Wiktionary:Tea room/2023/July

discussion rooms: Tea room • Etym. scr. • Info desk • Beer parlour • Grease pit ← June 2023 · July 2023 · August 2023 → · (current)

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him

Sense 5 is "Alternative letter-case form of Him", which is defined as "Honorific alternative letter-case form of him". Is this... useful, or can we drop the "Alternative letter-case form of Him" at him? - -sche (discuss) 23:51, 1 July 2023 (UTC)

@-sche: This was added in 2014 by a rather odd IP editor geolocating to New Zealand. They seemed preoccupied with refuting the proposition that divine references have to be uppercase, and with adding after years cited in the entries a parenthetical number representing the year divided by something between 3 1/4 to 3 1/3. Thus 2012 was "613 m" and 1525 was "465 m".

In other words, it's better not to assume any logical reason behind this. Chuck Entz (talk) 01:57, 2 July 2023 (UTC)

The elusive wild-goose

We have wild goose chase, which just says it's an alternative of the hyphenated wild-goose chase, which has a fairly opinionated note about the correctness of the hyphenated version. An ngrams search suggests that while the hyphenated version was more common historically, this changed around 1955, with the unhyphenated one becoming far more common in recent years. I wonder if the usage notes should really be quite so finnicky (let alone remain the primary page, rather than an alternative itself), especially considering that what I could find from style guides (second hand) seem a bit mixed on the overall topic of compound adjectives like this. I'd be hard pressed to tell the difference between a chase of a wild goose, and a wild chase of a tame goose. Anyway, just thought I'd bring this one up...food for thought. Deacon Vorbis (talk) 05:07, 2 July 2023 (UTC)

If the given etymology is correct, the “literal meaning” ascribed to it in the usage notes is incorrect. (I am stumped by the last sentence of the Etymology section.)  --Lambiam 15:32, 2 July 2023 (UTC)

I read that as suggesting that the modern sense might have predated the horse-racing sense given as the origin. Incidentally, why do we not have the horse-racing sense as one of the definitions? Chuck Entz (talk) 16:03, 2 July 2023 (UTC)

deal, noun

We currently have three senses that are close to each other:

• 3: "A particular instance of trading (buying or selling; exchanging; bartering); a transaction."
• 4: "A transaction offered which is financially beneficial; a bargain."
• 5: "An agreement between parties; an arrangement.

I don't find the distinction particularly enlightening.

Also, the following usage example - "recognizing the societal deal between capital and labor regarding retirement savings" - is assigned to sense 3, but is that correct? (Not sure I understand said usex, to be honest.)

@-sche, an opinion about that? PUC – 08:57, 2 July 2023 (UTC)

Sense 4 seems distinct from other senses, however it may have evolved from other definitions. I fail to detect a worthwhile distinction between 3. and 5. DCDuring (talk) 16:45, 2 July 2023 (UTC)

All of these senses are widely recognized by plenty of speakers. Number 3 is "we did a deal on the furniture," with money changing hands usually being implicitly meant, but "we made a deal of sofa for loveseat" is the barter case. Number 4 is "I got a deal on that furniture," with high value for price being implicitly meant. Number 5 is "we made a deal that he would go to rehab if he hadn't stopped drinking by Christmas." Regarding the societal deal between capital and labor regarding retirement savings — there is a degree of overlap there, where sense 5 is the one most applicable but sense 3 is not entirely absent; transactionality is present overall but is not solely a simple one-time price tag. "The social contract" is what the sentence is about. "You work hard your whole career and you won't be screwed come retirement time*," is the alleged social contract. (*Some restrictions may apply. Not available in all locations. You agree that the social contract is not a legally binding contract and that Big Business may amend this contract from time to time at its sole discretion. You agree that your results may vary and that you proceed at your own risk, but the C-suite will definitely be driving Porsches and living in luxury no matter what.) Quercus solaris (talk) 04:36, 3 July 2023 (UTC)

Genussmittel

is there a more concise English translation for this? Jberkel 10:32, 2 July 2023 (UTC)

It really includes alcohol? Then I would say not. Even people who drink only a little bit with dinner each night would probably not just casually put it on a list with all those other much tamer things. Even without alcohol, I admit I'm hard pressed to come up with a translation, even a multi-word translation, that communicates the same concept as the definition we currently have. —Soap— 23:45, 4 July 2023 (UTC)

It makes me think of comfort food, even though it's not the same thing and doesn't encompass everything. PUC – 12:46, 7 July 2023 (UTC)

"[the words] her and Boyd had used"

I saw that phrase on Wikipedia, and the use of her struck me as colloquial. Is it? Our entry doesn't have a sense for this use, but at e.g. him, kwami recently added "'He' as a grammatical subject or object when joined with a conjunction." + "warning than him and 25,000 troops were going to stage a coup", saying it was standard on both sides of the Pond. Is it? Neither "warning than him and [...]" nor "[...] than he [...]" seem to exist, so I assumed "that" was meant and fixed the typo, but seeing the "Boyd" phrase made me realize that while "warning that him and [...]" does exist, it's far less common than "he and", and sounds odd... should it be labelled "nonstandard" or "colloquial, uncommon"? If you refer to just one person, *"the words her had used" and *"warning that him was going to" are definitely nonstandard. - -sche (discuss) 17:25, 2 July 2023 (UTC)

Should be "she". AFAIK not standard at all. Equinox ◑ 17:35, 2 July 2023 (UTC)

It should be 'she' but it's definitely colloquial rather than non-standard to say 'her' or 'him' when the word 'and' appears between two subjects. It's not the sort of thing that would appear in many books but people often say 'me and him went to the pub/cinema/(insert other meeting place here)' instead of 'he and I...'. Without the word 'and' it's highly nonstandard or dialectal though ("'ers gorra roit cob on 'er, the mardy wench" would be a very Black Country way to say "She's in a foul mood"). --Overlordnat1 (talk) 18:24, 2 July 2023 (UTC)

With the native speakers in my circle, a conjunction is required for the object form in subject position. Usually 'and', but occasionally 'or'. This is not 'standard' in the sense of being found in grammar guides, but it is the norm for many people, and I suspect for the majority of people (again in my circle). You can see something odd is going on because the people who use the subject form will also use the subject form when the PNs are in object position. I believe this is a case of hyper-correction: They're taught at school that their native understanding of their language is wrong, but since the case difference has been lost in this position, 'correcting' it requires correcting it everywhere. E.g., how many people have you heard say "just between you and I"? I've seen that in copy-edited published writing. I suspect that, for large parts of the Anglophone world, distinguishing case for conjoined pronouns in both subject and object position only occurs for highly literate people, or the children of highly literate people.

(And yes, "than" was a typo. Sorry.) kwami (talk) 05:35, 3 July 2023 (UTC)

It not formal English, that's for sure. Another related phenomenon is when people use 'myself' instead of 'me' and 'yourself' instead of 'you' in situations other than 'I feel like myself' and 'you'll feel like yourself again' - for example 'you spoke to myself yesterday' and 'I spoke to yourself yesterday'! --Overlordnat1 (talk) 08:36, 3 July 2023 (UTC)

I don't think I've ever heard that, but I don't see how it could be related.

You do hear it in formal speech, unless by 'formal' you only accept the speech of a well-educated minority of the population that have internalized unnatural prescriptive grammar rules. kwami (talk) 09:21, 3 July 2023 (UTC)

If you ever worked in a British call centre surrounded by rather intellectually-challenged colleagues you would, unfortunately, have heard those ‘myself/yourself’ examples all the time! By 'related', I don't mean anything deeper than the fact that it's also an example of the misuse of pronouns. As far as the original topic is concerned, perhaps it’s best labelled as ‘colloquial’ rather than ‘nonstandard’ or ‘informal’? --Overlordnat1 (talk) 09:32, 3 July 2023 (UTC)

That works for me. kwami (talk) 09:51, 3 July 2023 (UTC)

I’ve now labelled it as ‘colloquial’. The weird uses of ‘myself’ and ‘yourself’ seem to be mainly a British thing (Irish people also say it - 'We start off with yourself, first, Jason' - look at 'Sport LK Soccer Pod 017' on FaceBook for the video, I can't get it to link here because of the spam filter. Also there's a durably archived Irish use of 'We'll start with yourself' here[1]) and it seems to be business jargon in particular. There are two Mumsnet threads about it ([2] and [3])but perhaps it hasn’t crossed the Atlantic yet?

It's probably of Hiberno-English origin in fact, here's the GCSE Bitesize Irish section on 'Myself and my family'[4] and here's an extreme example of the phenomenon, 'Is himself in?'[5] Overlordnat1 (talk) 10:34, 3 July 2023 (UTC)

Trying to test/quantify the suggestion that "...that him and X were going to..." would be the norm for most people, I find that that him and is about 1/350th as common as that he and until recently in books, and even at its recent peak is nowhere near as common, whereas for example grevious is about 1/70th as common as grievous. (OTOH that him and her does rise to about 1/70th as common as that he and she.) Has anywhere like DARE tried to quantify how common one or the other is in speech? - -sche (discuss) 19:01, 3 July 2023 (UTC)

Yes, it's not going to be common in writing, which is why I think 'colloquial' is an appropriate label. It would be straightforward to quantify it with the various speech corpora that are available, but time-consuming. kwami (talk) 20:31, 3 July 2023 (UTC)

endship

Would this have been used in the past for villages anywhere, e.g. you might speak of endships in France? Or was it, as seems to be the case, limited to...well, where, exactly: England, or England+Wales, or...? (And how early was it used? I don't see it in the Middle English Dictionary.) - -sche (discuss) 18:10, 2 July 2023 (UTC)

Is the idea of this that an endship is at the end of a road, in no way a (market) town or even a parish? DCDuring (talk) 19:17, 2 July 2023 (UTC)

• 1647, Collections, volumes 11-13, published 1918, page 73:

  February 20, 1647, David Greenman and his brother Edward sold to John Greene, husbandman, of Newport, twenty-two acres of land near the endship or village called Greenend, bounded on the southwest side by the road leading from Newport to Portsmouth.

• 1872, Richard Stuteley Cobbett, Memorials of Twickenham: Parochial and Topographical:

  In addition to Whitton, Ironside mentions another "endship" of the parish of Twickenham called HEATHROW or HETHROW, which must have consisted of a very small collection of houses somewhere on the banks of the Thames, now quite forgotten.

• 1983, Arthur Palmer, A History of Whitton, page 4:

  Whitton Dene was what was known as an endship, that is it was a small suburb or hamlet joined to Whitton, but with its own little community.

  DCDuring (talk) 19:27, 2 July 2023 (UTC)

I've seen nothing that indicates to me usage concerning any place other than England. OED has it obsolete. We could call it historical, but the recent instances seem more like mentions than usages. DCDuring (talk) 20:04, 2 July 2023 (UTC)

Interesting. I can't help with endship, but there is a street in Whitton named Whitton Dene, over 1 km long, which has a short branch (leading to Kneller Road) with a triangle at the junction, there is a bus route which goes round the triangle on its way between Hounslow and Twickenham in both directions. Crazily, most of Whitton Dene is in Hounslow borough, and has Hounslow and Isleworth postcodes. As for Heathrow, the only one I know is the airport, built on the site of a hamlet named Heath Row during WWII. DonnanZ (talk) 20:08, 5 July 2023 (UTC)

There is not too much doubt that the endship Heathrow, as mentioned by Ironside according to the 1872 quote above, is the same as Heathrow (hamlet), wiped out by the expansion of the old London Airport into what is now London Heathrow Airport. DCDuring (talk) 15:16, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

I wonder how far Twickenham parish extended in those days. Heathrow is a few miles north-west of Twickenham, which is of course by the Thames. DonnanZ (talk) 15:53, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

Wasn't the area west of current Twickenham marshy, not well suited for farming, etc. DCDuring (talk) 19:08, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

I don't think so. The land, though generally flat, rises gently away from the river, and the soil is clayey and mixed with stone. I'm forever throwing stones into the hedge when gardening. One riverside road floods every high tide though. A smaller river, the Crane, can flood on occasion, but it's not marshy. DonnanZ (talk) 22:35, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

At a guess, endship could mean "end of a township". Usage of township in Britain is not so common now, but there's plenty of places in Britain with "end" in their names; e.g. Ponders End, Crouch End. DonnanZ (talk) 20:43, 5 July 2023 (UTC)

Can a page named "& # 3 9 ;" be created?

There was this coding error that caused apostrophes display as ', e.g. "don't" or "can't". But, when I tried to make the page, it just said something like "There is a page named ' on this wiki". alex (talk) 19:16, 3 July 2023 (UTC)

It's because it's the codepoint for an apostrophe. (Also, isn't this some electronic version of a typo? I don't think it needs an entry.) CitationsFreak: Accessed 2023/01/01 (talk) 00:50, 5 July 2023 (UTC)

I'm not saying whether it should be added or not. But; there is the template Template:misspelling of for common typos. And; machines are very consistent with their typos, with almost no variation overall. Plus; this would be placed under the Translingual L2, as the typo occur in every language.

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A side note — I know of cases where handwritten adresses on envelopes have been using this type of machine typo. So instead of street adress "Söderå 3" ("South River 3") someone wrote, by hand, "S& #246;der& #229; 3" on the envelope. So it is not limited to machines only. Christoffre (talk) 07:53, 5 July 2023 (UTC)

Huh. That's very interesting. (Also, create it, under an UnsupportedTitles/ section.) CitationsFreak: Accessed 2023/01/01 (talk) 21:29, 5 July 2023 (UTC) (Modified)

@CitationsFreak: For what it's worth, we have an entry for &. Binarystep (talk) 12:30, 5 July 2023 (UTC)

Other examples of mistakes generated by a machine/software that we have are medireview and ¯_(ツ)_/¯. J3133 (talk) 12:43, 5 July 2023 (UTC)

Coding errors are not "words in a language" so I don't think we should have it (or any HTML tag that might be seen due to miscoding!). Equinox ◑ 21:00, 30 July 2023 (UTC)

Pronunciation of surname "Posner"

When I first encountered the surname "Posner" I first pronounced it /ˈpɒs.nəɹ/, but then I heard a person with that surname say /ˈpoʊz.nəɹ/. I don't have any recordings of people with the surname Posner using any of these pronunciations though. Regardless, I've decided to be bold by simply adding both to the page.

Also, the existence of the Pawsner entry might suggest that /ˈpɒs.nəɹ/ is in use.

Could someone verify the pronunciations and make sure they are in use and that I transcribed the IPA properly? Thanks. A diehard editor (talk) 05:54, 4 July 2023 (UTC)

@A diehard editor I have only heard this pronounced /ˈpoʊz.nəɹ/. Cf. for example Mike Posner, well-known for the song "I Took a Pill in Ibiza"; Wikipedia gives /ˈpoʊz.nəɹ/. Pronunciation with a short o vowel or aw vowel seems possible but rare, and I would still expect a /z/ not /s/ for the written s. /ˈpɒs.nəɹ/ seems non-ideal in any case because you didn't indicate whether this is UK, US with caught-cot merger, US without caught-cot merger, etc. and this affects the interpretation of /ɒ/. So I would just delete this pronunciation. Benwing2 (talk) 06:34, 5 July 2023 (UTC)

Alright, I think we'll just keep /ˈpoʊz.nəɹ/. /ˈpɒs.nəɹ/ isn't really attested and as far as I know, it is just my idiolectal pronunciation of the name. Until I find enough attestations of /ˈpɒs.nəɹ/ - I'll probably just delete it for now per your suggestion. Thanks! A diehard editor (talk) 06:58, 5 July 2023 (UTC)

I would suggest undoing your latest edit as the first syllable of Posner can indeed be a monophthong ('o') or a diphthong ('oh'), though the exact quality of each of these vowels can vary. It does seem odd that we claim that cot in many UK accents is pronounced the same as caught in an inland North US accent when there is clearly a difference in both vowel length and quality between the two but the logic of removing /ˈpɒs.nəɹ/ on that basis would lead us to remove all words with an ɒ in them and the caught-cot merger apparently relates to ɑ in any case - though that seems a little dubious itself as there are definitely at least as many Americans who say both 'cot' and 'caught' in a way that's similar to a British pronunciation of 'cart' as there are who say both words in a way that's similar to a British pronunciation of 'cat'. Look on Youglish and you'll hear a monophthongal first vowel from most UK and Aus speakers and the diphthong version from most US ones. --Overlordnat1 (talk) 02:22, 7 July 2023 (UTC)

Well, now I'm conflicted between Overlordnat1's suggestion to put /ˈpɒs.nəɹ/ and Benwing2's suggestion to remove it. Perhaps we could add some {{a}} markers? A diehard editor (talk) 11:40, 7 July 2023 (UTC)

@A diehard editor OK, the Youglish cites seem to indicate that both /ˈpoʊz.nəɹ/ and /ˈpɒz.nəɹ/ are possible. I would list them in that order. (Please note, /ˈpɒs.nəɹ/ as you have written it with an [s] is wrong regardless.) Contrary to User:Overlordnat1, I don't discern any UK or Australian bias towards /ˈpɒz.nəɹ/ in the British and Australian cites; both pronunciations occur. Also User:Overlordnat1 your aside about cot vs. caught is rather confused; I don't really get your point. The vowel quality of my [ɒ] in caught (I am an American speaker with the cot-caught distinction) is indeed very similar to the [ɒ] in RP cot, although I would describe the latter a clipped and extra-short, which is not present in my pronunciation. Benwing2 (talk) 04:08, 10 July 2023 (UTC)

Alright, I suppose I'll just add /ˈpɒz.nəɹ/ back then. A diehard editor (talk) 06:12, 10 July 2023 (UTC)

Benwing2 You’re probably right, I think I got a bit confused by the fact that the audio clip we have for the General American pronunciation at cot, which we transcribe as ɑ, is closer to the ä at Wikipedia (Open central unrounded vowel) than the ɑ (Open back unrounded vowel) to my ears. Mergers to any of those three are possible in various accents in America and elsewhere though Cot–caught merger. The Posner entry looks good now though in any case. Overlordnat1 (talk) 08:47, 10 July 2023 (UTC)

språngmarsch: Can someone double check that I've used "double" (sense: run) correctly?

Hi. I'm not comfortable with using the noun "double" in the "run" sense. So can someone please just do a quick check at språngmarsch (“double; double-quick”), especially the quotation, to see so I've used it correctly? Christoffre (talk) 08:36, 4 July 2023 (UTC)

'double' and 'double-quick' are only really used in military contexts and they don't sound right here. Perhaps chase is a better translation? Surely 'he was arrested' would make more sense than 'he could be arrested' too (though I don't speak Swedish, so I could be wrong about that). --Overlordnat1 (talk) 09:21, 4 July 2023 (UTC)

The term is originally from the military, but it has found its way into normal language. So maybe I should separate the definition into "Military: double, double-quick" and "By extension, colloquial: a movement faster than walking; (sometimes) a run"?

Also; thanks for the suggestions with the quote translation. Christoffre (talk) 15:58, 4 July 2023 (UTC)

happy days (interjection)

Has anyone come across this? I think I may have before. The text I have reads: "The current Secretary of State likes to see statistics. We have lots of statistics. Happy days!" (RAIL 2023 June 28). I did find something here [Why do Brits say Happy Days? - Dictionary - Dictionnaire, Grammaire, Orthographe & Langues] DonnanZ (talk) 19:32, 5 July 2023 (UTC)

It's something I've heard many many times before. It's surprisingly hard to find uses on Google Books but they must exist and it's all over Twitter. There are several definitions on Urban Dictionary of this sense of 'happy days' (along with lots of utter twaddle of course) and it does seem to be mainly (exclusively?) British. --Overlordnat1 (talk) 20:27, 5 July 2023 (UTC)

Agree. Common interjection in BrE especially. Quercus solaris (talk) 00:48, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

PS: An interjection sense of good times exists and is parallel in form with that sense of happy days. I may enter the PoS sometime if I'm looking for a good time at the time. Quercus solaris (talk) 23:02, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

Not only should someone create happy days as an interjection, I might even do so myself, but it should also be listed as a phrase - here’s a BBC article where the author writes ‘and happy days’ meaning ‘and Bob's your uncle’[6] and there are multiple hits if you do an advanced Google search for ‘then happy days’ where it means ‘then you|we|I should be happy’ there are also some Irish uses, such as this one[7] and this one[8] where it means fair enough rather than simply ‘you should be happy’. I found an actual Google Books cite of the interjection (in a British book) here[9]Overlordnat1 (talk) 00:49, 7 July 2023 (UTC)

What stops me creating happy days is deciding on a definition. Is it an expression of satisfaction, or relief even? DonnanZ (talk) 08:15, 7 July 2023 (UTC)

I’d say it’s mainly an expression of satisfaction but then if you’re relieved that a bad thing hasn’t happened or isn’t going to happen then that’s a similar situation to being satisfied that a good thing has happened or it’s going to. It could also be thought of as an expression of satisfaction with a current state of affairs rather than satisfaction with a thing that’s happened as such. I’m also unsure how exactly we should define it. Overlordnat1 (talk) 09:06, 7 July 2023 (UTC)

Do we need an interjection entry for other phrases like midlife crisis, Sunday driver, roadhog, double-trouble? This seems trivial and non-lexical, just part of common or garden pragmatics. DCDuring (talk) 12:42, 7 July 2023 (UTC)

Classing something as an interjection is always contentious and questionable, for instance Happy Birthday could be thought of as a noun phrase instead, we have happy trails as an interjection too. The phrase is clearly idiomatic and should be covered somewhere though. Overlordnat1 (talk) 13:54, 7 July 2023 (UTC)

happy trails wouldn't be lexical at all were it not for its use as a greeting or a "bon voyage". Generic use in the form of a sentence fragment would seem to characterize vast numbers of collocations (not limited to NPs either). DCDuring (talk) 15:39, 7 July 2023 (UTC)

I suppose we should list it as an interjection then, for consistency's sake. It deserves an entry though as it's a fixed phrase with a non-SOP meaning - it's not possible to say "Glad days!" or "Happy seconds!" instead with the same meaning or as standalone sentences. --Overlordnat1 (talk) 17:17, 7 July 2023 (UTC)

I created happy days, adding the quote I mentioned above. The def can be revised, of course, if anyone is not happy with it. DonnanZ (talk) 18:44, 7 July 2023 (UTC)

Quite predictably, a certain editor, who has taken no part, altered it. DonnanZ (talk) 18:58, 7 July 2023 (UTC)

Yes, just as you requested, on this free open team wiki. Petty much? Equinox ◑ 19:00, 7 July 2023 (UTC)

Petty much what? Thanks for adding a quote. DonnanZ (talk) 19:41, 7 July 2023 (UTC)

Psigiatry

Reality therapy Eye of the ti (talk) 08:22, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

Who agree with me that reality therapy, made public by Dr. William Glasser is the best way to treat patients with behaviour problems? Eye of the ti (talk) 08:26, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

I haven't a clue what you're talking about. Apparently 'psigiatrie' is Afrikaans for 'psychiatry' but 'psigiatry' doesn't exist and we already have an entry for Dr. Glasser's reality therapy, so there's nothing further to discuss here. --Overlordnat1 (talk) 09:12, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

октомври

In the Bulgarian section of the октомври page, the noun header indicates that it is indeclinable, but there is a Declension sub-section, should it be there? The Declensions seem to be for a neuter noun even though it is a masculine noun, anyone know why?

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SimonWikt (talk) 21:06, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

(Notifying @Kiril kovachev, IYI681)

@SimonWikt, I think that in the Bulgarian language, colloquially, all months are declinable, and for some reason some of them are declined as neuter nouns. Gorec (talk) 16:45, 11 July 2023 (UTC)

Yeah, in some dialects they tend to be, in the standard language, however, they are indeclinable. @Bezimenen can shed some light on as well. Greetings, Christian. IYI681 (talk) 17:04, 11 July 2023 (UTC)

Interesting! SimonWikt (talk) 20:43, 11 July 2023 (UTC)

I agree with @IYI681, in that all the Bulgarian dictionaries I have access to— BER, Chitanka and "Български тълковен речник"—say nothing about a declined form, except for Chitanka, which outright calls it indeclinable. If there is any kind of declension, then it's definitely sub-standard. I would be glad if anyone could find the declensions for these, but at least for me I have never heard these months declined, and it feels unnatural to me to do so. Thanks for @ing me, Kiril kovachev (talk) 18:47, 11 July 2023 (UTC)

OK, I have checked the other months and they are all marked as indeclinable and do not have Declension sections, so, for the sake of consistency I will remove the Declension section from октомври. Someone can put it back if they want, with dialectical information :) SimonWikt (talk) 20:48, 11 July 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for the feedback SimonWikt (talk) 20:42, 11 July 2023 (UTC)

slotch

The etymology of slug claims it is related to this word but we have no entry for it. What does slotch mean? Should we create an entry for it? Overlordnat1 (talk) 02:43, 7 July 2023 (UTC)

It's a dialectal word meaning "lazy person" (among other things). I'll create it. Leasnam (talk) 19:48, 7 July 2023 (UTC)

Thanks! --Overlordnat1 (talk) 00:27, 8 July 2023 (UTC)

no thank you

I am surprised that our primary form of this entry lacks a comma. Soap wrote a usage note declaring that it is used without a comma in writing, which is contradicted by all our quotations (except for one which is derived from a TV show). Other dictionaries include a comma in their entry. When I first came across this as a gloss in our entry for Latin benigne I thought it meant something like "no thanks to you" - I really don't think I've ever seen this written without the comma. Would anyone object to swapping the primary form to no, thank you? This, that and the other (talk) 10:00, 7 July 2023 (UTC)

I only see two quotes. The ratio of comma to no comma is therefore just 1 to 1. Saying "all our quotes" is misleading. You may in the end be right about this, but I would be against moving it just yet when we are just starting to look at it. We do both at least agree that it is typically spoken with no pause in speech, right? I think that therefore it will be commonly written without a comma as well, as people tend to write dialogue in novels in such a way that the reader picks up the prosody, and this phrase is not commonly used outside dialogue in writing. —Soap— 10:15, 7 July 2023 (UTC)

My apologies, I didnt see the quotes on the no, thank you page. And it's going to be difficult to search for because search engines just ignore the commas. Even so, I will try looking through novels on Google Books and see what kind of ratio there seems to be. Thanks, —Soap— 10:17, 7 July 2023 (UTC)

Looking in Google Books (with -congress to get rid of all the senators saying they have no more questions), almost all of the 20th-century uses have a comma. The comma-less uses start to emerge in the 1980s and 1990s, and they are often used where there is already a comma in the sentence ("Oh, no thank you!") or in an emphatic, non-literal way ("All he wants to do is jump into bed. Well, no thank you!").

When I set GBooks to 21st-century, none of the items found have previews for some reason... This, that and the other (talk) 10:18, 7 July 2023 (UTC)

Okay, thank you for researching this. Rather than sit myself down to do work you've already done, I'll take your word for it, and unless someone else objects (for this reason or for a different reason) I have no objection to moving the page. I like what you did with the usage note. Best regards, —Soap— 10:22, 7 July 2023 (UTC)

Thanks, Soap. I'll give it a couple of days before moving in case anyone else wishes to offer input. This, that and the other (talk) 10:46, 7 July 2023 (UTC)

This[10] has ‘no thank you’ and it’s 21st century with a visible preview. I personally think that “No, thank you” looks strange with an ugly and unnecessary comma that I would never use but IF that’s the more usual form then I suppose we should move the main entry there. Overlordnat1 (talk) 10:58, 7 July 2023 (UTC)

I think the comma-less form is more natural for the current-day average person, but it's the kind of low-level proscribed punctuation that proofreaders and editors spot and correct the first time they look at a text. It wouldn't surprise me if automatic spellcheck removed it, too. To my eye, "no, thank you" seems slightly formal and stilted, more like what an English teacher would write. Chuck Entz (talk) 16:54, 7 July 2023 (UTC)

It's possible that there has been a shift in the past couple of decades, but it's hard to be sure from just looking at GBooks, where a lot of newer books are self-published and therefore not subject to editors and proofreaders, who, as you say, would add the comma to this phrase in their sleep. I'm sure many of these books contain various other traditional proscriptions too. This, that and the other (talk) 01:23, 8 July 2023 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ Comment: no thanks = alt form of no, thanks. This is as it should be. The idea that the commalessness is "wrong" is, at bottom, a usage prescription that fails to appreciate all flavors that exist in nature. Quercus solaris (talk) 04:32, 8 July 2023 (UTC)

sceneshifter and sceneman

These are the same as stagehand, right? Cappwe (talk) 21:44, 7 July 2023 (UTC)

dáil

Looking at our Ulster and Connacht pronunciations given here they seem to be approximately the same as the one we can hear at this link[11], though I’d say the vowels are slight diphthongs there. The Munster one seems quite different though, more like d̪ˠɔːlʲ. Is this accurate for the region and might that explain where the dɔɪ̯l (Doyle) pronunciation we have at Dáil Éireann comes from? Overlordnat1 (talk) 14:46, 8 July 2023 (UTC)

Pinging User:Mahagaja, who may know. - -sche (discuss) 18:43, 8 July 2023 (UTC)

In some varieties of Munster Irish, /ɑː/ surfaces as a rounded [ɒː], which sounds to English-speaking ears like our [ɔː]. And it's regular for palatalized consonants to have a brief [i̯] onglide after a long back vowel; together that [ɒːi̯] will sound to English speakers like the diphthong [ɔɪ] and be rendered as such in anglicized pronunciations like [dɔɪl] for Dáil. It's also the origin of the oi in the name Moira < Irish Máire. I've changed the brackets to slashes at dáil to clarify that the pronunciations given are broadly phonemic, not narrow phonetic ones. —Mahāgaja · talk 18:54, 8 July 2023 (UTC)

Interesting stuff, thanks for such a detailed an informative reply. --Overlordnat1 (talk) 23:59, 8 July 2023 (UTC)

dar la talla

The Spanish definition of this word says "fill the bill", which appears to be an old-fashioned way to say "fit the bill". However, through both the individual meanings of the words and quotations I found online, I'm pretty sure the word's meaning is closer to "hit the mark". Thoughts? Aaron Liu (talk) 17:42, 8 July 2023 (UTC)

Maybe both are correct. The entry was originally created by Wonderfool, so should probably be reverted (as should all his edits) Erre Kerry (talk) 21:58, 8 July 2023 (UTC)

I'm not in touch with Wikt politics, what's wrong with Wonderfool's edits? All I read is that they're a sockpuppeteer. Aaron Liu (talk) 22:00, 8 July 2023 (UTC)

Wonderfool has done immeasurable good for this project, but like all of us, has also made some mistakes. The important pattern to realize here is that anytime someone says Wonderfool is horrible and we need to undo everything they've ever done ,it's most likely Wonderfool himself having a laugh on yet another alternate account. In this case, I see they've corrected their earlier entry, but we can still leave this discussion open to see if there is a more detailed definition we should list. —Soap— 06:30, 9 July 2023 (UTC)

Also I don't think that was a minor edit. Aaron Liu (talk) 22:02, 8 July 2023 (UTC)

@Aaron Liu Indeed, User:Erre Kerry is Wonderfool; it's easy to see from the pattern of their edits. For some reason, they haven't been blocked, probably User:Koavf missed this one. Benwing2 (talk) 04:12, 10 July 2023 (UTC)

Bedankt, grazie, merci, obrigado. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 04:22, 10 July 2023 (UTC)

Ȑ/ȑ and Ȓ/ȓ

I know what language the inverted breve one is from, it is from Inupiaq, but idk where the double grave one is from. Also these have no pages. alex (talk) 17:59, 8 July 2023 (UTC)

Both of these letters are found in Serbo-Croatian in contexts where the pitch accent is shown. —Mahāgaja · talk 18:55, 8 July 2023 (UTC)

Blame @Kwamikagami. I'm sure he got them deleted. --RichardW57m (talk) 14:42, 24 July 2023 (UTC)

mukt

English.

This had no headword template, so I added {{en-verb}}. Then today I noticed usage notes saying the conjugation was irregular, so I changed it to {{head}} to avoid displaying incorrect forms. I'm not sure I understand the usage notes ("to the right"??) and it's hard to find verbal usage, so I thought I'd see if anyone knows about this.

The usage notes:

• The verb does not have any conjugations pertaining to participles; the tense of the sentence is determined through the inflection of the primary auxiliary or light verb to the right of the base- mukt.

Chuck Entz (talk) 21:54, 8 July 2023 (UTC)

I can't find the verb in any form—would suggest just RFVing it. - -sche (discuss) 00:08, 9 July 2023 (UTC)

Done. I'm guessing the creator of the entry had another language in mind- judging by मुक्त करना (mukt karnā), probably Hindi. Besides which, the usage notes actually sound more like they're describing a predicative adjective, which is what मुक्त (mukt) in मुक्त करना (mukt karnā) seems to be. Chuck Entz (talk) 00:51, 9 July 2023 (UTC)

Judging from Google News mukt (adjectival) is common in public campaigns (public health ('anemia mukt'), politics ('corruption mukt'), marketing (2-G mukt)) in India. I'm going to see whether I can incorporate mukt into my everyday speech. Maybe we can make Wiktionary discussions trouble-mukt.

Also, though mukt#Noun occurrences seem to be mostly mentions, I think it would be attestable. In the course of attesting the adjective and noun uses maybe we would eventually find use (in English) as a verb. DCDuring (talk) 14:37, 9 July 2023 (UTC)

Add a new definition of the verb "block"

I have already added a new definition of the verb "block" which is an Internet slang. This definition was missing for a long time. The definition is:

"To impose a ban, either temporarily or permanently from accessing an online account, IP address or an online service."

This definition comes from a block which prevents editing a Wiki. Power Hacks (discussion) (contributions) 12:44, 9 July 2023 (UTC)

We already had a sense for that. Equinox ◑ 14:41, 9 July 2023 (UTC)

Oh, I'm sensitive to a different meaning. A previous sense we had a few years ago has a different meaning and the sense I have already had has a different meaning. Power Hacks (discussion) (contributions) 22:48, 9 July 2023 (UTC)

@Equinox Why did you delete my example? Power Hacks (discussion) (contributions) 12:20, 17 July 2023 (UTC)

The usage example removed was redundant. DCDuring (talk) 13:19, 17 July 2023 (UTC)

It's also not a good idea to use specialist jargon like "indef" in usage examples, which are meant to be understandable for non-specialists. (IMO the "edit war" one is already pushing it.) —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 13:22, 17 July 2023 (UTC)

transaction

What's the difference between senses 1, 2 and 3? PUC – 15:19, 9 July 2023 (UTC)

Perhaps 3 is intended to be or should be a subsense of 1 for when the transacting (which is general in sense 1) is specifically economic? And similarly sense 4? Other dictionaries have fewer senses, although our sense 2 does seem clearer than their "something transacted" (MW), "something that is transacted" (Dictionary.com), which as written seems likely to be read as meaning the two bananas you buy from a grocery store are "two transactions that you then put in your grocery bag and carry home", whereas what seems to be mean is ~"a business agreement" (our sense). - -sche (discuss) 17:54, 9 July 2023 (UTC)

pre-2012 Nynorsk past participle forms in -i

@Eiliv I am trying to clean up Nynorsk non-lemma forms. I have a question about past participle forms in -i. Wikipedia's Nynorsk article says:

Strong verbs had an optional feminine form -i prior to the 2012 language revision that still are used among some users.

However, there are a lot of entries like skori, gali, dropi, rivi, rokki, etc. that label these forms as (a) both feminine and neuter and/or (b) simply the "past participle". These entries were typically created by User:Glaxe, who is no longer active. What is the correct story? There is a document here [12] outlining the changes made in the 2012 Nynorsk language reform, but it's long and written in Norwegian, which I don't speak. There appears to be a section stating that the supine could formerly be in -i, but I'm not sure what to make of that exactly. Benwing2 (talk) 23:49, 9 July 2023 (UTC)

@Gabbe, Mårtensås, LA2, Robbie SWE who might possibly know something about Nynorsk. Benwing2 (talk) 23:51, 9 July 2023 (UTC)

BTW I am getting rid of {{nn-verb-form of}} in favor of {{infl of}}. Benwing2 (talk) 23:53, 9 July 2023 (UTC)

You might as well ping @Tollef Salemann, who's a native speaker. Chuck Entz (talk) 03:56, 10 July 2023 (UTC)

Page 180, about use of supinum and perfectum participp with i-ending. They decided in 2012 to not use it in Nynorsk no more. It is today used as Old Nynorsk (Høgnorsk?) and as dialectal feature (like in my dialect we say "he tikji" and not "har tatt"). Not sure if supinum and participp have the same meaning as in English tho. Concerning what is the feminine verb form in Norway, am not sure, but it is used in Norse and Old Swedish, so i reckon, some Norwegians are using it as well. Tollef Salemann (talk) 07:12, 10 July 2023 (UTC)

Paging @Eiliv ᛙᛆᚱᛐᛁᚿᛌᛆᛌ ᛭ Proto-Norsing ᛭ Ask me anything 08:26, 10 July 2023 (UTC)

Sorry Benwing2, my knowledge of Nynorsk is extremely limited. Robbie SWE (talk) 16:54, 10 July 2023 (UTC)

It’s correct that -i in both feminine and neuter were correct before 2012 in past participle (the supinum uses the neuter form), however these were used in different variations of the language and not found simultaneously. If the feminine has -i, then neuter will generally have -e. Eiliv / ᛅᛁᛚᛁᚠᛦ (talk) 10:37, 10 July 2023 (UTC)

@Eiliv Thanks! Can you expand a bit on the different variations you are referring to? I'm not quite sure how to express this in the relevant pages. Maybe it's enough to label the -i forms as either feminine or neuter, with an attached pre-2012 label that links to a page that expands on the outdated forms, indicating that they appear in different variants (dialects?), something like this:

1. (pre-2012) inflection of drypa:
   1. indefinite feminine/neuter singular past participle
   2. supine

Alternatively we could have two different labels indicating what these variants are, something like this:

1. (pre-2012, foo variant) indefinite feminine singular past participle of drypa
2. (pre-2012, bar variant) inflection of drypa:
   1. indefinite neuter singular past participle
   2. supine

Benwing2 (talk) 19:03, 10 July 2023 (UTC)

So the variants basically depend on the dialect of the writer. In most eastern dialects, you’d say neuter with -i, while feminine has -a, but in the western dialects where feminine has -i, neuter is always -e. In other words, it’s an east/west difference.

The second example is probably the most sensible, but there are no formal rules about this and fully dependent of the intuition of the writer. The best label for the neuter -i would be “Eastern dialects”, but the feminine -i has long been the standard across the whole country. Eiliv / ᛅᛁᛚᛁᚠᛦ (talk) 22:53, 10 July 2023 (UTC)

I want to add that my descriptions here are very generalised, as there are, as far as I know, dialects in the middle of the country with -i in both feminine and neuter. The “Midlandsnormal” uses -i in both, as you can see under “Lagord” in the article I linked. Eiliv / ᛅᛁᛚᛁᚠᛦ (talk) 22:58, 10 July 2023 (UTC)

@Eiliv Thank you. I think it's OK to have generalized descriptions. Maybe like this?

1. (pre-2012: Western and Central dialects, standard) indefinite feminine singular past participle of drypa
2. (pre-2012: Eastern and Central dialects) inflection of drypa:
   1. indefinite neuter singular past participle
   2. supine

Benwing2 (talk) 23:23, 10 July 2023 (UTC)

That looks good to me! Eiliv / ᛅᛁᛚᛁᚠᛦ (talk) 23:27, 10 July 2023 (UTC)

What is the Central dialects? Midt-Noreg or Oppland? Tollef Salemann (talk) 10:56, 11 July 2023 (UTC)

Portuguese "seismologia"

Does the word seismologia (meaning seismology) really exist in Portuguese? I've searched for it in a few online dictionaries and in the Portuguese Wikipedia article about it, and I don't think that's the right word. The only form I found (and know) is sismologia, cf. sismo and sísmico. OweOwnAwe (talk) 19:04, 10 July 2023 (UTC)

This might be a good question for RFV. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 20:46, 11 July 2023 (UTC)

African-American

The usage note was originally “This term is not used (except jocularly) for Americans of North African descent whose skin is not black, such as Berbers or Egyptians, nor is it used for white South Africans.” This was changed by Tommyvercetti098 to “This term is not used (except logically) for Americans of North African descent, such as Moroccans or Egyptians, nor is it used for White Africans.” (along with changes to following sentences) on 8 August 2022. The same user changed it on 14 October 2022 to “This term is not used (except realistically) […]”. Should it be “jocularly”? J3133 (talk) 08:08, 11 July 2023 (UTC)

It should, yeah. I'll change it today. cf (talk) 18:06, 11 July 2023 (UTC)

Do we need the parentheme at all? Almost any term can be used jocularly. I would just say This term is not used for Americans of North African descent nor for white immigrants from Africa, or even something like This term is not used for immigrants from Africa who are not of Sub-Saharan ancestry since there are other groups of people in Africa who are neither black nor white, at least some of whom probably have moved to the United States. Also, I removed adjective sense 3 just now, seeing it as redundant with the noun senses, and perhaps it was added by someone who expected the nouns to be listed first and didn't realize their mistake. —Soap— 22:43, 11 July 2023 (UTC)

Why do we have usage notes that follow directly from the definitions given? DCDuring (talk) 00:29, 12 July 2023 (UTC)

The entry looks good in its current state. Surely most black (‘African’) Americans are of West African descent rather than specifically sub-Saharan but there’s no need to try to be so specific in any case. —-Overlordnat1 (talk) 09:24, 12 July 2023 (UTC)

I suppose this is no longer an issue, but why "jocularly" rather than the less clunky "jokingly"?

Also, I raise an objection to the use of the capital w in "White". I do see this listed on Wiktionary's entry for White, but just how common or notable is this spelling? It just looks to me like substandard orthography. I am not aware of any push for a capital w spelling of white (although I am aware of the push for the capital b spelling of Black).

But my biggest objection is probably the hyphen in "African-American". I mean, why is there a hyphen? I would think Afro-American should have the hyphen but African American should not have a hyphen. Even consulting the cited analogue, I see Irish American (no hyphen) is the main Wiktionary entry while Irish-American (with the hyphen) is the alternate spelling. (Come to think of it, how does Wiktionary decide which is the main entry anyway? Is it basically just an arbitrary decision or the way things happened to play out, or is it based on actual usage statistics or anything?) Anyway, I think a page move is due: move African-American to African American and vice versa. 2603:8080:C600:288F:0:0:0:1468 02:57, 14 July 2023 (UTC)

צָרְפַת

According to dict.com it is a qamatz qatan. Dngweh2s (talk) 23:37, 11 July 2023 (UTC)

Japanese (粃) formatting question

Hello, I just expanded the article at 粃(しいな) (shīna) to include several other etymologies, most of which are only one syllable off the original, and so are clearly closely related to the main term; I've currently listed each of the two variant forms under separate etymologies, specifying both kanji tabs and pronunciation sections for them. Then, there is also another, independent etymology, not related to the first three forms, but still synonymous. What do we do when there are so many redundant forms like this? Should they just all be merged under one Etymology, and just have several possible heads in the entry? e.g. {{ja-noun|しいな|しいだ|しいら}} as etymology 1, and {{ja-noun|みよさ}} as etymology 2? Also, what to do when the entries have actual etymology information, e.g. etymology 2 derives from 1, 3 is a variant of 2, etc.? Kiril kovachev (talk) 00:28, 12 July 2023 (UTC)

At least following the example set by 草鞋, every pronunciation is given its own etymology, even if the meaning and spelling are both identical to an etymology above. —Soap— 07:16, 12 July 2023 (UTC)

@Kiril kovachev, ya, like @Soap said.

In Japanese, a single spelling may have multiple pronunciations, and a single pronunciation may have multiple spellings. Japanese terms exist at the intersection between spelling and pronunciation. Even with the same spelling and meaning, different pronunciations can be subject to lexically significant differences in usage, such as dates of appearance and/or obsolescence, narrower senses of synonyms, sociolectal connotations, and regional / dialectal usage patterns, among others.

Another polysemic entry is 柄, where some of the pronunciations are related, and many are not.

HTH, ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 21:52, 12 July 2023 (UTC)

Alright, thanks very much for this input. So, in future, I'll keep dividing them like I have been doing so far. Kiril kovachev (talk) 22:45, 12 July 2023 (UTC)

new country project

Is this really a thing? The quotes aren't particularly convincing imo, it looks like they've been cobbled together to give the impression that we're dealing with a term of art. Aren't these mere ad hoc combinations? "I am familiar with this new country project, which was started some time ago". PUC – 12:00, 12 July 2023 (UTC)

There seem to be three uses on three different threads at alt.politics.micronations. DCDuring (talk) 23:45, 12 July 2023 (UTC)

New country project on Wikipedia.Wikipedia redirects to Micronation. A search at Google Books for '"new country project" micronation' yields several visible mentions and uses: "This book discusses the Genesis Project plan of the Terran Empire, a micronational new country project." and "the Kingdom of Ruritania - named for the fictional central European country in the novels of Anthony Hope - is somewhere between a new country project and a hobby. Not using "micronation" in the search captures many uses that mean "new country (music) project". This would clearly pass RfV. DCDuring (talk) 00:02, 13 July 2023 (UTC)

лоза declension

The Bulgarian declension of лоза includes a vocative form, whereas the entry in лоза in Rečnik na bǎlgarskija ezik (Čitanka.Info) shows no vocative. Which is correct?
Notifying @Kiril kovachev SimonWikt (talk) 10:04, 13 July 2023 (UTC)

@SimonWikt Well, there are two angles from which one could judge it: the first is that, principally, any noun could have a vocative; I believe I raised a similar point on телефон (if you see this diff) several years back, in that a vocative was entered that seems very dubious in when it would be used. (This is arguably like the non-feminine forms of бременен, which you'd be very hard-pressed to find a use for in typical usage.) So, although the vocative is basically impossible to encounter, except for in poetry and literature, in which addressing grapevines might be a normal thing to do, we still list it for completeness. From this angle, it may be sensible to have the vocative anyway.

The other perspective is whether it's attested. In all my searching, though, I only found a single occurrence of "лозо" being used in this vocative sense: Па да до(й)деш, крива лозо... ― Pa da do(j)deš, kriva lozo... ― Why, may you come, o curved grapevine...—from an obscure folkloric text. For this particular word, I think it's fair to say this form is never actually used in practice.

TL;DR: there is really no such form, at least in any obvious sense, and it's nearly never attested. Now I would like to hear your opinion: do you think vocatives like these are a helpful reference, or just confusing? We can do what you want with it, i.e. keep or remove.

P.S. What Chitanka says, mind you, is typically correct, but it also often disagrees with RBE on whether nouns have a plural or not... so make sure to check both if you're unsure. If you're able to decode their dictionary abbreviations, that is :) If one source says a plural does exist, and another not, then that's usually a sign that a plural does exist, but it's very uncommon or substandard; of course you can use whatever language you like.

In this vocative case, though, from the get-go there is no reference for its existence to begin with, so it's strange where it was derived from.

Dear @Benwing2, I noticed you added the vocative in this diff; what was the reason for this originally? Kiril kovachev (talk) 12:38, 13 July 2023 (UTC)

@Kiril kovachev I am really not sure any more; unfortunately I didn't leave any explanatory note in the changelog. Generally for Bulgarian I only put vocatives for nouns that really have them (whereas e.g. for Ukrainian generally all nouns are given vocatives for whatever reason). I do remember Googling for the vocative of the Bulgarian term for elevator (whatever it is) and finding a couple of examples, e.g. a cartoon of a woman addressing an elevator. Possibly I Googled this term as well, but I have no memory of it, and I wouldn't object to just removing it. Benwing2 (talk) 21:45, 13 July 2023 (UTC)

@Benwing2 I see, sorry to ask. There was probably no way you'd remember that far back.

I don't mind keeping it either, just as long as no one is misunderstanding how infrequent the vocative really is for that word. I was actually wondering if I should ask for us to enable vocatives by default, which would dissipate any confusion about which words "have" a vocative, since they all would, and a word's having one in its declension would no longer be extraordinary or special like it is now. I can't say whether this would definitely be an improvement or not, though. Kiril kovachev (talk) 22:37, 13 July 2023 (UTC)

@Kiril kovachev No need to apologize. The reason I might be wary of enabling vocatives by default is that the rules aren't always set in stone about how to form the vocative (at least I think). For example, in the case of the word for elevator I mentioned above (асансьо́р (asansjór)), I wasn't sure if the vocative was асансьо́ре or асансьо́ро; I think I found examples of both. Benwing2 (talk) 22:55, 13 July 2023 (UTC)

@Benwing2 Yeah, you're right about that, and the vocative is also so rare for regular nouns that I myself don't really know the rules for forming it. I was actually surprised by the vocative for лоза (loza) because I thought it should be лозе (loze) instead of лозо (lozo). As far as anticipating the vocative form in general, though, I see the module already applies the rules from w:Bulgarian nouns; although those seem quite rigid, besides the known exceptions, it's concerning that we can hardly know all the exceptions, so suddenly converting every declension into one with a vocative might be prone to some errors like you say. Kiril kovachev (talk) 23:26, 13 July 2023 (UTC)

I also noticed there may be a bug in how we're doing vocatives by default right now: the module at line 1300 or so currently doesn't individually check each gender case before applying the vocative rules, which appears to produce some errors. Example: баща (bašta) should be баща (bašta) in the vocative (according to Chitanka, and also BG wikipedia's own vocative table), but becomes бащо (bašto), declining like a typical feminine noun. How about we reform the structure of that subroutine to something like this:

local function generate_noun_vocative(word_spec, accent_spec)

if accent_spec.gender == "n" or not accent_spec.has_vocative then

return nil

end

local lemma = word_spec.lemma

if accent_spec.gender == "f" and rfind(lemma, com.cons_c .. "$") then

return nil

end

local stem = accent_spec.reducible_vocative and word_spec.reduced_stem or word_spec.stem

local ending

if accent_spec.gender == "m" then

...

elseif accent_spec.gender == "f" then

...

else

...

end

return combine_stem_and_ending(stem, ending, accent_spec)

? (Sorry, I couldn't format the code correctly.) This way we can explicitly check the gender and apply the separate rules for each. This is dependent on the gender being available, though: is the gender available through `accent_spec.gender` only for manually-specified genders? Or does it also get generated automatically? If not, then this structure will need some more amendments to allow the code to get a working gender no matter what in that subroutine. Kiril kovachev (talk) 23:36, 13 July 2023 (UTC)

@Kiril kovachev cc @Benwing2 Wow! I do find vocatives quite confusing where their usage is unlikely, but I am a relative newcomer to Bulgarian! Personally I would not include them unless their usage was obvious or common, however, this is a dictionary and not a phrase book, so maybe they should be there and I'll just ignore them! Is there a way of marking them as rare or unlikely to be used except in poetry? SimonWikt (talk) 05:16, 14 July 2023 (UTC)

@Kiril kovachev Yes, what you're proposing sounds totally fine. At the point this function runs, the gender is always available; it gets set in detect_noun_accent_and_form_spec() starting on line 858 if the gender isn't explicitly given, and the detection phase runs before any inflection (see the main driver code lines 2272-2281). Feel free to fix the code as appropriate, or if not I will try to get to it soon. Note that you can format code using <pre>...</pre>. Benwing2 (talk) 09:35, 14 July 2023 (UTC)

@Benwing2 Alright, thanks for letting me know. If I get the time then I'll try getting to it then. Kiril kovachev (talk) 13:51, 14 July 2023 (UTC)

@Benwing2 I tried to rewrite the code, and it seems to have been mostly successful, but there is a definite problem with certain parts of it. I was under the impression that returning nil from that function is supposed to unmake the vocative slot from the table, and so it shouldn't appear, but instead I was getting [[#Bulgarian|]] or something similar as the vocative output, e.g. for баща. You can see my current state of progress at Template:User:Kiril kovachev/bg-ndecl.

I implemented an additional check for masculine nouns in detect_noun_accent_and_form_spec, which checks against the masculine forms that are known to generally have no vocative, unsetting the accent_spec.has_vocative flag early in this case. In the vocative-generating function itself, I made it implement the same rules as before, but on a gendered basis, with the opinion that feminines end in -о by default instead of -е.

Thanks for any feedback on this. Kiril kovachev (talk) 20:41, 17 July 2023 (UTC)

P.S. These edits went through several iterations, and unfortunately it only now occurred to me to subst the momentary state of the template in when posting here, so that you could see what problems I was encountering; I believe the issue is sorted, now, though, so with your permission, we could see to port it back to the main module. @Benwing2

@SimonWikt You make a good point, I think there is a way to label any individual declension, and there's a "rare" label that would probably be applicable here. I'm just still considering whether to remove it or just label it as rare, though... Like mentioned above, this is so rare that even "rare" might make it sound too frequent... Kiril kovachev (talk) 13:50, 14 July 2023 (UTC)

RWC

What is the English abbreviation for a "wheelchair accessible toilet"? Just as a conventional toilet is abbreviated WC.

In this particular instance it is explicitly wheelchair accessible, but handicap accessible and other similar terms might also work.

I'm also unable to properly translate the first half of the quote, as it contain both the abbreviation and full word. — Christoffre (talk) 12:29, 13 July 2023 (UTC)

I'm not sure there is one. But I also live in a region where the abbreviation "WC" is not used. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 19:57, 13 July 2023 (UTC)

While favourable, it does not have to be "WC" related. I think I'm making up terms, but it could be "HCA" ("handicap accessible) or something similar to that.

Or in other words – if I put up a sign directing to a wheelchair accessible toilet; what abbreviation would be suitable? In worst case, if it doesn't quite fit, I can just direct to it under the Usages Notes.

-- Christoffre (talk) 21:25, 13 July 2023 (UTC)

Im not aware of any abbreviation, though like Andrew I live in North America where the abbreviation WC isnt typically used either. Long before emojis came into fashion, wheelchair-accessible restrooms were identified by their ♿ symbol and by being located next to the other restrooms, if there were any. —Soap— 10:22, 14 July 2023 (UTC)

"• Wheelchair accessible toilet.
• Changing table."

I take it then that there are no equivalent term in English? Christoffre (talk) 13:48, 14 July 2023 (UTC)

(Random aside -- at first glance, my native-English-speaking eyes mis-read the longer word on the sign here as SKROTUM. Yeesh!) ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 18:56, 19 July 2023 (UTC)

The equivalent in English just wouldn't be an abbreviation. Where a Swedish sign uses an abbreviation, an English sign would just use a wheelchair-user symbol (like the emoji above) and possibly put the word "accessible" below it; if you were expressing it in words, like in a verbal or text description of the building, it'd be a "wheelchair accessible toilet" or "accessible toilet". A similar discrepancy happens in the other direction with some places/languages, including Swedish AFAIK, having "no equivalent term" per se for English "exit" as found on building-evacuation exit signs, because they just use a symbol of a person running to a door in green or on a green background, rather than using a word in red or on a red background. - -sche (discuss) 15:44, 14 July 2023 (UTC)

It was more that I wanted a definitive "No".

Just like the emergency sign; just because a pictogram is normally used, that does not mean there are no text-equivalents to be used for clarification or in books and newspapers. Like there is a standard Swedish text version of the emergency sign, abbreviated ut or nödut. Christoffre (talk) 07:07, 15 July 2023 (UTC)

I wouldn’t say there are any terms specifically for wheelchair-accessible toilets but ‘disabled toilet’ seems to be the main expression used rather than ‘accessible toilet’ (though there may be regional variation). Overlordnat1 (talk) 11:49, 15 July 2023 (UTC)

And speaking of regional variation, note, Christoffre, that this is one topic where there is considerable variation in English (more than in most cases). For instance, in the UK and Australia, the typical word for the public variety of lavatory is toilet. In the US, it's restroom. In Canada, it's washroom. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 18:27, 15 July 2023 (UTC)

On groats and geysers

Was ‘groats’ really pronounced ‘grits’ and did ‘geyser’ really once rhyme with ‘razor’ as claimed in the famous poem ‘The Chaos’[13] or is that somewhat fanciful? Overlordnat1 (talk) 13:12, 13 July 2023 (UTC)

Maybe you might pronounce 'geyser' that way if you don't know how to pronounce it properly, just by the spelling. But there should be no way that 'groats' could ever have had an 'i' in it. That has never been a normal pronunciation of <oa>, and the etymon also doesn't have an /i/ in it either. I would guess that those words are just being used poetically, but it could also be that our coverage of these on Wiktionary is missing some obscure, dialectal pronunciation or something. Kiril kovachev (talk) 22:31, 13 July 2023 (UTC)

I agree, I think this is poetic license or confusion on the part of the author, who in several instances is really stretching to find obscure obsolete pronunciations and may have simply gotten confused by the etymological relationship between groats and grits. Benwing2 (talk) 23:00, 13 July 2023 (UTC)

I suspected as much but it’s surprising that no one seems to have mentioned how absurd these rhymes are online until now. Until we can actually find another poem which actually rhymes ‘groats’ with ‘grits’ or something like ‘bits’ or an audio clip of someone saying ‘geyser’ as ‘gazer’ though I think we can say: “Case closed”. Overlordnat1 (talk) 11:58, 15 July 2023 (UTC)

@Overlordnat1: As far as geyser goes the OED lists /ˈɡeɪsə/ as one of its current BrE pronunciations, with an audio clip (I don't know why /s/ and not /z/). In fact I can see a 19th-century poem where geyser is rhymed with razor ([14]), so that one I'm pretty sure is correct. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 00:13, 16 July 2023 (UTC)

This 1869 source also mentions groats being pronounced (at the time) as "grits", and in 1836 we have a dictionary stating "Oats hulled or coarsely ground, in which sense it is mostly written Groats, though still pronounced Grits" [15]. So both seem right. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 00:24, 16 July 2023 (UTC)

We do list "grit" as a related term of "groat", and both are processed oats. cf (talk) 23:40, 13 July 2023 (UTC)

of consequence

Hi. This is a "PP" (prepositional phrase), right? But @PhalanxDown seems to think that this is some magical important phrase that requires a usage note (and IMHO very ignorantly insists that it's an "adjective!") -- and got up on my user page about it! It's just a PP that means "important". Compare "items of significance", "things of note", etc. Linguists and brothers and sisters, who is right? Equinox ◑ 02:24, 14 July 2023 (UTC)

Thank you for putting this on the teahouse page; as a novice I wasn't sure where to ask this (though in retrospect it was mentioned when I joined). I apologize if my comment on your talk page was rude; I had not intended it.

I have heard the sentence: "It is only of consequence".

If the "of" is considered a preposition, the main clause will lack an object.

Prepositions and their phrases are normally grammatical adjuncts- optional information that may be omitted.

For example: "I eat food at home". "at home" may be omitted while the rest of sentence remains grammatical: "I eat bread".

If "of consequence" were omitted, the sentence would become "It is only". What would the object of the main clause be?

If "of consequence" is treated as a phrase of its own, with the meaning of "consequential", as I interpreted my hearing of the phrase, the sentence remains grammatical.

All of @Equinox's examples follow a noun-preposition-noun pattern. These conform with "of"'s genetive use, and are indeed prepositional phrases. However, in the example I provided, there is no noun before the preposition.

I (clumsily) justified Wiktionary's inclusion of this adjectival sense in the Usage Notes.

I defer to the judgments of Wiktionary's linguists and grammarians. PhalanxDown (talk) 13:01, 14 July 2023 (UTC)

Prepositional phrases can be used adverbially and in some adjectival roles. One of those roles is after a copula, like be or seem. Formerly, we had both adjective and adverb PoS sections for prepositional phrases, but they duplicated each other semantically and merely documented a feature of English grammar. Common grammar features are not a proper part of a dictionary. Most people have an intuitive feel for most such features, but I find it easy to get confused when trying to fit natural speech into either traditional or more modern grammatical categories and I expect others do too. DCDuring (talk) 13:56, 14 July 2023 (UTC)

Excellent reply!

Can you help me delete the page? I tried clearing it, but that triggered the abuse filter. After that, I would copy your exact reply to the talk page for future folk like me.

Thanks for your time! PhalanxDown (talk) 16:25, 19 July 2023 (UTC)

I have edited the adjective entry into a prepositional-phrase entry. It may be deemed SoP and therefore fail our WT:RFD process. DCDuring (talk) 16:36, 19 July 2023 (UTC)

See “of consequence”, in OneLook Dictionary Search. for coverage by some other dictionaries, actually only MW 1913, which has a run-in entry. DCDuring (talk) 16:39, 19 July 2023 (UTC)

one's socks off, one's cotton socks off

These are apparently adverbs! Blimey. I am certainly ready to admit the existence of "V one's socks off", but we can hardly call it a fossilised adverb yet: "Bob blew his socks off": the pronominal part of the phrase is changing to match the subject! Come on, this is just a popular sentence. It's something for Appendix:English snowclones. Equinox ◑ 02:39, 14 July 2023 (UTC)

Doesn't the pronomial part of any idiom we list with "one's" (such as lose one's temper) also change to match the subject? (Granted, most of the ones with "one's" are verbal phrases, and this one's a nounal phrase.) cf (talk) 06:49, 14 July 2023 (UTC)

Certainly. But we give lose one's temper as a verb (and it has a verb as head). I'm raising one's socks off because it is peculiarly headless, and (I suppose) only an adverb because that's the wastebasket. Equinox ◑ 07:47, 14 July 2023 (UTC)

I would call it an intensifier. Since that's not an independent part of speech I suppose it would be an adverbial phrase, and if that's not a valid part of speech either then I suppose we would have to call it an adverb.

My personal opinion on snowclones is that they exist when changing a content word changes the meaning of the phrase ... for example, "to be or not to be" is different from "to sleep or not to sleep" because the meaning of the phrase derives from the content word. Whereas this phrase means the same thing no matter what the words are ... socks is probably the most common item of clothing used, but people will substitute other words such as boots, shoes, and pants without changing the meaning of the phrase. (The collocation scare the pants off is common enough for us to list separately, for example.) So no, I don't think it's a snowclone, but that's just my opinion. If we end up listing such phrases as snowclones I will try to at least get them listed separately from what I consider the true snowclones so that people can see the difference between the phrases with flexible meaning and those that mean the same thing every time.

A minor point: the phrase Bob blew his socks off suggests transitive use, since it's unlikely that someone would be able to impress themselves, so the his is not referring to Bob but to some unnamed third-person. I would've used a different example. I also agree that one is merely a substitute for a pronoun and so it is expected behavior for it to change, whether it agrees with the subject or the unnamed object. —Soap— 08:40, 14 July 2023 (UTC)

savage (slang sense)

Is sense 6 ((slang) Of an insult or person: disrespectful and audacious in a hilarious way) actually distinct from sense 8 ((US, slang) Severe, rude, aggressive, reckless, careless)? I find the synonym cloud approach to sense 8 unhelpful (mainly because the words are not synonyms). I have not come away from that definition knowing what the word actually means. I'm very happy someone finally added the slang senses though, since I never got around to it!

@Mechanical Keyboarder, you added sense 8. Can you explain what it means? And it looks to me like you removed the sense "(Ireland, US, slang) Great, brilliant, amazing" out of process. Is there a reason for that? Andrew Sheedy (talk) 19:04, 15 July 2023 (UTC)

resurface

Aren't senses 3, 5 and 6 one and the same? PUC – 20:07, 15 July 2023 (UTC)

Close enough, IMHO. But, maybe the OED has it otherwise. Some different usage examples would make the range of usage obvious for almost any language learner. DCDuring (talk) 22:13, 15 July 2023 (UTC)

All major dictionaries I've checked, including the OED, treat these as a single sense "reappear". (In fact the OED doesn't even distinguish 3 from 1, it just notes that it's often figurative.) The only exceptions are learners' dictionaries ([16], [17]), but I agree that can be handled by examples. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 23:19, 15 July 2023 (UTC)

smack den

Apparently a UK slang term for supervised injection site. Is that correct? Heard in "Joe Lycett on Gay Pride, Sexuality, and Gender" (at 3:15), but information is surprisingly hard to come by on the web, and the Wiki projects don't mention this term, either. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 20:48, 15 July 2023 (UTC)

If smack den meets CFI (readily attestable, but maybe SoP), then we could show the use you refer to as a disparagement when applied to the euphemistically named supervised injection site. DCDuring (talk) 22:21, 15 July 2023 (UTC)

Until now I didn't know that smack means heroin and I also didn't think of opium den and the like, being barely familiar with the construction. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 19:00, 18 July 2023 (UTC)

by now

The definition isn't quite right imo: "At some time in the near past". PUC – 10:56, 16 July 2023 (UTC)

Often the time it describes is the present: "People think I must own the place by now", "He is probably hungry by now". It implies a change of state that happened between now and some contextually implied point in the past, which doesn't have to be "near". But we also don't have by then, by this point, etc. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 11:13, 16 July 2023 (UTC)

Interesting. In a declarative sentence, this expression seems to me to work (best?, only?) with irrealis mood verbs or in sentences with 'irrealis' meaning. It doesn't seem to work with past tense. I don't think it occurs with normal use of the present tense. (It would work with the 'historical present'.)

It certainly can mean "At or during a time or times before the present", including times not 'near': By now intelligent aliens should [have visited|be visiting] Earth. Whether it includes the present moment is not clear to me and may not be very relevant in irrealis-type sentences. DCDuring (talk) 15:54, 16 July 2023 (UTC)

@DCDuring, Al-Muqanna: Reading DCDuring's point, I think some usage notes might be the solution here. Without them, I'm not sure we'll be able to achieve both a concise and accurate definition. I think it means "at this moment in time", but as Al-Muqanna mentioned, with the added nuance that some elapsed time before now is considered as well (?). by then could imo be created (a difference with by now being that it doesn't necessarily require an irrealis?). PUC – 16:12, 16 July 2023 (UTC)

It is by no means limited to 'this moment in time'. DCDuring (talk) 16:14, 16 July 2023 (UTC)

I didn't mean "Aliens should have visited us at this moment in time", which doesn't make a lot of sense, but "at this moment in time, aliens should have visited us already". But ok, I guess "at this moment in time" is not a good gloss. PUC – 16:51, 16 July 2023 (UTC)

What about already, in fact? PUC – 16:54, 16 July 2023 (UTC)

Already is sometimes substitutable for by now, but which sense of already would a language learner use? DCDuring (talk) 18:25, 16 July 2023 (UTC)

barrel

sense: "To assume the shape of a barrel; specifically, of the image on a computer display, television, etc., to exhibit barrel distortion, where the sides bulge outwards."

Plausible, probably specialized, possibly dated (CRT technology?). Has anyone heard this? DCDuring (talk) 15:12, 16 July 2023 (UTC)

I havent, but its antonym, pincushion#Verb, is also listed and well-cited, so there are probably examples of this being used as a verb too. Perhaps a bit harder to search for since the signal-to-noise ratio is different. —Soap— 20:47, 18 July 2023 (UTC)

Sorry, I should have looked closer. Only one of the three cites for pincushion is about monitors. Maybe we will need to broaden this word to include things like barrel chest (though thats not a verb either). —Soap— 22:31, 18 July 2023 (UTC)

late or be late?

@Fay Freak, you asked whether be late (“have one's menstrual discharge late, implying successful nidation suspected”) was just synecdoche of what it means to be 'late'. I suppose it's distinct, but: should it be at be late, or late, where we similarly have "Not having had an expected menstrual period" with the usex "I'm late"? (In either case, it does seem to require cites like I'm late, since my period is late or I had a late period seems like just the same generic sense as my mail is late, a late start.) - -sche (discuss) 16:10, 16 July 2023 (UTC)

PS I assume someone will translate the second half of the definition into English if this is kept at be late. - -sche (discuss) 16:10, 16 July 2023 (UTC)

And if on the page late anyway, then predicative only? How would it be otherwise? “His late wife”? I cannot imagine such an example well, while I was able to discern occasional use with “to be”, and was unsure whether it was “a sense”.

Did I also understand it correctly that the sense, on whichever page it be, merits a register label such as “colloquial” or “informal”? Fay Freak (talk) 16:33, 16 July 2023 (UTC)

Or it euphemistic? DCDuring (talk) 18:22, 16 July 2023 (UTC)

Perhaps. Not clear from our strict definition of euphemism as replacing a “offensive, blunt or vulgar” mode of expression. Referring to the corporeal function or state in clearcut words would not be in every case blunt and/or offensive? Nor the suspicion of pregnancy, as even the affirmation of pregnancy itself is neither blunt nor offensive nor vulgar.

I have the theory that our definition of euphemism is wrong, or at least does not capture a great deal of actual meaning that is used in practice. The bluntness, vulgarity or offension do not need to be properties of the wording. They can be properties of the references themselves in certain delicate contexts, where the references may contravene expectation for whichever reason, by which reason verbal expression becomes a hint. It’s avoidance speech of lesser pervasion of the whole language. I guess this categorization itself shows that we cannot exclude pertinent terminology as mere synecdoche, but we have to portray avoidance lexemes in the dictionary. Fay Freak (talk) 19:04, 16 July 2023 (UTC)

We call terminate (an employee or the employment of a person) and terminate with extreme prejudice euphemisms. DCDuring (talk) 19:11, 16 July 2023 (UTC)

Well, the former I call wrong with confidence. Termination of employment is how it is called in a most simple fashion, from the perspective of mildly formal language at least; there is some synecdoche here in saying that the employees are terminated, instead of their contracts, but this is only observed with not usually necessary legal pedantry. The exact same sense exists in Germany with kündigen as applied to Arbeitnehmer (“kündigen”) vs. Arbeitsverhältnis (“employment relationship”). I deny even that this is a separate sense. The equation with “to fire”“ and ”to lay off” is also terminally wrong, for firings and lay offs are forms of dismissal which is itself only one form of termination of an employment relationship. (It is also dull to define dismissal by “being fired”.) Fay Freak (talk) 19:43, 16 July 2023 (UTC)

tough-pitch

It seems to be an adjective more than a noun. Not confident of my metal knowledge to tackle this. Also, it is from a dictionary from 1913, so there's bound to be sound obsolescence in there Perpetual69 (talk) 16:47, 16 July 2023 (UTC)

It's a noun that's usually used attributively, and should really be at tough pitch with a space and not a hyphen. The term is still in use, as here. It was originally used in the phrase "at tough pitch", which is pretty well-attested but seems to have fallen out of use by the 20th century. I don't think Webster's distinction of the two senses is helpful though, sense 1 suggests some kind of figurative or extended usage that doesn't appear to exist. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 02:22, 21 July 2023 (UTC)

reading

Check out my new definition for 'reading' and modify as appropriate! "A romanization, transcription, transliteration, and/or similar of a word from another language that indicates the pronunciation in that language." I bring it to your attention because I made it up because I didn't immediately find a dictionary with this sense. --Geographyinitiative (talk) 17:45, 17 July 2023 (UTC)

It's definitely real and not made up, but the entry admits several definitions that could be subsense of another. E.g., if you include token or sign in your enumeration, it would cover to read a poker player's body-language, except you mean read in a strict sense of language. 2A00:20:6004:EBF:FF68:54E9:B217:721A 18:24, 18 July 2023 (UTC)

@Geographyinitiative: IMO the gloss should just be "a pronunciation" (esp. of a character)—it doesn't need to involve any kind of transcription, and it's used interchangeably with pronunciation in the literature, e.g.: "Unlike in Chinese and Korean, it is usual for characters to be read in Japanese with two or more pronunciations ... Moreover, the readings vary grossly ...". "Learning the readings" of a character means learning the pronunciations, not specifically how the pronunciations are represented (though it can involve that). (The IP's comment above is a bit confusing but I think is conflating it with the more general sense of reading as "interpretation", which is listed separately.) Incidentally this usage also seems to be confined to Sinitic script as far as I can tell, people don't talk about "readings" of e.g. cuneiform characters in this sense. Possibly it's influenced by Chinese 读音. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 11:33, 19 July 2023 (UTC)

OTOH (O=one) WP has 'reading' articles in the narrow Sinitic languages sense.

OTOH (O=other) Lexicon of Linguistics has, using a Collins COBUILD-style definition: "SYNTAX: if an expression has two (or more) readings, it has two (or more) logically distinct interpretations. If two expressions have a reading in common they share an interpretation." Ie, reading meaning "interpretation", possibly semantic. That is like use in literary criticism.

I would expect that the Sinitic language sense deserves a distinct definition, possible as a subsense or grouped with other more or less specifically language-related definitions. DCDuring (talk) 14:05, 19 July 2023 (UTC)

There's another sense in manuscript work which I don't think we cover at the moment, where it simply means an item of text that varies between manuscripts (explained here and [18], [19])—slightly confusing in that it refers to the text itself, not how it's "being read". In that context secondary reading is also used as a neutral/polite term for what used to be called "errors", "corruptions" etc. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 14:36, 19 July 2023 (UTC)

main character syndrome

I think the definition is poor because as pointed out at Urban Dictionary, everyone is by definition the main character of their own life. I feel this definition misses the point of the term and why it is consistently used negatively. Rather, I suspect that "main character syndrome" could be usefully described as the antonym of sonder. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 19:07, 18 July 2023 (UTC)

That is a criticism of the concept, but it may be how the word is used. DCDuring (talk) 22:16, 18 July 2023 (UTC)

impostor syndrome is somehow an antonym too (although it's a term mostly used by people who genuinely aren't any good but assume they must be: meta-impostors?). Equinox ◑ 20:28, 18 July 2023 (UTC)

• Also worldbuilder is a truly poor word to use as a definiens, as in def. 1. DCDuring (talk) 22:16, 18 July 2023 (UTC)

I think that maybe changing def. 2 to something like "The phenomenon of thinking of oneself as unrealistically important or distinguished." would be better.

(Also, do/should we have "imposter syndrome" in the sense of, like, "people say I'm great at X, but I think I'm bad at it"?) cf (talk) 22:52, 18 July 2023 (UTC)

"Main Character" evidently speaks of movie productions with heteronormative, privileged stereotypes with white knight, damsel in distress and the omnipotent narrator. More recently, the means of production have reached the short film producing end user, literally everyone and their mother, and the same criticism applies. The current definitions don't mirror this, obviously according to target audience same as it always was, except now it includes SJW, Karen and other memes as a matter of {{lb|sarcasm}}, becausevthat's likely where it came from, the twittersphere. 88.128.92.96 13:35, 22 July 2023 (UTC)

caium

At our entry for the Latin word caium, we list cay as a Middle English and then English descendent but where’s the connection? Surely cay means island, is from the Taino language and is related to key? Surely we should remove cay from the derived terms? It seems that someone just got confused by the fact that key can mean the same as both cay and (rarely) quay. Overlordnat1 (talk) 08:36, 19 July 2023 (UTC)

Conceivably caium may be referring to cay-the-alt-form-of-quay, which is not present in the entry cay at the moment but is mentioned in quay. No objection to dropping it, though; we don't absolutely need to list every alt form if the main form (quay) is listed, and in this case it's either confusing or wrong. - -sche (discuss) 08:52, 19 July 2023 (UTC)

Fairly sure that's what it means as well. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 09:02, 19 July 2023 (UTC)

Thanks to both of you. I looked for examples of ‘cay’ meaning ‘quay’ on Google Books in case it did exist with that meaning and couldn’t find it but missed the fact that it was listed at quay. It would be good if someone created a new sense and etymology to cover it at cay and adding a supporting cite (preferably 3), so I’ll leave caium as it is for now (though I certainly wouldn’t object if someone did remove ‘cay’ from the list of descendants). Overlordnat1 (talk) 09:27, 19 July 2023 (UTC)

If we keep it, or in other similar situations, I wonder if we should add a gloss or qualifier (at caium) to clarify that we mean quay-cay and not the more common key-cay. - -sche (discuss) 09:47, 19 July 2023 (UTC)

I've created cay#Etymology 2 for the quay sense, with 2 citations. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 09:54, 19 July 2023 (UTC)

Thanks! Overlordnat1 (talk) 10:36, 19 July 2023 (UTC)

Danish medarbejder vs Bokmål medarbeider

Can someone who knows Norwegian fluently chime in as to whether the Bokmål term is a false friend of the Danish term or whether they mean the same thing and the Bokmål definition we have is wrong? Helrasincke (talk) 09:18, 20 July 2023 (UTC)

• The Norwegian English Dictionary by Einar Haugen (University of Wisconsin Press) agrees with co-worker, fellow worker, etc. Haugen was a Norwegian. DonnanZ (talk) 22:16, 21 July 2023 (UTC)

Added a French translation for the titin full name.

There aren't any soft hyphens because idk how to add them, could someone add them? Raw text here, wiki page here. alex (talk) 16:54, 20 July 2023 (UTC)

EDIT: i found out how, i tried to implement them in but i tried to and failed to do so. alex (talk) 19:06, 20 July 2023 (UTC)

copalxocotl

@Equinox - What's up with this one? "Saponaria americana" doesn't seem to exist in any standard lists of botanical names. Saponarias aren't native to the Americas. Its use here implies a different plant (a tree rather than an herb), and seems to think its something different from whatever "Saponaria americana" is. Doppelbrau (talk) 18:51, 20 July 2023 (UTC)

It's identified as Cyrtocarpa procera here (which seems plausible given the info on wiki, albeit it says the soap's from the bark and not the fruit). —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 20:03, 20 July 2023 (UTC)

There's lots of confusion here. Saponaria americana is mentioned in the same context as copalxocotl in an 18th century history of Mexico, and goes back at least to John Ray in the 17th century. As such, it predates Linnaean taxonomy, and isn't a reference to the genus Saponaria of modern taxonomy. Instead, it's a descriptive Latin term that could have been used for anything associated with soap. Apparently, the plant mostly referred to by that name was the one known by some variant of ahmōlli in Nahuatl, which was some kind of root used for soap. Judging by its Uto-Aztecan cognates, it must have been some kind of Agave. The term "amole" seems to have been applied to various local plants that had soap-producing roots. From a footnote in one edition, it would seem that an early author called copalxocotl "soap-tree", and searching for "arbol de jabon" turns up mentions of variants like copaljocotl and copajocotl.

I would caution against referring to a specific plant part being used, since the fruit is mentioned specifically in several places. Of course, saponins are poisonous and anything that has enough to be used as soap shouldn't be eaten. That said, there's nothing that says the ripe fruits were used for soap, and concentrations can change considerably from one stage of development to another. And the identification to species is in a study of one illustrated manuscript, so it may not be accurate for all other usage.

Besides, this is for the English entry, and all the usage is by people with no direct knowledge of the plant. It's probably better to define it as some plant used by the Aztecs for soap, and leave the details for a Nahuatl entry. — This unsigned comment was added by Chuck Entz (talk • contribs) at 20:03, 21 July 2023 (UTC).

Agreed, I've removed the mention of bark. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 12:53, 23 July 2023 (UTC)

It can be found in Google Books. Must be obsolete. Equinox ◑ 20:10, 20 July 2023 (UTC)

It's only now starting to be used in fluent English (in historical fiction and the like) rather than code-switching as far as I can tell, see the citations I've just added. Older citations are italicised. Copalcocote is a synonym listed in Merriam-Webster but looks hard to attest. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 23:37, 20 July 2023 (UTC)

porgy

I always thought this was an alternate spelling of 'porgie', an adverb describing someone who is plump, as in the nursery rhyme 'Georgie Porgie, pudding and pie'. Dharobed (talk) 20:05, 20 July 2023 (UTC)

We dont have a pronunciation listed, but I'd expect porgy the fish to be pronounced with a hard /g/. —Soap— 12:34, 21 July 2023 (UTC)

Me too. DCDuring (talk) 21:47, 21 July 2023 (UTC)

Why a hard 'g' when orgy is a soft 'g'? 2A02:C7C:5A89:100:2446:4E3F:813C:BF14 21:55, 21 July 2023 (UTC)

Probably something to do with the different origins of the two words. DonnanZ (talk) 22:49, 21 July 2023 (UTC)

Help Requested

So there's this article here which is quite incomplete; it says it's a synonym of "King's Bench Prison", which seems to be redlinked. It also was last edited in September 2019. Now, I'm rather new here, so I'm not at all sure about what to do with all this, but if anyone here knows how to handle it, then I'd be quite delighted. If I'm intruding or doing anything unacceptable, please let me know; I'm very new here, as I've said. Anyway, ramble over.

All the best 2001:56A:FA36:9C00:20B1:5982:D063:C0F5 00:04, 21 July 2023 (UTC)

I changed it to a Wikipedia link for now; on a quick glance I'm not sure if King's Bench Prison itself would be worth including. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 00:10, 21 July 2023 (UTC)

Ah, merci beaucoup! Much appreciated. However, if "King's Bench Prison" isn't worth including, then how does "Abbot's Priory" have its own article? 2001:56A:FA36:9C00:20B1:5982:D063:C0F5 01:29, 21 July 2023 (UTC)

Typically something as specific as a particular prison, however notable, would be considered encyclopedic and not dictionary material, but if it's attestable "Abbot's Priory" might be worth keeping regardless because of its non-obvious meaning. Alcatraz (sense 2) is another case where it just links to a Wikipedia article, rather than us having an Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary entry; similarly Old Bailey (sense 2) points to Wikipedia instead of an entry for Central Criminal Court. I don't have strong feelings in this case though. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 01:40, 21 July 2023 (UTC)

Marshalsea also comes to mind as a similar example (the wikilink is included at marshalsea). --Overlordnat1 (talk) 13:14, 21 July 2023 (UTC)

Adapted vs unadapted borrowings from Sranan Tongo in Dutch

In the Woordenlijst, borrowings from Sranan Tongo are included in an unadapted form equivalent to the modern Sranan Tongo spelling (for instance markusa, gadotyo, sula). Yet in these cases the adapted forms (markoesa, gadotjo, soela) are dominant in Dutch-language contexts in Suriname itself. I would be tempted to create the adapted spellings as the Dutch main lemmas when dominant, add the unadapted forms as alternate forms, and add a usage note, what's your opinion @Lingo Bingo Dingo @Mnemosientje, @Thadh ? Appolodorus1 (talk) 14:36, 21 July 2023 (UTC)

If these adapted forms are attestable, I think it's okay to set them as lemma forms. Thadh (talk) 16:08, 21 July 2023 (UTC)

Reconstruction:Proto-Germanic/aisōną and descendants in Norse and Icelandic

I stumbled across 𐬀𐬉𐬴𐬨𐬀 (aēṣ̌ma) and was curious, and had a look at etymon Proto-Indo-European *h₁eysh₂- (“to fall upon, act sharply, be angry”) to see what reflexes there might be in Germanic languages. That sent me to Proto-Germanic *aisōną (“to rush”), with listed descendants of Old Norse eisa and Icelandic eisa.

The problem is that the Old Norse and Icelandic entries themselves say nothing about Proto-Germanic *aisōną (“to rush”, verb), and instead list a sense of embers.

Does anyone know what's going on? Are we just missing an additional section on the Old Norse and Icelandic entries for a "to rush" verb sense? Or is the Proto-Germanic entry incorrect? ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 18:34, 21 July 2023 (UTC)

@Eirikr: Old Norse geisa (“to rage; to rush”) exists, which {{R:no:NEO|Geisa}} derives from Proto-Germanic *ga-aisōną. --{{victar|talk}} 23:42, 21 July 2023 (UTC)

You might be aware of idioms such as "in a glimpse", "in a jiffy", "in a jist", German Geistesblitz. 88.128.92.96 13:01, 22 July 2023 (UTC)

I've never heard in a glimpse nor in a jist. The sense of in a glimpse is clear, and apparently irrelevant to this query about *aisōną. The sense of in a jist is more opaque, but again the term appears to be irrelevant.

German Geistesblitz at least looks vaguely like it might be related, but ultimately this is from Geist, which again appears to be etymologically unrelated.

@Victar looks to have the right of it -- our *aisōną entry is pointing to the wrong descendants. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 18:40, 24 July 2023 (UTC)

IPA for Neihu/Nehru

I was able to compare Nehru and Neihu to determine that /ˈneɪhu/, nāʹho͞oʹ probably applied to Neihu and /ˈneɪru/, nāʹro͞oʹ probably applied to Nehru. Then I had a doubt, so I went to the zh-pron box on 內湖／内湖 (Nèihú) and it says: Sinological IPA (key): /neɪ̯⁵¹ xu³⁵/.
(1) What's the correct pronunciation in English for Neihu and Nehru?
(2) What's the correct pronunciation for 內湖 in Mandarin?
(3) If everything is right as it is, why is Mandarin x and English h?
My answer to my own questions: everything IS correct, it's just that non-Scottish English does not have the initial "h" sound from Mandarin, so /ˈneɪhu/ is an accomodation to English.

audio

(file)

My next question would be:
(4) What is this kind of shift in the pronunciation of a loan word in the target language called? --Geographyinitiative (talk) 22:01, 21 July 2023 (UTC)

I think it's usually called by language-specific terms like anglicization (which you are familiar with, I'm sure)... if you're looking for a language-nonspecific word, that Wikipedia article calls it the domestication of foreign words; other ways of describing it include as adaptation or assimilation of foreign words to the borrower-language. - -sche (discuss) 22:47, 22 July 2023 (UTC)

vainglory

Do we need so many senses? PUC – 09:13, 22 July 2023 (UTC)

If 2 were "Boastful or unwarranted", then 4 would seem wholly redundant to it AFAICT. - -sche (discuss) 21:51, 22 July 2023 (UTC)

My inclination would definitely be to merge 2 with 4. 1, 2 and 3 basically reduce to vanity, arrogance, and ostentation, and there seems to be some distinction worth making there though I'm unsure about how distinct 3 really is. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 22:01, 22 July 2023 (UTC)

Note that based on the single citation for 3, I would interpret it as applying to things, whereas the other senses apply to the attitudes of people. There seems to me to be a difference between vainglory as referring to excessive decoration as opposed to drawing attention to oneself. 1 and 4 could be the same, depending on what is meant by "vanity". Andrew Sheedy (talk) 22:32, 22 July 2023 (UTC)

matter of fact

Same question as above: why so many senses?

Also, our current treatment for various expressions based on matter looks a bit random at the moment:

• matter of law ~ as a matter of law, matter of fact ~ as a matter of fact: 2 separate entries
• matter of course ~ as a matter of course: redirect from the latter to the former
• matter of record ~ as a matter of record: no entry for the latter
• matter of principle ~ as a matter of principle, matter of routine ~ as a matter of routine, matter of courtesy ~ as a matter of courtesy, matter of fairness ~ as a matter of fairness, matter of urgency ~ as a matter of urgency: no entry
• as a matter of: no entry

PUC – 16:14, 22 July 2023 (UTC)

Also, using "as a matter of fact" in one of our usexes when we have "as a matter of fact" as its own separate phrase seems suboptimal. - -sche (discuss) 21:48, 22 July 2023 (UTC)

Is there any reason to have as a matter of law other than as a redirect to matter of law? I don't see one. DCDuring (talk) 22:34, 22 July 2023 (UTC)

IANAL, but the three 'matter of' entries that we have form a set of coordinate terms in legal use. The existence of such a set supports their inclusion. I don't see why we need redirects from the 'as a matter of' entries. Presumably, as#Preposition tells people what they need to know to from 'matter of' to 'as a matter of'.

as a matter of fact is a set phrase, as is matter-of-fact. as a matter of course seems like a dated set phrase. I don't know about matter of course. I don't think any of the redlinked items warrant entries. DCDuring (talk) 22:51, 22 July 2023 (UTC)

@PUC, -sche: I've tried cleaning up matter of fact by removing the senses that seemed to refer specifically to "as a matter of fact", rewriting the extended sense, and adding an entry for "matter of fact" as an ellipsis of that phrase. The etymology was also spurious. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 08:08, 23 July 2023 (UTC)

"Mary" and "merry" audio files

Both of these words have two sound files labeled distinction and merged which is impossible. Dngweh2s (talk) 19:44, 22 July 2023 (UTC)

I can comprehend how each word could have both a merged and an unmerged pronunciation which we could have audio of, but it certainly seems confusing that Dvortygirl's pronunciation of Mary is labelled as having the distinction while her pronunciation of merry is labelled as having the merger. (I understand how, if the pronunciation of one of the words is unaffected by whether or not a speaker merges the other words to that same pronunciation, someone with or without the merger pronouncing that word might be used to illustrate what it sounds like regardless of the merger, but if that's what we're doing we should make it clearer. IMO it would be ideal to have one set of audio files for all three words in the set spoken by a speaker without the merger, and labelled accordingly, and another set of all three words spoken by someone with the merger, labelled accordingly.) - -sche (discuss) 22:01, 22 July 2023 (UTC)

As far as I can tell, the audio files for Mary are exactly the same which confirms my prior notion that General American speakers pronounce all three words the same way unmerged speakers pronounce Mary. As far as my observation of Philadelphia English this is the case. There are incomplete mergers i.e. merging merry into marry and there are people who seem to think that all three were merged into merry. I think the confusion comes from the fact that there is a nonstandard pronunciation of Mary but this is a separate phenomenon from the mmm merger, that is, for most Americans it was meəɹi, mɛɹi, mæɹi > meəɹi not meɪ.ɹi, mɛɹi, mæɹi > meəɹi although it may have been for some. Dngweh2s (talk) 23:01, 22 July 2023 (UTC)

with

Which sense of with is used in "if he doesn't approve, to hell with him"? - -sche (discuss) 07:15, 23 July 2023 (UTC)

1. Probably "6) In regard to". Compare the hell with it, down with, and off with someone's head. The preposition is used more for selection or identification than for location or direction. Chuck Entz (talk) 07:55, 23 July 2023 (UTC)

   See also "it's always the same with him". PUC – 10:04, 23 July 2023 (UTC)

pod auger

Is it a pod auger???

Or maybe this is a pod auger

I was sniffing around for some pictures of a pod auger. Judged on the description, it seems either of these photos describes one. I may well be way off the mark, though, so decided to confer with the community before adding them to the entry. Michelle Softer (talk) 08:19, 23 July 2023 (UTC)

I don't know, but would like to. I am pretty sure that the two on the left of the three-auger image are not pod augers. They may be screw augers. The image in this entry from MWOnline makes it seem that a pod is a name for the certain configurations of the business end of an auger, but I don't have enough evidence to say what configurations. Commons is not too helpful because the content that mentions pod auger is not very easy to search, especially for images. Google Images reflects the fact that hand augers are not much used or studied by people who post images of them. DCDuring (talk) 14:01, 23 July 2023 (UTC)

I posted too soon. A NZ site had the following helpful text: "Originally a hole would have been bored, and then a pod auger was used to ream the hole to a taper to allow a tapered stopper or plug to be tightened into the hole. These bung borers shown were an improvement in that they carried out the process in one operation." The images there and some of the others at Google Images show that the cutting edge(s) of a pod auger run(s) up the shank. A screw auger cuts (almost) entirely at the broad tip. The "screw" in a screw auger seems mostly to be used to remove the cuttings from the hole. HTH. DCDuring (talk) 14:14, 23 July 2023 (UTC)

AND: one definition of a pod (etymology unknown) at MWOnline is "a straight groove or channel in the barrel of an auger". I thing barrel is used to mean "business end", as opposed to shank. DCDuring (talk) 14:14, 23 July 2023 (UTC)

IOW, none of the four augers in the two images show evidence of such a pod. (BTW, I wonder if pod can be used to apply to the groove in parers.) DCDuring (talk) 14:18, 23 July 2023 (UTC)

The 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica (and hence Commons) has images in their section on boring things; they say a pod auger is one where the business end of the auger is a pod that fills with the material being bored and removed: "a common form (fig. l) consists of two curved iron plates, one attached to the rod rigidly, the other by hinge and key. By being turned through a few revolutions the pod is filled, and is then raised and emptied". As DCDuring says, none of the augers pictured here seem to be pod augers. - -sche (discuss) 18:04, 23 July 2023 (UTC)

The solo auger might be a pod auger, because there might be a channel from the tip all the way to the handle, but the picture does not clearly show the essential feature. DCDuring (talk) 23:11, 23 July 2023 (UTC)

The Hungarian word "lédig", meaning "individually", as with items of produce

Odd to note that this is omitted from Wiktionary ; I find no disambiguation point for "ledig" (German, e.g.) and "lédig".

Example : https://www.spar.hu/onlineshop/banan-ledig/p/106135002, link to webpage of Hungarian grocer.

Might it be worth adding ?

Alex Knisely // asknisely AT gmail.com 217.65.123.194 09:30, 23 July 2023 (UTC)

I've added the corresponding Hungarian entry at lédig. Einstein2 (talk) 11:11, 23 July 2023 (UTC)

whinney

Gorse on Whinney Hill

Whinney Hill near Holywood

Whinney is apparently a surname, which we don't have an entry for. We do have an entry for whin, referring to gorse. And whinney shouldn't be confused with whinny. I came across a reference in the Railway Magazine for September-October 1949, page 329, where the name of Chaloners Whin Junction was being discussed (the junction has gone, it was south of York). I quote: "The "whin" is doubtless the furze or gorse that covered this land until a much later time, but the association with the name of Chandler may be due to an illiterate contraction of the name "Whinney", that is gorse-infested land." The name certainly occurs in place names and road names like "Whinney Hill" and "Whinney Lane", especially in the north of England, so I suspect it is indeed gorse-covered land. Has anyone else come across this word? DonnanZ (talk) 10:46, 23 July 2023 (UTC)

Weirdly, Wright's old English Dialect Dictionary asserts "WHINNEY" to be "sb. w.Yks.2 [wi·ni.] A wet, swampy place; a place where willows grow." Everything else I can find agrees with you that it's gorse-land: A Glossary of Words Used in the Neighbourhood of Sheffield (Sidney Oldall Addy, 1888) has "WHIN, sb. furze or gorse. Harrison mentions a field called 'Whinney Banke,' 'Whinney Knowle,' and 'Whinney Hill,' in Ecclesfield." A Dictionary of North East Dialect (Bill Griffiths, 2010), page 547, has "whins gorse bushes “the whinnes shall pricke thee to the bare bane” Beattie Border Ballads p.176; “хiii loods of furres or whynnes” Raine MS Castle Eden 1576/77; "whinns, for baking" expenses, Sherburn Hospital, 1686 via Brockett Newc & Nrth 1846; "lay drunk amang the whins" Allan's Tyneside Songs p.207 1827; "the whins and bents and strang sea air" Allan's Tyneside Songs p.468 1862. EDD distribution to 1900: general. NE 2001: in use. [ON? compare Norw. hvine]. Plus “whinney-bush” Wood rural Teesside C20/2, Trimdon 2002 Q 547." And the DSL has Scots whinnie as "covered with whins" or gorse ("Only in a place-name", "That peice of the lands of Coits called Whinnie-Know"). Wright also has a cite/use of the surname btw, when discussing a matter "between Thos. Whinney and Wm. Nicholson" (Extract from Manorial Court Bk. - -sche (discuss) 18:10, 23 July 2023 (UTC)

Yes, the Comcise Scots Dictionary (Edinburgh University Press) has whinnie: "composed of or overgrown with gorse". Strangely, it also lists whinney: "a dried or hardened piece of bread or cheese", apparently local to Orkney. I found an image entitled "Gorse on Whinney Hill"; this is in Edinburgh, I found it in the end in small print on a couple of maps, but the spelling on those is Whinny Hill; whinny may be a spelling variant, does it refer to the gorse? This word seems to have spread to Northern Ireland too, Whinney Hill is apparently a road near Holywood, another image I found says "it is living up to its name here", presumably referring to gorse in flower by the side of the road. I wonder if the OED has anything. DonnanZ (talk) 12:59, 24 July 2023 (UTC)

The way the Scottish definitions are worded, I think it is actually an adjective, rather than a noun. DonnanZ (talk) 16:33, 24 July 2023 (UTC)

congener

Can it mean "member to the same SPECIES as another" alongside "member of the same GENUS as another"? Or only the latter? French congénère can mean both. @DCDuring? PUC – 13:04, 23 July 2023 (UTC)

Many dictionaries have the "same genus" definition; many have a much broader sense, sometimes extending to non-biological entities; a couple have the "same genus" sense as an example of a broader, but usually biological sense. I haven't seen any that mention species in particular. We seem to lack the broad sense. DCDuring (talk) 13:43, 23 July 2023 (UTC)

Some thoughts in case they help: the noun conspecific is useful if needing a word for "member to the same SPECIES as another". Regarding examples of use of the genus sense for abstractions, I just saw a nice one yesterday in MWU s.v. synecdoche. Quercus solaris (talk) 23:39, 23 July 2023 (UTC)

Thanks, conspecific is indeed the term I was looking for. PUC – 00:27, 24 July 2023 (UTC)

Meltham

Is Meltham pronounced Melth-em or Melt-em (like Feltham is)? DonnanZ (talk) 13:32, 23 July 2023 (UTC)

With a 'th' according to the Cambridge English Pronouncing Dictionary and various other, less scholarly sources (e.g.). Interestingly it apparently wasn't always so: this newsletter mentions that it is now "always pronounced Mel-tham, but historically Meltam", and that's confirmed by a few 19th-century sources like this one that give "Melt-em". —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 13:53, 23 July 2023 (UTC)

I settled for /mɛlθəm/. Thanks a lot! DonnanZ (talk) 14:24, 23 July 2023 (UTC)

treasure trove

The distinction between senses 1 and 3 is unclear to me. PUC – 23:38, 23 July 2023 (UTC)

Leave it to lawyers to have an autohyponymous sense for when the trove was buried or concealed "by an unknown owner" specifically (as sense 3 asserts). IANAL, so I can't vouch for the distinction, but I can vouch for the fact that technical senses of terms are not uncommonly autohyponymous. Quercus solaris (talk) 23:52, 23 July 2023 (UTC)

Apparently, if you find a hoard of precious metals in the UK it can be declared a "treasure trove", in which case it becomes government property. This is a specific legal concept that doesn't apply to just any collection of valuable items. Chuck Entz (talk) 00:08, 24 July 2023 (UTC)

Arabic active and passive participle declension

@Fenakhay, Fay Freak, Mahmudmasri, AdrianAbdulBaha Hi, I'm not sure who is knowledgeable about Arabic grammar so I picked some people; the workgroup ping includes about 15 people which seems a lot to ping. I notice the general state of Arabic lemmas has somewhat deteriorated, or at least there is a lot of inconsistency in the way the lemmas are handled. I am going to try to clean some of them up and standardize some of the parameters (partly this is my fault as when I overhauled the Arabic templates around 2015, I wasn't so familiar with general template conventions). Right now I'm focusing on participles. I am designing a template (or rather two, one active and one passive) that will decline a participle given only its form I through XV or Iq through IVq (and in some cases the weakness, since active final-weak and geminate participles tend to have the same unvocalized form). I have implemented a function to infer the vocalization of active and passive participles, but I have questions about their declension:

1. Do all participles have sound masculine and feminine plurals?
2. If the answer is yes, do some participles in addition have broken plurals? For example, مُدِير (mudīr) is the active participle of أَدَارَ (ʔadāra, “to manage; to spin, to turn around”) but is also a noun meaning "manager, chief, superintendent". As a noun it is listed as having both a sound plural مُدِيرُون (mudīrūn) and a broken plural مُدَرَاء (mudarāʔ), but I don't know if the broken plural can be used in a participial sense or only as a noun. Another example is عَامِل (ʕāmil) active participle of عَمِلَ (ʕamila, “to do”) but also a noun meaning "factor, causative agent" with broken plural عَوَامِل (ʕawāmil). I just found an example that is given with a broken participial plural but I don't know if it's correct: بَارّ (bārr) active participle of بَرَّ (barra), given with both sound plural بَارُّونَ (bārrūna) and broken plural بَرَرَة (barara) (this broken plural looks weird to me; it's not one of the normal broken plural patterns).
3. Can someone explain this:

   {{ar-adjective|سَاجِد|cpl=سُجَّد|f=سَاجِدَةٌ|fpl=سَاجِدَات|fpl2=سَوَاجِد|pl=سَاجِدُونَ|pl2=سُجُود}}

   This is defined as as the active participle of سَجَدَ (sajada) and glossed as "prostrated" (maybe "bowing down" is better?). This appears to have both sound and broken masculine and feminine plurals. Are all these forms correct and are they used as well when this term is used as a participle? Also what is the meaning of the "common plural" سُجَّد (sujjad)? Under what circumstances is it used?

Benwing2 (talk) 01:50, 24 July 2023 (UTC)

• @Benwing2: I think yes, all regularly formed participles used as such have sound masculine and feminine plurals. I see حَامِل (ḥāmil, “pregnant”) is only used for one gender and without those sound forms but technically it is lexicalized with an idiomatic meaning instead of being used as a participle and sound feminine plural is attested to satisfaction anyway in spite of our lacking mention: توقف عن سؤال النساء إذا كن حاملات “Stop asking women whether they are pregnant”.
• In general, participles beyond the base stem can’t have broken plurals, as a regular feature of Arabic—in contrast to Old South Arabian where broken plurals developed even for them. I think that something like مُدَرَاء (mudarāʔ) is unlikely to be understood as a participle for this reason because people learn to memorize broken plurals for nouns but it is unintuitive to do so for unlexicalized participles, which are only parts of the paradigms of verbs.
• fuʕʕal is sometimes the broken plural like fuʕʕāl you know better. I quoted another example at كَنَسَ (kanasa); they have an augmentative nature, with a word of Fischer, Wolfdietrich (2006) Grammatik des Klassischen Arabisch (in German), 4^th edition, Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, →ISBN, § 90 & 122, who does not have much to say about this principally occurring form; Ewald, Georg Heinrich August (1831) Grammatica critica linguae arabicae, cum brevi metrorum doctrina‎^[20] (in Latin), volume 1, Leipzig: Libraria Hahniana, page 195 has more, observing that this form is particular to fāʕil type singular forms. “Common plural” here means (whatever it means elsewhere, I talk about the use of the forms in Arabic and the use of the term on Wiktionary to make statements about Arabic usage) that the form can be applied to male individuals, female individuals and inanimate plurals ad sensum: as you know, the endings ـُونَ (-ūna) and ـَاتٌ (-ātun) only work for male and female individuals if there are multiple ones respectively while inanimate collectives require the form which marks solitary female individuals ـَةٌ (-atun) (Fischer § 114). In comparison, we have the same usage spread for the plurals of أَصْفَر (ʔaṣfar)-type “color or defect” adjectives, where the feminine صَفْرَاء (ṣafrāʔ) is not even allowed for inanimate collectives (Fischer § 119 Anm. 2). We have rarely created these fuʕʕal plurals because of being too lazy to create fāʕil active participles in addition to base stem verb entries in the first place if the meaning of these participles can be inferred from the verb (hence my quote of that plural in the base stem, which may be startling to readers who do not know this grammatical detail).
• Note also the behaviour of the older Semitic passive participle patterns faʕīl and faʕūl (which were replaced by mafʕūl innovation) in Arabic after Fischer § 120: In passive meaning, they are not kongruenzfähig, but “can form Flexionsplurale”, faʕīl can get sound endings but faʕūl only broken plurals (but not necessarily: even قَلِيل (qalīl) and كَثِير (kaṯīr) can be used in their citation forms after plural individuals). Fay Freak (talk) 06:23, 24 July 2023 (UTC)

⟨singular subject⟩ is strangers to ⟨topic⟩

I've found several uses of be strangers to with a singular subject:

• “she was strangers to these relatives”;^[21]
• “he was strangers to his daughter”;^[22]
• “I am strangers to them”.^[23][24]

Should we document this, and if so where (at stranger or at strangers) and how (examples or usage notes)?  --Lambiam 21:09, 24 July 2023 (UTC)

It looks like we document "She was friends with them" as a usage note at friend.--Urszag (talk) 21:18, 24 July 2023 (UTC)

Yeah, she was friends (besties, etc) with them was discussed at Wiktionary:Tea room/2021/October#friends. She was strangers to them sounds weird to me, as does e.g. google books:"she was enemies with": I wonder if it's restricted to particular regions or registers. google books:"she was siblings with" seems to exist as a non-native speaker's error. As mentioned in the previous discussion, the fact that these terms can also be used in the singular—"she was a stranger to him", etc—suggests to me it's not a feature of the plural friends, strangers, etc., but of the underlying lexeme (hence the note being at friend not friends). - -sche (discuss) 21:38, 24 July 2023 (UTC)

"He was enemies with her" could be logically justified by rearranging it: "he, with her, was enemies" (you get a pair of enemies, plural, when you take the two people together). But one person being "strangers" cannot be justified. Equinox ◑ 21:40, 24 July 2023 (UTC)

"Being strangers" is usually a mutual situation, so it seems no less (or more) logical than the use of "friends". You could rephrase 1, 2 and 3 above as "She and these relatives were strangers (to each other)," "He and his daughter were strangers (to each other)", "They and I are strangers (to each other)."--Urszag (talk) 22:37, 24 July 2023 (UTC)

Equally logical, maybe, but not equally grammatically possible, under a normal analysis. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 23:14, 24 July 2023 (UTC)

I don't think that is comparable because you have the "to" preposition to consider, which applies to only one of the pair. Anyway, no matter. I can find a small handful of "I am no strangers to" in a Web search too. Equinox ◑ 23:18, 24 July 2023 (UTC)

It's a bit inconclusive, but seeing not only that uses are sparse but also that most of the uses I managed to find appear likely to be by non-native English speakers, I guess we can leave this rare plural use with singular meaning unmentioned.  --Lambiam 08:25, 25 July 2023 (UTC)

बटाटा

बटाटा वडा (baṭāṭā vaḍā)

The Hindi entry has the following usage note:

This word is used in parts of Goa and Maharashtra and in the names of certain Maharashtrian dishes in Modern Standard Hindi, such as Marathi बटाटा वडा (baṭāṭā vaḍā).

This is very confusing, because it says the word is used in the names of "dishes in Modern Standard Hindi", but then proceeds to give an example in Marathi, which is evidently not Modern Standard Hindi (and it uses the wrong template to boot). Does anyone know what is meant? This, that and the other (talk) 07:15, 25 July 2023 (UTC)

I reverted the edit that changed the example to Marathi: it was done by an IP from Melbourne- probably our Minecraft-loving block-evader who makes amateurish edits in languages they don't know- and it changed {{m|hi|बटाटा वड़ा|t=[[batata vada]]}} to {{bor|en|mr|बटाटा वडा}}. Chuck Entz (talk) 12:39, 25 July 2023 (UTC)

Gosh, I didn't think to look at the edit history. Thanks as ever! This, that and the other (talk) 08:45, 26 July 2023 (UTC)

Gotcha, didn’t I?

We list a load of senses under gotcha, which however still fail to cover several uses, such as:

• a new e-bike rental company has gotcha covered ^[25] (from get sense 3: "(copulative) To become, or cause oneself to become"?);
• Well, you see what it gotcha.^[26] (from get sense 4: "Io fetch, bring, take", or from sense 8, "To cause to come or go or move");
• what’s Gaelen gotcha workin’ on now? ^[27] (from get sense 7: "To cause to do").

My feeling is that for covering the verbal uses we’ll be better off by just a single definition: “Contraction of got you.”. I think we should furthermore add sections for the term as an interjection and as a noun.  --Lambiam 10:11, 25 July 2023 (UTC)

I am inclined to agree. I'd say merge the senses, but keep a variety of usexes and quotes to illustrate the different usages. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 14:55, 25 July 2023 (UTC)

I wouldn't have called it a contraction rather than a pronunciation spelling. DCDuring (talk) 15:37, 25 July 2023 (UTC)

I don't have strong opinions either way, but note that similar entries use "Contraction" rather than "Pronunciation spelling" (e.g. woulda, gonna, wanna). Andrew Sheedy (talk) 16:58, 25 July 2023 (UTC)

OK, but doing so makes our entries pleonastic with the definition repeating the PoS header. DCDuring (talk) 23:08, 25 July 2023 (UTC)

The list of allowed POS headings does not include Pronunciation spelling, but we can in such cases use {{pronunciation spelling of|en|...}} as the definition. The boundary is not sharp; in this case it is very defensible that /ˈɡɑt͡ʃə/ is a pronunciation of got ya, but a similar claim for /ˈaɪmə/ is hard to make for lack of a source term; I’m ’onna doesn't make the cut.  --Lambiam 22:40, 29 July 2023 (UTC)

I intended only to address your proposed definition, not to introduce, heaven forbid, a new PoS header. DCDuring (talk) 17:42, 30 July 2023 (UTC)

créquier

@-sche We claim that this word is used in French to refer to the blackthorn or bullace tree but that heraldically, in English and French, it refers to a chandelier-like stylised depiction of a fruit-bearing wild cherry tree (presumably Prunus Avium). As the depictions are so cartoonish, and bearing in mind the primary meaning of the French, how can we be sure that this isn’t a depiction of a blackthorn or bullace tree bearing sloes or damsons rather than a wild cherry tree bearing cherries? Overlordnat1 (talk) 08:15, 27 July 2023 (UTC)

The more so since thornbush is just a bullshit name for blackthorn (Verlegenheitswort), sometimes even hawthorn or boxthorn, hence the vague definition.

Prunus genera are in a large swathe cross-breeds—popular “plums” including apricots and peaches are allopolyploid (amphiploid, Additionsbastard); these plums consist of blackthorn and cherry plum, while the sour cherry is an allotetraploid cultivated from the sweet cherry Prunus avium and the ground cherry Prunus fruticosa. Sweet cherry is diploid but in evolutionary history developed from an older Prunus original, lastly close to the groundcherry, facilitating hybridization by human intervention. But the cultivated forms differ much from each other and also from the wild forms and with disadvantageous characteristics, giving rise to complaints such as self-incompatibility, and further manipulation. In the phantasy of an estate owner rich enough to be occupied rather with comparative heraldry than sullying himself with first-hand gardening, it must have been easy to draw wishful analogies between cherries and plums sometimes.

-sche’s heraldry endeavours make use of books predating the discovery of DNA, thus having mistaken concepts of cherries. Through a series of mistranslations a sloe or thornbush vepre in general could have become a cherry-tree. Fay Freak (talk) 14:38, 27 July 2023 (UTC)

No need to bring botany into this, especially in such a muddled fashion. Canonically, cherries are red, while sloes and damsons are (bluish-)black (with a white bloom). Etymologically this is definitely the latter, but I suppose it might have shifted semantically if used to depict something the stereotypical color of cherries. Chuck Entz (talk) 15:07, 27 July 2023 (UTC)

Fascinating... on one hand, I can't find any English-language works that identify a heraldic créquier as a blackthorn, and I only spot a single old mention of "a picture of [a] créquier or wild-plum (see Littré), which was borne, coloured gules"; all the other old and modern English-language works I can find about heraldry which identify it at all identify it as a wild cherry (e.g. Terence Wise (2012 April 20) Medieval Heraldry, Bloomsbury Publishing, →ISBN). On the other hand, the French Wiktionary does define it as a prunier sauvage, prunelier (which they translate to English as "wild plum, blackthorn" although Google Translate renders it "wild plum, plum" instead). I tried digging through older French dictionaries to see how it was historically defined but did not find much. For modern French, TLFi defines it as a "meuble de l'écu qui représente un arbre imaginaire, sorte de prunier sauvage", "an imaginary tree, a sort of wild plum".

Perhaps the issue is in the translation from English to French: would cherry have formerly encompassed plums, or at least would wild cherry have formerly encompassed prunier sauvage, the way apple formerly encompassed all manner of fruits, pinecones, etc? Or would French prunier have been so broad a word that English translators would have misinterpreted which plant, exactly, was meant?

Another possibility is that the plant the heraldic word denotes is simply different from the plant the word denotes outside heraldry, the way sinople has universally been a red colour since ancient times, but French heralds use it to mean "green".

- -sche (discuss) 18:40, 27 July 2023 (UTC)

But there is evidence for confusion: Pierre-Joseph Amoreux (1809) Traité des haies vives, destinées à la cloture des champs, des prés, des vignes it des jeunes bois‎^[28], 2nd edition, Montpellier: Auguste Richard, Les pruniers, cerisiers, pommiers et poiriers, page 218:

Le merisier (prunus avium, L.) se rapproche de la famille des précédens. Il est aussi une sorte de cerisier sauvage qu'on a pris pour un prunier sauvage (peut-être le merisier, species, L.), qui croît dans les Haies de Picardie, et qu'on nomme crequier et son fruit crèque. Ce fruit champêtre et naturel aux Haies, mérite d'y être multiplié et amélioré par la greffe.

Apart from German Krieche being in historical dialects, copiously cited e.g. in Grimm, used for sour cherry.

I abhor the idea of plums being blue, like the Oregon grape Mahonia aquifolium, this is apparently an Anglo meme often with added photo editing of glossy magazines; they are purple-red, and cherries are dark-red: in the chapter on cherries in a recent fruit cultivation book, picture c of 16.3 is more typical than a, and b of 16.2 more than its a—they admit the subspecies and varieties are not in GRIN yet; I warn in any case that Central Europe has probably the most Prunus cultivar diversity of all places. Well but Americans like unnatural food colourants like those banned in Europe! Now I realize that not even our ideas of a canonical plum align. Thus it may be that Englishmen even don’t read colours in French books correctly in particular when applied to plants. Fay Freak (talk) 20:25, 27 July 2023 (UTC)

stereocenter

While I'm admittedly not an expert on the policy in this case, it seems like Wiktionary prefers to use the American-spelling variants for the main pages of words, and have soft redirects at the entries for British-spelling variants. See center/centre, analyze/analyse, and color/colour. Should this not also be the case for stereocenter/stereocentre? For that pair, the convention appears to be swapped. – Guitarmankev1 ^(talk) 17:29, 27 July 2023 (UTC)

No, much like Wikipedia it is basically arbitrary and depends on whatever spelling was added first. See neighbour for another example where the British spelling is the main entry, or just search "US standard spelling of" for many others. WT:AEN just says "If a word is spelled differently in different standard varieties of English, the spelling (that is, the entry) which was created first is made the lemma". —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 17:34, 27 July 2023 (UTC)

relate the story without welt

While trying to cite the heraldic sense (no luck, even in texts about heraldry, all but one cite I found was plainly just using the general sense or referring to the clothing-part), I found many old works (here are three) which seem to use the term figuratively. Idiomatic enough for an entry, and if so, where? (welt? without welt?) - -sche (discuss) 19:43, 27 July 2023 (UTC)

The OED distinguishes a literal and a figurative sense of the phrase without welt or guard, one meaning literally unornamented ("coarse cloth, without welt or guard"), the latter apparently meaning plain or straightforward though they don't bother to gloss it. I would probably put it there, allowing for the predictable modifications in the citations you've found. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 20:05, 27 July 2023 (UTC)

collingual

This is an unexpected alt. sp. of colingual. What's the double l all about??? Blatantlymobvious (talk) 20:26, 28 July 2023 (UTC)

Well, its not the only example .... we list col- as a variant form of co-, though there are only three other words using it. —Soap— 20:32, 28 July 2023 (UTC)

Yeah, it's Latinist pedantry following the rule that con- assimilates to col- before l. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 20:39, 28 July 2023 (UTC)

Added the prefix to collingual Blatantlymobvious (talk) 21:08, 28 July 2023 (UTC)

quod#Middle English

I moved a Chaucer quote to quod#Middle English. It's apparently a past tense of quethen, but I didn't add it as my Middle English sucketh Mixtapemuseum (talk) 11:26, 29 July 2023 (UTC)

"عشق آباد" redirects to "عشق‌آباد"

We need to seperate "عشق‌آباد" from "عشق آباد" (both mean Ashgabat, the capital of a Central Asian country called Turkmenistan). "عشق‌آباد" is the Arabic name. "عشق آباد" redirects to "عشق‌آباد", which is Persian because there is a character that seperates the two without using the space (ZWNJ)

I want to create a seperate entry for the spaced "عشق‌ آباد", which I can't because of the redirect.

Persian: https://fa.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D8%B9%D8%B4%D9%82%E2%80%8C%D8%A2%D8%A8%D8%A7%D8%AF Arabic: https://ar.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D8%B9%D8%B4%D9%82_%D8%A2%D8%A8%D8%A7%D8%AF Adamnewwikipedianaccount (talk) 16:06, 30 July 2023 (UTC)

Oh and if you're wondering, when I check the page for Ashgabat and I click on "عشق آباد", it redirects to "عشق‌آباد"

I created عشق‌ آباد, but that contains the ZWNJ in it, and we need to solve this redirect problem ASAP. — This unsigned comment was added by Adamnewwikipedianaccount (talk • contribs).

sickly sweet

This is categorised in English adverb-adjective phrases. Is that correct, though? "Sickly" might be an adjective, making it Adj+Adj, like sticky-sweet. Equinox ◑ 17:43, 30 July 2023 (UTC)

direct

Sense: "(aviation, travel) Having a single flight number." Is that actually what it means? Isn't it rather that a direct flight doesn't stop off anywhere in the middle, which means as a side-effect it will be allocated only one flight number? Equinox ◑ 20:59, 30 July 2023 (UTC)

@Equinox I would have thought so too, however, the Direct flight article would seem to indicate otherwise.

SimonWikt (talk) 21:19, 30 July 2023 (UTC)

I thought that a direct flight from A to Z was one not requiring one to change aircraft (at least as long as the aircraft was operational) at any intervening stop. The "same flight number" definition may normally coincide with the "no need to change planes" definition. I view non-stop flight as a hyponym of direct flight. DCDuring (talk) 21:28, 30 July 2023 (UTC)

Are we supposed to privilege technical/provider/business use over user/customer use in our definitions? I thought not. DCDuring (talk) 21:29, 30 July 2023 (UTC)

Ideally we would list both... the "flight number" version could be additionally tagged as (industry) jargon. Apparently industry use of "direct flight" does routinely involve physical transfers between planes, as long as they maintain the same flight number, so it is a distinct sense. I found a good example of the confusion here in this U.S. DOT communique, which explicitly does not use direct flight in the industry sense: it's warning about consumers wrongly assuming that flights with a single number are "non-stop or direct flights". —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 22:28, 30 July 2023 (UTC)

So I have taken a couple of flights where we stopped off for an hour at an intermediate airport, and then took off again on the same plane to the final destination. In both cases, the flight number covered the whole journey, and I wouldn't be surprised if they were described as "direct" when being advertised, for instance (though I can't remember if they actually were, as both were a few years ago). If I'm understanding correctly, that seems to be a third kind of flight that falls between the two senses being discussed above (i.e. non-stop flights, and routes that have been assigned a single code involving multiple planes). Theknightwho (talk) 23:21, 30 July 2023 (UTC)

PWGmc *rittjan vs. *hrittjan

It seems that we have a duplication in the reconstruction of this term. Which is the correct one ? Leasnam (talk) 21:36, 30 July 2023 (UTC)

Well, Old Saxon hrittian exists. Chuck Entz (talk) 21:54, 30 July 2023 (UTC)

Excellent point ! I'll correct it. Thank you ! Leasnam (talk) 22:03, 30 July 2023 (UTC)

On further inspection, looking at the actually attested forms of Old Saxon *hrittian, they are as follows: Pers. Sg. Prät. ritta (in terra) scribebat Wa 60, 2a = SAGA 108, 2a = Gl 4, 302, 30, GlPW 3. Pers. Pl. Prät. rittun exarabant Wa 96, 10b = SAGA 84, 10b = Gl 2, 582, 45, GlPWf 3. Pers. Pl. Prät. rittún exarabant Wa 105, 4a = SAGA 94, 4a = Gl 4, 345, 14. None of these show the initial h-. Can anyone verify if there are other examples possibly missing from this [cursory] analysis ? Leasnam (talk) 22:10, 30 July 2023 (UTC)

intensive pronoun

Looks like a word-for-word copyvio from Merriam-Webster. May need rewriting. Equinox ◑ 05:18, 31 July 2023 (UTC)

I made a complete rewrite, but I don't see the difference between the two definitions. Also, is emphatic or intensive the more common usage? Outside of English, I think these are usually called emphatics, but English might be different, or there might be a subtle difference between emphatics and intensives that I missed. —Soap— 06:31, 31 July 2023 (UTC)

It seems that in Latin at least, intensives are reflexive in form regardless of their syntactic meaning. For example, we have egomet defined as an intensive pronoun. Whereas emphatic pronouns are any pronouns used when the sentence structure does not require them; for example ego amo "I love". It may be that the difference is therefore only relevant in pro-drop languages. —Soap— 06:40, 31 July 2023 (UTC)

Thanks. Examples should probably go in an example box (see double negative) as they are not usage examples of the term "intensive pronoun". Equinox ◑ 06:42, 31 July 2023 (UTC)

I think the definition of the term needs to be broader; other languages have intensive pronouns that do not take the same form as reflexive pronouns. — Vorziblix (talk · contribs) 22:07, 1 August 2023 (UTC)

as X as Y

As American as apple pie, as English as apple pie, as Australian as a meat pie, as Canadian as maple syrup... could we list all these, and corresponding phrases in other languages (zo Nederlands als wat?), somewhere? Appendix:Snowclones/as X as Y? I am not proposing to remove any of the mainspace entries, just to have a place to find them all and find 'translations', if they exist. - -sche (discuss) 06:51, 31 July 2023 (UTC)

punt-out in American football

Not familiar enough with gridiron football, I am reluctant to copy-edit the definition given by Webster's 1913 dictionary - A punt made from the goal line by a player of the side which has made a touchdown to one of his own side for a fair catch, from which an attempt to kick a goal may be made. It's an obsolete term, and I guess there's a modern-day (quasi-?)equivalent. There's an article about it here which might he of use. Good luck Overthesnowmelt (talk) 07:48, 31 July 2023 (UTC)

We have lots of obsolete terms. It would be nice if we had some citations of it in use. Google News and Books might have some. DCDuring (talk) 19:05, 31 July 2023 (UTC)

schering en inslag

Why "plural only"? PUC – 18:53, 31 July 2023 (UTC)

I think this is not really a noun but a noun phrase, but that is an explicitly disallowed PoS heading. Also, the term is "singular only", but we have no way to say this as such, so I have made it uncountable.  --Lambiam 19:13, 1 August 2023 (UTC)

FWIW the question of whether it's accurate that a lot our templates treat "does not pluralize" as identical to "uncountable" (and treat that as identical to "quantities are not measured in discrete amounts") has been brought up before, and I encourage people to keep track of cases (especially if there are English cases) where one of those concepts is notably more applicable than the other, if we ever want to discuss whether it'd make sense to split the two sometime. - -sche (discuss) 19:17, 2 August 2023 (UTC)

Chang Pronunciations

I have added new pronunciations for Chang. I see the "general" pronunciation as applying to them all, whereas the individual sections for each etymology have different "real" or "intended" English pronunciations. I'm writing this here because I'm not clear how to appropriately deal with this; please correct. --Geographyinitiative (talk) 21:45, 31 July 2023 (UTC)