Wiktionary:Tea room

Wiktionary > Discussion rooms > Tea room

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A place to ask for help on finding quotations or other information about particular words. The Tea room is named to accompany the Beer parlour.

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Oldest 100 tagged RFTs

quirinalis
Ilyinichna
linear
Черняк
most
shadowing
belly dance
half
Surinam
series
address
imaginary
catalogue
based
berm
rayon
Aster
nasal cavity
dies Mercurii
monosemic
tweener
tacet
no thank you
eat like a horse
چھہ
червь
gender-neutral
carhouse
turn the tide
chicken-or-egg question
cornus
family
rumped
Category:Tea room archives
code point
manso
over skyerne er himlen altid blå
regnbuefamilie
multivarious
Indon
α΄
orignal
don't try to teach grandma how to suck eggs
speech recognition
hazelly
pirmas
Euthemia
otocrane
hagdon
caviar to the general
lipsati
native bread
RGSS
arena rock
pasar por las horcas caudinas
one over the eight
rhina
Wesson
smuggling raisins
monolid
ကာလယဲ
smeť
search up
war hero
war-hero
watercressing
green privilege
Chinese landing
one's heart bleeds
phrogging
ၐြဳ
one's house in order
mukt
tjälknöl
radiendocrinology
lightning bruiser
churtle
dunnarf
unprovenienced
diving bell spider
Huddel
cyberdeck
cracker
თავისუფლება
wingnut
focus pocus
BlueAnon
Appendix:Protologisms/Long words/Titin
شطرنج
extinct
joint
dignity
common bamboo
psychoanalysis
psychoanalyze
bishop
halalflation
-tthit
fractal dimension
заебать

June 2026

occurrent (philosophy)

Given the quotations, would it be better worded as: "Currently or actively present in the mind"? I'm basing this definition on this lecture. TranqyPoo [💬 | ✏️] 03:30, 1 June 2026 (UTC)

See also:

• Lavelle, Jane (2013), “What is it to have a mind?”, in Philosophy for Everyone, →ISBN, page 53

TranqyPoo [💬 | ✏️] 17:52, 1 June 2026 (UTC)

I believe it would be better worded as you write, based on the quotes and (book-)page mentioned. Perhaps also good to additionally include the awareness of the presence. VVolfie P.B. Saluzzo (talk) 20:48, 1 June 2026 (UTC)

pump

I just wanted to add the sense of pumping a stock or cryptocoin to the Spanish bombear (and sometimes they say pumpear, also nouns pumpeo and pumpeada) but now I notice we don’t have it at the English verb pump! Wiktionary is outdated again! Suggestions for formulation are enquired. I am flabbergasted. “To kick, throw or hit the ball far and high” seems closest. Fay Freak (talk) 14:44, 1 June 2026 (UTC)

Our entries vary between having separate definitions for every metaphorical extension to the base sense we like and can attest and leaving the metaphorical extensions as an exercise for the reader.

We use the (possibly) missing sense at pump and dump. Near synonyms exist among the senses of hype, puff up?, pump up, push, and promote.

I don't think that pumping is limited to financial assets. Heavily promoting a product with serious shortcomings before word-of-mouth or poor online ratings kills sales is a tried and true tactic. It is well-known in the film industry, for example. Certainly something similar happens in sports betting. I'm not even sure that the motive is always financial gain. There are probably similar phenomena in electoral and legislative politics. DCDuring (talk) 17:36, 1 June 2026 (UTC)

"wolle" German clarification

As far as i understand, "wolle" in German can mean "will"/"may"(English), for example in "koste was es wolle". However, to me it is unclear from the definitions whether or not this is the case. As far as i can find elsewhere it seems to be the case. VVolfie P.B. Saluzzo (talk) 20:34, 1 June 2026 (UTC)

Yes, it's the subjunctive sense listed at wolle. It is comparable, in verb mood, to "say what you will" (= [say whatever you might wish to say]). Say what he will, he won't change her mind. Say what you want [= say what you like⁠], I still think blah blah blah. (koste es, was es wolle / whatever it takes; komme, was da wolle / come what may) English now uses a modal verb in many such constructions: whatever he may wish; whatever he may say; whatever he might say; whatever it might cost. Quercus solaris (talk) 21:34, 2 June 2026 (UTC)

"Was es wolle" / "was da wolle" is a set phrase that should be memorized as such. It means "whatever may", as indicated by Quercus. Outside this particular set phrase, German simply uses the indicative: "Ich tue, was immer sie will." (I'll do whatever she wants.) It would be entirely uncommon (and IMO ungrammatical) to use "wolle" or any other subjunctive form in such a sentence. Subjunctives do of course appear, in formal style, when we're dealing with reported speech: "Ich fragte ihn, was er wolle." (I asked him what he wanted.) ~2026-32702-79 (talk) 15:14, 4 June 2026 (UTC)

Trinity term

Defined as "(law) The fourth and final term of the legal year, ...". Do Australians and/or Americans also refer to the final term of the legal year in Australia and/or America as the Trinity term? If the term refers only to the legal year in the UK and Ireland, then the definition should probably specify that, like "...the UK and Irish legal year...". (And if only British and Irish people use the term, then the label should say that.) - -sche (discuss) 06:08, 2 June 2026 (UTC)

@-sche: isn’t the context clear from the part of the definition which you didn’t quote: “[…] during which the upper courts of England and Wales, and Ireland, sit to hear cases”? — Sgconlaw (talk) 06:10, 2 June 2026 (UTC)

Anyway, I added "Ireland, UK" to the label. — Sgconlaw (talk) 22:25, 2 June 2026 (UTC)

Thanks. At least to me, that part of the definition doesn't clearly convey that England and Wales, and Ireland are the only places that have a Trinity term: compare e.g. how Christmas is "A festival or holiday commemorating the birth of Jesus Christ [...], which in Western Christianity is celebrated on December 25", but that doesn't mean Western Christians are the only people who do Christmas, or how Sunday is defined as a day of the week, and then we mention that it's when the Christian Sabbath is, but that doesn't mean only Christians have Sundays. To me, at least, something like "The fourth and final term of the legal year in England and Wales, and Ireland, running from June to July, during which the upper courts sit to hear cases." would more clearly convey the restriction (if it is accurate). - -sche (discuss) 04:05, 4 June 2026 (UTC)

I agree. While the meaning of "the legal year" may be clear enough with context, it's more explicit to put the specification there (using something like "the UK or Irish legal year" or "the legal year in England and Wales, or Ireland") since that is what it depends on: a general label like "Ireland, UK" usually means that a term is used by speakers from Ireland and the UK, not that it refers to something in Ireland and the UK (e.g. "London" is not a UK term even though it is a place in the UK).--Urszag (talk) 17:12, 18 June 2026 (UTC)

sorely - adverb or adjective?

Hi people I won't likely respond to any comments here but just wanted to draw attention to the page 'sorely'. It's listed as an adverb, however I'm not sure if that is correct. Maybe it's an adjective?

I am tired. (tired is an adjective) I am sorely tired. (sorely is modifying an adjective here, so can it even be classed as an adverb?)

My understanding of grammar is not the best, so it's v possible I'm just confused. So act or don't act as appropriate. Thanks,bye ~2026-32827-71 (talk) 16:37, 2 June 2026 (UTC)

It's an adverb. ~2026-32651-88 (talk) 16:47, 2 June 2026 (UTC)

Adjectives are modified by adverbs. I'm not sure where you heard otherwise. Vininn126 (talk) 17:17, 2 June 2026 (UTC)

Adjectives modify nouns. Adverbs modify adjectives, verbs, or other adverbs. So in the example I am sorely tired, sorely modifies tired, an adjective. Leasnam (talk) 07:50, 6 June 2026 (UTC)

restitute - direct and indirect objects

I don't know how "restitute" is normally used. One of its synonyms is "reimburse", and it seems "We reimbursed him" and "We reimbursed the money" are both normal - but does "restitute" share this level of flexibility concerning direct and indirect objects? TooManyFingers (talk) 06:25, 3 June 2026 (UTC)

I see some attestations in the GBS corpus that support the syntactic pattern of "restitute them for [X]", such as "restitute them for their losses". So yes, the flexibility is true for this verb as well. I'll add a citation showing it. Quercus solaris (talk) 16:42, 3 June 2026 (UTC)

jiri#Sicilian - minor mistake?

Under "Alternative forms", it shows:

gniri (eye dialect, non-standard, palatalization just before n)

Shouldn't this be more like

gniri (eye dialect, non-standard, palatalization directly following n) ? TooManyFingers (talk) 21:35, 3 June 2026 (UTC)

gabelzhan

Should this not be "misspelling of gabelzahn" (which we don't yet have)? Seems a typo, explaining the rarity. ~2026-33020-30 (talk) 11:24, 4 June 2026 (UTC)

Thanks for catching that! Taking a quick look on Google Scholar, Internet Archive, and the Web, gabelzhan seems to be more common than gabelzahn. I feel like it would be weird if it was typoed that much. Frog x Lover (talk) 11:40, 4 June 2026 (UTC)

Be wary! misspelling may well be the wrong term. It could be a regional or temporal difference. IotaCi (talk) 02:32, 13 June 2026 (UTC)

hear me out

What kind of usage is the first definition, "Used to allude to an unspoken opinion.", trying to cover? Could we get some usexes or cites? The phrase itself is often used when one is in the middle of speaking the opinion, or—hear me out—is about to speak the opinion, isn't it? That's not just "alluding" to an "unspoken" opinion. This shows a spectrum from uses where the opinion is explicitly put into words ("hear me out: more coffee") and cases where the opinion is expressed via images (of an actor and the character you think they should play, for example); was that sense intended to cover the latter, or this kind of use? Is that last kind of use a fundamentally different definition than the other two...? (If so, it seems to involve a type of opinion that is more specific than just 'any unspoken opinion'...) - -sche (discuss) 21:29, 4 June 2026 (UTC)

In my experience the usage seems closer to "Preceding a potentially controversial opinion." I have not heard the term "used to allude to an unspoken opinion", rather an opinion about to be stated. I think it's usage in this instance is related to hear out, where the speaker is asking the listener to hear an explanation before objecting. EFOSERVETY 02:33, 7 June 2026 (UTC)

I think the “phrase” senses can be removed as redundant to hear out. — Sgconlaw (talk) 05:00, 7 June 2026 (UTC)

(not my) cup of tea

Because not my cup of tea redirected to cup of tea instead of someone's cup of tea as it should have, I created a definition at not my cup of tea before noticing the existence of someone's cup of tea.
Now the question is, where to go from here. The example of someone's cup of tea also uses the negative form, and the sense "An activity or domain in which someone is interested or skilled in; one's personal preference." is not quite accurate. For example, take something you feel neutral about. Like making a shopping list. Making a shopping list is not something I'm particularly interested or skilled in, so per the sense of someone's cup of tea (which is identical to the sense of cup of tea) I would be correct in saying that making a shopping list is not my cup of tea. But obviously that's wrong. When one says "this is not my cup of tea", they actively dislike it.
Can "my cup of tea" even be used without "not"? It could be used with other pronouns like "not her cup of tea" (though much more rare I suspect), so maybe the entry should be moved to not someone's cup of tea? — Alexis Jazz (talk) 22:13, 4 June 2026 (UTC)

Ah, a discussion of definitional minutia: just my cop of tea! DCDuring (talk) 23:59, 4 June 2026 (UTC)

DCDuring, hmm, that does work. I still suspect it's more commonly used with the preceding "not", and I do wonder what the origin is: is "my cup of tea" derived from "not my cup of tea" or the other way around? — Alexis Jazz (talk) 04:05, 5 June 2026 (UTC)

We have Category:English negative polarity items and the ability to use {{label|en|usually with not}} (not completely accurate). For (al)most (all) w:negative polarity items I think searchers are better served by the notless form: the not can appear as n't; separated from the notless component, eg, by a personal pronoun, a person's name, or reference to a person or group; or in an irrealis expression: "If gardening were my cup of tea (but it isn't), I'd have bought a larger property." But many contributors insist on having the main entry with the not and impersonal pronoun attached. DCDuring (talk) 14:57, 5 June 2026 (UTC)

DCDuring's comment here is useful. Makes me agree that it is best to lemmatize at either "cup of tea" or "someone's cup of tea", rather than lemmatizing at "not someone's cup of tea" or "not my cup of tea", which ought best be mere redirects instead. One hiccup as of this writing is that there is currently content forking (duplication) at "cup of tea" and "someone's cup of tea". The smartest move, I'm now convinced, is to treat "cup of tea" as the central hub and to have all the others redirect there. Quercus solaris (talk) 22:06, 5 June 2026 (UTC)

I would write not one's cup of tea, as while "not my cup of tea" is the most common form, it reflects that any possessive adjective could be used, while not someone's cup of tea feels, in my opinion, cumbersome to say and gives the feeling that the person referred to is strictly outside of the conversation. - EFOSERVETY 02:25, 7 June 2026 (UTC)

errand-ghost

errand-ghost is labelled "puristic", but is it really ? Contrasted against waterstuff as an example of a puristic term for "oxygen", I do not sense a hint of purist tendencies with the use of errand-ghost. It's not an attempt by Anglish writers to oust "angel". It's merely an interesting expressive term that's been revived. Leasnam (talk) 08:40, 6 June 2026 (UTC)

I have occasionally run into labeling where the existing label says "puristic" when what is actually true is "sometimes|puristic". In other words, the word has sometimes been used with puristic intent, but its use is not at all confined to that intent exclusively. I cannot recall off the top of my head which entries I encountered this imperfect labeling at. It is advisable to just change the label "puristic" to "sometimes|puristic" when this theme applies. Quercus solaris (talk) 18:59, 6 June 2026 (UTC)

Incomplete Middle Chinese readings of 話

The Module Data for the character is incomplete, with only a secondary reading listed.

As per Kangxi Dictionary page 1158, the primary readings are 胡卦切 and 胡挂切, both pronounced the same, which are reflected in the readings of the character in modern Chinese varieties. Additionally on the same page, the readings 戸快切, 胡化切, and 胡臥切 are listed after the pronunciation already present on Wiktionary.

To resolve this issue, the Module Data would need to be changed to the following:

return { "匣佳二合 去胡卦", "匣佳二合 去胡挂", "匣夬二合 去下快", "匣夬二合 去戸快", "匣麻二合 去胡化", "匣戈一合 去胡臥" } Cuddlecreeper8 (talk) 08:59, 6 June 2026 (UTC)

Ізмаїлщина

I just moved this Ukrainian entry from Ізмаїлщина (where it had been since its creation in January 2023) to Ізмаїльщина. The latter spelling is abundantly attested, a sample of which I have cited at Citations:Ізмаїльщина. By contrast, I found only four uses of *Ізмаїлщина qua lexeme; one of *Ізмаїлщині and these three uses of *Ізмаїлщини (none for *Ізмаїлщина, *Ізмаїлщину, *Ізмаїлщиною, or *Ізмаїлщино). I think the spelling without the soft sign (ь) is a misspelling, and I have defined it as such. However, I wouldn't say it's a common misspelling. So, should Ізмаїлщина (Izmajilščyna) be kept as a rare spelling of Ізмаїльщина (Izmajilʹščyna), deleted, or treated otherwise? 0DF (talk) 14:15, 6 June 2026 (UTC)

hyppyyttää

Wikipedia lists "to boss someone around" as another meaning, but this is not refelcted in our entry. It's not cited, so I'm wondering if it should be added. EFOSERVETY (talk) 02:17, 7 June 2026 (UTC)

It is a real sense, although a slightly different one than what Wikipedia says. — SURJECTION ^{/ T / C / L /} 07:37, 7 June 2026 (UTC)

Zion

Is it fully in Israel? Should it just say: "A hill on which ancient Jerusalem was partly built"? Aloysius Jr (talk) 10:40, 7 June 2026 (UTC)

Edit: I forgot to add what it originally said: "A hill in Jerusalem, Israel, on which ancient Jerusalem was partly built". Thank you for the answers! Aloysius Jr (talk) 08:54, 11 June 2026 (UTC)

According to the Wikipedia article, Mount Zion is controlled by Israel. Putting the location by country is a common and useful way to provide context. Furthermore, Israel is a country referenced in other definitions so this allows the reader to understand why without extraneous research. IotaCi (talk) 23:40, 10 June 2026 (UTC)

Technically, it says that Mount Zion is in Jerusalem, which is "a city in the Southern Levant, on a plateau in the Judaean Mountains between the Mediterranean and the Dead Sea". Both Israel and Palestine claim to control it, which makes saying it is in one country or another really controversial. In fact, our entry for Jerusalem, the city in question, say that the city is "the claimed capital city of both Israel and Palestine", which accurately reflects the controversy of the geography in question. CitationsFreak (talk) 01:11, 11 June 2026 (UTC)

But sense three directly references context non-present with that definition. Sure it is claimed by both nations but it is located de facto and de jure in one. This is not an endorsement but an accurate definition. More generally, we can provide definitions even if we disagree with the ideas that wrought them. IotaCi (talk) 02:13, 11 June 2026 (UTC)

Regarding "Sure it is claimed by both nations but it is located de facto and de jure in one": the latter part is an epistemic flub; whose jure is the "correct" jure, lol? Regarding the Temple Mount, read Wikipedia's lede opener s.v. East Jerusalem regarding that question. But your next sentence is right — yes, Wiktionary can (and must) succinctly state emic definitions while making clear (through def wording, labels, or usage notes) that it does not endorse (nor enforce) the emic viewpoint nor fail to realize that other emic ones, or etic ones, could be different. In some cases this can be accomplished through def wording such as "an X that is (or is believed by the speaker or writer to be) Y". "Jesus is believed by Christians to be divine", etc. People can quibble over which way to best accomplish it in each case, but it needs to be accomplished in one succinct way or another. Quercus solaris (talk) 03:50, 11 June 2026 (UTC)

By de jure I meant under the most recent treaty (the end of the six days war in this case), as that is how we typically find where borders are. I will admit that East Jerusalem being the claimed capital of Palestine does complicate things. As the hill does technically fall in the Western side of the 1949 line (albeit in a grey zone) it is not claimed by Palestine. IotaCi (talk) 10:29, 11 June 2026 (UTC)

OK, I changed it to the Levant. - -sche (discuss) 04:25, 11 June 2026 (UTC)

This removes helpful context. It also significantly broadens the area under discussion. I believe this edit unnecessarily lowers the amount of information on the page, which is why I'm further changing it to "in West Jerusalem, Israel," until a consensus is reached. IotaCi (talk) 10:40, 11 June 2026 (UTC)

The obviously best solution is simply to say ‘Jerusalem’ and anyone who’s living under a rock who doesn’t know where Jerusalem is on a map(regardless of which country it is classed as belonging to) can follow the link. Another issue is that we only give pronunciations for Zion and Sion where they rhyme with gun but most people rhyme them with gone and say Sion like Zion with a voiced rather than an unvoiced s at the beginning. If you look up ‘Sion, sing’ or ‘Sion, praise thy saviour, singing’ on YT you’ll hear American Catholic choirs sing it like that but it definitely happens in British Anglican choirs too. If you look up ‘Glorious things of thee are spoken’, or indeed any of several hymns with ‘Zion’ actually in the title, you’ll hear the version that rhymes with ‘gone’ (like the second RP pronunciation we give for ion rather than the first one). Overlordnat1 (talk) 11:21, 11 June 2026 (UTC)

I disagree with your first part but you are very correct about the whole pronounciation thing. IotaCi (talk) 11:25, 11 June 2026 (UTC)

@Overlordnat1: be careful about using singers as examples of spoken pronunciation. Vocal training in English proscribes anything that sounds like a lax schwa in full syllables, so [ɘn] tends to become [ɑn]. Chuck Entz (talk) 13:57, 11 June 2026 (UTC)

Even the audio clip on the page seems to be [ɑn], rhyming with on. I personally have basically only heard it that way. IotaCi (talk) 14:02, 11 June 2026 (UTC)

mother

How come senses 1 and 2 are separate? Sense 1 includes the meaning of sense 2 already. I just removed sense 2 at father for this reason. Now I see mother has the same issue. ~2026-33503-28 (talk) 13:44, 7 June 2026 (UTC)

The distinction has to do with whether they are biological/birth parents. Our definitions incorporate the general sense into the biological sense with no explanation, so they should be restructured somehow to be more clear. Chuck Entz (talk) 14:56, 7 June 2026 (UTC)

they have two separate translation tables at least. —Soap— 16:49, 7 June 2026 (UTC)

This entry has been a bit of a mess for a long time. We initially had even more senses; I merged some of them, but not these, back in 2023. Thinking about this again now, I agree that even these should be merged: I can sort-of see what distinction the two senses might be getting at (a mother in sense 1 may not have given birth to her child, but instead adopted it, whereas the usex for sense 2 seems to assume that a sentence like "My sister-in-law has just become a mother for the first time" necessarily means the SIL gave birth), but it's my experience that you could say a woman "became a mother for the first time" after her wife gave birth, and I suspect you could say it after the first time she adopted a baby. I have revised mother in line with how OP revised father. - -sche (discuss) 04:23, 11 June 2026 (UTC)

-care

This suffix has no derived terms. Seems suspicious. ~2026-33503-28 (talk) 14:07, 7 June 2026 (UTC)

There are Bidencare, ObamaCare, HillaryCare and TrumpCare - is the uppercase version really the primary one, at this point? That feels at odds with the lowercase suffix. Canada also has denticare and pharmacare, but I'm not well versed enough in those to say for certain whether that's exactly that suffix or an independent blend along similar lines. PhoenicianLetters (talk) 05:55, 9 June 2026 (UTC)

I think the first ones are all blends with Medicare, the idea being (at least originally) to contrast the newness and narrow base of initiatives by individual presidents with the broad base of Medicare, which has been a basic part of US health care policy for decades- sort of like something written in on an older document with a marking pen. Chuck Entz (talk) 07:18, 9 June 2026 (UTC)

Walmart etymology is inconsistent

mart says Walmart is derived from it. But Walmart disagrees, saying probably from market. ~2026-33503-28 (talk) 14:58, 7 June 2026 (UTC)

well, we have cites for mart going back a few centuries, so even if Walmart popularized the shorter form "mart" they clearly didnt invent it. i'd think that would mean that Walmart is indeed derived from mart. —Soap— 15:45, 7 June 2026 (UTC)

here is a cite of "Toy Mart" in the 1940s. In fact there are plenty of hits just for the phrase "toy mart" from that era. It definitely wasnt new. Perhaps Im too cynical but I really dont think people needed that Reader's Digest article to tell them where the name Wal-Mart came from. It was pretty self-evident what mart meant and that Wal- must have been a name ... we were briefly confused when Walmart was just getting to our area about whether or not they were affiliated with Walgreens, but that's about it. —Soap— 19:14, 7 June 2026 (UTC)

Whoever wrote that the /mɑɹt/ syllable of Walmart probably came from market was mistaken, as the noun mart long predates Walmart and so does its use in compounds (whether open, hyphenated, or solid). I fixed it. Quercus solaris (talk) 19:33, 7 June 2026 (UTC)

PS: That Reader's Digest article was OK but mediocre and low-effort and partly misguided and slathered in ads. I removed the citation of it from Wiktionary s.v. 'Walmart' and improved the etym there. Quercus solaris (talk) 19:41, 7 June 2026 (UTC)

stinking#Adjective

We have these 2 senses (among others):

• A: Very bad and undesirable. I have a stinking cold.
• B: (euphemistic) An intensifier, a hypallage. We don't need your stinking sympathy. / We don't need no stinking badges.

I think B could be merged into A. Certainly the badges are just being described as bad. The other usex ("your stinking sympathy") does possibly fit the hypallage that is mentioned (perhaps it means "you stink, and we don't need your sympathy") but I barely see a useful distinction here. ~2026-33503-28 (talk) 15:57, 7 June 2026 (UTC)

I think stinking rich is a better example of B. It's arguably derogatory, but it's certainly not undesirable. Smurrayinchester (talk) 16:47, 7 June 2026 (UTC)

@Smurrayinchester: "Stinking rich" being a set phrase, special rules might apply that don't apply to the general word. Also surely that has to be an adverb? We have no stinking#Adverb yet. ~2026-33503-28 (talk) 18:22, 7 June 2026 (UTC)

Dozen: informal adjective?

"Many", as in I've told you a dozen times already! JMGN (talk) 17:24, 7 June 2026 (UTC)

A number before a noun like that is a determiner. It can't be an adjective in your example. And almost any "large" number can be used to mean a lot: I've told you a hundred, hundreds, a thousand, thousands, a million, millions, zillions of times. ~2026-33503-28 (talk) 18:24, 7 June 2026 (UTC)

A dozen is being used as a numeral here. The presence of "a" may make it confusing, but both words are being used together to form a numeral. It is used in the same way that ten would be. EFOSERVETY 21:24, 7 June 2026 (UTC)

doughty

The only sense we have here is "brave", but I'm more familiar with this word meaning "robust" or "stout", perhaps "matronly" when used of a woman. See for example

• "Her remark invited a deeper look into her face, which seemed to flicker between that of a puckish, energetic man and a rather doughty, sturdy-looking woman."
• "... but then, doughty matronly bosoms always intimidate me."
• "Aye, here's a ship of doughty build and strong."
• "One can imagine the enthusiasm with which this young man in his thirties, and not the fat and doughty Quakerish- looking gentleman usually portrayed..."

No other dictionary has this sense however. So have I grasped the wrong end of the stick, or is this a new sense of the word? Smurrayinchester (talk) 17:54, 8 June 2026 (UTC)

N.B. possible homophonic confusion of dowdy and doughty. Quercus solaris (talk) 19:49, 8 June 2026 (UTC)

Or confusion with doughy. — Sgconlaw (talk) 22:19, 8 June 2026 (UTC)

Where do you have those quite plausible examples from? PJTraill (talk) 23:37, 10 June 2026 (UTC)

Smurrayinchester's examples come from the source indicated by the hyperlinked word in each example. They're catachrestic uses. I'm going to enter a sense at doughty as catachresis for dowdy, given that enough attestations exist to warrant it. Quercus solaris (talk) 01:12, 11 June 2026 (UTC)

The links, of course, how obvious! — sorry to trouble you! But surely “Catachresis for dowdy” does not capture the sense of the first three examples, where it appears to mean “robust” rather than “lacking flair in appearance”, nor that of the fourth, where “doughy” seems intended. Is it not more likely that the sense “robust” was either mistakenly inferred from usages such as “slaughtered thirty of Hrothgar's doughtiest earls” or survived from Old English dohtig “competent, good, strong, valiant”, perhaps influenced by German tüchtig &c? It seems natural for language users to suppose that the physical, mental, and spiritual qualities go together. “Catachresis” in a definition also sounds rather prescriptive for what seems to me, as to Smurrayinchester, a normal sense. PJTraill (talk) 10:42, 11 June 2026 (UTC)

Hmmm, you may well be right — perhaps there are deeper layers to this word's use than what I recognized so far. If so, then what we're seeing is a situation where the catachresis sense does exist (i.e., doesn't not exist) but there are also one or more other senses that exist that are not yet captured/entered at Wiktionary's entry. Hopefully the others can be worked out and added as well. Quercus solaris (talk) 13:42, 11 June 2026 (UTC)

Yeah, the NYT quote (the first one) in particular seems unlikely to be a malapropism/catachresis just because the NYT Books section (particularly back in 1997 before the internet crunched newspaper budgets) has very thorough and pedantic editors and fact checkers, and I doubt an error like that would slip through in their big prestigious page 1 interview. As PJTraill says, I don't think you can substitute "dowdy" in most of these quotes - a ship can't really be dowdy. Smurrayinchester (talk) 08:24, 12 June 2026 (UTC)

(I just spotted that Collins does have this sense, as "hardy; resolute" and cognate to the Dutch duchtig - they have it as British English, but it looks like it's also used in US) Smurrayinchester (talk) 07:42, 15 June 2026 (UTC)

Gender of Latin letter names

Per Lewis & Short, also modern Latin phrases such as "b quadratum/rotundum", I'm changing the gender from "f" to "n or f". If I'm missing some subtlety, please let me know. L&S are a bit inconsistent with the letter entries, but under "T" they clarify the gender as "indecl. n. or (to agree with littera) f." Other entries are shorter, and "B" is given only as "indecl. n.", but I assume all follow the same pattern apart from zeta and presumably ypsilon, which are neuter per the Greek, and fem. i graeca (I don't know if there's an *i graecum). kwami (talk) 21:53, 10 June 2026 (UTC)

@Kwamikagami Also consider: "A primum est", "I solum" and "S nostrum", from Lucilius https://archive.org/details/cluciliicarminu01lucigoog/page/n164/. Gaffiot's LA-FR dictionary also provides genders for the letters, almost all of them (including Z and Y) both fem. and neu., with a few cases with no gender and D with just the neutrum label. For more, you may want to look for A.E. Gordon, The Letter Names of the Latin Alphabet, 1973 (referenced by WS Allen in Vox latina). — Phazd (talk|contribs) 15:37, 28 June 2026 (UTC)

Thanks, that's quite helpful. kwami (talk) 00:22, 1 July 2026 (UTC)

Ah, I even found i graecum. That was the last holdout. kwami (talk) 06:32, 10 July 2026 (UTC)

mandarin: “satelittes”

According to http://technovelgy.com/ct/content.asp?Bnum=209, “satellites” is, unlike the version at mandarin not spelt as “satelittes” in the quoted work, but I do not know for certain that it is not, unlikely as it seems, so in the original. PJTraill (talk) 23:20, 10 June 2026 (UTC)

I confirmed via GBS that the word is spelled correctly in the original, so I fixed the typo in Wiktionary's citation and added the GBS URL there. Quercus solaris (talk) 01:21, 11 June 2026 (UTC)

"get a duke at that"

One man hoisted up his young son for a better view of a burning house. “Get a duke at that,” he said.

(source)

Which sense of duke is this? Or is it a fixed expression? Jberkel 07:30, 11 June 2026 (UTC)

I haven’t heard that but you’ll occasionally encounter the rather dated terms decko or dekko in Britain and, apparently, Ireland and deek is Geordie slang for look with ultimately the same origin (from Gypsy slang, itself from Romany and ultimately from Hindi), so I assume ‘duke’ is a Northern Irish variant. Overlordnat1 (talk) 12:04, 11 June 2026 (UTC)

try something

Do you think this deserves an entry? Or is it SOP? It'd probably be a non-gloss definition like used to demand the target initiate a fight. HootenannyHoller (talk) 11:40, 11 June 2026 (UTC)

I've always interpreted the phrase non-lexically. It is common but I think try is the word insinuating a fight i.e. 'try me'. IotaCi (talk) 13:38, 11 June 2026 (UTC)

I think its pretty much SoP. Theres really no other way i, myself can describe it. But then again my mind lowk fried, child.~2026-34678-22 (talk) 22:32, 12 June 2026 (UTC)

My take is that it is sum-of-parts but the sense isn't clearly defined in try's page I think. IotaCi (talk) 22:43, 12 June 2026 (UTC)

I agree with that. Do you propose that we create a more clear defintion for this variation and meaning of try in the try entry? I wonder if it would be more or less clarifying for the definition of try something though.~2026-34752-03 (talk) 22:50, 12 June 2026 (UTC)

It belongs in the try entry as a sense of it's own with the AAVE tag probably. It's very common to hear this use in dialects I'm around. IotaCi (talk) 22:55, 12 June 2026 (UTC)

Yah, thas accurate. I'll go ahead and make that definition. ~2026-34752-03 (talk) 23:30, 12 June 2026 (UTC)

tell me if thats accurate or theres any other way youd word it. ~2026-34752-03 (talk) 23:37, 12 June 2026 (UTC)

That works I'll cite it and add a usex, thanks. IotaCi (talk) 23:44, 12 June 2026 (UTC)

Moved one of the AAVE senses to almost identical non-slang sense above, of which it may be a sub-subsense. DCDuring (talk) 17:09, 28 June 2026 (UTC)

verhalten (German, Participle) unclarity

As far as i'm reading, Etymology 2's Participle is included in the Conjugation table of Etymology 1's Verb. Having it additionally be in its own definition seems confusing, is there something i am missing here? VVolfie P.B. Saluzzo (talk) 15:11, 11 June 2026 (UTC)

Generally speaking, I agree that inflections that are identical to the lemma form should not be mentioned again in the entry - outside inflection templates. However, participles are a bit of a special case insofar as we treat them as a part-of-speech in its own right, rather than verb forms. So it may be justifiable in these cases, although my first instinct when I first came across such a case was the same as yours. ~2026-33460-66 (talk) 18:05, 11 June 2026 (UTC)

Understandable, though there are also "Present Participle" and "Infinitive" forms, which i think should then also be mentioned separately? VVolfie P.B. Saluzzo (talk) 18:24, 11 June 2026 (UTC)

Update: The Present Participle form does have its own definition, i just hadn't caught it because it's on a different page (but is linked in the table). The Infinitive form however still seems to be lacking one, as i understand this. VVolfie P.B. Saluzzo (talk) 18:26, 11 June 2026 (UTC)

The infinitive is the lemma form of the verb. The present participle is never the same as the infinitive, so it can never be relevant in this context. The special case that you mentioned arises only when the past participle of a verb happens to be the same as the infinitive. This is overall rare, but does occur in some strong verbs with a prefix (e.g. "verhalten", "verkommen", "verlaufen"). ~2026-33460-66 (talk) 21:16, 11 June 2026 (UTC)

Ah, i see. Then i was mostly just missing that the main definition is infinitive. Thank you! VVolfie P.B. Saluzzo (talk) 22:26, 11 June 2026 (UTC)

Trumpster diving part of speech

It's defined as a noun, but all three cites are of the form "going Trumpster diving", which suggests a verbal phrase, doesn't it? ~2026-34218-01 (talk) 19:21, 11 June 2026 (UTC)

Phrases like "going Trumpster diving" can be thought of as shortened versions of phrases like "going a-Trumpster diving", where the "a-" is a reduced preposition (i.e. "on"). This would make Trumpster diving a noun. Leasnam (talk) 23:46, 12 June 2026 (UTC)

swallow whole

I feel it should be added —User:Vealhurl (talk 21:23, 11 June 2026 (UTC)

Seems SoP to me. — Sgconlaw (talk) 21:50, 11 June 2026 (UTC)

it is SoP.🤭 ~2026-34303-45 (talk) 02:18, 12 June 2026 (UTC)

You can swallow a lie whole, but you can't "believe a lie whole". It's an extended metaphor at least. ~2026-34218-01 (talk) 02:22, 12 June 2026 (UTC)

oh yah, you right. ~2026-34303-45 (talk) 04:50, 12 June 2026 (UTC)

I dont know about the current definition. It is accurate, but i dont think it should pertain only to lies. Ive read and seen it used where one swallows a story whole. I think that we could find a more all-compassing definition. ~2026-34303-45 (talk) 21:03, 12 June 2026 (UTC)

Ive also heard other variations. ~2026-34303-45 (talk) 21:11, 12 June 2026 (UTC)

I have also heard many different variations of this saying. Not to say we should create individual entries for each variation. But alter the definition to encapsulate all similar variations. Im gonna edit it just to visualize my thinks. So yall can js revert it if yall need ta.~2026-34678-22 (talk) 22:06, 12 June 2026 (UTC)

Tell me if thats not accurate lolsies🤭 ~2026-34678-22 (talk) 22:17, 12 June 2026 (UTC)

Seems pretty good. ~2026-34752-03 (talk) 22:42, 12 June 2026 (UTC)

I'ma see if I can't find some quotes for your beautiful page. IotaCi (talk) 22:56, 12 June 2026 (UTC)

you have such a way with words.~2026-34752-03 (talk) 23:11, 12 June 2026 (UTC)

Ok, so I added a third sense for destroying whole in one fell swoop. It seemed really common while looking in corpi for quotes but I can't tell if it is SoP. Let me know what y'all think. IotaCi (talk) 23:31, 12 June 2026 (UTC)

No that doesnt seem SoP to me. ~2026-34752-03 (talk) 23:44, 12 June 2026 (UTC)

hell-bent in Rhymes:English/ɛnt

The OED shows /ˈhɛlˌbɛnt/ as the only pronunciation of this word, and Wiktionary follows this. Is the stress in this word never on the last syllable? If so, this word should be removed from Rhymes:English/ɛnt. Intolerable situation (talk) 07:43, 12 June 2026 (UTC)

I agree that /ˈhɛlˌbɛnt/ is the usual stress pattern, but I've also sometimes heard the last-syllable stress version. "He's /ˈbɛnt/ on doing it" and "He's /ˌhɛlˈbɛnt/ on doing it." My gut suspects that it happens for the same underlying linguistic reasons why one may hear "He's /ˈɹʌɪt/ to be pissed off" and "He's /ˌfʌkən ˈɹʌɪt/ to be pissed off." Quercus solaris (talk) 20:03, 12 June 2026 (UTC)

Australian Use of Gift

In Australia a certain class of footrace is called a 'gift'. See, for example, the Stawell Gift and the Castlemaine Gift. Should the entry for gift mention this? ~2026-34711-53 (talk) 16:24, 12 June 2026 (UTC)

Well spotted. I can find some uses of lowercase "gift" ("the gift", "a gift", etc) and have added a sense. Australian editors, please improve or correct it as needed. - -sche (discuss) 23:47, 12 June 2026 (UTC)

Can anyone confirm is the gift the meet or the footrace at the meet? There is a differentiation to be made. IotaCi (talk) 02:26, 13 June 2026 (UTC)

Pronunciation of pajeet

Discussion moved from Wiktionary:Information desk/2026/June#Pronunciation of pajeet.

I can't edit the entry pajeet, but it lacks the "Pronunciation" section. So I suggest the following possible pronunciation of the word: {{IPA|en|/ˌpəˈjiːt/}}. Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs) 17:00, 12 June 2026 (UTC)

@Sbb1413: This is not how IPA works, but I fixed it for you. Fay Freak (talk) 19:55, 12 June 2026 (UTC)

Saint Louis

The etymology and usage notes both seem to be written about a different (version of this) entry, an entry that lists many different places including ones in Francophone areas, Alsace, etc. The (rest of) the entry "Saint Louis" only lists two places in Missouri. If there are other "Saint Louis"es, they should be added; if not, then the etymology and usage notes are mentioning ghosts... - -sche (discuss) 18:14, 12 June 2026 (UTC)

It's the first of those two options, rather than the second (ghost) one. They definitely exist (in Canada, France, and elsewhere), but EN.Wiktionary doesn't enter them yet. EN.Wikipedia enters them already (Saint Louis § Places). This pattern (of comprehensiveness) recurs across many terms. The approach that Wiktionary should take (for this theme) is to avoid moving backward (i.e., decreasing coverage) while waiting to move further forward from the current mediocre state (i.e., filling in coverage gaps). Thus, the pron variants should remain as given, and (as you said) somebody should enter these senses someday. Quercus solaris (talk) 20:13, 12 June 2026 (UTC)

I've added an "alt form of..." pointer to Saint-Louis, where we seem to house the Francophone places. That entry claimed that the main spelling in all cases is St., which seems incorrect, so I've changed that, too. - -sche (discuss) 23:17, 12 June 2026 (UTC)

twixtbrain, 'twixt-brain

Can someone help to sort this out?

• twixtbrain is defined as a synonym of diencephalon.
• 'twixt-brain is defined as a synonym of thalamencephalon.
• The OED says this word is a synonym of tweenbrain, 'tweenbrain, which is defined as "portion of brain between the hemispheres and the corpora quadrigemina".
• 'tweenbrain is defined as a synonym of diencephalon.

— Sgconlaw (talk) 21:54, 12 June 2026 (UTC)

I thought tween brain was when you chant six-seven vacantly lol jk Quercus solaris (talk) 23:47, 12 June 2026 (UTC)

three-syllable million

See Talk:million#3 syllables: how should a three-syllable pronunciation of million, and presumably also billion, trillion, etc, be presented and labelled, if at all? It's not in any dictionary I've managed to find yet, and I haven't encountered it in the first several dozen Youglish clips I paged through, so presenting it without any label as a general pan-dialectal English pronunciation seemed wrong to me, but some speakers report having such a pronunciation. - -sche (discuss) 22:52, 12 June 2026 (UTC)

Like /ˈmɪl.i.jən/? That seems like a bunk-pronunciation people use to emphasize it based off spelling and not spoken tradition. I wouldn't make any reference to it as it is not a part of anyone's vernacular far as I know. IotaCi (talk) 02:17, 13 June 2026 (UTC)

It's an unremarkable pronunciation in NZ English. I use it more often than not. Averinthine (talk) 05:30, 13 June 2026 (UTC)

Yeah, I think I use it in free variation with the two syllable pronunciation, especially when I'm emphasising it. "Ten /ˈmɪl.jən/ people live in London" but "I can't believe London has ten /ˈmɪl.i.jən/ people!". As for citing it... Alex Horne definitely pronounces it with three syllables. I think I hear /ˈbɪl.i.jən/ or maybe /ˈbɪl.ə.jən/ in the boardroom scene from Birdemic: Shock and Terror. Smurrayinchester (talk) 15:07, 15 June 2026 (UTC)

amphiptere

@Jacklmoughteu, thanks for your edit, but if I may ask, what is your source for this? How do we know the pter part is /tɪɹ, p.tɚ/ as opposed to /tɛɹ/ like in pterosaur? The only -ptere word I can find at Onelook is haptere, which I see Merriam-Webster does suggest is pronounced /tɪɹ/. - -sche (discuss) 05:51, 13 June 2026 (UTC)

According to English phonotactics, p is not allowed to be pronounced before s, n, or t. That's why p is silent in pterosaur or pterodactyl. However, English allows it to be pronounced in the middle of a word, such as helicopter. Jacklmoughteu (talk) 06:07, 13 June 2026 (UTC)

"The caps have my rapt attention. I'm practically hypnotized!" :)

It seems to me that we've had to reanalyze helicopter away from the technically-correct "helico-pter" to something illogical but pronounceable. TooManyFingers (talk) 23:57, 23 June 2026 (UTC)

Please tag all senses of porno as slang

Page is locked. ~2026-34786-22 (talk) 15:48, 13 June 2026 (UTC)

What even is slang? IotaCi (talk) 16:58, 13 June 2026 (UTC)

@IotaCi: This is a dictionary: look it up! ~2026-34786-22 (talk) 17:00, 13 June 2026 (UTC)

Lol, I mean how are we to say every use of porno is slang when it's an industry term. Is it out of convention because it is inappropriate subject matter or because it is somewhat less common? What's the logic here?? IotaCi (talk) 17:09, 13 June 2026 (UTC)

I tagged them all as informal. Aloysius Jr (talk) 11:05, 19 June 2026 (UTC)

band needs US uncountable sense

In American schools, a kid might say "I'm in band". I suppose this is a school club where instruments are played? Anyway it's uncountable so no current sense covers it. ~2026-34786-22 (talk) 15:58, 13 June 2026 (UTC)

Isn't this just an elision? Presumably it's short for "the [school] band". A student might similarly say "She's in computer this afternoon" [the computer club]. Not sure if uncountable senses should therefore be added to all these words. — Sgconlaw (talk) 16:25, 13 June 2026 (UTC)

I don't think anyone would ever say "I'm in computer": evidence please! ~2026-34786-22 (talk) 16:31, 13 June 2026 (UTC)

It is certainly an uncountable sense of band and not elision. I think it is common for clubs to behave like this too. I.e. 'he's in drama and debate', but it's certainly not universal as pointed out with 'I'm in computer' sounding ridiculous. IotaCi (talk) 17:02, 13 June 2026 (UTC)

@IotaCi: you're looking at this from a particular geographical lens. In parts of Asia I don't think it would be that "ridiculous" for someone to say "I'm in computer". — Sgconlaw (talk) 20:18, 13 June 2026 (UTC)

I have no idea about that but if it's attestable it should be added to computer's page I suppose. Unless you're saying it's a grammar thing in which case it's nonpertinent. IotaCi (talk) 21:14, 13 June 2026 (UTC)

@IotaCi: yes, I'm saying it's "a grammar thing" which doesn't require a specific sense in entries. — Sgconlaw (talk) 19:23, 14 June 2026 (UTC)

More likely it's referring to a class, and class names can be used pretty much universally his way: "I took Algebra last year". Of course, the names of school organizations can be used the same way, so it may be a bit of a gray area- especially since school bands are also organizations that do things like playing at various events. School sports have similar issues. At any rate, there are so many school-specific terms used this way it could get really ugly, and one school's Algebra II isn't guaranteed to be the same thing as a class of the same name somewhere else...

I think you're missing the point: algebra is uncountable, but our band has no uncountable sense. ~2026-34786-22 (talk) 18:06, 13 June 2026 (UTC)

Yes, but algebra doesn't have a sense corresponding to whatever it is we would be adding at band. The usage is there, but how do we keep it manageable: do we add such senses at glee club, choir, football, baseball, basketball, track, etc. (those are just a few I remember from my school days). It's kind of like nouns as adjectives: it's not that people don't use them that way, but that everything can be used that way. Chuck Entz (talk) 18:56, 13 June 2026 (UTC)

No, you're not 'in baseball'. If you said that I wouldn't think you're on the team I'd think you didn't speak English. You are 'in band' tho. This isn't a general, unmanageable inclusion. IotaCi (talk) 19:42, 13 June 2026 (UTC)

Semantically, I agree with Sg that "I'm in band" means the same thing as "I'm in the [school] band"; the absence of the "the" is (apparently) dialectal (being permissible in the US but not UK, it seems), which possibly means the phrase in band would pass the "in hospital" test. Grammatically, I question whether the difference between "I'm in band" and "I'm in the band" is best viewed as being primarily a countability issue, as opposed to an issue of (e.g.) using vs not using the definite article: I notice that we do not have an "uncountable" sense of hospital to cover British usage of "I'm in hospital" (should we?) vs American "I'm in the hospital", and the sense of school which we have to cover "I'm in school" is also not labelled "uncountable", nor is e.g. ROTC ("I'm in ROTC") at present. We should mention the difference in use vs non-use of the article somehow, but it's possible that's better done by a usage note(?). - -sche (discuss) 22:54, 13 June 2026 (UTC)

I think it should be indicated as a new sense with a tag before talking about article-dropping in US English as it is specifically the school band (a meaningful distinction imo). IotaCi (talk) 23:06, 13 June 2026 (UTC)

"numeral symbol of the English alphabet"

Someone raised a query about this on the "leave us a message" page: what's up with these? What is a "numeral symbol of the English alphabet"? [1] ~2026-34786-22 (talk) 16:32, 13 June 2026 (UTC)

ghetto girl

ive heard and seen many uses of this.i can look into citations, but the definition i know thus far is this

1. (slang, potentially derogatory) Typically characterized as a girl (typically latina) who likes hot cheetohs, heavy makeup, and whose actions exhibit that of ghetto culture.

~2026-34752-03 (talk) 23:52, 13 June 2026 (UTC)

and gang iibsfrrn, thas the rough draft definition lemme tell you ~2026-34752-03 (talk) 23:55, 13 June 2026 (UTC)

Another variation of this word is hot cheetoh girl. ~2026-34752-03 (talk) 01:45, 14 June 2026 (UTC)

WT:SoP. It's bit like blue car; it doesn't need its own entry. Aloysius Jr (talk) 13:16, 14 June 2026 (UTC)

play on someone's heartstrings

1. To produce strong emotions of sadness or pity in someone.

Doesn't this idiom refer to all sorts of emotions rather than just sadness and pity? Aloysius Jr (talk) 13:16, 14 June 2026 (UTC)

yah. Ive come across many different emotions in relation to this idiom. For example joy, love, nostalgia. ~2026-34752-03 (talk) 15:40, 14 June 2026 (UTC)

I changed it to:

1. To produce a strong emotional effect on someone, especially of compassion, love or sadness. Aloysius Jr (talk) 10:56, 15 June 2026 (UTC)

give pause

1. To give somebody cause for concern.

Isn't this too specific? For example, an additional sense is that it makes one stop and contemplate. Aloysius Jr (talk) 13:16, 14 June 2026 (UTC)

The def on the page is at least how I use it. IotaCi (talk) 16:49, 15 June 2026 (UTC)

Interesting. When I've said in discussions on this site that something gives me pause, I mean it makes me hesitate and be unsure. Cambridge has "to cause someone to stop and think about what they were doing or intending to do" and Collins has "to cause to hesitate or be unsure, as from surprise or doubt", which match my understanding, and MW has "to cause (someone) to stop and think about something carefully or to have doubts about something". Our entry's wording is from 2005(!). In the wild, some uses of the phrase are causing someone to consider something concerning including when, as our voting record usex, they were not previously thinking about the thing at all, whereas other uses are causing someone to hesitate and be unsure about something, especially something they were doing or intending to do. I'm unsure whether that's best handled via one sense, or two, or one sense with subsenses, because the extremes of that semantic spectrum appear distinct, but in practice, many examples don't fall on either extreme but in a middle space. (E.g., if "I was about to go into the mine, but the sign saying 'DANGER: RADIATION' gives me pause", I'm given cause to be unsure and concerned about something I was thinking about doing.) I considered using one sense plus subsenses like this, but the (sub)senses don't really seem clearly separate, so maybe one sense covering everything is best. "To cause (someone) to hesitate and think carefully about something, by giving (the person) cause to be unsure or concerned about something."? - -sche (discuss) 19:03, 15 June 2026 (UTC)

I liked the sandbox edit. The entry is yours to command. Aloysius Jr (talk) 21:51, 16 June 2026 (UTC)

Well, I changed it. Aloysius Jr (talk) 22:18, 18 June 2026 (UTC)

Good on ya IotaCi (talk) 23:44, 18 June 2026 (UTC)

Jesus is my boyfriend

Listed as an adjective but the definition is of a noun??? Inpacod2 (talk) 18:45, 14 June 2026 (UTC)

what in the crackhead? You right. ~2026-34752-03 (talk) 19:15, 14 June 2026 (UTC)

ill go ahead and change the part of speech to Noun if thats alright. ~2026-34752-03 (talk) 19:16, 14 June 2026 (UTC)

It's not definitively a noun—it might simply be a phrase. I think quotations are needed to determine how it is used. — Sgconlaw (talk) 19:20, 14 June 2026 (UTC)

Uhuh. Yah it doednt sound like no noun.🫰🏼 ~2026-34752-03 (talk) 19:42, 14 June 2026 (UTC)

In my experience, it's used attributively: "'Jesus is my boyfriend' songs", or "a 'Jesus is my boyfriend' approach to worship". I've come across it mainly aurally and would have been inclined to write it, Jesus-is-my-boyfriend. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 06:15, 21 June 2026 (UTC)

O'

Not important, but I'm wondering why the lemma (and Wiktionary entry title) doesn't include a hyphen after it. (It's a prefix, after all.)

More important, I am wondering about that apostrophe-looking thing. Judging by the word's etymology, I take it that this is not actually an apostrophe (and it seems to be more of an accent mark)? So would it be incorrect (orthographically), in English, to use smart quotes and render the name "O'Reilly" as "O’Reilly"? ~2026-34983-30 (talk) 17:57, 15 June 2026 (UTC)

In my view the only descriptively accurate way to understand it is that conventionally the mark is emically taken to be an apostrophe and is treated as such, regardless of how its use came about. For anyone to claim that it were orthographically incorrect in English to use the directional glyph for the character, and to use the apostrophe character (at all), would be to strike out into an eccentric prescriptive frontier featuring the flouting of a vast percentage of corporal attestations. In essence it would be akin to retconning to do so: "It turns out that countless writers and printers were all wrong when they did the conventionally normal thing!" Well, no. The definition of what's 'wrong' (or not) passes through, and is shaped by, emic territory. Quercus solaris (talk) 03:50, 17 June 2026 (UTC)

the boss of me

One often hears the phrase "You're not the boss of me!" instead of the expected You're not my boss. I think there's a slight difference in meaning, in that the former is more likely to cover metaphorical uses outside the workplace whereas the latter is more often used literally. How should we handle this? —Soap— 18:10, 15 June 2026 (UTC)

i'd argue that even though one is used outside the offive, it still has a sense that is used literally. Theres another frequently used synonym "you're not in charge of me" and Boss is someone in charge of someone else in or out of the office, although we dont have a definition for the general sense of "someone placed in charge of another person". ~2026-34752-03 (talk) 19:31, 15 June 2026 (UTC)

As ESL from a language with casus intact, I would argue that loss of case has to be confusing to a native speaker. There are sufficiently peculiar cases, no pun intended, that they received attention in the literature, e.g. Mér er kalt (Icelandic anti-causative). Note the expression this is us, "our stop, please halt". Of-constructions appear to be the most common substitute, also in German as a more fusional language. In this case it may be argued that possessive 's, genetive my et al. are less correct than dative me, since to boss (s.b. around) is necessarily transitive and not genitive. Boss being a Dutch loanword, my only remorse is that I don't know the language enough to be sure. ~2026-34966-51 (talk) 22:00, 15 June 2026 (UTC)

Copious citations under the Dutch entry show Dutch van (“of”), confirming my point -- unintentionally -- although there is no associated verb. ~2026-34966-51 (talk) 22:07, 15 June 2026 (UTC)

"...the boss of me" is obviously highly colloguial, so making that "sense" notation is warranted.

Does the They Might Be Giants song factor in at all? Vininn126 (talk) 22:01, 15 June 2026 (UTC)

As ESL I feel like the expression became prominent in recent times, yes. ~2026-34966-51 (talk) 22:19, 15 June 2026 (UTC)

Unlike the rather different possessive pronouns used in the Guns n Roses song ‘Sweet Child of Mine’ and the hymn ‘This Little Light of Mine’. ‘A boss of mine’ sounds much better than ‘a boss of me’ despite ‘the boss of me’ sounding much better than ‘the boss of mine’ too, though I can’t fully fathom or explain why. Overlordnat1 (talk) 13:16, 16 June 2026 (UTC)

this StackExchange thread suggests the song helped popularize it, but the growth becomes noticeable a few decades before the song. The graph is for the negative form, which is the form I'm used to hearing. The fact that this song exists, though (I'd never heard of it), at least shows we can cite something smaller than the whole sentence, which is what I was hoping for. Should I make a usage note at boss and then redirect boss of me and the boss of me to it? I want to at least have the redirects so that the typeahead JSON search will turn something up. —Soap— 20:54, 16 June 2026 (UTC)

FWIW, Cambridge has an entry for not be the boss of. I'm not sure whether it's idiomatic enough to have an entry. I like the idea of at least having a usage note at boss and redirects from phrases like the boss of me, boss of me, be the boss of, as proposed above. (BTW it's discussed here.) - -sche (discuss) 21:03, 16 June 2026 (UTC)

wow, 1883. i wonder if that's old enough to be a direct calque from Dutch. OED (which is unexpectedly open for me right now; Im not even a subscriber) has it going back to 1874. It also lists be the boss of (someone) as a distinct idiom, so I wonder if we should in fact give it its own page. i'll think about that for a while. i think we need to add a new sense at boss in any case, and in fact i think that entry is missing at least two senses (think about "the bosses" meaning anyone with power in an industry), but i'll focus on one thing at a time. —Soap— 22:37, 16 June 2026 (UTC)

Yes, when did the OED open access? They seem to have done it quietly, I wasn't able to find an announcement on their site. Jberkel 10:25, 21 June 2026 (UTC)

@Jberkel: See “How was an OED page made available free of charge?”; only specific entries are free to access. J3133 (talk) 10:33, 21 June 2026 (UTC)

mayor

This article lists the following: (without the mare-mayor merger) IPA(key): /ˈmeɪ̯.ɚ/ (mare-mayor merger) IPA(key): /ˈmɛɚ/. However this isn't actually a phonological merger, /ˈmeɪ̯.ɚ/ is just a spelling pronunciation, and users of the /ˈmɛɚ/ pronunciation keep pairs such as payer-pair, layer-lair, etc. distinct. ~2026-35055-72 (talk) 23:06, 15 June 2026 (UTC)

Interesting. I can find next to no information this merger being a thing, Wikipedia's section on it is flagged as having no sources, and the examples they give of words that the supposed merger supposedly merges do not appear to pattern the same way. This was added last month by a rather unresponsive user known for many problematic edits to a wide range of dialects they do not appear to be familiar with (and also known for many helpful edits, but the ongoing problematic edits and unresponsiveness, see Wiktionary:Tea room/2026/May#/ˈbɪi̯f/, un-/ɹil/ and other Orrigarmi edits, make for a problem). For now I am going to undo the edit. - -sche (discuss) 18:46, 16 June 2026 (UTC)

(different user than above) Note that the same supposed merger is also mentioned at "layer" (etymology 1). The edit(s) should be undone here as well. Another relevant word is "prayer"; the 'merger' is not mentioned there, but someone recently put the disyllabic pronunciation first for GA, which seems misleading bc to my knowledge it is not predominant. ~2026-33460-66 (talk) 19:55, 16 June 2026 (UTC)

I've revised layer too now; the other entries which currently mention this merger are lair, air, Ayer, and graham. - -sche (discuss) 20:50, 16 June 2026 (UTC)

Woah there! Here's Geoff Lindsey discussing the merger: https://www.englishspeechservices.com/pronunciation-pieces/how-mayor-may-or-may-not-be-pronounced/ (reliable per WP:SELFPUBLISH as he is an expert). Accordingly I think we should add back some of the information. With that said, I can't find many other sources for the rest of the claims, so the unsourced material should be removed.

I think he might discuss it more in his book in a section on smoothing, but I can't verify this until maybe the end of the week.

P.S. I'm from the UK, and the merger is pretty common here. ^{[citation unneeded]} (talk) 04:10, 22 June 2026 (UTC)

From your source: "[...]partly due to the ever-present influence of American English, which usually pronounces mayor with 2 syllables." As someone who actually lives in North America, I can confirm that this is completely incorrect (the single syllable pronunciation is more common, made evident by puns in American media that rely on the homophony of mayor and mare). Your source is British so perhaps he simply isn't aware of the finer details of American accents. "I suspect it’s arisen partly due to the spelling (compare mayonnaise, which begins mɛ́jə)[...]" this seems to me like an admission that it is in fact a spelling pronunciation (and thus not a legitimate variant). ~2026-35055-72 (talk) 07:09, 26 June 2026 (UTC)

Interesting, to me it seems like mare is stereotyped in America as a feature of specific dialects (e.g. Chicago has Da Mare), differing from the (quote-unquote-)"non-dialectal" American pronunciation. Longman has the UK pronunciation being /mɛə/ (they write /meə/ as they systematically use "e" for /ɛ/, e.g. they have "/bed/" as the US and UK pronunciation of bed) and the US /ˈmeɪər/; the OED has UK /mɛː/, US /ˈmeɪ(ə)r/ MAY-uhr; MWO and AHD acknowledge both ~/ˈmeɪəɹ/ and ~/ˈmɛɹ/ as (US) pronunciations but list /ˈmeɪəɹ/ first. In any case, (@Citation unneeded,) the webpage linked above does not mention a systematic "merger" of these phonemes AFAICT, and as mentioned earlier in this discussion, the different words claimed to show this merger pattern differently (British speakers traditionally pronounced mayor and mare the same, but Graham and gram differently, whereas Americans often pronounce Graham and gram the same but mayor and mare differently). There is a difference between saying ~"some people pronounce the specific word mayor with one syllable, some with two", like mayor did prior to Orrigarmi's edits and does now that those edits have been undone, and saying ~"there exists a merger of these phonemes (in all words in which they occur)". - -sche (discuss) 15:48, 26 June 2026 (UTC)

I’ve heard Amol Rajan (annoyingly IMO) say ‘mayor’ with two syllables when reading out questions for University Challenge but the only time I’ve heard prayer(supplication) said like prayer(someone who prays) is in some, but by no means all, versions of ‘Hear My Prayer, Oh Lord’ by Henry Purcell. The famous choral group ‘the 16’ sing it like this on YouTube. The way the piece is written, alongside the simple fact that ‘prayer’ comes from ‘pray’, makes it clear that Purcell thought ‘prayer’ had two syllables and I suspect ‘pray-uh’ is a more accurate representation of a period pronunciation than ‘pre-uh’. Of course Purcell wouldve said it rhotic ally as ‘pray-urr’. Overlordnat1 (talk) 06:39, 14 July 2026 (UTC)

Turns out the section from English After RP on smoothing that I remember was about PRICE and MOUTH, not SQUARE. Lindsey does say that SQUARE has often smoothed into a monophthong in SSBE. He doesn't mention prayer, payer, pair, layer, or lair, but does have an entry for mayor in his mini-dictionary (p. 129), which I'll quote in full:

"In RP, this word was pronounced as one syllable with the SQUARE diphthong. Many speakers retain a one-syllable pronunciation with the modern SQUARE vowel, mɛː, but younger speakers increasingly pronounce mayor as two syllables, with the FACE vowel followed by schwa. This change brings the pronunciation closer to the spelling and to the American pronunciation. See also ate, bedroom, forbade, forehead, handkerchief, hurricane, mosquito, mushroom, nephew, newspaper, often, prortrait and Chaps 1 [on spelling pronunciations] and 2 [on the influence of American English]."

Pretty clearly then, Lindsey regards this pronunciation as something like an American-loaned spelling pronunciation and not a genuine phonological change. I think this is enough grounds to dismiss ideas of a mayor-mare merger. ^{[citation unneeded]} (talk) 21:52, 20 July 2026 (UTC)

Putting Words into Categories

What is the best way to put words with affixes into categories? I found this code: Category:English terms suffixed with -acity (in square brackets). I am currently working on the -acity suffix. For example, audacity has the -acity suffix, but the base is bound <Aud>, so there is no word entry. I put (whence -acity) in the etymology, but that did not put the word automatically in the -acity category. Please advise if the Category:English terms suffixed with -acity (in square brackets) is the best way to include affixed words in categories or if another better way is possible. HeatherMarieKosur (talk) 19:15, 16 June 2026 (UTC)

What I learned this time ago last year is that other editors believe that these "English terms suffixed with X" categories should be reserved only for words whose most direct etymological/morphological derivation is made by attaching the suffix. I find it confusing because "suffixed" does not only mean that, and generally I have more use for categories of words ending with the same shared element or letter sequence (and words may ultimately have been built with both a prefix and a suffix like postpositivism). Some previous suffix gatekeeping discussion at User talk:Hftf#-post, Discord Hftf (talk) 20:34, 16 June 2026 (UTC)

@Hftf "intitle:" search can be used to find all entries with a given ending. (intitle: /[ending]/ -intitle:/[ending]./) Additional restrictions, including "insource:" can reduce the number of hits for languages that you don't care about. See this MW help page. DCDuring (talk) 20:12, 21 June 2026 (UTC)

Thanks for the somewhat useful (slow) hack, although it isn't completely practical. It will for instance not help much finding the words with the English prefix element a- because most results are false positives coincidentally beginning with the letter a. Is there a serious argument for why Wiktionary could not also have a set of these categories? Hftf (talk) 21:53, 21 June 2026 (UTC)

Related issue: the text "from Medieval Latin audācitās (whence -acity)", "from Latin capācitās (whence -acity)" in entries like audacity, capacity, efficacity, pugnacity, dicacity, loquacity, tenacity and veracity is misleading (wrong), because the suffix -acity does not derive (only) from Latin audācitās; the suffix was not generalized from that one Latin word audācitās into a suffix than English now applies to other words like capacity. So that wording needs to be cleaned up. I suppose it could be mentioned like "The ending is equivalent to -acity." (or similar; but the current wording is wrong). Whether to categorize words which were never suffixed with -acity, but were instead borrowed ending-and-all from another language, is the subject of some dispute, as Hftf mentions. - -sche (discuss) 21:12, 16 June 2026 (UTC)

English -acity comes from Medieval Latin -ācitās from Latin -ācis (from -āx) + -i- + -tās. HeatherMarieKosur (talk) 23:01, 21 June 2026 (UTC)

Yes, which makes the wording "From Middle English audacite, from Medieval Latin audācitās (whence -acity)" in audacity (and similar statements in the other entries linked above) incorrect or at least misleading. Do you understand why? - -sche (discuss) 05:47, 22 June 2026 (UTC)

I've been cleaning up lots of errors that seem to stem from, in effect, confusing genetics with genealogy: yes, your hair color may have been inherited from your mother's paternal grandfather, but that's not the same as saying your great-grandfather had sex with your mother... Chuck Entz (talk) 13:12, 22 June 2026 (UTC)

petite souris ("fly on the wall")

We have the idiomatic sense "tooth fairy", which is not in doubt. However, it's also given as the French translation of "fly on the wall" (unseen witness). The latter is not mentioned at fr.wiktionary, but is made somewhat plausible by the fact that German Mäuschen does mean this. Can someone either confirm or rule out this sense for the French? ~2026-33460-66 (talk) 19:39, 16 June 2026 (UTC)

It's a thing, yes (which I'd removed mistakenly from our entry): see GB. PUC – 20:38, 21 June 2026 (UTC)

good girl

How is sense 2 of the noun used? I have heard people demeaningly tell a women to "be a good girl" or the like, but AFAICT that's sense 1 (telling her to be obedient; behave herself; etc) + context (that it's meant derogatorily); being sometimes "also used derogatorily / demeaningly" is something to put in a context {{label}}, like how "also used sarcastically" is in the context label of Einstein, not a separate sense. And I've heard the interjection "Good girl!", both as praise (including in sexual contexts) and demeaningly, but interjections go in the ===Interjection=== section. - -sche (discuss) 18:02, 17 June 2026 (UTC)

ire

Currently, the US and UK pronunciations use /./ to specify that they are two syllables, and the entry is in Category:English 2-syllable words. But it is also in Category:Rhymes:English/aɪə(ɹ)/1 syllable. How should this discrepancy be resolved? Some entries, like hire, list both disyllabic and also monosyllabic pronunciations (/haɪɹ/, /ˈhaɪ.ɚ/); I suppose we should add /aɪɹ/ as a pronunciation of ire? Conversely, hire is in only Category:English 2-syllable words, so we should add Category:English 1-syllable words...? - -sche (discuss) 20:02, 17 June 2026 (UTC)

To me the only sensible answer is to capture both variants as transcriptions and to allow the word to be categorized at both syllable counts (because it has both variants). An iron for the fire lol ;-) ... Quercus solaris (talk) 20:45, 17 June 2026 (UTC)

coati

I think the correct definition is "A member of the subtribe Nasuina", but that will mess up the translations. Wonder what should be done. Frog x Lover (talk) 21:54, 17 June 2026 (UTC)

Maybe, but in a world where birds are dinosaurs, termites are cockroaches, dolphins could be construed as a type of hippo. and our species has been referred to as "the third chimpanzee", you have to be very careful about redefining vernacular names whenever the taxonomy changes. Chuck Entz (talk) 03:04, 18 June 2026 (UTC)

who'm pronunciation

The given pron has two syllables (like the uncontracted "who am"). I would expect one syllable, like I'm, you're, etc. Can it be confirmed? ~2026-35611-55 (talk) 08:26, 18 June 2026 (UTC)

花より団子 usage note

I don't really understand what the usage note is saying. Can someone explain? ~2026-35611-55 (talk) 08:49, 18 June 2026 (UTC)

sedimentation time

Defined as "(geology) The measure of the thickness of sediment accumulated per unit of time." This is not very clear. If it's thickness, the unit would be (say) millimetres; if it's thickness per time unit, the unit would be (say) millimetres per year. But I would expect "sedimentation time" to measure time, i.e. just years or such (in which case it might be SoP too). ~2026-35611-55 (talk) 09:52, 18 June 2026 (UTC)

Circularity problems with cellular

I recently spotted cellular data and simplified it and thought it might be SoP. There was in fact no suitable cellular#Adjective so I added this: "(telecommunications) Relating to a cellular phone or network." However, cellular phone just says: "A mobile phone using cellular technology." It seems impossible from Wiktionary to find out what exact type of phone technology actually counts as cellular. ~2026-35611-55 (talk) 10:27, 18 June 2026 (UTC)

That was a good addition that you made by adding that sense. I added the sense that is at the heart of what makes a network a cellular network. The net result (from your improvements and mine) does a nice job to resolve the issue. Quercus solaris (talk) 18:33, 18 June 2026 (UTC)

Are these “usage notes” really correct?

raison d'être says:

As this is a foreign phrase, it is usually written in italics. However, some style guides such as those of the Chicago Manual of Style and The Economist assert that foreign words and phrases which have become familiar to English readers should not be italicized.

To me it seems far too general to say that foreign phrases, in general, are written in italics.

Wouldn’t it be better to just say “Raison d’être is often written in italics, but some style guides advise against this”? The claim is also not sourced, and it’s unclear if the style guides are advising this for raison d’être in particular (explicitly). Theanswertolifetheuniverseandeverything (talk) 19:30, 18 June 2026 (UTC)

The wording should be tweaked a bit to explain better. It is a fact that English orthography often uses italics as a general default for foreign words qua foreign words, somewhat like how Japanese will use katakana for a foreign word rather than hiragana (for example, "the man handed me a dzhuversonosti, which is a kind of dumpling made with squash"), but it often forgoes italics once that particular word is fairly well naturalized (for example, it usually doesn't italicize when it talks about a café because that word is thoroughly naturalized). That recurring theme is well known and established, and that's the theme that the usage note would like to address but needs some polishing to address it better. I'll see about improving it. Quercus solaris (talk) 20:23, 18 June 2026 (UTC)

 Done. "As with other words that began as foreign loanwords but have been substantially naturalized into English, this term sometimes is italicized but often is not." Quercus solaris (talk) 20:28, 18 June 2026 (UTC)

PS:That line should be templatized so that it can be transcluded across various entries. I may bother to templatize it soon if I choose to be arsed about it. Quercus solaris (talk) 20:33, 18 June 2026 (UTC)

split attraction model categorization

Split attraction model is currently in both the Romantic orientation and Sexual orientation categories. However, both of those are set categories and I don't think that it meets the criteria (same with the abbreviation, SAM). Would it make sense to remove it from those categories? Eater of Strange Shapes (talk) 03:19, 20 June 2026 (UTC)

un- prefix

I'm curious, is this pronounced with an /ʊ/ in regions without the foot-strut split? I live in North America so I can't really test it myself, and I couldn't find any audio recordings of this prefix from those regions. ~2026-35055-72 (talk) 04:04, 20 June 2026 (UTC)

chewing tobacco

Two senses, but the only differences I can see is that (ii) is marked as "dated" and (ii) mentions actually chewing the tobacco. Otherwise (it is cut or ground somehow and placed in the cheek) they are the same thing. Can we merge? ~2026-35914-11 (talk) 12:49, 20 June 2026 (UTC)

I grouped the subsenses of the term under a unified parent sense (Q1345873). One subsense is loosely but idiomatically synonymous with dip whereas the other is a literal sense that is coordinate with it. Quercus solaris (talk) 18:55, 20 June 2026 (UTC)

dangling modifier in usage notes at pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis

"Cited as the longest word in the Oxford English Dictionary, the dictionary lists it as ..." Suggested replacement: "Cited as the longest word in the Oxford English Dictionary, where it is listed as..." ~2026-35914-11 (talk) 15:15, 20 June 2026 (UTC)

 Done. Thanks for being arsed in a world of widespread arsedlessness. (By which I mean that it is sometimes hilarious how often dangling modifiers surround us because of the prevailing who cares anyways amirite lol.) Quercus solaris (talk) 18:52, 20 June 2026 (UTC)

@Quercus solaris: Well, "Cluebot NG" on Wikipedia has got into a state where it reverts (and warns) on almost any small grammar correction (commas, 'whom' etc.) by an unnamed user, so that is extremely frustrating. But "on, on one goes" as Kureishi said. ~2026-35914-11 (talk) 20:54, 20 June 2026 (UTC)

Gayboy

This appears to have been a surname, either real or used for fictional characters, well before the sense on gayboy came into use. The earliest appearance I can find is a 1825 novel, The Life of an Actor, where a "Sir Henry Gayboy" appears. There's also a 1910s comic character Old Doc Gayboy. It shows up as a name for bulls, horses, and at least one dog in a Gbooks search, as well as a name for a stock character (I think?) in 19th century humor. I'm having trouble figuring out the details. Apocheir (talk) 19:19, 20 June 2026 (UTC)

Clearly a real surname (search GBooks for "Mr Gayboy") so I've created a basic surname entry. Expand as you see fit. (fnar!) ~2026-35914-11 (talk) 01:04, 21 June 2026 (UTC)

virtue

Folowing is first definition: "The idea of all that is good or excellent (in every sense of those terms) in a human being, collectively instantiated by a varying number of human traits known as "the virtues", the enumeration of which vary by the many virtue systems which have developed within different cultures, religions, and historical periods."

I don't think virtue is an "idea". A minimal change would be "That which is good or excellent (in every sense of those terms) in a human being, collectively instantiated by a varying number of human traits known as "the virtues", the enumeration of which vary by the many virtue systems which have developed within different cultures, religions, and historical periods."

But the definition is at least three times longer than a dictionary definition should be, IMO. Probably written by a pedian. DCDuring (talk) 20:48, 20 June 2026 (UTC)

Any definition with variations of "all senses of the word", except naturally in every sense of the word (ironically void of a sense), are red lexi-flags. To choose one sense of good, is a virtue really "Pleasant; enjoyable"? Perhaps... that's a question for Wikiphilosophy... —User:Vealhurl (talk 21:07, 20 June 2026 (UTC)

@DCDuring, when you say "pedian", do you mean "pedant", or is that term a clipped form of "Encyclopedian" or "Wikipedian"...an apheresis?

filled

Poorly defined as "that is now full". We can do better... —User:Vealhurl (talk 21:00, 20 June 2026 (UTC)

"Made full"? It seems to focus on the action/verb fill having been performed. However, the entry suggests you have to say "filled with", which isn't true. You might talk about "filled candies". ~2026-35914-11 (talk) 21:26, 20 June 2026 (UTC)

This is a bit tricky to define well, particularly because one must indicate that the focus of the implied verbal argument is the indirect object (the thing being filled), rather than the direct object (the "filling material" itself). . After considering the basic concepts, I came up with: "having had the (filling/content) thereof fully complemented". EDIT: I went ahead and changed the definition. It is much better than it was; hope that it is liked by y'all. — This unsigned comment was added by ~2026-37544-07 (talk) at 09:21, 2026 July 7.

Absolutely dreadful. I will revert it. DCDuring (talk) 18:33, 7 July 2026 (UTC)

What then? More dreadful than the circular definition that you restored? Are you a lobotomy patient?

in a word

An anon split this into two definitions, something I don't find in other OneLook definitions. Is the distinction worthwhile? It doesn't seem so to me. DCDuring (talk) 21:12, 20 June 2026 (UTC)

The first new sense is applying "in a word" to a whole phrase, and the second to a noun or adjective. Is that the intended split? Doesn't seem very worthwhile. Also who the heck says "in summarization"? It's "in summary". ~2026-35914-11 (talk) 21:28, 20 June 2026 (UTC)

Often I am sympathetic to sense or subsense distinctions, especially when semantic relations differ for the two (e.g., synonymy versus hypernymy, synonymy versus cohyponymy), but even I am doubting that this particular split (abbreviative versus cumulative) is necessary; it would seem better to have a single def that says something like "for either abbreviative or cumulative effect". Quercus solaris (talk) 23:29, 20 June 2026 (UTC)

The only trouble with that prep. phrase is that a normal human would have no idea what it's supposed to mean in this context. Could you paraphrase it and give clear usage examples? I fear that if the definition is expanded using only words from a normal defining vocabulary, it will still be hard to grasp. I don't find the current usage examples helpful either. I neglected to mention that the OneLook dictionaries that have entries for in a word all have only one definition. DCDuring (talk) 23:47, 20 June 2026 (UTC)

The distinction is about the absence or presence of heterogeneity in the things being glossed over. The abbreviative sense is not lossy in its compression (because there was no variety being lost), but the cumulative sense is lossy (because a variety was being flattened). This is appreciable in the existing usexes that the editor gave, but perhaps with effort some different ones could be worked up to try to highlight it better. Thus, 68.112.86.146, heads up, if you're still out there, you should work on it some more if you want the distinction to be preserved (i.e., for the entry not to be reverted back to being a single sense). I can see the distinction that you were on about, but I don't care enough about capturing it in WT's coverage to help bolster the coverage enough to keep it from being erased. Quercus solaris (talk) 03:32, 21 June 2026 (UTC)

It does seem that there’s a very subtle difference between the senses that’s difficult to define clearly and concisely. Perhaps we could link this phrase to ʽin other wordsʼ as a synonym or near-synonym at some point too? Overlordnat1 (talk) 07:23, 21 June 2026 (UTC)

Great idea regarding including 'in other words' among the syn or nearsyn. Although I at first was not interested enough to care about working on this entry, my brain is now starting to work on it despite that fact (damn its eyes lol), so I may end up taking a crack at improving it by making the def be a single def (with a nearsyn population) and then stating in a usage note (yes, a short one, for all you usage note haters out there) that the summing effect can be either abbreviating or cumulative (for example, 'blah blah short example 1' as compared with 'blah blah short example 2'). Quercus solaris (talk) 15:51, 21 June 2026 (UTC)

If you feel like taking it on, perhaps you can find synonyms that belong only to each of the two senses as well as those that are shared. To me, they all seem shared. DCDuring (talk) 18:29, 21 June 2026 (UTC)

I suspect you're right. I'll probably fiddle with it soon. Quercus solaris (talk) 21:58, 21 June 2026 (UTC)

 Done. Maybe someone else might later do even better, but in my view, I did justice to all the concerns and produced a good improvement. Quercus solaris (talk) 21:46, 22 June 2026 (UTC)

An excellent job indeed! Overlordnat1 (talk) 11:43, 7 July 2026 (UTC)

kebab button, kebab icon, kebab menu

Wondering if some or all of these are adequately covered by kebab sense: "(graphical user interface) A menu icon of three vertical dots". We do have e.g. hamburger menu (and various other types of food have been used to denote menus, by extension) but I think that was the first of the set, and probably existed as "hamburger menu" before "hamburger" alone. ~2026-35914-11 (talk) 22:04, 20 June 2026 (UTC)

Linking to translation hubs like they were real language entries

See bumboy where User:LlywelynIV has linked to the thub gay man. Isn't this bad practice? Thubs aren't supposed to be main entries, so we would better link to "gay man" i.e. the two real entries. Incidentally is this user the same one as User:LlywelynII? Pedantry suggests yes. Is he allowed two accounts? ~2026-35914-11 (talk) 00:04, 21 June 2026 (UTC)

They are the same and it's kosher as long as I'm open about it and not being sneaky, double voting, etc. It just has to do with device issues when I changed computers and still needed to use the VPNs that let me over the Great Firewall when I'm in China. In any case, "gay man" doesn't only link to the translation hub but also to the link to the thesaurus entry for all the related synonyms, which neither "gay" nor "man" easily does. Sure, if it's a hard-&-fast rule we'll put it back but at least for this it's far more helpful to users, minimizing scrolling and confusion. — LlywelynII 08:50, 29 June 2026 (UTC)

gingeli, gingilli, gingelly, jinjili

An entertaining merge job for somebody. Is it a seed, is it an oil, is it Superman? ~2026-35914-11 (talk) 00:57, 21 June 2026 (UTC)

Nethinim

Don't know much about Jewish history. Don't know much templology. Don't know much about a grammar book. Don't know much about the Hebrew I took. But I do know that I love you And I know that if you love me, too, What a Wonderfool world this would be...

Err, so, pls check this. Capitalised? Pluralised? Is there a singular Nethin? —User:Vealhurl (talk 20:46, 21 June 2026 (UTC)

natin might be another spelling. —User:Vealhurl (talk 20:57, 21 June 2026 (UTC)

@Vealhurl: according to the OED entry, what is stated in our entry is correct: (1) it is capitalized; (2) nethinim is plural in Hebrew, but often treated as singular in English with the result that it is either pluralized as Nethinims (seven quotations in the OED, 16th–19th centuries), or Nethinim is treated as a plural noun (two quotations, 20th century). I don't see any Natin or Nethin form. — Sgconlaw (talk) 14:40, 22 June 2026 (UTC)

What would the Hebrew plural - nethinim spelling be?—User:Vealhurl (talk 11:59, 23 June 2026 (UTC)

@Vealhurl: Google AI says it's נְתִינִים, derived from נָתַן. — Sgconlaw (talk) 12:55, 23 June 2026 (UTC)

• OK, I added some info, but pls can someone knowing Hebrew check the changes—User:Vealhurl (talk 14:50, 24 June 2026 (UTC)

h-dropping in history

I'm sorry if this has been brought up before, but I failed to find a discussion of this that took place recently: should there be a paragraph regarding the treatment of "history" and derivatives thereof as having a silent <h> (leading to cases like "an historian herself", "an historic document" etc.) in the Usage Notes? Is there a tendency for this in any particular variant/dialect of English? Olive Loft (talk) 18:58, 23 June 2026 (UTC)

Note that "an" before H doesn't necessarily mean the H was silent. It was common at one point to use "an" for words beginning with H whose second syllable was stressed. At least, that's what I recall reading somewhere. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 06:21, 24 June 2026 (UTC)

In the case of historic/historian/etc. the h was silent originally since the words came from French (and if you look at pronunciation guides from the era they usually recommend against pronouncing it in these words). However, in native English words the h wouldn't be dropped in educated speech. ~2026-35055-72 (talk) 20:58, 26 June 2026 (UTC)

I wonder how sociolinguistic factors played into this. The low prestige in England of the best known h-dropping lect might have caused hypercorrection at some point. That apparently never happened in the US, where h-dropping was virtually unknown until the Disney Mary Poppins movie introduced it as something safely foreign, colorful and exotic. Chuck Entz (talk) 00:09, 27 June 2026 (UTC)

קטל — pi-el (קטל) and other binyanim

The information for the pi'el binyan is missing. Instead, there is a link to an unrelated Yiddish noun. I am not sufficiently competent in Hebrew to fix this but would consider that including all binyanim for קטל is important, because that is the root that many textbooks use when they discuss verb forms. Can someone help? Thanks! Peter Chastain (talk) 08:42, 24 June 2026 (UTC)

أمة

Discussion moved from Wiktionary:Information desk/2026/June#Image not supporting a word’s meaning and possibly misleading.

In the page for أمة, the image under etymology 2 is sexually explicit and not a neutral illustration of the definition for أمة. It doesn’t help readers understand the meaning, and it may bias interpretation by implicitly suggesting a sexual connotation tied to the word. I don’t think the image serves any beneficial purpose on this entry, and it may hinder understanding. I propose removing it (or replacing it with a neutral, non-graphic image if an illustration is deemed necessary) Twbolton (talk) 15:41, 24 June 2026 (UTC)

It is certainly true that some female slavery is sexual. The question for Wiktionary is whether the word is used more often for sexual slavery rather than other kinds of slavery. As there are often taboos surrounding such matters, many words are used euphemistically. For example in the derived terms for this entry we see تَأَمَّى (taʔammā, “to take as maid”, form V) and اِسْتَأْمَى (istaʔmā, “to take as maid”, form X), whereas the entries for those terms have definitions "take as female slave". Is there a hyponym of أَمَة (ʔama) that is used more specifically for a female primarily enslaved for sexual purposes? DCDuring (talk) 20:17, 24 June 2026 (UTC)

There is سرية which can have that specific meaning. أمة is also said to be a female equivalent of عبد (this is also indicated in the page for أمة), which has no sexual meaning. Twbolton (talk) 14:10, 25 June 2026 (UTC)

responsibilization

Rare word. Can't find much online. I tried to craft the phonetic spelling. Is it correct?

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ɹɪˌspɒn.sə.bɪl.ɪˈzeɪ.ʃən/
• (General American) IPA^(key): /ɹɪˌspɑn.sə.bɪl.ɪˈzeɪ.ʃən/

Aloysius Jr (talk) 12:28, 25 June 2026 (UTC)

Come rain or shine, I made the edits. Aloysius Jr (talk) 21:28, 28 June 2026 (UTC)

firespace

1. a bio-ethynol fuelled hearth that doesn’t require a flu or chimney

This came to my attention because it has a hard-coded link to the current revision of a marginally-related Wikipedia article as its only "Reference". I have no idea how plausible this is, and I don't want to put it through the rfv process if it's likely to be attestable. Chuck Entz (talk) 14:03, 25 June 2026 (UTC)

Audio Pronunciation: implacable

I think we should create a new audio for the southern england pronunciation. It is very hard to hear. ~2026-34752-03 (talk) 15:46, 25 June 2026 (UTC)

• Yeh, WF'll redo it eventuaally—User:Vealhurl (talk 08:18, 30 June 2026 (UTC)

-acy and -cy

Is there any validity to the "non-productive" label on the latter? I feel like -ate > -acy and -ant/-ent > -ancy/-ency are still moderately productive derivational processes. It seems that normalcy goes back to the 19th century, and numerate and numeracy are said to date to as recent as 1959. Another point: I feel like most of the terms listed as being derived from -acy (e.g. curacy) are better analyzed as having just -cy: since words like *"prive", *"adeque" don't exist as independent units, it doesn't make sense to me to split privacy and adequacy as currently indicated: I think it is better to mark them as private, adequate + -cy. @HeatherMarieKosur Urszag (talk) 19:52, 25 June 2026 (UTC)

I do not think the -acy is nonproductive either. As for the -acy, there are multiple routes to this suffix including the suffixal construction of -ate + -cy, meaning -acy is etymologically analyzable but not morphologically analyzable. -acy is not an example of suffix stacking. For example, <ad + Equ + ate -> adequate> and <ad + Equ + acy -> adequacy> (same bound <Equ> base as in equal) but not <ad + Equ + ate + cy -> adqueatecy>. HeatherMarieKosur (talk) 03:15, 27 June 2026 (UTC)

To ensure these words appear in the correct categories etymologically and morphologically, can these be marked as: From private + -cy. Morphologically from priv(ate) + -acy. (With links, obviously.) HeatherMarieKosur (talk) 03:33, 27 June 2026 (UTC)

Pronunciation of English circumfuse

The Wiktionary entry for the English word circumfuse puts its primary stress on its first syllable. However, many of the dictionaries covered by OneLook put the primary stress on the third syllable of the word. These dictionaries include Merriam-Webster, American Heritage, Collins, Vocabulary.com, Wordsmyth, and the OED. How can we find the correct pronunciation of the word? Intolerable situation (talk) 09:53, 26 June 2026 (UTC)

Many words have multiple pronunciations. My American English pronunciation of circumfuse is [ˌsɝkəmˈfjuz] with the primary stress on the third syllable and secondary stress on the first. Merriam Webster is similar: /ˌsər-kəm-ˈfyüz/ (just with slightly different notation. Stress tends to fall on the primary base, which <Fuse> is in circumfuse. The best way is to find pronunciations by native speakers. HeatherMarieKosur (talk) 03:40, 27 June 2026 (UTC)

How should we find the pronunciations of this word by native speakers considering that this word seems rather uncommon? Intolerable situation (talk) 05:52, 27 June 2026 (UTC)

A good resource for that task is Youglish, which uses search technology on the transcripts in the YouTube corpus to serve up the relevant audiovisual clips. This particular word yielded no search results there today (because it is, as you said, a rather uncommon word), but that site is great for this task in many cases. Just keep in mind the caveat that real people often speak spelling pronunciations, so just because any particular native speaker uttered a certain pronunciation doesn't at all guarantee that that pronunciation is the normal, usual, conventional, or traditional pronunciation; but if you get dozens of clips at Youglish and they mostly reflect a certain pronunciation, then you have found a pronunciation variant of that word that is at the very least descriptively common. Quercus solaris (talk) 15:10, 27 June 2026 (UTC)

koloquo

I did my best to make a real entry out of this, as far as the formatting goes. I have my doubts about whether the language header is correct and about what the term actually refers to. Chuck Entz (talk) 03:11, 27 June 2026 (UTC)

Synonym for "married name"

Other than "marital name", what synonym(s) exist(s) for "married name"? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 13:42, 27 June 2026 (UTC)

The only one I can think of is "marriage name", which is well attested (examples here). Quercus solaris (talk) 14:53, 27 June 2026 (UTC)

I think that "family name" is a near synonym, though there is a somewhat hypernymic relationship between the two. If you think about the situation, when a woman marries and the couple have children, if she retained her maiden name she would have a different surname than the rest of the family members, who would have the "family name" (or, "gentile name", if you will).

sectile

Been trying to bring this entry out of the Webster 1913 doldrums. It needs synonyms and antonyms. in-, dis- and unsectile don't hit. Also, I'd like a picture/video of a stone being sliced smoothly, pls. —User:Vealhurl (talk 17:26, 27 June 2026 (UTC)

I took a crack at it, which is to say, I took a stab at it. I did not slice it tho, even though I thought incisively while stabbing. No matter how you slice it (or dissect it), it's an interesting word. Quercus solaris (talk) 19:29, 27 June 2026 (UTC)

Good job, QS! Glad you could flex your lexi-muscles and pun-muscles. —User:Vealhurl (talk 18:02, 29 June 2026 (UTC)

草龍

Our entry, following the Flora of China online, defines this as Ludwigia hyssopifolia, a flowering weed that grows near water. Our entry for 食草龍, on the other hand, says 'Literally: “to eat a skink”', which suggests it also means a type of lizard (the translation table at skink gives the Chinese name as 石龍子). Since the term includes words for both "grass" and "dragon", I can see how it could easily mean either or both.

• 
  Ludwigia hyssopifolia
• 
  Plestiodon elegans

The plant is a fairly common weed in rice paddies, and apparently has been used in Traditional Chinese Medicine.

As for the lizard: there are a number of skink species native to China (see List of reptiles of China on Wikipedia.Wikipedia , which has a section on skinks). They're ground dwellers and are often brightly colored, so I'm sure they would be familiar enough to enter into common folk expressions. Chuck Entz (talk) 01:49, 29 June 2026 (UTC)

Pinging a few Chinese speakers to take a look: @Fish bowl, kc_kennylau, Tooironic, is the entry 草龍 missing a lizard/skink sense? (If not, what is 食草龍 referring to?) - -sche (discuss) 16:41, 29 June 2026 (UTC)

winter

Can someone format the quotes at winter? Lots of unnec. abbrs. —User:Vealhurl (talk 10:00, 29 June 2026 (UTC)

vyuntspakhkite

Needs more Russian - supposedly named after Vyuntspakh in the Kola Peninsula. Sth like Вюнтспакх??? —User:Vealhurl (talk 11:00, 29 June 2026 (UTC)

Pinging a few Russian speakers, @Atitarev, Brutal Russian, can you find the Russian spelling of this placename? It's apparently part of the western Keyvy massif. - -sche (discuss) 16:58, 29 June 2026 (UTC)

@Vealhurl, @-sche:

The mineral is called вюнцпахки́т (vjuncpaxkít) and the mountain Вюнцпа́хк (Vjuncpáxk).

1. вюнцпахкит - w:ru:Плоская (гора, Кейвы) - Ке́йвы (Kéjvy)
2. Вюнцпахк - https://webmineral.ru/deposits/item.php?id=5116
3. Кейвы - https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Кейвы

Anatoli T. ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 23:01, 29 June 2026 (UTC)

obtected and obtect

Sorry for flooding WT:TR recently, firstly. Are these the same? One is "Covered with a hard chitinous case, like the pupa of certain files.", other "(of a pupa) Having the legs and other appendages more or less strongly cemented to the body." Certainly not obvious synonyms by the definitions alone, but the wormhole of reading, and my poor knowledge of entomology (despite loving word history) sets some synonym-lights on. —User:Vealhurl (talk 17:59, 29 June 2026 (UTC)

My guess is that the casing forces the appendages to be stuck in place, like when I was in a straitjacket a long time, after which I played snooker terribly..... Perhaps authors care more about either the cocoon or the body-shape. —User:Vealhurl (talk 18:10, 29 June 2026 (UTC)

I found evidence of biologists using obtect as a transitive verb:

this colour is visible as a vertical band of about i cm broad; it does not obtect the reflexed peristome which is white and has a white lip

the deep cylindrical umbilicus, which is about 3 mm wide, and which is not obtected by the columellar plate

J. B. Henrard, A New Species of Pseudobba (Mollusca Gastropoda) from Western New Guinea, 39 Zoologische Mededelingen 308, 308 (1964) [2].

Strictly erect perennial plant, up to 1 m high, inclusive of the panicle; culms simple about 3- noded, obtected at the base by leafless hirsute sheaths

J. Th. Henrard, New Grasses from Suriname, 39 Recueil des travaux botaniques néerlandais 141, 143 (1942) [3].

I also found a broad definition "In biology, [to] conceal[] under a neighboring part" in an 1898 dictionary here: [4]. Searching archive.org turns up a lot of dictionary entries for the words.

My hypothesis is that obtect was previously used as a transitive verb in the broad sense, is no longer widely used that way in the English-using biology community, and is preserved mainly in bare and gerund form to describe a specific type of pupa. Piparsveinn (talk) 22:44, 29 June 2026 (UTC)

Trumpism

It has one sense so far, but is a sense being "words invented by Donald Trump". It has literally been used as that on our Requests for Deletion page. Aryamaan Rajwade (talk) 07:12, 30 June 2026 (UTC)

Your sense is also there, lower down on the page. ~2026-37577-52 (talk) 14:25, 30 June 2026 (UTC)

oh Aryamaan Rajwade (talk) 14:41, 1 July 2026 (UTC)

Notes at either do or die

The notes seem incredibly waffly. Do we think these are useful to readers at all, let alone at such length? ~2026-37577-52 (talk) 15:25, 30 June 2026 (UTC)

They're not waffly as in vague, they're just linguistic inside baseball for the purposes of Joe Average who can't be arsed to focus consciously on the phenomena that they're on about because those are academic for his purposes. As such, they would be fair game for commenting out (so that editors may encounter them when editing but end-users are spared from them) or for moving to the Talk page. Quercus solaris (talk) 23:00, 30 June 2026 (UTC)

 Done. Quercus solaris (talk) 23:17, 30 June 2026 (UTC)

ice-cream senses at cornet

"A pastry shell to be filled with ice cream; (UK, dated, by extension) An ice cream cone." To my surprise, Wikipedia says that an ice-cream cone is a type of pastry; so is there any real distinction here? ~2026-37577-52 (talk) 16:29, 30 June 2026 (UTC)

Polysemy's a bitch but we're stuck with ər. I made the distinction clear. Quercus solaris (talk) 17:19, 30 June 2026 (UTC)

July 2026

Transliteration of අත්අඩංගුවට (Sinhalese)

The transliteration of අත්අඩංගුවට is listed as "ataḍaṁguwaṭa", but the transliteration itself would suggest the spelling "අතඩංගුවට". In the correct spelling of අත්අඩංගුවට, the symbol ත් (t) is followed by the independent vowel letter අ (a), and in the wrong spelling අතඩංගුවට, ත would represent ta and there is no අ (a) after it. In Sinhalese, the independent vowel letters අආඇඈඉඊඋඌඑඒඔඕ usually only appear in the beginnings of words, rarely mid-word like here. In fact, in the UCSC/LTRL SINHALA CORPUS BETA VERSION - APRIL 2005 Sinhala corpus, containing 656080 tokens, "අත්අඩංගුවට" is the most common word that contains a mid-word vowel letter, appearing there 112 times. Should the unusual spelling (with a mid-word vowel letter, which, as it's preceded by a consonant, cannot be unambiguously captured in the automatic transliteration) be somehow indicated in the article? In the first edition of the page, this was indicated by a · as the transliteration "at·aḍaṁguvaṭa" but this was later removed. -- Mölli-Möllerö (talk) 05:31, 1 July 2026 (UTC)

smoky browns

For example, [5] This book uses Americans and Smoky Browns in reference to the American cockroach and the smoky brown cockroach. It's common for e.g. exterminators to abbreviate organisms like that. Are those worthy of entries do you think? Or is that a predictable feature of English? I guess it's roughly analogous to a mechanic saying "I had two oil changes today", does oil change then mean "an assignment to change a car's oil"? A doctor might say "I've got a UTI waiting for me" meaning a "patient with a UTI". What do you think? On the other hand, an ornithologist wouldn't say "let's keep an eye out for a bald" meaning bald eagle, so maybe it's not so predictable? HootenannyHoller (talk) 05:57, 1 July 2026 (UTC)

We had a recent RFD about this kind of topic - see Talk:snowy#RFD discussion: February–March 2026. I don't think there was any consensus (I leaned "delete"), but the entry was ultimately kept. Smurrayinchester (talk) 08:07, 1 July 2026 (UTC)

Ah... okay, interesting. HootenannyHoller (talk)

As I commented in that earlier RFD, the fact that plural forms of a term such as an adjective are attestable suggests to me that the term has gained a noun sense. — Sgconlaw (talk) 06:27, 4 July 2026 (UTC)

I agree. My understanding of CFI is that if it is attested, and doesn't meet one of the criteria for exclusion (e.g. being the proper noun name of a specific road that is not used figuratively), then it needs to be included in some way, and the only basis for not including it in one way is if it is better handled in another way. For example, we don't include refrigerator#Adjective, because we consider that it's sufficient for a person who sees a phrase like "refrigerator prices have risen" to look up refrigerator and find refrigerator#Noun : we consider that refrigerator prices is better analysed as a use of the noun refrigerator attributively. (And similarly, Axis#adjective is questionable and should perhaps be RFDed.) Perhaps the initial argument for deleting snowy#Noun was that a user who saw snowy could look up snowy and find snowy#Adjective and (arguably) arrive at an understanding of the word through snowy#Derived_terms. But a user who sees snowies and looks up snowies needs to find something, and we don't consider English adjectives to have plural forms, i.e. we don't have an entry snowies#Adjective defining it as the plural of the adjective snowy... so we have to have snowy#Noun (so we can have snowies, since snowies is attested). And (IMO) we have to have smoky brown#Noun. This is consistent, I note, with what we have at ruddy#Noun, brown#Noun, etc. - -sche (discuss) 17:52, 4 July 2026 (UTC)

baldie is listed as a slang term for bald eagle, for what it's worth. —Soap— 01:38, 12 July 2026 (UTC)

Okay, I have added smokybrown and def lines at American and German (those three species of cockroaches are oft-compared and discussed cuz they are common pests). HootenannyHoller (talk) 08:10, 14 July 2026 (UTC)

anticult

Could "anticult" be translated as "antiseita" or as "antisectário" in Portuguese? What about Spanish and other languages for that matter?

I ask because the Bitter Winter website got me curious about the term-of-abuse "cult" as it is translated in different languages, especially after Massimo Introvigne wrote a recent article with the term "anticult terrorism" therein. -- Apisite (talk) 10:48, 2 July 2026 (UTC)

It seems like "antiseita" is used to mean anti-cult in the new religious movement kind of way and is thereby applicable. However, anticulto is much more common and antiseita doesn't even have a page. If you anyone is in the mood to make it a page it should probably not be an alternative translation and instead a synonym of anticulto. It is attestable, but rather rare. IotaCi (talk) 01:55, 16 July 2026 (UTC)

Native North American

A Native American from North America? JMGN (talk) 17:14, 2 July 2026 (UTC)

The fully title cased collocation, which signifies that referent, is lexicalized to the extent of having lexicalization status within contexts that clarify its meaning (example here), but it is not ubiquitously lexicalized in the sense that "people use it all the time" (no, they don't), and it invites confusion to the extent that it is capitonymic versus the unlexicalized collocations native North American (anyone born in NoAm) and native North American (anyone with NoAm-Indigenous ancestry). Thus, in speech (as opposed to writing), it is homophonously ambiguous, and even in writing, the unlexicalized collocations are polysemically ambiguous, plus, many people aren't real sharp about noticing capitonymic distinctions anyway. This situation invites misparsing. People with adequate talent for word choice will think carefully about wording and phrasing so as to gracefully avoid predictable misparsing potential. Polysemy and ambiguity are endemic to natural language (speaking of nativity). As for the question of whether Wiktionary should enter it as a headword, though, there is no good argument that it shouldn't do so, because there are lots of attestations (as seen among the results at https://www.google.com/search?tbo=p&tbm=bks&q=%22the+Native+North+American%22, https://www.google.com/search?tbo=p&tbm=bks&q=%22the+Native+North+Americans%22, https://www.google.com/search?tbo=p&tbm=bks&q=%22the+Native+South+American%22, and https://www.google.com/search?tbo=p&tbm=bks&q=%22the+Native+South+Americans%22). Quercus solaris (talk) 19:17, 2 July 2026 (UTC)

@Quercus solaris Similarly Native South American, right? (a member of any of the indigenous peoples of South America). JMGN (talk) 19:58, 2 July 2026 (UTC)

Yeah, descriptively it's a fact that those collocations (fully title cased) signify those referents; and their degree of lexicalization is not nothing. Quercus solaris (talk) 20:30, 2 July 2026 (UTC)

Vingty

A modern slang definition is an object or piece of memorabilia that is considered to be vintage. I created the domain name to match current trends of .coms ending in “y,” as is a big commercialized & highly successful branding strategy. Thus, the root of “vintage” is “vingt.” The addition of the letter “y” at the end then is a trendy way of stating the vintage nature of an item. It is vintage is a boring statement whereas it’s “Vingty,” is a new cool way of replacing the word vintage & has deep branding ability adding to the domain’s value. I currently use the .coms url as a re-direct to my Etsy store and was hoping they (Etsy) would take notice of the domain name. I feel it better suits Etsy because after all- what’s an Etsy? I realize my ideal leaves out handmade items-but does it? Vintage or made by me rhymes perfectly with the ending suffix.

I hope my new word creation catches on & becomes coined.

Please note this is no am advertisement as my site is years away from being in a condition worth someone’s money.

I just make up domain names & this is one I hold close to my heart. Say it with me! It’s a vingty look! Or-look at her vingty decor. TannerBee (talk) 06:33, 3 July 2026 (UTC)

We don't add words you just invented. See WT:CFI. ~2026-37910-27 (talk) 08:18, 3 July 2026 (UTC)

corralled and corraled

• corral#Verb

Hi just flagging this because wiktionary currently states that the former is British Eng and the latter is US Eng. However, multiple spell checkers contradict this and state that corraled is incorrect in US Eng. I note that on Google Ngrams, corralled is by far the more common word (suggesting that corraled is rare in US Eng).[6]

Also, is this only ever a past participle? Can it also be an adjective if it stands before a noun? Example context:

Several corralled servants brought the water to her room.

^ Is that still classed as a past participle or is it an adjective? Idk, my grammar is not great.

Anyway, please correct (or don't) as appropriate. Bye ~2026-32827-71 (talk) 18:10, 4 July 2026 (UTC)

You can select “American English” in Google Ngrams Viewer. Historically, the spelling corraled was not that uncommon in American English.^[7] In recent years, however, it has been crowded out by corralled.^[8] The spelling has not yet reached the level of extinction, but may be driven there by spell checkers.  ​‑‑Lambiam 07:19, 6 July 2026 (UTC)

Should wiktionary assert that corralled is British English and corraled is US English? It appears that corralled is over 3 times more common in US Eng.

[9] ~2026-32827-71 (talk) 10:31, 6 July 2026 (UTC)

Since corraled has so sharply fallen out of favor it might be good to put a (uncommon) tag or something but the divide is purportedly accurate. More importantly, I'm changing each of those pages to include reference to the other spelling. IotaCi (talk) 18:40, 16 July 2026 (UTC)

Seeking Opinions Regarding the Etymology in the English Section of the Page "hew"

I have noticed something on the page for English "hew". I came upon this while referencing the etymology of the entry, and I noticed that within the etymology it is indicated, in not so many words, that the "hew" sense-meaning "to conform (to)" arose by means of the ellipsis of the bulk of the old English timber-framing phrase "hew to the line", which itself has come to mean "to conform" (after a process of semantic broadening). My question is, should this be split into two etymologies (develop an "Etymology 2"), with the third sense meaning of this entry being placed under its own etymological subsection, and does this accord with Wiktionary custom as I am supposing? I question that because the derivation of the particular sense in question is not from any of the Proto-Germanic or PIE etyma from which the other senses of "hew" are genetically descended, but rather has been derived by a process of univerbation from said woodworking phrase. The differences in the etymologies, both in the type of originating linguistic units (root and lemmas vs. a phrase) and in terms of processes (genetic descent vs. univerbation), between the first two and the third senses on the page, would appear to make the etymologies pertaining thereto both distinct and separable. Therefore, it seems to myself as if those etymologies should be separated on the page entry into an Etymology 1 and an Etymology 2. What say you all? Thanks in advance. ~2026-37544-07 (talk) 19:56, 4 July 2026 (UTC)

She was shaking her head no.

Is this meaning of no covered yet? JMGN (talk) 20:09, 4 July 2026 (UTC)

@JMGN: It means no. Like "not yes", disagreement. If you make such outrageous posts then you need to state what you think it means (preferably based on your own logic and not Microsoft(R) Encarta(R) for Windows(R) 95, we are all sick of that, mate). ~2026-39130-53 (talk) 00:07, 10 July 2026 (UTC)

@~2026-39130-53 Who's y'all, SC? https://ell.stackexchange.com/q/375326/60502 JMGN (talk) 00:41, 10 July 2026 (UTC)

I did smile when I first read the comment and thought "ahh you're interpreting 'no' as some kind of adverb". I assume we call "yes" and "no" adverbs in the wastebasket taxon style, so we don't have to deal with awkward anti-Chomskyan issues when there is what would otherwise be a run-on sentence with a comma ("yes. PERIOD. Virginia there is a Santa Claus"). Your statutory rights are not affected. ~2026-39130-53 (talk) 00:44, 10 July 2026 (UTC)

Horse breeds and proper nouns

Please chime in at User talk:Quercus solaris#Horse_breeds, where I think a big series of Wikidata edits are going entirely the wrong way... ~2026-38329-29 (talk) 22:54, 5 July 2026 (UTC)

That link just takes me to the user talk page, rather than specifically to anything about horse breeds. Overlordnat1 (talk) 11:41, 7 July 2026 (UTC)

@Overlordnat1: I fixed the link. Try it now. Chuck Entz (talk) 13:28, 7 July 2026 (UTC)

vro

From what I've seen on the internet, it looks like this English term has been re-analyzed from a synonym of "bro" into a gender-neutral version of "bro". Is this true? HyperAnd (talk) 06:59, 6 July 2026 (UTC)

I've only seen vro being used as a synonym so far, and I don't think this is true because many people use bro gender-neutrally at this point, and people might have used vro gender-neutrally for that reason. 009slam (talk) 15:58, 10 July 2026 (UTC)

ǐ in IPA

Serbo-Croatian sičan has IPA pronunciation /sǐt͡ʃaːn/. What does ǐ mean? Vox Sciurorum (talk) 19:33, 7 July 2026 (UTC)

Similar marks show up in some Ancient Greek transcriptions so I assume it's a pitch accent indicator of some sort. ~2026-35055-72 (talk) 20:36, 8 July 2026 (UTC)

Yes you are right, ǐ in IPA means a rising tone. 009slam (talk) 16:02, 10 July 2026 (UTC)

Alfred pronunciation

The current article makes the following claim "The modern pronunciation with /f/ is a spelling pronunciation; the name in Old English was pronounced with [v], as shown in its Middle English descendant Alured (in which u stands for modern v)."

However this seems a bit odd because in general English forbids syllables starting with /vr/, with the only exception aside from foreign words/names being recent onomatopoeias like "vroom". The paragraph seems to suggest that the original pronunciation was /ˈælvɹəd/ which would be syllabified as /ˈæl.vɹəd/ (since by the Middle English period, people would've forgotten that it was originally two words), but since this creates a /vr/ cluster at the start I would think that the development of the /ˈæl.fɹəd/ pronunciation would be a natural response to the syllabification rather than a spelling pronunciation. (The Old English article also lists [ˈæɫvˌræːd] which is a bit odd to me since I thought Old English devoiced fricatives at the end of syllables (and the word ælf ended with an [f]), but I don't know enough about Old English pronunciation to strongly object to this). ~2026-35055-72 (talk) 14:08, 8 July 2026 (UTC)

The logic here is dubious: "would be syllabified as /ˈæl.vɹəd/ (since by the Middle English period, people would've forgotten that it was originally two words)". Even if we accept the premise that it was not analyzable as two words, that by no means requires placing the /v/ in the same syllable as the following /r/: why would it? The maximal onset principle (which is of debated validity as applied to English anyways) never says you need to put a consonant in the following syllable if it would create a disallowed onset. This is why even adherents of the MOP normally accept syllabifications like ˈdɪŋ.i and ˈæt.ləs for English: since ŋ and tl are disallowed (or only marginally permitted) as onsets, they clearly can be in the coda even before a vowel or resonant in monomorphemic words. Likewise, I see nothing remarkable if Middle English Alured was syllabified with /lv.r/. As for Old English, it devoiced fricatives word-finally. In syllable-final position, evidence points instead to Old English fricatives matching the voicing of the following consonant. Thus, ælf, had [f] (as did Ælfstān) but Ælfrǣd, Ælfwine, Ælfgār had [v].--Urszag (talk) 21:23, 8 July 2026 (UTC)

I'm referring to the modern English pronunciation. If [ˈæɫvˌræːd] does indeed correctly represent the Old English pronunciation, it doesn't necessitate that the modern pronunciation with [f] is a spelling pronunciation. There was considerable regional variation during the Middle English, and resyllabification from [ɫv.ɹ] to [ɫ.vɹ] would naturally trigger a voicing shift to [ɫ.fɹ] (although I suppose that Middle English manuscript evidence would be required to confirm this). ~2026-35055-72 (talk) 23:30, 8 July 2026 (UTC)

It's true there was variation in pronunciation in Middle English. But that doesn't mean that any sound change that seems plausible necessarily happened. And I don't see what evidence there is for thinking that it is even plausible that regular sound changes caused [ɫv.ɹ] to shift to [ɫ.vɹ] and then [ɫ.fɹ] in this word. As I said, resyllabification, in cases where it occurs at all, does not normally create onset clusters that are not permitted by the phonotactics of a language. Can you give an attested example of that happening? (I gave two counterexamples from English, dinghy and atlas; other counterexamples can be given from Spanish, where [sp] is not allowed as an onset and so España is syllabified as "esˈpa.ɲa" not "eˈspa.ɲa", and from Arabic, where no complex onsets are allowed and so عفريت is syllabified as "ʕif.riːt" not "ʕi.friːt". Thus, I see no reason to expect that /ˈælvɹəd/ "would be syllabified as /ˈæl.vɹəd/", as you claimed.--Urszag (talk) 02:24, 12 July 2026 (UTC)

English lacks a consistent phonotactic structure. Even for basic vocabulary like hurry /ˈhʌɹi/, linguists have no consensus on exactly where the first syllable begins and the second syllable ends. Some linguists consider that the first syllable ends after /ʌ/, and others consider it to end after /ɹ/. Some linguists have even proposed that the consonant /ɹ/ belongs to both the first and the second syllables.

In the case of English, most linguistics-people (myself included) only use primary and secondary stress symbols, and forgo the full stops entirely. When I add pronunciations, the only exception is when a diphthong and a monophthong occur at a syllable boundary. SVG-image-maker (talk) 19:28, 12 July 2026 (UTC)

In many accents (my own included), this would be an r-coloured vowel (ɝ I guess), so it would be [ˈhɝ.i]. Wouldn't it be [ˈhʌ.ɹi] in accents that don't have the shift? I can't imagine that [ʌɹ] could remain stably distinct from [ɝ] for long without a syllable break splitting the [ʌ] and the [ɹ]. ~2026-35055-72 (talk) 01:36, 13 July 2026 (UTC)

In the examples you gave, [ŋ] is completely forbidden in the onset so it is expected that it wouldn't appear there in English even if it appeared in the language that the word was borrowed from. However while [vɹ] is forbidden, it is significantly easier to pronounce than either of your examples (which are virtually impossible to pronounce for English speakers). This is because [vɹ] differs from an allowed cluster only in voicing, while English doesn't permit [dl] in onsets either and [ŋ] is always voiced. In the case of the consonant /ɹ/, there is a universal tendency towards pulling consonant clusters in the previous syllable apart so they instead form clusters with /ɹ/. Aside from transparent compounds like "bedridden" that are treated as two words, you can see this in words like "children" where even though it's morphologically child + -ren, it is syllabified as [ˈt͡ʃɪl.dɹən], pulling the r to the second syllable. For examples of this specifically for [v.ɹ] --> [.fɹ], a good example is the word "sovereign" because in Middle English (and in modern times), the schwa between the v and the r is frequently dropped. https://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/middle-english-dictionary/dictionary/MED41908/track?counter=1&search_id=5141035 shows spellings such as "suffrain", "sufferaine", "suffrane", "suffereinte", "suffreinous", etc. with the double f unambiguously indicating a voiceless [f], so in some Middle English pronunciations we can see resyllabification happening even though the original word has a [v]. ~2026-35055-72 (talk) 01:19, 13 July 2026 (UTC)

monkey-branch

I recently came across the term "monkey-branch" in a slightly different sense to the one we already list (which is "To attempt to improve one's status (at work, or in personal relationships, etc.) by repeatedly choosing the best option and then moving to better options as they become available".)

The new sense encompasses that, but specifically involves lining up a new romantic partner before leaving the old one.: [10]

How should that be included? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 16:09, 9 July 2026 (UTC)

*bands and Category:English miscellaneous irregular plurals

Discussion moved to Wiktionary:Grease pit/2026/July#*bands and Category:English miscellaneous irregular plurals.

The meaning of don't look now

don't look now

This one is intriguing me at the moment. My understanding is that if X and Y are in a place, and Z is nearby (but not part of their group), X might say "don't look now, Y, but Z is picking her nose again" — in other words it's a way to draw attention to somebody without having that "attention-drawing" draw attention back upon oneself. That is the literal sense and origin, yes? Well, our don't look now entry has two senses, which are both bizarre to me and don't match any usage I recognise. Is this what we think the phrase means? Ping @Soap as creator. ~2026-39130-53 (talk) 00:27, 10 July 2026 (UTC)

i apologize for the highly specific first sense. i can't really explain why i wrote that as a definition instead of a speculative etymology. and it's possible that this expression was sarcastic all along and that there never was a party of hunters out in the forest somewhere using this phrase to alert one careless member of their party to an approaching grizzly.

as for the second sense, i believe that's what it means, yes, but i'm open to learning new things. clearly the expression exists and is somewhat of a comic staple, so if it doesnt mean what i wrote, what could it mean? i think perhaps using a comic without the illustration is not the best way to show the meaning, but, what else could we use? it's a phrase that only makes sense in a comic (where a visual element can change from one panel to the next) and in real life (where one person can see something the other cannot). a novel, which is our most common source of cites, would be an awkward place to set up this type of asymmetrical conversation. —Soap— 12:12, 10 July 2026 (UTC)

Definitely true that (as OP said) 'a way to draw attention to somebody without having that "attention-drawing" draw attention back upon oneself' needs to be the main and first-listed sense. Also true that some uses do not literally invoke the 'pay-attention-surreptitiously' aspect, which means that some additional senses beyond the main one will be OK too (but they need work yet). Quercus solaris (talk) 16:43, 10 July 2026 (UTC)

The entry doesn't look like anything more than a first draft or some hypotheses about meaning.

I hate(???) to be a scold, but: shouldn't we get outside of our own idiolects and act like serious lexicographers? The first step is to see what other lexicographers have written. (Nothing at OneLook) If we still have (over)confidence in our armchair musings, then the next step is find a lot of cites. (Lot's in fictional dialog or other conversationally written text) Then sort into 'piles' of similar ones, possibly with similar collocating terms, eg, but (before or after). Then, assess whether any of the piles are not SoP. Lastly, write a definition. DCDuring (talk) 18:52, 10 July 2026 (UTC)

Quite true, but if we all did that, then development of Wiktionary would go from (1) understaffed within a whisker of dying to (2) DOA. It's OK to take entries from crap to middling first now, and then someday later take the time to do the necessary academic work to take them up to eleven. Quercus solaris (talk) 19:09, 10 July 2026 (UTC)

We can rip off other dictionaries for most of our content and need have no shame or fear any legal consequence with just a modicum of care. It's when we have no fellow-travelling lemmings that we most need to be systematic. I have added to Citations:don't look now six usages with no but on the page. Four/six mean something like "Don't let the object of the preceding of following statement see you looking at them". 1923 is about "modesty preservation". The meaning of 2016 (from a Batman comic dialog), eludes me.

It didn't take that long. DCDuring (talk) 19:51, 10 July 2026 (UTC)

The Batman citation could almost be replaced by "newsflash#Interjection! We're not in Kansas anymore." It has a different colloquial effect than "Don't let the object of the preceding of following statement see you looking at them". DCDuring (talk) 20:57, 10 July 2026 (UTC)

Urban Dictionary has, for newsflash: "A word commonly used to point out the obvious" as in Newsflash: Getting shot hurts! DCDuring (talk) 21:05, 10 July 2026 (UTC)

MWOnline has: "used in speech before a statement to tell someone to be aware of something without looking"

Don't look now, but they're coming our way.

Don't look now, but I think we're being followed.

These cases convert the purpose of not looking from 'don't draw attention/invite a response/display interest' to 'don't waste time looking, just do something' or 'Look out!'. DCDuring (talk) 21:37, 10 July 2026 (UTC)

I appreciate the edits other people are making and can't think of anything to add except that the comic strip i quoted has both characters facing the approaching the shark, with the baby saying the line to point out to his father what should have been obvious to both. Marvin comics being apparently one of the few that didnt put dates on its strips i can only say it's on the 20th content page of Marvin: Spoil Me! which was published in the summer of 1986. I think that provides important context showing that it isn't used in the sense we now have at the top. It's possible that we could find a better wording than the one I came up with, however. Again, I suspect this usage is common in comic strips and in real life but uncommon in novels because it would be more difficult to communicate the situation to the reader without the visuals. This fits with Batman being the one cite whose sense doesn't fit up above ... it's the only comic. Here are some other uses of the phrase in comics .... a lot of them are offline now, as it seems this site mostly indexes very old webcomics, so I only just barely found two cites we could use from it, but I'm sure there are many more .... it's just that most modern webcomics aren't searchably archived anywhere. —Soap— 15:09, 11 July 2026 (UTC)

TV, film? In the Batman cite the use seems to be to remind a particularly inattentive reader of the time-travel that is the set-up for the story.

The top sense is first because it is the only one attested. It is also a broad sense that includes many uses, especially the social or public-space uses. The discourse function of the expression in all the other cases seems to draw on the (earlier?) types of uses.DCDuring (talk) 16:30, 11 July 2026 (UTC)

"Don't look now, doc, but you missed me" (The Unruly Hare) Hftf (talk) 18:18, 11 July 2026 (UTC)

Another type are discreetly calling attention to a problem with the clothing of the person addressed so they can correct it without drawing attention. This has led to a number of puns on "Don't look now, but your slip is showing", based on slip being both an undergarment and an error. I think that's where most of the "Don't look now, but your [x] is showing" usage comes from, though it seems to have branched into a whole subset with "Don't look now, but" followed by something that the addressee doesn't want to admit but that is asserted to be obvious. Chuck Entz (talk) 18:47, 11 July 2026 (UTC)

I think that captures a lot of usage. It pulls the idiom from uses where the meaning is literal but there is a social function into uses where the literal meaning usually doesn't apply. When and if it does apply, maybe the idea is to not draw attention to one's 'slip' by looking at it. DCDuring (talk) 19:22, 11 July 2026 (UTC)

demigirl#Adjective

Pretty unconvincing. The cites are all like "people who identify as demigirl" which looks nouny to me. We know the usual grammatical tests for adjectivity (User:DCDuring has certainly gone hoarse repeating them to us): "how demigirl are you? he/she/it is the most demigirl person I've ever seen"... etc. ~2026-39130-53 (talk) 00:40, 10 July 2026 (UTC)

demiboy raises the same questions but has no citations at all. ~2026-39130-53 (talk) 00:41, 10 July 2026 (UTC)

Hmm, an interesting question. At first glance, I shared your skepticism, but upon consideration, I think that must be because the word has a very recognizable element ("girl") that is—when on its own—a noun; thinking about the actual "[someone] identifies as demigirl" cites, and what kind of words can go in "[someone] identifies as __" constructions, it does seem like mostly adjectives. E.g. "he identifies as _Portuguese_ moreso than _European_", or "...identifies as bisexual", etc: a noun would typically bring in an "a" ("he identifies as _a European_", "he identifies as _a Portuguese [person]_"), or require plurality ("they identify as _Europeans_"), or would need to be a mass noun ("the material was identified as iron"). There are very few hits for google books:"identify as man" (they run out after 3 pages) compared to google books:"identify as male", and most of them put "man" in quotation marks, they seem to be using a less-usual grammatical construction to highlight that the specific term the person identifies with is "man"; it seems like the construction usually indicates adjectivalness. Online, I can also find e.g. google:"was demigirl"; since it would be (AFAICT) even more of a stretch to view demigirl as a mass noun (like "the table was iron"), there too it seems easiest to view "[so-and-so] was demigirl" as an adjective, yes? or no? - -sche (discuss) 01:40, 10 July 2026 (UTC)

Yes yes -sche I believe you generally have a clue, but you could have spent the time writing that massive paragraph putting good citations in. Kisses, ~2026-39130-53 (talk) 02:05, 10 July 2026 (UTC)

The 2015 Anonymous adjective cite seems like a mention, but there are enough "as demigirl" cites in Books alone.

Also, 2 books cites are 2019. Still a neologism?

Is demi girl an alt. form of the adjective. Do we count alt. form cites as main-form-definition attestation? DCDuring (talk) 13:51, 10 July 2026 (UTC)

Regarding that last question (only): I currently am convinced that it is best to show quotes for all of the forms at the "main" entry (i.e., the one that the alt form entries point toward) and also to show quotes for each alt form at its alt form entry. I have good reasons for the conviction that it is valid, and better, to show it in both places. As yet, I do not go out of my way to impose this concept on existing content (retroactively), but I advocate its adoption on a prospective basis (i.e., going forward). Quercus solaris (talk) 16:02, 10 July 2026 (UTC)

...they seem to be using a less-usual grammatical construction to highlight that the specific term the person identifies with is "man"... – this seems to me like exactly what’s happening in the quotations currently in the entry. They specifically discuss the label itself. — Polomo ⟨⁠ ⁠oi!⁠ ⁠⟩ · 16:25, 11 July 2026 (UTC)

Okay, these Google results for "was demigirl" are pretty convincing, and I can see how these LGBT+ labels may turn adjective-ish more easily. — Polomo ⟨⁠ ⁠oi!⁠ ⁠⟩ · 16:31, 11 July 2026 (UTC)

the definition of this Japanese particle

isn’t this specific definition supposed to mean “men’s speech”, not “masculine”? cause that’s a totally different meaning, right? I’m just double checking with others. Aurora :3 (yap? • contribs) 02:46, 10 July 2026 (UTC)

Jeffersonian

The citation seems excessively long to me. I was reverted when I trimmed it. Consensus please. ~2026-39130-53 (talk) 03:50, 10 July 2026 (UTC)

Now trimmed in such a way as to retain the semantically relevant part. Quercus solaris (talk) 04:38, 11 July 2026 (UTC)

gabacho - rutabaga?

Definition 3 is "(colloquial, mildly pejorative, Texas) a white man of any nation (originally the word for rutabaga)". If this is correct (and attested), "rutabaga" should be split off as a separate definition, shouldn't it? (But is this correct at all; was the semantic evolution really, as the entry currently implies, "Pyrenean" → "Frenchman" → "rutabaga" → "any white person", or was it not more likely "Pyrenean" → "Frenchman" → "any white person"?) - -sche (discuss) 05:00, 10 July 2026 (UTC)

i agree. i wonder if the rutabaga sense is a somewhat garbled duplicate of the note that's already in the etymology. Rutabagas are not really associated with American cuisine, so it's hard to see that semantic shift happening in the Americas, which suggests it happened in Europe, where there'd be no particular need for a term for a white man, which means the rutabaga sense might have been generalized from the goiter sense when the Spanish saw those vegetables for the first time. if we can cite it, we can list it as a fifth sense, probably obsolete.

i clicked to a few other wikis to compare, and some suggest a different etymology, deriving from the verb gabar and its cognates. worth noting perhaps that we dont really explain gavach. —Soap— 13:25, 10 July 2026 (UTC)

à cheval: made on two numbers (adv)

By placing a bet on two adjacent numbers, e.g. in roulette or cards

Etymology: < French, "on horseback," which used to mean "with one foot on each side." Because the risk is shared equally between two ( Microsoft® Encarta® 2009) JMGN (talk) 08:09, 10 July 2026 (UTC)

Shindo intensity scale at 震度 (shindo)

In the Japanese section under the definition "seismic intensity" is a "Coordinate terms" section with a "Shindo intensity scale". This is a list of earthquake magnitudes expressed as numerals ("1" through "7" with hiragana ruby text to show the Japanese pronunciation). Instead of "5" and "6", there are separate lines for "5-" [5弱 ごじゃく (gojaku)], "5+" [5強 ごきょう [go-kyō]], [6弱 ろくじゃく (rokujaku)], and [6強 ろくきょう (rokukyō)]. All of the terms are redlinks, because there are no Japanese entries at 1 through 7, and certainly none for 5 and 6 combined with Japanese words for "weak" and "strong". Besides which, there's no information on what these numbers mean (see Japan Meteorological Agency seismic intensity scale on WikipediaWikipedia for a breakdown).

This table has been there for over 3 1/2 years and I don't edit Japanese entries, so I'm checking here before I remove it, just in case. As for fixing it: I don't see how there are any "coordinate terms" it could link to- these are just numeric earthquake intensities- and it would probably be better replaced with a link to the Wikipedia article and/or the Japanese equivalent ( 気象庁震度階級 on the Japanese WikipediaWikipedia ^ja). What do you think? Chuck Entz (talk) 02:35, 11 July 2026 (UTC)

I agree with replacing the table with a link to Wikipedia. It would be nice to have something informative about how to use “intensity number+strong/weak” in context with this term (they often appear together), and for that purpose I think a usage example or quotation would serve well. Haplology (Talk) 01:38, 12 July 2026 (UTC)

dihydro, tetrahydro

These seem obviously wrong... shouldn’t they be prefixes (dihydro-, tetrahydro-)? But also, this is formulaic chemistry nomenclature, i.e., just two independent prefixes stacked. I think we should delete these (including what’s already at dihydro-). Cf. anti-anti-. — Polomo ⟨⁠ ⁠oi!⁠ ⁠⟩ · 15:05, 11 July 2026 (UTC)

There seem to be other cases of this (prefixes being listed as other parts of speech), including hydroxy and dihydroxy, that seem suspicious. Please help find more of these. (I bet we also have an abundance of formulaic prefixes that I think should be deleted, but that’s a separate matter) — Polomo ⟨⁠ ⁠oi!⁠ ⁠⟩ · 15:19, 11 July 2026 (UTC)

They do get used as standalone words sometimes, often in compound noun phrases such as "dihydro group", "dihydro bond", "dihydro derivative". Undoubtedly there are messes to be found and cleaned up though. Recently I noticed many such terms being listed as related at fluoro despite that entry not including a definition of this type (which it could). Averinthine (talk) 12:03, 14 July 2026 (UTC)

I see. In that case, I guess the entries might be okay (is the noun PoS correct?), but we need to fix the derived terms. — Polomo ⟨⁠ ⁠oi!⁠ ⁠⟩ · 15:59, 14 July 2026 (UTC)

It's not always especially clear whether these words are serving as nouns or adjectives, but most of the time it looks like a noun to me. Here's a pretty unambiguous example for hydroxy; there are others like it. Averinthine (talk) 01:36, 15 July 2026 (UTC)

Videos could be useful for template documentation

As an occasional editor, it would be great if you could just watch a video (YouTube or otherwise) to find out how a particular template works. Especially for the more complicated templates. Of course we can still keep the text-based documentation, for those who prefer to learn templates by written text. SVG-image-maker (talk) 20:29, 11 July 2026 (UTC)

Te infinitives of Dutch separable verbs

Dutch separable verbs undergo separation not only in subordinate clauses, but also in te infinitives:

• hij moest zichzelf geweld aandoen om het spek aan te bakken.^[11]

Should these separated infinitives be presented too in the conjugation tables? Note that the gap can be larger than just a single te:

• Er moet worden afgeweken van het ‘modeldenken’ in het opleidingsonderwijs ... om aan te kunnen sluiten bij de specifieke mogelijkheden of beperkingen van een student.^[12]

The latter separated form, with an intrusive auxiliary, coexists with a conjoined form:

• Bij terugdenken wordt het beleid juist op maat geschreven om te kunnen aansluiten bij bestaande beslispunten in de dagelijkse werkpraktijk van de uitvoerders. ^[13]

@DerRudymeister, DrJos, Lingo Bingo Dingo, Marnixvdb, Mnemosientje, Rua  ​‑‑Lambiam 21:38, 11 July 2026 (UTC)

We have them in German, where they are univerbated (a spelling formerly common in Dutch as well: aantesluiten). In my opinion, mere spelling conventions should never justify a different treatment. On the other hand, we also (falsely) think that the conventional difference between "raspberry juice" and "frambozensap" is meaningful, so who knows... ~2026-38565-25 (talk) 22:38, 11 July 2026 (UTC)

Which treatment should not differ from which treatment?  ​‑‑Lambiam 06:31, 12 July 2026 (UTC)

@Lambian Sorry for my late answer: What I meant is that spelling conventions should be irrelevant as to whether Wiktionary will include a given term or form. Whether to spell *frambozen sap or frambozensap, or raspberry juice or *rasberryjuice, is a mere spelling convention. So this should have no bearing. If there are actual morphological differences, that's another matter; but the convention as such should be irrelevant.
Regarding this particular question such a principle would mean: The fact that German spells anzuschließen, while Dutch (today) spells aan te sluiten is irrelevant. The fact that Dutch can say aan te kunnen sluiten, while German cannot say *an zu können schließen may be relevant. ~2026-39739-81 (talk) 23:10, 15 July 2026 (UTC)

A conjugation table should present morphological forms of a verb. Aan te sluiten is not a different inflected form; it is the infinitive appearing in a syntactic environment in which te is required. Likewise, aan te kunnen sluiten, aan gesloten te hebben etc. are all syntactic constructions, not conjugated forms. Since there is no principled place to stop once such constructions are admitted, they are probably better placed in usage notes than in the conjugation table itself. Marnixvdb (talk) 11:52, 12 July 2026 (UTC)

Did you mean aan te hebben gesloten?

Don’t the phrases ik sluit me aan bij de vorige spreker and om aan te sluiten bij de vorige spreker both contain verb forms of the same verb, aansluiten? Both are constructions governed by the rules of syntax. Why should the conjugation table present the first of these verb forms (the indicative appearing in a main clause), but not the second (the infinitive appearing in a te + infinitive construction)?  ​‑‑Lambiam 20:34, 12 July 2026 (UTC)

Hm, fair point. I don't object strongly to including the simple te-infinitive if others agree with it, but I still don't think the conjugation table should extend to productive periphrastic constructions involving auxiliaries such as aan te kunnen sluiten, as then to me there seems no principled place to stop. Marnixvdb (talk) 06:50, 13 July 2026 (UTC)

Of course, just like the conjugation table of aansluiten should not also contain sluit ik aan, sluit je aan, sluit hij aan, ... .  ​‑‑Lambiam 08:31, 13 July 2026 (UTC)

-ageous?

The Longman Pronunc. Dict. includes it, stating that this suffix may impose rhythmic stress on the preceding stem, as in advantageous /ˌædvənˈteɪdʒəs/. JMGN (talk) 21:56, 11 July 2026 (UTC)

It is not at all uncommon that a suffix moves the stress: anonym → anonymous; cerule → ceruleous; membrane → membraneous. This is also what we see here. It does not turn -age +‎ -ous into a suffix in its own right.  ​‑‑Lambiam 07:02, 12 July 2026 (UTC)

@Lambiam The dict. also includes both -age and -ous, so I cannot make sense of -ageous even as a sort of phonologic unit... JMGN (talk) 09:28, 12 July 2026 (UTC)

justice-impacted individual, justice-involved

A recent edit stated that at least one of these entries may be somewhat misdefined. For example, could a justice-impacted individual, currently defined as "criminal", be a defendant who has not (yet) been found guilty of criminality? (Or no?) - -sche (discuss) 03:13, 12 July 2026 (UTC)

Here we find a much more general definition. This is a mention, not a use, but it seems to be borne out by actual uses.

A first point is that the term appears to be the sum of justice-impacted +‎ individual, as evidenced by uses such as justice-impacted people,^[14][15][16] justice-impacted talent,^[17][18][19] and justice-impacted student.^[20][21][22]

If having been exonerated after a prior criminal conviction removes the criminal label, here someone without that label self-identifies as “justice-impacted”. And uses of justice-impacted family^[23][24][25] or justice-impacted household^[26] show that the impact can extend beyond a single allegedly criminal individual.  ​‑‑Lambiam 07:33, 12 July 2026 (UTC)

Both justice-impacted and justice-involved seem to me not SoP and to be (or have been) euphemistic. I don't think we will find many instances in which justice-impacted is applied to criminal defense attorneys who lose a case. I wonder whether these terms ever apply victims of crimes attributable to lack of law enforcement or recidivism, except in polemics. Though more likely, I suppose, we probably won't find justice-involved applied to arresting officers, let alone parole officers, traffic cops, judges, etc. Effort devoted to these terms should include looking for cites that deal with edge cases and euphemism. DCDuring (talk) 14:05, 12 July 2026 (UTC)

Based on Lambiam's findings I have 'moved' (redirected) the entry "justice-impacted individual" to "justice-impacted". Whether the terms are SOP would seem to depend on their scope; are prosecutors "justice-involved", for example? In a literal sense, at least some are, but whether they are within the scope of how the term is used is another matter. - -sche (discuss) 02:26, 16 July 2026 (UTC)

moult into

I've come across some uses of mo(u)lt and I'm not sure whether or not the existing definition covers them adequately. Something like "birds moult periodically" is obviously well-explained by sense 1, "To undergo the process of shedding or losing a covering [...etc...]", but what if the bird "moults into a new suit", or if nymphae "moult into adults"? What if "[a new thing] moults into the place of [an old thing]"? (That's the most aberrant use and I have not yet managed to find others like it, so perhaps it's just a singular oddity.) - -sche (discuss) 07:05, 12 July 2026 (UTC)

Why is this odd? Just replace the verb in these uses by by moulting, ... change:

• by moulting, the bird changes into a new suit;
• by moulting, nymphae change into adults.

Compare similar phrases with other verbs of change, like

• it crystallizes into flakes;^[27]
• It melts into an almost colourless fluid.^[28]

I do not understand the "most aberrant" use, though; what was the actual phrase? Some context might help.  ​‑‑Lambiam 07:55, 12 July 2026 (UTC)

Oh, sorry, I should have mentioned, I put all of the quotations I mentioned above here. - -sche (discuss) 17:33, 12 July 2026 (UTC)

Isn't this covered by the intransitive definition (overlong, BTW). I don't think moult is used if one merely dons a new layer without doffing an old one. DCDuring (talk) 19:55, 12 July 2026 (UTC)

colloquial whelm

Sense 5 is a backformation from overwhelm/underwhelm. Saumache (talk) 11:01, 12 July 2026 (UTC)

parge repoint

are parge & repoint synonyms ? ~2026-39545-78 (talk) 13:23, 12 July 2026 (UTC)

French à base de

(Notifying workgroup: PUC, Jberkel, Nicodene, AG202, Benwing2, Andrew Sheedy):

The Italian equivalent of this expression (a base di) can also be used with relational adjectives; e.g.

• a base oleosa (literally “à base huileuse”)
• a base naturale (literally “à base naturelle”)
• a base vegetale (literally “à base végétale”)

Can French à base de also be used with a feminine singular relational adjective without de as in Italian? If so (it seems to be so), can that please be mentioned in the usage notes?

o/ Emanuele6 (talk) 17:11, 12 July 2026 (UTC)

PWGmc *stubbju

Proto-West Germanic *stubbju: The daughter languages (OHG, ODT, OSX) show a neuter ja-stem. Although the PGmc may have been a masculine u-stem, by the time of PWGmc it had become neuter. I propose a move to Proto-West Germanic *stubbi. Thoughts/objections ? Leasnam (talk) 18:30, 12 July 2026 (UTC)

Request for third opinion

See also: WT:RFDE § intellectual diversity

Could someone please weigh in here? Thanks, Voorts (talk) 01:55, 13 July 2026 (UTC)

folk

folk has a lot of compound derived terms (e.g. womanfolk, blackfolk, countryfolk, etc). Could it be classified as a suffix? Frog x Lover (talk) 08:49, 13 July 2026 (UTC)

Most of these seem like fairly odd coinages (why say "womanfolk"/"womenfolk" when you can just say "women"?) and/or sound better (more idiomatic) when replaced with two word phrases ("black folks", "country folks", etc.) ~2026-35055-72 (talk) 15:13, 13 July 2026 (UTC)

To make your utterance more folksy. DCDuring (talk) 16:27, 13 July 2026 (UTC)

My brain views it etically as a root that is subject to compounding, rather than a suffix. Admittedly, though, -man and -woman are viewed by emic convention as suffixes, and at the moment I am finding it hard to argue with a straight face that there is a real difference between the behavior of those and the compounded use of folk. You might end up here with a hypothesis that is probably etically true but lacks emically conventional acceptance/recognition. Quercus solaris (talk) 21:34, 13 July 2026 (UTC)

antihero

An editor seems to insist on making the definition and list of examples here overly long. They at least seem overly long and verbose to me. — SURJECTION ^{/ T / C / L /} 04:22, 14 July 2026 (UTC)

It seems flat out incorrect too. An antihero doesn’t lack all heroic qualities and they’re thought of, or celebrated, as a hero by many despite their foibles. Overlordnat1 (talk) 06:49, 14 July 2026 (UTC)

Reverted as inaccurate, ungrammatical, and excessively long. ~2026-39870-67 (talk) 13:10, 15 July 2026 (UTC)

ð in modern English

The definition is currently,

Replaces th for an archaic style.

However, the pronunciation is given as only /ð/, not as both th phonemes. Do we have an example of such usage in English, and is it true that <ð> is only used for the voiced th? kwami (talk) 07:53, 14 July 2026 (UTC)

English has never used separate letters for /ð/ and /θ/ in writing. The choice of thorn for /θ/ and ð for /ð/ is a modern convention probably influenced by the IPA. ~2026-35055-72 (talk) 14:45, 14 July 2026 (UTC)

Do you know of any examples of this for Modern English? kwami (talk) 20:23, 14 July 2026 (UTC)

<ð> isn't really used in modern English (aside from a few weird people on Reddit but that hardly counts). The thing about "replaces th for an archaic style" is probably a mistake since usually thorn <þ> would be used for this purpose or even <y> (since it looks like thorn in some fonts), not <ð>. ~2026-35055-72 (talk) 00:54, 15 July 2026 (UTC)

I assume this is in reference to jocular respellings like If anyone is on X ðe app formerly known as Twitter… maybe help bring ðis to ðe fore for discussion. - -sche (discuss) 00:57, 15 July 2026 (UTC)

@Koavf Do you recall what you intended for this? For jocular usage, we e.g. don't even have an English entry for Я despite it being fairly common, even found in the logo "ToysЯus". kwami (talk) 02:26, 15 July 2026 (UTC)

??? ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 02:28, 15 July 2026 (UTC)

You added the English section last year.[29] kwami (talk) 03:33, 15 July 2026 (UTC)

Hmm, are you suggesting we shouldn't have an entry for this? That's interesting to think about. In my initial comment above I just assumed that if this is attestable (if there are 3+ CFI-meeting/durably-archived cases of people using this letter to archaicize, which is TBD), it'd be OK to have an entry, some kind of entry, though perhaps structured differently. Now, I'm trying to think of other comparable cases, and how we handle them. At u and v, the definition is just that it's a letter, and we have a note in the etymology section about how they were formerly used. (BTW, should that note be moved out of the English section, into Translingual? It's not just English that formerly interchanged these.) Here, I wonder if we should have an entry ð defining itself as a letter, tagged as rare, and with a usage note explaining how it's used (which is, apparently: jocularly to archaicize)...?
I think we can use a little common sense to distinguish someone writing "help bring ðis to ðe fore", where only one letter is different and it's still part of the same script as English otherwise uses, and the use of ð is consistent—it's an archaizing replacement for th when th stands for /ð/— vs. someone making their username "ｂάᔕ𝔨Ⓔｔ𝕓αㄥ𝕃 ℙ𝕝𝓪𝐘€г" and someone else making their username

"ｆㄖØтⓑ̵̨̬̱̌̀̀ą̴̛̫̝̥͖̞̜͚̙͍̠̓̓͌̓́͋̅̅͗̿͜͠Ļ̴̡̢̘͇̟̙̣̱͍̬̳̻̣͛̆͑̐͋͠Ⓛ̷̡̡̦̝̠͎̬̲̮̭́̌̈́̋̀̉̓̇͒̔͆̕ ғ卂𝕟"

etc, where the symbols are from myriad scripts and are not used consistently. (Where on that spectrum "Я" or "И" falls might be worth discussing.) But maybe there is some other way that this should be handled... - -sche (discuss) 04:31, 15 July 2026 (UTC)

Yes, I was thinking that it didn't seem to deserve an entry. I mean, there's the very common "metal umlaut", but we don't have that definition under ö or ◌̈. We could probably find adequate print attestation for dozens of letters that are used to give a jocular, archaizing or foreign feel to English, such as ø in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, which I imagine has been copied by thousands of people. What would qualify such a letter for inclusion? kwami (talk) 07:52, 15 July 2026 (UTC)

နေ့လည်

Why are there two entries for the word "afternoon" in Burmese on Wiktionary, နေ့လည် and နေ့လယ်? Even though the entry for the latter says its colloquial, it actually isn't. In the မြန်မာစာလုံး‌ပေါင်းသတ်ပုံကျမ်း, the word for afternoon is နေ့လယ်, not နေ့လည်, even the word for lunch is နေ့လယ်စာ. နေ့လည် only exists as a misspelling, and it isn't documented as a word in any other places except Wiktionary. Has anyone, except me, even noticed this? s‌ ~2026-39772-59 (talk) 13:49, 14 July 2026 (UTC)

swedish word [eluttag]

Hi, can you add the page for the Swedish word eluttag (power outlet) please. I don't know enough of wikitionary script to make it myself Thank you

ett eluttag (definite singular eluttaget, indefinite plural plural eluttag, definite plural eluttagen) 1. a power outlet, wall outlet, wall socket Det fanns inget eluttag i rummet så de behövde en förlängningssladd. There was no electrical outlet in the room so they needed an extension cord. (from https://svenska.se) ett jordat eluttag a grounded electrical outlet (from https://svenska.se) Alla platser i affärsklass var utrustade med eluttag för datorer. All business class seats were equipped with electrical outlets for computers (from https://en.bab.la/dictionary/swedish-english/eluttag) ~2026-39747-43 (talk) 14:49, 14 July 2026 (UTC)

 Done (eluttag). Voltaigne (talk) 14:46, 17 July 2026 (UTC)

[linamnam] as the Tagalog translation for [umami]

I would like to say that linamnam basically means the same thing as umami. Linamnam means "deliciousness" or "savoriness". I was wondering if umami can be added as a definition/translation for linamnam. CrimsonGray27 (talk) 10:52, 15 July 2026 (UTC)

Insanity at the top of dachshund entry

More than a dozen silly alt forms ("extremely rare, nonstandard phonetic spelling") at the top of the entry before you get to any useful content. Can this at least be made collapsible, or better removed? ~2026-39870-67 (talk) 12:07, 15 July 2026 (UTC)

Agree that it's excessive and with the partial remedy. We can also group the spellings into two or three groups that have shared labels and we should RfV the extremely rare ones, summarily deleting them in 30 days. DCDuring (talk) 12:13, 15 July 2026 (UTC)

It reminds me of some kind of lexicography/phonology homework assignment. DCDuring (talk) 14:03, 15 July 2026 (UTC)

"the few millies I sprinkle on her nose"

milly is given as slang for "million". The 1934 citation says: "The betting on my dog’s light, which is O. K. by me, since it means a juicy dividend on the few millies I sprinkle on her nose". This seems to refer to gambling on a dog race, but would someone really be betting a few million on a dog in the 1930s? Are we sure it means million here? ~2026-39870-67 (talk) 13:08, 15 July 2026 (UTC)

I looked up the original quote. I can't make out the text clearly, but I'm not even convinced it says "millies". Smurrayinchester (talk) 07:54, 16 July 2026 (UTC)

I think it clearly says "million" - to me the "sprinkle" is even less clear. Notice also how "front" in the next line looks like "frost", so there is something odd about the balance of the font. Imaginatorium (talk) 18:19, 16 July 2026 (UTC)

I don't know what others are looking at, but I can only find a low-quality low-res scan. It doesn't look like "millions" to me -- there don't seem to be enough letters at the end. It's not clear that it says "millies" either. If we can't tell for sure what it says, and since "millies = millions" seems unlikely on the face of it, perhaps we should just delete this citation. Mihia (talk) 23:42, 16 July 2026 (UTC)

It couldn't be a very distorted "pennies", could it? Mihia (talk) 23:53, 16 July 2026 (UTC)

I am inclined to agree that the easiest course of action is just to replace it with another citation, which I have now done. - -sche (discuss) 02:00, 17 July 2026 (UTC)

i wonder if it could be a performance-enhancing drug. i'm taking "sprinkled on her nose" literally here, since i've never heard of such an idiom. millie could be short for a milligram of that drug, or less likely a reference to something milled, like salt. —Soap— 19:14, 20 July 2026 (UTC)

The term "surface analysis" is missing from Wiktionary:Glossary

As this term comes up a lot in etymology sections, it may be worth adding to Wiktionary:Glossary. SVG-image-maker (talk) 14:37, 16 July 2026 (UTC)

I added it there. It links straight to surface analysis (at Appendix:Glossary) because I don't see sufficient reason to fork the content. Quercus solaris (talk) 23:51, 16 July 2026 (UTC)

I think honestly we should rename Wiktionary:Glossary (to something like Wiktionary:Wiktionary jargon or similar) to avoid confusion about this (any term used in etymology sections should be at Appendix:Glossary, and Wiktionary:Glossary is for terms that appear in talk pages or at RFV/RFD) Smurrayinchester (talk) 11:00, 17 July 2026 (UTC)

I would agree to this. Vininn126 (talk) 13:18, 17 July 2026 (UTC)

Support. MedK1 (talk) 23:51, 17 July 2026 (UTC)

It seems our page naming has led us, at least me, to sometimes forget which page is which. Appendix:Glossary is ordinary-user-facing, including definitions worded specifically for how the terms are used in the body of the dictionary (but not in the definitions themselves, which are supposed to be in ordinary English). Wiktionary:Glossary is for contributors. Both pages would benefit from renaming to indicate target audience and purpose. They should both be in Wiktionary space. DCDuring (talk) 15:02, 17 July 2026 (UTC)

Makes sense. I am OK with all proposed tweaks. Quercus solaris (talk) 15:05, 17 July 2026 (UTC)

See Wiktionary:Beer_parlour/2026/July#Rename_Wiktionary:Glossary for more. Quercus solaris (talk) 15:28, 17 July 2026 (UTC)

this much, that much

I added that much analogously to the already-existing this much, but I'm wondering whether either is actually idiomatic in the way claimed, or in the examples presently given. Does it simply mean "the stated amount/extent", which would be understood anyway from the parts? Or is there something more to these phrases? Mihia (talk) 19:16, 16 July 2026 (UTC)

so much, how much, however much. ~2026-40248-72 (talk) 02:31, 17 July 2026 (UTC)

I agree that those other expressions and possibly others using much have as much warrant for inclusion (subject to unambiguous attestation) as the two under discussion. But what current or potential definition of much would be suitable, let alone substitutable, in these? DCDuring (talk) 15:09, 17 July 2026 (UTC)

Where "this/that much" is concerned, as well as "as much", and by extension presumably "so much", as well as possibly others, some usages at least are apparently supposed to be covered by determiner sense 2 at much: (in combinations such as 'as much', 'this much') Used to indicate, demonstrate or compare the quantity of something.. However, there is also the annoyance of potentially different PoS usages: "I have this much money" (determiner), "I like you this much" (adverb), "I don't have that much" (pronoun). Generally speaking, I'm not sure that our treatment of all these phrases with "much" is presently entirely complete and consistent. Perhaps it would be useful to draw up a complete list, and see what we are dealing with:

• this much
• that much
• so much
• as much
• how much
• however much
• too much
• very much
• not much
• a bit much

Any others? Mihia (talk) 21:32, 17 July 2026 (UTC)

@Mihia: Here is a search for English lemmas with "much" in the page name. There are false positives, but it's probably not worth the time to figure out how to filter them out. Chuck Entz (talk) 22:18, 17 July 2026 (UTC)

If this is to be done, a first sort might be by the grammar of the expression. DCDuring (talk) 03:38, 18 July 2026 (UTC)

• I think that some of these "X much" entries are explicable as "X + much", but I doubt we would contemplate deleting them now and trying to cover everything at "much". There don't seem to be an open-ended number of them, anyway. I think we should briefly allude to such usages at much, sort of as is presently done, and link to the individual entries. I also feel, to answer my original question, that the supposed idiomatic sense at that much is fundamentally no different from the supposed "&lit" sense, and indeed I don't believe that the definition "The fact that has just been or is about to be stated" is correct, since it omits the idea of "a stated extent (but no more)" which is present. It's more like a definition of that alone. I'm combining the two definitions, but if anyone strongly disagrees then please discuss further. Mihia (talk) 20:35, 18 July 2026 (UTC)

what time

Shouldn't this entry at least have translations for languages that have a specific question word for "what time" as opposed to simply "when"? (I speak such a language). I'm surprised it only has a (dated, obsolete, rare) definition. Wreaderick (talk) 19:30, 16 July 2026 (UTC)

I'm not sure how to interpret the 'conjunction' definition or the supporting citation.

I've added an {{&lit|en|what|time}} for a 'noun' (phrase) reading and some usage examples, showing what time as subject and object of verbs and as object of prepositions. What can be considered a determiner in these usages. DCDuring (talk) 20:13, 16 July 2026 (UTC)

I'm not familiar with this meaning myself, but I suppose the "conjunction" entry just means "what it says on the tin", i.e. "what time his Pride / Had cast him out from Heav'n" means "when his Pride / Had cast him out from Heav'n". What I don't understand, however, is how a term can be both "dated" and "obsolete". Mihia (talk) 21:56, 17 July 2026 (UTC)

Anything I notice and don't understand, I kill, as I did. But that's OK because this is a wiki and the dead can rise again.

Does the &lit noun section seem over the top, not in the trasitional spirit of our entries, or otherwise bad? DCDuring (talk) 03:49, 18 July 2026 (UTC)

One thing I will say is that it's doubtful that "what time" is a noun in some of these examples. For example, in "What time does the boss go to lunch?" it is apparently adverbial. Cases like "He told me what time they would be leaving" are awkward in terms of PoS. Mihia (talk) 11:26, 18 July 2026 (UTC)

At least conceptually, possibly etymologically, the usage whose noun-ness you object to could be read as an ellipsis "(At) [w]hat time does the boss go to lunch?". Perhaps inserting the at into the usage example would be sufficient. DCDuring (talk) 20:42, 18 July 2026 (UTC)

I imagined that the idea of including both "What time does the boss go to lunch?" and "At what time is the office supposed to open?" was to show both uses distinctly. If not, it may be unnecessary to have both examples. Mihia (talk) 11:54, 19 July 2026 (UTC)

True. DCDuring (talk) 14:39, 19 July 2026 (UTC)

Appalachian double nouns

Some sources describe the Appalachian dialect's use of double nouns, in which two nouns are used, the first being a specific type of the second. These sources invariably list cadillac car, hound dog and widow woman, and maybe rifle gun, biscuit bread, toad frog. (Wikipedia most or maybe all other sources appear to be copying Wikipedia and only include those words) These [30] [31] add stairstep, which doesn't appear to be Appalachian-specific (and doesn't share the characteristic of the first word being a specific type of the second word (also for toad frog)). (They write stairstep as one word, but the two word version stair step are also ubiquitous on google books) But looking into it, widow woman doesn't appear to be US-specific even, much less Appalachian: it's in the title of a A Cornish Tale written by an Englishman, and was in the Canadian House of Commons. Other double nouns like oak tree and tabby cat are common in all dialects of English AFAIK. So, what gives? Is this really a feature of Appalachian English in some sense? I'm having trouble finding authoritative sources on it. Or are all double nouns of this sort idiomatic and some are just restricted to Appalachia (maybe)? HootenannyHoller (talk) 20:33, 16 July 2026 (UTC)

just gonna brainstorm lots of plausibles to see which are blue links: father man/pebble stone/meteorite rock/noun word/finch bird/salmon fish/pumice stone/sperm cell/wife woman/pelt trophy/femur bone/rat pest/daughter girl/king ruler/stripper dancer/staph bacteria/honey mustard sauce/sofa couch/naan bread or naan flatbread/korma curry/fork utensil/wrench tool/zoo attraction/sculpture art/plastic hydrocarbon/sneaker shoe/jewel stone/ruby gem/happiness feeling/pain sensation/peignoir nightgown/stetson hat,Stetson hat/jeans pants/parka coat/beef meat/combine tractor/nanny goat/hen chicken/pistol gun/sniper shooter/scimitar sword/dermatologist doctor/cocktail drink/kangaroo marsupial/office building/comforter blanket/breakfast meal

See all those sound reasonably plausible to me in some situations, and some casual googling shows most, maybe all, are citable, and not Appalachian. Even stripper dancer (which sounded ridiculous to me) is real (maybe dated though). HootenannyHoller (talk)

HootenannyHoller (talk) 20:33, 16 July 2026 (UTC)

Many of these don't seem localized to Appalachia or the Southern US; some remind me of expressions used by children (pebble stone, nanny goat) or to communicate to an audience including some undereducated listeners (meteorite rock, finch bird); others seem unlikely (peignoir nightgown). Others seem normal in a range of circumstances. Sadly, it seems like a laborious exercise to determine the scope of usage of these. One strategy might be to determine whether the expression most claimed to be Appalachian are citable as such and not citable in broader use. Fictional dialogue and trial testimony in Google Books might yield some cites. Also Dictionary of American Regional English. DCDuring (talk) 21:02, 16 July 2026 (UTC)

I realize, I'm saying none of them are Appalachian-specific. I'm trying to understand if there's something I'm missing that makes people think otherwise. It seems as silly as pointing out that Irish people sometimes use adjectives with gerunds. Even if you could find some combination of an adj and gerund only attestable in Irish English, would that make it idiomatic? Why would cadillac car be any different? HootenannyHoller (talk)

The only resolution is to pick some (small!) subset of the expressions most plausibly idiomatic as Appalachian English or most strongly asserted to be so and prove or disprove it. DCDuring (talk) 21:45, 16 July 2026 (UTC)

Another approach with a more certain benefit to Wiktionary is to find cites for the blue-linked expressions above, starting with biscuit bread. If the cites support regional usage, you might try the other blue links. DCDuring (talk) 21:45, 16 July 2026 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ I approve of the thinking described above (all of it). I agree that the phenomenon overall is not, and could not possibly be, exclusive to (i.e., maximally specific to) one region (for the same obvious reason that was mentioned above [oh those Irishmen with their adjectives and gerunds, you know how they are]), and that (nonetheless) certain terms produced by the phenomenon could be especially commonly used regionally (no doubt), merely by idiomatic forces alone. As DCDuring said, tracing the geolectal status for each term could be laborious. But to whatever extent it might be done, I would add that the resulting label ought to be "especially|[Region XYZ" rather than just "Region XYZ", because it is a known fact that many users tend to take the latter label as meaning exclusivity (maximum specificity) even when the labeler did not mean it that way. This known problem should be anticipated via explicit specification of "especially". I will only add here that the "[oh those Irishmen with their adjectives and gerunds, you know how they are]" reflex among most humans is humorously inveterate. That's the same silly reflex whereby a term like "stairstep" or "maple tree" ends up getting misguidedly framed as being (allegedly exclusively) Appalachian or Irish or Black or White or Whatever. A humorous thing about it to me is that even speakers who pride themselves on being nonbiased (whether nonracist or nonhomophobic or whatever) sometimes reveal a flash of strong stereotyping proclivity via a mechanism like this. It shows up in such silliness as "and then So-and-So used the word '[insert whichever word here]', oh that's So-and-So for you, I can't even hear that word without picturing their ugly face". It shows that the underlying stereotyping engine that powers such things as racism may be latent but is not absent. Quercus solaris (talk) 23:28, 16 July 2026 (UTC)

Hear hear! (I see now with some casual googling that at least hound dog, kitten cat, toad frog, poodle dog, salmon fish, tabby cat, nanny goat, femur bone and sperm cell could likely be included under COALMINE, which is a stupid rule btw). If anyone has access to Wikipedia's source, I'd be interested in seeing it, or just the relevant part. Edward Everett Dale, "The Speech of the Pioneers", The Arkansas Historical Quarterly, Vol. 6, No. 2 (Summer, 1947), pp. 117-131 HootenannyHoller (talk)

re: "COALMINE, which is a stupid rule btw". There are many indicators for the idiomaticity of multi-word expressions ("MWEs"). One of the most objective ones, not necessarily the strongest is the orthography of alternative forms, especially being spelled solid, but also with hyphens when the hyphen does not occur for other reasons. See User:DCDuring/Pawley for an exhausting, if not conclusively exhaustive, list of 23 indicators of idiomaticity. Any one of these indicators is usually insufficient to indicate idiomaticity conclusively. Note that nearly all of them require some effort and judgment to apply. Naive application of each indicator would dramatically increase the number of MWEs in Wiktionary, IMO beyond any hope of consistent maintenance. Had you experienced the lengthy RfD discussions of the idiomaticity of MWEs before WT:COALMINE, you would undoubtedly be appreciative of it. DCDuring (talk) 16:11, 18 July 2026 (UTC)

dubiety pronunciation, first vowel

I think it's wrong, and we may be propagating an error. See User talk:Xylon Chacier. ~2026-40248-72 (talk) 01:40, 17 July 2026 (UTC)

I agree the MW u̇ does not seem plausible here and is the only source with it. Sometimes elsewhere it's hard for me to trust/believe MW u̇ (Guangdong aroura) or other instances when MW is the only source for an unexpected pronunciation (kielbasa outrecuidance), anyway compare dukkah dookie Tungan Hftf (talk) 05:05, 19 July 2026 (UTC)

I had initially only removed the very dubious /ʌ/, but I agree that /ʊ/ is also dubious and am happy for it too to go. - -sche (discuss) 05:18, 19 July 2026 (UTC)

When I say both out loud, /dʊ/ as the unstressed syllable [dʊˈbaɪ.ə.ɾi] feels more natural than /du/, and has parallels in words such as superior. While I know that this alone isn't enough to justify keeping it, it is worthy of consideration (and I agree /ʌ/ is very dubious, whoever added that probably intended a schwa). ~2026-35055-72 (talk) 03:04, 21 July 2026 (UTC)

sizler

I’m new to learning Turkish, but how can this word be both formal and colloquial? Stoff (talk) 02:20, 18 July 2026 (UTC)

Nothing nonstandard about it, thanks for pointing it out, I'll go fix it. sizler is either used when there are multiple people you're addressing in a formal context, or, more commonly, multiple people you're addressing in an informal context, with the -ler used to make it clear that you're not addressing one person formally (which siz does). Wreaderick (talk) 13:11, 18 July 2026 (UTC)

Pronunciation of initialisms

I've just checked IMNSHO and IMHO and I've come across once again a personal issue I usually find here: lack of pronunciation of initialisms. I'm usually not sure if the common utterance of many specific initialisms consists of spelling the letters, pronouncing them as words, saying what it stands for, a mix of some of all those (in Spain, for example, PSOE is pronounced [pe'so.e] or, less often, ['so.e]; virtually never ['pso.e]) or it is not known or established yet. I know it depends on the editors but just saying it anyway; maybe some will listen and add a few pronunciations where they are currently missing. Thanks! ~2026-40223-93 (talk) 12:27, 18 July 2026 (UTC)

stacked

The adjective section seems to include a few definitions that are almost certainly not adjectives but rather the past participle. Certainly the usage examples indicate that. I think this is an example of a common problem for both past participles and -ing-forms (also including confusion with noun definitions) of English verbs.

Does anyone have any ideas how we can reduce the temptation for contributors to add non-adjective definitions to valid Adjective PoS sections? (Preventing the creation of invalid Adjective PoS sections is a separate problem.) My thoughts go in the direction of a template that would refer the entry user to the verb lemma entry. If we can't count on users to grasp how to apply the verb definitions, this wouldn't work and I despair of any significant discipline on excessive inclusion of definitions aside from the labor-intensive WT:ATTEST. DCDuring (talk) 17:40, 18 July 2026 (UTC)

I was thinking of a template like {{pplnotadj|stack}} yielding:

See transitive senses of the verb stack#Verb.

Specifically, def. 6 seems to be some kind of generalization/specialization of def. 1, but both seem like non-adjectives, passives of transitive senses of stack#Verb. Is def. 1 not exactly equivalent to that has been stacked? Def. 5 also seems to be a passive use of a sense of stack. DCDuring (talk) 17:47, 18 July 2026 (UTC)

I agree that it's an inherently challenging aspect for a dictionary that is on a crowdsourced model, because the madding crowd (as casual contributors) can't realistically be expected to comply with the rigorous POS-differentiating tests. It may be that the best answer is only "let people contribute the raw/unrefined content (unopposed) and then wait for skilled volunteers who are good at applying the rigorous tests to get around to revising/refining as needed." I realize that that approach (which is the current state by default) is unsatisfying. I just can't think (yet) of any way that the initial contribution could be steered for rigorous POS differentiation without creating some guardrail system that most casual contributors would accuse of being arcane. One practical thought I just had is that when it is quite predictable that a certain sense will be (re)added by the crowd under the adjective POS, but the rigorous viewpoint deems it nonadjectival, then there could be a simple commented-out line that the crowdmember would encounter when they went to add the sense, saying something like "Note: the sense meaning 'foo' is verbal rather than adjectival; please do not add it here." The practical value of having such a comment would be that if the rigorous people had already straightened out a particular entry (for POS precision), then such comments would cut down the extent to which the crowd would later undo/degrade the already-straightened-out state. Quercus solaris (talk) 18:29, 18 July 2026 (UTC)

I think it would be helpful to users rather than contributors to more directly lead them to the verb definitions. The alternative of moving passive-verb definitions to the pseudo-definition at stacked#Verb on the page seems unhelpful. Perhaps we could but usage examples there, but that would not be my preferred option. DCDuring (talk) 19:40, 18 July 2026 (UTC)

Further, it seems to me that many inexperienced contributors add definitions that are mere specializations (to, eg, fandom, gaming, or computing/internet) or rewordings of existing definitions. I doubt such definitions would be much deterred by comments in the edit view. DCDuring (talk) 19:55, 18 July 2026 (UTC)

anus/ass as vagina/pussy/cunt/etc

In certain subcultures, the anus of someone who doesn't have a vulva can be referred to as that person's vagina. Currently,

• pussy only covers gay use: "(vulgar) The anus of a man, usually the passive participant in gay sex."
• vagina covers both gay and trans use: "(transgender slang and gay slang, uncommon) The anus."
• cunt only covers trans use: "(transgender slang) The anus of a trans woman."

I suspect people who would refer to an anus as a pussy would also refer to it as a cunt and vice versa, though I suppose this comes down to citations. (This is not limited to English, either; there are records of the same phenomenon in e.g. some Native American tribes/languages.) - -sche (discuss) 22:56, 18 July 2026 (UTC)

yettie (slang)

A young, technologically knowledgeable entrepreneur who is involved in e-commerce and typically buys and sells technology stock.

[Late 20th century. Acronym of young, entrepreneurial, tech(nology)-based, after yuppie and similar words] JMGN (talk) 10:47, 19 July 2026 (UTC)

Verb "to lay"

"To lay" is often explained as needing an object, but I think the object need not be stated explicitly. Is "The hen is laying again." not acceptable?. Are laying a table (for a meal) and laying an egg different verbs? Otherwise, I would lay a table by knowing I needed another one for a dinner party, retrieving one from another room and laying it on the floor of the dinner party room. Or I might lay the cutlery on the table. ~2026-40318-38 (talk) 14:23, 19 July 2026 (UTC)

Intransitive senses are already listed at lay. The sense applicable to your "hen" example is "To produce and deposit an egg or eggs". Mihia (talk) 17:04, 19 July 2026 (UTC)

Fala en, "en a" → "na"?

Ping: @User:Ungoliant MMDCCLXIV, who created the entry also adding the quotation 2012-10-13 Special:Diff/18536196; @User:Santi2222, who added the usage note 2023-02-21 Special:Diff/71356205. There is no fax workgroup.

The usage notes on this entry say:

• When followed by the articles u/o, a, us/os, as; it contracts to nu/no, na, nus/nos, nas respectively.

So, "en a" is supposed to contract to "na" like *em a does in Portuguese.

However, the quotation on the same page (which was already present before the usage notes were added) has an uncontracted "en a".

• Domingo Frades Gaspar (2000), Vamus a falal: Notas pâ coñocel y platical en nosa fala, Editora regional da Extremadura, Chapter 2: Númerus: “Cumu to é custión de proporciós, sin que sirva de argumentu por nun fel falta, poemus vel que en a misma Europa hai Estaus Soberarius con menus territoriu que os tres lugaris nossus, cumu:”

What is the explanation for this?

o/ Emanuele6 (talk) 20:59, 19 July 2026 (UTC)

Hispanicism in the quotation, maybe? Spanish en la → Fala *en a? It is supposed to be na more properly? Emanuele6 (talk) 21:05, 19 July 2026 (UTC)

Looking at the entries in CAT:Fala terms with quotations, one can also find

• The same quotation in Fala comu (twice), con, fala, que, si, un.
• Domingo Frades Gaspar (2000), Vamus a falal: Notas pâ coñocel y platical en nosa fala (in Fala), Editora regional da Extremadura, Theme I, Chapter 2: Númerus?: “As lenguas, idiomas, dialectus o falas tenin un-as funciós mui claras desde o principiu dos siglu i si hai contabilizaus en o mundu un-as 8.000 lenguas, ca un-a con sua importancia numérica relativa, a nossa fala é un tesoiru mais entre elas.” in Fala as, desde
• Domingo Frades Gaspar (2000), Vamus a falal: Notas pâ coñocel y platical en nosa fala (in Fala), Editora regional da Extremadura, Theme IV, Chapter 1: Non Diptongación da “E” i a “O” en Nossa Fala: “Tampocu era normal en o leonés antiguu, según os estudius dos escritus i textus estudiaus, por ejemplu por Menéndez Pidal, quen tamén viñu i estudió o mañegu.” in Fala era.
• Domingo Frades Gaspar (2000), Vamus a falal: Notas pâ coñocel y platical en nosa fala (in Fala), Editora regional da Extremadura, Theme I, Chapter 1: Lengua Española: “En esti territorio se han assentau, en os anus que se indican, os habitantis siguientis:” in Fala esti, os.
• Domingo Frades Gaspar (2000), Vamus a falal: Notas pâ coñocel y platical en nosa fala (in Fala), Editora regional da Extremadura, Theme VIII, Chapter 4: Os Sufijus: Arius Inus: “Otru caso de sibilantis o encontramus en a “s” intervocálica i sin chegal a profundizal convén que pronunciemus i escribamus, en nossa fala, a traducción das palabras castellanas siguientis: […]” in Fala otru.

From these quotation, and the ones in Fala idel, sei, one can also see that "en ela", "en esta", "en esti" are not contracted either while they would be nela, nesta, neste, etc. in Portuguese/Galician. There are no Fala quotations with the contracted forms on Wiktionary.

@User:Santi2222 I realise that those quotations are all from the same book, but are you sure those contractions for en actually exist in Fala? If they do, could they be obsolete like Spanish nel, etc.? Maybe they are optional like Portuguese num (for "em um"), etc.?

Regardless, the usage notes should probably not be worded like that implying the contractions are compulsory like those of Fala de, unless, perhaps, the author of that book really was not supposed to use en uncontracted like that, but did as a Hispanicism.

• When followed by the articles u/o, a, us/os, as; it contracts to du/do, da, dus/dos, das respectively.

That book is used as source for nearly all Fala quotations on Wiktionary; I think the only two Fala quotations not to be from that book are the two in escribil from blog posts by Antonio M. Corredera Plaza:

• Antonio M. Corredera Plaza (7 July 2009), “VALVERDI. ¿Pur qué a chamamus Valverdi du Fresnu?”, in Um sitiu valverdeiru‎^[32] (in Fala), archived from the original on 15 September 2016: “Dejandu aparti as grafías mais u menus acertás de Balverde, Valberde, Valverde; en un documentu poi aparecel escritu de varias formas distintas.”
• Antonio M. Corredera Plaza (21 April 2014), “galegus, purtuguesis, dambus... ¿quen u sabi?”, in Sierra de Gata Digital‎^[33] (in Fala), Villasbuenas de Gata, archived from the original on 23 June 2021: “A Orden du Temple se crea en primel lugal pa defendel aus peregrinus que diban aus Santus Lugaris. Ensiguía se multiplican i repartin pur Europa i pur a Península Ibérica cua aprobaciõ das bulas papáis, acatandu as normas que escribíu pa elis San Bernardo de Claraval.”

Emanuele6 (talk) 03:38, 20 July 2026 (UTC)

The two aforementioned blog posts by Antonio M. Corredera Plaza do seem to use na, so I guess they do exist in usage. You still find "en este" uncontracted, though; also "en otra", but noutra for em outra is also optional in Portuguese even though Wiktionary does not mention it, unlike neste. Emanuele6 (talk) 03:44, 20 July 2026 (UTC)

There is no fax workgroup. I guess there is CAT:User fax; Ping: @MedK1, @Swaare. Emanuele6 (talk) 08:50, 21 July 2026 (UTC)

réseau

Tagged as astronomy. Doesn't look very astronomical to me... ~2026-39392-05 (talk) 19:58, 20 July 2026 (UTC)

It's not not astronomical (having to do with astronomy), any more than reticle is not not telescopic (having to do with telescopy); it's a visual marker that's used in the course of studying photographs of the stars, much like a reticle is a visual marker that's used in the course of studying what's visible in a rifle scope. Quercus solaris (talk) 22:20, 20 July 2026 (UTC)

multiple /ˈmʌltɪbəl/, during /ˈdɪə.ɹɪŋ/

Those pronunciations were added without labels in diff and diff; obviously, they're not pan-dialectally standard pronunciations, and need labels if they are to be kept. The edit summary says they're North American pronunciations, though not ones I recall hearing. Has anyone heard them? - -sche (discuss) 23:02, 20 July 2026 (UTC)

The form /ˈdɪə.ɹɪŋ/ sounds plausible to me as a reduced form in accents without yod-dropping. So /djʊə-/ might be simplified to /dɪə-/ in unstressed position. However, I don't know this! It's just a feeling. -- As to the /b/, this must've been added by a certain user who added similar forms with /b, d, g/ for /p, t, k/ in several entries. I had a discussion with them back then. I argued that while a fortis-lenis merger in unstressed position (as [b̥, d̥, ɡ̊] or unaspirated [p, t, k]) was possible for some speakers, insofar as both voice and aspiriation are reduced, this does not warrant a transcription with /b, d, g/ because it maximally entails a merger, not a shift to another phoneme. ~2026-40625-00 (talk) 00:24, 21 July 2026 (UTC) PS: As far as I remember, most of the instances where he added these /b, d, g/ where like multiple, namely unstressed syllables with a syllabic consonant. Others may have been unstressed initials. At any rate it was clearly bound to certain phonetic positions, not particular lexemes. ~2026-40625-00 (talk) 00:36, 21 July 2026 (UTC)

/ˈmʌltɪbəl/ seems like a listening mistake rather than a deliberate pronunciation, /ˈdɪə.ɹɪŋ/ is probably a failed attempt at representing a pronunciation like /ˈdjɝ.ɪŋ/ (which is already listed anyway). ~2026-35055-72 (talk) 03:12, 21 July 2026 (UTC)

As I already said, the /b/ is not a "hearing mistake". Some user did this in various words. They had in their native accent (I don't remember if British or North American) a positionally conditioned fortis-lenis merger. The /p/ in their multiple sounded just like the /b/ in their gullible for example, namely [b̥] - and this is what this reflects. As explained above, I nevertheless argued that a transcription with /b/ is not justified. ~2026-40625-00 (talk) 04:29, 21 July 2026 (UTC)

Well regardless that's very rare and nonstandard so it probably shouldn't be included on the page otherwise every page would be flooded by millions of idiosyncrasies and mistakes. ~2026-35055-72 (talk) 05:30, 21 July 2026 (UTC)

I'm sure it's rare, but how do you know it's idiosyncratic? Are you so closely familiar with all the regional accents of English? That it shouldn't be included is my opinion too, as I said. ~2026-40625-00 (talk) 06:51, 21 July 2026 (UTC)

name, rank and serial number

I think this phrase has enough metaphorical use as "just the most basic information with no additional details" to warrant an entry. Do others agree? —Mahāgaja · talk 10:27, 21 July 2026 (UTC)

Probably, but cites are the issue, not agreement. DCDuring (talk) 17:38, 21 July 2026 (UTC)

The metaphorical meaning might be "Minimal information for establishing personal identity"

But name rank and [number, ID number, telephone number, service number, file number; unit, regiment, post, organization, assignment, term of enlistment; lineage, parentage; insignia; characteristics, salary, title, career, position, occupation] occur with bare number and regiment occurring more than twice in a search at Google Books filtered with "search:fiction" and excluding co-occurence with prisoner. Both rank and serial number occur outside of a military context, which suggests the formulaic phrase is not SoP. DCDuring (talk) 18:18, 21 July 2026 (UTC)

belly chain and waist chain

What should be done to these nearly identical entries? Aloysius Jr (talk) 16:32, 21 July 2026 (UTC)

they

Regarding definition two, it should be held that while singular they is often proscribed, certain usages are considered even more nonstandard than others. In the example "One of the boys tripped over, and they hit their head on the door." since the word "boys" is used, the pronoun should clearly be "he", as in "One of the boys tripped over, and he hit his head on the door". Likewise "There is no need to panic, Robin should be here soon and they will know what to do." is more nonstandard than merely using singular they as a placeholder for a generic person, which while may be considered substandard compared to "he or she" in formal writing, certainly doesn't face the same level of proscription. ~2026-35055-72 (talk) 16:47, 21 July 2026 (UTC)

You did read the Usage notes section, right? DCDuring (talk) 18:26, 21 July 2026 (UTC)

It doesn't address these two cases which seem significantly more nonstandard/questionable. Particularly the fact that "One of the boys tripped over, and they hit their head on the door." is completely ungrammatical even if you accept "they" as a placeholder for a generic person (it is not applicable here since the sex is known). ~2026-35055-72 (talk) 19:35, 21 July 2026 (UTC)

I know exactly what you mean, and yet I have begun to see that subcategory of usage in the wild in recent years ("One of the boys tripped over, and they hit their head on the door."). It's already a thing, descriptively (in terms of usage that a linguist would not necessarily put an ungrammaticality asterisk before), although it will take a while before it stops sounding funny to some ears if not other ears. An interesting related fact is that the use of "themself" was so widely proscribed before the 2020s that it was unwise to use it at all if you were hoping to avoid critique of your writing or speech, but there is now various well-edited journalism that uses it unapologetically. Quercus solaris (talk) 21:22, 21 July 2026 (UTC)

I really don't like this defeatist view of language, but I understand where you're coming from. I still think Wiktionary should recommend against sloppy grammar regardless of whether it is used by journalists and the public or not, as plenty of more common constructions like "me and x" as the subject are nonetheless still labeled as proscribed, and many mistakes that were once prevalent 200 years ago are now very rare, showing that proscription can be an effective tool. ~2026-35055-72 (talk) 21:44, 21 July 2026 (UTC)

It's not our place to decide what is and is not "sloppy" grammar and to make recommendations against it, though we can mention when certain usages are deprecated by style guides and the like. —Mahāgaja · talk 06:16, 22 July 2026 (UTC)

It shouldn't be too hard to find a style guide that recommends against this usage. Anyway, you are right that I was misunderstanding how Wiktionary works, and after some research I now know that Wiktionary itself doesn't proscribe terms/usages but rather follows other sources. ~2026-35055-72 (talk) 07:21, 22 July 2026 (UTC)

declaim

I am not sure declaim sense 1, "To object to something vociferously; to rail against in speech." makes sense / is real. I think it's just an imaginary conflation between "declaiming" in sense 2 & 3 (making a speech) and sense 4 (disclaiming). Probably inspired by seeing "declaim against", which I think only means that because of the "against", like how "make a speech against" also would. Happy to hear other impressions, though; I'm not sure. In fact, if you feel you know, feel free to edit the page :) Dingolover6969 (talk) 20:18, 21 July 2026 (UTC)

For comparison, Merriam-Webster's collegiate dictionary 10th edition (2001) gives "1: To speak rhetorically; specif: to recite something as an exercise and elocution 2: to speak pompously or bombastically: harangue ~ vt to deliver rhetorically; specif: cite in elocution " I wrote more here but the website ate it. Dingolover6969 (talk) 20:28, 21 July 2026 (UTC)

The sense that is numbered as sense 1 (when these comments were written) certainly isn't the primary sense, so it shouldn't be first-listed, per the English Wiktionary's convention on sort order for senses. Sense 1 and sense 4 can be differentiated as "inveigh against" versus "disavow", but whether to break that into two senses versus treating it as "X; Y' inside a single sense is a subjective preference. I note here that MW Collegiate, MW Unabridged, and AHD5 don't give sense 1 nor sense 4; they give an "inveigh" intransitive sense, but not an "inveigh against" transitive sense. This indicates to me that the MW team and the former AHD team (RIP) view sense 1 and sense 4 as catachrestic (regarding declaim and disclaim), although that judgment doesn't at all negate those senses' existence, descriptively speaking. It seems to be somebody's law (Some-So-and-So's law) that any catachrestic sense that can exist is kinda likely to be found to exist in corpus attestations upon the seeking of it there, because that's how human minds tend to work under the hood. As for the poohpoohing of such a sense, an MW or an AHD can simply refuse to mention it entirely (as seen in this instance), whereas the most that can be "done about it" by a scrupulously descriptive dictionary (such as Wiktionary or someone like it) is to enter the sense and either label it as catachrestic (± often proscribed) or give a short usage note saying that some readers can be expected to take it that way. Which is to say: nobody can stop anyone else from using it, but the person who chooses to use it can expect with certainty that various others will whine about its use. Quercus solaris (talk) 20:48, 21 July 2026 (UTC)

Wantz

The page for Wantz only refers to a surname. In Essex there are a number of road names or junctions containing Wantz :

• The Four Wantz roundabout in Ongar
• Wantz Roads in Maldon, Margaretting and Dagenham
• Old map of Maldon showing "Four Wants"
• Wantz Lane in Rainham
• Wantz Stream in Dagenham

Some web sits suggest the origin is from Wents, meaning Ways. David.castell (talk) 10:19, 22 July 2026 (UTC)