I think if it were an adjective it would be hyphenated pain-in-the-ass. - saph ^_^^⠀talk⠀ 09:10, 7 February 2025 (UTC)Reply

bababna

Latest comment: 3 months ago1 comment1 person in discussion

"deliberate misspelling of banana". possibly a meme, though google search doesn't reveal much ragweed theater _{talk, user} 14:40, 7 February 2025 (UTC)Reply

dorn

Latest comment: 6 days ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Raja clavata, a fish --90.174.2.212 12:31, 8 February 2025 (UTC)Reply

Failed +deletedVilipender (talk) 22:09, 8 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

cyberfarting

Latest comment: 3 months ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Rfv-sense:

(UK, formal, singular only) The act of repeatedly sending virtual media to a user via cyberspace with malicious intent.

This definition misses the point, since it's not the sending of just any virtual media, but of sending virtual media of someone farting.

The whole entry needs to be reworked- the usage seems to be entirely in reference to the recent prosecution of a woman in India for allegedly doing this, so it's probably a hot word that doesn't fit the labels in the definition line, and it probably should be lemmatized at the verb cyberfart / cyber fart. I decided to post it as an RFV rather than an RFC because it's completely wrong in its present form and should be deleted if not cleaned up. Chuck Entz (talk) 21:41, 8 February 2025 (UTC)Reply

down the wind

Latest comment: 3 months ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Rfv-sense decaying. Only found in L'Estrange --90.174.2.104 11:30, 9 February 2025 (UTC)Reply

absoluter

Latest comment: 3 months ago3 comments2 people in discussion

It is a wrong comparative (it has three syllables!). In addition, I could not find it in Ngram (English). All the examples that I saw were in German. Note that it is easy to find absolutest (probably it has been confused with absolutist). — This unsigned comment was added by Adelpine (talk • contribs) at 13:04, 9 February 2025 (UTC).Reply

Search for "absoluter than", in Google Books: [66]. It can be found. 2A00:23C5:FE1C:3701:1CF6:D817:8F6E:7C72 13:13, 9 February 2025 (UTC)Reply

It can be found apparently 8 times, but one appeared 2 times and other 3 times. At the end only 5 occurrences. From these the first is a quote, two were poems (one of them requires absoluter to rhyme with computer); other was a Science Fiction novel where the speaker was extraterrestrial and obviously English was her second, third, fourth,... language. Finally, I could not read the last occurrence.

We can conclude that this word is so rare that it must be an error or a poetic license! Adelpine (talk) 01:10, 10 February 2025 (UTC)Reply

dripple

Latest comment: 6 days ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Senses weak or rare--90.174.2.221 01:26, 10 February 2025 (UTC)Reply

Failed +deleted Vilipender (talk) 22:09, 8 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

drunkenhead

Latest comment: 3 months ago2 comments2 people in discussion

I couldn't find 3 citations --90.174.2.221 01:38, 10 February 2025 (UTC)Reply

Looks like Middle English: “drǒnkenhēde, noun.”, in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007.. Chuck Entz (talk) 03:23, 10 February 2025 (UTC)Reply

earth oil

Latest comment: 3 months ago2 comments2 people in discussion

I don't think this is used any more--90.174.3.209 23:03, 10 February 2025 (UTC)Reply

Just mark it "obsolete", then. It's still a real historic term, for inclusion in dictionaries. 2A00:23C5:FE1C:3701:8434:3A38:6DBF:78CC 14:55, 11 February 2025 (UTC)Reply

semicomposting

Latest comment: 3 months ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Few hits on Google; the page itself also needs cleanup. - saph ^_^^⠀talk⠀ 16:37, 11 February 2025 (UTC)Reply

much for muchness

Latest comment: 4 days ago3 comments3 people in discussion

2A00:23C5:FE1C:3701:8434:3A38:6DBF:78CC 18:38, 11 February 2025 (UTC)Reply

Failed +kept quoteVilipender (talk) 22:09, 8 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
Where’s the quote? Overlordnat1 (talk) 14:32, 10 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

edulious

Latest comment: 16 days ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Browne was the only one to use this — This unsigned comment was added by 90.174.2.222 (talk) at 19:42, 11 February 2025 (UTC).Reply

Failed Vilipender (talk) 23:12, 27 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

absentee

Latest comment: 6 days ago2 comments2 people in discussion

RFV sense "One that is nonexistent or lacking" as distinct from other existing senses. No examples, and I am not exactly sure what kind of thing this is referring to. Mihia (talk) 22:08, 11 February 2025 (UTC)Reply

Failed +deleted Vilipender (talk) 22:09, 8 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

pedication

Latest comment: 3 months ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Rfv-sense "sex with a boy." A conceivable definition judging from the popular etymology of the Latin etymon, but the uses I've seen all take this word to be basically equivalent to "anal sex" or more specifically "anal penetration", with no reference to pedophilia ragweed theater _{talk, user} 01:43, 12 February 2025 (UTC)Reply

bever

Latest comment: 1 month ago3 comments2 people in discussion

bevering

Rfv-sense: to tremble. The only use available in OED is Middle English. It seems to have survived in dialect, but it's not clear whether it should be considered Scots or English. This, that and the other (talk) 05:13, 12 February 2025 (UTC)Reply

I could only find one cite of this spelling, but (with the help of the EDD) just barely enough English cites of biver that we could move the entry to that spelling: Citations:biver. (Will also need to update bibbern if this is moved.) - -sche (discuss) 07:23, 22 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

I'm adding the noun bevering to this RFV. - -sche (discuss) 23:17, 22 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

effrontuously

Latest comment: 17 days ago2 comments2 people in discussion

I found 2 quotes. Ours and "effrontously break" --85.48.186.48 08:59, 12 February 2025 (UTC)Reply

Unfortunately, "effrontuously break..." turns out to be a line from North, as do the other two sentences I managed to find this used in, "effrontuously affirms..." and "carried it unduly, effrontuously, or authoritatively" (see the citations page). It looks like North may be the only user of this term. - -sche (discuss) 15:28, 27 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

niggism

Latest comment: 6 days ago2 comments2 people in discussion

(might count as derogatory, depending on how one views it) — SURJECTION ^{/ T / C / L /} 10:27, 12 February 2025 (UTC)Reply

Failed Vilipender (talk) 22:09, 8 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

emendately

Latest comment: 16 days ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Only 1 use, and lots of dictionaries and telegraph books --85.48.185.69 13:46, 13 February 2025 (UTC)Reply

Failed Vilipender (talk) 23:12, 27 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

empyesis

Latest comment: 16 days ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Only used in Ancient Greek

Failed Vilipender (talk) 23:12, 27 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

emuscation

Latest comment: 6 days ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Only used by Evelyn --85.48.185.69 19:34, 13 February 2025 (UTC)Reply

Failed Vilipender (talk) 22:09, 8 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

encomberment

Latest comment: 6 days ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Only modern English was Spenser's. Some Middle English found

Failed+keepquote Vilipender (talk) 22:09, 8 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

grammar

Latest comment: 2 months ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Rfv-sense "(computing theory) A formal system specifying the syntax of a language." Doesn't really look like a distinct sense. there could definitely be a nuanced difference between this and Sense 1, but the way the one quote we have now uses the word grammar, although certainly adapted a bit for its purpose, is imo still an ordinary use of Sense 1 ragweed theater _{talk, user} 16:53, 14 February 2025 (UTC)Reply

See formal grammar for a more thorough definition. 2A00:23C5:FE1C:3701:C45D:16B0:6A08:44BE 14:42, 15 February 2025 (UTC)Reply

gnodde

Latest comment: 6 days ago3 comments3 people in discussion

English verb. Apparently in Chaucer, so probably should be Middle English. 2A00:23C5:FE1C:3701:C45D:16B0:6A08:44BE 14:41, 15 February 2025 (UTC)Reply

The only use in EEBO is [67]. None of the various editions of Chaucer turn up. A Wikisource text suggests the actual verb is Middle English gniden, but we do also have gnodden (neither with any evidence). This, that and the other (talk) 00:42, 26 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

Failed +deletedVilipender (talk) 22:09, 8 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

fluffy cow

Latest comment: 6 days ago3 comments3 people in discussion

cute entry. The quotes I see don't convince me. Father of minus 2 (talk) 17:43, 15 February 2025 (UTC)Reply

Are they like the one in the entry? That one seems like usage of SoP [[fluffy + cow. DCDuring (talk) 19:27, 15 February 2025 (UTC)Reply

Failed +keep-quoteVilipender (talk) 22:09, 8 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

squinance

Latest comment: 2 months ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Plenty of old French shit, little English Father of minus 2 (talk) 18:34, 15 February 2025 (UTC)Reply

I was just reading this entry yesterday! What mischief are you up to, WF?

Anyway there are lots of results in EEBO, which may well be enough to cite both senses. This, that and the other (talk) 03:13, 16 February 2025 (UTC)Reply

click off

Latest comment: 2 months ago3 comments3 people in discussion

Various implausible senses having no connection to clicking. 2A00:23C5:FE1C:3701:7554:3300:196:C6E0 19:40, 15 February 2025 (UTC)Reply

The first three senses seem synonymous to senses of tick off:

click off 1 = tick off 1 literally
click off 2 = tick off 2
click off 3 = tick off 1 figuratively

So we could somehow collapse these to a single sense "To tick off (to check off; to list)" perhaps? This, that and the other (talk) 00:24, 17 February 2025 (UTC)Reply

My feeling is that these are valid senses (though possibly don't need to be three separate definitions), probably based on the idea of clicking one of those hand-held counting gadgets. I can find a few relevant examples of "click off the miles", "click off the days", "click off the items" etc., albeit not quite as many as I expected. Mihia (talk) 21:51, 2 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

megalops

Latest comment: 2 months ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Rfv-sense: "A large fish of species Megalops atlanticus (Atlantic tarpon)." or an extended definition like "any of the genus Megalops of tarpons". Not easy to search for because of the other sea-life definition, the genus name, and use as a specific epithet. I've tried searching for the plural form and on Google NGrams for the upper- and lower-case forms with a or the, but the displayed search results don't differentiate by letter case. I also tried '"a meglops" tarpon -crab' at Google Books.

I think many lower-case versions of genus names are suspect. The hard redirect lower-case search term to upper-case entry and the use {{also}} with the upper-case form at any entry for a valid lower-case form should be sufficient help users decode and properly encode. DCDuring (talk) 18:02, 16 February 2025 (UTC)Reply

enrange

Latest comment: 6 days ago2 comments2 people in discussion

May only appear in Fairy Queene. I noticed some hits where "enranged" looked very likely to mean "enraged", though it is not a common misspelling --85.48.184.181 08:16, 17 February 2025 (UTC)Reply

Failed +kept-quoteVilipender (talk) 22:09, 8 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

enseel

Latest comment: 6 days ago2 comments2 people in discussion

I found nothing but mentions in encyclopedias, dictionaries, and an alternative spelling of enseal. --85.48.184.181 08:35, 17 February 2025 (UTC)Reply

Failed Vilipender (talk) 22:09, 8 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

immacuble

Latest comment: 2 months ago2 comments2 people in discussion

— SURJECTION ^{/ T / C / L /} 16:08, 18 February 2025 (UTC)Reply

occasional error for immaculate. a pre-Web example here, but otherwise seems pretty much uncitable. however note the readily attested (if obsolete) immaculable (“immune to staining”), which we don't have yet ragweed theater _{talk, user} 16:09, 1 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

phytozome

Latest comment: 2 months ago5 comments5 people in discussion

Discussion moved from WT:RFDE.

all attestations I can find are for the comparative platform for green plant genomics Phytozome, no usage of phytozome as a name for plant genomes. Anatol Rath (talk) 11:48, 12 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

Move to RFV. Inqilābī 15:29, 13 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

Did the RfV move get lost in the mail? LunaEatsTuna (talk) 00:25, 7 December 2024 (UTC)Reply

Failed Father of minus 2 (talk) 22:40, 15 February 2025 (UTC)Reply
Moved to RFV, of course. Ultimateria (talk) 00:30, 19 February 2025 (UTC)Reply

start

Latest comment: 2 months ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Rfv-sense: A handle, especially that of a plough. Provincial, apparently Father of minus 2 (talk) 11:30, 19 February 2025 (UTC)Reply

sand snake

Latest comment: 2 months ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Rfv-sense: "A wisp of sand blowing across the ice."

Uncited. Very poetic, poorly worded for a dictionary. DCDuring (talk) 16:12, 19 February 2025 (UTC)Reply

GLOW

Latest comment: 1 month ago2 comments2 people in discussion

"Girls living off welfare". Zero Google hits for GLOW plus this quoted phrase. 2A00:23C5:FE1C:3701:C50E:411F:93D2:A255 22:41, 19 February 2025 (UTC)Reply

I also cannot find GLOW with welfare, anti-feminist (see below), or other seemingly relevant terms.

I checked out the acronym MGTOW, which is listed as "see also". This appears to have been the creation of a "men's rights" / anti-feminist organization around 2006. The entry was created in June 2006, glossed as both "men going their own way" and "maximum gross take-off weight". The men's rights group might be defunct; the url of their discussion forum, menforjustice.net (originally mgtow.net), currently hosts an advertisement in Thai for what appears to be slot machines.

Like MGTOW ("maximum gross take-off weight"), both GLOW and GLOM have aviation-related meanings: "gross lift-off weight" and "-mass", respectively. This feels like an in-group joke.

At any rate, I cannot verify GLOW or GLOM in the sense "girls living off X". The page Citations:MGTOW does, however, have sufficient citations of that acronym, mostly online but also in print media. Cnilep (talk) 00:12, 21 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

staw

Latest comment: 2 months ago1 comment1 person in discussion

be fixed, stay. OED has quotes, but probably not matching this defn Father of minus 2 (talk) 12:14, 20 February 2025 (UTC)Reply

esguard

Latest comment: 2 months ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Only appearing in the Knight of Malta.--85.48.185.209 19:21, 20 February 2025 (UTC)Reply

exacinate

Latest comment: 2 months ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Although exacination does exist --85.48.185.26 09:10, 22 February 2025 (UTC)Reply

All I’m seeing for exacinationis mentions in word books and typos/scannos for examination. Overlordnat1 (talk) 09:15, 23 February 2025 (UTC)Reply

strany

Latest comment: 2 months ago4 comments3 people in discussion

Uncitable bsolete bird name, number 686 Vipgame321 (talk) 17:55, 22 February 2025 (UTC)Reply

I haven't found any clear uses yet, but OED provides three mentions of it as a name for the guillemot or a particular variety thereof:

1804 Thomas Bewick, History of British Birds, vol. II, p. 188: "The Foolish Guillemot. Willock, skout, kiddaw, lavy, seahen, or strany. (Uria Troile, Lath.—Le Guillemot, Buff.) This Guillemot is a plump, heavy bird in proportion to its size..."
1833 George Montagu, James Rennie, Ornithological Dictionary of British Birds (new edition): p. 502: "Straney.—A name for the Guillemot."
1896 Alfred Newton, A Dictionary of Birds, p. 398: "Around the coasts of Britain it is variously known as the Frowl, Kiddaw or Skiddaw, Langy (cf. Icelandic. Langvia), Lavy, Marrock, Murre, Scout (cf. Coot and Scoter), Scuttock, Strany, Tinker or Tinkershire, and Willock."

There are similar examples; Charles Alexander Johns, Birds in Their Haunts, various editions; Encyclopedia Britannica, 1910; etc. Unfortunately, while the word may appear in works using local dialect from Britain, but is difficult to search for because "Straney" is also a surname, and a book search for the word by itself turns up people with that name. If you add the word "guillemot", you're selecting for dictionaries, and excluding uses. "Strany bird" might be less dictionarian, but it's unlikely anyone would call one that, any more than we would search for "wren bird" or "chickadee bird". AI will find recent things, but probably not literary uses, since this combination won't appear in books. Searching under "strany", I note Tim Birkhead, Great Auk Islands (2010), p. 124: "The terms 'strang' and 'strany' were Scottish names for the Common Guillemot or Razorbill (Lockwood 1984; see also Appendix 1)..." So I suspect this may be citable, but it will take more time and effort. P Aculeius (talk) 04:28, 27 February 2025 (UTC)Reply

@P. Aculeius: did you try searching for potential plural forms? That sometimes helps. — Sgconlaw (talk) 04:58, 27 February 2025 (UTC)Reply

I did now, but I'm not having any luck. Still a lot of names, and a word in Polish. I'm beginning to think that a lot of dialect words don't make it into print outside of dictionaries or guides. But maybe someone else will have more luck. P Aculeius (talk) 23:38, 27 February 2025 (UTC)Reply

Tamil Pokkisham

Latest comment: 2 months ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Indian political thing. Can't find much. 2A00:23C5:FE1C:3701:D8D8:8AE7:2BDD:6149 10:25, 23 February 2025 (UTC)Reply

lordgirl

Latest comment: 1 month ago2 comments2 people in discussion

— SURJECTION ^{/ T / C / L /} 07:16, 24 February 2025 (UTC)Reply

Unlike the same user's xesnart, this one gets a few (mention-y, nonce-y) web hits, but it's probably still too rare a nonce to meet CFI. - -sche (discuss) 18:13, 22 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

deucebag

Latest comment: 2 months ago1 comment1 person in discussion

— SURJECTION ^{/ T / C / L /} 07:27, 24 February 2025 (UTC)Reply

fabbot

Latest comment: 2 months ago1 comment1 person in discussion

— SURJECTION ^{/ T / C / L /} 07:27, 24 February 2025 (UTC)Reply

infusibility

Latest comment: 2 months ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Etymology 2: “Capability of being infused, poured in, or instilled”; “rare” in the OED, with only “in N. Webster, American Dictionary of English Language ; and in mod. Dicts.” J3133 (talk) 07:40, 24 February 2025 (UTC)Reply

funkface

Latest comment: 2 months ago1 comment1 person in discussion

— SURJECTION ^{/ T / C / L /} 11:42, 24 February 2025 (UTC)Reply

expurgatorious

Latest comment: 2 months ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Sole use in Milton's work--85.48.186.228 11:16, 25 February 2025 (UTC)Reply

extradictionary

Latest comment: 2 months ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Sole use in Browne's work --85.48.186.228 20:09, 25 February 2025 (UTC)Reply

barefooter

Latest comment: 2 months ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Rfv-sense A member of the barefoot movement; a person who chooses not to wear shoes or socks.

Sense not established. I could see it being used to refer to someone who habitually goes barefoot, so we could leave the second part of the definition, but I couldnt find three cites in print media even for that looser sense. They're all about waterskiing apart from a couple of unclear uses which I don't have access to the necessary context to understand (and some of the books arent readable at all). —Soap— 21:24, 25 February 2025 (UTC)Reply

I see a reasonable smattering of hits on general Google search for "barefooter" -waterskiing -skiing. Term definitely seems to exist (agree we could possibly lose the first part of the definiton), but I don't know exactly where we are on citing "random Internet content". See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_barefooters. Huh! Mihia (talk) 22:06, 27 February 2025 (UTC)Reply

spatial computing

Latest comment: 2 months ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Rfv-term "spatial computation". 67.209.130.155 13:11, 26 February 2025 (UTC)Reply

famulist

Latest comment: 2 months ago1 comment1 person in discussion

An inferior student at Oxford Uni. I would expect this to be easily cited, but alas no --90.174.3.113 13:24, 27 February 2025 (UTC)Reply

tide

Latest comment: 17 days ago3 comments2 people in discussion

RFV sense "Something which changes like the tides of the sea."

Such as?

(Note "changes like", i.e. rises and falls with a regular periodicity, not to be confused with something being like the tide because it is a flow or current, which is covered by other senses.) Mihia (talk) 16:02, 27 February 2025 (UTC)Reply

I question the following sense, too, which has only one spectacularly unhelpful two-word cite. - -sche (discuss) 06:25, 22 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

FWIW, the OED has "fig. Applied to that which is like the tide of the sea in some way; as in ebbing or flowing, rising or falling, or 'turning' at a certain time. [...] SHAKS. Jul. C. IV. iii. 218 There is a Tide in the affayres of men, Which taken at the Flood, leades on to Fortune. 1777 PRIESTLEY Matt. & Spir. (1782) I. Pref. 10 The tide of popular prejudice may rise still higher. 1849 MACAULAY Hist. Eng. vi. II. 54 From that moment the tide of battle turned. 1900 Daily News 7 Dec. 8/5 The dramatic tide has its ebb and flow like other tides. It is not obvious to me that this necessarily requires a sense, as opposed to being an instance of the general phenomenon of words being able to be used metaphorically. - -sche (discuss) 15:39, 27 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

atpatruus

Latest comment: 2 months ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Latin only? I'm seeing a lot of dictionaries. Ultimateria (talk) 22:21, 27 February 2025 (UTC)Reply

fermillet

Latest comment: 2 months ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Only other citations are in French--90.174.3.113 08:28, 28 February 2025 (UTC)Reply

stime

Latest comment: 2 months ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Probably Scots. Vipgame321 (talk) 21:15, 28 February 2025 (UTC)Reply

stokey

Latest comment: 2 months ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Just in some crappy old dialect dictionaries Vipgame321 (talk) 22:00, 28 February 2025 (UTC)Reply

March 2025

geck

Latest comment: 2 months ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Rfv-sense Scorn; derision; contempt. Vipgame321 (talk) 10:20, 1 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

botsplaining

Latest comment: 2 months ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Not a term in wide use- just sourced to some tweets and a Hacker News comment. ScienceFlyer (talk) 06:59, 2 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

tonitrocirrus

Latest comment: 2 months ago1 comment1 person in discussion

— SURJECTION ^{/ T / C / L /} 07:13, 3 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

intergern

Latest comment: 2 months ago1 comment1 person in discussion

A @Leasnam special Father of minus 2 (talk) 09:08, 3 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

Schwarzschild density

Latest comment: 2 months ago6 comments3 people in discussion

— SURJECTION ^{/ T / C / L /} 17:22, 3 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

Schwarzschild density:

Looks well attested to me. DCDuring (talk) 21:56, 3 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

They have different values. I'm not sure there is a single consistent value that can be attested across multiple works. — SURJECTION ^{/ T / C / L /} 08:21, 4 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

Then edit that part out. In such theoretical physics a few orders of magnitude doesn't seem to get people upset anyway. DCDuring (talk) 13:39, 4 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

The current definition does not make sense; it has dimension

{\mathsf {ML^{{-}1}}}

(mass/length), whereas a density should have dimension

{\mathsf {ML^{{-}3}}}

(mass/volume). A definition found in the literature that does make sense is: the mass of a black hole divided by the volume of its Schwarzschild sphere, where the latter is defined as a sphere whose radius is the Schwarzschild radius.^[68][69] ‑‑Lambiam 13:47, 4 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

OTOH, errors in dimensional analsys do get theoretical physicists upset. An entry quality improvement to be celebrated. DCDuring (talk) 17:40, 4 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

glaver

Latest comment: 2 months ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Rfv-sense To prate; to jabber; to babble. Vipgame321 (talk) 23:11, 3 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

strale

Latest comment: 2 months ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Sense pupil. Well, and sense arrow, for kicks. Wars at my door (talk) 11:13, 4 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

strockle

Latest comment: 2 months ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Just in glossaries etc. ?Wars at my door (talk) 15:12, 4 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

strull

Latest comment: 2 months ago1 comment1 person in discussion

A bar placed so as to resist weight. OED suggests nope Wars at my door (talk) 15:21, 4 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

stulty

Latest comment: 2 months ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Didn't survive into modern English Wars at my door (talk) 15:31, 4 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

Added 2 cites. Leasnam (talk) 06:05, 7 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

stylometer

Latest comment: 2 months ago2 comments2 people in discussion

An instrument for measuring columns. How would it measure columns anyhow? Besides, there is clearly a thing called a stylometer, in the world of science (unsure what it does). And this is used informally for a gauge of how stylish something is, like a coolometer. Also, stylometry is something quite different. Wars at my door (talk) 17:56, 4 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

It might be an engineering device similar to a caliper or a compass. Probably related to the subject of this 1661–1662 tract, which appears to discuss the various orders of columns and uses the word, though I'm not sure whether I can find a discussion of it in English. Not in the original OED, but in Webster and The Century Dictionary. There's a technical use probably unrelated to columns here (1997). Looks like something to do with chemistry, but I can't tell exactly what kind of instrument it is. This (1957) probably refers to the same thing, though I can't be sure from the snippet view. I think this snippet (1970) might explain it: a photoelectric device used to measure chemical spectra. I see two or three other hits on Google Books that appear to be the same kind of thing used in physics. Here (2014) a stylometer appears to be an instrument for measuring, calibrating, or testing a stylus. Same word, different type of instrument. This seems clearly related to the first use, measuring (or perhaps describing) columns; the photoelectric device seems to be etymologically related, though I'm not sure of the exact details. P Aculeius (talk) 00:54, 5 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

subdulcid

Latest comment: 2 months ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Just one quote found: subdulcid , and agreeable nature Wars at my door (talk) 18:35, 4 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

subhastation

Latest comment: 4 days ago5 comments3 people in discussion

Not seeing English Wars at my door (talk) 19:02, 4 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

Cited (but always in German contexts) This, that and the other (talk) 10:45, 1 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

It's worth noting that all three cites I added are in the apparent context of involuntary sales or auctions. Is this a necessary quality? This, that and the other (talk) 10:46, 1 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

OED says "A public auction as compelled by law", but that's ambiguous as to whether the compulsion is to use auction as the mode of sale, or to conduct the sale in the first place. Reading OED's cites alongside ours, I suspect the latter and will update the def. This, that and the other (talk) 10:50, 1 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

RFV passed. --Overlordnat1 (talk) 14:28, 10 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

lemoga

Latest comment: 2 months ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Rfv-sense

We have 5 citations... but they're all just quoting the same source. Any citations for "lemoga" that aren't referring specifically to Armathwaite Hall (which I think would fail WT:BRAND, since it's just a name they're using to promote their courses) Smurrayinchester (talk) 11:11, 5 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

foggage

Latest comment: 17 days ago3 comments3 people in discussion

Rfv-sense verb --85.48.185.123 14:20, 5 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

"Foggaging" is all over Google Books: did you try searching? 2A00:23C5:FE1C:3701:381E:5671:C85F:C72 14:22, 5 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

I added various citations to the citations page, but changes to the definition may be needed: several dictionaries define foggage (like fog) not as dead grass but as new grass—a second growth of grass, grown for winter grazing—and the verb may be similarly polysemous, in which case we need to work out whether the cites are about growing new grass that's suited to growing in late-autumn / winter (as some seem like they might be), or about leaving spring/summer grass dead on the land. - -sche (discuss) 15:54, 27 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

quoddamodotative

Latest comment: 12 days ago6 comments3 people in discussion

— SURJECTION ^{/ T / C / L /} 09:44, 8 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

RFV-failed, only in a collection of words called "International House of Logorrhea" - can't find the ultimate source (if any) or anything beyond a scattering of online uses. This, that and the other (talk) 10:25, 1 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

im coming a bit late, but i want to make sure we've checked for the alternate spelling quodammodotative, which is true to the etymology, and which the OED lists. I dont have access to that page so I cant say if it's got three cites just from OED or if it was only used by one person. Or somewhere in between. —Soap— 22:12, 1 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

all cites on archive.org are either works by Thomas Stanley or works about him, so it doesnt look too likely even with the corrected spelling. —Soap— 22:15, 1 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

Good point, I didn't realise it had an alternative spelling. OED only has Stanley. There is also [70], which makes no mention of Stanley. It also appeared in the title of a book which apparently had a limited print run of 76 copies - not meaningfully "durably archived" in my opinion. This, that and the other (talk) 02:48, 2 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

Okay, thanks. Someone on the Discord showed me the OED text, and I was disappointed when I saw the original Greek .... it looks like this is an unnecessarily fancy word for a rather simple concept, that perhaps could be better expressed with a word like relational. That may explain why it didnt catch on even among other philosophers. The book you linked expresses its meaning very well, however, and there might just be a third cite out there somewhere. If we do turn up other uses, I'd say it'd be like cordate (“animal with a heart”) which is also cited only from philosophy. —Soap— 13:50, 2 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

samesexer

Latest comment: 2 months ago3 comments2 people in discussion

Even the hyphenated form seems dubious, but this one is really pushing it. 2A00:23C5:FE1C:3701:BD8F:976:A4DC:6C26 21:21, 8 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

If one fancies, Google Books has more than enough quotes. Some might see better previews than I do on my German machine. Never heard of it never was a good reason, what do you think a dictionary is for, other than to tell you things you haven’t heard or read. Fay Freak (talk) 21:50, 8 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

To adjudicate Scrabble games mainly. 2A00:23C5:FE1C:3701:BD8F:976:A4DC:6C26 22:37, 8 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

number three

Latest comment: 13 days ago4 comments3 people in discussion

Rfv-sense; this seems an obvious extension from number one and number two, but does it really meet CFI beyond being an easy nonce coinage? Courtesy ping, @User:HildaSimp. 🌙🐇 ^⠀talk⠀ ^{⠀contribs⠀} 18:31, 9 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

just making sure everyone sees the discussion from the previous RFV, at talk:number three, where it had been listed as just a synonym for number one. i think it's used often enough to mean masturbation, but it can also mean

• menstruation, particularly changing or disposing of an undergarment (because that's a bodily function too, and tampons are often dispensed in bathrooms). i once saw a Ren & Stimpy cartoon where one of the characters, i think Stimpy, said first he had to do number one, then number two, then number three, as he goes first into a men's room, then a boys' room, and then a girls' room. it could've been the artists' way of hinting at this meaning while staying kid-friendly, but it could also be completely meaningless. possibly proof of use here, though i understand TikToks are not CFI.

• washing one's hands.

♬ once you've done number one and number two ♬

♬ don't forget to do number three!♬

• possibly other things. one of the TikToks suggests it means #1 and #2 together. i think there was a different discussion somewhere but i can't find it now. it might have been on Reddit or some other site and not specific to Wiktionary. the Ren & Stimpy use may have just been absurdist humor, after all.

i lean towards not including this as currently defined, but i cant figure out how to express exactly why. it seems like we're missing the point if we insist on a precise definition, when the expression is almost always used in such a way that its meaning is derived from context. But, perhaps we could write a definition such as any third bodily function besides urination and defecation? —Soap— 13:56, 2 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

Not "any third bodily function" (eg, not digestion, respiration, motion, perspiration). Perhaps "any of certain common (tabooed?) bodily functions, especially those producing liquids, such as […] ". Harder and probably not worthwhile to include hand-washing. DCDuring (talk) 15:46, 2 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

yeah, i didnt make up the hand-washing song, but it must've stuck in my head out of proportion to its use, because i can't even find it now. and i don't think it was on a video, either, so I'm surprised i can't find it. oh well. i agree with you although i'd say the phrase bodily function itself is lexicalized enough to exclude those others .... in any case, i think the definition we use should make it clear that it relies on context. —Soap— 21:28, 1 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

gabarage

Latest comment: 2 months ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Only dictionaries --85.48.185.77 14:03, 9 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

gaddish

Latest comment: 1 month ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Adjective. There seems to be another meaning related to Judaism--85.48.185.77 18:26, 9 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

I couldnt find any Judaism-related meanings, although kaddish is a noun, a type of prayer. —Soap— 14:10, 2 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

successary

Latest comment: 1 month ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Nonce word? Jin and Tonik (talk) 21:38, 9 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

All I can find is:

1845, Mark Antony Lower, The Curiosities of Heraldry, page 80:
The Boke of S. A. [Book of St Albans] informs us that the arms of the king of France were "certainli sende [...] that he and his successaries all way with bataill and swereddys (swords) shulde be punyshed!"

which is a different sense ("successors") and is quoting a Middle English book anyway. (Google Books also has a copy of The Alexandra Magazine & Woman's Social and Industrial Advocate in which "Food and drink [...] are absolute or indispensable successaries" occurs as a misprint where other editions have "...necessaries".) - -sche (discuss) 06:05, 22 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

succision

Latest comment: 2 months ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Nonce word, just used by Bacon Jin and Tonik (talk) 21:42, 9 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

gargil

Latest comment: 2 months ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Distemper in geese.--90.174.3.25 09:12, 10 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

garookuh

Latest comment: 1 month ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Fishing vessel. It probably has other spellings --90.174.3.25 09:14, 10 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

might this be the same as #corocore below? the Wikipedia article suggests an Arabic cognate قرقور (qurqur), which at least has a /u/ in it, and [g] is a dialectal realization of MSA /q/. —Soap— 14:06, 2 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

affrayment

Latest comment: 2 months ago1 comment1 person in discussion

not much Jin and Tonik (talk) 01:10, 11 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

padow

Latest comment: 2 months ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Toad Jin and Tonik (talk) 01:28, 11 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

gripe

Latest comment: 2 months ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Rfv 3 nautical senses --85.48.185.67 13:33, 12 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

grossulin

Latest comment: 2 months ago2 comments2 people in discussion

A vegetable jelly. It is certainly some substance, but "vegetable jelly" doesn't look like the right definition. My guess is it is an old word for something with another name--85.48.185.67 14:17, 12 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

Pectin is the ingredient that makes jelly gel, so "vegetable jelly" isn't that far off the mark. A number of 19th-century reference works in Google Books state that grossulin is a synonym for pectin. I'm sure some scientist found a gelatinous substance in gooseberry fruit that later was shown to be the same as pectin, and the name was forgotten. I would label it as an obsolete synonym of "pectin". Chuck Entz (talk) 14:36, 12 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

gulist

Latest comment: 17 days ago2 comments2 people in discussion

A glutton--85.48.185.67 18:49, 12 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

(Added the only cite I've been able to find, but it occurs as a scanno of a lot of other things, so I may have missed something.) - -sche (discuss) 23:50, 26 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

squirmish

Latest comment: 2 months ago3 comments3 people in discussion

Ety 2, "skirmish". Usual tosh by this IP; all quotes given are mentions. — SURJECTION ^{/ T / C / L /} 21:54, 12 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

Cited. 2601:240:8002:E690:9995:D46C:8193:D473 02:26, 13 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

The noun under etymology 2 is cited but not the verb. Also, could etymology 1 not be 'squirm+squeamish' rather than 'squirm+ish'? -Overlordnat1 (talk) 09:12, 13 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

to-burst

Latest comment: 2 months ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Carry-over from [toburst] above, which failed verification. Leasnam (talk) 01:45, 13 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

xanadu

Latest comment: 16 days ago8 comments4 people in discussion

A grayish-green colour. 2A00:23C5:FE1C:3701:11A0:2DBE:F4B2:929F 18:25, 13 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

This will surely fail WT:BRAND as it is a type of green paint produced only by Resene, a New Zealand company. This link[71] claims that it was used in Paul Klee’s ‘art’ but that is impossible as the ‘artwork’ in question was produced in 1922 and the NZ company was founded in 1951! Overlordnat1 (talk) 08:11, 16 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

It was dropped in WT:REE and I said no. Then someone dropped it again. We need better hygiene. 2A00:23C5:FE1C:3701:6439:7FE9:917C:AB93 00:39, 19 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

Maybe someone could adapt aWa to assist with archiving rejected WT:REEs (complete with the rationale for rejection) to talk pages, so as to make it at least slightly more obvious (if not to potential requesters, then at least to other people who may notice when new pages are created) that a term was previously rejected and may need to be RFVed if created. - -sche (discuss) 05:55, 22 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

That sounds sensible. Let's call this entry RFV failed. --Overlordnat1 (talk) 09:04, 17 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

(I've started ~~Wiktionary:Grease_pit/2025/April#Requested_Entries~~ Wiktionary:Beer parlour/2025/April#Requested_Entries, soliciting ideas on how to improve REE hygiene / recordkeeping.) - -sche (discuss) 23:42, 26 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

The conversation is taking place in the Beer Parlour, rather than the Grease Pit, so I assume it must’ve been moved? I will let those more knowledgeable than me on the finer points of computer programming discuss the details but I’m on board with the idea of improvements in general. Overlordnat1 (talk) 06:56, 28 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

Yes, sorry; initially it was going to be a technical request for tweaking aWa or the setup of RE so I put it in the GP, but then I realized it had become more of an open-ended search for ideas and moved it to the BP. - -sche (discuss) 14:33, 28 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

guttersnipe

Latest comment: 15 days ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Rfv-sense poster?? for a kerbstone --90.174.3.109 19:32, 13 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

Def. found in MW 1913. DCDuring (talk) 14:15, 29 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

hake

Latest comment: 2 months ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Rfv-sense loiter --90.174.3.109 09:18, 14 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

heep

Latest comment: 1 month ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Hip of the dog rose. It is probably just an old spelling of hip. --85.48.185.87 09:42, 15 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

femcel

Latest comment: 1 month ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Sense 2: "(loosely, Internet, slang, ironic) A woman associated with and/or adjacent to the incel 'aesthetic', 'vibe', or other connotations."

Looks like this might reflect actual in-the-wild usage (femcelcore seems to be an oft-ironic TikTok phenomenon) but it needs to be backed up by cites demonstrating usage distinct from the "involuntarily celibate woman" sense. WordyAndNerdy (talk) 12:17, 15 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

telarly

Latest comment: 1 month ago1 comment1 person in discussion

nonce word Ungreaaseddish (talk) 14:03, 16 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

suggillate

Latest comment: 1 month ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Rfv-sense To beat livid, or black and blue. Citeable, but probably meaning to bruise Ungreaaseddish (talk) 17:04, 16 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

OED has one use as a verb: "Arminius paved his way first by aspersing and sugillating the fame and authority of Calvin. / J. Trapp, Commentary Evangelists & Acts (Acts xxi. 28)" Vox Sciurorum (talk) 12:26, 18 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

superconsequence

Latest comment: 1 month ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Nonce word? Ungreaaseddish (talk) 20:45, 16 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

tangfish

Latest comment: 1 month ago2 comments2 people in discussion

seal. Mentions in dialect books. The tang (another fish) possibly has this name Ungreaaseddish (talk) 22:52, 16 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

Three cites, a bit mentiony. I didn't notice the term much used for tangs. DCDuring (talk) 17:32, 2 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

henfish

Latest comment: 1 month ago3 comments2 people in discussion

Rfv-sense young bib --90.174.3.169 08:39, 17 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

The index to the 1884 Fisheries Exhibition says: "Henfish, name given to the female bib at Belfast". This might (?) be related to henfish as a general term for a game fish that lays eggs, especially a female salmon or trout. On the other hand, Yarrell (1886) says that Ray's bream "has been taken at Belfast, where it is called Henfish". Ray's bream is described as a marine bream, so it is probably unrelated to the bib (a type of cod). Cnilep (talk) 01:04, 28 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

Oh, I wasn't paying sufficient attention. I see that "sea bream" is the first definition given! Cnilep (talk) 03:12, 28 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

hieron

Latest comment: 1 month ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Temple --90.174.3.169 09:24, 17 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

not worth salt

Latest comment: 1 month ago6 comments3 people in discussion

This doesn't seem right, I think it should have "one's" inserted, as in worth one's salt. I'm not sure whether it's worth keeping it. DonnanZ (talk) 12:47, 17 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

@Donnanz: probably best to list this at RFD. I, too, think it should be deleted as redundant to worth one's salt. — Sgconlaw (talk) 13:32, 17 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

@Sgconlaw: Yes, I thought about that, it's a toss-up. If it can't be verified, it can be deleted here. DonnanZ (talk) 14:42, 17 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

@DCDuring: ah. Does it ever occur in the positive form worth salt? If so, maybe move it to that form. — Sgconlaw (talk) 21:07, 17 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

Maybe but it's very scarce. DCDuring (talk) 22:37, 17 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

greengate

Latest comment: 1 month ago3 comments3 people in discussion

(Scotland) A greenway. I cannot find it outside of place names. 2A00:23C5:FE1C:3701:C9B5:DFF3:D287:C6E5 18:15, 17 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

Just noting that OED has an entry under green gate labelled "rare (now Scottish)" with only two quotations, one dated c. 1540 and the other a mention in a 1988 glossary called Orkney Wordbook. — Sgconlaw (talk) 21:10, 17 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

It's possibly from Old Norse gata (“street, road”), the Concise Scots Dictionary doesn't help though. DonnanZ (talk) 22:45, 17 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

supersalient

Latest comment: 17 days ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Meaning leaping upon. There's a missing meaning out there though Father of minus 2 (talk) 21:42, 17 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

I added 3 cites to Citations:supersalient of what may be the "very salient" sense or else something more specific. I can't find "leaping upon", even searching together with various heraldic terms, and the best that turns up when searching for "supersalient" + "upon" is "supersalient assault upon him", which it still "very salient", not "leaping upon". - -sche (discuss) 23:22, 26 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

commonitive

Latest comment: 1 month ago1 comment1 person in discussion

"Nonce. Just Hall?" —What WF would have said if he remembered to list this page after tagging. Ultimateria (talk) 01:19, 18 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

homiletical

Latest comment: 1 month ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Rfv-sense companionable --84.78.16.7 09:49, 18 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

OED has three uses from the 1600s. Vox Sciurorum (talk) 12:16, 18 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

time machine

Latest comment: 1 month ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Rfv-sense: a bed

Uh, what? I can find one possible usage, although in context it seems clearly like a joke, not a lexical term:

(Can we date this quote?), Jarod Kintz, There Are Two Typos Of People In This World: Those Who Can Edit And Those Who Can’t, Jarod Kintz:
I want to go to sleep in my time machine and wake up eight hours in the future.

Smurrayinchester (talk) 15:11, 18 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

Anyway, not a bad joke. DCDuring (talk) 17:34, 2 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

xenotransgraft

Latest comment: 1 month ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Cannot find 122.56.85.105 21:22, 18 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

shonk

Latest comment: 1 month ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Sense 3: a shark. Maybe this is some Internet meme joke sense like "puppers" being dogs, but I dunno. Convince me. 2A00:23C5:FE1C:3701:6439:7FE9:917C:AB93 00:37, 19 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

apparently used a lot on the internet to refer to the blåhaj shark plushie from IKEA? a google image search of "shonk" shows that posters in r/BLAHAJ use it routinely. probably influenced by stonk (etym 2) and thonk. might be difficult to cite with durable sources, but we kept car, sense 11, so there's probably no reason not to keep this as well.

in any case, this is a separate etymology from the other senses. ragweed theater _{talk, user} 12:22, 21 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

hyrse

Latest comment: 1 month ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Old term for millet. Mentioned in old dictionaries --84.78.23.109 13:39, 20 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

ichthyopterygium

Latest comment: 1 month ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Rfv-sense: The typical limb, or lateral fin, of fishes. The term was used, but is now archaic, and referred to a fin in the evolutionary stage. Besides, we don't have a fish definition for limb, and typical fin is a poor definition. --84.78.23.109 19:13, 20 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

Definition was imported wholesale from Webster 1913. It seems to me after looking at some sources that it just referred to a fish fin, but usually in evolutionary/comparative contexts; i've changed the definition line to "(comparative anatomy, obsolete) A fish fin". the related terms cheiropterygium and archipterygium (and maybe more) we should probably also look into ragweed theater _{talk, user} 12:08, 21 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

illabile

Latest comment: 1 month ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Only seen one cite --85.48.189.147 10:08, 21 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

imbrocado

Latest comment: 1 month ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Cloth. It appears to be a fencing term, imbroccata--85.48.189.147 12:27, 21 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

hersum

Latest comment: 1 month ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Attestable after 1500 in this spelling? If so, should probably be labeled either {{lb|en|obsolete}} or {{obsolete spelling of|en|hearsome}}. If not, should be relabeled Middle English. —Mahāgaja · talk 19:43, 21 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

auf

Latest comment: 1 month ago4 comments2 people in discussion

Two senses, one cite, and that says "Say that the Fayrie left this Aulfe," and doesn't actually use auf (and aulfe doesn't have an entry). It's very hard to search for since auf is so common in German.--Prosfilaes (talk) 23:28, 21 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

With the help of Wright's English Dialect Dictionary, which has this under awf, I managed to find two cites of sense 2 spelled awf and one spelled aufe, and 1-3 cites (depending on whether or not we take "awf shot" to attest "awf" or only to be an alt form of elf-shot) of a sense, which we lack, "elf". It seems the lemma should be moved to awf (and the link at oaf updated). I don't know if sense 1 is attestable. - -sche (discuss) 04:39, 22 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

I've set up awf, with cites. I didn't just move the entry, because I realized the senses were distinct (but the ones currently listed at auf, and that spelling, may not be attested). Oph may not be attested, either; I'm going to add it to the RFV. - -sche (discuss) 07:29, 26 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

oph

(See auf.) - -sche (discuss) 07:29, 26 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

imparsonee

Latest comment: 1 month ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Adjective and noun. I claim it is only found in the compound noun parson imparsonee, plural parsons imparsonees --85.48.56.96 07:01, 22 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

improbate

Latest comment: 1 month ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Rfv-sense disapprove of --84.78.23.109 15:39, 22 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

improper

Latest comment: 1 month ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Rfv-sense to behave improperly --84.78.23.109 15:46, 22 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

inaffability

Latest comment: 1 month ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Rfv-sense reticence --85.48.189.123 18:20, 22 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

inaffectation

Latest comment: 1 month ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Seen in a 17th century dictionary, nothing since. --85.48.189.123 18:24, 22 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

incession

Latest comment: 1 month ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Rfv-sense walking. It has another theological meaning, apparently. Also, insession is worth looking at, maybe for a future RFV --85.48.189.123 19:13, 22 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

inconfusion

Latest comment: 1 month ago1 comment1 person in discussion

All other dictionaries agree that Bacon was the only user of this term --85.48.56.196 09:29, 23 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

increaseful

Latest comment: 1 month ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Only Shakespeare? I found a hit with increaseful crime tho --85.48.56.196 10:18, 23 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

barely cited ragweed theater _{talk, user} 10:42, 24 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

indeciduate

Latest comment: 1 month ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Rfv-sense in botany --85.48.56.196 11:34, 23 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

indical

Latest comment: 1 month ago1 comment1 person in discussion

t͡ɕRfv-sense indexical. There may be an anatomy sense missing --85.48.56.196 11:49, 23 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

flat metro

Latest comment: 1 month ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Computer GUI design? The context isn't clear. Might refer to the Microsoft Windows "Metro" design language, in which case probably a trademark/brand. Might not be in wide use at all. 2A00:23C5:FE1C:3701:A8AA:76F3:798C:234F 16:12, 24 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

Meiteiology

Latest comment: 1 month ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Cf #Meiteiologist, #Meiteilogist. - -sche (discuss) 20:17, 24 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

Lairembi

Latest comment: 1 month ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Not sure, from a check Google Books check, that the definition is correct. Many of this user's entries have been unattested in the sense given, or have been deleted for other errors... - -sche (discuss) 20:51, 24 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

Ancient Kangleipak

Latest comment: 1 month ago1 comment1 person in discussion

This seems like it may suffer from the same problem as #Ancient Meitei (above): it exists as a SOP phrase where uncapitalized "ancient" is adjacent to "Kangleipak", but whether it exists as a capitalized, unitary idiomatic phrase is unclear. - -sche (discuss) 21:15, 24 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

inditch

Latest comment: 1 month ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Unfound. The quote we have doesn't seem to match the definition --84.78.23.123 05:47, 25 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

indulgiate

Latest comment: 1 month ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Just 2 hits available --84.78.23.123 07:22, 25 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

inflatus

Latest comment: 1 month ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Only used by Browning in English --84.78.23.123 08:19, 25 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

infumation

Latest comment: 1 month ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Rfv-sense smoke-drying --90.174.3.105 15:32, 25 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

Odajyan

Latest comment: 1 month ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Tagged in September 2023. Pious Eterino (talk) 08:43, 26 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

via-satellite

Latest comment: 1 month ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Rfv-sense: satellite-fed foreign shows delayed by several minutes or hours in contrast to live television broadcasts Pious Eterino (talk) 08:44, 26 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

instimulate

Latest comment: 1 month ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Rfv-sense not to stimulate. Quote appears as an adjective. instimulated also exists as an adjective, but the verb itself may not. --85.48.186.179 19:06, 27 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

lapsus muris

Latest comment: 1 month ago3 comments2 people in discussion

I checked, not managing to really attest. One Usenet hit, a few on Twitter, that's about it. Appears more like an independently created nonce joke for those up on their Latin roots. Hftf (talk) 09:58, 28 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

I wonder whether mouso might be attestable. DCDuring (talk) 12:57, 28 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

Perhaps barely on the web, but not in durably attested media. Hard to find because of interference from a Japanese-derived game, a proper name, and a Windows background process, etc. Anyway it might be useful for us and for interface designers. DCDuring (talk) 13:19, 28 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

intention

Latest comment: 1 month ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Rfv-sense "A stretching or bending of the mind toward an object or a purpose (an intent); closeness of application; fixedness of attention; earnestness" These definitions are quite fuzzy, and probably just verbose ways of phrasing the main definitions. --90.174.3.94 21:38, 28 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

the definition is imported from Webster 1913 and could be worded to sound less archaic, but this is a distinct (but obsolete; i've added the label) sense. OED gives "the action of straining or directing the mind or attention to something; mental application or effort; attention, intent observation or regard; endeavour." so, not just having a goal in mind in general, but actually putting attention and effort to it, which the modern use of the word wouldn't necessarily imply ragweed theater _{talk, user} 14:36, 29 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

intercedent

Latest comment: 1 month ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Rfv-sense "pleading" --90.174.3.94 21:44, 28 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

Kings Solitude

Latest comment: 1 month ago1 comment1 person in discussion

— SURJECTION ^{/ T / C / L /} 08:11, 29 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

interminate

Latest comment: 1 month ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Rfv-sense "to menace". The verb is curable, but doesn't seem to mean this --85.48.186.236 09:34, 29 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

cited ragweed theater _{talk, user} 14:27, 29 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

intervent

Latest comment: 1 month ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Rfv-sense "thwart, obstruct". There are other meanings available, some of which I added or guessed at --85.48.184.135 09:50, 30 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

intrafoliaceous

Latest comment: 1 month ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Rfv-sense "above or in front of a leaf". This doesn't fit with the (thoroughly defined) prefix intra-. Probably a change of definiton is all that's needed --85.48.184.135 10:16, 30 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

It does if you look at it the way a botanist does: things start out inside of a bud, and grow upward and outward from there. That means that anything on the stem above the point of attachment of the leaves can be viewed as being inside them. If you view the leaves as facing inward, anything between them and the stem is in front of them. See the explanation here] for instance.

The term seems to be applied mostly to intrafoliaceous stipules. For instance, plants in the rhubarb family, Polygonaceae, have these stipules forming a sheath around the stem called an ochrea. Chuck Entz (talk) 03:46, 31 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

intrafusion

Latest comment: 1 month ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Rfv-sense "pouring into a vessel". There is a fantasy meaning missing too, the mutual fusion of magical powers or something. It was seen in at least 2 wizardry books --85.48.184.135 10:34, 30 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

service water

Latest comment: 1 month ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Tagged in 2024 TypeO889 (talk) 23:33, 30 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

shwty

Latest comment: 15 days ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Tagged in 2024 TypeO889 (talk) 23:34, 30 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

See Wiktionary:Requests_for_verification/English#floptoker. Deleted. - -sche (discuss) 01:43, 29 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

undergrub

Latest comment: 1 month ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Tagged in 2024 TypeO889 (talk) 23:34, 30 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

woolstock

Latest comment: 1 month ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Tagged in 2025 TypeO889 (talk) 23:35, 30 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

libate

Latest comment: 1 month ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Tagged in 2024 TypeO889 (talk) 23:35, 30 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

fuffy

Latest comment: 1 month ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Tagged in 2025 TypeO889 (talk) 23:36, 30 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

esture

Latest comment: 1 month ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Tagged in 2025,unlisted TypeO889 (talk) 23:37, 30 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

EEBO has lots of results for e.g. gesture, divesture where a letter was unreadable, and some placenames. This one looks like a false reading (compare "into dinately" just before). There's also Le morte darthur (Middle English) and a potential modern hit - but not sure of the sense. This, that and the other (talk) 10:08, 1 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

cutling

Latest comment: 1 month ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Tagged in 2025,unlisted TypeO889 (talk) 23:37, 30 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

cuskin

Latest comment: 17 days ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Tagged in 2025,unlisted TypeO889 (talk) 23:37, 30 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

@Vilipender: This is found in use exactly once, probably in the whole surviving written corpus of the English language, 1585 as a glossing, not glossed, term, in John Higgins’ English bilingual edition of the Latin dictionary Nomenclator … of the Dutch humanist Hadrianus Junius, page 232.
In Mackay, Charles (1877) The Gaelic Etymology of the Languages of Western Europe. And More Especially of the English and Lowland Scotch, and Their Slang, Cant, and Colloquial Dialects‎^[72], London: N. Trübner & Co., page 121a the word is etymologized with cuach (“bowl, goblet”) +‎ uisge (“water”), literally “water-goblet”. So we know where that Oxford student hailed from: not England.
We need to think out how to present the information. Fay Freak (talk) 01:31, 27 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

cubation

Latest comment: 1 month ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Tagged in 2025,unlisted TypeO889 (talk) 23:37, 30 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

commaterial

Latest comment: 1 month ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Tagged in 2025,unlisted TypeO889 (talk) 23:38, 30 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

comart

Latest comment: 1 month ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Tagged in 2025,unlisted TypeO889 (talk) 23:38, 30 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

compellatory

Latest comment: 21 days ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Tagged in 2025,unlisted TypeO889 (talk) 23:38, 30 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

I added some cites to the citations page, but we need to decide which sense they're using. - -sche (discuss) 06:52, 23 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

breme

Latest comment: 1 month ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Tagged in 2025,unlisted TypeO889 (talk) 23:39, 30 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

akageneite

Latest comment: 1 month ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Tagged in 2025,unlisted TypeO889 (talk) 23:39, 30 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

ablaqueation

Latest comment: 1 month ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Tagged in 2025,unlisted TypeO889 (talk) 23:40, 30 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

Turco

Latest comment: 1 month ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Tagged in 2025,unlisted TypeO889 (talk) 23:40, 30 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

archaeostomatous

Latest comment: 1 month ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Tagged in 2024,unlisted TypeO889 (talk) 23:40, 30 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

carvel

Latest comment: 21 days ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Tagged in 2025,unlisted TypeO889 (talk) 23:41, 30 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

(The RFV is of the sense "A sea blubber (Cyanea capillata).")

I doubt this can be distinguished from the following sense (a jellyfish). This work identifies a carvel as a Physalia jellyfish, for example. - -sche (discuss) 06:35, 23 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

cornicular

Latest comment: 1 month ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Tagged in 2025,unlisted TypeO889 (talk) 23:41, 30 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

There seems to be a biological sense we are missing. I will {{rfdef}} it.

I wonder if the noun sense in the entry is referring to the Roman cornicularius or corniculary (

Corniculary on Wikipedia.Wikipedia ). This, that and the other (talk) 02:26, 31 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

cornific

Latest comment: 1 month ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Tagged in 2025,unlisted TypeO889 (talk) 23:41, 30 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

Nil in EEBO. There are uses in GBooks:

1531, Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa Von Nettesheim, translated by James Freake, edited by L. W. deLaurence, The Philosophy of Natural Magic, published 1913, page 202:

So Cyprus, after he was chosen king of Italy, did very much wonder at and meditate upon the fight and victory of bulls, and in the thought thereof did sleep a whole night, and in the morning he was found horned, no otherwise than by the vegetative power, being stirred up by a vehement imagination, elevating cornific humors into his head and producing horns.

This one could fit the definition even if the intended meaning is multi-layered (I wonder if it is referencing the idea of "horniness"):

1879, Henry Astbury Leveson, The Forest and the Field, page 61:

As we were supping in Fred's comfortable quarters, the doctor, looking significantly at our host, who had only just turned up from escorting some fair party home, remarked in his dry, quaint manner, that he imagined there was something peculiarly "cornific" in the atmosphere so near the mountains, the influence of which extended to other animals besides ibex and wild sheep, and he forthwith commenced spouting after Shakespeare:
To wed, or not to wed, that is the question: [etc]

Here's another which is even more obscure:

[73] The cause is not far to seek; think of that stout cornific* doctor with leaden eyes, a confrère of Froissart, if you like, but how different! He holds in his hand his manual of canon-law, Peter the Lombard, a treatise on the syllogism.
* Cornificien, a name given by Jean of Sarisberg to those who disfigured dialectics by their extravagant, cornus arguments—Translator.

This, that and the other (talk) 02:18, 31 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

corniplume

Latest comment: 1 month ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Tagged in 2025,unlisted TypeO889 (talk) 23:41, 30 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

Nothing at all for this one. The mirror-image version, plumicorn, does seem to have some more use. Ultimately the term that caught on was simply ear tuft. This, that and the other (talk) 11:42, 5 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

corocore

Latest comment: 1 month ago3 comments3 people in discussion

Tagged in 2025,unlisted TypeO889 (talk) 23:42, 30 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

Seems to be a rare form (seemingly the French rendition) of kora-kora, a historic Malay boat (compare

Kora kora on Wikipedia.Wikipedia ). We give that as an alternative form of caracore, which we define as a historic Filipino boat, but Wikipedia has a separate article on the Filipino vessel (

Karakoa on Wikipedia.Wikipedia ). The two vessels look extremely similar and one would need to investigate whether we should treat them as synonymous. This, that and the other (talk) 10:40, 2 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

Surely. I have some doubt’s about Asiatic Colonial English of that time the kind which Hobson-Jobson collected being well digitized. This will be in some stupid naval registers. Fay Freak (talk) 18:56, 2 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

crippling

Latest comment: 1 month ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Tagged in 2025,unlisted: Rfv-sense Spars or timbers set up as a support against the side of a building. TypeO889 (talk) 23:42, 30 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

low voice

Latest comment: 1 month ago2 comments2 people in discussion

slow voice

low voice squared

rgb to bgr

— SURJECTION ^{/ T / C / L /} 05:56, 31 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

These terms belong to an obscure "logo editing" YouTube subcommunity. Good luck trying to make sense of their Fandom wiki, or to cite these terms... This, that and the other (talk) 08:39, 31 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

ƹayn

Latest comment: 1 month ago9 comments4 people in discussion

— SURJECTION ^{/ T / C / L /} 06:13, 31 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

Hmm, weird case. I can cite عayn (these are arguably more mentions than uses, but letter names are surely a special case since they're almost never used in the strict grammatical sense):

1806, John Richardson, A Dictionary, Persian, Arabic and English, page 626:
عayn, The eighteenth letter of the Arabic alphabet, and used as the twenty-first of the Persian; expressing 70 in arithmetic.
1997, Petra Bos, Development of Bilingualism: A Study of School-age Moroccan Children in the Netherlands:
عayn: voiced pharyngeal fricative
2024 January 22, Jane Wightwick, Mahmoud Gaafar, Mastering Arabic 1, Bloomsbury Publishing, →ISBN, page 68:
عayn does not have a near equivalent in English , so the Arabic letter itself is used in the transliteration.

and 3ayn

2008 November 19, Keith Massey, Intermediate Arabic For Dummies, John Wiley & Sons, →ISBN, page 63:
The [Arabic] (3ayn) has no correspondence in English. It's produced by tightening the back of the throat and then speaking a vowel through it.
2011, Zouheir A. Maalej, Ning Yu, Embodiment Via Body Parts: Studies from Various Languages and Cultures, John Benjamins Publishing, →ISBN, page 214:
The main objective is to ascertain embodiment through outer body parts, and the experience 3ayn profiles in one dialect of Arabic.
2014 November 4, Matthew Aldrich, Arabic Voices 2: Authentic Listening and Reading Practice in Modern Standard Arabic and Colloquial Dialects, Lingualism.com, page 13:
It has sounds from many languages... for example it has the sound "kha", the pronunciation of "kha", the "ghayn", the ... uh ... the "3ayn", the "Ha", so there are a lot of things that don't exist in other languages […]

But I can't find any evidence that ƹ is ever used. This may be an OCR thing, or it may be that no-one ever had a reason to use it when either they'd be using a typewriter or general printing press (where ƹ and ع would both be unavailable) or a specialist printing press (which would probably be more likely to have Arabic letters than an obscure IPA variant). Smurrayinchester (talk) 08:46, 31 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

Update: ʕayn is also citable (1, 2, 3), and 9ayn (1, 2, 3). Everything except ƹayn! Smurrayinchester (talk) 08:41, 1 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

I found this Omniglot page that uses it (I don't know if this is a reliable source or not): https://omniglot.com/charts/arabic_sudanese.xlsx

I have posted a similar message on the discussion page of the entry, because I didn't know this page existed.

Thanks.

Squidboy85 (talk) Squidboy85 (talk) 05:56, 3 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

Additional note: Omniglot has been cited before in Wikipedia entries such as this: Writing systems of Southeast Asia - Wikipedia Squidboy85 (talk) 05:59, 3 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

Sorry, it should be Writing systems of Southeast Asia - Wikipedia Squidboy85 (talk) 07:48, 3 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

I added a citation but the banner hasn’t gone away. Squidboy85 (talk) 04:22, 4 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

There are now four citations on the page. I hope this is enough. Squidboy85 (talk) 00:24, 6 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

I spent an hour plus looking through the four references added to the page in an attempt to convert them into quoted attestations, and arguably only one is even marginally acceptable. So far I don't see this word meeting CFI, unfortunately. There is also confusion/conflation of whether this word is a name for an Arabic letter or for a Latin letter ƹ used in some romanizations, which I tried to fix, probably in vain but whatever. That said, a couple of the references are good evidence for expanding the ƹ entry, as it is used in some romanizations. Hftf (talk) 10:40, 8 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

supralunar

Latest comment: 1 month ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Rfv-sense very lofty Lfellet (talk) 10:26, 31 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

April 2025

hawked

Latest comment: 1 month ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Rfv-sense spotted/streaked TypeO889 (talk) 08:12, 1 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

SOPish

Latest comment: 1 month ago1 comment1 person in discussion

This is Wiktionary-only jargon. We can't cite ourselves. Compare Talk:usex. 2A00:23C5:FE1C:3701:F5D8:C7C2:FAB5:4BC6 16:55, 1 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

surbet

Latest comment: 1 month ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Yet another Webster 1913-imported dictionary, which will remain on this page until August 2025, with 2 comments saying "no quotes", Wonderfool marking it as Failed, and eventually archived by Overlord. Really, I should just {{speedy}} this, but process is process... TypeO889 (talk) 15:04, 2 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

There is another use: [74] This, that and the other (talk) 22:51, 4 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

surcrew

Latest comment: 1 month ago2 comments2 people in discussion

nonce word? TypeO889 (talk) 15:08, 2 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

Delete. Everyone else spelled it surcrease, which is probably citeable. This, that and the other (talk) 22:46, 4 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

surculation

Latest comment: 1 month ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Purring? I don't see any cats in the text. Or engines, for that matterTypeO889 (talk) 15:10, 2 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

That should have been pruning – getting rid of the little suckers; compare surcle. ‑‑Lambiam 16:28, 3 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

survise

Latest comment: 1 month ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Lots of tyops + scannops for survive TypeO889 (talk) 15:26, 2 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

taurocolla

Latest comment: 1 month ago2 comments2 people in discussion

bullhide glue. Lots of italicised hits. Besides, I'd recommend bull semen if you want some seriously sticky, sweet-smelling stuff. TypeO889 (talk) 15:30, 2 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

I don’t know, may be in lists from apothecary's Latin, as in the System of Rational and Practical Chirurgery ed. 1733 by Richard Boulton. But we should have bull glue, bull-glue, bull's glue, to complement flesh glue, fish glue, and others. Fay Freak (talk) 19:06, 2 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

tavernman

Latest comment: 1 month ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Rfv-sense tippler? TypeO889 (talk) 15:38, 2 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

suscipiency

Latest comment: 1 month ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Rfv-sense admission. Father of minus 2 (talk) 20:19, 2 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

tarrock

Latest comment: 1 month ago2 comments2 people in discussion

3 birds. Etymology is suspect too: Greenlandic tattarock can't be thusly spelled. 20 points for anyone finding the Greenlandic term, 1 point for just removing this etymology Father of minus 2 (talk) 21:30, 2 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

I guess they mean taateraaq (“kittiwake”) [75] (I think that was only worth about 5 points tbh). Presumably it was borrowed into Scots/English via some other language though.

OED doesn't buy this theory, just giving "origin uncertain" and taking -ock as a diminutive suffix. It also cops out somewhat on the definition, saying that it's a word applied to various seabirds in different parts of Scotland.

DSL has the "kittiwake" and "tern" senses, but not "guillemot". This, that and the other (talk) 00:02, 3 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

wreye

Latest comment: 1 month ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Seeing how wray just faild RFV TypeO889 (talk) 22:34, 3 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

Kings Draw

Latest comment: 1 month ago2 comments2 people in discussion

I couldn't find anything relevant in Google Books, and not very much in the rest of the Internet either. —Mahāgaja · talk 16:47, 4 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

This and Kings Solitude would appear to require an apostrophe to make sense. 2A00:23C5:FE1C:3701:2581:80AA:C256:937C 17:21, 4 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

sycite

Latest comment: 1 month ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Some figlike thing Vilipender (talk) 17:11, 4 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

"fig-shaped stones or pebbles of flint", aka figstone/fig-stone, which are similarly hard to attest. Scores of English mentions, 2 or 3 uses(?) in tables of minerals, 1 use in running text. Possibly attestable in French and Italian. May be attestable as Sycite in German. DCDuring (talk) 18:00, 4 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

jadding

Latest comment: 20 days ago3 comments3 people in discussion

Old mining term--90.174.2.65 06:49, 5 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

It's all over Google Books, including a tool called a "jadding pick". Wonderfool, please stop trying to get dozens of valid entries deleted by flooding RFV beyond editors' capacity to deal with them. 2A00:23C5:FE1C:3701:2924:B51C:343F:F9B1 10:21, 5 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

Cited, but needs redefining, since stone (not just coal) can be jadded, and I'm not sure the action of jadding is holing, per se. - -sche (discuss) 02:58, 24 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

paratrinket

Latest comment: 1 month ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Seems to appear only as a definition or mention, in the glossary of the Web site "The Skeptic's Dictionary", with no real-world usage. 2A00:23C5:FE1C:3701:2924:B51C:343F:F9B1 10:20, 5 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

tea

Latest comment: 17 days ago2 comments2 people in discussion

“(slang) good-looking, sexy”. Placed as the first sense in the entry but uncited. J3133 (talk) 14:31, 5 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

Added in diff. I'm not familiar with it, but google:"was very tea" finds various things like "I was very tea last night hun", "ginger was very tea", "A live music video that was very tea", "Morning workout was very tea", "Outcome was very TEA 💋 I’m proud of myself pics will be posted". I don't know if it's made it into magazines or books, because I have not figured out how to search Issuu for a specific phrase (if I search for "was very tea", it just returns books which have the words very, was, and tea in them in unconnected places). I agree it'd make sense to move it below the noun even if it can be cited. - -sche (discuss) 22:52, 26 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

kadder

Latest comment: 1 month ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Jackdaw --90.174.2.65 17:29, 5 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

keckling

Latest comment: 1 month ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Nautical term. Why would someone wind rope around a cable on a boat, anyway? --90.174.2.65 17:46, 5 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

See the answer to your question at keckle. I do wonder whether this is just the gerund or present participle of that word. Chuck Entz (talk) 17:56, 5 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

kemelin

Latest comment: 1 month ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Only appearance in Chaucer, and some lists of products from 14th century --90.174.2.217 07:01, 6 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

don't try to teach grandma how to suck eggs

Latest comment: 21 days ago2 comments2 people in discussion

I could only find one use of this form. J3133 (talk) 15:43, 6 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

This is SoP even if it's citable - hard redirect to teach grandma how to suck eggs. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 03:16, 23 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

synchronology

Latest comment: 1 month ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Rfv-sense "chronological arrangement side by side". What does this even mean? Vilipender (talk) 17:07, 6 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

yell at

Latest comment: 21 days ago3 comments2 people in discussion

As a native English speaker, I'm unfamiliar with any kind of yelling at someone that doesn't essentially involve a raised voice. 2603:7080:A507:A8E1:C4F1:3E3A:F131:B58C 03:14, 7 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

This seems SoP, even if it's citable. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 03:15, 23 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

And the exact same sense is already present at yell. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 03:16, 23 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

26/11

Latest comment: 1 month ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Unlisted since 2025 Vilipender (talk) 10:30, 7 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

Agoslav

Latest comment: 1 month ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Unlisted since 2025 Vilipender (talk) 10:30, 7 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

Beetlejuice

Latest comment: 1 month ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Unlisted since 2025 Vilipender (talk) 10:31, 7 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

MFW

Latest comment: 1 month ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Rfv-sense Unlisted since 2025 Vilipender (talk) 10:31, 7 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

Nambé

Latest comment: 1 month ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Rfv-sense Unlisted since 2025 Vilipender (talk) 10:31, 7 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

Communications Group

Latest comment: 1 month ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Unlisted since 2024 Vilipender (talk) 10:31, 7 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

Paswan

Latest comment: 1 month ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Unlisted since 2025 Vilipender (talk) 10:32, 7 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

ajebutter

Latest comment: 4 days ago4 comments4 people in discussion

Unlisted since 2025 Vilipender (talk) 10:32, 7 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

Cited, but how should this be distinguished from ajebota#Nigerian Pidgin? —Fish bowl (talk) 18:35, 18 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

Passed (sort of). There's always a grey area between English, Nigerian English and Pidgin - much like there is for Scots and Patwa - by all means move it to Pudgin if you like. --Overlordnat1 (talk) 14:24, 10 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

Moving sounds right. Look at the usage example ("Na plenty ajebutter dey go dat place") and the fact that it doesn't have the English plural -s. 2A00:23C5:FE1C:3701:7912:4B5A:B874:B88C 14:28, 10 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

Cold War II

Latest comment: 1 month ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Unlisted since 2024 Vilipender (talk) 10:32, 7 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

PETA

Latest comment: 1 month ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Rfv-sense Unlisted since 2025 Vilipender (talk) 10:33, 7 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

at all hands

Latest comment: 1 month ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Unlisted since 2024 Vilipender (talk) 10:33, 7 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

clock it

Latest comment: 1 month ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Unlisted since 2025 Vilipender (talk) 10:33, 7 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

ectopion

Latest comment: 20 days ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Unlisted since 2024 Vilipender (talk) 10:34, 7 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

The term exists, but most of the cites I could find are about eyes and eyelids, not ectopic pregnancy, so the definition needs to be fixed. - -sche (discuss) 03:11, 24 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

saddle

Latest comment: 1 month ago1 comment1 person in discussion

2 construction senses.Unlisted since 2025 Vilipender (talk) 10:35, 7 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

inlagation

Latest comment: 1 month ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Unlisted since 2025 Vilipender (talk) 10:35, 7 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

One of these strange Anglo-Norman Saxon-French hybrids. Only in lexicons. Delete. This, that and the other (talk) 10:54, 7 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

first art

Latest comment: 1 month ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Unlisted since 2024 Vilipender (talk) 10:36, 7 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

labras

Latest comment: 1 month ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Lips. See labra, plural of labrum, meaning lip. This is attestable as plural of labra, meaning labrador (dog) --85.48.184.225 02:02, 8 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

laniary

Latest comment: 16 days ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Rfv-sense slaughterhouse --85.48.184.147 14:51, 8 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

Even the books I can find which refer to laniaries as a place where animals are killed...still mean the teeth, and are discussing how well other animals like stoats kill with their teeth. - -sche (discuss) 20:18, 28 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

Fagyar

Latest comment: 17 days ago2 comments2 people in discussion

This entry, or one or more of its senses, has been nominated as derogatory pursuant to WT:DEROGATORY. It may be speedily deleted if it does not have at least three quotations meeting the attestation requirements within two weeks of the nomination date, that is, by 22 April 2025.

— SURJECTION ^{/ T / C / L /} 06:05, 9 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

Deleted. Svārtava (t ɕ) 15:24, 27 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

tallowing

Latest comment: 1 month ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Rfv-senses The act, or art, of causing animals to produce tallow./The property in animals of producing tallow. Vilipender (talk) 10:16, 9 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

See tallow#Verb. Perhaps you should challenge the verb. (I've just put one cite there; more can be found.) 2A00:23C5:FE1C:3701:F050:4AD7:86D3:BA99 10:19, 9 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

turning turtles

Latest comment: 1 month ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Rfv-sense The act or practice of catching turtles by fliping them on their backs. Yep, there's an actual game called turning turtles. Perhaps this should be RFD-sense, meh Vilipender (talk) 14:23, 10 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

centumduodetrigintanion

Latest comment: 1 month ago4 comments2 people in discussion

Discussion moved from Wiktionary:Requests for deletion/English.

Not sufficiently WT:ATTESTed. (Also centumduodetrigintanions.) 𝟙𝟤𝟯𝟺𝐪𝑤𝒆𝓇𝟷𝟮𝟥𝟜𝓺𝔴𝕖𝖗𝟰 (𝗍𝗮𝘭𝙠) 20:36, 3 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

All of these go, thus, to WT:RFVE. Who's moving them? Polomo47 (talk) 05:00, 4 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

ducentiquinquagintasexion

Not sufficiently WT:ATTESTed. (Also ducentiquinquagintasexions.) 𝟙𝟤𝟯𝟺𝐪𝑤𝒆𝓇𝟷𝟮𝟥𝟜𝓺𝔴𝕖𝖗𝟰 (𝗍𝗮𝘭𝙠) 20:38, 3 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

sexagintaquattuornion

Not sufficiently WT:ATTESTed. (Also sexagintaquattuornions.) 𝟙𝟤𝟯𝟺𝐪𝑤𝒆𝓇𝟷𝟮𝟥𝟜𝓺𝔴𝕖𝖗𝟰 (𝗍𝗮𝘭𝙠) 20:38, 3 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

lastery

Latest comment: 16 days ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Nonce word? The OED lists the word as "spurious" --85.48.185.233 19:54, 10 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

Yes, I see some books saying it was a misprint (for castory) in Spenser, apparently called out in the work's errata but not fixed even in the next few printings. - -sche (discuss) 20:15, 28 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

taintworm

Latest comment: 1 month ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Only used in Milton's Lycidas, spelled as taint-worm? Vilipender (talk) 14:37, 11 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

propagos

Latest comment: 1 month ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Plural of propago. Seems that the actual plural (even in English) is propagines. 2A00:23C5:FE1C:3701:6544:BFA6:97A9:4E0 20:34, 11 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

greenman

Latest comment: 1 month ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Ostensible singular of greenmans, obsolete slang for the countryside. But compare darkmans (related slang for the night-time). I strongly doubt any singular exists. 2A00:23C5:FE1C:3701:6544:BFA6:97A9:4E0 22:07, 11 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

bullshittism

Latest comment: 1 month ago1 comment1 person in discussion

"The belief that everything is nonsense or untrue; the belief that attempting to be truthful is pointless." With a philosophy gloss, even! (Well, I did once meet a philosophy prof who taught a course called Truth and Bullshit.) But in Google Books there are only about five hits, and they just seem to mean "bullshitting, telling lies". I don't see this nihilist philosophy in evidence. 2A00:23C5:FE1C:3701:6544:BFA6:97A9:4E0 23:48, 11 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

leamer

Latest comment: 1 month ago1 comment1 person in discussion

A dog held on a leam (leash). Mentioned in edited versions of King Lear, but I couldn't find any use. --85.48.185.110 13:45, 12 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

tamaric

Latest comment: 1 month ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Just used in one old Bible verse? Vilipender (talk) 20:40, 13 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

tautegorical

Latest comment: 1 month ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Rfv-sense "Expressing the same thing with different words." The term clearly exists, mostly refering to symbols, not words. So rfdef... Vilipender (talk) 21:26, 13 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

ace bare

Latest comment: 29 days ago3 comments2 people in discussion

I don't know bridge, but the last three cites look like SOP to me. leave (v.) + ace (n.) + bare (adv.) is no more idiomatic than "leave the window open", right? In that case a new definition would be needed at bare. Ultimateria (talk) 02:38, 15 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

The previous incarnation of the entry was a bare {{lb}} + {{rfdef}}, deleted by Kiwima as "No usable content given". So this the first time it's being discussed; it seems unnecessary to draw attention to "redeletion".

In any event, if the concern relates to SOP, we would discuss it at WT:RFDE. This, that and the other (talk) 04:26, 15 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

Okay, I've removed "redelete" from this section header. I believe the entry could be idiomatic, but cites 2-4 don't support it—they would only support an {{&lit}} definition. I see now that it was confusing to describe cites as SOP. Ultimateria (talk) 17:18, 15 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

jorum

Latest comment: 18 days ago8 comments4 people in discussion

Rfv-sense "An unlikely word that a crossword solver constructs from the wordplay and crossing letters only to discover that it actually exists in the dictionary." — SURJECTION ^{/ T / C / L /} 12:08, 15 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

I am the administrator for a crossword blogging site and the first use of this term was here: https://www.fifteensquared.net/2015/07/25/guardian-prize-26627-puck/ DoubtfulBadger (talk) 23:51, 15 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

I wanted to add this URL as a link but I couldn’t figure out how DoubtfulBadger (talk) 23:53, 15 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

I’ve certainly come across ‘jorum’ on your excellent site and I’d be surprised if it wasn’t used in the same way by at least some commenters on the Times blog too but that would require wading through hours and hours of comments (it’s not on the Glossary page[76]). Overlordnat1 (talk) 00:10, 16 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

I’m trying to find out if TftT will consider adding it DoubtfulBadger (talk) 18:59, 16 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

It has now been added to TfTT glossary DoubtfulBadger (talk) 09:00, 17 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

What’s the latest on this. Can we get rid of the “citation needed” now? DoubtfulBadger (talk) 01:55, 26 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

I think we still need this to be verified in the usual way. Inclusion in a glossary or dictionary is not sufficient verification. — Sgconlaw (talk) 04:40, 26 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

graybar hotel

Latest comment: 26 days ago5 comments3 people in discussion

Only one quotation. No citations on the etymology. (Citations are needed here, right? I'm more active on Wikipedia.) — W.andrea (talk) 21:49, 15 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

The term is trivially citable, though the etymology could use some sources, yeah. 2A00:23C5:FE1C:3701:1DDE:A582:20BE:E3BB 22:00, 15 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

As for the etymology the sense development is as obvious as that of red-winged blackbird. Are we just looking for early attestation? An American slang dictionary dates it at 1970, but the earliest of its three citations is dated 1981. DCDuring (talk) 22:31, 15 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

Yeah, the derivation is obvious; I meant to say the etymology section needs citations. Specific facts like "Los Angeles", "ashamed", and "mail" would need to be cited if this were Wikipedia. — W.andrea (talk) 13:10, 18 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

You are right. Perhaps simply eliminating some of those words would help.

Relatedly, but not importantly, I wonder whether the existence of the Graybar Electric Company, a major distributor of electrical equipment throughout the US since 1920, made the name more prominent than similar alternatives. DCDuring (talk) 20:18, 18 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

elemeno

Latest comment: 28 days ago2 comments2 people in discussion

No citations. Saph (talk) 01:57, 16 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

Please be a useful part of the community and add some citations, from the obvious rich fund available when you search Google Books [77] 2A00:23C5:FE1C:3701:1DDE:A582:20BE:E3BB 03:17, 16 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

Fomosapien

Latest comment: 28 days ago1 comment1 person in discussion

— SURJECTION ^{/ T / C / L /} 04:03, 16 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

telary

Latest comment: 28 days ago1 comment1 person in discussion

web-spinning. Only used in Browne? Vilipender (talk) 08:44, 16 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

tenacy

Latest comment: 28 days ago1 comment1 person in discussion

tenaciousness. All quotes were spellops for tenancy. Vilipender (talk) 09:13, 16 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

filarious

Latest comment: 27 days ago1 comment1 person in discussion

(slang) Hilarious; very funny. 2A00:23C5:FE1C:3701:A4DE:F687:9057:1F20 19:13, 17 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

Smarandache function

Latest comment: 26 days ago1 comment1 person in discussion

See WT:RFDE#Smarandache function → Talk:Smarandache function. The challenge here, apparently, is to find three independent uses. This, that and the other (talk) 04:35, 18 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

direct-message

Latest comment: 26 days ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Noun. I originally put this as a form under the verb. J3133 (talk) 05:13, 18 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

locationist

Latest comment: 26 days ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Rfv-sense "One who forms an opinion about a person, their habits and traits, based on his or her residential or work location". — SURJECTION ^{/ T / C / L /} 08:52, 18 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

Too rare I think. Just a couple of examples in a Web search, which seem to refer specifically to an employer's prejudice against potential employees who don't live in the desired area: "Employers can be sexist, racist, ageist, locationist etc as well" (Quora), "Locationist, ageist, racist. What's fair and what isn't?" (Instagram). 2A00:23C5:FE1C:3701:E509:6B03:1FA8:8FA8 08:57, 18 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

anachronym

Latest comment: 26 days ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Rfv-sense 1: "a backronym". See the usage notes, and Talk:anachronym (posted by another user just now: I'm RFVing on his/her behalf). 2A00:23C5:FE1C:3701:E509:6B03:1FA8:8FA8 09:07, 18 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

anachronistic

Latest comment: 26 days ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Adding tagged-but-not-listed RFV for our second adjectival sense of anachronistic (‘behind the times’ or ‘Conservative’). It is clearly meant to be the adjective corresponding to our second sense of anachronism when applied to a person rather than a place. Overlordnat1 (talk) 12:00, 18 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

lowbell

Latest comment: 26 days ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Rfv-sense sheep-bell --85.48.185.116 13:46, 18 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

Found and added two. Anyone got a third? GBooks has a couple more promising results with the snippets forbidden. 2A00:23C5:FE1C:3701:E509:6B03:1FA8:8FA8 14:21, 18 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

lurid

Latest comment: 25 days ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Rfv-sense Having a colour tinged with purple, yellow, and grey. It seems very specific, but I acknowledge that verifying a quotation of a colour may be a tricky undertaking --90.174.2.53 07:21, 19 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

luxive

Latest comment: 9 days ago4 comments4 people in discussion

I see 2 quotes, luxive hills of Tuscany, and luxive eyes (meaning teary?), neither of which matches our definitions --90.174.2.53 07:36, 19 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

I've added the only cites I could find: one about "great luxive improvements" which I take to mean 'luxurious', a "luxive breast" which fits our definition of 'voluptuous' (although I question how sensible it is for us to be combining 'luxurious' and 'voluptuous'), and the "luxive, undulating hills", which could fit either sense. (A 2004 Essays in Arts and Sciences essay talks about Mayes' odd use of "luxive" to describe those hills, but considers it intentional, one of her quaintnesses, like using "haint" and calling cities by their ancient names.) So, our somewhat-weird-and-lumpy definition is technically cited.
"luxive eyes" is taken by some sources to be an error for "fluxive eyes", although other sources do take it to be "luxive"-connected-to-luxe. - -sche (discuss) 20:09, 28 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

All mean ‘bendsome, warpy, curvy, slanting, tending to perk over one's edges’, seen better in λοξός (loxós) than in lū̆xus (“dislocated, verrenkt”), apparently here even applicable to landscapes if hills are luxive, for I am not sure that one can ascribe wasteful opulence to them. Perhaps a better gloss would be extravagant, wanton, dissolute in a literal sense; if our working language were German I would gloss ausschweifend. Either can also be substituted with perky. From any perspective we shall not deny that this word is an arbitrary coinage with therefore some degree of arbitrariness, rather than uniformity, in meaning. Fay Freak (talk) 13:12, 30 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

If we have to define the single word luxive using a single word or phrase rather than using a wordcloud-like definition, which runs the risk of people wanting three cites for every word or phrase in the definition, then we should go with luxurious. ‘Voluptuous improvements’ doesn’t sound right, though it’s semantically sound, but ‘luxurious breasts’ works almost as well as ‘voluptuous breasts’ and the phrase is indeed used several times in Google Books. Overlordnat1 (talk) 06:56, 5 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

scatholic

Latest comment: 8 days ago2 comments2 people in discussion

This entry, or one or more of its senses, has been nominated as derogatory pursuant to WT:DEROGATORY. It may be speedily deleted if it does not have at least three quotations meeting the attestation requirements within two weeks of the nomination date, that is, by 4 May 2025.

The same IP address created two other similarly formed derogatory terms. Vox Sciurorum (talk) 16:27, 21 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

Failed. — Sgconlaw (talk) 17:30, 6 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

orthocuck

Latest comment: 8 days ago2 comments2 people in discussion

This entry, or one or more of its senses, has been nominated as derogatory pursuant to WT:DEROGATORY. It may be speedily deleted if it does not have at least three quotations meeting the attestation requirements within two weeks of the nomination date, that is, by 4 May 2025.

The same IP address created two similar derogatory terms. There is a set of low-follower social media accounts called "Antediluvian Orthocuck Society". Vox Sciurorum (talk) 16:30, 21 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

Failed. — Sgconlaw (talk) 17:30, 6 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

armth

Latest comment: 22 days ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Not in EEBO or the EDD, while the OED and MED have no attestations postdating the Early Middle English period. Hazarasp (parlement · werkis) 07:03, 22 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

tergiferous

Latest comment: 15 days ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Only in dictionaries, describing plants Vilipender (talk) 11:43, 22 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

Nothing on Google Scholar, nothing but mentions in dictionaries on Internet Archive. - -sche (discuss) 17:57, 29 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

tetty

Latest comment: 22 days ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Burton nonce Vilipender (talk) 12:34, 22 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

teuk

Latest comment: 10 days ago4 comments2 people in discussion

redshank. Lots of hits for "teuk", being the cry of certain birds, to wade through. Vilipender (talk) 12:36, 22 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

Perhaps you should invest in a subscription to the OED, which contains multiple attestations of this and several other words you have tagged. Zacwill (talk) 22:58, 3 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

I checked it - Quote page only has mentions, and this being a pron. spelling of took Vilipender (talk) 07:00, 4 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

See here. Zacwill (talk) 18:50, 4 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

fuck thee

Latest comment: 10 days ago6 comments3 people in discussion

Really? This, that and the other (talk) 02:22, 23 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

@This, that and the other: Added three quotations but you should have searched it on Google Books. J3133 (talk) 05:52, 23 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

I did, and I found lots of mentions and scannos for "suck thee". Clearly I didn't look hard enough. I should have known Samuel Beckett would use a phrase like this. This, that and the other (talk) 07:23, 23 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

@This, that and the other: The Internet Archive might have better results. J3133 (talk) 07:54, 23 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

Yes, lots of highly relevant uses there amongst the other texts. When IA is good, it's very good. Anyway, I feel quite embarrassed about this RFV. Sorry for wasting your time, J3133. This, that and the other (talk) 12:19, 23 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

Pass'd Vilipender (talk) 07:02, 4 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

deaggro

Latest comment: 20 days ago4 comments3 people in discussion

Both senses, unhyphenated (the hyphenated form would be SoP - sense one of de- plus the relevant sense of aggro). * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 03:12, 23 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

Well, maybe, but la-de-da contains de- that isn't de-. (Entry seems to have had a lot of cites added now, by the way.) 2A00:23C5:FE1C:3701:4936:1531:AACE:AD57 19:36, 23 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

In this specific case, unlike that one, "de-" has its usual meaning. And this is still missing a third unhyphenated cite for the transitive sense to be technically complete (but I wouldn't have RfVed in the current state) * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 21:36, 23 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

I added what I could find on Usenet. While the entry is still missing a third transitive unhyphenated cite, both forms seem widespread online. Einstein2 (talk) 23:27, 23 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

lutarious

Latest comment: 16 days ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Only in Nehemiah Grew? --[Saviourofthe] ୨୧ 14:52, 23 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

Cited. - -sche (discuss) 17:06, 28 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

cat cube

Latest comment: 21 days ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Object show thing. Tiny handful of Web hits only. User is creating many probably unattestable entries of this type. 2A00:23C5:FE1C:3701:4936:1531:AACE:AD57 19:31, 23 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

numisma

Latest comment: 20 days ago1 comment1 person in discussion

I can't find any use of any of these senses. Every single Google Books hit seems to be either Latin or a line-break "numisma-tic". Smurrayinchester (talk) 07:56, 24 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

manuary

Latest comment: 19 days ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Rfv-sense artificer. May mean a manual labourer. --85.48.185.179 09:16, 24 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

I'm not so sure. Looking at the evidence I collected (by which this is now cited - and yes, one of the cites is recent, but that author clearly has their head in 17th-century English, so I don't think it is evidence against the term being obsolete):

Mulcaster says manuaries are "those whose handyworke is their ware", in contrast to merchants, who sell the ware of others;
Hoby equates "manuary" and "printer". Printers are closer to "artificers" ("craftsmen" might be a better word) than manual laborers;
Borri (tr. Ashley) says that the Cochin-Chinois do not engage in manuary trades themselves but nonetheless value crafted items such as "Combes, Needles, Bracelets, Beades".

This, that and the other (talk) 02:46, 25 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

mechanurgy

Latest comment: 19 days ago4 comments3 people in discussion

Very rare. It seems to have been the name of a company, too--85.48.185.179 10:05, 24 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

~~I only find one use: [78]~~ Trying a bit harder, I've now cited this exceedingly rare word. This, that and the other (talk) 03:12, 25 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

one of your citations includes an accent on the a. Is that deliberáte? --85.48.184.90 05:54, 25 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

Yes! It's very clearly included in two separate scans I checked (so not an errant speck of dirt on the scanner glass). I presume the poet included it to help readers know where to put the stress, although I don't see him doing this on any other words. I put the URL in the cite so you can see for yourself. This, that and the other (talk) 07:29, 25 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

G. Boy Color

Latest comment: 19 days ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Too rare, won't meet CFI. 2A00:23C5:FE1C:3701:6C84:2E84:8629:57E6 22:55, 24 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

G. Boy Advance

Latest comment: 19 days ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Too rare, won't meet CFI. 2A00:23C5:FE1C:3701:6C84:2E84:8629:57E6 22:55, 24 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

melotype

Latest comment: 19 days ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Photography sense. It appears as a musical term, maybe defined as a "melody type"? Any photographic evidence only appears in glossaries and the like. --85.48.184.90 05:52, 25 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

I could only find one use of the photography sense. Curiously it is in a very recent text: [79]

The music sense belongs to the field of ethnomusicology. I'm struggling to locate a freely available source that explains what exactly it means. This, that and the other (talk) 12:08, 25 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

mercurialize

Latest comment: 19 days ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Rfv-sense to be sprightly --85.48.184.90 07:28, 25 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

ji bai

Latest comment: 19 days ago1 comment1 person in discussion

jibai

Compare the RFV of cibai above. - -sche (discuss) 14:55, 25 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

aftermidnight

Latest comment: 19 days ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Not seeing it in GBooks without a hyphen. 109.145.137.117 15:01, 25 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

hereamongst

Latest comment: 16 days ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Tried to find quotes, only hits seem to be scannos for "here amongst". @Theknightwho Ioaxxere (talk) 16:17, 25 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

I added the only cite I could find where this is clearly printed as one word. This has a slimmer space between here and amongst than other words, but clearly more of a space than is present between other e+a pairs such as "repeating" further down the page, so it is arguable. - -sche (discuss) 23:07, 27 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

quaternary

Latest comment: 19 days ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Adjective sense 4, which says "quaternary ammonium" (how is that an adjective?). Presumably it does have a meaning in that phrase, but what is it? 2A00:23C5:FE1C:3701:E065:9E45:D64C:F38E 20:57, 25 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

quasitau

Latest comment: 17 days ago2 comments2 people in discussion

simple maths term.... Vilipender (talk) 22:31, 25 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

It exists (also quasi-tau) but only in papers with Manuel Mañas listed as an author, so fails the indepedence test. This, that and the other (talk) 04:45, 27 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

migniardise

Latest comment: 18 days ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Nonce word? Compare mignardise --90.174.3.184 13:18, 26 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

minum

Latest comment: 18 days ago1 comment1 person in discussion

βRfv-sense printing type--90.174.3.184 19:09, 26 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

miskin

Latest comment: 18 days ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Rfv-sense little bagpipe. There may be other meanings --90.174.3.184 19:20, 26 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

amplexation

Latest comment: 16 days ago4 comments3 people in discussion

The Joseph Hall quotation is the only one in the OED. J3133 (talk) 05:22, 27 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

I added one more cite of a general "embrace" sense, and four cites which are about frogs or fish and seem like they may mean something more nuanced/specific than just "embrace", if anyone wants to split the entry into two senses. - -sche (discuss) 18:45, 27 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

@-sche: See amplexus. That is the grip on the back of the female the male makes so that he is in a position to fertilize her eggs when she releases them. In the biology sense, amplexation seems to be the act of making that grip. This is a very basic inborn behavior shared by most, if not all anuran species (among others). Since it's inborn, variation in the details is no doubt part of the evidence for the genetic relatedness of different taxa. That's why it's one of the traits listed in descriptions by biologists/herpetologists. Chuck Entz (talk) 20:33, 27 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

Aha; thanks for your input. I have found a third cite of the general sense on EEBO and have split the general and biology senses, which are now both cited. - -sche (discuss) 22:53, 27 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

tide (2)

Latest comment: 16 days ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Rfv-sense "Violent confluence." (Currently has only one spectacularly unhelpful two-word cite.) - -sche (discuss) 15:34, 27 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

The original quote in context is clearly just the usual "movement of water" sense (there's definitely no sense of confluence here - something flows to a place, but there's no combination of multiple flows): "Wherefore Nature, which many times is happily contayned, and refrained by some Bands of Fortune, beganne to take place in the King; carrying (as with a strong Tide) his Affections and Thoughts unto the gathering and heaping up of Treasure." That said, "tide + waterfall" pre-1850 did find a couple of useful looking hits:

1806, Gavriil Andreevich Sarychev, Account of a Voyage of Discovery to the North-east of Siberia, the Frozen Ocean, and the North-east Sea, page 49:
On the 29th of August we were obliged to stem the tide below a waterfall, which extended two fathoms, and in which both banks were filled with pointed projecting stones. It cost us no small trouble to drag our canoes against the stream betwixt these stones.
1824, Amos LOVE, “Lines Written at a Waterfall”, in The Poetical Works of the Late Amos Love, Esq. [Edited by R. J. R.], page 99:
Trace we now the torrent tide/Tow'rd yon dark steep's craggy side ; At the dread verge one moment stays its flight , Then flashing headlong on the light

Not sure what these are saying exactly, but it's at least closer. Smurrayinchester (talk) 08:34, 28 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

Esrever

Latest comment: 17 days ago1 comment1 person in discussion

— SURJECTION ^{/ T / C / L /} 18:16, 27 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

thirdings

Latest comment: 17 days ago1 comment1 person in discussion

sense: corn thing Vilipender (talk) 20:44, 27 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

amphibological

Latest comment: 17 days ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Rfv-sense "(linguistics) Grammatically ambiguous." how distinct is this from the first sense, and how securely citeable is it as specialized linguistics terminology? ragweed theater _{talk, user} 21:44, 27 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

monarchizer

Latest comment: 16 days ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Very rare. Appears as monarchiser in Heywood's work. --90.174.2.94 07:03, 28 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

spicy straight

Latest comment: 13 days ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Someone originally marked this as {{d}}, but I replaced the mark since this term does indeed exist Someone-123-321 (talk) 11:57, 28 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

I see a limited number of uses online, e.g. barely ~80 posts on Bluesky containing either the singular or plural, out of — for reference — 800+ million posts. And there are seem to be multiple meanings and connotations: sometimes it's reportedly self-applied by people who identify as straight but experience queer attraction ('Spicy straight' is a label used by predominantly younger girls who feel attracted to other girls, but would not date them); other times it's applied to people who don't experience queer attraction ("Spicy straight usually means someone that's gay exclusively for the male gaze i.e. a woman who makes out with another woman not because she enjoys it, but because she thinks a man would enjoy watching it"); other times—e.g. most of the uses on Bluesky—it's applied by bigots to queer people (especially bisexuals) to invalidate them. - -sche (discuss) 09:37, 1 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

he man

Latest comment: 16 days ago2 comments1 person in discussion

"A man (in NNSE)." On the web, I only see he-man meaning "a virile/macho man", and she-man meaning some counterpart thereto (an effeminate man?), not this. This is as much an RFV of the singular as the plural, currently given as "he mans". - -sche (discuss) 20:30, 28 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

she man

"A woman (in NNSE)." As above; please also check what the plural is. - -sche (discuss) 20:30, 28 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

thryfallow

Latest comment: 14 days ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Only Tusser? Vilipender (talk) 22:23, 28 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

SOP, with a dialectally then (in 1557) still current form of thrice. Fay Freak (talk) 00:05, 30 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

thwite

Latest comment: 14 days ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Tagged in 2024. OED has 1 modern hit Vilipender (talk) 22:29, 28 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

Cited. Fay Freak (talk) 00:02, 30 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

trophogonic

Latest comment: 15 days ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Tagged in 2024 Vilipender (talk) 22:31, 28 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

In particular, the RFV comment was questioning the definition: “seems like an alt form of gonotrophic”—or, I would add, of trophogenic. I added some cites, but although some mention bloodmeal, they might also be consistent with meaning gonotrophic or trophogenic. The entry was created by SemperBlotto, who was perhaps just guessing. Figuring out the actual definition (gonotrophic? trophogenic?) might require specialized knowledge or resources. (@Chuck Entz, what do you make of it?) - -sche (discuss) 17:57, 29 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

syngameon

Latest comment: 15 days ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Tagged in 2025 Vilipender (talk) 22:32, 28 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

creaze

Latest comment: 15 days ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Tagged in 2025 Vilipender (talk) 22:34, 28 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

creatic

Latest comment: 13 days ago6 comments3 people in discussion

kreatic

Tagged in 2025 Vilipender (talk) 22:34, 28 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

I found and added one cite while citing the next word (#corrivate). It's hard to find more because there are so many instances of pan- creatic. - -sche (discuss) 23:23, 28 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

I see some mentions (not sure if any uses) of the alt form "kreatic" which the entry formerly mentioned; TTO deleted that form as having failed RFV but I can't find any actual discussion of it. - -sche (discuss) 03:39, 29 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

Can't remember this, but it indeed doesn't seem to have been discussed. I've resurrected it so we can discuss it here. This, that and the other (talk) 12:26, 30 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

There are many useless mentions, but the closest thing to uses I can find for kreatic are these two borderline cites. IMO 1840 is technically a use; 1889 I'm unsure about: my instinct is it's a mention, but if I imagine a longer string, like "what he termed 'plastic tubes of creatic mush from the guts factory'", I'd have no trouble accepting that as using creatic. It's moot since there's no third cite.
Along the way I found more books than I expected spelling pankreatic with a k. - -sche (discuss) 09:05, 1 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

I managed to find two more uses of creatic. - -sche (discuss) 09:05, 1 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

corrivate

Latest comment: 15 days ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Tagged in 2025 Vilipender (talk) 22:34, 28 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

I added four cites to the citations page and tweaked the def. - -sche (discuss) 23:23, 28 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

coronamen

Latest comment: 15 days ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Tagged in 2025 Vilipender (talk) 22:35, 28 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

cingulomania

Latest comment: 15 days ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Tagged in 2025 Vilipender (talk) 22:35, 28 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

boston

Latest comment: 15 days ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Tagged in 2024 Vilipender (talk) 22:36, 28 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

dade

Latest comment: 15 days ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Tagged in 2025 Vilipender (talk) 22:37, 28 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

phacellus

Latest comment: 13 days ago3 comments2 people in discussion

Tagged in 2024 Vilipender (talk) 22:38, 28 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

By you, no less.
It's easy to find cites of the plural; I did also add one cite of the singular. MW suggests the usual word (in the singular) is "phacella", but that's not very common either (compared to its own plural, "phacellae"). - -sche (discuss) 23:30, 28 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

OK, I found more cites of the singular. Cited. - -sche (discuss) 08:12, 1 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

sillsallad

Latest comment: 15 days ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Tagged in 2024 Vilipender (talk) 22:39, 28 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

schwindogram

Latest comment: 14 days ago5 comments4 people in discussion

— SURJECTION ^{/ T / C / L /} 06:22, 29 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

@Surjection: I don't understand the definition and contend that it is nonsense, since spelling rapidly does not make the word anyhow different or make the spelling phonetically resembling the word, without prejudice to the sanity of synaesthesia, which I have no impressions of. Speedy. Fay Freak (talk) 23:25, 29 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

It means that saying the names of the letters OREO (oh-are-ee-oh) sounds like Oreo. 2A00:23C5:FE1C:3701:2CDE:4536:2194:2A09 05:22, 30 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

Fine, now I understand it.

It doesn’t though, it sounds like spelling out letters, unless you don’t spell out the letters. Anything beyond that is a function of your subjective field dependence, which is accurately low with me. That Quora user should not resperse pseudolinguistic concepts, which are better reviewed in psychological terms (lots of papers there, though more easily about visual than auditory perception). Fay Freak (talk) 12:56, 30 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

Created by ShwindoLover (talk • contribs), which should be a strong giveaway to its creative-coinage qualifications. --Slgrandson (talk) 07:06, 30 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

motation

Latest comment: 14 days ago2 comments2 people in discussion

I was unable to find any uses --90.174.2.14 14:03, 29 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

Added one from some kind of heterodox psychology book of the 1920s (William Moulton Marston, who talks about "psychons" on the same page). 2A00:23C5:FE1C:3701:2CDE:4536:2194:2A09 05:26, 30 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

slide-talking

Latest comment: 15 days ago1 comment1 person in discussion

— SURJECTION ^{/ T / C / L /} 16:20, 29 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

quasisexist

Latest comment: 14 days ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Was tagged for speedy deletion because "almost no citations". So RFV is more suitable. 2A00:23C5:FE1C:3701:2CDE:4536:2194:2A09 05:20, 30 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

helmet

Latest comment: 14 days ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Rfv-sense: "(heraldry) Such a helm when placed above a shield on a coat of arms." I don't think that this exists separate from sense 1. In theory, if someone said "bishops bear mitres as helmets" that could be this, but in fact books say bishops don't use helmets (they use mitres instead). This may be a leftover from when we formerly had a bunch of "hawk: 1. a bird. 2. this same bird, when it appears on a coat of arms." senses. - -sche (discuss) 05:46, 30 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

retorted

Latest comment: 14 days ago1 comment1 person in discussion

"(heraldry) Interlaced." The Thorpe quote is the only one I can find. - -sche (discuss) 05:51, 30 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

mump

Latest comment: 14 days ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Rfv-sense accept a gift --85.48.186.217 07:00, 30 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

mundatory

Latest comment: 14 days ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Rfv-sense adjective. I only find it in old dictionaries --85.48.186.217 07:09, 30 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

"the mundatory erection" can be found (something to do with George Cruikshank). 2A00:23C5:FE1C:3701:2CDE:4536:2194:2A09 10:53, 30 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

Wahalal

Latest comment: 14 days ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Mimicking of Quran recitation. 2A00:23C5:FE1C:3701:2CDE:4536:2194:2A09 10:48, 30 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

iBastard

Latest comment: 14 days ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Slur for Apple users. 2A00:23C5:FE1C:3701:2CDE:4536:2194:2A09 10:51, 30 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

trumplike

Latest comment: 14 days ago1 comment1 person in discussion

resembling a trumpet. Probs just used in ChapmanVilipender (talk) 11:44, 30 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

tid

Latest comment: 14 days ago1 comment1 person in discussion

soft,tender Vilipender (talk) 11:57, 30 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

Stroadville

Latest comment: 13 days ago2 comments2 people in discussion

— SURJECTION ^{/ T / C / L /} 15:37, 30 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

I see a handful of web hits for this (in the sense: an area characterized by stroads), basically just a, b, c, d, and e, and that's it. I don't even see any uses on Bluesky, where plenty of people discuss urban design. Nothing in Google Books, Internet Archive, Google Scholar. Too rare to meet CFI, I think. - -sche (discuss) 02:38, 1 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

dozenth

Latest comment: 6 days ago4 comments2 people in discussion

Rfv-sense A twelfth. i.e. ${\frac {1}{12}}$ . Theknightwho (talk) 16:07, 30 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

I think this is the sense being used when people speak of one dozenth (or multiple dozenths) of something, now cited at Citations:dozenth. The OED calls the other sense of dozenth ("that's the dozenth/twelfth time you've asked") colloquial, but doesn't have this sense at all, and many of the books I spot it in look rather more technical/formal than colloquial, so I am not sure what to make of it, as far as labels go. - -sche (discuss) 17:25, 30 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

@-sche My intuition is that this may have been widespread in the past in relation to certain units of measurement (e.g. 12 inches in a foot, 12 pence in a shilling etc). The word twelfth is annoying to say, too. Theknightwho (talk) 03:39, 5 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

Passed. - -sche (discuss) 16:45, 8 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

custom; discussions about online cites

Latest comment: 5 hours ago8 comments3 people in discussion

These are not requests for verification per se, but requests to discuss, as vote-mandated, whether to use (partly) online cites to ATTEST the following words:

custom

"A custom (made-to-order) piece of art, etc." The sense is already present in the entry, but only citing one tweet and one (online-only?) magazine. Myriad online cites are easy to find: [80], [81], [82], [83], google:"buy customs from" etc. Argument in favour of accepting online cites here: I would expect this word to be used more online than offline, since many customs are digital (custom digital art and/or porn, for example) — only some are physical objects — and it is, indeed, widespread as the word for this concept online. - -sche (discuss) 19:53, 30 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

@-sche it doesn't seem as though you are in any doubt that the sense exists and is in use, so I'm a little unsure why you started this discussion. WT:ATTEST only formally kicks in when a sense is challenged, and nobody (until you just now) challenged it. We have enough of a backlog as it is... This, that and the other (talk) 10:15, 1 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

Hmm, alright. Well, seeing no objections to creating/keeping these, I will archive these as "kept". - -sche (discuss) 17:08, 14 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

tergant

Two uses in books at Citations:tergant. Uses online: [84], [85], [86] (a turtle tergant azure, cf [87] a turtle tergant or), [88]. Argument in favour: many dictionaries and other reference works on heraldry say this word/spelling exists (and it is etymologically expected, unlike tergiant with its odd i), so we could accept the online-heraldry cites as confirming that yes, the word does exist. Argument against: unlike with custom, with heraldry you'd expect printed old book citations to exist. - -sche (discuss) 19:53, 30 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

farsick

Two book cites (and one online cite) at Citations:farsick (and the noun farsickness exists), More online cites: [89], [90], [91], etc (google:"farsick for"). - -sche (discuss) 19:53, 30 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

assininery and/or asininery

Cites: on Citations:assininery, and plenty more online: "With a Republican President who is demonstrably easy to influence, cabinet choices that are the height of assininery", "They're treating bars like most states treat pedophiles. It's sheer assininery.", "Hopefully they pull their heads out and fix this assininery." - -sche (discuss) 19:53, 30 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

Oh, now I feel asinine (at least in our definition of the word, "very foolish"—I understood it to mean something a bit different, this) for failing to notice until Hftf pointed it out that the expected spelling would be asininery. Nonetheless, we have to have the same discussion about that spelling, which is also only attested once in a book and otherwise has to be cited from the web: [92], [93], [94], [95], [96]. Do we accept web cites as showing that it is a word? - -sche (discuss) 02:08, 1 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

I’d say we should keep or create all of these, we do have assinine listed as a misspelling of asinine, after all, so why not do the same for assininery? Overlordnat1 (talk) 14:16, 10 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

May 2025

hwite

Latest comment: 12 days ago4 comments3 people in discussion

(uncommon, dialectal, offensive, slang) related to or associated with (behavior commonly expressed by people of) the white race

Theknightwho (talk) 00:02, 1 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

I'd define it more like whyte, but this is common enough online — [97], [98], [99], [100], [101], [102], [103], [104], etc — but I reckon we have to discuss whether to keep this using online cites, because I could only find one book cite of (roughly) this sense. (There is, of course, a second citeable sense, where it's just a pronunciation (re)spelling, which is more attested in books and can also be found online.) - -sche (discuss) 01:57, 1 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

I think the newly added second sense and possibly the first sense (added in September) falls under the scope of the eye dialect spelling, recalling the accent of the antebellum South, which maintained the wine-whine distinction involving phonemic /ʍ/. Only a few modern American speakers maintain this distinction, and I suspect their speech sounds old-fashioned even in those areas of the US where the distinction is still heard. Since the antebellum South evokes a plantation mindset, it can be used with racial connotations today, whereas older cites of the same spelling may have merely sounded old-fashioned in other ways. Therefore I'd say that this is at the very least cited as a pronunciation respelling. I know that's not what we're looking for here, but piecing out what exact connotations are intended in each use involves a lot of judgment calls, and if we can't agree on the meaning, which may be highly variable, I'd suggest using the eye dialect label as a fallback. There is also huwhite, which even passes the print-media CFI test, but seems to belong to a different subculture and therefore might need a separate listing even though from what I can tell they're both eye dialect spellings of the same pronunciation. —Soap— 15:19, 1 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

Used in the manner of sense 2 (which is now sense 1; I had been wary of changing the entry mid-RFV but I think the old sense 1 was clearly an attempt to cover the same thing), it's the same phenomenon as whyte and yt and e.g. Amerikkkan; I would not view it as "eye dialect" unless we view those as eye dialect. (If other people do view those as eye dialect, let's discuss that.) - -sche (discuss) 16:05, 2 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

rolypoliness

Latest comment: 12 days ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Wonderfolly Vilipender (talk) 06:58, 1 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

Probably 3 in GBooks, will look properly later. This, that and the other (talk) 07:16, 2 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

pinionists

Latest comment: 12 days ago2 comments2 people in discussion

“(poetic, nonce word) winged creatures”. The OED only has the William Browne quotation; @-sche asked on the talk page, “Was this used by more than just the one author?” J3133 (talk) 05:36, 2 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

In the years since I wrote that, archive.org has digitized this (better scan here), which might be this sense, if anyone can make sense of it...? I've typed it up at Citations:pinionists.
(They also digitized this, but to call that "conveying meaning", let alone conveying this meaning when it's ?glossed? as "lion", would be a stretch; it looks like gibberish.) - -sche (discuss) 06:46, 2 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

pristor

Latest comment: 12 days ago1 comment1 person in discussion

A reworded copy from a UD definition, so probably tosh. — SURJECTION ^{/ T / C / L /} 11:27, 2 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

mystagogue

Latest comment: 12 days ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Rfv-sense one who keeps and shows church relics --90.174.2.245 15:28, 2 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

kapeyka

Latest comment: 12 days ago1 comment1 person in discussion

I can only find this in reference to Belarus. J3133 (talk) 15:31, 2 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

undecimary

Latest comment: 11 days ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Only in dictionaries. Some others in this list might have the same problem. 2A00:23C5:FE1C:3701:F57D:AA4A:497:5681 06:55, 3 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

Indeed, I can't find any uses. - -sche (discuss) 17:30, 3 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

newing

Latest comment: 11 days ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Rfv-sense yeast, barm --85.48.184.253 08:38, 3 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

Wright's EDD has this but his only cite is Scottish (so we'd have to determine whether it's Scots or English, which might vary by edition of the text, since the EDD quotes it as "it is a fairy brewing that is na good in the newing", but some books report the line in more Scots-like forms like "it is a sairy brewing that is na gude in the newing" and other books quote it a fully English form as "...that is not good in the newing" or "...that's no good..."). Jamieson doesn't take that cite to mean "yeast, barm" in any case, glossing it as "i.e., when it is new". - -sche (discuss) 16:08, 3 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

nias

Latest comment: 11 days ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Rfv-sense unsophisticated person --85.48.184.253 09:03, 3 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

nidary

Latest comment: 11 days ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Probably a nonce word --85.48.184.253 09:15, 3 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

I can't find other uses, but there is a place near Wolmet (Woolmet), Niddry / Niddries, which gets scannoed as this, and boundaries and secondaries get scannoed as this, and it exists as a name ("Project leader Rosemary Nidary"), all of which make it hard to search. Some editions of or books quoting Evelyn have this in the plural and others have it in the singular, but those are of course not independent uses. (Other rare words from Evelyn are rupellary, which I just barely cited, and volary.) - -sche (discuss) 16:27, 3 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

NLP

Latest comment: 11 days ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Is NLP used as an initialism for “neuro-linguistic psychotherapy”? ‑‑Lambiam 15:23, 3 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

crown fire

Latest comment: 10 days ago4 comments3 people in discussion

Tagged in 2024 Vilipender (talk) 21:47, 3 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

Well, crown has the sense "the top of a tree", and this is defined as "fire in the tops of trees", so it seems more a candidate for WT:RFD as sum of parts. 2A00:23C5:FE1C:3701:F57D:AA4A:497:5681 21:55, 3 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

It has a more specific technical meaning: it refers to a fire that spreads through a forest at the crown or canopy level, without the need for a fire at ground level to ignite the trees. Crown fires spread far more rapidly and are much harder to fight, so firefighters try to prevent them if at all possible. See verb sense 11 at crown, which refers to a forest fire progressing to the crown fire stage. Chuck Entz (talk) 23:44, 3 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

Here] is an example of the kinds of technical discussions that revolve around this term, and here is another book about crown fires (Google Books has 15 hits with "crown fire" in the title, so there's no question that this passes rfv). Chuck Entz (talk) 00:00, 4 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

deonym

Latest comment: 4 days ago6 comments4 people in discussion

Tagged in 2024 Vilipender (talk) 21:47, 3 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

This one is interesting. Our entry says = theonym (name of a deity), but the very few (dubious-looking) sources I found claim that it means a generic term originating from a brand name, i.e. a deonym is an instance of genericide (with the same god etymology). 2A00:23C5:FE1C:3701:F57D:AA4A:497:5681 22:05, 3 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

Indeed, which is bewildering! It seems to be attested too early to be genAI (maybe NNSE??) but it looks like the kind of word-meaning combination genAI hallucinates when you ask it what is the meaning of the proverb "[some random words]"? I'd love to know how the sense arose. (I did manage to cite the theonym sense.) - -sche (discuss) 22:22, 3 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

Aha, the other sense did not arise from "god"+onym. That explains it. - -sche (discuss) 01:16, 10 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

I tagged that and I am aware of that. Problems with onomastic terms (on Wiki) is the issue of pre-standardization of onomastic terms. Authors who are not familiar with onomastics use this term casually. It might mean theonym in the past based on the given examples, but currently, according to The International Council of Onomastic Sciences (ICOS), deonym only means a noun derived or originating from a proper name. Same problem such as toponymy (used to mean toponomastics in a border sense) → now used chiefly to mean set of toponyms within a specific territory/region, language, period of time etc.; zoonyms (used as a generic name in a border sense) → now used as a proper name for a horse such as Šeráček. These terms require a clean-up. Chihunglu83 (talk) 02:52, 4 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

OK, AFAICT both senses are now cited (and more cites are available on Google Books), and split by ety with help from Lambiam. - -sche (discuss) 01:15, 10 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

dey play

Latest comment: 11 days ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Tagged in 2025 Vilipender (talk) 21:48, 3 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

dollar-speaking

Latest comment: 11 days ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Rfv-sense Anglophone Vilipender (talk) 21:48, 3 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

The phrase "speaking dollar" seems way more common than this. 2A00:23C5:FE1C:3701:F57D:AA4A:497:5681 22:03, 3 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

dry beat

Latest comment: 11 days ago1 comment1 person in discussion

RFV sexy term Vilipender (talk) 21:48, 3 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

octarius

Latest comment: 11 days ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Rfv-sense English Vilipender (talk) 21:49, 3 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

orb

Latest comment: 11 days ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Rfv astrology sense Vilipender (talk) 21:50, 3 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

parusia

Latest comment: 10 days ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Tagged in 2024 Vilipender (talk) 21:50, 3 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

Added 3 cites. One uses italics. 2A00:23C5:FE1C:3701:9C29:7D73:BAF9:8617 13:54, 4 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

who dey breeett

Latest comment: 11 days ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Tagged in 2025 Vilipender (talk) 21:51, 3 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

meat dealer

Latest comment: 11 days ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Rfv-sense pimp Vilipender (talk) 21:51, 3 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

indigest

Latest comment: 10 days ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Rfv-sense noun. I don't like to RFV Shakespeare's words, but methinks this be a nonce Vilipender (talk) 06:48, 4 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

Nonfirstorderizability

Latest comment: 8 days ago3 comments3 people in discussion

— SURJECTION ^{/ T / C / L /} 16:03, 4 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

Cited in lowercase. (Should be moved per the RFM.) - -sche (discuss) 18:07, 4 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

Moved to nonfirstorderizability; clear error. This, that and the other (talk) 01:38, 6 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

norie

Latest comment: 4 days ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Rfv-sense a cormorant. All the sources I found, Scottish, classify it as a puffin, sometimes as Tommy-norie or Tammie-norie or various other spellings --85.48.184.114 19:53, 4 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

The Scottish National Dictionary indicates that this is a rare and obsolete alternative sense. Zacwill (talk) 22:24, 9 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

notist

Latest comment: 8 days ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Meaning annotator. It has been used as a spelling variant of noticed, and as something in music, presumably one who plays notes, but not musically. --90.167.178.158 06:42, 5 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

The music sense is probably a literal rendering of German Notist (“music copyist”). May not be attestable in English. This, that and the other (talk) 01:42, 6 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

are the Kennedies gun-shy

Latest comment: 8 days ago1 comment1 person in discussion

J3133 (talk) 08:11, 6 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

Brexit

Latest comment: 8 days ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Dubious sense is "(slang, by extension) To leave a romantic relationship." I am aware of Brexit as a humorous substitution for exit generally, a broader sense, but I have never encountered a specifically romantic meaning, nor can I turn up any such examples by searching the web, which is where I would most expect to see them. 166.181.80.135 08:30, 6 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

smutch

Latest comment: 8 days ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Rfv-sense "To eat noisily, as with one's mouth open." Not in any dictionaries I have checked, even historical, nor can I find any supporting quotations. 166.181.80.135 21:54, 6 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

onology

Latest comment: 4 days ago3 comments3 people in discussion

Foolish discourse. Difficult to find because of confusables like oncology, demonology, chronology etc. --85.48.57.65 13:10, 7 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

The OED claims that this is a hapax legomenon, and when I track it down, even its one appearance looks like a mention, not a use:

1670, Thomas Blount (lexicographer), Glossographia: or a Dictionary Interpreting the Hard Words of Whatſoever Language, now uſed In our refined Engliſh Tongue, With Etymologies, Definitions, and Hiſtorical Obſervations on the ſame, Alſo the terms of Divinity, Law, Phyſick, Mathematicks, War, Muſic, and other Arts and Sciences explicated‎^[105], page 452:
Onology (Gr.) vain babling, talking like an Aſs.

166.181.80.135 16:22, 7 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

The 17th-century lexicographers made up a lot of words like this. This, that and the other (talk) 10:11, 10 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

raisin

Latest comment: 7 days ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Rfv-sense

(rare, slang) guardian (A person legally responsible for a minor (in loco parentis))

— This unsigned comment was added by Chuck Entz (talk • contribs) at 14:09, 7 May 2025 (UTC).Reply

shy

Latest comment: 7 days ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Rfv-sense "embarrassed." Sounds plausible, but after hours of searching, I cannot find it in any modern or historical dictionary, nor can I locate any attestations. 166.181.80.135 15:58, 7 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

orbicula

Latest comment: 4 days ago3 comments3 people in discussion

Zoology term. I can only find the term capitalized, suggesting it is a(n outdated) taxonomic name--90.167.189.218 18:54, 7 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

Cited, including from sources distinguishing the lower- and uppercase forms. The lowercase form seems to have died out before the 20th century. The uppercase form remains in currency as a genus.

I have also turned up two other attestable senses, but I do not have time just now to add them with proper citations. Look for them soon. 166.181.80.135 22:37, 7 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

Well, only one sense after more careful scrutiny. 166.181.86.165 01:36, 10 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

organophyly

Latest comment: 2 days ago3 comments2 people in discussion

Rfv-sense tribal history of organs. Doesn't make sense to me. --90.167.189.204 20:38, 7 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

The word tribal here probably is in the historical sense of "phylogenic" (as opposed to "ontogenic"), a sense formerly used under the theory of recapitulation, but which we seem not to have at its entry. When I get a chance, I'll see if I can make a pass over that whole cluster of terms. 166.181.86.165 01:40, 10 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

Well, that was more tedious than expected. See revisions at biogeny, blastogeny, blastophyly, cormogeny, cormophyly, germ history, histogeny, histophyly, morphogeny, morphophyly, organogeny, organophyly, -phyly, physiogeny, physiophyly, tribal, tribal history, and tribehood. 166.181.86.165 00:36, 12 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

padelle

Latest comment: 7 days ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Rfv-sense kind of lighting. This is the Italian plural of padella, which should be the main entry for English, too. The plural padelles is very rare, too --90.167.189.204 20:51, 7 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

infinity theory

Latest comment: 6 days ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Rfv-This term was made up based on the fact that physical abusers never stop abusing their victims in a romantic relationship. The abuse never ends just the way the term 'infinity' means never ending. Chinwe911 (talk) 23:07, 7 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

@Chinwe911 did you make it up? I'm struggling to find any evidence of the use of this term. This, that and the other (talk) 06:41, 8 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

queen bee

Latest comment: 6 days ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Moved from RFD:

Rfd-sense: stem cell. Is this really such a stock metaphor that it needs its own sense? This, that and the other (talk) 07:50, 28 December 2023 (UTC)

Keep or send to RFV. If the term really is used this way (outside of explanations of the metaphor), we should have a sense for it. — excarnateSojourner (ta·co) 01:39, 14 July 2024 (UTC)

Keep/RFV - clearly idiomatic if real. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 00:43, 21 November 2024 (UTC)

This, that and the other (talk) 08:56, 8 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

outbray

Latest comment: 6 days ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Rfv-sense take out (a sword) --90.167.190.9 11:18, 8 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

tilmus

Latest comment: 6 days ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Picking at the bedclothes. Vilipender (talk) 21:59, 8 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

verded

Latest comment: 5 days ago1 comment1 person in discussion

The only quote in the entry is from a dictionary of early Scots, and the Google Books hits seem to be all scannos except for text in languages like German, Dutch and Spanish (and one sci-fi book that uses its own made-up word for some kind of virtual reality display). Chuck Entz (talk) 04:34, 9 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

P97

Latest comment: 5 hours ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Dubious whether this is dictionary material to begin with. — SURJECTION ^{/ T / C / L /} 07:04, 9 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

Delete: I don't see why an internal company code (as this appears to be) would be useful as either an entry for Wiktionary, or Wikipedia for that matter. For example, if a supermarket had codes for various products, why would it be useful to have entries for, say, C109235 (Coca Cola) or O973218 (Oreo cookies)?. — Sgconlaw (talk) 17:15, 14 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

outterm

Latest comment: 5 days ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Probably nonce word, only use in Jonson--85.48.185.28 07:47, 9 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

pillworm

Latest comment: 5 days ago1 comment1 person in discussion

rare name for a worm Vilipender (talk) 13:15, 9 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

overlash

Latest comment: 9 hours ago3 comments3 people in discussion

Rfv-sense to drive on rashly. What does that actually mean? Drive a vehicle? --85.48.185.234 07:17, 10 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

To go on a "spree" or "bender", I imagine. (Sense might come from the idea of driving an animal, like a carthorse.) 2A00:23C5:FE1C:3701:7912:4B5A:B874:B88C 15:01, 10 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

Cited overlashingly. 166.181.86.165 13:16, 14 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

overlinger

Latest comment: 1 day ago3 comments3 people in discussion

Rfv-sense cause to linger, detain for too long --85.48.185.234 07:19, 10 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

Word is more often hyphenated. A transitive form "over-linger one's welcome" can be found (not the challenged sense here). 2A00:23C5:FE1C:3701:7912:4B5A:B874:B88C 15:07, 10 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

Doesn't look promising to me. I can't find any use other than the one that Webster's cites:

1648, Thomas Fuller, “The Favourite” (chapter I), in The Holy State, The Second Edition enlarged, Book IV, page 234:
Indeed, ſome difficulty of acceſſe and conference begets a reverence towards them in common people (who will ſuſpect the ware not good if cheap to come by) and therefore he values himſelf in making them to wait : Yet he loves not to over-linger any in an afflicting hope, but ſpeedily diſpatcheth the fears or deſires of his expecting Clients.

166.181.86.165 20:18, 13 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

bad touch

Latest comment: 3 days ago3 comments2 people in discussion

Sense 2: "An interaction that makes someone uncomfortable." 2A00:23C5:FE1C:3701:7912:4B5A:B874:B88C 20:37, 10 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

Perhaps the sense of touch as seen in high touch? Depends what kind of interaction we're talking about. This, that and the other (talk) 06:18, 11 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

Okay, from the entry history they must mean an interpersonal interaction, as between a child and an adult. (I don't see how the entry creator can genuinely call themselves a native English speaker in their Babel box, by the way. The writing style is curiously reminiscent of our profanity-obsessed user with no concept of Standard English.) This, that and the other (talk) 06:25, 11 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

pallet

Latest comment: 1 day ago4 comments2 people in discussion

Rfv-sense 3oz cup --90.174.2.221 00:21, 11 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

Cited, though with a few concerns. First, it seems to be a Parisian measure almost never used in English except when translating French palette of the same sense. So one could maybe argue that it is just a foreign term expressed in then-current orthography rather than a proper learned borrowing. On the other hand, a number of old dictionaries count it as English. Second, as a broader concern, we have all of the senses imported from Webster lumped under a catch-all etymology with no details. I'm going to break this one out, but I don't know where the other senses belong. 166.181.86.165 06:57, 13 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

It might also be worth revisiting Talk:pallet#Blood. 166.181.86.165 07:23, 13 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

Perhaps getting off topic, but while I am here, do we know what sense of pallet accounts for this kind of usage?

1827 October 24, James Webster, Caleb B. Matthews, Isacc Remington, “Analecta”, in The Medical Recorder of Original Papers and Intelligence in Medicine and Surgery, volume XII, sourced from Johnson's Journal for April 1827, M. Piorry's Pleximetre, page 187:
M. Piorry has announced that, by means of a small pallet of ivory placed on any part of the abdomen or thorax, he has been enable to turn percussion to a much better account than has yet been done; the sound emitted by the portions thus covered by the ivory pallet, being much clearer and more indicative of the actual state of the parts underneath, than when these parts are stricken by the fingers in the usual way.

166.181.86.165 07:18, 13 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

keystone

Latest comment: 3 days ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Rfv-sense "A native or resident of the American state of Pennsylvania." I would expect uppercase like Jayhawk or Hoosier, but in fact a quick search didn't find me anything in either case, except references to literal keystone stones in buildings in the state (lowercase) and a state sports franchise (uppercase). - -sche (discuss) 04:35, 11 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

Cf. Keystoner. 2A00:23C5:FE1C:3701:B9E2:37CF:57AE:AA62 05:39, 11 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

soucoupe

Latest comment: 2 days ago3 comments2 people in discussion

With quotations but tagged yesterday by 92.184.102.122 with the edit summary “Appears to be just a submersible's brand name. It should thus be classified under proper names in my opinion. Antonomasia needs to be confirmed otherwise.”, not listed. J3133 (talk) 05:17, 12 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

Note that the TLFi has this sense (in French). J3133 (talk) 05:37, 12 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

We claim this comes from soucoupe plongeante, which we say means diving saucer but we have no entries at soucoupe plongeante or diving saucer. If only Cousteau’s invention is ever referred to it would fail WT:BRAND but I did find one use of ‘diving saucer’ to refer to a Westinghouse diving saucer rather than Cousteau’s one on Google Books. I suspect this will pass with some further sleuthing. Overlordnat1 (talk) 10:52, 12 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

paludinous

Latest comment: 1 day ago3 comments3 people in discussion

Rfv-sense relating to a marsh or fen --90.174.2.127 11:11, 12 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

Seems quite popular around the 1880s. Cited. 166.181.86.165 13:23, 12 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

I've combined this sense and "paludinal", which don't seem distinct, as paludinal seems to have the same range of meanings as this. I added several more cites. - -sche (discuss) 14:08, 13 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

orchidaceous

Latest comment: 1 day ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Sense 2: "Characterized by ostentatiousness; showy." 2A00:23C5:FE1C:3701:F466:18CA:8E32:5020 16:12, 12 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

My gut thinks of "orchidaceous" as more like a particular flavor of "exotic," and the examples I found seem to agree better with that idea than with "ostentatious" or "showy". Therefore, I have proposed a revision to the contested definition. Assuming the revision is okay, cited. 166.181.86.165 07:08, 13 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

o algo

Latest comment: 1 day ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Spanglish internet slang. Any takers? Vilipender (talk) 19:36, 12 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

Not attestable. Literal meaning of o algo ("or" "something"), very niche use in single multilingual community. Tracerneo (talk) 13:02, 13 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

panter

Latest comment: 1 day ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Rfv-sense net, noose --85.48.185.78 07:42, 13 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

Cited for Middle English, but I'm rather doubtful that we'll find any uses post-Lydgate. I wonder if the entry at pantle should be enm too? I will wait for consensus before moving anything though. 166.181.86.165 13:07, 13 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

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