Wiktionary:Tea room/2024/April

discussion rooms: Tea room • Etym. scr. • Info desk • Beer parlour • Grease pit ← March 2024 · April 2024 · May 2024 → · (current)

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Granger#Etymology 2

I don't see how sense 1 is a proper noun. The place names included here, supposedly for association with Grangers, are proper nouns, which muddies the waters - these would be better placed in Etymology 1. It has not been treated as countable either. For comparison, titles such as Freemason, Democrat, Republican, Liberal, Tory, Whig, and Conservative are all treated as standard or ordinary nouns. DonnanZ (talk) 08:28, 1 April 2024 (UTC)

@Donnanz: I have changed it to a common noun; after the place names were added, it was changed in Special:Diff/61552220. J3133 (talk) 09:07, 1 April 2024 (UTC)

@J3133: Thanks, I didn't think of looking in the history. It doesn't solve the desire to group all places together - anyway we have a problem with the unknown etymology of Granger#Etymology 3. Looking at the place in Texas, it could be either Etym 1 or 2. I may move that one. DonnanZ (talk) 09:40, 1 April 2024 (UTC)

EN-uk: big into

There seems to be a British usage of big as an adverb that's much broader in scope than elsewhere. The sense is "greatly", which is similar to Sense 3 in the existing entry, but I'd argue that win big and save big are kind of idiomatic usage that's widespread, whereas big into is a different form of idiom that's less widespread. (It might be particular to some region/regions of England?)

Contrast:

• If you bet big you can win big!
• I've always been big into sport, but I'm especially big into football.

On the other hand, is this more of a grammatical structure that could be applied to any (conventional) adjective? Just recently I heard "massive into", as in "I'm massive into trivia". But I'm sceptical that it's a universally applicable structure:

• * "I'm little into fine dining." (Cf. "I've little interest in fine dining.")
• * "I'm small into fine dining."
• * "I'm moderate into drinking alcohol." (Cf. "moderately")
• * "I'm tiny into surfing." (Cf. "a tiny bit")

—DIV (1.145.118.218 11:22, 1 April 2024 (UTC))

I think the adverb use is already reflected in senses 3 ("In a large amount or to a large extent") and 4 ("On a large scale"), and the adjective use in sense 11: "Enthusiastic (about)", though as regards the latter the label "with on" probably needs updating since, as you point out, it can be used with into as well. — Sgconlaw (talk) 13:16, 1 April 2024 (UTC)

I don't think it's necessarily British. It appears to be an ellipsis of in a big way. And you can certainly say "I've always been a little into sport." Leasnam (talk) 13:17, 1 April 2024 (UTC)

True, but I wouldn't rush to equate a little with little. Similarly, a bit can be used in that adverbial way, but never bit on its own. (The fact that each has its own WT entry is probably a good clue to this.)

We can say things like, "I've little time for sport", but now we're back to adjectival use.

—DIV (1.145.69.194) 1.145.69.194 00:53, 4 April 2024 (UTC)

I agree that the senses are broadly correct.

Just a word of caution: AFAIK, "to be big on something" would be adjectival usage, but "to be big into something" would be adverbial usage.

—DIV (1.145.69.194 00:56, 4 April 2024 (UTC))

Your "little, small, moderate, tiny" examples would not be used. "Big" is also used for industries etc. like Big Pharma and Big Science (never Large Pharma or Huge Science). Equinox ◑ 13:22, 1 April 2024 (UTC)

I agree. Maybe it wasn't obvious, but I was trying to mark them as not representing actual usage by prepending an asterisk in each of those four cases. —DIV (1.145.69.194 00:27, 4 April 2024 (UTC))

Re it being British: AFAICT neither "I'm big into X" nor "if you bet big, you can win big" is regionally restricted; I googled "Trump is big into" on the theory that it would bring up lots of American news media uses of that phrase, and it does: 1, 2, and lest anyone think that's just because of his love of bigly / big league, here's "Obama is big into", and "Minnesotans are big into fairness" in Al Franken's autobiography. (In turn, here's American media saying "Biden bets big on...", "Trump bets big on...".) - -sche (discuss) 18:47, 1 April 2024 (UTC)

Hmmm... Good research. I must say I'd never heard it in US English before, but evidently it does crop up occasionally. I can't find holes in your three examples — they're about US politicians and apparently either written by or spoken by people from the USA.

For me personally (being neither American nor British), the closest natural phrasing would be "big on", which looks like adjectival use in constructions like "Trump is big on ...", "Obama is big on ...", etc., as I can readily swap to "Trump is keen on ...", "Obama is keen on ..." and so forth.

To "bet big", "win big" and so on feels — for me — a much more widespread (idiomatic) construction than "to be big on". I agree that "bet big"/"win big" is not regionally marked.

I would also distinguish "bet big"/"win big" from "to be big on", given one looks adverbial and the other adjectival.

—DIV (1.145.69.194 00:48, 4 April 2024 (UTC))

I've inserted an example sentence with "big into" under a subsense.

I think having an example of this structure is helpful. I am open-minded on whether it needs to be in a subsense, and how it should be labelled.

Note: I've labelled it as "informal" because on one occasion when a contestant on TV show Pointless repeatedly used the phrasing to describe his interests, the host (Alexander Armstrong) made a witty remark about that contestant's [poor] grammar.

—DIV (1.145.69.194 01:05, 4 April 2024 (UTC))

The phrase "big into" appears:

• once in the 1600 million words of the British Hansard corpus, in 1980;
• never in the 100 million words of the British National Corpus;
• 156 times in the 1000 million words of the Corpus of Contemporary American English;
• never in the 130 million words of the Corpus of US Supreme Court Opinions;
• once in the 100 million words of the TIME Magazine Corpus, in 1999; and
• 4 times in the 50 million words of the Corpus of Canadian English (Strathy).

Maybe my assessment of its regional connection was misplaced: maybe it's actually (originally) an Americanism?

Although the results are likely skewed by the phrase's informality, and (to me) reinforce the fact that it's not particularly common in any case.

—DIV (1.145.69.194 01:34, 4 April 2024 (UTC))

a buck is a buck is a buck

Is this form supposed to make sense somehow? PUC – 13:59, 1 April 2024 (UTC)

Emphasis Leasnam (talk) 14:33, 1 April 2024 (UTC)

Are there other instances of this kind of emphasis? Sounds weird imo. PUC – 17:07, 1 April 2024 (UTC)

Yes, it is generally usable, e.g. this Washington Post article headlined "A Dog Is A Dog Is A Dog -- And Should Be Treated That Way" [1]. Equinox ◑ 17:08, 1 April 2024 (UTC)

'Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose' from "Sacred Emily" (1913, published 1922) by Gertrude Stein, formerly often discussed in literary criticism classes. "An X is an X is an X" is a snowclone if ever there was one. DCDuring (talk) 13:52, 4 April 2024 (UTC)

or two

I was recently looking for an entry covering the use of "or two" in phrases like "I could use a drink or two." We have a thing or two, but I'm not sure the sense there ("a considerable amount; a lot") is a perfect fit; I would understand "I could use a drink or two" as meaning "I could use a drink and am open to making it two, or three, or …." So a couple questions: Should or two be an entry, a redirect, or not exist at all? If we rely on the entry a thing or two to cover this usage, should a second sense be added? 166.181.80.19 17:50, 1 April 2024 (UTC)

There's also the well-known phrase 'a pint or two' and the humorous alteration 'a pint or ten'. Even 'pint' on its own can be used as an understated way of referring to several pints. When someone says "I'm off to the pub for a pint" (or 'cheeky pint' or 'quick pint') then they rarely actually mean only the one. --Overlordnat1 (talk) 07:36, 4 April 2024 (UTC)

Another example that I think would be the same sense: "I'd like to teach him a thing or two." 166.181.80.37 19:46, 5 April 2024 (UTC)

Ad.

Anyone got a clue what the context label is on about here? The entry creator has made a few of these. This, that and the other (talk) 07:28, 3 April 2024 (UTC)

Seems to be specifying the manuscript where it's found, e.g. File:NL-HaNA 1.04.02 1 19.jpg, which is rather something to list as a cite/quote, I think... - -sche (discuss) 14:57, 3 April 2024 (UTC)

I've converted all entries by that user (unless they also edited under other usernames) to use {{rfquotek}}. - -sche (discuss) 22:48, 18 April 2024 (UTC)

Is mauve bright or pale, or both?

We define it as "1. (historical) A bright purple synthetic dye. 2. The colour of this dye; a pale purple or violet colour." Equinox ◑ 11:34, 3 April 2024 (UTC)

Not a helpful comment, but: as I've been cleaning up colour categories lately I've noticed that several of them have issues like this, or questionable definitions, e.g. desert sand... we probably need to systematically check all the colour entries' definitions. - -sche (discuss) 15:07, 3 April 2024 (UTC)

Per Wikipedia, "As the memory of the original dye ... receded, the contemporary understanding of mauve is as a lighter, less-saturated color[.]" CitationsFreak (talk) 00:00, 4 April 2024 (UTC)

Sounds right. Good find. DCDuring (talk) 02:35, 4 April 2024 (UTC)

The color I think of as mauve is more or less what the WP article calls opera mauve. It would be attestable. I don't know about the other four. DCDuring (talk) 02:40, 4 April 2024 (UTC)

Yes, good find; I've updated the entry. Please update further if needed. BTW, off topic but on the topic of other color things that need cleanup: a lot of entries linked in Appendix:Colors aren't in color categories yet. - -sche (discuss) 04:51, 4 April 2024 (UTC)

Consultee definition seems wrong.

In American medicine, the consultee is the entity who asks for a consultation, and the consultant provides the consultation, ie, the consultant is the person who is consulted. 96.238.51.252 14:23, 4 April 2024 (UTC)

 Done Fixed. Equinox ◑ 14:24, 4 April 2024 (UTC)

gwledig, wledig

This word was recently the subject of a viral Youtube video (by Cambrian Chronicles) about how no-one knows how to translate it, if any of our Welsh-speaking editors want to watchlist or expand it. - -sche (discuss) 16:16, 4 April 2024 (UTC)

(Portuguese) Which one is the current standard form: co-hipônimo or coipônimo?

Since the last Orthographic Agreement, it seems that the prefix co- is never followed by a hyphen, as it is said in its entry. However, in spite of not being a frequently used word, the form co-hipônimo seems to be the only form that appears in dictionaries, at least online. Is this rule wrong? I tried looking it up but ended more confused than before. OweOwnAwe (talk) 01:20, 6 April 2024 (UTC)

Should flying, objectifying, etc. have /j/ in IPA?

No expert, but I seem to perceive a /j/ sound there. Equinox ◑ 11:52, 6 April 2024 (UTC)

No, because it's not phonemic: there is no contrast between /ˈflaɪ.ɪŋ/ and /ˈflaɪ.jɪŋ/ (assuming neither is pronounced with any stress on the second syllable). The analysis of so-called "diphthongs" is debatable and some phonologists have entertained the idea that words like fly, etc. end in something like /aj/ or /ɑj/, but our transcriptions don't follow that phonemic analysis. Since we use /aɪ/ to transcribe the diphthong in general, that transcription is also sufficient before a vowel.--Urszag (talk) 18:21, 6 April 2024 (UTC)

FWIW, if we don't want /j/ here, I spy a few entries which need cleanup (since some people add pronunciations without such a high-level grasp of phonology) : decalcifying, despaghettifying, railgun. - -sche (discuss) 22:47, 7 April 2024 (UTC)

@-sche, Urszag: Actually, the entry for railgun shows a good grasp of phonology - there's no /j/ beyond the diphthong, but there is tendency to introduce a vocalic element, which is why there is one phonemic transcription but two phonetic transcriptions. --RichardW57m (talk) 16:22, 8 April 2024 (UTC)

curious, bi-curious

Related: how do people feel about the /j/ currently listed as occuring in curious, bi-curious? (To me it sounds wrong.) - -sche (discuss) 01:38, 25 April 2024 (UTC)

panter-pantle confusion

pantle is "(obsolete, Lancashire) Alternative form of panter (“A snare for catching birds, formed from twisted horsehair”)". But panter is merely "A net; a noose", not mentioning horsehair at all. How to resolve? Equinox ◑ 12:20, 6 April 2024 (UTC)

Khamnung

There are two senses given, but are they really different senses, or just different ways of expressing the same sense? (This is the work of the "Ancient Meitei"/"singular oasis of comparative civilization and organized society" editor, several of whose entries have been at RFV and RFD.) - -sche (discuss) 21:33, 6 April 2024 (UTC)

hold one's pee

This was deleted back in 2015. I think it should be restored. We have hold one's piss and I am sure that hold one's pee gets used in all the same ways. 2600:1006:B194:CA54:0:50:35F8:9001 22:26, 6 April 2024 (UTC)

(Ukrainian) новий

In the page new/translations, this word is shown as но́вий, but when I follow its link, this word is shown as нови́й. Which one is right? Intolerable situation (talk) 06:56, 7 April 2024 (UTC)

нови́й (novýj) is correct. I've corrected the error on new/translations. Thanks for spotting it. Voltaigne (talk) 14:03, 7 April 2024 (UTC)

pajeet

Is anyone else able to weigh in on the back-and-forth happening over how to define this entry (see edit history)? - -sche (discuss) 16:41, 7 April 2024 (UTC)

I did try to ask /pol/ about who qualified as being "pajeet" but the answers were mixed fedposting-accusations and one that basically said anyone who's not completely white + anyone from the global south (shown on a map, which I did post somewhere on here before but now can't find). Who knows the actually most precise definition may be, but I would suggest the current definition is fine. "Anyone whose way of life resembles the racist view that people have of Indians' lives" is roughly the same as the definition above and captures the derogatory intent as well. Kiril kovachev (talk・contribs) 20:45, 17 April 2024 (UTC)

@Kiril kovachev: Wait, do you have a link? Ioaxxere (talk) 23:07, 28 April 2024 (UTC)

@Ioaxxere Sorry, I'm nearly certain the image has been deleted from the 4chan servers, which is the main body of the original response, but I did (AFAICR) write out the response to my post. Here, the discussion in the Tea room before was at Wiktionary:Tea room/2022/December#pajeet, and the image link was https://i.4cdn.org/pol/1692477071732040s.jpg. Sadly, it's been deleted, unless somewhere has it backed up. Likewise, the thread is now also dead, but the responses (besides the ones who called me "Jew" or a "glowie") said:

1. "Any person from the subcontinent or Sri Lanka and their descendants."
2. "This is an outdated chart of pajeets that excludes Canada and the UK but it's close." (linked to the image).

My description of the image was:

...it'll probably be deleted not too long after this thread expires, but it depicts basically most of the global south, including all of America south of the USA, all of North Africa, Spain, Portugal, the Balkans, Turkey, Arabia and the Middle East, the entire Indian subcontinent and parts of China, alongside some regions north of India. The only thing is that most of Africa (who are presumably too dark of skin to be included) is not shaded. I don't know if this is just a meme answer, but it seems to be exceptionally broad and cover basically anyone. And the text of the post itself considers "Canada" and "the UK" to be locations where there are pajeets, perhaps insinuating there are lots of "pajeets" that have migrated there, so probably signifying Indians after all.

1. "Anyone that is more brown then a spic and less black then a nigger"

My comment was:

Evidently this person isn't even asking what race they are, the only point is their skin color, apparently. This then supports the idea that the term encompasses no particular ethnicity and can be used to offend anyone of brown skin.

If you know which sites archive 4chan posts, and how to find the original post itself (I think I only saved the image, not the URL), that might be helpful to you. Sorry I couldn't give the full source, Kiril kovachev (talk・contribs) 13:12, 29 April 2024 (UTC)

@Kiril kovachev: Here's the thread: https://archive.4plebs.org/pol/thread/438493719. I think we can just define the term as "Someone of South Asian ancestry" and maybe add a usage note explaining that different racists might use the term differently. Ioaxxere (talk) 18:04, 29 April 2024 (UTC)

@Ioaxxere Wow, good job finding that. How did you do it? Apologies also for my postings on that link, I didn't know exactly how to blend in on 4chan so I was trying to be inflammatory enough to make people interested. Sadly it didn't seem to get much attention anyway.

And, I agree with your conclusion. I would also draw a parallel with the use of the N word (qv) which is blanketly used to offend virtually anyone who is not white, so there is precedent for such a definition differing a bit from what it was originally meant to convey. Kiril kovachev (talk・contribs) 21:27, 29 April 2024 (UTC)

I am surprised by how many hits the term has on /pol/, every day dozens. I cannot find the post with Kiril’s information, but the archive exposes the general direction of the term, which is too extended to easily manipulate. The posters are likely to associate someone of Indian flag with this term, and in spite of the skin colour claim it is unlikely that some Brazilian “more brown then a spic and less black then a nigger” is called it, this is artificial: there is an environmental stereotype behind it, and basically Brazilians are in the Latin-American “spic” basket.

Whether or not some individual use contradicts a supposed strict definition is of little relevance, the important observation to be described is the overall picture. I embrace Kiril’s recognition that the current definition is fine resemblance-wise, but not every sememe we find has ever had aspirations to “most precise definitions”. Fay Freak (talk) 13:48, 29 April 2024 (UTC)

exponential

Are we doing justice to the extremely widespread use of this term in a way that seems to explicitly disagree with the "mathematical" sense of "constant rate of growth"? Do we have to make explicit the idea of rate of change per unit of time (vastly more common than any other variable? Or is my reading of our definitions of this term inadequate?

In other dictionaries:

Oxford Learners: "(formal[!!!]) (of a rate of increase) becoming faster and faster"

Collins: "Exponential means growing or increasing very rapidly."

Most other dictionaries don't mention the common use.

In one cite I found, from an educators' handbook:

1. • 2013, Yvelyne Germain-McCarthy, Bringing the NCTM Standards to Life: Best Practices, High School, page 101:

     ... Students apply the definition of slope to various representations of growth functions to discover differences between exponential and constant rate of growth.

Evidently, many people perceive "exponential growth" as much faster/bigger than "constant rate of growth", which seems to be interpreted as a constant amount of growth per unit of time. Such use seem much more common than what we label the "mathematical" use. If we follow the notion that definitions should be in order of current frequency rather than, say, dates of usage, then the last, "loose" definition should be first, and the first last.

Further, I doubt that our second definition "Expressed in terms of a power of e." is a "mathematics" definition attestably distinct from our first "Relating to an exponent".

If our use of labels is 'topical', then shouldn't all of the definitions of exponential be mathematics? DCDuring (talk) 17:46, 7 April 2024 (UTC)

re: second definition, see: https://www.ncl.ac.uk/webtemplate/ask-assets/external/maths-resources/images/Expo_form_complx_num.pdf

Basically, a complex number z can be expressed in Cartesian or polar form, or in exponential form, which is an expression specifically in terms of a power of e. Multiple Mooses (talk) 16:44, 8 April 2024 (UTC)

@User:Multiple Mooses Thanks. Are there any other instances of such use of exponential? The entry would benefit from labels that indicate the context(s) in which exponential is used in this sense. If this is the only use, then we need a fuller definition IMHO. DCDuring (talk) 16:56, 8 April 2024 (UTC)

See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exponential_function

In the phrase the exponential function, the term exponential has a similar meaning, i.e. relating to expression as a power of e. Multiple Mooses (talk) 17:07, 8 April 2024 (UTC)

Also see: https://math.mit.edu/classes/18.03/sup/sup6.pdf

"exponential principle", "exponential solutions" Multiple Mooses (talk) 17:13, 8 April 2024 (UTC)

In "exponential principle" the term exponential seems to have everything to do with "exponent' and little to do with "e". Similarly for "exponential solution". Many books have "exponential function" with bases of 2 or 10 as well as "e". The function with "e" as the base is often called the natural exponential function or the "exponential function with base "e"". "E" is a vary interesting number, but I'm not seeing def. 2 as helpful in defining any of these phrases. If you can provide examples (See WT:ATTEST) that unambiguously show support for def. 2 please provide them. DCDuring (talk) 19:44, 8 April 2024 (UTC)

I do think part of the confusion is the phrase "rate of growth" ("rate" indicates we're talking about the first derivative - it's not the unit of growth that's constant, but the amount that the unit of growth itself grows!). Tripling is a classic example of a constant rate of growth, but it's also an explosive growth (1,2,4,8,16,32,64,128,256,etc). I don't think people have a fixed mathematical image of what they mean when they say "My workload is increasing exponentially" and probably in some cases they're thinking of something less than a constant rate of growth ("... it feels like I get a new duty every month!", which would be merely arithmetic increase). In general, I think ordering by usage is good, but in this order there is a logical progression between each sense, and I don't like having "loosely"/"by extension" senses appear before the sense they're an extension of! (On the other point, I agree with Multiple Mooses - the e^x sense is something distinct from the n^x sense, although you can see it as an extension of that form I guess. If we need something to help disambiguate them, I'd say sense 1 is chiefly the counterpart to "logarithmic", while sense 2 is chiefly of complex numbers) Smurrayinchester (talk) 07:12, 10 April 2024 (UTC)

I have RfVed the 'e' sense. I'd like to see it used in expressions other than exponential function. Also, I note that other dictionaries have a noun PoS for exponential, which we lack. DCDuring (talk) 14:39, 10 April 2024 (UTC)

My position is that it's hard to find uses which justify the separation of senses 1 and 2 as they currently are, but that sense 2 is a special case of a more general use-case: see my long post at RFV.

On the other hand I very much think sense 3 should be reworded. What characterizes exponential as opposed to polynomial growth is that neither the growth, nor the growth of the growth, nor the growth of the growth of the growth, etc. is constant: none of the derivatives are constant. I've seen the phrase "constant rate of increase" used to describe geometric progressions, but never in mathematics (where it would probably be considered wrong); I would strongly prefer something like "rate of growth is proportional to the current value" and some good ux's. Winthrop23 (talk) 19:59, 10 April 2024 (UTC)

That the exponential function (e^x) is a special case of an exponential function:

$$ab^{cx+d}=\left(ab^{d}\right)\left(b^{c}\right)^{x}.$$

does not make exponential mean "relating to e". Even if there should be no consensus on a specific definition of a generalized exponential function, we still need attestation for definition 2. DCDuring (talk) 00:07, 11 April 2024 (UTC)

Maybe I'm not being clear: My opinion is that definition 2 should be deleted because it cannot be adequately distinguished from definition 1. However, exponential has many uses where it means "related to the exponential function [$e^{x}$]," and this sense should be included (in particular, there are many uses of exponential in this sense that can be distinguished from "related to an exponential function." To wit: exponential distribution, exponential order, exponential window, exponential map [of a Lie algebra], exponential series, etc. all of these rely on special properties of the exponential function, or are defined from it.). The point I'm trying to make is that definitions 1 and 2, as they are now, relate to exponents (or "exponential terms"), and I don't think the distinction drawn by definitions 1 and 2 is attestable. On the other hand, in the context of functions, exponential has a more particular (e-flavored) meaning which is definitely attestable.

I'd cut sense 2 and add a separate sense for "related to the exponential function" (probably, if we want to be complete, with sub senses for distribution and order since in these cases exponential can modify X outside the set phrase exponential X). If there weren't an RFV & a Tea room discussion I'd add this myself, but I don't want to overstep. Winthrop23 (talk) 00:45, 11 April 2024 (UTC)

Of course, a constant rate of interest applied to an initial account balance, with no deposits or withdrawals, yield exponential growth of the account balance.

For definition 3, how about "increasing or decreasing by a fixed ratio for each unit of time". DCDuring (talk) 00:42, 11 April 2024 (UTC)

That's well put about the rate of interest.

I like the idea of making use of time--almost always, as you say, that's the independent variable. I'd be happier with "scaling" or "multiplying" instead of "increasing or decreasing", since it's slightly more precise (reading uncharitably, it's possible to construe "increasing" as referring to adding, and "ratio" as just "fraction", which would mean the growth is linear). Winthrop23 (talk) 00:53, 11 April 2024 (UTC)

I wouldn't focus on the idea that many people perceive "exponential growth" as much faster/bigger than "constant rate of growth". Rather, I would say many people perceive "exponential growth" as much faster than "ordinary growth" or "expected growth" or "anticipated growth" (whether either of these occur at a constant rate or not).

The current draft definition "Characterised by a very rapid rate of change, especially increase." seems about right. However, I am not keen on the 2013 citation being used to support this, as the extract seems rather mathematical, and could actually be literally referring to y=e^x. The 2018 citation fits better.

—DIV (1.145.112.83 14:31, 18 April 2024 (UTC))

I agree with your penultimate point. IMO "(loosely) Characterised by a very rapid rate of change, especially increase" is OK. BTW, I removed the reference to "constant rate of change" from the mathematical definition before I was aware of this discussion. "exponential" growth, in true mathematical sense, definitely is not a constant rate of change. That is one of its most important characteristics. Mihia (talk) 13:26, 20 April 2024 (UTC)

(Dutch) gender of kat (Etymology 1)

In cat/translations, the gender of kat in Dutch is marked as masculine, but in kat, the gender of it under Etymology 1, which is the one that has the meaning "cat", is marked as feminine. Which is correct? Intolerable situation (talk) 01:31, 8 April 2024 (UTC)

According to Van Dale, kat is primarily feminine and secondarily masculine. The official Dutch wordlist and the Algemeen Nederlands Woordenbook have it as masculine/feminine. Woordenboek der Nederlandsche Taal gives it as feminine/masculine. Our own policy on Dutch gender deprecates f or m and recommends f in such instances, so that's probably what we should go with in cat/translations. Voltaigne (talk) 11:35, 8 April 2024 (UTC)

Yeah, but that policy is used for words which are per se feminine and are masculine only insofar as the three-gender system has collapsed. In such cases, using "f. or m." would be redundant, because every word that is originally feminine (and doesn't refer to a female person) can be treated as masculine in contemporary Dutch. However, words that really vary between genders even in a three-gender system should get both genders. And it seems that "kat" is such a word. It is important here that the WNT already gives it both, because the WNT has a strict three-gender approach. 90.186.83.227 09:07, 9 April 2024 (UTC)

actioner

We have a definition for actioner (an action movie), but we do not have a definition for actioner as opposed to actionee, and the former term is not mentioned in the latter entry. I have no particular desire to compose the definition myself, as trying to decipher exact meanings of corporate and/or legal jargon gives me a headache, but perhaps someone else here is up to the task.

https://thecontentauthority.com/blog/actioner-vs-actionee

citation citation citation Multiple Mooses (talk) 16:26, 8 April 2024 (UTC)

PIE roots beginning with bare /r/

We list only two PIE roots beginning with a bare /r/, compared with ten that begin with /h₁r/. The two bare-/r/ roots are both cited to Pokorny. Moreover, there is no particular reason that I can see why they should be treated differently than the others .... there are no Greek reflexes from which to guess about a possible original vowel or laryngeal. (Greek initial /r/ exists in just a handful of words, most of which are derived from the single PIE root *srew- ... those beginning with laryngeals in PIE have vowels in Greek.) This suggests that according to the standard reconstruction, PIE may not have allowed initial /r/ at all.

Do we know if more recent PIE scholars have added laryngeals or other sounds to the two PIE roots with bare r? We could add those as alternate forms, or even move the pages there and make Pokorny's reconstructions into the alt forms. Thanks, —Soap— 12:50, 9 April 2024 (UTC)

Also Uralic

Reconstruction:Proto-Uralic/ruŋke- looks suspicious too, as the only attested descendant we have is in the center of IE territory, so I wonder if it's either sound symbolism or actually a loan into Hungarian. I dont fully understand all the abbreviations used on this site, which lists some other words beginning with /r/ (page back and forth like a paper dictionary), and Im not sure Im looking at proto-Uralic or only proto-Finno-Ugric. —Soap— 16:03, 9 April 2024 (UTC)

"you get" - verb? phrase?

There's a (British? Commonwealth?) phrase "you get" that means more or less "that exist" or "there are". A few examples:

"that exist"

• "It was so refreshing to hear, unlike the type of people you get in London and the south east of England." (link)
• "Lovely decor inside, reminds me of gastro pubs you get in gentrified areas of London." (link)
• "They’re like those children’s books you get where you make a story by [putting together] different pages…" (link)

"there are"

• "You get non-binary people - you get people who don't identify as a man or..." (link (video))
• "It was a terrible place to live. You get places like that. It is just the way it is." (link)
• "Hubris is interesting, because you get people who are often very clever, very powerful, have achieved great things, and then something goes wrong - they just don't know when to stop." (link)

Is this just a sense of "get" (I don't see any that match currently), or is it a set phrase we should have? I can't imagine it with out the "you". I note we have you get that, which feels related.

I also don't know if the more distinctively American "you got" is the same thing (as in this quote from Joe Biden: "Number two, it would generate economic growth — the opposite — because you got people who are, in fact, now going to be freed up to be able to go borrow money to buy a home...") - it feels like they have subtly different nuances ("you got people who are evil" feels like it's calling specific people evil, while "you get people who are evil" feels more like hypothetical statement about the universe) but maybe I'm imagining that. Smurrayinchester (talk) 17:39, 9 April 2024 (UTC)

I think "you get" also exists in American English, and my initial reaction is that it seems like a sense of get, because it seems like a general phenomenon of using verbs 'impersonally' which occurs with a variety of pronouns/subjects and a variety of verbs. Compare "You never get people like Richard and Judy slagging off fat people in the same way they slagged off skinny models" to "[It's] interesting because you see the dried powdered black pepper everywhere yet you rarely see it in tropical gardens growing" or "Vinegar is so interesting, because you find all these home remedies like 'use it to clean the algae of your deck'", "you encounter", and of course the classic "there's"=there are and "it's"=there is/are. (It's harder to distinguish uses of "I get", "we get", "we find" etc which are impersonal vs are including the speaker and other people as subjects, but e.g. "April fools day is wild because we get people who aren't funny most days really going for it." does not strike me as fundamentally different from the same sentence with "you get".) - -sche (discuss) 19:11, 9 April 2024 (UTC)

I can vouch for "you get" existing in American English. I have the impression, though, that it is more widely used in Commonwealth English. Quercus solaris (talk) 04:39, 10 April 2024 (UTC)

Another reading of the most of the whole set of examples that -sche has collected is that get is a generalized verb for experience/perceive. Any verb of sensing works, as well as expressions like run the risk of. This reading makes it easier to incorporate the full range of pronouns into the usage. Our definitions of get don't include this as a distinct extension of the main definition: "obtain; acquire". The closest MWOnline comes to this is "to be subjected to" (got a bad fall); AHD has "to be subjected to" got a bad fall and "To perceive or become aware of by one of the senses": get a whiff of perfume; got a look at the schedule.. OTOH, in line with the 'impersonal reading, Oxford Learners has "get something (informal) used to say that something happens or exists"; You get (= There are) all these kids hanging around in the street. They still get cases of typhoid there.. At the very least, this extension of the most basic sense of get would account for the emergence of the 'impersonal' reading. DCDuring (talk) 14:24, 10 April 2024 (UTC)

OK, I think is probably a good case for creating a new sense of get with a non-gloss along the lines of "(impersonal, usually with you) Used in constructions stating that something exists or can occur." I personally think "They get cases of typhoid" is slightly different - that could just be the "receive" sense - but I think it can occur with one - "You know, the kind of thing one gets in Celtic ornamentation" (link). and similarly I'm not sure sure there's a case for "see" or "find" - you can easily interpret them as just literally meaning "You see with your eyes", but I'm open to be persuaded. Smurrayinchester (talk) 14:15, 13 April 2024 (UTC)

(To make the point a bit better: I think you get is different to you see, because one could say "That's the kind of person you see in London"/"Yes, I saw someone like that in London.", but not "That's the kind of person you get in London"/*"Yes, I got someone like that in London") Smurrayinchester (talk) 17:28, 13 April 2024 (UTC)

Seems like you have (colloquial) and one finds (formal) would be synonyms. Likewise something like one encounters (formal), following @-sche's contribution. ("You encounter" strikes me as a juxtaposition of informal and formal terms.) —DIV (1.145.112.83 14:22, 18 April 2024 (UTC))

Yeah, and not only "one finds" but also "you find". Other verbs, like "hear", can be used in similarly 'impersonal' ways: if I say "that's the kind of thing you hear in London", I am not suggesting that I think you, specifically, have been to London and have heard that — but if you have, you could reply "Yes, I heard something like that in London", changing the meaning of 'hear' back to the normal meaning in the same way as "yes, I saw someone" and the corresponding dialogues with "find" and "encounter" change the meaning between impersonal and 'normal'. Indeed, if we change "someone" to "something", you can construct the same sense-changing dialogue for "get": "That's the kind of thing you get in London." / "Yes, I got something just like that in London." While I don't object to adding a sense (this 'impersonal' use of get does seem perhaps slightly more opaque than the similar use of other verbs), it does just seem to be a general property of verbs; if someone says "I just saw a man pay [some excessive amount] for a mobile stop sign", I could comment on the price "that much? that's the kind of price you pay in London!" suggesting that London has high prices (not that you, specifically, have been to London and bought a stop sign there for that much), or I could comment on the association of mobile stop signs with Soviet policemen "a mobile stop sign? that's the kind of thing you buy in Moscow!" again not suggesting you, personally, have been to Moscow. (But in both cases, if you had in fact bought such a thing in London or Moscow, you could reply "Yes, I pay just such a price / bought just such a thing in...")
Btw, just to make sure everyone else isn't using 'impersonal' only because I did, I want to be clear that I put it in quotation marks because I'm not sure if it's the right word, I just can't think of a better word; 'impersonal' seems to usually mean the subject/doer is one or it ("it rains"), but in this case, despite the subject being the second person pronoun you, it's not "you, the 2nd person singular, specifically, as an individual" (I'm not suggesting that you, personally, went to London and saw/got/found/heard/etc something), it's like a dummy pronoun, so maybe 'impersonal' is right (but I'm unsure). - -sche (discuss) 15:24, 18 April 2024 (UTC)

FWIW, CGEL 2005 does not mention get in any of its indexed discussions of 'impersonal constructions', nor do any of the indexed discussions of get mention 'impersonal constructions'.

I am repeating myself and -sche, but 'impersonal construction' in all the cases mentioned seems to result from using you ("one") and can occur with almost any verb: "One flies from airport to airport"; "One is constantly editing what one reads in blogs"; "One opens a drawer only to find more junk".

Get has general senses of "obtain" and "receive", among others. IMO, get ("experience" / "find"[rather than "perceive"]) straddles "obtain" and "receive". This sense can be used with any pronoun: "When I call a help number I often get automated bureaucracy. Don't you?" "Doesn't everyone?"

Unfortunately, my review of OneLook dictionaries has not yielded corresponding definitions of get that are substitutable. Does OED have such a definition? Our uncertainty seems to suggest that there is a definition that OneLook dictionaries, at least, have missed. DCDuring (talk) 17:38, 18 April 2024 (UTC)

I think "You get non-binary people" does show something weird going on. I agree that in "You get bad service" (or "One gets bad service", "I get bad service") you're using the "obtain"/"receive" sense, but I don't think any other sense of "get" works for the general you get (*"You receive non-binary people"?). You don't even need to experience the non-binary people - the statement just says they exist somewhere, possibly without you ever encountering them. Smurrayinchester (talk) 08:38, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

misspelling or not--bullion, boullion, bouillon

Do i remember incorrectly, or is boullion an acceptable alternate spelling of bullion? Is boullion also an acceptable alternate spelling of bouillon, or is it misspelled on the 湯 page? How common must a misspelling be to merit inclusion on Wiktionary? --173.67.42.107 05:35, 10 April 2024 (UTC)

No doubt somebody will moan about the length of my answer, but anyone who can't stand it is free to skip reading it. Given how often people write *boullion when they mean bullion (which is a lot, according to the 6k ghits), I'd say it merits a {{misspelling of}} entry at Wiktionary. The exact location of the dividing line between {{misspelling of}} and {{alternative spelling of}} is a deep epistemologic question that gets into who and how many accept it, but in many cases there is also an element that one knows it when one sees it, as they say, although some ones know with a clearer idea than other ones do. For example, I'll be deep in the cold cold ground before I cede acceptance of *pruritis. If one asks why, the answer is nuanced: I recognize that it is not impossible for it to arrive at acceptability, epistemologically (because wide enough use is capable of eventually defeating all else when it comes to orthographic standardization, no matter who doesn't like it), but the problem is that that misspelling is nonetheless emblematic of a certain kind of orthographic skill issue: many people think it's OK merely because they're more or less incapable of seeing why it might not be OK, and that fact in itself is what fans of standardized orthography object to: people with dim orthographic "vision" (God love them, nothin against em) are not the right ones to make judgments about acceptability within standardized orthography, just as people with dim eyeball vision (God love them, nothin against em) are not the right judges of color palettes or airliner runway approaches. The idea is, those fans prefer that the acceptability decision be left to people who are even capable of seeing misspellings in the first place. If a spelling reflects a specific misapprehension (underlying its use), then fans of standardized orthography are loath to accept it. After all, many of the six thousand members of Category:English misspellings could potentially be declared accepted variants, but most of them are not close to tipping over that line (into consensus acceptability), because by the time we got done accepting most of those, there wouldn't be much point left in even trying to have standardized spelling at all. The fact that no respected traditional [i.e., well-curated] dictionaries enter *boullion as far as OneLook knows as of this writing accords with the idea that people who care about having standardized spelling are not ready to consider it an accepted variant. They know that the reason many other people write it is probably in many cases (albeit not all) that their brain was unduly influenced by the appearance of the word bouillon and is a little vague and/or careless on the difference. There's that theme again — if a spelling reflects a specific misapprehension (underlying its use), then fans of standardized orthography are loath to accept it. Thus (to answer one of the original questions), no, *boullion is not an acceptable alternative spelling of bouillon — it is a misspelling of it. As for "How common must a misspelling be to merit inclusion on Wiktionary," I'd say that if there are hundreds or even thousands of ghits showing it in action (among the countless *fokes out there who aren't exactly *sooper *kean on the whole spelling thing), then it is justified in having a {{misspelling of}} entry at Wiktionary. Quercus solaris (talk) 02:28, 11 April 2024 (UTC)

 Done at *boullion (sp). Quercus solaris (talk) 15:18, 11 April 2024 (UTC)

do a barrel roll

Sum of parts (does not deserve a page) and alternate form of barrel roll#Verb (deserving a page)? --173.67.42.107 05:35, 10 April 2024 (UTC)

Seems to me that the first argument wins and the second argument is unpersuasive because the same pattern would also have hundreds of other instances that do not merit entries. For example, feed#Verb versus give feed#Noun. The clause beer me means give me a beer#Noun, but give someone a beer will (rightfully) never be an entry. Quercus solaris (talk) 14:32, 10 April 2024 (UTC) Update: … will (rightfully) never be an entry unless it ever develops some indisputably widely used idiomatic figurative sense. Quercus solaris (talk) 20:12, 19 April 2024 (UTC)

Right, SOP beats "is a synonym of another word", because you can construct SOP synonyms of anything, e.g. Heimlich#Verb is includable and perform the Heimlich maneuver is not. - -sche (discuss) 23:15, 19 April 2024 (UTC)

Context: I seem to remember that "do a barrel roll" was some Internet meme, as a famous line of dialogue from an old Starfox video game. That may be why the IP was asking. Equinox ◑ 23:17, 19 April 2024 (UTC)

Aha, thanks for that. Admittedly, if a phrase develops enough of a memetic life of its own, it can develop a dimension beyond SoP. Quercus solaris (talk) 23:33, 19 April 2024 (UTC)

List_of_Star_Fox_characters#Peppy_Hare/do a barrel roll --Geographyinitiative (talk) 23:50, 19 April 2024 (UTC)

API

i made a "sandbox" at Talk:API#proposed deviation from usual format. i think it might be more useful to put Wikipedia links with each definition instead of lumping all the Wikipedia links into a single =Further reading= section? --173.67.42.107 06:12, 10 April 2024 (UTC)

I like this idea, because to my mind it is more useful, direct, and intuitive to users. My gut will not be surprised if other Wiktionarians dislike it. The Beer parlour ("for policy discussion and cross-entry discussion") is the correct place to propose it, rather than the Tea room ("for questions concerning particular words"). Quercus solaris (talk) 16:35, 10 April 2024 (UTC)

i did a copy-paste of this conversation to Wiktionary:Beer_parlour/2024/April#disambiguation of links to Wikipedia --173.67.42.107 23:50, 17 April 2024 (UTC)

Shitify

Shitify adjective sense 3 currently has the labels "(UK, Australia, South East, regional, New Zealand, vulgar, slang)" - where do "South East" and "regional" refer to? Thryduulf (talk) 23:47, 11 April 2024 (UTC)

This is a great example of the kind of stupid labels that seem all too common on many dialectal entries. Why is "regional" even necessary at all? That being said, did you mean a different word? I don't see three senses at shitify or shittify. Theknightwho (talk) 16:40, 12 April 2024 (UTC)

@Theknightwho: It looks like they meant shitty. It turns out that the labels in question were added by an IP that geolocates to Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. Chuck Entz (talk) 17:17, 12 April 2024 (UTC)

Sorry, I do indeed mean "shitty". "shitify" was the word I looked up initially, then I followed the link. Thryduulf (talk) 20:08, 12 April 2024 (UTC)

We should remove "regional" whenever possible, including whenever regions are already specified. "South East" is also useless here, and since it was added by a random and apparently clueless IP as their only edit, I'm just removing it. - -sche (discuss) 22:56, 12 April 2024 (UTC)

Right, it has bugged me too! Getting a list of the use of "regional" in labels sounds like a job for @Erutuon, This, that and the other and others with know-how P. Sovjunk (talk) 09:29, 14 April 2024 (UTC)

@P. Sovjunk you really do make some challenging requests. After much consternation, beard-scratching, soul-searching etc, I was finally able to come up with this link: Cat:Regional English. This, that and the other (talk) 10:10, 14 April 2024 (UTC)

"Starking"

The entry for "starking" needs to be removed. There is no verb form of the word stark in English. Redsquyrl29 (talk) 15:17, 12 April 2024 (UTC)

@Redsquyrl29: As shown at stark, this is a dialect verb meaning "to stiffen". It's not well known in modern times, or perhaps in your country. Equinox ◑ 16:09, 12 April 2024 (UTC)

@Redsquyrl29 Aside from anythng, it's in the OED. Your personal knowledge is not the standard we use for creating/deleting entries. Thanks. Theknightwho (talk) 16:35, 12 April 2024 (UTC)

Appendix:Minecraft/shroomlight

"A block that emits light which is presents Nether huge fungi." What does this even mean? Is it English? Equinox ◑ 16:08, 12 April 2024 (UTC)

I rewrote the entry. Vergencescattered (talk) 20:37, 12 April 2024 (UTC)

Fluffles

In Crime and Punishment, translated by Constance Garner, there is the sentence "The gentlemen are generally wearing fur coats and as for the ladies' fluffles;, they're beyond anything you can fancy." https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/ls?q1=crime+and+punishment&field1=ocr&a=srchls&ft=ft&lm This is quite a different definition that "plural of fluffle" where fluffle is given as "plural of fluffle (noun), but it seems to have a relationship to the verb, fluffle which is given as To fluff up. KudzuVine (talk) 18:22, 12 April 2024 (UTC)

I suspect it means something like "fancy, decorative accessories or items of clothing, or elements thereof", based on these other quotations I've dug up:

"One little square of linen, with wide fluffles of lace, […] " [2]

"[O]f course we do not expect to put on all the fluffles and frizzes that the older sisters do, […] " [3]

Note that, per that last quotation, we may also be missing a similar sense at frizz. Multiple Mooses (talk) 12:52, 13 April 2024 (UTC)

EN: adjectival cast iron versus wrought-iron

There seems to be an inconsistency in adjectival listing primarily under cast iron (unhyphenated) and wrought-iron (hyphenated). In particular, every one of the three examples of adjectival "cast iron" involve cast-iron (hyphenated). —DIV (1.145.112.83 08:46, 13 April 2024 (UTC))

I added a few quotations which use the unhyphenated phrase, and removed the hyphens from the example sentences. Multiple Mooses (talk) 12:23, 13 April 2024 (UTC)

At cast iron, that is. Multiple Mooses (talk) 12:24, 13 April 2024 (UTC)

Thanks. At least that would look more consistent. Although potentially one could find quotations using hyphenated forms as adjectives too. —DIV (1.145.112.83 23:19, 15 April 2024 (UTC))

insalivation

Defn is The mixing of food with saliva and other oral secretions while eating. Firstly, isn't there another word for it? Secondly, what other oral secretions are there in play here? Mucus? Bile? Vomit? Blood? Semen? P. Sovjunk (talk) 09:32, 14 April 2024 (UTC)

Changed to "The mixing of food with saliva during mastication." There are no quotes there to support the idea of "other oral secretions" being acceptable *insalivatents, and saliva is right in the word. Plus, mastication is more accurate in this context than eating. Multiple Mooses (talk) 13:02, 14 April 2024 (UTC)

Citations:Běijīng: What language(s)?

Today, the 'English' header was removed from Běijīng. It had been added here: [4]. My question is: what about the citations/quotations on the Citations page, Citations:Běijīng? I assume it is implied that they are citations of the Mandarin term on the page? Yet they are all clearly citations of English language texts. I just want to make sure that my edit here: [5] is the correct interpretation of the situation. I don't really know whether this is Mandarin or English, but it is definitely an interesting question. --Geographyinitiative (talk) 18:37, 15 April 2024 (UTC)

@Geographyinitiative: based on the Request for Deletion discussion, there appears to be consensus that the use of Pinyin with tone markings in English text is just an example of code-switching. It is no different to the occasional reference to foreign words in English text (for example, “I really enjoyed the Eisbein we had for lunch at that restaurant in Frankfurt.”). Thus, the citations on the Citations page are not worth keeping and should be deleted. — Sgconlaw (talk) 22:47, 15 April 2024 (UTC)

No. It would only mean a bias towards transcription systems that use digraphs instead of diacritics, and against academic texts in favour of uninformed colloquial writing. Šīrāz and Iṣfahān (example p. 290) are as valid English words as Shiraz and Isfahan. You behave contradictorily by accepting these two forms in the like text with less strict transcription, which is often an editorial choice that cannot affect the language something is written in. Fay Freak (talk) 22:58, 15 April 2024 (UTC)

@Fay Freak: feel free to bring this up for further discussion at the Beer Parlour, I guess. As I said, the consensus on Pinyin with tone markings was that they are evidence of code-switching and we should not create separate English entries for such terms. — Sgconlaw (talk) 04:35, 16 April 2024 (UTC)

@Sgconlaw: Maybe, but surely you don't just delete the citations! 0DF (talk) 05:24, 28 April 2024 (UTC)

@0Df: I don’t see why not. Let’s say we have a pages with quotations from novels set in Germany. The quotations evidence code-switching, as the authors have sprinkled German words throughout the text (for example, “‘Nein,’ she said, ‘We can’t do that.’”; “They walked to the local Supermarkt”). They can’t be used in German entries, nor English entries as the German words have not been assimilated into English. Why shouldn’t such quotations be removed? — Sgconlaw (talk) 05:53, 28 April 2024 (UTC)

Shānxi [6] --Geographyinitiative (talk) 23:47, 15 April 2024 (UTC)

in this connection

This phrase seems dated to me, I've never come across it in the wild. Apparently it's quite used in Indian English. Wondering what to put in the label: probably|dated|except|in|India seems really weaselly... P. Sovjunk (talk) 22:20, 15 April 2024 (UTC)

I see it as an upper elchelon phraseology. I was familiar with it before I saw it here and might rarely use it. --Geographyinitiative (talk) 01:00, 16 April 2024 (UTC)

It’s still used in formal British English. Nicodene (talk) 03:49, 16 April 2024 (UTC)

What evidence that this is any more proscribed than the supposed (and wordier) alternative? It's just another construction or, possibly, a use of an extended meaning of connection. It may be overused relative to simple one=word prepositions, but "proscribed"? DCDuring (talk) 14:04, 16 April 2024 (UTC)

It's one of many turns of phrase that at least some usage mavens (self-appointed or otherwise) traditionally tend to enjoy shitting on, which makes it something that people preparing content for formal-register publication have traditionally best avoided, not so much because it is horrible but just as washdown-able armor to keep the haters' teeth from sinking in and to expedite flushing them off one's back. GMEU5 has an entry s.v. in this connection, quoting someone else's temper tantrum, to explain the traditional shitstorm in a teapot. It's a bit silly because AFAIK any corresponding hissy fit against in this regard is MIA in the printed record, and for people who claim to live or die by consistency, that's pretty inconsistent. It may have existed orally, though, because MWDEU s.v. regard felt the need to state that in regard to and as regards are "perfectly standard." As for what Wiktionary would best do, I'd recommend keeping the "sometimes proscribed" label and just citing a reference for the label. I'll add a citation of GMEU5 there. To my understanding, Wiktionary can't be the place to give a full explanation of the usage caution because a full one is not of a type that fits into a two-line usage note. That's fine because anyone who cares enough can look it up in the cited WP:RS. Quercus solaris (talk) 22:57, 16 April 2024 (UTC)

@Quercus solaris Surely as long as it's not paragraphs and paragraphs we can still just summarize the argument in the usage notes? There are some pretty large usage notes out there, e.g. check out the n-word for one. I don't know how verbose this one is, but it surely isn't all that long? Kiril kovachev (talk・contribs) 20:31, 17 April 2024 (UTC)

Well, yes — as with many things, an abstract is possible, and it is merely a question of whether the abstract is representative enough not to be misleadingly oversimplified. In this case, it is true that we could probably successfully summarize the shitstorm as (yet another) instance of the general theme that usage mavens want people to avoid turns of phrase that are likely to seem (at least to some people) trite and/or pretentiously fancified (that is, what many usage folks call fancy words). In this particular case, though, we must also add (within one short additional phrase) that the objection is tenuous; the tantrum thrower was trying too hard at being crotchety, as this collocation can be said with fair objectivity to be really not a single degree above practical, no less so than its synonym in this regard, which is, as MWDEU might have agreed, perfectly standard (because perfectly unpretentious and, although perhaps not maximally concise, certainly perfectly non-unconcise, in a perfectly cromulent way). I will get both points across in a few short lines (i.e., what the objection was, and why it was flimsy). Will do later tonight. Quercus solaris (talk) 21:26, 17 April 2024 (UTC)

That was beautiful, QS. P. Sovjunk (talk) 13:25, 18 April 2024 (UTC)

Interesting; my initial reaction is that it sounds ungrammatical, which I would've thought would be a reason for the proscription, rather than being "trite" or "pretentious" (does "apparently" mean that part of the usage note is just speculation, or are some of the proscribers saying it's trite/pretentious?), but Google Books' Ngram Viewer says "in this connection" has always been more common than e.g. "in connection with this", and was more common than "in this regard" until the 1960s when it was overtaken, albeit now decisively, by "in this regard". When I page through the first hundred Google Books results, a large majority are from before 1930 (but are often in e.g. US and UK government records, and the rest are e.g. electricians' journals/newspapers, suggesting this was not some informal colloquialism), and of the modern uses, about half look like they might be by non-native speakers (e.g. someone with a Chinese name writing in an international journal of this or that technical subject), but the other half are native English speakers [often British] writing in quite academic works (again, suggesting it's not some colloquial error by uneducated speakers, but something educated people are using in formal works). Indeed, the second most striking thing (after how little this is used in the modern era) is how very little "in this connection" is used in "informal" works—how near-exclusively it seems to be used in formal (technical/academic or government) works. Even when I search for e.g. "in this connection" romance trying to find it in e.g. trashy romance novels, 27 of the first 30 results are (mostly modern) academic works about e.g. Kierkegaardian philosophy, or deixis, and when I search for "in this connection" aliens, 29 of the first 30 results are old government works (mostly from before 1933 but a few from as late as the 1970s) about immigrants rather than spacefarers, and the 30th result is the Religious Telescope about the same thing. Accordingly, I'm going to label this "formal", and maybe expand the usage note to mention when usage started to drop off. - -sche (discuss) 14:38, 18 April 2024 (UTC)

Looks great where you added the the prevalence info, thanks. Interesting regarding prevalence decline, because I honestly suspect that the backlash against the phrase (whether or not the backlash was properly justified or justifiable) may well be what caused the decline in its usage. People get burned by their teachers and parents and peers and newspapers and books telling them that usage X is wrong and bad and stupid and embarrassing, and they learn the lesson and lick the wound and bend over backward to avoid saying it and (especially) to avoid retaining it in the final draft of a written communication or manuscript (even if it was written in the first draft). I went back and reread the quoted matter in the cited reference, and I polished the part where I should have said "wordiness or triteness" (fixed). Certainly a lot of usage proscriptions also involve the theme of (real or alleged) pretentiousness too, which is why I had hastily included that one earlier. Anyhow, IMO the usage note is now pretty darn respectable, thanks to this group effort. Quercus solaris (talk) 12:54, 19 April 2024 (UTC)

in that connection can also be found. Equinox ◑ 12:56, 19 April 2024 (UTC)

Incongruencies

Can anybody tell me definitively if incongruencies is a proper English word or is it just a mispronunciation that caught a foothold?? UltimateLexiconFlex (talk) 05:44, 17 April 2024 (UTC)

Yes: incongruence (plural incongruences) and incongruency (plural incongruencies) — they are synonymous, and each has both noncount and count senses. All forms are well attested in book corpora. Quercus solaris (talk) 06:00, 17 April 2024 (UTC)

PS: This is not the only pair of -ence/-ency synonyms. There are various such pairs. Quercus solaris (talk) 06:12, 17 April 2024 (UTC)

Proto-Malayic prefixes

@Kwékwlos, @Austronesier, @Nyilvoskt.

Should these affixes:

• *mAŋ-
• *mAɣ-
• *pAŋ-
• *tAɣ-
• *kA-
• *pAɣ-

which has an 'A' in the reconstruction, should it be replaced with an 'e/ə'? Or should it still be written like that? Berbuah salak (talk) 09:41, 17 April 2024 (UTC)

with great power comes great responsibility - not sum-of-parts?

Although this was previously deleted as SoP, I'd like to contend that it might not be, which I thought of after entertaining the following idea based on the phrase:

With great responsibility does not necessarily come great power, since just because you're made to deal with a lot of responsibility doesn't mean you're necessarily empowered with the necessary rights. In the same way, responsibility doesn't naturally come with power, since it's also possible to have lots of power but wield it irresponsibly.

The point of the proverb is that you should behave responsibly in the charge of power, not that power actually comes with responsibility built in. So, I think we should reinstate this entry. Thoughts? Kiril kovachev (talk・contribs) 20:27, 17 April 2024 (UTC)

Sorry, I don't follow. It seems to me that the correct interpretation is readily apparent from the words in the phrase. Nicodene (talk) 05:50, 18 April 2024 (UTC)

I agree that this is sum-of-parts.

With respect, Kiril kovachev I think you may be slightly misinterpreting the phrase. I take responsibility as an obligation for certain behaviour (Sense 3: "A duty, obligation or liability for which someone is held accountable."), not a characterisation of the behaviour or person (~Sense 1: "The state of being responsible").

—DIV (1.145.112.83 14:14, 18 April 2024 (UTC))

You're right, clearly I've misunderstood what the point of sum-of-parts is meant to be. Thanks for explaining, Kiril kovachev (talk・contribs) 20:44, 19 April 2024 (UTC)

That's OK. However, SoP classification is evidently subjective — not everyone will necessarily reach the same conclusion!

In particular, there are some proverbs that look potentially like SoP cases that are nevertheless included in Wiktionary. An example could be "haste makes waste", whose definition is "Being too hasty leads to wasteful mistakes", which seems fairly close to "Being hasty creates waste", which is pretty much a word-for-word literal paraphrase. So, I would argue, the meaning of the phrase can be worked out by anyone fluent in English from the ordinary meaning of the individual words. Nevertheless, being classed as a "proverb" might make a case for why people (perhaps less fluent in English) would want to look it up.

Maybe you can mount a similar case that "with great power comes great responsibility" is a modern-day proverb that people will want to look up. As we have discovered in our own discussion, there is also the possibility of at least two different apprehensions of what responsibility means in the phrase, so perhaps it's less clear-cut than I may have led you to believe.

—DIV (1.145.69.71 06:36, 24 April 2024 (UTC))

EN: couth as past participle of can

The entry for can has a sense defined as, "past participle (obsolete except in adjectival use) couth". However, there doesn't seem to be an example of this at couth (or indeed at Middle English couth). It feels like something is missing from the entry for couth related to (obsolete) usage as a verb.

By contrast, the entry for could indicates that it is an "(obsolete except Geordie) past participle of can" with the quotation "I haven't could sleep." Potentially this information could be added at can (sorry if I've overlooked it), although perhaps that'd be too much detail.

Combining the above information, logically it seems "I haven't couth sleep." would be the 'standard' (non-Geordie) obsolete expression. Although it doesn't mean much to me. I can't quite see what the modern English rendering with a past participle would be. I'm speculating that in German it'd be "Ich habe Schlafen nicht gekonnt." (which sounds unnatural to me) if können were not to be used as an auxilliary verb (but rather as a Vollverb) and thus replicating the English structure as closely as possible.

—DIV (1.145.112.83 03:06, 18 April 2024 (UTC))

It wasn't used for that sense of "can", but for the old sense of can as in "know" (hence couth = known). The last usage example categorized as a past participle in the Oxford English Dictionary's entry for "couth" is from 1609 ("Couth, knowen. R. Cawdrey, Table Alphabeticall (ed. 2)"), which doesn't actually seem to be a use but a mention. The next latest is "c1450 Þare was þe kirk of tynemouth' Of cuthbert right to all' men couth. Life of St. Cuthbert (1891) l. 5511". I would support sending this to RFV as I'm not sure whether there are any clear examples of "couth" used as a verbal participle past 1500 (our cutoff point for where Modern English starts); even if there are, I don't think it's necessarily useful to include this form in the headline of the verb as an inflected form (even with the qualifier "obsolete").--Urszag (talk) 19:11, 19 April 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for the explanation, Urszag. I had encountered the meaning 'to know' in the etymology, but didn't have much else to work on in the various entries.

Should I take it that the Geordie usage of could as a past participle still has the sense of an ability, though? (If so, perhaps a slightly extended example at could would help:  ?"I haven't could sleep for the past few nights, on account of the nighttime roadworks outside my bedroom window.")

And then did the obsolete usage of could as a past participle have the sense of ability (like current Geordie usage) or the sense of knowledge (like obsolete couth)? If the latter, then combining them into one sense under could might not be appropriate.

I'll leave it to those better placed to decide on making an RfV.

—DIV (1.145.112.83 10:32, 20 April 2024 (UTC))

Something else I would question about that entry: I think it's of dubious accuracy to describe able as a suppletive present participle of can. While "be able" is used as a suppletive infinitive form, "be able" doesn't feel like a progressive/continuous construction to me.--Urszag (talk) 19:15, 19 April 2024 (UTC)

EN: ourselves (or us) in subject of sentence

Under I a sense is included for nonstandard/proscribed usage in the object of a sentence. Similarly, I imagine that ourselves would occasionally appear in the subject (not covered by existing senses). In particular, this seems more natural with a longish phrase for the subject, as in

Many highly motivated newcomers — and, of course, ourselves, as experienced alchemists — have tried to turn lead into gold.

Similarly with us.

I could be wrong, but I am assuming that grammatically we should be used. (Note: "we, ourselves" would presumably be OK, where ourselves would be used as emphasis.)

It looks to be awkward to search for, but from a quick scout I found usage by some Slovenians:

"Many others and ourselves have found them very useful – so it is a waste of time and money not to use them."

in a conference paper.

—DIV (1.145.112.83 06:14, 18 April 2024 (UTC))

Closer analogy is perhaps at me:

5. (colloquial) As a grammatical subject or object when joined with a conjunction.

[It was] literally all me and my astrophysicist colleagues could talk about.

Stella and me have opted to take a course called 'Autobiography and Fiction'.

8. (informal, with and, often proscribed) As the subject of a verb.

Me and my friends played a game.

The existing senses 5 and 8 there seem to have excessive overlap too, although clearing that up is a separate problem.

Again, such sense(s) should probably apply to us and ourselves too.

—DIV (1.145.112.83 06:33, 19 April 2024 (UTC))

There’s also the strange pretentious use of ‘myself’ and ‘yourself’ instead of me that is often heard in Britain from call centre operatives: “I spoke to yourself yesterday, have you got a minute free to speak to myself today?”. Also the Hiberno-English ‘himself’ for ‘he’, for example: “Is himself in?”. Overlordnat1 (talk) 06:40, 19 April 2024 (UTC)

Interesting. I can't specifically say I've heard those. In the case of the call centres, I'm imagining that "me" and "you" were seen as overly familiar, yet English doesn't really have formal pronoun alternatives in the way that some other languages do.

I think it's highly unlikely that this is where it came from, but, just to share, the grammar arguably works better by padding it out as: "“I spoke to your good self yesterday, have you got a minute free to speak to my good self today?”" Admittedly my good self is not particularly idiomatic (and not listed in WT), although some instances can be found online.

—DIV (1.145.112.83 10:42, 20 April 2024 (UTC))

knowm sayin?

As a shortened form of know what I'm saying? Really common in speech. /ˌnɒmˈseɪn/ is the given pronunciation. Any idea of a common spelling, dawgs? P. Sovjunk (talk) 13:21, 18 April 2024 (UTC)

Not sure that any are common. If it were me I'd put in an apostrophe or two, as in know'm sayin' (or know'm sayin), cf. knowm'sayin and knowm sayin'. I found all bar the parenthesised version online, but it might be more of a struggle to find any of them in literature.

—DIV (1.145.112.83 14:05, 18 April 2024 (UTC))

Appears as gnome sayin' in this youtube video. —Soap— 05:26, 19 April 2024 (UTC)

nomsayin'? Tollef Salemann (talk) 06:12, 19 April 2024 (UTC)

‘Gnome sane’ and the similar ‘seem sane’ (‘Do you see what I’m saying?’) always make me think of J-Roc from TPB[7]. I’m sure there’s even an episode where he actually spells it as ‘gnome sane’ rather than says it that way but I can’t find it on YT Overlordnat1. We should probably have an entry for mafk as an even more abbreviated form of muhfucker too and quote J-Roc for one of our cites. --Overlordnat1 (talk) 06:43, 19 April 2024 (UTC)

plural of cat's eye and similar words

I initially started this discussion on Talk:farmer's_daughter#plural but i thought of cat's eye a few minutes later and I think that while both are good examples, cat's eye is even better. I think the plural of cat's eye should be cat's eyes, not cats' eyes as we currently have linked. Cat's eye is an atomic root, not a two-word phrase, since there is no cat invovled even metaphorically with most of the senses and saying "cat's" on its own doesnt communicate the meaning. The illustrations we have on the page use the cat's spelling. Similarly as with farmer's daughter it is not the daughter of a farmer except by chance, but rather a woman who stereotypically lives in such isolation that she will fall for any man who approaches her since she has no other opportunities to meet men. It is an atomic root just like cat's eye. I think the plural of farmer's daughter should be farmer's daughters, as our two quotes spell it, and not farmers' daughters as we currently have linked. Thanks, —Soap— 05:19, 19 April 2024 (UTC)

I don't see the value of such a priori arguments, except to generate testable hypotheses, which is trivially easy to do, though not with consistent results, at Google N-Grams. Both forms look to be attestable, as well as cats eyes (no apostrophe). DCDuring (talk) 11:58, 19 April 2024 (UTC)

So is it best to just list both forms? At least for words where both can amply be found? I will check each word individually then, rather than seeking a blanket policy. —Soap— 17:09, 19 April 2024 (UTC)

I think you are right: the plural of "cat's eye" in the non-literal sense should logically be "cat's eyes". While on the one hand we should list attestable forms, on the other hand we should also bear in mind that people consult dictionaries to discover what is "correct". Mihia (talk) 20:40, 21 April 2024 (UTC)

We could encourage them to be tolerant of others' choices, while thinking for themselves about their own. Maybe getting rid of apostrophes is the wave of the future. You wouldn't want to be on the wrong side of history, would you? DCDuring (talk) 21:15, 21 April 2024 (UTC)

My money is on the first word staying the same in both singular and plural just because of human nature. The spelling "cats' eyes" strikes me as hypercorrect: I have my doubts about how many people pay attention to the relevant orthographic rule (cat's vs. cats'), and following it correctly would require a decision as to how many cats there are, which is completely beside the point. It would be like determining what combination of left and right eyes are involved (eight possible permutations for three cat['s]/[s'] eyes). Chuck Entz (talk) 22:01, 21 April 2024 (UTC)

@ChuckEntz: Bad algorithm. With three eyes there must be at least two cats, so plural. Cats' eyes on the road are sufficiently separated that one shouldn't mistake even two for a single cat's eyes. --RichardW57m (talk) 08:33, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

@RichardW57m: You're missing the point. If I have a box full of marbles, there are no literal cats involved. Deciding how many non-existant cats they theoretically could belong to is completely pointless. Since these aren't actual cats, one could just as easily posit a single imaginary cat with 47 eyes, or 47 single-eyed cats. If I run over a cat's eye on the road, I don't have to worry about any critter being harmed. As for sea slugs: I'll leave that to your imagination... Chuck Entz (talk) 10:13, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

The singular cats’ eye is also found.  --Lambiam 10:36, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

Senses 1 and 3 of throb

I believe these would be identical in use. Should the senses be merged? -saph 🍏 17:10, 19 April 2024 (UTC)

I don’t think so. It is a transferred medical sense; nothing needs to pound or beat rapidly at all but the perception gives the impression. It may be possible to rewrite the first gloss in a way that would point out transferral periphery of the sense. Fay Freak (talk) 19:37, 19 April 2024 (UTC)

eFormat

An electronic format suitable for any written information not covered by eBook or ePub. Othello86 (talk) 05:55, 20 April 2024 (UTC)

Are you looking for Wiktionary:Requested_entries?

Or is there a specific question to be addressed?

Alternatively, per the message that currently shows up when trying to access eFormat, you can consider creating the entry yourself if it meets the criteria for inclusion. If you are new to Wiktionary, please see Help:Starting a new page, or use the sandbox for experiments.

—DIV (1.145.112.83 10:47, 20 April 2024 (UTC))

go to the well

Don't like Equinox's definition P. Sovjunk (talk) 21:30, 20 April 2024 (UTC)

I think of it as "to tap/use/call on an often-tapped/used/called on resource." (Wording could be improved.) DCDuring (talk) 17:57, 21 April 2024 (UTC)

Replaced with "To draw on a finite resource or reserve (that may be at risk of being exhausted)." Any better? —DIV (1.145.105.155 05:40, 23 April 2024 (UTC))

I don't think that the risk of exhaustion is essential, at least no more than any resource can become expensive or unavailable. For example, it comes up in religious contexts where the "well" is inexhaustible. To go to the well too often brings some focus on the idea of the resource not being available. (Some dictionaries have entries for go to the well too often). The same focus is in you don't miss your water until your well runs dry. You would think that any post-childhood human would get the metaphor without needing a definition. I BTW, the resource often is the goodwill of family, friends, neighbors, lenders, employees, volunteers, donors, etc. DCDuring (talk) 18:38, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for the input. From my experience the connotation of exhaustibility is common. Although I can't bring to mind an example from religious contexts where the resource is inexhaustible, I defer to your knowledge on that point. Therefore perhaps deleting "finite" to leave "To draw on a resource or reserve (that may be at risk of being exhausted)." covers it. Otherwise perhaps create a subsense?

—DIV (1.145.69.71 06:43, 24 April 2024 (UTC))

I couldn't find another OneLook dictionary that had an entry for go to the well, but there are a couple that have an entry for go to the well too often. It might be better to move our entry there. That would fit your definition. Go to the well to me seems SoPish, using common extended/figurative sense of go and well. Even the longer form seems SoPish to me, but I defer to the practical wisdom of professional lexicographers (Calling them "lemmings" seems unfair.) on inclusion. DCDuring (talk) 12:32, 24 April 2024 (UTC)

arena rock

"Rock music played at concerts held in large venues." — This definition broadly applies broadly to any rock music played at any concert, in which case one would wonder about the necessity about such a word; however, the Wikipedia page defines arena rock as being *particularly suitable for* concerts, with attributes such as anthemic choruses. (This is also my own understanding of the term.) Can the definition be replaced? —Fish bowl (talk) 00:44, 21 April 2024 (UTC)

How's my new def? CitationsFreak (talk) 03:49, 21 April 2024 (UTC)

per se

• (colloquial, proscribed, chiefly in the negative) In a true or literal sense; as one would expect from the name or description.

It's not a museum per se, but they do have some interesting artifacts.

Does anyone agree/disagree that this sense is "colloquial" and/or "proscribed"? Mihia (talk) 20:05, 21 April 2024 (UTC)

Surprising to me. Looking at the WT entry, I guess the concept is that Sense 2 diverges from the meaning suggested by the etymology, "by itself". Sense 1 fits with that, meaning "in itself" (not mentioned in the definition, but present in the list of synonyms). Sense 2 essentially means "as such", which I would have thought was a common understanding nowadays. I notice that "as such" is also listed in the list of synonyms, but with the vague restriction "(in certain senses)".

My guess is that historically there may well have been proscriptions against the usage of Sense 2, and it may well have been considered colloquial. (Although having both labels is a little disconcerting to me.) Yet perhaps nowadays the meaning has shifted sufficiently that those labels no longer apply.

Postscript. Or am I putting too much weight on the example? I find the example unexceptional. But I could construct another example to try to fit the stated definition and seem (to me) more exceptional — to the extent that I can hardly imagine anyone using the phrase this way: *"A: OMG, I was so shocked when Brad proposed, I literally died! B: Yeah, but you didn't die per se, did you?", or, similarly, *"I’d rather sink to the bottom of the ocean per se -- than call Brad for help!".

—DIV (1.145.105.155 05:36, 23 April 2024 (UTC))

I must admit I wasn't considering those kinds of cases, but only the cases when "per se" referred directly to a noun, as in the example presently given. To me, one feature of your examples seems to be a mismatch of registers, with "per se" seeming unexpectedly formal/jargony for the context, more or less the opposite of what the "colloquial" label would suggest. A "verbal" example such as "it does not vulcanise per se", without such a register mismatch, to me simply seems jargony. Not the greatest English ever, I suppose, but I wouldn't go so far as to call it "proscribed". Mihia (talk) 19:36, 24 April 2024 (UTC)

policija

Lithuanian polìcija (Also affects its inflected forms.)

The pronunciation is given as /poːˈlʲɪt͡sʲɪjɐ/, but apart from this being shown as phonemic (WT:ALT#Pronunciation requires phonetic), I think the first vowel is actually short. I think it is noted as such in http://yuriykushnir.com/documents/Y_Kushnir_Dissertation.pdf. @Joonas07, Insaneguy1083, AmazingJus, Chuck Entz. --RichardW57m (talk) 08:26, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

Actually I found the pronunciation given at https://home.uni-leipzig.de/~yuriykushnir/strucclith/class_1.pdf Example 17:

(17) policija [pɔˈlʲɪtsɪjæ] police

So, is Kushnir right, or are there multiple pronunciations we need to record? --RichardW57m (talk) 09:20, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

I've just realised that the final vowel in @Joonas07's pronunciation, which we currently display, is wrong - the two low vowels are neutralised after /j/, and this is not a question of hocus pocus. --RichardW57m (talk) 11:03, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

Latin ambro

Last year I have updated the entry ambro and added a latin header. I wondered if any of you had examples of such a strange medieval latin developement (from a specific and late romance language to latin, or in any other language branche where a daughter language provided its parent language (highly specific since the parent needs to be "frozen" as latin is) with a new lexicon), helping me in the update of the etymology section which I have thus far tagged incomplete and even to create a category if there be enough examples of it. Tim Utikal (talk) 15:19, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

There are entries in the DMLBS and Du Cange, neither of which confirm this etymology. The DMLBS notes that it occurs as a tribe name in Classical Latin (Livy has "a Teutonis et Ambronibus castra defendit"); I'm not sure if the dictionary means to imply that the use in the sense 'glutton' is a figurative extension of that. In that case the Romance etymology would be impossible. Are you aware of any sources that support a connection between hambre and Latin ambro?--Urszag (talk) 15:26, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

Here's a book that seems to view it as an extension of the proper name: (A Volume of vocabularies, Wright 1882).--Urszag (talk) 15:35, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

I only find the gloss gnedge for latin ambrones at page 100 in the last source you shared and I'm not sure what to make of it. I can't remember where I got my version from, I hope I didn't guess it myself but I don't think it was directly mentioned in the edition I was reading. The FWOTD didn't help either even though it's no excuse. Now the relation to spanish ambron seems very improbable and the idea that old spanish would have given one of its word back to latin (and through the writings of a britannic writer) quite far-fetched.

But I still hold my query, if you have examples of such developments I mentioned I'd be glad to hear them. Tim Utikal (talk) 16:11, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

Dutch aanbod

Currently said to be uncountable, but I think that's wrong: cf. "een aanbod doen". It's just that it has a suppletive plural: aanbiedingen. Thoughts? @Lambiam, Thadh, Mnemosientje, Lingo Bingo Dingo PUC – 20:07, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

I would just say that it has no plural. Aanbiedingen is better analysed as the wholly regular and predictable plural of aanbieding. It certainly is uncountable in the sense of economic supply (contrasted with demand, vraag). ←₰-→ Lingo ^Bingo _Dingo (talk) 21:09, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

@PUC, Lingo Bingo Dingo: I would personally instinctively say aanboden and it seems attestable. Thadh (talk) 21:12, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

Most hits will be for the past tense plural form of aanbieden in a subordinate clause (de woning die ze aanboden was onbewoonbaar), but its use as the plural of a noun can be unambiguously attested.^[8][9][10] A usage note might inform the user that this plural is rarely used today.  --Lambiam 07:39, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

@Lambiam: Sorry, the link was broken, but "meerdere aanboden" in Google gives the noun almost every time. Thadh (talk) 08:48, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

pernīčė typo?

Looking at descriptions of other Samogitian words for days of the week, I'm fairly certain it's supposed to be petnīčė, from Russian пятница (pjatnica). Even the Samogitian Wikipedia article is titled Petnīčė, but then in the same article uses pernīčė. But I don't really know for sure. Both per- and pet- come up with quite a few hits on Google. Insaneguy1083 (talk) 23:19, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

Update: https://zemaitiuzeme.lt/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/zz_2012_04.pdf#page=24 suggests that both of them are correct. I quote:

"Pernīčė - penktadienis
...
Petnīčė - penktadienis".

Will update references accordingly. Insaneguy1083 (talk) 12:10, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

on

I don't fully understand this adj. definition:

• (informal) Destined, normally in the context of a challenge being accepted; involved, doomed.

"Five bucks says the Cavs win tonight." ―"You're on!"

Mike just threw coffee onto Paul's lap. It's on now.

I'm not certain I even know what the second example means. Does "It's on now" mean that some kind of confrontation has started? Is this fundamentally the same as sense #2, e.g. "We had to ration our food because there was a war on", just with the referent of "it" implied and unstated, or is it something different? Are "destined", "involved" or "doomed" sensible ways to define "on" as used in either of the examples? It doesn't seem so to me, but before I dismantle this entry, please let me check whether I am missing something. Mihia (talk) 13:52, 24 April 2024 (UTC)

I think the words may be too sophsticated for sucha simple word, you might want to edit it to say something simpler, like "started" for example. I have hesrd it used in real-life contexts though, so it is a real term, and to me the quotations are sufficient to express the meaning. If in doubt, maybe find some social media content that may have examples of this or wait for someone better at wiktionary to reply. Hope my reply helped. Garethphua (talk) 13:58, 25 April 2024 (UTC)

So in what way is example 2 the same sense as example 1? (I understand what example 1 means, by the way, just not so clear on example 2). Yes, example 2 could mean "it's started now" (still not clear if this is usefully distinct from existing sense 2), but example 1 does not mean "You're started!" or anything much like it, as far as I can see. I'm beginning to think that this entry is after all probably just a muddle that can be rewritten. Mihia (talk) 19:53, 25 April 2024 (UTC)

German Tatbestand

We only have one definition there, currently given as:

• (law) the factual elements realizing the concept under which subsumption takes place

Could someone explain what the heck this is supposed to mean?

The list of English translations provided at de:Tatbestand#Übersetzungen is probably a good starting point: "factual findings, facts of the case, matter of fact, state of affairs". ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 17:24, 24 April 2024 (UTC)

@Eirikr: The issue with all of them is that you cannot translate gesetzlicher Tatbestand, just for example. (Legal factual findings? Legal state of affairs? Yikes.) So they are bogus for a general translation, though contextually applicable. It means conditions envisioned by law. What do you think do we do in law school all the time and from the first day? Subsumption; Tatbestand → legal consequence. The first part I have not found a translation for yet. Them Anglo-Saxon jurists talk around all the time, or use more specific terms. As Straftatbestand becoming “criminal offence”, when this is indistinguishable from Straftat (“criminal offence”). Fay Freak (talk) 17:42, 24 April 2024 (UTC)

DWDS says: "die im Gesetz festgelegten Merkmale einer Handlung" (the legally specified characteristics of an action). Oxford Dictionary: "gesetzlich festgelegte Merkmale für eine bestimmte Handlung oder für einen bestimmten Sachverhalt" (legally specified characteristics for a certain action or a certain circumstance). One usually says "etwas erfüllt den Tatbestand des XY" (something fulfils the Tatbestand of XY), which, as far as I know, means that some real-life event fulfils the criteria for being defined by some legal term or concept. Especially, that some action fulfils the criteria for being defined as a certain crime. Maybe this helps. 2.207.102.51 17:59, 24 April 2024 (UTC)

Though it’s not the whole truth that it must be statutory. Take a kaufmännisches Bestätigungsschreiben. Or basic contract law: “Dann aber, so macht die Revision geltend, fehle es am Tatbestand einer Willenserklärung.” A uni sheet reformulates the decision: “Bei fehlendem Erklärungsbewusstsein liegt eine Willenserklärung dann vor, wenn der Empfänger die Erklärung als Willenserklärung aufgefasst hat, er sie auch so verstehen durfte und der Erklärende diesen Tatbestand bei Anwendung der im Verkehr erforderlichen Sorgfalt hätte vermeiden können.” Some assessment that can be avoided to be the case. It can be anything we mentalize to be a legally relevant concept, and morally relevant concept for everyday use.

I have difficulties to own that there are in fact two definitions, which most dictionaries claim for simplicity, such as in the example in Luxembourg: “den Tatbestand richteg analyséieren”. We would never say this (den Tatbestand richtig analysieren), this is overly confusable (since we analyze the law as well as opposed to reading and understanding the description of the facts) and in my view beyond the boundaries of the even peripheral meaning of the word; instead one uses Sachverhalt when actually meaning the facts (as they have been described). Fay Freak (talk) 18:21, 24 April 2024 (UTC)

Agree, this is gobbledygook to me, compounded by the fact that our entry for subsumption doesn't explain what a subsumption is and our entry for subsume sheds no light either. —Caoimhin ceallach (talk) 11:54, 26 April 2024 (UTC)

Cleaning up Hamar inflection table templates

The inflection table templates I made for Hamar are currently a gigantic mess and I'd like to have clean templates for declensions 1-6 before I start working on adding entries again. I'm not very good with Lua or with templates, so if anyone could help that would be nice. -saph 🍏 13:35, 25 April 2024 (UTC)

Pronunciation of Longyearbyen

Just came across the unfinished bokmål entry for Longyearbyen, saw the pronunciation was "missing" and it looked abit off, would someone help fix that, thanks! Garethphua (talk) 13:55, 25 April 2024 (UTC)

 Done. Put into an IPA template and removed request for pronunciation. -saph 🍏 17:09, 25 April 2024 (UTC)

Hey what, no, its wrong pronunciation. I know people from up there and they call it kinda like in the Nynorsk entry. It's more like 'Long-year-been'. But i guess that in 'standard' Bokmål its more like 'Long-ear-bew-uhn'. Tollef Salemann (talk) 15:54, 26 April 2024 (UTC)

Im sure that some people are saying it like "Långirbyn" but i have no evidence of it, so the pronunciation is probably similar to Nynorsk (Långjerbyn). All of people i've asked now, they say it with /je/ (people of different dialects). So i guess, the /je/ pronunciation is more common (at least in my circles). Tollef Salemann (talk) 18:12, 26 April 2024 (UTC)

ischiocerite

I suspect it is the same as one of the flagellomeres. My pet lobster agrees with me. P. Sovjunk (talk) 21:18, 26 April 2024 (UTC)

ex-spouse/ex-husband/ex-wife

I see these as "A former spouse (from a previous marriage after a divorce)". The more standard writing of the definition is merely "A former spouse". Is my gloss "(from a previous marriage after a divorce)" more a usage note thing? Is it somewhat right? Please correct as needed. --Geographyinitiative (talk) 12:01, 27 April 2024 (UTC)

One wouldn’t refer to a widowers’s deceased wife as his “ex-wife”, also not if he later remarries.  --Lambiam 18:47, 27 April 2024 (UTC)

I believe that's exactly what I'm trying to say. It seems so simple, but several places say "ex-spouse" means "former spouse" (of any kind). clearly not true though (as far as I can see?). --Geographyinitiative (talk) 19:05, 27 April 2024 (UTC)

ethos and pathos

We list this definition at ethos:

(art) The traits in a work of art which express the ideal or typic character, as influenced by the ethos (character or fundamental values) of a people, rather than emotional situations or individual character traits in a narrow sense; opposed to pathos.

I cannot find an opposing definition at pathos, distinguished with an (art) label and mentioning "individual character traits". I believe we are missing a sense. Multiple Mooses (talk) 15:02, 27 April 2024 (UTC)

Indeed we are. CitationsFreak (talk) 03:28, 28 April 2024 (UTC)

The arts definition at ethos does not seem likely to be intelligible to someone who didn't already know what it meant. It may show that the definition writer(s) knows the meaning, but not that they can make others understand what ethos refers to. DCDuring (talk) 16:05, 28 April 2024 (UTC)

rayon

Crimean Tatar

The forms “rayondır”, “rayonındaki”, and “rayonlar” occur in the Vikipediya (Crimean Tatar Wikipedia) article for Canköy rayonı (Dzhankoi Raion), none of which occur in the declension table. Whilst “rayondır” and “rayonındaki” may feature possessive suffixes, “rayonlar” is a clear nominative plural, yet the table lacks plural forms for this obviously countable noun. 0DF (talk) 05:14, 28 April 2024 (UTC)

Fishing tool

Is anybody familiar with fishing tool names for leister fishing? It is now prohibited in many places, so maybe there are not many people who are doing it now. I have created entries on Norwegian lysterkorg and Russian коза (also attested as боранъ (?) and кобра) for a fire basket used to attract fish with its light at night. I also have seen many of those and even forged one myself. But i never can believe that this tool is only known in Norway, Sweden, Russia and Finland. I could make an English only-etymology entry, but maybe someone knows an English name for this tool? — This unsigned comment was added by Tollef Salemann (talk • contribs) at 15:03, 28 April 2024 (UTC).

I tried to find the German name but I think nobody ever used the tool in the last generations. Both leisters and directing light onto the water are claimed to be forbidden, so yes, it is not known in Germany at least, though I don’t find the provisions in the fishing laws. Now tell us how you call a مِخْرَاق (miḵrāq) or Plumpsack – according to historical German-English dictionaries there is no English name for it either. Fay Freak (talk) 00:31, 29 April 2024 (UTC)

As best I can tell, such baskets are called "fire basket(s)" in English, see Citations:fire basket; some books also call them "cresset(s)"; both terms also refer to other baskets of fire, but it seems reasonable to add a sense to fire basket for this and host translations there (defining them in some clarificatory way like "fire basket used in night-fishing"). The single book I can find using "leister basket" is Norwegian and probably calquing. The last book I found and put on that cites page mentions that such baskets were also used by the Japanese and Koreans and Mediterranean fisherman in the 7th century, so we should expect terms or descriptive phrases for them to exist in those languages. None of these terms, except perhaps the Norwegian one that has lyster in the name, seem to definitionally require that specifically and exclusively a leister and not some other fishing tool be used to catch the fish the fire attracts, BTW; various books mention nets as another possible catching tool. In German, descriptions of the practice like in this old Oesterr.-ungar. Fischerei-Zeitung, page 109, use Feuerkorb, which (like the English and Russian terms) is just a descriptive term and can also denote other Körbe with Feuer in them. - -sche (discuss) 19:52, 29 April 2024 (UTC)

quá độ

In the etymology section of this word, there is a claim that this word is homophonous with cognates in other languages. I highly doubt this claim, as I speak Mandarin. The Mandarin pronunciation of this word has slight differences from the Vietnamese pronunciation.

I deleted the claim a while ago, then it got inserted back. I deleted it again, without realizing that I had deleted the claim earlier. I then reverted my deletion the day after. Sinotransition (talk) 06:44, 29 April 2024 (UTC)

@PhanAnh123 As an uninvolved person and an expert on the Vietnamese language I think you're qualified to deal with this. We should delete this claim, shouldn't we? Sinotransition (talk) 15:49, 29 April 2024 (UTC)

I don't think I'm fit to be called an expert in anything, since I'm not a trained linguist but merely someone who likes reading linguistic papers and learning about languages as a hobby. I think the original claim of homophony is due to the fact that Vietnamese quá độ belongs to the same stratum as the cognates in Sinitic and Korean listed, so the tones do belong to the same tone categories and registers and the other phonemes exhibit regular correspondences, while qua đò, while consists of cognate elements, does not show such precise sound correspondences (as they are derived from different stratum). Does this mean that if you have a Vietnamese speaker and a speaker of Standard Mandarin say the word quá độ and 過渡／过渡 (guòdù) respectively and put it into Praat, the result that come out would look exactly the same? I assume certainly not, so the claim that they're "homophonous" doesn't hold water (at least in certain sense(s)), but it's also not some complete baseless nonsense. PhanAnh123 (talk) 16:24, 29 April 2024 (UTC)

Journal about Samogitian, but written in Lithuanian

So it took me after making way too many Samogitian entries (e.g. ciels) to realize that this whole time, the entries had been classed under the category "Lithuanian terms with quotations", because I used "{{cite-journal|lt|..." rather than "{{cite-journal|sgs|..." for the references section. Problem is, the journal is largely written in Lithuanian, and the translations are from Samogitian to Lithuanian rather than to English. So if I put "{{cite-journal|sgs|...", it would render:

• “Žemaičių Žodynas”, in Žemaičių žemė (in Samogitian), 2012

, which for the most part (w.r.t. the entire journal) is not accurate. So should I still do it anyway? And if not, how do I make it so the words will categorize into "Samogitian terms with quotations"? Insaneguy1083 (talk) 18:02, 29 April 2024 (UTC)

I believe termlang=sgs, described at Template:quote-journal (to which the documentation at Template:cite-journal points people), will do the trick. - -sche (discuss) 19:56, 29 April 2024 (UTC)

Thanks. That works in terms of categorization, but it seems like there's a bug with termlang, where it for some reason displays two of the same language, as follows:

• “Žemaičių Žodynas”, in Žemaičių žemė (in Lithuanian) (in Lithuanian), 2012

Instead, I have resorted to using {{cite-journal|sgs... and then worklang=lt, which displays properly:

• “Žemaičių Žodynas”, in Žemaičių žemė (in Samogitian) (overall work in Lithuanian), 2012

Insaneguy1083 (talk) 21:32, 29 April 2024 (UTC)

Wrong Middle Chinese final data in many characters

(Notifying Atitarev, Benwing2, Fish bowl, Frigoris, Justinrleung, kc_kennylau, Mar vin kaiser, Michael Ly, ND381, RcAlex36, The dog2, Theknightwho, Tooironic, Wpi, 沈澄心, 恨国党非蠢即坏): A lot of characters seem to have the wrong final inputted in its Module:zh/data/ltc-pron page, seemingly shifted up one in index per the way they are listed on Appendix:Middle Chinese#Finals. Examples are 石 (should be 昔 instead of 清), 鹿 (should be 屋 instead of 東). It actually seems like most data pages created on 15 June 2016‎ by User:Wyangbot have this issue, but not all of them, such as 倭, which is correct. Strangely, on the actual page for character, the final has the correct numerical index in accordance with Appendix:Middle Chinese#Finals, just that the character used for the final is wrong. (e.g. 石 lists its final as "清 (123)" - it having the 123rd final, i.e. 昔開, is correct, but 清 is the wrong final.) LittleWhole (talk | contribs) 03:44, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

Fixed. 沈澄心✉ 05:57, 30 April 2024 (UTC)