Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2014 June 29

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June 29

An old technology for animal control

After reading turnstile, I thought about the cattle guard of the American West, and then the stairs that go over the old pasture walls in Ireland. These stairs serve to fence in the cattle, but let humans transcend the walls. What is the name for this device, please. It's on the tip of my tongue, but ... --Ancheta Wis   (talk | contribs) 00:07, 29 June 2014 (UTC)

Well, do you mean Stile? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 00:34, 29 June 2014 (UTC)

Yes! Thank you. Now you see how my mind works. It constricts, syllable by syllable. Not a pretty picture, eh? There Was a Crooked Man has the word, but ... --Ancheta Wis   (talk | contribs) 00:44, 29 June 2014 (UTC)

I have added an image of the type of "step stile" that you described to our article, but it's in England instead of Ireland. Alansplodge (talk) 22:17, 2 July 2014 (UTC)

Typo gunman vs. gunmen in Annalena Tonelli

The article says she was killed ... by a gunmen. Shouldn't it read by a gunman because it was only one man who shot her ? Or should it read killed by gunmen because there was more than one murderer ? I didn't correct this because I'm not a native English speaker. -- Juergen 80.132.132.153 (talk) 17:25, 29 June 2014 (UTC)

According to L'Osservatore Romano, there were two gunmen. I've made the appropriate corrections to the article - thanks for spotting the error! Tevildo (talk) 19:45, 29 June 2014 (UTC)

Perhaps it should say "...killed by one of the two gunmen". StuRat (talk) 02:21, 1 July 2014 (UTC)

Etymology of ‘Wolfenstein’

I would like to know the etymology of this surname, please. I can’t find information on it on the Internet. --66.190.99.112 (talk) 20:18, 29 June 2014 (UTC)

I don't think there anything for the particular combination, but there is no reason to think the two roots are anything other than German wolf meaning 'wolf' and German stein meaning 'stone'. wolf is from Germanic *wulfaz ultimately Indo-European *wulxwaz. stein is from Germanic *stainaz, related to IE *stāi- meaning 'to thicken'. Source: Vladimir Orel, Handbook of Germanic Etymology (Brill, 2003). ---Atethnekos (Discussion, Contributions) 21:23, 29 June 2014 (UTC)

Can you explain the ‐en‐? --66.190.99.112 (talk) 22:11, 29 June 2014 (UTC)

It's a linking morpheme (German: Fugenelement), ofte found between the two elements of a compound in German. They normally derive from some historical form of a genitive case ending, although the noun Wolf as such doesn't have a genitive in -en today. Fut.Perf. ☼ 22:31, 29 June 2014 (UTC)

That usage, of two words joined by "en" to make a German surname, is also discussed in Liechtenstein Castle and Frankenstein Castle, and probably others. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 23:21, 29 June 2014 (UTC)

Ja, das ist die Liechtensteiner Castle, mein Schatz. Deor (talk) 00:42, 30 June 2014 (UTC)

For the etymology of a surname you have to consider the time when the surname emerged. At that time "Wolf" (meaning wolf as an animal or Wolf as a man's name) and "Stein" (here meaning rock, castle) had already merged into one word, the "en" denoting a particular genitive of "Wolf" (here the name Wolf, genitive Wolfen, is meant, not the animal Wolf, genitive Wolfs). Hence the surname is derived from a place name like Wolfenstein or (modernized) Wolfstein and its meaning is exactly "man of Wolfenstein" (within the range of German Christian surnames emerging around, say, 1500). Within the range of German Jewish surnames emerging two or three centuries later the etymology of the name would need a separate consideration. --Pp.paul.4 (talk) 12:39, 30 June 2014 (UTC)

For what it' worth, Castle Wolfenstein in 1981 was a notable early shoot 'em up video game. The protagonist shoots up a castle full of armed Nazis. Maybe in the game it was inspired by the "Frankenstein" series of horror movies. See also new "Frankenstein's Army" motion picture may be based in part on Wolfenstein video game. Edison (talk) 02:58, 2 July 2014 (UTC)

Rastrum or rastral?

Listening to Says You! tonight on the way to work, I heard a question about the word "rastral". Now that I'm at work, I looked it up just to read up on it a little. I can't find any formal definition of "rastral" (dictionary.com hasn't heard of it, Google suggests -um, etc.) but have found, obviously, our article rastrum. So, is the -al form of the word correct usage in English? I see that German uses the -al form. So, I'm just curious if they were wrong or just using some very little known English spelling. Anyone know? Dismas|^(talk) 23:28, 29 June 2014 (UTC)

It doesn't appear in the venerable OED. — SMUconlaw (talk) 00:10, 30 June 2014 (UTC)

Rastrum was added to the OED Online in 2008, but rastral isn't in there other either. OneLook does not find rastral in any "real" dictionaries but does find it in Wordnik, here, which says it's a synonym for rastrum. This page from a web-based forum shows rastral being used as an adjective; apparently in certain software the "rastral number" relates to the spacing of lines on a musical staff. --70.49.171.225 (talk) 07:39, 30 June 2014 (UTC)

"Rastral" is used in some zoological contexts (here, for example), to describe structures of insect larvae. I also found one reference to "rastral electron microscopy" here, but that's presumably an incomplete translation from the Russian, "scanning" being the more usual word. Tevildo (talk) 08:11, 30 June 2014 (UTC)

It seems that most occurrences of the "-al" word in the Web are adjectives and refer to staff lines rather than the tool used to draw them (the tool itself has obviously been obsolete for a few generations, but staff lines themselves are ubiquitous among musicians.) As to "rastral electron microscopy", that's essentially a calque, a better option would have been "raster scan electron microscopy" (though the standard English term is indeed "scanning".) --Itinerant1 (talk) 10:19, 30 June 2014 (UTC)

Thank you all! Dismas|^(talk) 08:49, 1 July 2014 (UTC)