Wiktionary talk:Votes/2023-11/Ordering of etymologies within an entry

Clarification

The vote concerns the ordering of etymology sections within an entry, for cases where homographs may have different etymologies. Ordering of POS sub-sections within an etymology section is out of scope for this vote.

Thanks,

Chernorizets (talk) 01:43, 20 November 2023 (UTC)

The Beer Parlour discussion seems to be mostly about foreign languages, but it does mention English. I just want to be clear ... will this proposal cover situations where an English word has multiple definitions, and we have a choice of ordering them by attestation date (as do some traditional dictionaries) or by frequency of use (as, I assume, some other dictionaries do)? Some relevant examples: brake, rape, and Im sorry I cant remember any others but I've seen them and I know at least one more page was ordered etymologically until fairly recently. —Soap— 07:33, 20 November 2023 (UTC)

@Soap interesting examples. The proposal recommends ordering by commonness, rather than earliest attested date, which implies that the top etymology for e.g. brake would ideally not be the fern one, but rather the car brake one. As it's a recommendation, it's not meant to be enforced, and editor consensus within a language - if spelled out somewhere (maybe the About English page?) - can take precedence. I don't have hard data to prove it, but I'd imagine that someone looking for "brake" would - most of the time - care about more familiar meanings, so it would be beneficial for those to be at the top. Ease-of-use for the common case is an underlying theme of the proposal. Chernorizets (talk) 10:32, 20 November 2023 (UTC)

Another example of an entry that was chronological until recently is poop, changed in Aug 2019 by Leasnam. —Soap— 10:48, 20 November 2023 (UTC)

Chronological ordering may be a carry-over from paper dictionaries, where the eye can more easily focus anywhere on the page, and might naturally tend to be attracted to the longest section or the one with a familiar picture. I don't think it makes much sense here, but the fact that we had the brake entry in chronological order as late as Jun 2022 indicates the chronological order has its supporters, and I can't speak for them. —Soap— 10:40, 20 November 2023 (UTC)

@Soap it would be nice to hear from editors with different ideas about etymology ordering. I think there is precedent for most-common-first, for example in the way we choose to order word senses within the same POS section, and POS sections within the same etymology section. Personally, I believe in the power of patterns that prime users' expectations and save them time when using the dictionary, so I see etymology ordering as just another instance of the pattern I've observed. Chernorizets (talk) 10:46, 20 November 2023 (UTC)

I thought we had a policy on the order of definitions and the order of POS headers, but looking it up I can't find it. I agree that most-common-first should be our guideline and we should aim to be consistent about it at all levels of an entry. —Caoimhin ceallach (talk) 17:30, 20 November 2023 (UTC)

I'm not sure the order at brake not being changed until recently necessarily indicates much, to be fair. I generally favour most-common-first but I wouldn't normally bother swapping them around especially when (aside from this vote) there's no existing policy either way. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 19:51, 20 November 2023 (UTC)

Text should use em dash, not hyphen

i.e. "we recommend that — whenever possible —" Equinox ◑ 21:13, 12 December 2023 (UTC)