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.
For questions about the general Wiktionary policies, use the Beer parlour; for technical questions, use the Grease pit; for questions about etymologies, use the Etymology scriptorium. For questions about specific content, you're in the right place.
Latest comment: 1 month ago2 comments2 people in discussion
Hello,
There are words in the Wiktionary that can't be found anywhere else. I think for example to slowlier. They are generally labelled as rare. What are the rationales for such words to be added to the dictionary ? And are there any reliable resources justifying such a move ? Kind regards. Si84m (talk) 05:05, 3 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 1 month ago3 comments3 people in discussion
What do people think about this? I would expect e.g. sense 6 of say ("To suppose"), which seems to function identically to suppose, to have the same transitivity as it, which would mean that sense of say is "transitive, intransitive" (if our entry on suppose is correct), rather than solely "intransitive" (as the IP has it) or solely "transitive" (as it was before). - -sche(discuss)08:24, 3 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
Given that the quote can be replaced by pronouns like "it", "that", or "nothing" (and that the verb can be rephrased into the passive then), surely the entry should at least include "transitive"?
And while quotes might be analyzed as complements instead of objects, I think we need some way to indicate that "say" requires that complement, you can't just say "He said", barring colloquial ellipsis. PhoenicianLetters (talk) 09:04, 3 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
I agree. The alleged syntactic analysis given by the IP in their edit summary is flawed. It says "its subsequent prepositional phrase" — but which phrase is that, exactly (allegedly)? This person apparently thinks that "which" is a preposition? In short, this IP was confidently wrong. The OED entry for "say"(v) at I.1.a (subsuming I.1.a.i and I.1.a.ii) states "transitive". Quercus solaris (talk) 23:21, 3 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
I infer that both of the decorated stones that are preventing the sloped stone moldings from sliding down are keystones and thereby crossettes. DCDuring (talk) 17:27, 4 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
Judging from the gap between the one on the right and its neighbor, it looks to be less effective as a keystone, but a keystone nonetheless. DCDuring (talk) 17:29, 4 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 1 month ago4 comments4 people in discussion
(Notifying Fay Freak, Brutal Russian, Benwing2, Lambiam, Mnemosientje, Nicodene, Sartma, Al-Muqanna, SinaSabet28, Theknightwho, Imbricitor): The module Module:la-correlatives, which creates a table of Latin words for things like "this, that, who, where" and so on, has recently been subject to enthusiastic expansion, which seems to be still ongoing. In my opinion, this expansion has been a little misguided and has resulted in an already unwieldy, oversized table getting even more awkward to navigate. It is wide enough to require scrolling even on a computer screen, and tall enough to fill the entire page.
I also feel the table is cluttered and probably has too many obscure terms that make it harder to see and process the frequent and useful terms. For example, while terms such as quāquamtenus may be pleasing in terms of filling gaps in the table, this word seems to be rare to the point that I couldn't find any examples (hence, I added it to RFV). Other terms are attested but very rare, such as utiquam: I guess it makes sense to include these, with a marker, in cases where the gap might otherwise cause confusion, but in cases where an entire row is rare, such as quantūrus, I think we should strongly consider omitting that row.
I've tried to discuss this a couple of times on the talk page of User_talk:Redeemed_Angle_Dust, but the discussions petered out and it seems my raising the topic there didn't really slow the rate of new additions.
Therefore, I'm posting here since I'd like to get some fresh eyes to provide input on which columns and rows are really useful, and which ones might not deserve to be in this table. Once this is decided, I think it would be good for the table to be stabilized in that format, rather than being subject to perpetual increase. @Redeemed Angle Dust, I want to say that columns and rows removed from the module's table could still be included at the appendix Appendix:Latin correlatives, so it isn't like they would necessarily be entirely deleted from Wiktionary if they are taken out of the module.
I've been thinking about whether there are more large-scale reorganizations that could be done to split the module into several smaller tables, like splitting the demonstrative/deictic system from the interrogative/indefinite/relative system, but I'm not sure if that would be a good direction to go in. Any thoughts are appreciated. Urszag (talk) 18:53, 4 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
I think the best thing we can do is divide everything, not just the columns but the rows as well. It was an idea I already had, but I thought it was a bit radical.
While browsing Logeion, I discovered that, for example, dual correlatives are much larger than we imagined, including correlatives of alternation, place, origin, direction, path, among others. Therefore, I thought it would be better to create a separate module including all the duals. The same could be done with the size correlative, which would include extend and intensity correlatives as well as their diminutives, and also one for quality correlatives, including their two comparatives.
I think this would be the best thing to do rather than simply summarizing the module, because the problem would obviously remain. The module has many empty cells; for example, the statements don't have any duals and don't contain anything besides the quantity correlatives. It's a whole wasted empty space that could be avoided if we sliced the module into smaller modules, while we could leave a unified table in the appendix. Redeemed Angle Dust (talk) 19:48, 4 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
The size is definitely harmful to the table being read at all. Content can be kept if the default only shows a selection, which apparently requires a parameter for the editor to control which one in any entry, and the user can request to unhide the rest. Fay Freak (talk) 20:39, 4 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
@Redeemed Angle Dust You need to be more responsive and take the comments made by @Urszag and others seriously, otherwise I will remove many of your contributions and lock the module so you can't contribute to it any more. This reminds me of the fiasco with Module:number list/data/en, with various new editors adding rare or unattestable English number-like terms, thereby bloating the full table at Module:number list/data/en and the individual per-number tables at each mainspace number. IMO only attestable and reasonably common (or at least not rare) terms should go into a table like this. There's little point in including extremely rare terms into such a table. At most, such terms, if attestable, if they fill out an existing gap, could be put in square brackets to indicate that they are rare, but new rows or columns should not be created containing primarily rare terms. Benwing2 (talk) 00:33, 6 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 1 month ago2 comments2 people in discussion
About half the other dictionaries define this like WT, facing towards the axis. The others have the opposite, facing away from the axis. What is right, or is somehow in botany "facing towards" the same as "facing away from"??? The picture doesn't help me, it states the flower has 3 antiochus and 3 posticous stamens... 90.160.107.4407:31, 5 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
Aneilema aequinoctiale flowerThere is no doubt that anticous means “on the anterior side” and posticus “on the posterior side”. So the question is, which side is anterior and which side is posterior (to a botanist)?
If it helps, the flower of Aneilema is described here as having “flowers with three anticous, fertile stamens and three (or two) posticous staminodes, bracteoles usually cup-shaped”. ‑‑Lambiam12:44, 5 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
Added in diff, which is by an Irish IP at least. Pinging User:FishandChipper and User:Moilleadóir because your userpages imply you speak or know speakers of Irish English: how is Oceania pronounced in Irish English? Is it ever /ˌoʊʃiˈænə/? Are there other pronunciations? (Separate issue, at the moment this is the only Irish English pronunciation listed, which means there's no need for the label to say "also" like it does.) - -sche(discuss)18:24, 5 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
I wouldn’t be surprised if someone pronounces it that way, but I couldn’t tell you anything much about Irish English pronunciation anyway. ☸ Moilleadóir☎04:58, 6 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
A pronunciation ending in /ˈænə/ certainly exists, and not only in Ireland; I would be surprised if it is completely universal in any particular locale, though, given its unintuitive correspondence to the spelling.--Urszag (talk) 22:34, 6 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
Indeed! Thanks for finding an actual example. I've been saying it out loud for myself but unable to imagine anyone pronouncing it without the second /i/.
Why do you think it's pronounced that way? It's not like Pennsylvania and Romania become /ˌpɛn.sɪlˈveɪ.nə/ and /ɹʊˈmeɪ.nə/. Is it a dissimilatory effect from the first /i/? Or perhaps an analogical one from co-occurence beside the likes of Asia/ˈeɪ.ʒə/, as in the video? —Caoimhin ceallach (talk) 11:53, 7 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
Aha, I hadn't even realized that /-nə/ was the part giving anyone pause. I do hear both /-njə/ and /-nə/ commonly enough (IRL and on Youglish) that I'll add them as US pronunciations, and they could probably also be added as alt UK pronunciations, as you say. Examples, from various accents, are 1, 2. 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 (stumbling), 12; those are from the first 60 Youglish hits (only a couple of which are the same speaker multiple times: most are different speakers), so /-nə/ represents 12/60 or 20% of the pronunciations I sampled, 5/60 (~8%) were people pronouncing other words or using weird one-off pronunciations (often haltingly, seemingly unfamiliar with the word), and the remaining ~72% of speakers pronounced either /ni.ə/ or /njə/. Perhaps various factors have contributed, like dissimilation from the earlier /i/ + the validity of /-ænə/, /-ɑ(ː)nə/ as a word ending (Americana etc)...? - -sche(discuss)16:34, 7 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
I think it is the same sense “to cause to be” as in “I made myself comfortable”,[1] “make it better”,[2] and “we want to make you happy”.[3] Curiously, I could not find this rather common sense among the list of 37 senses we give for the verb make. One listed sense appears to be a special case of the more general sense “to cause to be”:
Our definition 8 ("To cause to be") covers it, but concealed under a ditransitive label. The usage example "made him woozy" shows the adjective complement usage. The case where the complement is an adjective should probably be carved out under a transitive label with that usage example. MWOnline has, under a transitive label: "to cause to be or become". DCDuring (talk) 13:39, 5 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
I scanned the list for “(trans", which is why I missed this entry labeled “(ditrans...“. I wonder if ditransitive is the right label. When the complement is a noun phrase, one can substitite turn ... into for the verb, turning the usex Scotch will make you a man into Scotch will turn you into a man. ‑‑Lambiam17:49, 5 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
I support entering well-attested pronunciation spellings, but where duz it end, tho? Dwee go ahead and enter them all? The bar set by WT:CFI will filter out the flotsam, fortunately. Joo ever search the GBS corpus to see how many attestations exist there for joo that aren't themselves just dictionary-of-slang entries? I just took a look there and concluded that the population is anemic enough that I can't be arsed with further hunting and filtering for it. Anyone who cares enough to enter any particular one should bother to do a whole-ass job of it, supplying three or more high-quality citations when creating the entry. But dollars to donuts few people will bother to try to enter them if they have to actually shift their ass a bit to make it stick. Which is nice, because in this particular class of cases, human laziness will work in favor of WT's quality instead of against it. Quercus solaris (talk) 22:30, 6 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
It can work either independently (joo do your homework yet?) or in combination (couldjoo do me a favor?). But I won't bother to enter either joo or -joo into Wiktionary, though, because to my eye they are on the wrong side of a threshold regarding "Kwee please not do this for every pron-spell in existence?" (i.e., only a most important and widely used handful are worth entering). Admittedly anyone who wanted to work hard enough on citation assembly could get various ones to pass WT:CFI, because lots of rare things are attested at least thrice in a well-documented language such as English. Anyone is welcome to do that work if they want, but for me it's not worth doing, personally, except for a few important ones, such as wuz, cuz, tho, for example. Quercus solaris (talk) 14:43, 7 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
My gut says no, because emically English doesn't include digraphs in its alphabet. Thus, for example, if you look at the entry for th at #English or th- at #English, there are no senses entered there pointing to /θ/ and /ð/, and if you look at the entry for ch at #English, there are no senses entered there pointing to /t͡ʃ/ and /k/. Same with rh, tch, gh, dj, and others. A few of these strings (but not most) have a sense at #Translingual that covers the digraph use. For example, see ch at #Translingual, which says (as of this writing), "A digraph from c and h, considered an individual letter in some languages." Bottom line, this is an interesting topic, but as for any action that could be taken, I would argue that the only opportunity seen here is that various digraphs could all have coverage of their digraph use posted at #Translingual, and it would tend to follow that pattern of "A digraph from [letter] and [letter], considered an individual letter in some languages." To me the most interesting (nontrivial) thing about it all is the emic-versus-etic difference. Quercus solaris (talk) 15:52, 7 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 1 month ago8 comments5 people in discussion
As a sentence that illustrates the good use of the word carcass, "The forest was covered in dog carcass" is not only nonsensical but also ungrammatical. Surely we can do better than that. David Ingerson (talk) 03:22, 6 November 2025 (UTC)David IngersonReply
A bad choice of example, silly, but neither nonsensical nor ungrammatical. I picture an extremely large number of parts of dog carcasses, sufficient to cover the forest or, at least, the forest floor. DCDuring (talk) 16:38, 6 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
Agreed: it is grammatically possible, and semantically sensible, for nearly any count noun to be used in an unusual noncount way, such as "there was a bad wreck on the highway, and now there is a bunch of used Toyota smeared all over the pavement"; but the point is well taken, though, that usexes are supposed to illustrate use that is not a corner case, generally speaking (i.e., allowing for some smallish number of unusual but advised exceptions). So David Ingerson's and Chuck Entz's larger point was valid (i.e., that the former usex was not a desirable usex for a dictionary) even though it isn't true that it was nonsensical and ungrammatical (in fairness, it isn't either of those; but it is conspicuously unusual, being an exception to typical usage, which is why it isn't needed and isn't desirable when standing in the spot where a good typical use example ought to be, instead). And any user who habitually either fails to detect those facts themself or purposely flouts them is bad news. Quercus solaris (talk) 19:49, 6 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
Points well taken. I should have known that when dealing with word nerds (I'm just a word enthusiast) I should take extreme care to choose my words extra carefully. Thanks for being responsive and making the change. David Ingerson (talk) 07:20, 8 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 29 days ago7 comments4 people in discussion
An IP removeddoona = "do not", arguing the books are written by Americans and that it doesn't exist in Scottish English. That seems to be correct; at least, I can't find any examples of doona in the DSL or EDD, as contrasted with the amply attested dinna. However, the word is so commonly attested in this sense in non-Scottish works imitating Scottish English that I think its absence from a true Scotsman's speech is actually an argument for keeping it and explaining the situation. I've tentatively restored the section and added an explanatory {{n-g}}, taking some inspiration from ze = "French/German the" (and ve haf vays of making you talk), but I welcome other opinions, better wording, etc. In general, we probably need to go through the Scottish English category (like the AAVE category...) to remove words which only exist in incorrect caricatures. - -sche(discuss)05:12, 7 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
I'm personally of the opinion that we shouldn't be giving any space to pseudo-Scots, given how much damage Wiki projects have already done to the online record of the Scots language. Per the Scots entry guidelines: "Be very careful adding Scots terms. Much of what is passed off as Scots on the Internet is in fact a caricature of Scots written by people who don't speak the language." If it's not included in any Scots or Scottish English dictionaries, and has only been used by American authors with no grasp on either, then I don't see any reason to include it. I'd support removing it. --Grnrchst (talk) 15:04, 14 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
This amounts to censorship and is not much more than "we shouldn't have this term because I don't like it". There are quotes showing the term is used. If it's not used in actual Scots or Scottish English, that can be pointed out in the definition or the usage notes. — SURJECTION/ T / C / L /15:49, 14 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
The term isn't "used" though, it doesn't even exist outside of some poorly-written American romance novels (one of which is self-published) from the mid-2000s. I don't appreciate being accused of "censorship" just because I'm wary about us continuing the proliferation of pseudo-Scots. I just don't think arguments for inclusion have made a particularly good case, given the evidence for it is so low-quality. --Grnrchst (talk) 16:07, 14 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
I would argue that keeping the entry does substantially more to combat pseudo-Scots than removing the entry would do; indeed, removing the entry lets pseudo-Scots spread without challenge. Doona is not being presented as Scots (compare e.g. dinnae, which is presented as Scots with a big ==Scots== header at the top and, for users who have the 'flags' gadget turned on, a Scottish flag); doona is presented as English, a language in which it is used (the way any number of other terms are mistakenly used, e.g. for all intensive purposes), and the definition then helpfully informs readers that the word is not Scots or Scottish English. In my view, this combats the proliferation of pseudo-Scots, whereas removing the word means people read it in novels that do also use other (real) Scots / Scottish English words like dinnae, and are thus left to assume doona too like dinnae is real Scots or Scottish English, if we were to remove the entry and not tell them any different. Better to have an informative entry for the word, I think. - -sche(discuss)17:23, 14 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
Thanks for giving this perspective, I think it's brought me around more towards keeping it, so long as we very clearly flag that this is the product of American writers with no grasp on Scots or Scottish English. I'm not convinced the current wording goes hard enough, but it's definitely better with this explanation than it was previously. --Grnrchst (talk) 17:31, 14 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
That quote comes across as merely imperfect ESL, nonidiomatic. Quercus solaris (talk) 15:55, 7 November 2025 (UTC) Update: In response to a question asked in an edit summary: The quote as presented above is not the same thing as when someone says "there is no way that X [is or could be] true" and someone else retorts, "there is *SO* a way that X [is or could be] true." Person A: "There's no way!" Person B: "There is *SO* a way!" or "There is *TOO*!" In contrast, the quote above, as presented, is only a flawed ESL approximation of those constructions, albeit plenty comprehensible. It is solecistic albeit successfully communicative. Quercus solaris (talk) 18:47, 7 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 12 days ago6 comments2 people in discussion
Hello,
Is Chinese 重 (zhòng) term also means "hard", for example 因重擊造成的瘀傷 ("Bruises caused by a hard hit") and its derivative 重擊／重击 (zhòngjī) term also means "hard hit" and "to whack", for example 因重擊造成的深藍色或深紫色瘀傷 ("Dark blue or dark purple bruises caused by a hard hit")? Please Yuliadhi (talk) 11:12, 7 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
@Yuliadhi, I already replied to your query last month, which you later deleted without comment, and apparently without even reading it.
I think 重, both as standalone 重 (zhòng) and in the compound 重擊／重击 (zhòngjī), could be interpreted as meaning "heavy". Consider the semantics of English phrase heavyblow. In both languages, in this context, the modifier implies "heavy, severe, with great force". ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │Tala við mig22:37, 12 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
It's correct standalone Chinese 重 (zhòng) and its compound 重擊／重击 (zhòngjī) also means "hard" and "hard hit, to whack" other than "heavy" and "heavy blow" respectively? Yuliadhi (talk) 13:10, 29 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 1 month ago3 comments2 people in discussion
Greetings, I'm a native speaker of Pattani Malay and i would like to create entries on that language. The thing is I also worked on setting the orthography of the language here, yet nobody use this yet since it's neither official nor widely used. So I want to apply the orthography when comes to create new lemmas, could I? Mirlim (talk) 12:43, 7 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
To be added, terms have to be "attested" somewhere, either used in newspapers, journals, books, etc, or (if Patani Malay counts as a WT:LDL, unlike "standard" Malay which is a WT:WDL) at least used in a reliable (non-Wiki) dictionary. If certain spellings are only used on another Wikimedia project, then no, they can't be used: they need to gain some traction in the "real" world first. - -sche(discuss)16:08, 7 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 1 month ago5 comments4 people in discussion
The king has been pleased by letters patent under the great seal of the realm dated 3 November 2025 to declare that Andrew Mountbatten Windsor shall no longer be entitled to hold and enjoy the style, title or attribute of ‘royal highness’ and the titular dignity of ‘prince’.
What's the meaning of pleased here? "Satisfied" by letters patent (that is, authorised by letters?) Or is he "pleased … to declare", which is a weird sentence structure, and doesn't make sense? Jberkel16:14, 7 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
It is unusual, but still grammatical (AFAICT), sentence structure, saying that he has been pleased to declare—by letters patent—that AMW is no longer a prince. At Google Books, I can find examples of monarchs using this phrasing since at least the 15- and 1600s. I suspect they feel that retaining the odd structure makes the announcement seem more formal, situating it in a long and ancient tradition of such announcements. - -sche(discuss)16:44, 7 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
See the last sense at pleasure, as in, According to the king's good pleasure... (see entry for further examples). It has more to do with volition/choice than desire/contentment. I think that's what the second sense of please is getting at, but it's clearer in the pleasure entry. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 23:18, 7 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
I've always thought that this use of please asserts (as in this case) or acknowledges (in the case of, say, an attorney addressing a judge in court) the absolute discretionary power of a monarch or a court. DCDuring (talk) 23:57, 7 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
Aha, so this basically reaffirms that the king "does as he pleases" = has full control/authority over this particular act, and it is done via the letters, great seal etc. Thanks. Jberkel00:31, 8 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 1 month ago2 comments1 person in discussion
The zh/data/ltc-pron module has no data for 鬨, however according to the data here, it should be something corresponding to the Baxter transcription "huwngH". I don't think the data for this module is freely editable, so I just thought I should mention it here in case someone can add it. Samot2 (talk) 17:34, 8 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
Update: I realized there are a ton of characters missing MC data like this, so it's not really worth requesting that they all be added. Samot2 (talk) 18:25, 8 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 1 month ago3 comments2 people in discussion
What is up with senses 5 and 6? Is English even really spoken in those regions? Were those supposed to have been placed at Spanish solano? — Polomo ⟨ oi! ⟩ · 18:16, 8 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
I'm going to delete those, because I tried to find citations supporting them and came up empty. If anyone can prove me wrong, then feel free to restore them, with citations. They were added on 2024-06-30 by one Pagginelli, but I wonder if Pagginelli was confused about EN versus ES, via EFL. I see that various Merriam-Webster dictionaries (e.g., Webster 1911 s.v. solano^ and MW OWL s.v. solano^) agree that English has naturalized that Spanish name of that wind, but what Pagginelli's edit asserts is that some English speakers have calqued that word rather than using it as a loanword, and my attempts to find attestations to support that assertion are not finding any. Thus, WT:BOLD. Again, If anyone can prove me wrong, then feel free to restore them, with citations. Quercus solaris (talk) 18:29, 9 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 1 month ago8 comments4 people in discussion
I moved the derived terms that were from thorpe (a variant of thorp(“village”), “now chiefly in placenames” per the entry) and not the placename Thorpe itself to thorpe.
@Donnanz restored the terms with the edit summary, “the transfers to satisfy a POV were less than helpful, restored those removed”.
I undid this edit, writing, “This is not my ‘point of view’ [as] this is not how we list derived terms: [e.g.] places with ‘River’ are listed at ‘river’, not the placename ‘River’.” J3133 (talk) 17:42, 10 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
Yes, that makes sense. Thorpe with the initial capital is defined as either a surname or specific placenames. Thus, it is not the word from which place names ending in -thorpe are derived. — Sgconlaw (talk) 18:17, 10 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
While they are not "Derived terms", AFAICT these could correctly be listed in Thorpe as "Related terms". But because there are so many, it would be good not to duplicate them in both places (Thorpe and thorpe) ... one entry or the other should probably just have a "see [other entry]" pointer. I have tentatively put the pointer in Thorpe, leaving the list at thorpe. If there are objections to this, undo my edit and we can all discuss further. - -sche(discuss)18:28, 10 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
Let's get something straight. I did not remove the transfers to thorpe. I added them back to Thorpe, for the simple reason that users would expect to find them there, and because thorpe is obsolete, unlike river. J3133 has merely grabbed the low-hanging fruit, ignoring many others such as Nunthorpe, and there are many more which don't have entries yet: those with Thorpe as the first part are listed at List of United Kingdom locations: Thi-Thw#Tho. And that doesn't include those with Thorpe as the second part. It is a very common component in English place names. DonnanZ (talk) 19:39, 10 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
@Donnanz: Derived terms are listed at the word they derive from (thorpe in this case, as Sgconlaw has also stated above), regardless of obsoleteness. Also, I moved these because they were the ones you or others listed, not because I was ignoring others. J3133 (talk) 06:57, 11 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 1 month ago2 comments2 people in discussion
I think "(when conjugated as attributing or attributed) IPA(key): /əˈtɹɪb.(j)ət/" does not belong in attribute in this form. I believe the "correct" thing is to provide pronunciations at attributed and attributing. (If some note were to be kept at attribute, it should specify the actual pronunciations of those other forms, rather than a sort of "back-formed" pronunciation of infinitive attribute that AFAICT isn't used.) - -sche(discuss)21:29, 10 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 1 month ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Howdy! Regarding the sense presence, stay, I was unable to find quotes that best fit presence. However, PIV associates presence with this quote: "dum 5 1/2 jaroj de mia estado en universitato". I believe stay would be more applicable, so I merged the senses for now. To be clear, I understand that presence refers to the state of being present while stay refers to the period of time being present at some place. I request for a more experienced speaker to determine if they should be separated or kept merged. If kept, I additionally request to add a glossed definition that covers both glosses. TranqyPoo (talk) 20:50, 11 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 1 month ago3 comments2 people in discussion
"A flyhandle on the driver's air brake cuts out the proportional application and allows the locomotive to move even if the train pipe vacuum is broken." This appeared in the Railway Magazine, April 1958, page 267. Apart from that, I know nothing about it. There's no entry for fly handle either. DonnanZ (talk) 22:37, 11 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
So far, I've only managed to find one other train-related (rather than fishing-pole-related) quote:
1861, The Friend of the people, page 123:
[…] the train. About the middle compartment of each carriage, but especially over the guard's box, must be a small sheave, or capstan, on a vertical axle, one end of which must pass down through the roof, and be furnished with a fly-handle below it, for the convenience of turning.
I also found this, which (in the context of presses instead of trains) seems to identify fly handles with treadles:
2005, Mary Jo Maynes, Birgitte Søland, Christina Benninghaus, Secret Gardens, Satanic Mills: Placing Girls in European History, 1750-1960, Indiana University Press, →ISBN, page 87:
[…] in press work. Operated by fly handles or treadles, presses were "used for cutting out, shaping, or fitting together thin metal" and other materials to make buttons, jewelry, clasps, fastenings," in fact an endless variety of miscellaneous useful or[…]
And this has pictures of door handles it calls fly handles. Together with the treadle quote, it gives the impression that a fly handle may be a handle that can be pressed down, rather than turned like a knob...?
I have both types of door handle in this house. So it could be a lever-type handle with a spring in the mechanism, that returns to its usual position after operation. DonnanZ (talk) 10:50, 12 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
Sometimes a word is used, not just in poetry, in a way that calls on several definitions. To me the meaning would seem to be covered by definitions 2 and/or 4, influenced by 8. Why would it not be? DCDuring (talk) 14:00, 12 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 1 month ago3 comments2 people in discussion
Being a software guy I don't really know this phrase: see the Talk page regarding how it was changed from Adjective to Noun. But are there really three separate senses, all without plurals? Can there be two "system pulls"? Can some hardware dork improve the entry? Best wishes, software dork. ~2025-33037-05 (talk) 21:46, 12 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
There is a piece that they are missing in order to be accurate, which is "fr:" added to planche inside the template call. Without that they are almost right but not quite. The only problem is that English doesn't use the word planche to mean anything other than the gymnastics stance (i.e., any rare niche technical jargon senses, if they exist, not counting for the purpose). So the surface analysis in English is not quite planche + suffix, even though many English speakers (those with sufficient acquaintance with word roots) can easily see the surface analysis (even when they can't speak French fluently) and even though the suffix itself is certainly one that is used in English. What they are seeing is in fact the surface analysis from French as it shines through the transparency of the cognation. That said, if "fr:" is added, it becomes accurate. I will add that. Quercus solaris (talk) 16:03, 13 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 1 month ago1 comment1 person in discussion
To my knowledge, this is always preceded by an "s" and can be formed only of words ending in s, e.g. elvistellä, jeesustella. Also, these don't have consonant gradation and their stem is just -tele- instead of -ttele- mentioned in the head. I wonder if it should be moved to -stella entirely - many etymologies would need to be fixed if we so decide. -- Mölli-Möllerö (talk) 11:03, 14 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
I agree the citations in the entry don't support the rest of the details beyond "kill, assassinate"; indeed, they (and others I can find online) seem to outright contradict "especially a politically prominent figure", because they (often) use it of non-notable people; I also don't detect any suggestion in them that the killing needs to be recorded. Even online the term seems to be uncommon and might fail entirely if RFVed, BTW. - -sche(discuss)08:07, 16 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 27 days ago3 comments3 people in discussion
Hello, could someone have a look at these entries? I'm not sure of current definitions. Do these phrases mean 'very', 'pleasantly' or 'completely'? Also, I'm pretty certain that 'lovely and' is a British phrase ~2025-34020-15 (talk) 16:47, 16 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
Everything that's given at the current definitions of good and and nice and, as of this writing, is not wrong. There is some potential to add to what's there. Meanings conveyed by these constructions include "very", "plenty" (adv), "pleasantly", and "adequately", depending on which term and which particular use instance, and it is true that "thoroughly" could be added too. From "thoroughly" it is not a stretch semantically over to "completely" and "wholly", so there's a fair argument that those are not wrong to add, even though these terms more often than not don't denote "completely" or "wholly" or "maximally". I agree that lovely and in a sense synonymous with nice and is not something that AmE does. Quercus solaris (talk) 23:40, 16 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
One characteristic of note is that good and can be used with a following adjective of either positive or negative valence, whereas nice and (and presumably lovely and) are normally only used with positive-valence adjectives.
Latest comment: 18 days ago3 comments2 people in discussion
hello! so i noticed recently, that for the old english sprǣdan the ipa notation is spræː.dɑn which as far as i understand it would imply sprǣddan as the spelling, rather. is this a mistake of some sort or do i not fully understand this? 1PintOfLint (talk) 23:13, 16 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
@1PintOfLint ˈspræː.dɑn represents the syllable /ˈspræː/ followed by the syllable /dɑn/: there is no geminate "dd" here. It contains /æ/ (the vowel quality spelled "æ") followed by /ː/ (the vowel length marker) followed by /./ (the syllable break marker) followed by /d/ (the consonant spelled "d"). Were you not familiar with the use of the period to separate syllables? That is optional and some people prefer to omit syllabification in transcriptions.--Urszag (talk) 04:51, 20 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 25 days ago9 comments4 people in discussion
I think they are used in similar way in British English (instead of sitting and standing), so shouldn't they have similar definitions? Also, aren't they present participles rather than adjectives? ~2025-34337-55 (talk) 19:42, 17 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
[after edit conflict]: OED would agree with DCDuring's assessment above ("passives of transitive"). Here is what I was about to say: The forms sat and stood are never present participles (which end in -ing). It is true that BrE can use the past participle (ending in -ed, -d, or -t) in a certain way, conveying a certain meaning, for which AmE uses only the present participle (ending in -ing). It is in sentences such as "I'm standing here before you because X" versus "I'm stood here before you because X", or "there was a guy standing on the corner smoking" versus "there was a bloke stood on the corner smoking", or "there's a guy sitting in the corner laughing" versus "there's a bloke sat in the corner laughing". I just looked at OED, AHD, and MWU to see how they address and handle such usage, and to my eye, none of them do full justice to it. OED's metalanguage for it at I.5.g — "transitive (in passive)" — is decent (regarding that grammatical assessment, compare, for example, "I am painted into a corner"), but the question is precisely how each authority decides whether to call a certain use of a participle a verbal use versus an adjectival use. The relevant page range in CamGEL 2002 is 76-83. Quote from page 79: "In the light of this distinction between participial adjectives and participle forms of verbs we can clarify the nature of the functional resemblance between participle and adjective that forms the basis for the general definition. In examples like [9] it is not a matter of the word written itself having a function like that of an adjective, but of written being head of an expression whose function is like that of an expression headed by an adjective, i.e. of an AdjP. The functional resemblance is at the level not of words but of larger constituents […] At the level of words, verbs and adjectives differ significantly with respect to the dependents they take." Quercus solaris (talk) 23:07, 17 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
I meant present participle (I am stood = I am standing), but on second thoughts, maybe we shouldn't label it as present participle on account of morphology – all other present participle ends in ...ing
That being said, I still think these entries need an improvement. We label 'sat' as an adjective but we don't label 'stood' as an adjective. Why is that? ~2025-34465-37 (talk) 07:34, 18 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
Agreed. No doubt the main part of the answer to "why" is simply that the entries were worked on by different people at different times. The next layer of the answer is that people have differing notions regarding part-of-speech definitions for past participle functioning as verb form versus past participle functioning as participial adjective. At the moment I'm inclined to tweak the stood entry so as to make it handle the phenomenon in the same way that the sat entry currently does. I might do that soon if no objections occur here. Quercus solaris (talk) 15:17, 18 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
I object. I don't think sat or stood meet the relevant adjective tests to distinguish them from use as component of passive: comparability, gradability, distinct meaning, use with copulas other than be. DCDuring (talk) 16:42, 18 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
Fair enough. Can't argue with those. This means, then, that the reverse is true: the adj POS at sat should be removed, and then someone should sit with both entries, stood and sat, and make sure that the [notionally] 'transitive' passive sense is covered at the verb POS as well as it can be, in that someone's informed judgment. I might possibly do that, but I doubt that the spirit will move me to do it. Feel free, anyone who seeks consistency on it. What I mean by "[notionally] 'transitive'" is the following: it is notionally transitive even though the agent is usually the self: I'm sat in the corner because I have sat myself down in the corner (that is, I have sat my ass down in the corner, where my ass is a synecdochical patient representing my whole self and is thus in fact a pronominal form, although WT isn't allowed to call it that, per previous decisions from users who don't get that aspect). The agency is thus usually closer to both intransitive and reflexive in nature (essence) than to transitive, although one can be sat or stood in the corner via someone else's agency too, though (e.g., that of a disciplinarian or jailer). Quercus solaris (talk) 17:26, 18 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
Well, per the theory above, sat still (at the moment) needs its adj POS section removed. (Thus, I'll remove it in a moment, boldy.) I'm fine with the current verb POS and its usexes, although the usex that illustrates this "transitive passive" usage should be labeled as both "informal" and "chiefly UK/Commonwealth", because AmE doesn't do it; those AmE speakers who do it are consciously employing UK/Commonwealth usage when they do it. (Thus, I'll add the geolectal label in a moment.) I'm OK with the usage notes as they currently are (and they do have good parallelism with each other); admittedly there's no clean way to add further explanation there that WT's main audiences would benefit from. Quercus solaris (talk) 18:36, 18 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 26 days ago1 comment1 person in discussion
The pronunciation of the word ចក្រភព(cakkraʼphup) was modified by @RalvahKaset who I am not sure I trust. The original pronunciation was given by @Sitaron - self-identified native speaker.
Both are inactive since 2022.
In http://sealang.net/khmer/ it seems to me that in many instances is more reliable than Headley97, Headley77 gives /cakraʔpʰup/, Headley97 gives /cak pʰup/. I think Headley97 shows simplificiation of the pronunciation.
I think of leaving respellings ច័ក-ក្រៈ-ភប់ /caʔ.kraʔ.pʰup/ + ច័ក-ក្រ់-ភប់ /caʔ.krɑ.pʰup/, the latter per native speaker + /ច័ក ភព់/ /caʔ ˈpʰup/ per Headley97.
The closest would be "situated toward or at the front of something", in a figurative sense. These are things that are right up front where you can see/taste/smell them, not obscured by anything else. Chuck Entz (talk) 07:08, 18 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
I don't see anything that quite covers the usage in those citations. At first I thought it was the same sense as in expressions like fashion-forward (in 5 other serious OneLook dictionaries), tech-forward, future-forward, design-forward, in which it seems to mean "at the forefront of a trend or a field". It also reminded me of facing in [customer-]facing ("in direct contact with [customers]").
It seems to me to mean something like "especially prominent or emphasized", which is not obviously in any of our definitions of forward, either adjective or adverb. DCDuring (talk) 14:26, 18 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
That's my sense, too (that none of our current senses clearly cover it), but I wanted to check I wasn't missing something. Dictionary.com has a sense for this, "standing out from others"; their usexes show that they consider that sense to cover both standalone use ("sage is an herb with a strong, forward flavor") and use in combinations ("fashion-forward celebrities"). IMO their definition is not great; I like your wording better, and have tentatively added it along with more cites, but I'm unsure if it makes sense to have just one sense, or two: what forward means when it stands alone ("sage is an herb with a forward flavour") and what it means in combinations ("this is a gin with a citrus-forward flavour") seem similar, but I'm not sure whether they're identical. What do you think? - -sche(discuss)19:10, 18 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
I think they are so close that it is not worth separating them, though it would not be wrong to do so.
But I don't think fashion-forward (which may have been the first wide-spread use in this sense) and the others fall under the same sense of forward. One could substitute -trendy for -forward in those, except for the pejorative connotation of trendy. (Future-forward seems like a marketing-type pleonasm.) DCDuring (talk) 20:19, 18 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
I think the difference is that being "fashion-forward" is being ahead of the common herd as everyone moves in the direction of newness and stylishness, with the fashion-forward leading the way. With "citrus-forward flavor", it's more stationary: the citrus is more prominant, as if metaphorically in a position closer to the one perceiving it. Chuck Entz (talk) 09:41, 19 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
Agree that they're aspects of the same underlying whole. But there is a part-of-speech difference between the aspects. Noun sense 11 at noun mind is truly a noun sense (e.g., one of the usexes there is "They are the “tars” who give mind to the spreading sail"). It's the same noun as in "pay no mind to those jerks". The mind in mind you is a verb in the imperative mood. The you is the subject expressed after the command form. It is grammatically parallel with hear ye ("listen up, you!"). Compare "mind that you don't get home too late" (verb in imperative mood). Quercus solaris (talk) 15:26, 18 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
D'oh! Sorry about that. Yes, I agree. Quite right. Quercus solaris (talk) 15:39, 18 November 2025 (UTC) BTW: Verb sense 11 is the same critter as verb sense 1, just used syntactically in a certain way. Whether that means that verb sense 11 is redundant to verb sense 1 will depend on who is asked. Quercus solaris (talk) 15:40, 18 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 24 days ago3 comments2 people in discussion
Just spotted this in a book - person is having a dream about playing in a Scrabble tournament. “Then my mother appears and starts coffeehousing.”
Anyone seen this one before? Synonym of kibitz? JulieKahan (talk) 18:08, 19 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 22 days ago19 comments4 people in discussion
Is 'adjective' the right part of speech for this? (I mean, arguably it's not really a word on its own at all, just a part of certain longer terms like "baker's half-dozen" that are formed in imitation of "baker's dozen", but because the combinations it's attested in are not always themselves thrice-attested, it's arguably better to try to have something that explains them than to leave them unexplained.) - -sche(discuss)03:53, 20 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
Yeah, it seems odd to call the genitive/possessive inflection of a noun an "adjective", and this isn't done for others, such as devil's (nor should it be). To me it is better deleted than not. Quercus solaris (talk) 04:37, 20 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
Baker's, like any possessive, serves as a determinative function in general, but the entry's definition is not determinative, so adjective may be the best we can do.
BTW 1, the adjective definition is insufficiently specific. The citations show that it's (rare) use is with a definition like "a little bit more than". Even "An Imperial ton or long ton is a baker's ton." seems to me wrong using the US ton (12% more), but good using the metric ton (1.6% more).
Isn't the &lit possessive form of the noun a ===Noun=== {{head|en|noun form}}, not a determiner? We appear to handle apostropheless possessive forms of nouns as noun forms, both in English (e.g. kinges) and in Middle and Old English and other languages (e.g. cynges). - -sche(discuss)21:00, 20 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
Relevant to my original question, I see we have people's (and today's) as an adjective, but... that too feels a little odd to me: could you say "the republic was democratic and people's" or "this republic is more people's than that one, but this other one is the people'sest of them all"? - -sche(discuss)06:07, 21 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
But then, if it is (or at least, is homographic to) a noun form (the possessive form of people) and can only be used in ways nouns can be, not in adjectival ways, should we not call it a noun form? - -sche(discuss)07:49, 21 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
I have put "baker-'s" at the "noun form" {{&lit}} "definition". Would such an inflection line for all nouns that use possessives be satisfactory? At least it clearly gives a learner something to click on, admittedly unconventional in appearance. DCDuring (talk) 15:20, 21 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
"that is not how it is written", and that is a problem because ....?
"we do not separate other headwords into parts": unless there is some separation indicated by a space or hyphen/dash. Why not add apostrophe to the list? DCDuring (talk) 17:52, 21 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
Re the meaning of people's and people being different: so? The meanings of message and messages are also different; sometimes things which originate as different forms of one word/part of speech have different meanings but are still the same part of speech; I'm not proposing to remove the definitions, just wondering if it might be more accurate to have 'noun' as the part of speech. - -sche(discuss)18:52, 21 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
I'm sorry that I didn't make clear what I was talking about. I was referring to various definitions offered at people's which are not quite parsable as any definition at people + 's, whatever the etymological connection. I don't see why people's, when used to mean something distinct from the possessive of people, has to be considered a noun when it behaves so little like a noun. AFAICT, it can't normally be a subject of verbs or object/complement of verbs or prepositions; be modified it by determiners; or have either countability/uncountability as a property. It also cannot form a possessive! We find it easy to call a homograph of a noun an adjective when it has a distinct meaning in attributive use. This seems analogous to me. DCDuring (talk) 00:13, 22 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
Is there another way of reminding language learners of the ordinary possessive use of such nouns? Do we think that an inflection-line link to -'s (without even a space preceding it) is sufficient? Would a preceding space be sufficient for enough users? DCDuring (talk) 15:13, 21 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 16 days ago9 comments5 people in discussion
I remember someone created the page vidoe Misspelling of Video, But somebody removed it without a having a clean up requesting and why they removed it I mean it's actually this word rarely misspelled when they type vidoe on messenger. What do you think? フィリピン人 (talk) 12:44, 20 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
We include misspellings, like pharoah, that result from someone misremembering how a word is spelled. This is different from typos, where someone has the right spelling in mind but their finger slips. jlwoodwa (talk) 22:02, 21 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
@フィリピン人: This was nominated for speedy deletion in May and deleted in June. Nothing has happened since, and it certainly wouldn't have shown up in any categories after deletion. There's no point in undeleting it so we can delete it again while you watch. Chuck Entz (talk) 18:01, 27 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 12 days ago2 comments2 people in discussion
is it very confusing that 兎馬 and 驢 can be both means donkey and also the Japanese section says 驢
(Hyōgai kanji)
This term needs a translation to English. Please help out and add a translation, then remove the text rfdef. I'm not sure if it just translate as donkey so I'm gonna add it anyway フィリピン人 (talk) 14:09, 20 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
Regarding Japanese having multiple words for "donkey", consider that English does as well: we have donkey, as well as ass and jackass and jenny-ass. 😄
I've expanded several of our entries relating to the 驢 kanji, and some entries related tangentially to those, particularly:
Latest comment: 12 days ago2 comments2 people in discussion
Does the archaic label make sense for this term? There's modern examples of at least the phrase 何ちゅう; the first example in the NKD is from 1905, and I think this video from 2025 uses the term 何ちゅう as well. Or should 何ちゅう be considered separate from the original contraction of という as ちゅう? Horse Battery (talk) 02:14, 21 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
Digital Daijisenhere at Kotobank explicitly calls this out as 上代語(jōdai-go, “ancient language → Old Japanese”).
Meanwhile, my copy of Daijirin states:
現代語でも方言的な言い方として用いられることがある。
Gendaigo de mo hōgenteki na iikata to shite mochiirareru koto ga aru.
Even in the modern language, this may be used as a dialectal kind of speech.
Latest comment: 19 days ago3 comments2 people in discussion
Should be we add memorable quotes from Filipino movie titles like Isang bala ka lang!, Ako ang huhusga, Hindi ka ng sisikat ng Araw and Kapag puno na ang salop? フィリピン人 (talk) 13:15, 21 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 22 days ago6 comments5 people in discussion
These words have a similar meaning: "begin to be", but I'd like to distinguish them from each other better.
1. become - More formal than get. Often with permanent states. Followed by adjectives and nouns
2. get - More informal than become and often with emotions, temporary states, adjectives that looks as past participle and comparatives. Followed by adjectives or an object + adjectives
3. turn - I'd like to merge the meaning 2.1 and 4 and indicate it's more formal than go and often used with colors, clear sudden changes, weather and ages. Followed by adjectives, nouns or and object + adjective.
4. go - I'd like to merge the meaning 10.1 and 11 and indicate it's often used with colors and negative states and that it's more informal than turn. Followed by adjectives
5. come - Mostly used in set phrases and certain collocations. Also, I'd like to delete the example "He was a dream come true.". It doesn't seem correct to me and also "come true" is a fixed phrase, so it would be better to just leave a link to come true under the definition
Get and turn have both transitive and intransitive usage in the sense(s) you may mean to change.
As to advice: I'd pick something simpler to start, preferably an open group such as nouns, adjectives, or manner adverbs. Or try cleaning up entries that others have found worth adding to WT:RFC (cleanup), WT:RFV (verification/attestation), WT:RFD??? (deletion), or Wiktionary:Todo/Lists. Finding citations for less common definitions of common words is both valuable and challenging. Or focus on something of intrinsic interest to you. We lack many terms from traditional industries and crafts.
OP: I feel your pain, regarding the urge to codify the connotative differences, but I will just share the calibrating point (from experience) that you can't explicitly codify all the facts about the synonymizer's discrimination (as the thesaurusmakers call it) and parasynonymy into Wiktionary's definitions without turning Wiktionary into something that is not as useful to the chief classes of its target users. You could try writing a unified paragraph of discrimination (for this set that you've expressed interest in) and put it as a single usage note at become, but I just need to warn you (from experience) that if your result is more than 3 lines, someone else will just delete it anyway, because something-something-shut-up-egghead-poindexter-handwave-etc. In fairness, they're not entirely wrong. Learning which aspects to live without (because others are enough) is a journey, and managing to scratch some of the itches of that type (i.e., the discrimination-explication urge) pretty well (well enough) while nonetheless remaining concise as hell is a pleasure in itself when it happens. Cheers to your own discoveries along that line. In the meantime, I remain, Quercus solaris (talk) 06:13, 22 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
I decided to be bold and just make some changes. I wouldn't be surprised if they needed some improvement but I believe they enteies are more informative now ~2025-35508-18 (talk) 10:39, 22 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 21 days ago2 comments2 people in discussion
We define this as "(childish) The condition of splitting something in order to share it." At google books:"go splitsies on" I can find plenty of uses (mostly referring to splitting the cost of something) which do not seem childish to me. I have tentatively changed the label to "childish or informal", but am mentioning this here in case anyone has better ideas for the label or for the definition, or disagrees with my analysis. - -sche(discuss)19:10, 22 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 21 days ago3 comments3 people in discussion
Deleted back in 2011 for being SoP. However, it seems like this term is chiefly used to mean "perpendicular line segment bisector" rather than any bisector (of an angle, figure, etc.) that is perpendicular. HyperAnd (talk) 01:41, 23 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
I would agree, it doesn't really refer to any "bisector" which is "perpendicular", but specifically to one of a line segment, so it has a particular meaning. Moreover, even if it were just interpreted as its face-value meaning, it is a specific technical reference / term of art, so it should be present in my opinion for these two reasons. Kiril kovachev (talk・contribs) 03:20, 23 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
I agree with you both and would also like to point out that there may be a justification for recreating this entry for translation purposes, perhaps as a translation hub. Selecting ‘all’ rather than ‘main’ when doing a search here for ‘perpendicular bisector’ produces several hits for words in other languages with ‘perpendicular bisector’ as a definition which are currently either unlinked or linked separately to ‘perpendicular’ and ‘bisector’. Thanks for bringing this up, you made me realise that I foolishly defined ‘inverse Pythagorean theorem’ in terms of ‘perpendicular bisectors’ instead of ‘altitudes’. I’ve thus improved that definition and added a new sense at our ‘altitude’ entry. Overlordnat1 (talk) 08:05, 23 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 20 days ago3 comments2 people in discussion
We define this as "a factory where drinks are bottled", but don't there exist facilities for nonfood liquids such as Javel water? PUC – 11:54, 23 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
No doubt, although usually when people say "bottling plant" they mean a beverage-bottling plant. To my eye the best way to handle this instance of that common natural-language theme (i.e., "when I say X, I mean X of type 1 unless otherwise specified or contextually evident") is via a second sense. I'll go do that boldy. Quercus solaris (talk) 00:41, 24 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 19 days ago2 comments2 people in discussion
Our definition includes aversion to "LGBTQ people in general". As I said on the Talk page: "Doesn't seem right. I have never seen transphobia called "homophobia" for instance. It should at least be split into a separate sense, since the synonyms don't match, as things stand." I also just checked Merriam-Webster and they do not expand their definition beyond gay people. ~2025-35917-66 (talk) 09:53, 24 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
As of this writing, I see that the defs at homophobia are split into two senses, which in my view is unassailable: changing it would not improve it. Changing it to a single sense of the type of "X; usually, X with Y" or "X; often, X with Y" would not be an improvement (it would not be wrong, but the syns beneath it would then need qualifiers grouping them into groups); and deleting the second sense while leaving the first sense as-is would not be an improvement either: it would be introducing an error. Etymonic meaning is not the sole component of meaning, whereas coinstantiation plays an important role semantically in producing idiomatic meaning. For example, in this case, the challenge is that in many cultures (those without emic conceptions of third genders), many people with homophobia hate anyone who's gay or trans or nonbinary, because they lump them all together, with the attitude that they're all "perverts". For example, in the country where I grew up, while I was growing up (US, of a certain age), there was more or less no such thing as (i.e., zero or near-zero) people who were respectful of trans people and didn't mind their existence but meanwhile hated gay people. And that's why the word queer in its slur sense covered absolutely everyone who in the 21st century would later be called LGBTQIA. (The LGBT- series of terms didn't exist when I was growing up; their referents, gay people and trans people and others, have always existed, but the terms naming them differed.) Even today I doubt there are many such people in my country (i.e., homophobic stricto sensu but not transphobic); if you can find one, you'll have found an uncommon and idiosyncratic exception. Now, granted, the other polarity is different: there are quite a few people who are transphobic even though they're not homophobic; but that doesn't work in the opposite polarity (i.e., doesn't exist IRL [zero or near-zero], versus hypothetically). From this viewpoint, the strict etymonic definition of homophobia (sense 1, gayphobia) when considered in the absence of transphobia, as contrasted with sense 2 (LGBTphobia), is the definition of the beliefs of a hypothetical person who in my country doesn't exist outside of some rare one-in-a-million unicorn. That doesn't mean that sense 1 should be deleted (no). But it's a fact about referents that exist IRL and the words that people use to refer to them (regardless of whether anyone thinks that they ought not to), which is a crucial theme in lexicography. Regarding the whole point about "homophobic but not transphobic" being a near-nonexistent unicorn in many cultures: the situation could be different in a culture that has a third gender emically. For example, if someone in South Asia acknowledges a societal role for hijra but hates gay people. Quercus solaris (talk) 16:55, 24 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 19 days ago6 comments4 people in discussion
What do we think of this kind of entry: created with no content (just rfdef slot for a definition) and only legitimate because of a rare, non-standard alt form that passes COALMINE (in this case "blackgirl")? The creator seems keen to create these: lime blossom is another. ~2025-35917-66 (talk) 18:10, 24 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
Right on the bleeding edge of abusing WT:COALMINE but in a way that's difficult to fight because of slippery slope. My gut says don't fight it, just live with it, whenever the particular solid compound at hand (in the given case) is rare but passes WT:CFI because of three or more durable attestations that are not credibly construable as being inherently/indisputably/always an orthographic error. There is a credible argument that, regarding compound nouns in English and the orthographic potential for coexisting open and solid forms (where the latter are alternative spellings versus misspellings), borderline cases, where the solid form is not credibly construable as being always an orthographic error, are not a violation of WT:SoP. They are the cases that live a hair's breadth from the frontier but have both feet on the safe side of the line (by a millimeter). Even though someone who makes a point of surfing and fishing on the very edge of that wave will certainly cause annoyance, I don't think you can purge the borderline cases without an undue level of prescriptivism, chopping off some toes that weren't quite over the line. Who can declare that limeblossom isn't allowed to be a real word? And if limeblossom gets in, then lime blossom gets in too, as a conjoined twin. Quercus solaris (talk) 18:40, 24 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
Yeah, I agree regarding subliteracy/semiliteracy. There's a difference between (1) limeblossom and (2) blackman or gayman: those latter ones need usage labels identifying them as nonstandard, and even as slang. (When are they not slang in present-day use?) Looks like User:Sham124 is either intentionally trolling (probably) or obliviously surfing in the same spot that a troll would occupy (maybe). Maybe the sham part of their name is a thumb in our eye. Perhaps there is a place for declaring that Wiktionary will refuse to enter the open spelling in a certain rare subclass, where the solid compound is a rare nonstandard slang form only, in present-day use. That would be a reasonable and defensible rule, it seems to me at the moment. The open form then is viewed, in that subclass, as "an SoP whose COALMINE treatment is an abuse of a technicality, and just because it exists doesn't mean WT is obligated to enter it." I think this approach would suffer lime blossom to live but would kick out these others. Quercus solaris (talk) 19:03, 24 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
It is just as much an abuse of {{rfdef}} as of WT:COALMINE, IMO. Perhaps speedy deletion of instance of simultaneous abuse of those two rules would waste less contributor time. Or deleting when entries don't come with citations + definition. Something like what we do with derogatory terms also might work. DCDuring (talk) 19:48, 24 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
Given the lack of definition, and the apparent agreement above that this looks like trolling or abuse, I have deleted it as "no usable content given". - -sche(discuss)20:10, 24 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 17 days ago6 comments5 people in discussion
See diff. Obviously it's not used in all subculture ever, so we need a more specific or better label. (Grey Worm talked like this in A Song of Ice and Fire / Game of Thrones.) - -sche(discuss)19:40, 24 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
I've only seen this years ago in erotic BDSM fiction (lol), where the submissive is denied individuality and cannot say "I" or "me". I note that two of the citations were posted by users who wrote their names in lower case, so possibly flaunting their submissive status. ~2025-35917-66 (talk) 20:10, 24 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
The quotes appear in the context of code comments unrelated to kink (or so it seems), so it feels weird to say this is solely a kink thing. Definitely close, tho. CitationsFreak (talk) 13:25, 26 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 19 days ago2 comments2 people in discussion
Is this, listing description (and fashion) as synonyms of class = "group based on shared characteristics", correct? The relevant sense of description is sense 3, "set of characteristics by which someone or something can be recognized: the zoo had no lions, tigers, or cats of any description". A "set of characteristics" is similar to a "group based on characteristics", but is it the same / synonymous? (The edit is by a user known for sometimes mistaking similar things as synonyms.) - -sche(discuss)20:43, 24 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
This seems rather limited to the idiom "of some/any/every description". You can't say: "Biologists are still deciding which description to place the new fish into." Still, I'm not sure, as a thesaurus entry can cover quite a lot of ground: the words overlap in meaning but are never 100% identical. ~2025-35917-66 (talk) 20:48, 24 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 18 days ago6 comments4 people in discussion
Hi!
I am new here, I allowed myself to add audio file for 嘴巴. i hope I haven't done anything wrong? I am in early stages of learning mandarin, can somebody more proficient that my check if it's 100% okay?
There is a misunderstanding. I did not RECORD the audio myself - instead, I had found the audio on Wikimedia Commons (by a native speaker, I suppose) and linked it to the entry in WD (because it was missing before).
I am 95% sure I found the right audio - but if tones would be different, I would be none the wiser, thus my plea for help by a more proficient speaker. To be 100% sure.
Latest comment: 17 days ago8 comments3 people in discussion
Which kind of bow is this from? So-called as it's used to make archery bows? Or because it stoops? Perhaps it was seen from the bow of a ship.... Pronunciation would be nice too, like with all terms derived from heteronyms Vealhurl (talk) 11:56, 25 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
If only there were some way to look up such information that were accessible to those who could contribute to these discussions. If only […].
Wait! There is such a resource: Wikipedia! It has the following (and more!):
"Although its wood is commonly knotty and twisted, straight-grained Osage orange timber makes good bows, as used by Native Americans.[5] John Bradbury, a Scottish botanist who had traveled the interior United States extensively in the early 19th century, reported that a bow made of Osage timber could be traded for a horse and a blanket." DCDuring (talk) 17:48, 25 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
As an old guy, I still have the mental habit of saying to myself "I'll look that up when I get home. What book would have that?" or "It's right on the tip of my tongue.", instead of getting my phone out to get the answer right away. DCDuring (talk) 21:28, 25 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
Tangentially related to this, I have called bodark and homophone of bois d'arc because it probably is or was among some speakers, Itherwise it never would have come to be a synonym of bow-wood. Could someone give bois d'arc a proper pronunciation section with "both" pronunciations? DCDuring (talk) 02:47, 26 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
@Ooligan: If it was an acronym, it would be pronounced something like "f"- a regular word pieced together from the first parts of the components and pronounced as single unit. Instead, it's an initialism, made by piecing together the first letters pronounced individually. For the same reason, "US" as an abbreviation for United States doesn't sound like "us". As for adding it to a list: the occurance of {{initialism of|en|Purple Heart}} has already added it to Category:English initialisms. As I pointed out above, adding it to Category:English acronyms would be wrong. To add something to that category, you would use {{acronym of|en}} in the definition line or {{cln|en|acronyms}} somewhere on the page. Chuck Entz (talk) 22:46, 26 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
Interesting. My immediate gut reaction was that Eq was correct when (in 2015) he declared it SoP and redirected it to soon. But then I thought harder about it and realized that it works the same way that as soon as does in several senses: (1) the SoP sense (not any sooner than: timepoint value ≥ X), (2) the sense meaning "immediately", and (3) the sense regarding preferences. I'm going to boldly take a crack at this. Quercus solaris (talk) 18:24, 28 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
I think that no sooner does not have to appear followed by than anywhere in the sentence. One can assert that in such cases than and what follows is "understood", but that needs at least an explanation. Perhaps one or more usage notes would address my concern.
I'm open to alternative conceptions regarding SoP and regarding POS=Phrase where phrase can function prepositionally or conjunctively. I took the already-existing state of as soon as and no later than as inspirations for how I handled no sooner as redirect to no sooner than. I won't cry if anyone rejiggers all of these entries (i.e., as soon as, no sooner than, no later than), but my argument would be that whatever handling is chosen for these phenomena should have enough thought put into it so as to address the fact that these things function in various ways: (1) literally-in-a-prepositional-way, (2) literally-in-a-conjunctive-way, (3) idiomatically-in-same-way-as-immediately#Conjunction and once#Conjunction, and (4) idiomatically-regarding-preferences. Quercus solaris (talk) 23:23, 28 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 13 days ago2 comments2 people in discussion
In Welsh, the word champion (borrowed from English; not currently listed on that page) is used as a colloquial interjection and adjective, but I can't quite figure out the specific meaning, how to word the definition, or if it would even qualify for a section - it's not in dictionaries, I assume because it's colloquial. It's also not on Wiciadur. Here's two (barebones and probably badly formatted...) quotations from an episode of Rownd a Rownd that demonstrate its usage, firstly as an interjection and secondly as an adjective:
2025 November 27, “27 Tachwedd 2025 [27 November 2025]” (10:15 from the start), in Rownd a Rownd[4], S4C:
Elliw: Wnaf fi yrru linc y ddynes i chdi rwan, Arthur. / Arthur:Champion!
Elliw: I'll send the woman's link to you soon, Arthur. / Arthur:Champion!
2025 November 27, “27 Tachwedd 2025 [27 November 2025]” (10:52 from the start), in Rownd a Rownd[5], S4C:
Iestyn: Mum. Are you sure you're okay? / Gwenno: Yes! [I'm] champion.
The official English subtitles translate the former as "Great!" and the latter as "I'm fine", which helps a little, but I'm still unsure. I don't currently have any more examples, mostly because I only thought about this entry because of hearing the word twice in this Rownd a Rownd episode. I'd really appreciate any help (and, secondarily, some help with formatting {{quote-av}} when the quote involves multiple characters speaking...). Paging @Arafsymudwr, since you make a lot of Welsh entries. Suntooooth, it/he (talk/contribs) 03:40, 29 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 13 days ago2 comments2 people in discussion
These are defined as "Something that is irrelevant or unimportant", but a) the only quotes and usexes currently provided are in the form what does that have to do with _, and b) in that construction, and others I can find (e.g. from GBooks […] "What the fuck does Mama know about the price of tea in China?"), it seems to me that it means the opposite, "Something relevant or important, usually used to emphasize that another, compared thing is irrelevant or unimportant or non sequitur, or that someone unaware of it is ignorant, etc." : "What does that have to do with anything relevant or important?" and "what does she know about anything important or relevant?" are coherent criticisms, whereas "what does she know about something irrelevant?" is (itself) a non sequitur. So I'm inclined to redefine these. Am I missing something? (Are there sentences where these must mean "something irrelevant"? Do both senses exist?) - -sche(discuss)07:28, 30 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
There's an extra element missing, I think. At least sometimes those and many other expressions are used to represent one of many possible topics, randomly selected, not related to the matter at hand in discourse. They can often be glossed as "anything". "The matter at hand" is often substitutable, though not a satisfactory definition.
Consider: "Speaker 1: "[…] What are you implying?" Speaker 2: "It's a simple question. Answer that question, and we'll move on to the price of tea in China, the shoe sale at Macy's, Nigerian puberty rituals, or whatever else you want to talk about."
Also: "So he likes movies. Everybody likes movies. What's that got to do with the price of beans in China?"
IOW, 1. A usage note had better indicate that almost anything could be substituted for the specific expressions.
2. Usage of the expression probably can't be covered by one definition. The existing definition is sometimes appropriate.
Latest comment: 8 days ago2 comments1 person in discussion
In diff and diff Aradia.archeologist1995& added /ˈbeiɡ/ as a PNW and Canadian pronunciation (in the first case) and a PNW pronunciation (in the second case, where the entry already listed the Canadian pronunciation as /ˈbeɪɡ/). I gather that as far as notation is concerned both of these should be /ˈbeɪɡ/ (if the intention is to indicate they rhyme with Hague), and have changed them accordingly, but it would be good if PNW and Canadian speakers could verify that the pronunciations themselves are accurate. In particular, for Canadian, it seems like some speakers merge bag, beg but some don't, so the label should be qualified or (perhaps better yet) there should be a separate line for Canadian listing both merged and unmerged pronunciations...? - -sche(discuss)17:30, 30 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
Clearly that it is the derivation, but the meaning in current UK use seems more specific when used with in or into. BTW, I am not aware of any similar US expression. DCDuring (talk) 18:44, 1 December 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 13 days ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Just an observation: the creator made this entry by copying quarter-pounder and changing quarter to third — all six senses! — which is possibly excessive, because "third-pounder" is a much rarer term with only 4 or 5 Google Books hits. ~2025-37467-56 (talk) 10:32, 1 December 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 12 days ago2 comments2 people in discussion
It would be interesting to know since when this term is used concerning the Roma people.
This wasn't always the case.
In a Catholic Magazin from 1907 e.g. the term is used to denounce Protestants:
"What is Protestantism in its essence? Variegated and hydra-headed in its species the generic sign by which it can always be recognized is antagonism to Rome; some forms of Romaphobia are more blatant and malicious than others, but to a perceptible degree all Protestants have it..."
Latest comment: 12 days ago1 comment1 person in discussion
In Plautus, 'to lie with a prostitute' is given either as "scortum accumbere" (Menaechmi 475/1042 "accubui", Bacchides 1189 "accumbas") or "scortum accubāre" (Bacchides 72 "scortum pro scuto accubet")
'To lie with' both in Bacchides 1192 as: "tecum accumbam... cum illo accubet"
Cornelius Nepos 17.8.2: quod ei usu venit, cum annorum octoginta subsidio Tacho in Aegyptum iisset et in acta cum suis accubuisset sine ullo tecto stratumque haberet tale, […], eodemque comites omnes accubuissent vestitu humili atque obsoleto[…] his quaerentibus Agesilaum vix fides facta est, unum esse ex iis, qui tum accubabant.
Latest comment: 7 days ago5 comments3 people in discussion
The page for datum lists its use as the singular of "data" as "dated", but anyone who's taken a statistics class in university can tell you this usage is still well alive in many academic fields. Might there not be a more appropriate label here? Kisequé (talk) 18:09, 2 December 2025 (UTC)Reply
I agree that removing "dated" is reasonable there. The core thrust that drove that label's placement is the fact that the mass sense of the word data continues to increasingly crowd out the plural count sense of data, but the latter is by no means dead though (for example, there are major style guides that still prescribe it), and thus the reality behind that "dated" is too complex and we should just delete that label there. Relatedly, the labels at data need more work. The labels there ought to make clear that data has both a mass sense (noncount sense) and a count sense, but at the moment the labels just say "collective" across all the relevant senses, which is not helpful, useful, precise, or accurate. Quercus solaris (talk) 16:32, 3 December 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 11 days ago1 comment1 person in discussion
It says "Pronunciation: the tone of this word may differ substantially depending on its position in a phrase", but then "Placed at the beginning of a sentence to indicate a question". So how can its position vary? ~2025-37660-57 (talk) 20:39, 2 December 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 10 days ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Under Derived terms on this L2 are two columnar lists: "derived terms (types of fruit trees associated with places)" and "other derived terms". This has some drawbacks:
normal users have to look through two lists to find (or fail to find) what they are looking for.
those adding an item to the list have to look through both lists to find whether it is already there.
those adding to the list have to consider where any particular item belongs. (I note that Allegheny plum appears in :other derived terms".)
it adds clutter to the L2 for those looking for other things.
Are there offsetting advantages to users?
Do we want to split there derived terms this way for this entry? (We may have to consider whether we want to split derived terms by etymology or on any other basis for any entry, a BP matter, I suppose.) DCDuring (talk) 19:08, 3 December 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 9 days ago2 comments2 people in discussion
Currently this has two definitions, one simple past and past participle of unvail, the other simple past and past participle of unvaile, both defined as Obsolete spelling of unveil. Is there a way to rewrite this so it doesn't appear that unvailed is the past participle of two different words, instead of the past participle of two different spellings of one word? Prosfilaes (talk) 00:05, 5 December 2025 (UTC)Reply
Looks perfect to me. It is the past participle of two different words. Those words are alt forms of each other, but still distinct words with their own spelling. ~2025-38083-82 (talk) 06:48, 5 December 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 7 days ago10 comments8 people in discussion
@Lumbering in thought is claiming that asajew is a slur equivalent to race traitor. However, the quotes on that entry clearly show that the term is intended as a mildly insulting snark, and it's hard to imagine that a "anti-Jewish slur" would be getting casually tossed around in articles published by The Jerusalem Post or The Jewish Chronicle. Lumbering in thought's basis for the label is an article published by The Nation and that claiming otherwise is "w:OR", referring to w:Wikipedia:No original research. Besides the fact that Wikipedia policies have no relevance on Wiktionary, my counterpoint is that David Klion writing for The Nation calls it as such because he objects to it ideologically (note that w:WP:THENATION states: Most editors consider The Nation a partisan source whose statements should be attributed.), and that if we relied on random people's (i.e. non-linguists') commentary rather than actual usage we would also be obligated to call cisgender a slur.
The second change I oppose is to the etymology section, which now claims that the phrase "as a Jew" is "a stereotypical obsessive lived experience introduction to an argument made by a Jewish speaker that would indicate an insufficient sense of group self-preservation to topics associated with Judaism". Either this is meant to be understood in wikivoice, in which case it seems highly insulting, or it's meant to represent the perceptions of those who use the term, in which case it's highly inaccurate.
The last thing to note is that Lumbering in thought added a usage note claiming that the term was "brought to popular Western media attention around 2024 in Commentary magazine", which is false, as the The Jewish Chronicle is based in London and used the term in a 2016 article. The cited reference to The Nation doesn't make this claim at all, and this makes me concerned that Lumbering in thought is adding similar spurious claims to other pages.
i think your version is mostly better and that perhaps we should revert to it and discuss further changes here. however, if we do that i will say that i like the semantically active wording to criticize Israel and Zionism over the semantically passive perceived to be antisemitic, and perhaps the word weaponize is better than invoke. —Soap—00:55, 5 December 2025 (UTC)Reply
@Soap my experience (reading stuff online etc.) is that self-hating Jew and synonyms could theoretically also refer to someone who holds anti-Jewish beliefs unrelated to Zionism/Israel, like Soros-style conspiracy theories, but this seems to never happen in the modern day (are there Jewish Groypers?). Johannes Pfefferkorn is sometimes given as a historical example. So the point of the term isn't to specifically defend Israel or advocate for Zionism but rather to make the claim that their advocacy is detrimental to the Jewish community across the world. Ioaxxere (talk) 02:16, 5 December 2025 (UTC)Reply
Strong support to revert the definition and etymology to the previous version. I found it incredibly odd how these were phrased and now I know why! Juwan (talk) 01:13, 5 December 2025 (UTC)Reply
@Ioaxxere Support. I think your definition was far more neutral and does a good job of explaining the term; not everything derogatory is a slur particularly if it's used by Jews themselves. (I should add, the "as a Jew" phenomenon has been commented on for years, long before this particular term was coined.) Benwing2 (talk) 02:53, 5 December 2025 (UTC)Reply
Comment: The version as I write this is flawed because it fails to make clear (enough) that "race traitor" was not meant as being said in wikivoice. There needs to be something like "in the view of the speaker or writer" built into this def line. Someone might counterargue that the labels saying "slur" are, by themselves, enough to make clear that wikivoice is not yelling "race traitor", but I don't buy that argument. It needs to be clearer. I note that the entry for race traitor, as of this writing, contains the phrase "are considered to be", which at least tries to handle this issue adequately. It ought to be further clarified by saying "are considered by the speaker or writer to be". Quercus solaris (talk) 03:08, 5 December 2025 (UTC)Reply
This being the wrong place to get consensus (having stumbled here from wanting to make an unrelated thread), everyone should be reading my edit summaries, which addresses much of what's already said. But I will say the article is nearly identical to dindu nuffin, and what is being said in wikivoice is not insulting. Maybe, since Wiktionary only has WT:NPOV, which has a Wikipedia reference page at the bottom, I should have said that it has no research, nevermind original, I also think I will attribute The Nation, though this doesn't mean I inaccurately view the perceptions of The Jerusalem Post or The Jewish Chronicle, who have lesser standing in regard to this issue btw, or the Trump-Netanyahu "chickens voting for KFC" analysis which celebrate "group of people" slurs just with a difference of degree. Lumbering in thought (talk) 23:55, 5 December 2025 (UTC)Reply
I will say the article is nearly identical to dindu nuffin
One term is used by random racists on Usenet and other sewers of the Internet, the other one is used by writers for major news sites. I absolutely do not think these two entries should look identical. Ioaxxere (talk) 04:53, 6 December 2025 (UTC)Reply
Comparing the original entry, the latest revision prior to my own edits just now, and some of the intermediate revisions, and looking at (1) the etymology, (2) definition, (3) quotes, (4) usage note, and (5) label, I think: Re (1) and (4), one of the intermediate revisions had a much clearer etymology, saying why "asajew" is used; I have restored it; ironically, the etymology of the latest revision prior to my edits was not an etymology and seems, if anything, more like usage note content, while the usage note says little of value and seems like it would be better placed, if anywhere, in the etymology, as it is a note on who popularized it. (2) Parts of the current definition are better, like that it actively spells out what is meant, "...criticize Israel and Zionism" rather than the vague, obfuscating "...supporting political causes perceived to be antisemitic", but parts are more problematic, like saying "race traitor" in wikivoice; I agree with Quercus that it is better to qualify that term, like "one perceived as..."; IMO we should even spell out who does the perceiving, like "one viewed by Zionists as a race traitor". I would also just say "use" (or the earlier "invoke"?) rather than "weaponize". (3) The Klion quote is a mention, not a use; I have moved it. (5), of all of these, seems the most clear-cut to me: this being a term that slurs people quite explicitly on the basis of their ethnicity (and/or religion), it is not clear to me how it could fail to be an ethnic (and/or religious) slur (especially given how expansively Wiktionary seems to use that label, e.g. most of the often-humorous or ribbing terms Black people use for white people are currently labelled here as ethnic slurs). (Also, @Lumbering, where would you think the right place to get consensus would be? This is a central forum, more watched than entry talk pages; if you try to edit the talk page you'll see a little edit notice to this effect.) - -sche(discuss)20:21, 6 December 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 8 days ago5 comments4 people in discussion
It says: "Punning blend of Bollywood + oligarch. By surface analysis, Bombay + oligarch." Is this... consistent? I thought "surface analysis" was just when the words were broken up differently, not when the originating words were entirely different. ~2025-38651-03 (talk) 11:27, 5 December 2025 (UTC)Reply
I agree the wording needs improvement. The second analysis is not a surface analysis in the normal conception of what that means. There are many ways that one could try to word the explanation of why, but it's the same underlying thrust that your comment mentions. The second analysis involves "an imaginative, clever, and cutesy triple blend, one of whose elements is more initialized than merely clipped" (hey, I see what you did there!), which is not quite simply a "surface analysis". Claiming that Bollywood isn't involved in the second analysis is flawed, because if it were solely Bo(mbay)+oligarch then the double-el-y orthography, -olly-, would not be chosen (versus -oli-); that orthography is present only because of the influence of the word Bollywood. For the first analysis, the word "punning" should just be omitted. Lots of blends can be viewed as involving wordplay of one sort or another, but WT doesn't specify "punning" or "wordplay" on the countless many. Quercus solaris (talk) 15:35, 5 December 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 6 days ago3 comments3 people in discussion
I have heard some (older?) Irish English speakers pronounce card with a vowel more like the square vowel than the start vowel; for example, several times in a row from about 3:45 to 4:10 here, in the film Older than Ireland. (OTOH, other Irish speakers use the start vowel, e.g. [6], [7], [8].) Does anyone know if this is a dialectal/regional thing, or an older (square) vs newer (start) thing, or anything we could document? We currently don't list the Irish English pronunciation at card at all AFAICT. — This unsigned comment was added by -sche (talk • contribs) at 22:46, 5 December 2025 (UTC).Reply
@-sche: This is normal for ⟨ar⟩ in Irish English and their start vowel, at least Dublin English rather than an innocent international-influenced Standard Irish English, though I use to hear [æˑɹ] and not [ɛɹ] as in square you refer to (which Wikipedia on DE concedes to be the start vowel at its most extreme, supposedly also fully lengthened).
Since I have paid attention to how the largest English-speaking country in the EU speaks and I consequentially might choose to speak, I have heard it to satisfaction.
It was surely not allowed to be /ɑɹ/ because this is the north vowel before the horse–hoarse merger – which has now taken place in the younger generation or “New Dublin English”, who pronounce the pair as in Multicultural London English. I showed it four years ago in the word storkling, which belongs to the north set. The Wikipedia articles on Irish English are actually easily observed to be quite correct with the multimedia availability nowadays, despite that British dialects appear to be a kick bollocks scramble. Fay Freak (talk) 00:20, 7 December 2025 (UTC)Reply
I don’t know what a ‘kick bollocks scramble’ is but I’m not sure at want to find outǃ I’ve noticed broad Scots speakers say things like ‘fairm’ and ‘airt’ for ‘farm’ and ‘art’ (both of which we currently have entries for but I’m strangely unable to add blue hyperlinks currently) and I’ve seen and heard things like ‘hairt’ for ‘heart’ or ‘hart’. I’ve also noticed the Irish, especially Dubs, do similar things. Occasionally this happens in the West Country too. Adge Cutler may have famously sung about a combine harvester, with a lengthened ‘a’ sound, but he sings the place name ‘Charterhouse’ as ‘Chairderouse’ in the song ‘Drink Up Thee Zider’. Overlordnat1 (talk) 07:33, 8 December 2025 (UTC)Reply
Two variants of a single [phrase] as “alternative forms”
Hmm. I think our current presentation of these is weird. If they were alternative forms, I would expect only one to have a definition, and the other to hard-redirect (#REDIRECT) or soft-redirect ({{altform}}) to it. It seems to me like we should either move the cross-links from "Alternative forms" to "Related terms", or perhaps just hard- or soft- redirect toss someone's salad to toss salad...? After all, we only have (e.g.) blow, not *blow someone, kiss not *kiss someone, etc (we even only have eat out, not *eat someone out), since the forms with someone are just ... the verb, with an object. - -sche(discuss)20:29, 6 December 2025 (UTC)Reply
Hmm... if the term is used even when sex is provided not for payment, I guess that would make it idiomatic. (Also, checking the various synonyms Wikipedia mentions, it does seem like temple prostitute is the most common term, though for _ prostitution it's a different story, sacred being more common.) If the term is used only when sex is provided for payment, then it looks SOP to me, but there are probably enough ancient languages with non-obvious terms for it to make it a THUB regardless... - -sche(discuss)20:47, 6 December 2025 (UTC)Reply
You don't know what it historically was. It is a mythical concept many sexworkers of today derive their self-worth from. The parts of the sum cannot explain it. Fay Freak (talk) 00:23, 7 December 2025 (UTC)Reply
yes, this is entry-worthy, because it is culturally significant, in my opinion. -sche mentioned THUB and I concur.
Latest comment: 5 days ago3 comments3 people in discussion
I came across a number of Georgian entries in WT:Todo/Lists/Entries with missing headword lines which were all created by @Reordcraeft a while back with either "Postpositional phrase" or "Prepositional phrase" headers, but all apparently postpositional, and none of them having any headword:
The "Postpositional phrase" headers had been bot-corrected to the closest allowed header, "Prepositional phrase". With a little searching, however, I discovered that "Postpositional phrase" is an allowed lemma category even though WT:EL doesn't allow it as a header, and that it was placed under a "Phrase" POS header in various languages.
After I converted them all accordingly, it occurred to me: aren't these all SOP? If I made up a word, "XYZ" and spelled it in Georgian characters, wouldn't XYZადმი mean something like "towards, in relation to XYZ" in a specific context? Or am I missing something? Considering how little I know about Georgian, that wouldn't surprise me- which is why I brought it up here rather than in RFDN. Chuck Entz (talk) 22:18, 6 December 2025 (UTC)Reply
They just need to be treated as non-lemma noun forms, not as independent lemmas or “phrases”. Since Wiktionary wants all words in all languages, if they are attested and either a single word or an idiomatic multiword term.As for inflections, entries for forms should exist and indicate what form they are, linking back to the lemma.
The sum of parts / SoP rule is defined seems to be explicitly about multi-word expressions (unidiomatic terms made up of multiple words).
SoP is a deletion argument for phrases like “towards humans” (in languages which make up these senses using multiple words), not for single-word inflected forms, and definitely not while using a productive suffix. Single-word forms are allowed if they are attested, regardless of how transparent they are. These are all attested in academic and everyday speech alike, also in mass media. Reordcraeft (talk) 23:09, 6 December 2025 (UTC)Reply
They are non-lemma noun forms. Forms suffixed with -ადმი(-admi) feature in the declension tables of the corresponding noun lemmas. I have edited მეგობრისადმი(megobrisadmi) and ლესბოსელებისადმი(lesboselebisadmi) to show what I think is the correct treatment, consistent with existing practice.
Latest comment: 5 days ago9 comments3 people in discussion
@Ysrael214 can I add loko-loko on Tagalog section and kuyad on Cebuano pls, because I've been found this on Filipino dictionary book called "TAGAHULUGANANG PILIPINO (TAGALOG-TAGALOG)" by AUREA JIMENEZ SANTIAGO from Merriam & Webster Bookstore, INC. in Manila, Philippines, published on 1975 (No exact date known!), on the page 54 Kuyad, (Pu), defines Bagal, madalang na pagkilos, mahinang pag galaw, kupad.
@フィリピン人 The title literally says Tagalog-Tagalog, why would you add Cebuano? Unless you know it has been loaned to Cebuano with all of its affixes, why not? But do you have a better source? 𝄽ysrael214 (talk) 11:04, 7 December 2025 (UTC)Reply
@フィリピン人: Because Google Translate is based on artificial intelligence and is often at least partly wrong- especially when detecting languages. I use it a lot, but I always keep its limitations in mind. I can't tell you how many times I've had to override its choice of language. Particularly annoying is when it detects a language, but just repeats the input text as the English translation- its way of saying it has no clue. Then I change it to the correct language, and it gives an English translation in actual English... Chuck Entz (talk) 06:39, 8 December 2025 (UTC)Reply
@Chuck Entz My Filipino brother always said this word whenever the peoples is dirty minded and doesn't think much anything. It is totally the common reduplication of Loko, so I can now add the Tagalog section now! フィリピン人 (talk) 12:22, 8 December 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 5 days ago8 comments4 people in discussion
Our definition is copied straight from Webster's 1913 "To separate (the food) in its passage through the alimentary canal into the nutritive and nonnutritive elements; to prepare, by the action of the digestive juices, for conversion into blood; to convert into chyme." Surely we can modernise that definition, without lazily defining is like "to carry out the process of digestion" Vealhurl (talk) 12:44, 8 December 2025 (UTC)Reply
I agree that it's a good definition, and none of its words are too difficult, nor archaic either. I wouldn't say it needs changing; if anyone thinks they can do better than it, they're welcome to try, but if so, I suspect it will end up as six versus a half dozen. Quercus solaris (talk) 19:23, 8 December 2025 (UTC)Reply
chyme? "Conversion into blood" (but not amino acids and proteins for other purposes)? Is digestion limited to pre-intestinal function? For what organisms does the term apply? DCDuring (talk) 21:43, 8 December 2025 (UTC)Reply
Ah! Great point: unthinking/uncritical assumption of human versus human-plus-nonhuman. I skipped right over that instance of unthinking anthropocentrism (although often I'm inclined to notice them). Regarding human digestion, the word chyme is not wrong; as for vocab choice regarding learner's versus collegiate, well, Wiktionary kinda tries to be both at once, so anyone is free to take their own stab at that balance. Quercus solaris (talk) 22:02, 8 December 2025 (UTC)Reply
All mammals, excluding platypuses and echidnas, apparently have chyme as an intermediate digestive product.
Chyme can be found at Google News only in specialized scientific/medical publications. I could poll English majors on their knowledge of its meaning and get as many thinking of it as one of the "humours" as the required sense. I would argue that it therefore does not belong in the definiens of a nontechnical definition. DCDuring (talk) 23:08, 8 December 2025 (UTC)Reply
BTW: the chemical sense "To expose to a gentle heat in a boiler or matrass, as a preparation for chemical operations." seems more restrictive than current chemical usage, which includes digestion by bacteria etc., higher than "gentle" temperatures. DCDuring (talk) 22:00, 8 December 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 5 days ago2 comments2 people in discussion
It has been my understanding that /æ/ and /ɛ/ (among others) are conventionally considered checked vowels in English, requiring a following consonant, and so for example Dictionary.com and Cambridge and the OED give the pronunciation of marry as /ˈmæɹ.i/ and/or /ˈmɛɹ.i/. (Technically, they all use /r/ instead of /ɹ/, and Dictionary.com uses spaces instead of dots, "ˈmær i, ˈmɛr i", and Cambridge uses /e/ instead of /ɛ/, "UK /ˈmær.i/ US /ˈmer.i/ /ˈmær.i/" — that they do not actually mean /er/ can be seen if you compare e.g. bedding, which they write as "/ˈbed.ɪŋ/" — and the OED uses /a/ instead of /æ/, "British English /ˈmari/ MARR-ee, U.S. English /ˈmɛri/ MAIR-ee", but all of that is beside the point of how they syllabify the word.) @LC49 has been changing entries to split the checked vowel from its coda, /ˈmæ.ɹi/, saying that that is the conventional analysis instead. What is correct? - -sche(discuss)23:32, 8 December 2025 (UTC)Reply
OED only writes it like that for the convenience of an understanable phonetic respelling, since MA-ree would be misinterpreted by most as /mɑː/. Using phonetic respelling to syllablify is deeply problematic for this reason. Courier, by contrast, is writted as KUU-ree-uh, since it doesn't have that problem. Dictionary.com also does not syllabify the British pronunciation, and the American syllabification will be influenced by the fact that most speakers are Mmm-merged.
But I'd be OK with comprimising by removing the syllabification entirely, since it's not necessary to convey the pronunciation, adds no useful information to the layperson looking up how to pronounce the word, and most English dictionaries don't bother with syllabification for IPA pronunciations anyway. LC49 (talk) 00:10, 9 December 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 4 days ago1 comment1 person in discussion
I made one post here, and now my screen is permanently reduced in size by a banner telling me to log-in or create an account. How can I get rid of this screen junk? ~2025-39238-53 (talk) 19:39, 9 December 2025 (UTC)Reply
EDITː I now know all I had to do was click on Sign-out of Session. That has resolved it. — This unsigned comment was added by ~2025-39238-53 (talk) at 19:40, 2025 December 9 (UTC).
Latest comment: 3 days ago2 comments2 people in discussion
One for the tea room. The gunpowder tea WP mentions a possible source of 剛泡的 / 刚泡的(gāng pào de, “freshly brewed”), but this doesn't sound very plausible. Is the Chinese even correct? Is it worth adding to the etymology? Jberkel19:04, 10 December 2025 (UTC)Reply
@Jberkel: sounds like a folk etymology. The current etymology in the entry is supported by the OED, with the clarification that the tea resembles gunpowder pellets. — Sgconlaw (talk) 12:19, 11 December 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 3 days ago1 comment1 person in discussion
In the spirit of Wikipedia:The deadline is now, i edited the part of the easy page where it said of a woman) Consenting readily to sex, which i changed because people do not only use the word to describe females over the age of 18. i think my revision is a little clunky though, but incomplete if i try to shorten it. Unless, say, calling a guy easy is "metaphorical" (if that's the right word)? the way movies sometimes show a drill sergeant "insulting" the men (literal men) by calling them "little girls" (metaphorical/slur)?
i don't know if i'm making sense here, but that's why i'm posting here, to see if my edit meets Wiktionary standards and consensus. Wishing everyone safe, happy, productive editing. -~2025-39905-91 (talk) 11:02, 11 December 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 3 days ago1 comment1 person in discussion
The word Fascintern (cf Comintern) does seem to satisfy WT:T:CFI, with three independent sources in 1938, 1939 and 2025, although the specific authors of the 1938 and 1939 TIME articles are not stated. Though whether it's really widespread is less clear. There's also a difference in meaning: the 2025 Fascintern is seen as a mostly new political grouping by the author, compared to the 1938/1939 Fascintern (in reality, at least in France, Italy, and India, the historical links between 1930s fascism and 2020s fascism are well established by political scientists, though the literal term Fascintern seems to be rare). Since this is Wiktionary, not Wikipedia, this historically split meaning might not be a problem.
(With historical hindsight, the 1938 prediction turned out to be dramatically wrong.)
Latest comment: 1 day ago5 comments3 people in discussion
Etymology 2: "(proscribed) past participle of join."
I called this "Misconstruction of join, parallel to spelt, past participle of spell
Is this right? What is joint a misconstruction of? Is it a "misformation"? Is it really proscribed? It doesn't seem to be a misspelling. DCDuring (talk) 18:11, 11 December 2025 (UTC)Reply
By gut, before I started checking the corpus for confirmation, I would lay down five bones on the bet that some people have used joint as a past participle (being an alt form of joined) in the past 400 years. If that's true then it's not a misspelling nor a misconstruction but rather merely an archaic form that most people would be inclined to deprecate nowadays. I might dig deeper into this if the spirit moves me. Off the top of my head at the moment I think to myself that there are probably various (maybe dozens? scores?) p.p. forms ending in -t that feel archaic and are thus something that people don't want you to use in current usage (deprecation or proscription) but they aren't "wrong" as in "nonwords" and "never been used in any century". Quercus solaris (talk) 02:33, 12 December 2025 (UTC)Reply
Thanks. MED has joint as a past participle of join. I hadn't looked there. I'd be interested in what the OED had to say.
It doesn't seem obsolete or dated, just much, much less common, to the extent that "have|had|being|been|are joint together" don't appear at all in NGrams. "Be|were joint together" do appear there. The occurrences are as likely to be in technical publications by likely non-native speakers as in other works. I assume that the pronunciations are different for most speakers. It seems to me that the -t model for forming a past participle is being used actively, rather than that joint was heard or read and imitated. I believe that those reading or hearing joint would find it archaic or wrong. If we don't want to call it wrong, then I suppose archaic works. DCDuring (talk) 14:44, 12 December 2025 (UTC)Reply
Sounds good, I agree. For the heck of it, I threw an Oxford party and checked OED, SOED, COED, and ODE, and they all indicate no knowledge/awareness of joint as a variant p.p. of join: they say nothing about the participles at all, which per their convention means that "it's a regular verb with nothing to be said except -ing and -ed". But I'd bet that the rare variant could be found to be attested a few times, though, if one were to throw a professional-grade 21st-century search party for it, and what you said about MED accords with that idea. Quercus solaris (talk) 22:31, 12 December 2025 (UTC)Reply
I'm inclined to say that we should stop digging that hole any deeper. Lord knows that some of the blue links mentioned above might get deleted someday for SoPness (and thus turn red). I wouldn't be the one to bother to nominate and cajole for deletion, but I also would hesitate to be the one to dig the hole any deeper. Maybe I'm wrong but that's how it seems to me at the moment. Quercus solaris (talk) 02:27, 12 December 2025 (UTC)Reply
When, as, and if we ever get a good template therefor, wedding present would be good collocation at wedding and present, even if purists convince you and potential others not to add. DCDuring (talk) 23:58, 12 December 2025 (UTC)Reply
I second that theme; I like to put strong collocations at the entries for their constituent words. I use {{coi}} for that purpose, even though it doesn't yet have a parameter for strength of collocation. Someday it will, we hope. Quercus solaris (talk) 00:08, 13 December 2025 (UTC)Reply
One peculiarity is that a gift named for an occasion celebrating someone is, by default, given to that someone: whatever may be given by the wedding couple or retiree or birthday boy/girl, etc. to others isn't normally called a wedding present, retirement gift, birthday gift, etc. That seems to be not a lexical characteristic of the collocations, but a cultural fact. Chuck Entz (talk) 00:35, 13 December 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 1 day ago5 comments3 people in discussion
In my region of the US, this term would be understood to mean a store specializing in selling hard liquor, so I would not call a store which sells (only) lower alcohol beers and wines a "liquor store", therefore I would like to add "typically hard liquor" to the first definition. I'm not super familiar with other regions' usages of the term, so are there objections to this addition? Horse Battery (talk) 19:02, 12 December 2025 (UTC)Reply
Dictionaries that include the term liquor store give it a US label. In the US state law governs matters concerning the retail sale of liquor, including what other items stores that sell liquor can sell and to whom they can sell. I think a liquor store always (not just typically) sells liquor, usually principally liquor. DCDuring (talk) 21:52, 12 December 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 1 day ago2 comments2 people in discussion
Ukrainian -ай(-aj), Ukrainian -ей(-ej) and Proto-Slavic *-ьjь are throwing module errors because @Fenakhay added more IDs to Proto-Slavic *-ъ and the links in the other entries to that page don't specify which of them were intended. The Ukrainian ones were added by a sloppy St. Petersburg IP who has since been blocked, but @Vininn126 added the one at the PSl entry, so should be able to bring it up to date. Chuck Entz (talk) 23:36, 12 December 2025 (UTC)Reply
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Done Created as syn of yes way. 2A00:23C5:FE1C:3701:9102:826E:CDC4:95F7 13:22, 7 November 2025 (UTC)
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