Unless I'm mistaken, this is another manifestation of the same repeatedy-blocked IP user who's contributed a ton of bad edits centered on the themes of Japanese language, magic and mythology. I notice that many of their edits are still unpatrolled, since they tend toward esoteric subjects and the editors who know Japanese seem to be busy elsewhere, so I would propose that those who know something about the subjects in question take a closer look at these edits. If this is who I think it is, and they're doing the same bad edits, action should be taken to prevent a lot of work later on. [[User:Chuck Entz|Chuck Entz]] ([[User talk:Chuck Entz|talk]]) 16:23, 14 October 2012 (UTC)
Unless I'm mistaken, this is another manifestation of the same repeatedy-blocked IP user who's contributed a ton of bad edits centered on the themes of Japanese language, magic and mythology. I notice that many of their edits are still unpatrolled, since they tend toward esoteric subjects and the editors who know Japanese seem to be busy elsewhere, so I would propose that those who know something about the subjects in question take a closer look at these edits. If this is who I think it is, and they're doing the same bad edits, action should be taken to prevent a lot of work later on. [[User:Chuck Entz|Chuck Entz]] ([[User talk:Chuck Entz|talk]]) 16:23, 14 October 2012 (UTC)
== <s>[[last sixteen]]</s> ==
Moved from RFV:
----
In order to give our users accurate information, we need to know which sports use this nomenclature. The existing context ''sport'' is inaccurate AFAICT. It applies outside sports, eg, chess, and doesn't apply to all sports, eg, US football or basketball. [[User: DCDuring |DCDuring]] <small >[[User talk: DCDuring|TALK]]</small > 08:23, 12 August 2012 (UTC)
:For the sake of accuracy, you're not disputing existence are you? This sort of thing should be dealt with on [[WT:RFC]] or [[Talk:last sixteen]]. [[User:Mglovesfun|Mglovesfun]] ([[User talk:Mglovesfun|talk]]) 10:50, 12 August 2012 (UTC)
::It's a matter of meaning, which warrants more effort at attestation than goes into RfC. Obviously RfD didn't lead to improving the quality of the entry. As with any term that is not covered in other dictionaries, we need to attest to its meaning. These are the entries that differentiate and justify Wiktionary relative to its competitors. They should be among our best. [[User: DCDuring |DCDuring]] <small >[[User talk: DCDuring|TALK]]</small > 15:55, 12 August 2012 (UTC)
:::I would have thought that a list of all sports which use the term is becoming encyclopaedic. On the matter of the {{lb|und|sports}} context template, that could be replaced with {{competition}}, but that's a redlink. Not also that [[last eight]] and [[last four]] both use the same template. '''[[User:Spinningspark|<font style="background:#fafad2;color:#C08000">Spinning</font>]][[User talk:Spinningspark|<font style="color:#4840a0">Spark'''</font>]]''' 16:34, 13 August 2012 (UTC)
:::::@DCDuring yes it is an RFC issue per your own comment. No rule against adding citations to a term listed at RFC. This looks to me like a backdoor way to get it deleted, by hoping nobody bothers to add citations for 30 days then this can get illegitimately deleted. [[User:Mglovesfun|Mglovesfun]] ([[User talk:Mglovesfun|talk]]) 18:10, 13 August 2012 (UTC)
----
Per the preceding discussion, I have moved said discussion here from WT:RFV. [[User:-sche|- -sche]] [[User talk:-sche|(discuss)]] 00:32, 15 October 2012 (UTC)
* '''Fixed''' --[[User:WF on Holiday|WF on Holiday]] ([[User talk:WF on Holiday|talk]]) 19:01, 19 September 2017 (UTC)
== <s>[[:bork]]</s> ==
== <s>[[:bork]]</s> ==
Line 637:
Line 621:
:::If there are minor secondary senses, they can still be added by someone who knows the language. Better to have accurate but incomplete information than inaccurate or misleading information. —[[User:Angr|'''An''']][[User talk:Angr|''gr'']] 23:15, 4 November 2012 (UTC)
:::If there are minor secondary senses, they can still be added by someone who knows the language. Better to have accurate but incomplete information than inaccurate or misleading information. —[[User:Angr|'''An''']][[User talk:Angr|''gr'']] 23:15, 4 November 2012 (UTC)
:::: Wikipedia could be a good starting source. --[[User:Wikitiki89|Wiki]][[User talk:Wikitiki89|Tiki]][[Special:Contributions/Wikitiki89|89]] 07:52, 5 November 2012 (UTC)
:::: Wikipedia could be a good starting source. --[[User:Wikitiki89|Wiki]][[User talk:Wikitiki89|Tiki]][[Special:Contributions/Wikitiki89|89]] 07:52, 5 November 2012 (UTC)
== <s>[[art]]</s> ==
The following is from [[WT:RFV#art]]:
<blockquote>The current configuration of main definitions, on which the translation tables are built, has been there since 2005. But I find the definitions variously hard to understand, tendentious, or duplicative, especially in the absence of usage examples of citations. I'm also not sure about completeness. This would be a candidate for some kind of advanced cleanup. [[User: DCDuring |DCDuring]] <small >[[User talk: DCDuring|TALK]]</small > 14:33, 8 November 2012 (UTC)</blockquote>
Yes we do surprisingly badly on very common English words, probably for this reason, definition written back in 2005 or even before in some cases, and never reviewed, as we seem to focus too much in my opinion on adding new words, not improving the one's we have. We have ten definitions, some long wrong, silly or meaningless like "Activity intended to make something special". #2 looks good to me (might need a very slight reword) but I'd favor removing everything else and starting from scratch. It would cause chaos with the translations, and the rfv-sense should remain until (or if) it fails. Would do it myself were it not for the translations. [[User:Mglovesfun|Mglovesfun]] ([[User talk:Mglovesfun|talk]]) 12:12, 9 November 2012 (UTC)
* The appearance is fine now - lots of TTBC's, but that's not a Cleanup issue. --[[User:WF on Holiday|WF on Holiday]] ([[User talk:WF on Holiday|talk]]) 07:23, 19 August 2017 (UTC)
== <s>[[:Template:audio]]</s> ==
This template has a somewhat amateurish appearance, at least in FF with Monobook with my browser-option large text size. There is a line on the bottom of what appears and the menu button runs onto the white space. [[User: DCDuring |DCDuring]] <small >[[User talk: DCDuring|TALK]]</small > 15:12, 9 November 2012 (UTC)
The template doesn't work on [[anacrusi]]. It doesn't work on the documentation when displayed at [[Template:Audio]], but works on [[Template:audio/doc]]. [[User:Hyacinth|Hyacinth]] ([[User talk:Hyacinth|talk]]) 09:18, 18 November 2012 (UTC)
:Reviving this dinosaur. Could this template also add to categories [[:Category:Terms with audio links by language]]. That would mean that all audiolinks for each language would have language specified - a big cleanup task. --[[User:Atitarev|Anatoli]] <sup>([[User talk:Atitarev|обсудить]]</sup>/<sup>[[Special:Contributions/Atitarev|вклад]])</sup> 09:36, 25 April 2013 (UTC)
* ''Ápparnetly '''fixed''' --[[User:WF on Holiday|WF on Holiday]] ([[User talk:WF on Holiday|talk]]) 16:36, 15 September 2017 (UTC)
== <s>[[Mayberry Machiavelli]]</s> ==
Tagged, not listed. [[User:Equinox|Equinox]] [[User_talk:Equinox|◑]] 23:27, 10 November 2012 (UTC)
* '''Trimmed ety linked to WP'''--[[User:WF on Holiday|WF on Holiday]] ([[User talk:WF on Holiday|talk]]) 16:35, 15 September 2017 (UTC)
== <s>[[dogmeat]] and [[dog meat]]</s> ==
Ideally, one entry should cover both definitions and also include all the translations already in both entries. One should also be a soft redirect of the other. I would do it myself but I'm a bit preoccupied at the moment - can anyone help? [[User:Tooironic|---> Tooironic]] ([[User talk:Tooironic|talk]]) 06:26, 19 November 2012 (UTC)
* {{temp|alt-form}} is the key. --[[User:WF on Holiday|WF on Holiday]] ([[User talk:WF on Holiday|talk]]) 07:20, 19 August 2017 (UTC)
This is a manually created and maintained list of pages that require cleanup.
Adding a request: To add a request, place the template {{rfc}} to the messy entry, and then make a new nomination here. Include an explanation of your reasons for nominating the page for cleanup, but please put any extensive discussion in the discussion page of the article itself.
Closing a request: A conversation should remain here at least for one week after the {{rfc}} tag is removed, then moved to that page’s talk page from here. When the entry has been cleaned, please strike the word here, and put any discussion on the talk page of the cleaned entry.
Pages tagged with the template {{rfc}} are automatically placed in Category:Requests for cleanup. They are automatically removed from the category when the template is removed, or, if the template has not been used, when Category:Requests for cleanup has been removed from the page.
If an entry needs attention from experienced editors in a specific language, consider using {{attention}} instead of {{rfc}}.
Latest comment: 7 years ago6 comments5 people in discussion
Get rid of the cause subdivision. Can’t we remove the webster tag by now? Split up derived terms and translation sections. H. (talk) 10:04, 13 June 2010 (UTC)Reply
All Webster tags should be considered tantamount to rfc tags, IMHO. When I am ambitious, I tackle one. (I tried at accident. Does the new version seem better?) It is quite time-consuming. The wording is usually stilted and using words and wording likely to communicate effectively to few users. Modernizing the formatting only or removing {{Webster}} only serves to make such problematic entries harder to find and correct and perpetuates the illusion that we have a satisfactory monolingual dictionary.
If I were translating, I would avoid such entries as a matter of course and add them to this list if they are important to you. Correcting them may take time. I would be happy to make any entries that appear here as having {{Webster}} a matter of priority for my efforts. DCDuringTALK15:05, 13 June 2010 (UTC)Reply
Yes, all webster entries need modernising. Exactly the reason why I don't want a great batch of similar entries generated from the old medical dictionaries (see Grease Pit). SemperBlotto15:10, 13 June 2010 (UTC)Reply
And some of the Webster tags have been removed prematurely. The medical dictionary entries would probably languish unless we recruit and train (!) some medical types. Perhaps other templates and a process for updating would give us some hope of eventually getting such entries right. DCDuringTALK16:42, 13 June 2010 (UTC)Reply
If anyone is simply dumping definitions from the medical dictionaries, I'll be happy to join in the collective administration of a cluestick. So far, with just us regulars working through the list, I haven't seen any evidence of that. -- Visviva17:54, 15 June 2010 (UTC)Reply
Cleaned up, I reckon. I updated the definitions, added some quotes from Wikisource, checked a translation. Yes, there are some TTBCs remaining, but the essence of the page looks good enough to me. And good enough is good enough, as a wise person once said. --P5Nd2 (talk) 10:52, 10 October 2017 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 7 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion
There's some weird history for this entry. I don't know exactly what's going on. But the translation tables don't match the senses, at least not for the adverb.—msh210℠ (talk) 16:47, 14 July 2010 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 7 years ago9 comments7 people in discussion
rfc-sense: "That part of an object furthest away in the opposite direction from that in which an unsupported object would fall. " tagged by someone, seemingly two different users, with the following invisible comment: <!-- This is gibberish. What does it mean? Answer: this definiton works for any celstial body, be it the earth, moon or mars, etc. because of the direction of gravity! Excellent definition.-->. Mglovesfun (talk) 16:32, 31 October 2010 (UTC)Reply
Right, I tagged this years ago with <!-- This is gibberish. What does it mean?--> It is still gibberish to me. If I stand a pencil on one end and watch it fall, the opposite direction from the way it falls is not the top. In orbit around a celestial body, a water bottle has a top and a bottom in spite of the fact that there is no gravity to cause it to fall in any direction. —Stephen (Talk) 04:55, 1 November 2010 (UTC)Reply
On earth, if you lay a cereal box on its side, you can talk about "the side of which is currently its top", as well as of "the top of the box, which is now on the side facing you". These are two senses of top: one, the side currently facing away from the pull of gravity, and the other, the side which is usually facing away from the pull of gravity (or some better definition than that, most likely). The first corresponds to our tagged sense.—msh210℠ (talk) 16:40, 1 November 2010 (UTC)Reply
Perhaps it does, but wording could be better. In fact I've read this about ten times, I still don't get it. "Furthest away in the opposite direction" looks bad to me. Mglovesfun (talk) 16:56, 1 November 2010 (UTC)Reply
I agree that it's worded opaquely; I was commenting only on SGB's implication that the definition is wrong. As to the opacity, perhaps "That part or end of an object which is farthest from the source of gravity"? (But physicists will cringe.) By the way, we're missing the other sense I used in my cereal-box example: the usually-farthest-from-the-'source'-of-gravity sense. And I think our currently second sense (The part viewed, or intended to be viewed, nearest the edge of the visual field normally occupied by the uppermost visible objects: Headings appear at the tops of pages; Further weather information can be found at the top of your television screen) is nonexistent, or redundant to our first.—msh210℠ (talk) 17:29, 1 November 2010 (UTC)Reply
Let's not forget that the top of a box is still the top if you turn it upside down. Certain things just naturally have a top side, which is the easiest-to-open side, the side where the writing is the right side up, etc. —CodeCat00:03, 14 November 2010 (UTC)Reply
You're right that there are two senses of top, it's got nothing to do with gravity though. Whoever wrote this just meant "uppermost" or "highest". Ƿidsiþ10:40, 24 November 2010 (UTC)Reply
I have cleaned up the defs a bit - making two defs to cover the senses discussed above, adding citation and ux. If someone agrees, we can remove the rfc.-Sonofcawdrey (talk) 01:35, 30 September 2017 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 13 years ago3 comments2 people in discussion
On both pages a number of definitions are given that are actually all synonyms of one another. Cathode comes from κατα and ὄδος: the path down and anode from ἀνα and ὁδος the path up. This refers to the conductive path that leads electrons down into or up out of the electrolyte (or vacuum). The 'definitions' are simply different examples of these processes.
Jcwf02:29, 4 January 2011 (UTC)Reply
I have done some work on these articles. Apologies for not coming here first, I started on anode and only noticed the cleanup notice at cathode when nearly complete. I have merged defs 2 and 3 ("the positive terminal... etc) which I agree are both aspects of the same concept. In fact, these definitions were incorrect as stated: anode and cathode are not defined in terms of negative and positive poles but in terms of direction of current flow. Def 1 (oxidation/reduction electrode) I have left as is; although this might be scientifically demonstrable to be equivalent to (the new) def 2 it is not linguistically equivalent and remains an alternative meaning. At the risk of causing further confusion, I have added a new definition at def 3, this is often said to be incorrect usage, but is widely used with respect to semiconductor devices and definitely amounts to a different definition. The definition (def 4) at cathode concerning vacuum tubes could conceivably be merged with def 2 but that would make it an even more clunky definition than it already is so I have left it as it is and created a corresponding entry at anode. A further difficulty with trying to merge the vacuum tube usage in with the electrochemical cell usage is that vacuum tubes often have more than two electrodes, which can all be carrying a current, not all of which are referred to as anodes and cathodes. SpinningSpark14:17, 26 February 2011 (UTC)Reply
No idea where a competent user would put this comment, but as someone who understand electronics to a reasonable degree and valves to a better degree than most who're under 60 years of age, I should point out that under valve technology the ideal (which was very nearly acheived in most instances) would have been for no valve electrodes to carry current *except* the cathode and the anode. Valves worked by the attractive/repulsive effect of the /static/(stationary) charges on the grid(s) upon the transmission of electrons from cathode to anode. With correct biasing almost no electrons would impinge upon the grid and therefore /no/ current would flow. Remember the interior of a valve is a vaccuum except for the emitted electrons and that electrons will not be attracted to a positively charged grid. Where /my/ theory falls down is I don't understand how the electrons 'know' that the (relatively) charged grid is thusly charged. I assume that this is connected to the infinitesimal, as in ~1e-6A, 'leakage'(for want of better word) current.
The answer to where this comment should be put is nowhere on Wiktionary since it is an encyclopaedic comment and Wiktionary is not an encyclopaedia. By the way, you are in error about the grid being "positively charged" - the grid is biased negatively or to zero volts.
Latest comment: 13 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
RFC-sense for the "A malicious hacker who commits illegal acts" sense. See the entry's talk-page. Was previously tagged, everyone seemed to agree that the definition was problematic . . . and somehow it got de-tagged without any changes being made to the def. (It did get reshuffled etymologically, but actually that just added more problems, in that our entry now implies, on top of everything else, that malicious lawbreaking hackers are "villains" who have traditionally worn black Stetsons.) —RuakhTALK21:36, 27 January 2011 (UTC)Reply
I propose to split them up into three groups: those that contain proper names, like "Alaskan time", in one group, nouns, and the rest (adjectives etc.). To shorten the list, alternative forms should be moved to the main derived term and removed from the list. Sae1962 (talk) 12:37, 14 June 2012 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 13 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
And taughten. Connel MacKenzie "helpfully" changed the header to Middle English, for no apparent reason. Again, deleting/replacing the entire content seems the best option. Mglovesfun (talk) 00:10, 23 March 2011 (UTC)Reply
That might be an RfV question. There is usage of the collocation among linguists, but it is hard to say how consistent among uses and with our sense. DCDuringTALK17:39, 31 March 2011 (UTC)Reply
It seems it would need a context of something like "(in Russian grammar)". Much other usage doesn't seem to correspond to this sense, AFAICT, but I definitely could be wrong. DCDuringTALK18:25, 31 March 2011 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 13 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Tagged but not listed; all the appendices could do with a tabulated format. Even better would be to use {{sk-decl-noun}} to create individual declension templates for noun declension patterns. Mglovesfun (talk) 20:32, 17 April 2011 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 13 years ago4 comments2 people in discussion
Third definition is just plain wrong, but the other two definitions only cover verbs. Verbs and pronouns can have first/second/third person forms, perhaps in other languages, other parts of speech. A fear a lot of ttbcs after the reorganization is done, but it's better that than inaccurate, misleading definitions, right? Mglovesfun (talk) 15:19, 13 May 2011 (UTC)Reply
What’s wrong with the third definition? A third-person pronoun is he, she, it, they, one. The rest of what you wrote is unintelligible to me. —Stephen(Talk)17:04, 13 May 2011 (UTC)Reply
Yes they are third person pronouns, the entry says. They are are not third persons. It needs to be removed but when we do, there won't be any definition to cover pronouns as opposed to verbs. If you want to find citations for "she is a third person" as opposed to "third person pronoun", feel free. Mglovesfun (talk) 14:17, 14 May 2011 (UTC)Reply
To clarify, is wasn't a definition but rather a list; it would be like defining animal with "lion, tiger, turtle, frog, mouse" and then not even naming all of them, which is what the definition did. Mglovesfun (talk) 14:36, 14 May 2011 (UTC)Reply
I think the biggest problem with it was the etymology. It made no sense to say that the word comes from itself. Nuna means land, -vut means our. I am uncertain about the middle part, tuka, because my experience is with Yup'ik, which is a little different. Tuka might be related to tukangcar-, meaning to raise or rear a child. If you don’t know the etymology, it would be better to leave that section out than to say it comes from itself. —Stephen(Talk)19:27, 24 August 2011 (UTC)Reply
Hmmm... That doesn't sound quite like the plural of something unique, or even merely special. I was hoping for something along the lines of a young lady's exes being collectively referred to as her the ones. In any case, the sense is already at one, as of this edit. This is exactly where it should be, IMO. Recommend delete. — Pingkudimmi06:16, 4 June 2011 (UTC)Reply
I have RfVed the plural to see if there is any use of other than as fused head, unless I misunderstand the RfD and the definition. Is the definition just an attempt to put words to the fused-head use? DCDuringTALK10:58, 4 June 2011 (UTC)Reply
I thought so too - it seems like the writer recognises it's a stretch. On the other hand, some such construction might be expected to highlight that it is the two-word unit that is being pluralised. (It is after all an unusual plural.) I found a citation that uses just single quotes and lower case, which I've put in the entry. Even allowing that, I'm not very confident we'll reach quorum. — Pingkudimmi14:50, 4 June 2011 (UTC)Reply
Have you found any uses of "the one" in this sense used in any way other than as a predicate? I find it amusing too, that we don't have an entry for the One or One in religious or philosophical senses. DCDuringTALK15:05, 4 June 2011 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 13 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
A lot of stuff that ought to be under English initialism is under Translingual symbol, and so forth. It's all a big mish-mash. I noticed this because I was planning to add "(UK|politics|in election results) Conservative", and couldn't work out where. For extra brownie points, add that while you're cleaning up. Thanks! Equinox◑23:53, 8 June 2011 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 13 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Use of templates in the etymology, make the alternative into alternative forms, or move that information elsewhere. Also it has 'Slavic' in the descendants section, though it's not a language. Definition is also imperfect, and it uses {{ru-decl-noun}} although it isn't Russian. Mglovesfun (talk) 17:34, 27 July 2011 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 13 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Noun section has 4 encyclopedic-style definitions that look to me like instances of the verb form. IMO, they aren't even worth adding as senses to monitor#Verb, but others may disagree. DCDuringTALK11:30, 5 August 2011 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 13 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion
The second of the senses seems to be a bit encyclopedic, overly detailed and narrow, and, to the extent it is not, to duplicate the first sense. DCDuringTALK18:45, 5 August 2011 (UTC)Reply
See [[talk:text file]]. The distinction between the two senses is roughly that 2 is all files except binary files, so including HTML, CSS, Javascript, CSV, RTF, and many other files excluded by 1, which is just plain text meant to be read by humans and not machines. (This comment is meant to address your last concern, duplication, only.)—msh210℠ (talk) 19:04, 5 August 2011 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 13 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
If this is just a variant spelling, why are the definitions reproduced here? We should just be cross-referencing "vermilion". In fact, the definitions are already inconsistent with those at "vermilion".
Excited by desire in the pursuit of any object; ardent to pursue, perform, or obtain; keenly desirous; hotly longing; earnest; zealous; impetuous; vehement; as, the hounds were eager in the chase.
Latest comment: 13 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
This includes a somewhat encyclopedic definition and one or more definitions that seem to be of proper nouns. The term seems to be used in various ways including as a single mountain range, a group of mountain ranges, and a group of mountain ranges in a certain type of location relative to a continent. Sometimes the plural is used for the latter two, I think. (deprecated template usage)Cordillera may not exist except as a deixis or anaphora referring to a particular cordillera, which might account for the second sense. DCDuringTALK15:45, 23 August 2011 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 13 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
More messy not-quite-vandalism from enthusiastic-but-not-very-clueful IP users. The list of compounds is nearing encyclopedic proportions; I'm reasonably sure that some of the items are not Japanese, the formatting's a mess, and putting these into a table wouldn't go amiss. -- Eiríkr Útlendi | Tala við mig15:03, 25 August 2011 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 13 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
A bit confused, this one. There's an RFE for Japanese in the Translingual section, and the Japanese marks the character as a kokuji or "Japanese-only", making it very unlikely that there should even be a Translingual section in the first place. Can anyone can find non-Japanese use of this character? -- Eiríkr Útlendi | Tala við mig18:17, 26 August 2011 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 13 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion
It seems not all the noun senses here are necessary. If they are, they're really badly worded. 4, for example, links to a verb form. -- Liliana•04:36, 10 October 2011 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 13 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Webster entry. Definitions need formatting. Synonyms and Antonyms need to be associated with definitions rather than numbers. -- Liliana•12:54, 11 October 2011 (UTC)Reply
Are temperature scales nouns or adjectives? There seems to be inconsistency here. Fahrenheit says adjective, but centigrade says noun. What part of speech is Celsius in "Celsius temperature scale"? At least "A metric scale of temperature, originally defined as having the freezing point of water as 0° and its boiling point as 100°, at standard atmospheric pressure" should be removed. This is actually incorrect, it is the definition of centigrade, which is not quite synonymous as claimed by the entry. The centigrade page has the same error. SpinningSpark22:13, 22 January 2012 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 12 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
The entry suffers from a proliferation of senses, mostly without citations, with usage examples that mostly don't support the senses given. Is anyone familiar with East African English. DCDuringTALK16:04, 1 February 2012 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 7 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion
Sole adjective definition: "More than one of something." Sounds wrong or rather poorly worded to me. Also it doesn't cover the most usual English usage such as 'plural form', you can't say that 'houses in the more than one of something form of house'. Mglovesfun (talk) 18:17, 11 February 2012 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 12 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Needs help from someone with more background than I in literary history. Contexts and applicability of term seem confounded in first three senses. Implications for translations? DCDuringTALK13:39, 7 March 2012 (UTC)Reply
"To down a shot." Is this transitive or intransitive?
"casual carpooling; forming ad hoc, informal carpools for purposes of commuting, essentially a variation of ride-share commuting and hitchhiking." This is a definition for a noun. How is this used as a verb? How should it be worded. Where is it used? DCDuringTALK16:38, 9 March 2012 (UTC)Reply
Maybe something like "To form ad hoc, informal carpools, in what is essentially a combination of ride-share commuting and hitchhiking" Chuck Entz (talk) 22:39, 9 March 2012 (UTC)Reply
That doesn't quite fit the two citations I found, which are not yet sufficient for attestation. There are probably more to be found on Usenet. DCDuringTALK23:38, 9 March 2012 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 12 years ago3 comments2 people in discussion
Another entry from our known-suspect magic-obsessed IP user. This term appears to be cromulent, showing up in a Buddhist terminology list among other places. However, the entry is a complete mess, and I suspect that many of the synonyms and see alsos are bogus. -- Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig15:52, 21 March 2012 (UTC)Reply
This template should be named no-conj-verb or something like that. It is conjugation template but is used in the place for headword-line template (under L3 header).
Something is wrong with the imperative.
What is inflection 1 and inflection 2? They look the same.
Latest comment: 12 years ago3 comments2 people in discussion
I think this is the same person as our previous magic-obsessed Japanophile IP user posting under addresses in the 2.2xx range, and possibly the same as the user with addresses in the 90.xxx range. I gave them a 3-hour block earlier today to prompt them to read a number of WT reference pages and to give me time to go through their edits.
Of 11 total edits that they've made so far, yesterday and today, every single one had issues:
Added translations to the Selene entry that required reworking. (Done.)
Created 5 other new term pages, all for Japanese, all requiring substantial reworking. (Done.)
Included links to JA WP pages that don't exist.
Included links to other languages' WT for pages that don't exist.
Added content more suited to WP.
Added wholly-bogus content scrounged up from who knows where, or maybe made up on the spot.
Misused categorization templates, and misattributed source languages.
This user appears to be a huge time sink just waiting to happen. I sincerely hope they clean up their act, but if they are the same user as before, my hopes are not high. Please be on the lookout for edits from this user. -- Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig00:21, 31 March 2012 (UTC)Reply
This user is so consistent in their bad editing, and it is such a drain on our time, that a longer (or even indefinate) block could be appropriate. - -sche(discuss)08:30, 31 March 2012 (UTC)Reply
In the interest of giving someone a fair shake, I'll give them another chance -- so far I've only written to their talk page just the once. But if they come back with another slew of problematic edits, I think I will block them for a much longer span. -- Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig19:53, 31 March 2012 (UTC)Reply
All adjective senses. Which of these are a true adjective sense with a meaning distinct from that of a corresponding verb sense? Are we missing some verb senses? DCDuringTALK17:43, 20 April 2012 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 12 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
The only definition given is the crayon color, but that only dates to 1993 and there are cites given dating back as far as 1947. I'm not sure how to word the non-crayon definition, though. Chuck Entz (talk) 04:44, 21 April 2012 (UTC)Reply
I fixed the worst problem with the translingual section, but that exposed another: the definitions are verbatim from here]. The contributor obviously just copied-and-pasted them- even forgetting to separate two of them after removing the letters marking each one.Chuck Entz (talk) 09:23, 5 May 2012 (UTC)Reply
From the history, it seems it was created by a bot using the Unihan database, which is where the error comes from. It still seems like the definitions ultimately came from the source I linked to above, though they may have come from a common third source. Chuck Entz (talk) 09:41, 5 May 2012 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 12 years ago9 comments4 people in discussion
There is a dispute with another user that auscultate only refers to touching a stethoscope to a patient in order to listen for their lung sounds but it is clearly also used to refer to the ausculation of heart sounds, this is evidenced by the articles on wikipedia for stethoscope and heart sounds, and any medical book. This other user stubbornly blocked me for reentering factual information and the definition is currently inaccurate, any thoughts?Lucifer (talk) 19:24, 1 June 2012 (UTC)Reply
Actually, he's wrong: he would only be correct if either (1) only lung sounds could be auscultated, as he initially claimed, or (2) only lung sounds and heart sounds could be auscultated, as he now implies. But neither of those is true, because in fact, plenty of other things can be auscultated as well; for example, examination of the abdomen includes auscultation to listen for bowel sounds. The best fix is simply to remove this encyclopedic information that is not relevant to the term auscultate. —RuakhTALK22:50, 1 June 2012 (UTC)Reply
The real problem is that this isn't really a full-fledged lemma in its own right. The proper place for this stuff is auscultation, which already has a definition that covers the extra information. By the way, the "see also" section has ausculate, which doesn't seem to exist. Perhaps LW was thinking of osculate, which is only similar in that heavy breathing is often involved... Chuck Entz (talk) 23:13, 1 June 2012 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 12 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Definition "The way to do something." I find this way too general and/or ambiguous. For example, if I see someone holding a cricket bat wrong, I can't sau "you're using the wrong route" or "your route is wrong". Mglovesfun (talk) 21:01, 8 June 2012 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 7 years ago8 comments6 people in discussion
Doesn't make any sense, and full of links that might be spammy. Please cut it down to actual definitions that make sense to human beings. Equinox◑21:00, 16 June 2012 (UTC)Reply
I'm really unfamiliar with how to write wiktionary entries, but of use may be three definitions on the related Wikipedia article, all by Wilhelm Reich:
"[the] capacity to attain gratification by discharging an amount of libido equivalent to the built-up sexual tension in the organism" (1927, Further Remarks on the Therapeutic Significance of Genital Libido).
"the capacity to surrender to the flow of biological energy, free of any inhibitions; the capacity to discharge completely the dammed-up sexual excitation through involuntary, pleasurable convulsions of the body" (1940, The Discovery of the Orgone, Volume 1: The Function of the Orgasm.)
"the capacity for complete surrender to the involuntary convulsion of the organism and complete discharge of the excitation at the acme of the genital embrace" (date unclear, Selected Writings).
They're not of much use, if any, to me. If other people understand them, great, good for them. I take it Equinox you've checked that this can get three citations, right? Mglovesfun (talk) 16:10, 17 June 2012 (UTC)Reply
I do not see why the validity of Reich's work should be of any concern for an accurate definition. (It is also simply false to claim that all of Reich's work is discredited. His 'Character Analysis' was used as a standard textbook in psychology for many years, for example.) At any rate, there is such an incredible amount of disinformation and distortion about Reich's work that it justifies keeping close to Reich's OWN definitions, which is why I supplied them. Fact is that 1) Reich coined the term and 2) he adjusted the definition several times.
If it is necessary to fully understand the terms, there is a related Wikipedia article (including many references) that are available for study.
By the way, of interest to fixing this entry may also be the term 'orgastic impotence' as the opposite of orgastic potency.--Gulpen (talk) 12:11, 18 June 2012 (UTC)Reply
I think our current definitions lack lexical potency in the sense that they fail to clarify the term. I'm not an expert in Reichology, but to me his definitions look like complicated ways of saying "capacity to reach an orgasm". --Hekaheka (talk) 23:53, 24 June 2012 (UTC)Reply
No, the two are fundamentally different. For example, though virtually all men have 'ejaculative potency', during an orgasm many experience disgust, unpleasure, phantasies, partial release, various forms of anxiety (conscious or subconscious), mechanic movements, etc. etc. However, none of these can occur with orgastic potency (not to mention that almost no people experience the involuntary, rhythmic convulsion of the whole body - merely some local response). This is all written down on the related Wikipedia page. Every single word in Reich's definitions are crucial as they function to exclude all the pathological phenomenon associated with orgastic impotence.--Gulpen (talk) 12:45, 30 June 2012 (UTC) Again, I'm not arguing whether any of this is valid. I'm just trying to help clarify the conceptual difference.--Gulpen (talk) 01:43, 4 July 2012 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 12 years ago6 comments4 people in discussion
The computing sense consists of five sentences. The music sense also seems a bit encyclopedic and PoV. The cricket sense is encyclopedic, belonging in a rulebook, not a dictionary. DCDuringTALK11:36, 19 June 2012 (UTC)Reply
I wish I knew what the contributor was getting at with the Gaelic bit. It seems encyclopedic. Does a WP article shed any light? Put it in the talk page? DCDuringTALK12:15, 24 June 2012 (UTC)Reply
The gaming sense seems like a specific use of sense #1, could be rfd-redundant but in all honesty to me it's uncontroversial enough just to remove it. The cricket one probably is distinct from the other senses, I know what it means, I will reword it at some point (expecting visitors here, can't guarantee I can do it now). Mglovesfun (talk) 12:25, 24 June 2012 (UTC)Reply
I've removed the gaming sense, added a usex to the first sense to show music use, RfV'ed the existing music sense, and removed the rfc tag. DCDuringTALK12:37, 24 June 2012 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 12 years ago4 comments3 people in discussion
The etymology consists of: "Originally, 角 is written by mistake, which the sound is "gluk"". Is there any useful information in this? Chuck Entz (talk) 04:51, 23 June 2012 (UTC)Reply
Etym apparently added by Lo Ximiendo in this edit. However, the surprisingly ungrammatical nature of the added sentence makes me worry that Lo Ximiendo's account has been hijacked; her writing is usually better than this.
FWIW, this character does not appear in any of the Japanese references I have to hand, and web searches for Japanese pages show usage only in reference to Chinese place names. The ZH WT entry lists this character as an alternate for 角, potentially consistent with Lo Ximiendo's addition. -- Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig05:11, 23 June 2012 (UTC)Reply
All Lo Ximiendo did was move the etymology to its canonical position. The poorly written etymology itself was added by an anon here. —Angr06:53, 23 June 2012 (UTC)Reply
Thank you Angr, I'm clearly not at my most observant.
Hearkening back to Chuck's original question then, I suspect the anon IP meant to convey that the 甪 character originally derived from a corrupted form of 角. James, or any of our other Chinese-speaking editors, can you shed any light on this? -- Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig07:27, 23 June 2012 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 12 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion
Tagged a few weeks ago by Hamaryns (talk • contribs), but not yet listed. An IP tried a sort of piecemeal fix, which Razorflame (talk • contribs) reverted. I'm sure it was a good-faith edit, but this needs a more systematic reworking : right now it reads like it can't make up its mind whether it's a dictionary entry or bullet-points from a lecture, and I'm sure there's a good bit of overlap in the senses- it says a bunch of things without really adding up to much of anything. Chuck Entz (talk) 03:39, 26 June 2012 (UTC)Reply
Yes, there are too many definitions. I have added a bunch of translations, which are all about the same sense, mistress and slave-girl translations should be added separately. I'm having trouble writing the definition properly, though, so it's not defined as simply "mistress", "lover" or (female) slave, etc. Perhaps the status of both should be mentioned? We hardly use concubine in the modern world, since there is no nobility any more. --Anatoli(обсудить)04:14, 26 June 2012 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 12 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion
The description in the entry seems a little off and it also mentions and which I believe is meant as English rather than Norwegian (because in Norwegian it means 'duck' I think). The synonyms are also suspicious. —CodeCat00:53, 27 June 2012 (UTC)Reply
It looks like the anon who added it actually forgot which language they were writing. A quick look at a Norwegian dictionary leads me to guess that the following were actually meant (except in the definition line, of course):
Latest comment: 12 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
This page is aggressively bad. Until I expanded it, the only sense was "A judicial court of chancery, which in England and in the United States is distinctively a court with equity jurisdiction.", which I have kept for now but cannot make any sense of (the court itself is not a chancellor, surely?) Most of the facts in the usage note I have been unable to verify, and most of the derived terms look like clear SOP, probably imported from 1913 Webster by mistake. Can anyone work out what the original sense means, and tidy it up a bit more? Smurrayinchester (talk) 11:44, 7 July 2012 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 12 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
This is defined in the way square peg in a round hole is and should be defined. I can't think of how to define this without reference to one of the several verbs commonly used with this (at COCA: fit (2), force (2), ram, pound, drive). It could be finessed by defining it as an alternative form, though that is not the narrow definition of alternative form. (We do use a broad definition of alternative form for proverbs.) Is this derived from a proverb? DCDuringTALK17:20, 10 July 2012 (UTC)Reply
I think it is principally the noun that is the problem. Some to the senses (those having a sense of "group") belong to the ety derived from secta#Latin. After those have been separate into Ety 2 3, the assignment of the remaining noun senses should be relatively straightforward. But h[H]aving an OED handy would be very helpful essential for a split between an Etymology from a OE/ME verb and the past participle of that verb. I don't know if it would be sufficient. MWOnline provides no etymology for the noun. AHD has a single etymology for all but the "group" senses.
I have begun the process, but must stop. The entry is usable., but has the non-standard title "Etymology 1 & 2". Some of the noun senses in Ety 1 may not belong there. There are also missing senses and poorly worded senses among the nouns. I haven't looked much at the other PoSes. DCDuringTALK02:35, 12 July 2012 (UTC)Reply
No, I don't think 'fire' is the only verb that can be used with this. You can also raise your voice in anger, growl in anger and so on. —CodeCat20:39, 14 July 2012 (UTC)Reply
Why not just RfD this verb + adjunct expression? If someone can produce citations that show it to be something other than fire#Verb + in anger, good. I also rather doubt that in anger is inclusion-worthy. There is a use of in anger meaning something like "for real" (as opposed to "for school", "for play", and especially, "for practice"). Perhaps this entry should be moved to [[in anger]] and cleaned up there. DCDuringTALK21:13, 14 July 2012 (UTC)Reply
It looks to me like "in anger" has a specific military definition that anger wouldn't cover. The definition should be at in anger, rather than here, because it may take other verbs. Chuck Entz (talk) 21:18, 14 July 2012 (UTC)Reply
I've change my mind and agree, but, as MG pointed out, it's a bit broader than military, certainly including competitive sports. I could even imagine it being used in business. DCDuringTALK21:24, 14 July 2012 (UTC)Reply
But the point is, as the usage note says, that "fire in anger" doesn't actually necessarily imply the emotion of anger; "in anger" seems to be a military technical term meaning "with intent to kill, cause damage, etc." regardless of the emotional state of the person firing. —Angr22:04, 14 July 2012 (UTC)Reply
I agree that almost always the meaning of in anger is recoverable from its components. To me the use that the contributor of this entry and MG have in mind is a bit different. Anger does not mean "seriousness" or "a state of intensive motivation". At MWOnline, usually quite inclusive of senses, only two definitions appear: "a strong feeling of displeasure and usually of antagonism" and "rage". Our definition at [[anger#Noun]] does not include this either. As User:Angr points out, an individual soldier need not be angry to fire a shot in anger. Perhaps the definition of anger could be stretched by personifying the forces at war and imputing anger to the personifications. I also don't think that anger has this sense with other prepositions (not from, because of, or out of, for example) nor as subject or object of a verb. The periphrasis "in a state of anger" also does not yield this sense. DCDuringTALK22:22, 14 July 2012 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 12 years ago3 comments2 people in discussion
Swedish; rambles on a bit, usage notes duplicate the definition, IPA uses a non-IPA character. Actually if it weren't for that, I could clean it up myself. Mglovesfun (talk) 14:02, 16 July 2012 (UTC)Reply
You mean the grave accent? That is an IPA character. It also had an apostrophe instead of a stress marker and a regular colon instead of a triangular colon, which I fixed. — Ungoliant(Falai)18:22, 16 July 2012 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 12 years ago3 comments3 people in discussion
Lycomedes (talk • contribs) created entries over a 4-day period in February, mostly Latin and English scientific terminology. The bulk of it is no doubt reasonably accurate, but there are a few entries where the definitions are obviously wrong: epipterygius is defined as "yellow-stemmed", which is obviously a guess based on the common name of a fungus with epipterygia as the specific epithet (the Greek components to the word have nothing to to with "yellow" or "stem"), caryophyllus is defined as "fleshy-leaved", when it really comes from the Ancient Greek name for cloves, and autotoxicus is defined as "autoimmune",when it should be "autotoxic" or "self-poisoning" (it seems to only occur in the phrase "horror autotoxicus"). Many of the Latin entries have usage notes to the effect that they're only used in taxonomic names, which means they probably should be treated as multilingual rather than Latin.
Unfortunately, the obvious bad guesses call into question the credibility of the whole lot, and the fact that the entries are well-formatted, and that there don't seem to be any obvious errors in use of Latin and Greek templates, actually makes things harder- there's no easy way to tell which ones are nonsense. Chuck Entz (talk) 10:00, 23 July 2012 (UTC)Reply
DCDuring (talk • contribs) has a policy of treating taxonomic Latin as Latin rather than Translingual. The rest of us aren't so sure what to do with them. Latin is supposed to be attestable, like any other language, in running Latin text, and I question whether some of our species epithet Latin words are. I think for DCDuring, something like Gorilla gorilla would count as a two-word attestation for Latin, even if imbedded in another language's text. Mglovesfun (talk) 10:10, 23 July 2012 (UTC)Reply
A fair summary. If we decide otherwise, or to drop taxonomic names in whole or in part, I wouldn't mind.
We don't seem to have convenient access to the botanical descriptions in botanical journals which presumably use some or all the these terms, sometimes in accord with rules of Latin grammar, often with extension of sense, new vocabulary, and curious inventions. I don't have very good resources for terms that are not in widespread use or closely connected to classical Latin.
I seek protection for such terms in the ultimate refuges here: "All words in all languages" and "Someone might come across them and want to know what they mean.
As to the user's contributions, they do need cleaning up. I will do my best, but the first thing is to tag the most suspect ones with individual tags. That's certainly what I will do with those I can't improve. The extent of what I can do is often limited to what I did at epipterygius, which really needs checking by someone with better Latin and better botanical references than mine. DCDuringTALK04:16, 11 September 2012 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 12 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion
The translation-table glosses don't match the defs . . . and the former actually seem better to me than the latter. It makes me wonder if some past vandal removed some good definitions? —RuakhTALK02:05, 27 July 2012 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 11 years ago5 comments4 people in discussion
Verbo entry: "An insignificant critter 'writhing in the dust', notably a mortal versus divinity". I really don't know what this means. "An insignificant critter" makes sense, though 'critter' seems to me to be not the best choice of word, after that I really don't know. Mglovesfun (talk) 09:31, 3 August 2012 (UTC)Reply
I'm not sure either. It seems like if you call someone a 'worm' or a 'maggot' but I really can't say I've heard the word being used very often in that sense, if at all. —CodeCat10:29, 3 August 2012 (UTC)Reply
It looks like a metaphorical combination of earth, in the sense of earthly, and worm in its pejorative sense, calqued into Dutch. I suppose it might show up in poetry or some over-the-top religious tract (using what I've heard described as "worm theology": "without God's Grace we are all just worms writhing in the dust of mortal existence"). Seems a bit of a stretch, but, then, bad writing can be found in any language... Chuck Entz (talk) 14:21, 3 August 2012 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 12 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
I find all four definitions confusing. They seem to overlap a lot. The first definition is probably accurate but really hard to understand. #4 I think is #1 worded specifically for people. #2 and #3 seem really similar. In fact I think #3 and #4 might be the same definition, but one is worded as psychology, the second is in layperson's terms. So basically, help, or put forward your own opinion. Mglovesfun (talk) 12:22, 28 August 2012 (UTC)Reply
Well, it can be use as object of prepositions like at, after, until, before, by, since, toward so it is a nominal. What other PoS would you recommend? Also, consider:
"Ten to is when we are leaving." (subject)
"The ten-to train left two minutes late." (attributive use of ?)
"It was nearing ten to, when we were supposed to board the train." (object of verb)
It seems to simply beg a meaningful question to declare them "Phrases" and let the user figure of that they aren't verbals or adjuncts or whatever. DCDuringTALK02:44, 11 September 2012 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 12 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion
How have we overlooked inflammatory words like insidious and a generally overheated rhetorical tone in a mainspace entry for seven years? I'm not at all familiar with what it's talking about, but this entry needs to be toned down and made more impartial. Chuck Entz (talk) 19:40, 15 September 2012 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 12 years ago2 comments1 person in discussion
Etymology 1, noun section. Definitions don't match translation tables. Usage notes formatted as usage examples and possibly not just about the usage of the word. Would take a bit of time and multilingual knowledge. DCDuringTALK14:53, 20 September 2012 (UTC)Reply
The changes introduced by "GatorGirl" need to be examined carefully. Some seem good, some OK, some poor. In any event, the relationship to the translation table needs to be checked. DCDuringTALK15:01, 20 September 2012 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 12 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion
Synonyms to sort by meaning, Portuguese TTBCs, definitions to split, definitions to improve, etymology seems far too simple, pronunciation format non-standard
(Done: Portuguese TTBCs, splitting defs, sorting synonyms by meaning). Some synonyms seem not to be equivalent enough to be listed as synonyms. Pronunciation format is OK, but the first stress marker doesn’t look right. Etymology is unlikely to be more complex than that. — Ungoliant(Falai)01:24, 26 September 2012 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 12 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Going about in circles. Sny, etym 4, says it is an alternative spelling of snye which, in turn, is given as: Eighteenth-century spelling of sny (abound, swarm, teem, be infested) ... from etym 2 of sny. I believe that both snye and sny, etym 4, should be: a small channel of water (see the quotes given). --AnWulf ... Ferþu Hal! (talk) 08:37, 28 September 2012 (UTC)Reply
An encyclopedia article would be more concise. This is an article, the notes section and the bibliography from the back of the book, all dumped on the same page. Chuck Entz (talk) 03:50, 1 October 2012 (UTC)Reply
I have moved the Latin material to [[repraesentamen]], which leaves the excessively long definition, which is solely based on the usage by Charles Sanders Peirce. We could use other citations, which seem abundant enough in the literature of semiotics to warrant Collins having a definition. I personally don't speak or read semiotics. DCDuringTALK13:23, 1 October 2012 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 12 years ago6 comments3 people in discussion
The usage note describes a different orthography than the one the entry actually uses. Should the entry be moved, or should the usage note be changed? - -sche(discuss)19:17, 10 October 2012 (UTC)Reply
I think the usage note is describing "ǃɢā̰n-ǃɢá̰n", and that they weren't sure whether they could/should represent both diacritics on the same vowel. So the answer is: c) neither. Just change the display form and remove the usage note. Chuck Entz (talk) 12:40, 11 October 2012 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 12 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Unless I'm mistaken, this is another manifestation of the same repeatedy-blocked IP user who's contributed a ton of bad edits centered on the themes of Japanese language, magic and mythology. I notice that many of their edits are still unpatrolled, since they tend toward esoteric subjects and the editors who know Japanese seem to be busy elsewhere, so I would propose that those who know something about the subjects in question take a closer look at these edits. If this is who I think it is, and they're doing the same bad edits, action should be taken to prevent a lot of work later on. Chuck Entz (talk) 16:23, 14 October 2012 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 12 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Middle English. It looks like it was once an English section that was converted into Middle English. But it wasn't quite fixed, there are still some things like the pronunciation and usage examples that look more like modern English to me. —CodeCat17:45, 19 October 2012 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 12 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion
The translations use indents, specifically ** or *: for usage qualifiers instead of by language or by script such as *: Mandarin and *: Cyrillic (both of these two examples are standard). Also, we do just want the word for 'cousin' in these translations, languages which have specific words for maternal cousin and paternal cousin but also just have a word for cousin, that sort of extra information should go in the language's entry itself. The reason is usability. Yes, we sometimes act like our users aren't human beings, but they are! Adding tonnes of qualifiers and extra information makes translation tables much harder to use, which is why I sometimes remove such information and put it in the language itself. Mglovesfun (talk) 10:27, 26 October 2012 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 12 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Does Nostradamus' use of the term deserve its own sense? Given his style, is there even any chance the definition is anything but speculation? Also, reference to "us" should be avoided. - -sche(discuss)02:15, 29 October 2012 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 7 years ago3 comments3 people in discussion
In the sense "having existed or lived for the specified time", the translation format is absolutely awful. Aside from the highly invalid red links, the amount of information and how it's presented makes it hard to read. I know it's a bit of a toughie to translate, but surely we can do better than this. Mglovesfun (talk) 10:27, 1 November 2012 (UTC)Reply
I don't think this is a separate sense from the main sense. How is "three years old" different from "three feet tall" or "three gallons full"? --WikiTiki8910:56, 1 November 2012 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 12 years ago5 comments3 people in discussion
This can be very confusing, since there are two trees with the same name (but very different etymologies) in English: the flowering tree in the genusTilia, which is also known as linden, and the fruit tree in the genus Citrus.
As an IP noted, Serbo-Croatian lipa can be found in both the Tilia and the Citrus (tree) translation tables, and the Citrus (tree) table also includes Polish lipa and Icelandic lind. Following the link back to the Polish and Serbo-Croatian entries (both Cyrillic and Roman), they have separate senses for "linden tree" and "lime tree". I don't speak Polish or Serbo-Croatian, but I sincerely doubt that they both have the same accidental pairing of the inherited Tilia name and the introduced Citrus name that English has.
It looks to me like we need to check not just the translations in the table, but also the non-English entries themselves. We should change all definitions in every language we know that consist of the single word lime or the two-word phrase limetree to either linden/lindentree or something like lime(citrus)/limetree(citrus) (assuming they're not using one of the other senses of lime.
I'm not sure how we can keep this error from creeping back, because I'm sure there are lots of bilingual dictionaries out there that don't distinguish between the Tilia and Citrus senses of lime in their definitions.
I saw that, but if there were a minor secondary sense, it might not show up in an article devoted to the primary sense. It really needs reference to a very good bilingual dictionary or to a monolingual one to be sure- something that's fairly comprehensive with secondary senses. Or the knowledge of someone familiar with the usage would be good, as well. I have little doubt that lipa refers only to Tilia, but I don't want to mess with a language I don't know unless I'm 100-percent sure. Chuck Entz (talk) 19:15, 4 November 2012 (UTC)Reply
If there are minor secondary senses, they can still be added by someone who knows the language. Better to have accurate but incomplete information than inaccurate or misleading information. —Angr23:15, 4 November 2012 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 7 years ago5 comments5 people in discussion
Paleo- / palaeo- words are a bit of a mess. Many words have definitions under one spelling and alternative forms under the other (and vice versa); some have ===Alternative forms=== sections but many have not; some have definitions under both spellings; many have etymology sections that specify the prefix, but not all. It would be great if someone was bold, decided which should be the main entry and which the alternative form - then implemented this across all affected words, creating the missing forms as appropriate (you need to look at "All pages with prefix" to find them all). Perhaps a quick look on Google should be used to decide which is the form to use (but it really needs to be consistent across all of them). Good luck. SemperBlotto (talk) 10:51, 21 November 2012 (UTC)Reply
I have only done a few, but I'm planning to go through them when I have time. I am making all palaeos alt-forms as they are almost always rarer, most especially in newer publications. —Μετάknowledgediscuss/deeds07:49, 7 December 2012 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 11 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
"In Australia, a railway enthusiast. Originally derogatory, referring to overly enthusiastic or foolish rail fans. Now refers to railway enthusiasts in general, and the term is often used with pride." Also etymology. Mglovesfun (talk) 14:27, 7 December 2012 (UTC)Reply
It could refer to the end of the world in the sense of an edge in space, rather than time. The "fall off the end of the world" kind. —CodeCat18:08, 20 December 2012 (UTC)Reply
Only through context though. Without prior knowledge, you wouldn't know which sense of "end" was being used in "end of the world". —CodeCat21:27, 20 December 2012 (UTC)Reply
It would not be the end of the world if this dictionary had neither this nor [[not the end of the world]]. But I would make [[not the end of the world]] a redirect to this as the "not" does not have a fixed position (as in my opening sentence or form (could appear as part of a contraction) in the naturally occurring construction. In addition, one could say: "It's always the end of the world if he thinks he might have to stay late."
The fourth definition is the only one that would not be included in {{&lit}}, IMO. This is just hyperbole, but it is basically a set phrase, though variations on it in the figurative sense are numerous: "the end of the world as we know it", "the end of the civilized world" etc. DCDuringTALK21:40, 20 December 2012 (UTC)Reply
No idea; I just brought the entry here because I saw that it was tagged and had not been altered significantly since. Perhaps, as the tagging editor, DCDuring can tell us what it is about the entry that needs to be cleaned up. I'll post a message on his talk page. I'm so meta even this acronym (talk) 18:26, 8 January 2013 (UTC)Reply
AFAICT, its only meaning is "a line on a graph […]". I've made a few non-central changes. It wouldn't hurt if someone better than I at chemistry or physics took a look. DCDuringTALK19:23, 8 January 2013 (UTC)Reply
I still have a nagging feeling that the definition needs to take account of the possibility of a gaseous state, not just liquid and solid. I'm not sure what the distinction between liquidus and solidus would be.
Also, the definition just seems wrong. It is most likely true that the line(s) themselves represent loci of equilibria, on one side of which the material is liquid and the other solid, and not "A line, in a phase diagram, above which a given substance is a stable liquid and below which solid and liquid are in equilibrium." Other dictionaries seem to say that the line is where liquid and solid are in equilibrium. DCDuringTALK19:33, 8 January 2013 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 11 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
An excellent specimen of an encyclopedic entry. The entry has lots of redlinks which should either be filled with alternative forms or deleted or something. DCDuringTALK17:44, 12 January 2013 (UTC)Reply
It's inconsistent with Wiktionary formatting conventions: our headword-line templates are supposed to generate one line, not four.
The word "Eumhun" is just thrown in there in a place where it can only be described as "wrong". (The fourth line, labeled "name", is the eumhun, but the "Eumhun" appears on the second line.) (Edited to add: Actually, this comment wasn't really right. The eumhun is both the meaning and the pronunciation taken together. So the presentation is not really wrong, merely incredibly confusing. 17:41, 2 February 2013 (UTC))
It generates stray parentheses in some cases, and probably stray commas in others.
I suspect that some (much?) of the template's content should simply be removed.
I'd be happy to see some bold editing in this case. Bold editing not recommended for widely used templates in general, but in this case I think it's appropriate. Maybe use {{ko-hanja/new}} to make changes then move it on top of ko-hanja (that is, deleting the current version of ko-hanja and replacing it with ko-hanja/new). Mglovesfun (talk) 11:58, 2 February 2013 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 11 years ago4 comments3 people in discussion
After working on this a while, it's getting harder to tell the prepositional from the adverbial from the nominal from the adjectival in all of the different sections (I may have actually made things worse). In addition, the role of the term in phrasal verbs doesn't seem to be explicitly addressed at all, which has to be confusing to people trying to look up the phrasal verbs by way of the parts. I realize such problems are rampant among entries for the ubiquitous "little words", but we might as well start somewhere. Chuck Entz (talk) 01:04, 24 February 2013 (UTC)Reply
Regarding "up to New York" (adverb #3), could we say that "up" is a preposition? I think that it goes like "I'm going [PP up [PP to New York ] ]" and not "I'm going [AdvP up ] [PP to New York ]" because we can say "It's up to New York that I'm going" and not *"It's to New York that I'm going up". Same as into which is just in + to. —Internoob02:02, 24 February 2013 (UTC)Reply
But consider: "We went up in the balloon for a one hour tour." Other prepositions that can follow up include on ("He climbed up on the roof." != "He climbed upon the roof." !!!), with, and over. The following prepositional phrase can be replaced by some locative expressions (eg, here, there, yonder). DCDuringTALK13:22, 24 February 2013 (UTC)Reply
A way forward for this may be to explicitly include (under the Adverb PoS, I think) non-gloss definitions for usage in phrasal-verb constructions, possibly as subsenses for any corresponding purely adverbial sense. We could then remove phrasal verb usage examples, ie, probably all usage examples involving the most common verbs and replaced them with less colloquial examples using multisyllable verbs that unambiguously do not make phrasal verbs [my hypothesis]. Also, all the usage example that involve synonyms of become need to me moved to the adjective section. DCDuringTALK11:51, 1 April 2013 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 11 years ago7 comments3 people in discussion
I wasn't sure where to start on this one. (1) Layout is non-standard. (2) Some senses/translations are too specific - others need writing in simpler English. (3) Translations probably need pooling for re-checking. — Saltmarshαπάντηση05:47, 10 March 2013 (UTC)Reply
Insanely, there's nothing to cover the mental state of being concentrated. I've added a French entry for it, but the English definition it refers to doesn't exist yet. Mglovesfun (talk) 10:56, 11 March 2013 (UTC)Reply
But it isn't clear whether "the act or process of concentrating" (all the subsections refer to the amounts of one material in another) includes mental concentration. (1) does "mental concentration" get a 3rd subsection or a new section of its own. And (2) does the relevant translation sense include both mental and physical concentration when some languages will have separate terms? — Saltmarshαπάντηση12:25, 11 March 2013 (UTC)Reply
How much do other languages use different words for translating this as a process, an act, an ability, a result? What about the distinction between a reflexive/intransitive sense ("the concentration of the particles in the lower portion of of the fractioning apparatus", ie, the particles could be viewed as concentrating themselves) and a transitive sense {"the concentration apparatus proved effective", ie, the apparatus concentrates something else)? DCDuringTALK20:29, 15 March 2013 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 11 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
RFC-sense "The Mendelian Law of Segregation related to genetic transmission or geographical segregation of various species." For starters, could someone clean it up so that it doesn't define "segregation" as, basically, "segregation related to segregation"? - -sche(discuss)19:48, 15 March 2013 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 11 years ago15 comments3 people in discussion
Tagged but not listed. What exactly is the problem here? Abstract and concrete verbs are a feature of some verbs in Slavic languages, verbs of movement - go, run, swim, roll, fly, etc.
"Abstract verb refers to a verbal aspect in verbs of motion"? Are we defining it, or mentioning it while talking about something else? I would reword it, but I haven't been able to untangle it enough, yet, to figure out what it actually means. By the way: "Abstract verb" should be in quotes- assuming it should be there at all. Chuck Entz (talk) 01:24, 25 March 2013 (UTC)Reply
(before edit conflict)I see you have changed the definition just now. Is this satisfactory?
The user examples given are in English, not sure if the notion of "abstract verb" and "concrete verb" are applicable to English verbs. I only know this concept in terms of Slavic languages, no other. As shown above abstract and concrete verbs differ in forms and cause difficulty to foreign learners, e.g. "I'm flying"", "I will go" in translations may use one or the other verb type or both may be acceptable in some contexts.
(after edit conflict). The concept is complicated, I will search for better definitions. Still don't see how this can explained using English verbs. Any help is appreciated. --Anatoli(обсудить/вклад)01:47, 25 March 2013 (UTC)Reply
I didn't address the issue of Slavic languages vs. English. I would say that English is good for explaining the concepts to English speakers, even though there's nothing in the morphology to reflect the difference. I suppose, though, that it might give the false impression that English has this as part of its grammar. As for language-specificity: there seem to me to be enough idiosyncratic details in the concept to make it unlikely to be found elsewhere in the same form, but I could be wrong. Chuck Entz (talk) 02:32, 25 March 2013 (UTC)Reply
The concept of abstract/concrete with English verbs doesn't make sense, since the verbs don't differ depending on the situation, IMHO. Take verbs плыть(plytʹ) (concrete) vs плавать(plávatʹ) (abstract). Note that the verb tense (present simple or present continuous) is irrelevant here, "плавать(plavatʹ)" is a "generic" verb but not in terms of time but direction)
Я плыву к берегу (Ja plyvú k béregu) (concrete, unidirectional). - "I'm swimming to the shore".
Я плаваю по субботам (Ja plávaju po subbótam) (abstract, multidirectional) - "I swim on Saturdays".
Я плаваю/Я плыву (Ja plávaju/Ja plyvú) (abstract/concrete - either type is OK). - "I'm swimming". The former means "swim around", the latter "swim in a direction". The difference in meaning is blurred but the forms are very distinct. --Anatoli(обсудить/вклад)02:51, 25 March 2013 (UTC)Reply
Yeah, if there's that much missing from the concept in the English examples, I guess there's no reason to use them. It's generally helpful to explain the unfamiliar in terms of the familiar, but not if it means leaving things out. I won't be much help in that area, though: I was only able to squeeze in one quarter of Russian as I was getting ready to graduate from UCLA- and I was taking Armenian and second-year German at the same time. Chuck Entz (talk) 03:21, 25 March 2013 (UTC)Reply
As commonly used in English the expression is almost certainly SoP. I think the scope of non-SoP usage in language needs to be better delineated. For example, David Crystal's Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics (5th ed) does not include abstract verb, though it has abstract in a sense that might cover this. The English usage examples could fit under the SoP sense ({{&lit}}). Perhaps the scope needs to be limited to the languages for which the abstract/concrete distinction is morphological. It would also help if there were citations in the entry. The would be suggestive of in what usage contexts the term was used in a non-SoP way. DCDuringTALK09:47, 25 March 2013 (UTC)Reply
This is not an RFD or RFV page and "abstract verb" is a grammatical term, like collective numeral or comparative degree, etc., not a SoP. Only this term has little to do with the English grammar, like instrumental case. The examples and explanation match exactly how Slavic abstract and concrete verbs are defined. I'm not surprised that English dictionaries don't include this term or words like "measure word", which is used to describe grammar in other languages, not English. --Anatoli(обсудить/вклад)10:08, 25 March 2013 (UTC)Reply
Citations and usage examples (not just conceptual examples, which are like images) are supposed to be part of every entry and would help here to show the scope of coverage of the word. As the term is used almost exclusively in a very SoP ways and as there is no dictionary coverage, we really need to show usage. DCDuringTALK10:30, 25 March 2013 (UTC)Reply
The only cites that CFI requires are for the term "abstract verb" itself. I could be wrong, but I would think that any explanation of it in an English-language grammar about a Slavic language would be a use, rather than a mention: it's a grammatical term, and the book would be using it to explain a grammatical subject. As long as the book is durably archived, somewhere, it doesn't have to be online. Of course, it would have to be in English, since this is all about the English term. Chuck Entz (talk) 03:09, 26 March 2013 (UTC)Reply
Three cites need to be of a single non-SoP sense. Usually that means that the wording shouldn't by too specific to make sure that enough authors use it with the definition, but the needs to be more than a transformation of abstract + verb. For some reason we seem to be really good at seeing the idiomaticity of terms in the areas of linguistics and computing, so it shouldn't be too hard. DCDuringTALK04:17, 26 March 2013 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 11 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
"Difficult to describe", usage example A precise definition of diarrhea is elusive (Robbin's pathology, 8th ed). Not sure that it means 'difficult to describe' in this example, but rather 'tending to elude'. Mglovesfun (talk) 13:15, 14 April 2013 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 11 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion
The noun portion of the entry has seven senses, which do not seem very distinct. I cannot find more than two senses in other dictionaries (Century). The entry does, however, reference the OED. Can someone verify that the OED has all the senses. Even if the OED has all seven senses, I wonder if three cites can be found to clearly support each distinct sense. DCDuringTALK23:12, 9 May 2013 (UTC)Reply
"A species of landscape that is flat and open." seems too poor to be included. Some of these seem very much distinct, for example someone who farms open land is clearly distinct from the land itself. A field of study seems to be like field (expert in one's field, for example). Mglovesfun (talk) 08:38, 10 May 2013 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 11 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion
rfc-sense: "The art of using similar techniques in politics or business." Similar to which sense, sense #1 or sense #2? Or neither, perhaps it means the art of using techniques which are similar in politics or business (I don't think it means this, but it's the most literal interpretation from where I stand). I think maybe it's trying to suggest that strategy can be a mass noun, which I think it can, in which case it's not limited to business and politics, in sports you can use strategy (mass noun) and not only a strategy or strategies (count nouns). Mglovesfun (talk) 20:31, 18 May 2013 (UTC)Reply
MWOnline has six senses, none of which fit the uncountable sense, which I agree exists and is not uncommon:
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I think there are two kinds of meanings: more or less neutral: "strategizing, the activity of developing an implementable strategy"; more or less favorable: "good, clever planning". I generally don't think we should have definitions like the second if they are arguably included in a neutral sense.
The MWOnline senses are for: 1.a.1 - national grand strategy, 1.a.2 - military strategy, 1.b - a type or instance of the above, 2.a - a careful plan, 2.b - the art of devising such plans, 3 - something to capture what is imputed to a species for its successful evolution.
These are supposedly adjectives meaning "citizen of". I'm not sure how that works. Adjectives modify nouns, but "citizen of" would seem to require that the noun following it not be the one modified (e.g. in "citizen of Germany", "citizen of" is describing Angela Merkel, not "Germany"). - -sche(discuss)20:56, 22 May 2013 (UTC)Reply
I took a stab at it. Couldn't hurt to have someone who knows Rohingya (or had even heard of it before this thread, unlike me) to look it over, though. —Angr14:59, 27 May 2013 (UTC)Reply
Turkish word lists
Latest comment: 11 years ago6 comments2 people in discussion
These pages are far too long and they are triggering script errors halfway through because of that. They should be split up further if possible. But I wonder why we need such lists at all..? —CodeCat21:43, 28 May 2013 (UTC)Reply
As for why we need such lists at all, a lot of people find frequency lists helpful for a wide variety of applications. I certainly wouldn't want us to get rid of them. —Angr09:18, 29 May 2013 (UTC)Reply
Vietnamese entries with pronunciation and readings conflated
Latest comment: 11 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
In the following entries, IPA information is shoehorned into ====Readings==== sections. It should probably be in its own section. Other formatting issues may also exist.
There is an additional set starting with "couldn't" and some we lack: We only have couldn't punch one's way out of a paper bag as a redirect to way out of a paper bag. (fight could substitute for punch) The entry fails to make it clear that this only exists with could (BTW, not would).
We have Category:English predicates with nearly five hundred members and probably one or two hundred other entries that could be so classified. These should be so classified.
These do have some verb-like inflection potential, eg, wouldn't have shouted if a shark had bitten him".
These phrases really only exist idiomatically in association with some kind of subjunctive. The forms in which we have them are by far the most common. An entry for shout if a shark bit him would tempt many who just saw the headword to waste time opening the entry preparatory to challenging it with an RfV or RfD. If I were designing the entry for a machine I probably wouldn't do it this way, but our current approach seems OK for humans. DCDuringTALK04:00, 17 July 2013 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 11 years ago3 comments2 people in discussion
I don't really know what to do with this. The main talking point is the misspelling of Gl, it's apparently a 'prefix' but a prefix would be GI- or Gl-. Is it really a misspelling? Perhaps a misreading because of the similarity between the lowercase l and the uppercase I in some fonts. Erm, help. Mglovesfun (talk) 13:57, 24 July 2013 (UTC)Reply
It's separated from the number by a space, so it's not a prefix in the strictest sense, but it's always immediately in front of the number: "Gl 1234". As for the misspelling part: given that ls and Is are often scannos for each other, and that they tend to look the same in most non-serif fonts, it's pretty hard to tell what the relationship is between Gl and Gi in actual use. It would be more accurate to call it a "common error", but I don't know how we handle such things. Chuck Entz (talk) 14:32, 24 July 2013 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 11 years ago4 comments2 people in discussion
This entry has both an adverb and a conjunction POS, which seems justifiable. The senses, however, seem to be randomly added to one or the other, and there's overlap between the senses under one POS and those under the other. At the moment, it's really hard to tell what the difference is between the two POS. Can someone take the time to sort this out so the entry as a whole makes sense? Chuck Entz (talk) 21:48, 4 August 2013 (UTC)Reply
I agree that some of the wording is similar and that one could not readily distinguish based on the wording alone. But don't the usage examples clarify the functional distinctions adequately? A functional non-gloss definition would seem likely to read as duplication of the meaning of the L2 header, but might clarify things further. DCDuringTALK13:20, 6 August 2013 (UTC)Reply
Actually, the usexes agree reasonably well with the defs. The problem is that they're in the wrong POS. Substitute how for however in the sentences, and you'll see the distinction: the adverbial ones sort of work, but the conjunction doesn't. "However far he may get" would work as "How far he gets", for example. It looks to me like a clear-cut modifier of far, thus, an adverb. I'm just not sure what to do with the "conjunctive" adverb sense, which looks exactly like the one clear-cut conjunction sense. Chuck Entz (talk) 13:52, 6 August 2013 (UTC)Reply
I've been working on simple substantives too long: I've lost the ability to make fine distinction on functions words. I'd have to work my way back up to it. DCDuringTALK18:46, 6 August 2013 (UTC)Reply
BTW, there are at least hundreds, if not thousands of, similar-quality definitions in many languages, not limited to names of living things, though common among such entries. DCDuringTALK20:42, 25 August 2013 (UTC)Reply
In this case, the entry was bot-created from an online database, and the definitions are verbatim from there. My guess is that some of the definitions are deduced from the character's use in compounds, and don't mean anything much until you see the context. Something is better than nothing, but one would have to have access to some pretty comprehensive references to convert such entries into anything self-contained and useful for all senses. Chuck Entz (talk) 22:13, 25 August 2013 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 11 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
We have two identical senses, just one is glosses transitive and the other transitive. The second one " To remove something; especially, to remove an eyeball or tumor." ca't be intransitive can it? Furthermore one translation table says to remove the eye, one says to remove a tumor, but there are no such definitions; both tumor and eye are present in both of the last two definitions. Mglovesfun (talk) 13:13, 30 August 2013 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 11 years ago3 comments3 people in discussion
He or she has been cranking out changes to English etymologies claiming actual or possible Occitan etymologies for all kinds of words with Old French in their history. I'm more than a little skeptical, since widespread contact with Old French is well known and well documented, but demonstrable Occitan origin is relatively rare. Someone who knows English and Romance linguistic history needs to check all of these edits. They've done a lot of other types of edits that are no doubt ok, so nuking isn't an option. Chuck Entz (talk) 05:02, 31 August 2013 (UTC)Reply
Another issue is that Occitan, as far as Wiktionary is concerned, is a modern language. Maybe he means its ancestor, Old Provençal, which demonstrably left loads of loanwords in the languages of Iberia and France. — Ungoliant(Falai)05:09, 31 August 2013 (UTC)Reply
I picked one at random ramp. Looks pretty bogus. Surely most of the time, the Occitan will be cognate to the French, but almost never the direct etymon of an English word - would have to be via French as in general, English doesn't borrow words from Occitan. I can't name even one. Mglovesfun (talk) 09:26, 31 August 2013 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 11 years ago3 comments2 people in discussion
Sense: (eventual etymological fallacy) A beginning to flower. I don't know what the bit in brackets mean. Especially since the etymology says it comes from the Latin "I begin to flower". Mglovesfun (talk) 11:05, 1 September 2013 (UTC)Reply
See w:Etymological fallacy. They were trying to say that the sense is the result of trying to force the meaning of the Latin original onto the English term. The question then becomes whether it's really used that way, or whether it just shows up as mentions in dictionaries and word lists because of a faulty assumption. If it is used that way, then the etymological fallacy part belongs in the etymology (if anywhere), otherwise the sense should be removed. Sounds like a job for rfv. Chuck Entz (talk) 15:53, 1 September 2013 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 11 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Latin: The definition seems to be based on a misreading of the entry in Lewis and Short. I'd like an experienced Latinist to clean it up or, better, explain the Lewis and Short entry. DCDuringTALK17:37, 2 September 2013 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 11 years ago14 comments4 people in discussion
definitions: "a species of plant" and "name of various plants"
These are virtually worthless as definitions, but similar definition are common among Sanskrit entries here. Can this be improved upon at all? Similar situations in Latin and especially Greek usually generate plausible conjectures. Some of the cases where a species name is given are not much better as the species name may be used nowhere but in dictionaries or south Asian languages. DCDuringTALK00:53, 9 September 2013 (UTC)Reply
There are analogous cases in Old French especially regarding plants where there's no way to be sure all the authors are talking about the same plant. I can see a lot of problems on that page, "a species of plant" seems redundant but "name of various plants" is probably as good as it can get. Mglovesfun (talk) 01:25, 9 September 2013 (UTC)Reply
That is a typical Sanskrit page with typical problems, including no differentiation of proper nouns, except for higher prevalence of "name of" as part of the definition. The definitions look like wikiformatted copies of old Sanskrit-English dictionaries, possibly different ones combined, with the old dictionaries not being as well done as LSJ (Ancient Greek)or L&S (Latin). The definiens often use polysemic English words with no gloss to suggest which modern sense. DCDuringTALK01:59, 9 September 2013 (UTC)Reply
You haven't begun to guess at the true enormity of the problem: I've copypasted the relevant part of the Monier-Williams entry from a pdf I downloaded (enclosed in collapsible header templates for those who don't care to read through it all), and interleaved it with our definitions. The OCR severely mangled the romanized Sanskrit and it would have taken too long to fix it, so don't try to decipher that part. As you can see, our entry is simply the Monier-Williams translated into our format, stripped of the source abbreviations, and paraphrased a bit.
It seems like a combination of multiple dictionaries because Monier-Williams went through libraries-full of sources and made notes, then compressed those notes into an incredibly dense and cryptic format in order to fit everything (barely) into one very large volume. All the bulleted lines below take up what looks like a single 2 or 3 inch square in a much larger three-column page, with nothing separating them but spaces and semicolons. The amount of detail in that work is astonishing- it would take years to properly unpack all the abbreviations and taxonomic names and convert them to modern equivalents. Just one page would take days! Nobody has all the necessary reference material at hand to do it, anyway, so the best we seem to be able to do is reformat this massive lump of condensed shorthand to make it look like a Wiktionary entry, without properly decoding it.
I had looked at some of the Dictionary pages given as references.
My interests and "expertise" are quite limited. I think I can modernize some of the taxonomic names from the 130-year-old ones that were the best he had to work with, but I have to always look at the dictionary page itself. Some of the species names I cannot find in any authoritative online source.
DCDuring keeps repeating that we're dealing with a "130-year old dictionary" but he fails to mention that the dictionary is a synthetic result of tens of thousands of man-hours, and that it's perfectly valid today due to the simple fact that Sanskrit is an extinct language that doesn't change anymore. If the respected authorities have failed to determine what exact species of plants saha denotes in some works, then probably nobody else will. Comparing it to Webster 1913 and modern English is stupid. Regarding proper nouns - they are not recognized as a separate lexical category by Sanskrit grammarians (there is no uppercase/lowercase distinction, there are tens of thousands of deities in Hinduism representing just about any imaginable concept). I have been separating proper/common nouns in some early entries, but have stopped doing so. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 15:53, 13 September 2013 (UTC)Reply
It's a great dictionary. It's available online for free to scholars, so Wiktionary's having copied pages is simply duplicative. It's copied pages are only a first draft of a Wiktionary entry. DCDuringTALK16:27, 13 September 2013 (UTC)Reply
Apart from the research done on the new interpretation of meanings of Sanskrit words in the 20th and 21th century, it's a complete entry. Sanskrit entries copied from MW dictionary are far more complete than English entries copied from Webster 1913, because the language is not productive anymore as a literary device. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 22:53, 16 September 2013 (UTC)Reply
I have three problems with our English entries based on MW 1913 and two with the Sanskrit entries. To me they have one problem in common.
with English entries from MW 1913:
it has English words whose meaning and usage context have changed in some cases, whereas we have not brought the entry up to date.
it uses a dated English for all of its definitions
it includes lists of synonyms in the definiens (instead of under Synonyms), a defining style we don't use.
with Sanskrit entries:
it does not adhere to Wiktionary format and structure eg, not having distinct L3/4 sections for proper and common nouns and non-definiens material in the definitions.
it uses a dated English for all of its definitions.
Just as with MW 1913 entries: I am glad we have the Sanskrit entries. They are an excellent first draft. They need work to be up to our high standards. DCDuringTALK01:13, 17 September 2013 (UTC)Reply
I've told you already: proper nouns are not recognized as a separate lexical category by Sanskrit grammarians. This "e.g." of yours is the only objection you actually have to the structure of Sanskrit entries, and yet you keep parroting it as if it is one of many. Non-definiens material (i.e. the list of works were the set of meanings makes appearance) is essential due to the fact that Sanskrit literature stretches over three millennia, and someone reading Rgveda is not interested in the same meanings as someone reading Gita Govinda. We already include non-definiens material in all of the entries - they are called context labels. I fail to see how "this meaning is only used in UK" is any different than "this meaning is only used in the Vedas".
Most of its English is perfectly fine. You're needlessly exaggerating. If you find "dated English" feel free to update it. Perhaps some terms are a bit dated, but often no clear non-dated synonyms exist, and replacing them could introduce new interpretation of some words. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 16:13, 17 September 2013 (UTC)Reply
All of this makes it seem as if a user of the material would be better off to be using the complete text, not Wiktionary's half-formatted, subject-to-insufficiently-respectful-editing version. For example, see Category:Sanskrit proper nouns. Do we need 97 RfC for them?
What value are we adding if all we do is copy? One value might be that we can link to the Sanskrit from other language entries. But that is not for Sanskrit scholars who know the peculiarities of the original dictionary; it is for ordinary Wiktionarians and folks who are simply curious, even recreational users. As scholars have the free online source and should have page links in the Wiktionary entry to that source from every entry copied from it, our Sanskrit entries ought be rendered consistent with Wiktionary format to facilitate use by those other than scholars. DCDuringTALK17:12, 17 September 2013 (UTC)Reply
The really terrible one is the neuter noun = बल(bala), because बल has 28 noun definitions. Which one of the 28, or all 28 of them? Limiting only to neuter nouns transliterated as bala, that's down to 14. Mglovesfun (talk) 17:22, 17 September 2013 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 11 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
The usage notes look suspect to me. Apart from the word which I think is suboptimal, is this true of all English speaking place or just one or two in particular? Added by CORNELIUSSEON (talk • contribs) in 2007 so it's not recent or by a reliable editor. Both of these make me think it's either out-of-date, inaccurate or just plain bogus. Mglovesfun (talk) 16:29, 19 September 2013 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 11 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
The etymology for this entry isn't that great, but the main problem is the quotes: one says it's "from Mr. Deed goes to Town", but it isn't (if it's an actual quote at all), and the other is under the sense: "Drunk", but doesn't refer to actual drunkenness. Mr. Deeds Goes to Town didn't invent the word, but certainly brought it out of obscurity and widely popularized it, so it might be nice to have a real quote from the movie. The other quote is good, but something needs to be changed so it matches its definition- or vice versa. Chuck Entz (talk) 09:00, 22 September 2013 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 11 years ago9 comments3 people in discussion
While I (the creator of the page) did not post the rfc that is currently on the page, I have to agree that the page could do with a bit of touch-up.
I will state this, however: the definition, usage notes and synonyms are 100% correct. Keep that in mind if you change the wording on the page. It is vital to realise that this is NOT a familial term, but neither is it derogatory or rude. It's... sort of in the same category as "stranger" in the sense of "Where go ye, stranger?" Tharthan (talk) 00:37, 30 September 2013 (UTC)
Anyone? Tharthan (talk) 18:25, 1 October 2013 (UTC)Reply
SemperBlotto really should've listed this after tagging it. We try and avoid things like "used to address" because it doesn't indicate a noun, so defining it as "a man" or "a person" is better. You mean familiar not familial; familial means relating to family where familiar means colloquial (roughly). It's also written from quite a first-person perspective, as if you're saying how you use the term i.e. your opinion rather than a dictionary definition, that has to address how everyone uses the term. I'd contribute more if I could. Mglovesfun (talk) 18:34, 1 October 2013 (UTC)Reply
I actually meant neither "familiar" nor "familial." I actually meant "cordial." I was tired, my apologies. And it's not as much written from a first-person perspective as it is written from the perspective of someone who wants to make sure the term isn't confused with other similar terms. The whole reason that I have taken this precaution is because of the term's odd usage history. It's all over the place. Tharthan (talk) 21:16, 1 October 2013 (UTC)Reply
The original uasge (going back to 1934 according to the OED) of boss-man was just a synonym of boss (etymology 3), so I think we should have that sense first, with your modern colloquial usage second. Wouldn't "a term of address" be clearer than "vocative"? Dbfirs07:38, 17 October 2013 (UTC)Reply
I'm pretty sure that such is just a similar coinage. "Bossman" is not "boss-man." Anybody can coin "[title] + man" as a familial use of said term. Bossman, however, is not synonymous with "boss" nor a term of endearment. This is somewhat consistent with the other use of "boss"; as a sarcastic term use when frustrated. Thus, they are indeed coined by the same two words, but not at the same time nor with the same intent. In addition, I've never seen "bossman" confused with "boss-man" in my entire life; neither in spelling nor in speech. Tharthan (talk) 22:14, 17 October 2013 (UTC)Reply
I was looking at the current (on-line with subscription) edition of the OED, not a compact version, but it doesn't have your exact interpretation. Dbfirs20:37, 1 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 11 years ago5 comments4 people in discussion
This passed an RFD with no consensus, so it has kind of just been left there. Today, an editor decided to add Catalan, which makes me wonder now, how big should we make the list? It's going to be impossible to include all languages, and people are always going to think "their" language is worth including. So we really need to decide which languages should be there and exclude any others. —CodeCat14:40, 10 October 2013 (UTC)Reply
I changed the English Pronunciation Keys; therefore, I was also responsible for the changes. (AT LEAST according to "main-stream medicine", THAT'S the legalese kind of matter that we may want to deal with, right?) --Lo Ximiendo (talk) 07:57, 11 October 2013 (UTC)Reply
If we decide to drop Catalan, why not drop Dutch? It has less than 30 million speakers, and the dialects of most of those claimed speakers have a different pronunciation (and lexicon, and even grammar). --80.114.178.701:05, 25 October 2013 (UTC)Reply
Wu and Shanghainese
Latest comment: 11 years ago9 comments5 people in discussion
Has anyone else noticed the appalling state of our Wu entries?
In response to a complaint on Feedback about a Shanghainese usage note in the Mandarin section of 啥, I tried to add a Wu section to move it to (Shanghainese is an important Wu dialect). When working with a language I don't know, I always look through the other entries to see how others are doing things.
What I found was only 11 entries under all the POS categories combined, with 18 under Wu terms needing attention and 14 under Wu definitions needed. It looks like overlapping of categories reduces the total to 33 or so, but that's still 2/3s of the entries with no POS. What's more, there's also 戆(6gaon), which has only one category: the non-existent Category:Wu hanzi. I suspect that there are other Wu entries that are uncategorized: there are no Wu templates, and {{head}} requires a language code and POS, so it's likely there are entries with just the headword bolded by single quotes, but no attention or request template.
Is there any way to get a list of all the Wu entries? I'll see if I can find Wu reference material to at least put POS categories on them, if not provide the 14+ missing definitions. Thanks! Chuck Entz (talk) 23:33, 12 October 2013 (UTC)Reply
I never would have found 丁,五,倷,啘(0ueq),场(6zan), and 石, since they had no Wu-specific categories. Thanks! Now I just have to deal with missing information and mutually-exclusive POS-treament/formatting. Chuck Entz (talk) 00:31, 13 October 2013 (UTC)Reply
Pretty much all of our CJKV characters are terrible. Most of them don't even have definitions; just transliterations into the Latin alphabet, sometimes not even that, just a language header and nothing else. Mglovesfun (talk) 11:47, 13 October 2013 (UTC)Reply
Digress: even after creation of Wu Wikipedia, Shanghanese are busier working on Mandarin - the main language of China and Taiwan, which can take you places. Recently I saw a Mandarin - Wu textbook with audio recordings transliterations, good word lists and good example sentences, thought of buying but then changed my mind. Wu writing traditions are so close to Mandarin, so basically to learn Wu, you need to know Mandarin + a few specific characters and Wu pronunciation. The tone sandhi in Wu is quite weird but it's closer to non-tonal languages and failure to pronounce tones correctly causes less problems for learners. Wu in Shanghai is different from Wu in suburbs, so, even if it's officially larger than Cantonese (about 80 mln speakers vs 70 mln Cantonese speakers), it seems less useful than Cantonese, which has much higher status and popularity. (I know a girl who speaks regional Wu and Shanghai Wu.) 80 mln, 70 mln seems a lot but it's a very small percentage of Mandarin speakers in Greater China. --Anatoli(обсудить/вклад)05:48, 22 October 2013 (UTC)Reply
Ah, I knew you would turn up on sensitive issues. (You're not planning to run away again, are you?) :) Well, that's the policy supported by the majority or rather the economic and other needs. For example, film and music industry (including Taiwan) is not producing much in dialects because there is little demand, not because someone makes them so. I communicate with Chinese people from various regions, all or most of them (notable exception is Cantonese) make Mandarin a priority. I know you are of different opinion but what are you going to do? Can you speak your dialect to all your friends, colleagues? Think of other extremes. In India, local languages give way to English because they could never agree on having one national, local language and they don't treat their languages the way Chinese do. --Anatoli(обсудить/вклад)01:30, 25 October 2013 (UTC)Reply
Giving them language statuses in Wiktionary is not going to assist their preservation. The situation that these varieties are losing speakers does not imply Wiktionary should designate them as languages as a consequence. Dialect#Dialect or language:
Language varieties are often called dialects rather than languages: 1) if they have no standard or codified form, 2) if they are rarely or never used in writing (outside reported speech), 3) if the speakers of the given language do not have a state of their own, 4) if they lack prestige with respect to some other, often standardised, variety.Wyang (talk) 02:57, 25 October 2013 (UTC)Reply
So, your WTF comment on Talk:爱斯导尼亚 means not badly formatted but "why this entry even exists, under this heading (Wu)"? With Chinese topolects, it's just the way Western linguists treat them, nothing personal. There is no current effort to unify them under "Chinese" at Wiktionary, even though, all Chinese Wiki projects use "zh", not "cmn". For foreign linguists, it's important to show the pronunciation, Chinese topolects differ greatly in pronunciation but have a lot in common or are almost identical (formal writing) in Hanzi. Mandarin uses standard pinyin, that's one of the main reason, why it's treated separately from Cantonese, Min Nan, Wu, etc. Changing the status quo would take a lot of energy and you may still lose. IMHO, it's better to concentrate on adding value, rather than making a point. --Anatoli(обсудить/вклад)03:15, 25 October 2013 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 11 years ago3 comments3 people in discussion
Tagged but not listed: "Excited by desire in the pursuit of any object; ardent to pursue, perform, or obtain; keenly desirous; hotly longing; earnest; zealous; impetuous; vehement." Not quite sure what the problem is. Perhaps it's a bit Websters 1913. Mglovesfun (talk) 11:40, 16 October 2013 (UTC)Reply
But the definition that would remain is none too good. We really should have the definition for the sense tag that precedes the synonyms list. DCDuringTALK01:10, 20 October 2013 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 10 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
This definition: "The final point of something in space or time."
The use of the word "final" is too temporal and telic. "Point" is too limiting, to an instant or an event. This definition doesn't even fit one of the usexes: "At the end of the story they fall in love".
Spatially, end can be a point, a line, an area, or a volume. As an area it could be as half of a total area ("the West End"). Temporally, it can be an instant or, usually, a period or a sequence of events, processes, or states.
Though I dislike the wording, Webster 1913 took pains with their first sense: "The extreme or last point or part of any material thing considered lengthwise (the extremity of breadth being side); hence, extremity, in general; the concluding part; termination; close; limit; as, the end of a field, line, pole, road; the end of a year, of a discourse; put an end to pain; -- opposed to beginning, when used of anything having a first part."
I think it would need to be changed into a Determiner anyway. "all" is not a property of something, but a reference specifier like other determiners. —CodeCat00:23, 8 December 2013 (UTC)Reply
I could also do it myself. I was just feeling lazy when I requested this. Mostly because the pronoun sense needs to be split across весь, вся, всё, and все. Additionally, I'm not sure what part of speech it is in "оно всё там", which is the exact 100% equivalent of "it's all there". --WikiTiki8900:45, 8 December 2013 (UTC)Reply
I'm not sure I can clean as per the nomination but I'm happy to take suggestions. The choice for SoP itself is not so obvious and the Russian Wiktionary uses "местоиме́нное прилага́тельное" (pronominal adjective). Perhaps providing more usexes would make the senses clearer? --Anatoli(обсудить/вклад)01:44, 16 December 2013 (UTC)Reply
"Бумажник упал в лужу и весь промок." What part of speech is that according to you? I guess you could say that it is an adverb and the second clause has a null subject, but then we'd have to add an adverb sense. Now that I think about it, I think that the adverb interpretation is more accurate because it also accounts for "Он весь промок." --WikiTiki8904:08, 16 December 2013 (UTC)Reply
That answer seems to agree with me that in "Бумажник упал в лужу и весь промок." and "Он весь промок.", it is an adverb. But this is a strange case of an adverb that agrees with a noun in gender, number, and case: "Я его всего высушил.", "её всю", etc. --WikiTiki8904:49, 16 December 2013 (UTC)Reply
We can get more people to weigh in than that. As I said above, the exact same dilemma exists in English, only since English does not have gender/number/case agreement, there's less of a problem calling it an adverb: "They all went home." ("Они все пошли домой."), "I ate it all." ("Я его/её всего/всю съел."). --WikiTiki8913:02, 16 December 2013 (UTC)Reply
It just making everything horribly complex to satisfy some arcane sense of category. I don’t see anything wrong with it the way it is. This reminds me of a few years ago when Michael decided to rename a bunch of files to separate them into Wiktionary:X and Appendix:X, and then I could never find the pages that I used to use because I don’t share his sense of categories. I never again saw some of those pages. —Stephen(Talk)20:22, 16 December 2013 (UTC)Reply
I'm not suggesting getting rid of anything we have. It's just that certain senses are missing (the adjective/pronoun/whatever-they-are ones), but are present in usage examples. A sense needs to be created for them, and since it is not an adjective/determiner, we have to decide what it is. --WikiTiki8920:27, 16 December 2013 (UTC)Reply
That’s what I’m saying. To me, весь is one simple part of speech. We used to call it an adjective, and in my opinion, that is what it is. Or mark them with the Russian terminology, attributive pronoun. All this modernistic stuff about determiners and such is just so much nonsense to me. If you want to divide it up into all sorts of part of speech, you have to do it yourself. I don’t recognize those categories and I don’t see the need for them. —Stephen(Talk)02:47, 17 December 2013 (UTC)Reply
That's not my point at all. I also consider the distinction between adjectives and determiners to be quite useless, especially in Russian. What I'm saying here is that in the cases I mentioned, it is not an adjective or determiner. It's either an adverb or a pronoun, depending on how you look at it. It makes more sense as an adverb, except for the fact that it declines for gender, number, and case. --WikiTiki8902:57, 17 December 2013 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 10 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
A lot of this user's early contributions were to add Bible verses to Chinese entries, but they added the citation without, AFAICT, indicating what translation, or even what verse, they were quoting. (Their later edits do include verse information.) Someone should add the verses or remove the usexes (which in general don't illustrate the uses of the words very well). - -sche(discuss)22:52, 24 December 2013 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 10 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Vietnamese entries contributed by Cehihin need review. Cehihin's methodology has yielded wildly incorrect readings and definitions in many cases, and the formatting is poor. Some examples:
𡮈𨳒: They appear to have just searched for Nôm characters for nhỏ and mọn, took two results at random, and combined them for a transliteration of nhỏ mọn.
𨳊: One of the readings, cu, appears to be a translation of the Cantonese sense, and the others appear to be readings of other characters that have cu as a reading.
𨳒: The definitions are just the Cantonese definitions, translated into Vietnamese. The Readings section is just a list of synonyms of the Vietnamese "definitions".
I spent the last few days rewriting some of Cehihin's entries, but there are scores more. Without knowing Vietnamese, here's how to write a basic Vietnamese character entry:
If I or another Vietnamese speaker has come along and rewritten the entry, there's probably no need to clean up further.
Otherwise, get Hán-Việt and Nôm readings for the character:
Search the list for a Latin-script entry that has a "Sino-Vietnamese transliteration" section. Expand the box under that heading and search for the character; all the words listed on the same line are Hán-Việt readings.
Search the list for a Latin-script entry that has a "Chữ Nôm" section. Expand the box under that heading and search for the character; all the words listed on the same line are Nôm readings.
Back here, delete the old Vietnamese entry and use this format (replace "宀02" with the radical and stroke number):
===Character===
====Readings====
{{vi-readings|hanviet=comma-separated list from step 2|nom=list from step 3|rs=宀02}}
===References===
* {{R:WinVNKey:Lê Sơn Thanh}}
Latest comment: 10 years ago7 comments3 people in discussion
There are many entries for short function words that have similar problems, but we've started an off-topic discussion of this one at Wiktionary:Requests for deletion#in cash, so we might as well begin with this one.
I've added a sense to in (though it, and many of the other senses, could use some tweaking) that covers this usage. When you're speaking of money, you can say "in" almost anything- cash, securities, tens and twenties, even Monopoly money. Chuck Entz (talk) 17:17, 3 May 2014 (UTC)Reply
I have taken a run at a subsense structure for the definitions. I feel we are still missing some senses and have unnecessary specificity in some definitions (See the sub-subsenses.), though the usexes could stay. I find prepositions among the hardest PoS sections I have tackled, requiring a great deal of abstraction to deal with the senses that are not spatial or temporal. DCDuringTALK20:25, 3 May 2014 (UTC)Reply
Much better, though getting it perfect might be a lifetime job. Sense 3-2 seems particularly off the mark: "he met his match in her" is just another way of saying "he met his match, and she was that match". All that stuff about "a place-like form of someone's (or something's) personality, as his, her or its psychic and physical characteristics" is just unnecessary verbiage. Consider, for instance: "In boxing, he found the perfect outlet for his anger and frustration". Chuck Entz (talk) 20:52, 3 May 2014 (UTC)Reply
I couldn't agree more. I just didn't have the courage to hack away at every piece. We are certainly missing subsenses and also some senses that are hard to fit under the senses now in the entry. Having access to the OED would help make sense of the groupings, though there might be too much information not strictly relevant to current senses. I should probably put some musings on Talk:in. DCDuringTALK21:09, 3 May 2014 (UTC)Reply
(edit conflict) There's also the "dressed in, wearing" sense, as in the famous quote from w:Animal Crackers: "I once shot an elephant in my pajamas- how the elephant got in my pajamas, I'll never know", not to mention the "target of an action, within a greater whole", as in "shot in the heart", or as in "they attacked the fortification in its most vulnerable section", or as in "he was shot in the fracas, which, as we all know, can be quite painful". Chuck Entz (talk) 22:03, 3 May 2014 (UTC)Reply
I had forgotten that five years ago I had created a page [[Appendix:Collocations of
in]], intended to provide a factual basis for improving the entry. In principle, using that data, we could develop an approach that would apply to other prepositions, for the data is easily obtained. We need to look at other lexicographers' efforts, of course, because they will have captured some less common uses. We should make sure that any sense from a Wiktionary contributor is fully captured as our contributors may have noted a change of meaning that has eluded others. Talk:in has some useful material. DCDuringTALK21:48, 3 May 2014 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 7 years ago3 comments3 people in discussion
Derived terms: This very large section includes many vernacular names of pigeon species and subspecies and many pigeon breeds (shown as Columba livia domestica, which is not a universally accepted species AFAICT), such as the 700 or so listed at w:List of pigeon breeds. These are probably legitimate. Some of the items in the DT section seem on their face to be SoP, but may be on the list or be short names for breeds on the list. It would help if someone knowledgeable about pigeon breeding could sort through this list. I will work on the vernacular names of species in the meanwhile. DCDuringTALK15:58, 8 October 2014 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 7 years ago9 comments4 people in discussion
Italian: feminine plural of muro. Makes no sense, muro is listed as a masculine noun with the plural muri, it says see also mura. If muro did have a feminine form, mura would be the singular and mure the plural (using the usual rules anyway). If there is such a meaning, what it is? Because we don't have it. Renard Migrant (talk) 17:42, 8 November 2014 (UTC)Reply
It really is the feminine plural of muro. Mura is used to give the idea of “togetherness”, in the same way that collective nouns are used. But the presentation can certainly be improved. — Ungoliant(falai)18:03, 8 November 2014 (UTC)Reply
Sounds like it could have been a direct descendant of the Latin neuter plural, except that mūrus is masculine. Does it really take feminine plural concord, e.g. Le mura sono alte? —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 18:10, 8 November 2014 (UTC)Reply
Sounds like a job for a usage note and example sentences. No one is going to expect a masculine noun to have, in addition to its regular masculine plural, a feminine plural form that looks like a feminine singular. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 18:31, 8 November 2014 (UTC)Reply
Muro doesn't mention it (at least not its meaning) and mura really doesn't mention its meaning either, so of one these entries has to mention what it means. Renard Migrant (talk) 22:48, 8 November 2014 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 9 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion
Is there any reason why this should have the plural as lemma? The singular is attested;
the second definition needs rewording. It’s not “the relationship […]” but “people having the relationship […]” (I can’t think of a way of doing it elegantly);
looking at google books:"co-parent-in-law"|"co-parents-in-law", it seems the most common use is in translating languages that have a single word for this. Is this worth mentioning in the usage notes? Or maybe a context label like chiefly anthropology and linguistics.
Maybe a good idea in principal, but these have been transformed by Pass a Method into lame POV cruft: their theory seems to be that no religion should be mentioned unless all the religions are mentioned. The problem, of course, is that there are lots and lots of religions, mythologies, pantheons, etc., and many of them are virtually unknown, so lists like this tend to be hit-and-miss, and give undue weight to trivia.
Add to that the fact that PAM has very poor judgment, and seems to be randomly adding anything they run into as a religion without really thinking through whether it actually is a religion. Some of the "religions" are being rfved at the moment, and I suspect that there are some secular philosophies and ethical systems mixed in, too. I included the religious texts, as well, even though they do seem to be all real religious texts, because I have my doubts as to how representative the list is. Chuck Entz (talk) 17:02, 1 March 2015 (UTC)Reply
The majority of the entries correspond with a list of what the UK governemnt regards as religion. The UK government's statistics can't be that erroneous can they? Check out the Uk governemnt census here. 89.242.85.24809:05, 2 March 2015 (UTC)Reply
That's not the list of official UK religions, that's the list of (statistically significant) write-in entries on the census (note that all major UK religions - Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism - are absent from that list). The government doesn't regard Jedi or Heavy Metal as religions, it just noted that it received a large number of these as write-ins. The actual census question used "No religion, Christian (all denominations), Buddhist, Hindu, Jewish, Muslim, Sikh, Any other religion (write in)" - which is not to say that those are more official than other religions in the UK, but just that those were the most statistically useful to list (for instance, paganism is roughly as common as Judaism or Sikhism in the UK, but wasn't included because it covered too many different traditions). You can read a very detailed analysis of the technical details of creating a useful but not over-comprehensive list of religions by the Office of National Statistics here, which might give some pointers for creating more useful versions of these templates. Smurrayinchester (talk) 09:36, 9 March 2015 (UTC)Reply
I suggest either turning the template into a list of only the ten or so biggest religions, or deleting it and directing users to the category instead. — Ungoliant(falai)12:29, 9 March 2015 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 9 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
An English section was added by our incompetent supernatural-obsessed IP from England. In typical fashion, everything that isn't copied verbatim from Wikipedia has problems. Still, the name is used in English, and we should have an English article for the mythological character (and probably the given name, too) under some variant of the name, with alt-form entries under others. Can someone sort this all out? Thanks! Chuck Entz (talk) 22:54, 1 May 2015 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 9 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Along with anhypostasis, can we make these entries make sense? Anhypostasis, for example, is a little far off from the OED's defintion: “Lack of a substantial or personal existence.” —JohnC502:28, 18 May 2015 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 9 years ago6 comments3 people in discussion
This entry has a "Request for cleanup" on grounds of "re-split by etym" dating from September 2011, which seems a long time for such a basic word. There does not seem to have ever been a discussion about this (I finally located the original entry here). Ideally this should be attended to. I would be tempted to put everything under one etymology. Is that a good idea? 81.132.196.22500:17, 9 June 2015 (UTC)Reply
There has been discussion of a similar case in which some definitions seem to from an Old English verb and some from a cognate Old English noun or adjective. There are a significant number of basic English words with this characteristic. Some favor combining, some favor a split. Some entries seem to be easy to split, others not so much. I would recommend registering and earning whitelist status by working on less controversial entries. DCDuringTALK02:08, 9 June 2015 (UTC)Reply
It's not important that I do it. I think the main point is that a 3 1/2 year-old cleanup tag on a very common word probably should either be addressed or removed. 81.132.196.22502:41, 9 June 2015 (UTC)Reply
I think that the main point is that there is a larger disagreement that prevents this from being resolved without risk of edit war. DCDuringTALK14:17, 12 June 2015 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 9 years ago5 comments2 people in discussion
I don't see the point of having similar definitions and examples under three categories: Adjective, Adverb and Prepositional Phrase. --Hekaheka (talk) 04:45, 14 June 2015 (UTC)Reply
Blame me. I had RfDed the adjective and adverb PoS sections 1 Sept, 2010 at the conclusion of the RfD discussion for the "Preposition" (not "Prepositional phrase") section. I did not institute the new RfDs on the RfD page because I thought the not-yet-removed previous RfD needed to stay a bit longer and I believed the headers interfered (which they do) meaningfully (which they don't) with each other. Liliana-60 removed the RfD tags a year later.
Do you think you have included in the Prepositional Phrase -section everything that is worth including, i.e. could the Adverb and Adjective sections just be deleted (after copying the translations, of course)? --Hekaheka (talk) 22:58, 14 June 2015 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 7 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion
MWOnline has 7 senses. We have 14. Our definitions have a large amount of overlap, no subsense structure, and not even an intelligible order of presentation. DCDuringTALK13:39, 6 July 2015 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 9 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion
bitch off says "To complain or criticize", which I've never heard of. I see some use of something similar, but nothing citable, and I think it may mean something more like "to run off through complaining or criticizing". This Dictionary of Slang just records bitched off as "furious", no verb. WurdSnatcher (talk) 03:21, 10 July 2015 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 9 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
This article, particularly the adjectival sense is an absolute mess. The glosses on the translation tables don't clearly match up with definitions, are out of order, and many are missing. I attempted to rearrange the definitions a bit to add some clarity, but I found the mess absolutely confusing myself, so what I've done may be undone without causing me any offense, so long as the article is improved. The definitions also contain a level of vocabulary above that of the word they're defining, which will absolutely not be helpful to most people looking up the word.
I was halfway through fixing the translation section when my browser crashed, leaving me absolutely annoyed, so I'm afraid I must pass the unpleasant job off to someone else, since I feel what I tried to do ended up being an absolute waste of time. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 19:35, 21 July 2015 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 9 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
The wording of the definitions is an embarrassment to Wiktionary, IMO. At least two senses seem virtually identical. Some senses may not be attestable. DCDuringTALK22:29, 22 August 2015 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 8 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion
Sense: (finance) A directional position or interest, by a dealer in a financial market – if one wishes to unload stock, one is “axed to sell” or “has an axe”.[1] Derived from “have an axe to grind”, which is also used.
I've make it shorter and a little more concise, with two examples to make it clearer how it's used in relation to financial markets. Page already mentions "axe to grind" as a derived term, so that was removed. Reference stayed, because it really does help explain the usage further. I'm not a regular contributor, so I'm sorry if it's a little out of order but I think I got it all right. 2601:602:8601:4A00:B9D5:E880:DCC3:A63116:47, 24 December 2015 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 9 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
See Talk:goblet drum. Both Wiktionary and Wikipedia have, for some time, described "goblet drum" as though it is a synonym for the darbuka, which is one type of goblet drum. "Goblet drum" is a musicological term, there are lots of goblet-shaped drums. goblet drum does not mean darbuka any more than flat-backed lute means guitar. So I've added a better def at goblet drum, but the translations appear to mostly be translations of darbuka, not goblet drum. Some are not. Can someone who knows more about the applicable languages move most of the translations to darbuka? WurdSnatcher (talk) 16:39, 18 October 2015 (UTC)Reply
I'm not sure how important the term is to either topic. The Wikipedia articles don't mention the word. Are there sources that say it is important? I'd just delete sense 4 and 5. Dbfirs01:07, 1 November 2015 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 9 years ago5 comments3 people in discussion
A disease in turnips and other crops, produced by a species of caterpillar.
As far as I can tell from a glance at Google and bgc, black canker is the caterpillar itself. I haven't seen anything indicating it's the disease (but didn't look properly). Separately, there seems to be a disease of trees, or maybe a fungus that causes such, of the same name.—msh210℠ (talk) 23:54, 12 November 2015 (UTC)Reply
In plants black canker seems to be any cankers that manifest in black disfigurement of plant tissue, including various ones affecting cherry, apple, parsnip, soursop, willow, and mango. There is a black canker caterpillar (genus Lua error in Module:parameters at line 858: Parameter "noshow" is not used by this template.), but modern sources refer to fungi and bacteria as the causal agents, mostly differing by affected plant. Perhaps the caterpillar is a vector for some black cankers. It seems like yet another little research project for proper disambiguation. DCDuringTALK00:49, 13 November 2015 (UTC)Reply
Just FYI, Tenthredo aren't caterpillars, they're sawfly larvae- primitive Hymenoptera. They do look a lot like caterpillars, though (sometimes it takes counting legs to tell them apart- sawflies have more pairs of legs than caterpillars do). Chuck Entz (talk) 04:08, 13 November 2015 (UTC)Reply
Here is an example of the larva being called black canker without any mention of a disease. Sawflies tend to appear in large numbers and devour everything in sight belonging to their food plant species with unnerving speed. If your entire crop is being rapidly destroyed by a huge mass of insects, you might start to think of them collectively, as a force of nature like a disease. Chuck Entz (talk) 04:33, 13 November 2015 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 8 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Has two different pronunciations that don't match. Says it's a collective noun and the lemma form gender doesn't match the singular form. Already an entry at the singular form with another pronunciation. DTLHS (talk) 00:37, 17 November 2015 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 8 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
A rare, obsolete term with extensively-footnoted usage notes mentioning just about everywhere the term was used. I'd call this encyclopedic, but it's far too boring to work as an encyclopedia article. Can someone prune this down to something that looks like a dictionary entry? Chuck Entz (talk) 03:24, 14 January 2016 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 8 years ago3 comments3 people in discussion
I'm having a hard time telling which instances of * * are purely formatting errors and which ones are linguistic notation. ([2]might need checking also) —suzukaze (t・c) 03:42, 9 February 2016 (UTC)Reply
I eliminated a few that I felt were unneeded, principally in citations. As for the rest, the second of some of the paired asterisks seems to be intended to appear, indicating some kind of language error. Some are hard to discern. Many could use some kind of explanation of why they deserve to be so marked. I'd consider grouping them by language and rfcing them that way. DCDuringTALK04:23, 9 February 2016 (UTC)Reply
Some linguists use a double asterisk to indicate a form that is both reconstructed and wrong. Thus, parallel to something like "In English, shrimp is a possible word, but *srimp is not a possible word", they might write "In Proto-Indo-European, *bʰerdʰ- is a possible root, but **berd- is not a possible root". I don't know if any of our double asterisks are serving that function, though. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 07:01, 13 February 2016 (UTC)Reply
I had trouble with the definitions, too. I hope I have not been a mischief (3.1.1) and that any mischiefs (1.3) I may have undertaken do not rise to the level of (serious) mischief (2.1). If the definitions are comprehensible then it would be easier to proceed to the specific problems that @Jberkel had.
I had the most trouble believing in the "agent of trouble" definitions (3), but found one citation for each and could probably find more. DCDuringTALK01:07, 13 February 2016 (UTC)Reply
It would benefit from some simplification, but the older uses seem quite distinct, at least in degree, from the most common current senses. DCDuringTALK14:03, 13 February 2016 (UTC)Reply
In general I agree and avoid moving things to Wikisaurus but for these longs lists it makes sense, it's even specifically mentioned in WT:ELE: "Instead of listing many synonyms in each of several synonymous entries, a single reference can be made in each to a common Wikisaurus page". – Jberkel (talk) 14:45, 13 February 2016 (UTC)Reply
It is one thing to add a reference to a Wikisaurus page to an entry that had no synonyms, and it is another thing to remove lists and replace them with the references only. WT:ELE should probably be edited to clarify whether editors find such a replacement okay. --Dan Polansky (talk) 14:52, 13 February 2016 (UTC)Reply
I liked this revision and found nothing confusing. By contrast, what I see now seems rather confusing, above all the subsensing, although it is probably more accurate and refined. I especially do not understand what is going on with the 3rd sense. --Dan Polansky (talk) 14:56, 13 February 2016 (UTC)Reply
I don't see why moving things around is such a controversial thing, especially given the size of these lists. Why can't entries be modified according to guidelines? Some options we have: 1) Keep synonyms in the entry and add a mechanism with a collapsible display, similar to {{der3}} and {{rel3}} which makes it feasible to include long lists 2) move long lists of synonyms to Wikisaurus + add references. 3) cap the size of lists. I personally prefer 1). – Jberkel (talk) 15:26, 13 February 2016 (UTC)Reply
@Jberkel: Too many people oppose moving content away from the mainspace; multiple people proposed abandoning Wikisaurus and moving its content to mainspace. It is therefore wise to tread lightly and avoid harming Wikisaurus position and reputation by avoiding associating Wikisaurus project with content being moved away from the mainspace. As for the comma-separated list to be too long to display directly, I think you'll find you are in the minority of people who have any problem with them. --Dan Polansky (talk) 19:57, 14 February 2016 (UTC)Reply
I don't like long lists of anything (except definitions) unless they can be concealed by a show-hide. These particular lists seem like a hodge-podge of things which don't match the headword's various definitions very well, so they could readily be shortened, one list at a time, once the definitions were stabilized.
But in this case the lists would be made more useful if they could match some of the definitions. For example, the main current sense of mischief as something "minor trouble or annoyance" would warrant a subset of the current list which does not differentiate by degree of trouble or harm. Thus, annoyance, nuisance, and prank might belong whereas sabotage might not.
A more drastic approach would be to not have any long list of synonyms for any obsolete sense or one that is currently rare. A Wikisaurus link could still provide access to a fuller set of synonyms. One advantage in the case of this entry is that it would somewhat reduce the weight of the obsolete/less common senses in the entry.
For any of this to be worth doing we first need to stabilize the entry. OED has even more senses than we now show. I don't know whether a fuller set of definitions can usefully be brought into any sense/subsense structure that I can produce. DCDuringTALK20:33, 14 February 2016 (UTC)Reply
If the lists are deficient as for accuracy or coherence, they need to be pruned rather than dumped to Wikisaurus. If they are considered too long even after that pruning, they may get shortened to contain only the most salient or common synonyms. --Dan Polansky (talk) 20:45, 14 February 2016 (UTC)Reply
BTW, could someone with access to the OED see whether they have a different, preferably shorter, list of senses and a similar delineation of which senses might be considered archaic, which countable, etc. Cambridge Advanced Learner's has only two senses, both uncountable, one for "behavior that is slightly bad", another for "damage or harm", but links to entries for do sb/yourself a mischief (we don't have any corresponding entry), ie, countable mischief, and make mischief which means about the same as stir the pot. DCDuringTALK17:41, 13 February 2016 (UTC)Reply
I am informed that the OED has 13 senses and subsenses, but some of them seem to be archaic (they label them obsolete) or rare in current use. Two are legal, too finely distinguished for me to even paraphrase. DCDuringTALK18:38, 13 February 2016 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 8 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
After last night's controversy over Rhymes:Romanian/abilitate, which Equinox thankfully deleted, I have been going through this category and discovered that the user who contributed, has made a lot of errors. E.g.:
Categorisation is wrong. For instance, Rhymes:Romanian/e is placed in an inexistent category named Romanian rhymes/e and this tends to happen to every page in the category Rhymes:Romanian. I compared it to Rhymes:French and it doesn't happen there.
The category Rhymes:Romanian is a mess – among the many problems, we have for instance Rhymes:Romanian/easkɘ: Romanian doesn't have IPA ɘ. Also, the user who added these categories misinterpreted "rhyming with..." as meaning "words ending with..." which was proven last night after the Rhymes:Romanian/abilitate debacle.
Latest comment: 8 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Language: English
Part of speech: Adjective
Definition:
{{sense|idiom}} A statement meaning an end of a discussion.
Added by a notoriously incompetent IP who managed to get a little bit of everything wrong. There may be something worth salvaging in this, but I'm not sure if it's English or Latin, and not 100% sure that it's not SOP. They provided a link to an article on a Roman Catholic website as a reference, which suggests that this is in use among Catholics. Chuck Entz (talk) 04:06, 8 March 2016 (UTC)Reply
I've seen this phrase before, it's an old maxim that (if I recall correctly) pre-dates the RC / protestant schism, that says that in matters of canon law &c. decisions of the bishop of Rome are final. Nowadays in protestant circles mostly quoted as an example of how not to go about things. I can imagine it could metaphorically also be applied to other cases where someone's word (presumably the word of someone with authority) ends a discussion or dispute, but even so I think the lemma as quoted is confusing and unclear.
Latest comment: 8 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Usage notes with reference (not included here): "Accountability is condemned by some as jargon of the political élite and referring to a mechanism for democratic good-governance that is unworkable in practice."
I can't quite work out what it's on about and the fact that this is mentioned in one book, without seeing the citation in question, so what? One author expresses an opinion on a word and we put in some usage notes? Also very weasely. Condemned by some? Who? I'm looking for a reason to not just delete these as nonsense. Renard Migrant (talk) 18:03, 20 March 2016 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 8 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
This is apparently unattested for CFI purposes as a single word (there are lots of web hits, though, so it probably needs to be moved to tracker phone. The definition gives the impression that it's used for tracking other people or things, but the usage seems to indicate that the idea is a phone that can be tracked. There were a few other problems, but they were easily removed as clearly wrong.
There's probably a real entry in there, somewhere, but it needs to be either fixed up or deleted. I don't have time for either, at the moment. Chuck Entz (talk) 02:37, 22 March 2016 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 8 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion
If etymology 2 is correct, some definitions need to be brought over from etymology 1. I'm not sure if this belongs here or in the Etymology Scriptorium, but at any rate, I don't have time to fix the entry myself. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 21:05, 31 March 2016 (UTC)Reply
One approach is to split the noun and verb senses now in Ety 1 leaving all or most noun senses in Ety 1 and putting all or most verb senses in Ety 2. Another is to combine Ety 1 and Ety 2 on the grounds that the stems of the etyma are the same. The MED asserts that Middle Englishrakken (verb) is deemed to derive from rak (noun). I have the feeling that the etymology is confused by the persistent trend to Dutch etymological imperialism that characterizes many of our etymologies. DCDuringTALK22:48, 31 March 2016 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 8 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Should the proper noun be uppercase? Everything should probably be at the non-ligature spelling (we tend to lemmatize modern rather than archaic and ligatured spellings when possible). - -sche(discuss)20:36, 4 April 2016 (UTC)Reply
It could be RFV as the user is claiming it's not used in Latin (not as an idiom, anyway) but rather it's used in English, obviously a coinage based on Latin if that is indeed the case. Renard Migrant (talk) 18:45, 7 April 2016 (UTC)Reply
That doesn't make it English though. I've seen the same term used in Portuguese, German, French and Dutch texts, and I think readers are aware of the fact that this is a Latin coinage. So labelling it as English seems a bit silly and it would also require the lemma to be duplicated for pretty much every European language and even some non-European ones. And it also assumes there is no such thing as modern Latin. For what it's worth, the Latin wiki article on the topic uses this same phrase.
I've found a text (https://books.google.nl/books?id=ZdaP5IehqFsC&pg=PA398#v=onepage&q="argumentum ad hominem") saying that around 500 AD the term was used in a different sense, namely an argument that tries to convince someone by reasoning from his own (possibly mistaken) assumptions. The example quoted is that if the other person beliefs all useful things to be good, you can convince him that something is good if you can prove its utility. (In that sense the modern use could be considered a narrower sense, since it follows the same general form: if your audience beliefs that cat people make for unreliable witnesses, you can convince your audience that someone is an unreliable witness by showing him to be a cat person. Note however that originally ‘homo’ referred to the person to be convinced or the audience and not necessarily to the person to be attacked.) — This unsigned comment was added by 80.114.147.138 (talk) at 08:55, April 10, 2016.
Thanks. I'd noticed that the older usage was as you say. Century 1911 had that older concept at the core of their definition, but referred to medieval logicians who, extending a point of Aristotle's, said ad hominem arguments were of two kinds: one against a person's positions, the other against his person as "by taunting, rayling, rendring checke for checke, or by scorning." (Thomas Blundeville c. 1575). This isn't quite the modern meaning which includes smear campaigns, IMO. DCDuringTALK15:06, 10 April 2016 (UTC)Reply
Blundeville said: ‘Confutation of person is done either by taunting, rayling, rendring checke for checke, or by scorning.’ So according to him, refutation of person means to either ridicule someone or show contempt for him. Both those meanings fall squarely into the modern category of ad hominem. (As such I'm a bit puzzled by the use of ‘thus’ in the C1911, but maybe the editor meant what I meant by ‘narrower sense’ above.)
The quotation of Wilson immediately afterwards though seems to draw the distinction between the Aristotelian straight solution and the solution tailored to the man, which is the old sense again. Or so at least it seems to me. And I think the same applies to the quote of More.
I think I may have found some more quotes from Latin texts around 1700 (give or take a century) but vetting them would take a lot of time. So I don't know if these texts use the old or new definition. Still, by now I think it somewhat probable that this phrase was indeed somewhat commonly used in Latin texts, at least newer ones.
An other interesting thing is that the old-style ad hominem can also be used to argue not from someone's actual assumptions, but from things he must assert for some other reason. — This comment was unsigned.
The modern definitions, from A Handlist of Rhetorical Terms 2nd ed, (1991):
"#Abuse of your opponent's character.
"#Basing your argument on what you know of your opponent's character."
But, perhaps more significantly for this page, per COCA, ad hominem is currently used with attack much more than with argument or argumentum. Even when used with argument or argumentum it retains the same sense of attacking the source of an argument rather than its substance (ad rem). I can find no trace in current use of the historical sense, which seemed to be standard even in the 19th century. There was, however, in the 19th century much use of the term in reference to what we now call flip-flopping, which seems to have become an attack on the sincerity of the flip-flopper, not just an observation of logical inconsistency. DCDuringTALK17:05, 10 April 2016 (UTC)Reply
The only general dictionary that includes it is Collins, as follows:
fallacious argument that attacks not an opponent's beliefs but his motives or character
argument that shows an opponent's statement to be inconsistent with his other beliefs
Latest comment: 8 years ago3 comments3 people in discussion
I think the words ‘capital’ and ‘principal’ are too ambiguous to be used as definitions by themselves. Somebody fluent in Sanskrit should verify what exactly is meant.
The definitions for मूल्य(mūlya) at the Sanskrit Dictionary suggests that the capital sense is more specifically capital in the form of goods purchased, rather than capital in the form of the monetary amount initially invested: the principal as opposed to the interest. The latter sense is what is given for मूल(mūla) instead.
Apparently there are plenty of Indian Sanskritists who converse to one another in fluent Sanskrit - but I suspect that perhaps none of them are Wiktionarians. - Sonofcawdrey (talk) 23:30, 9 April 2016 (UTC)Reply
I notice a discrepancy between our definitions for मूल(mūla) and मूल्य(mūlya) and those of SanskritDictionary.com. If the latter are more reliable, then maybe some knowledgeable person could work on this.
Latest comment: 8 years ago5 comments3 people in discussion
...some of which use "(Black's Law)" as a context (not formatted), and many of which say "(A Non-Copied Entry)" in the references, which is probably not necessary to note. Check the contributions of 75.69.172.246 and X8BC8x. - -sche(discuss)19:33, 15 April 2016 (UTC)Reply
The user has replied to me in private. He/she seems to intend to not edit anymore. Seems inexperienced with wikis as I would normally expect a reply on a talk page to go on the talk page rather than in private message. Renard Migrant (talk) 22:10, 19 April 2016 (UTC)Reply
Oh, dear. We don't want to scare people off, but we do want them to exercise some care and ask for help if needed. Maybe we can refer the user to some places where he or she can seek advice? — SMUconlaw (talk) 16:35, 20 April 2016 (UTC)Reply
I don't really want to quote a private message directly (even one with no personal information in it) but I get the impression they hadn't been scared off so much as they feel like these entries would be better handled by someone with Wiktionary experience. Renard Migrant (talk) 22:01, 20 April 2016 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 8 years ago7 comments5 people in discussion
Hello. On that page, we list ДНР as an "alternative form" of Донецкая Народная Республика, but AFAICS it's just an initialism. Should we move it somewhere else? Mr KEBAB (talk) 14:16, 23 April 2016 (UTC)Reply
We used to put forms such as that under the heading ====Abbreviations====, but I believe that has been discontinued. I don’t know what if anything has taken its place. —Stephen(Talk)15:06, 3 May 2016 (UTC)Reply
I searched and see that there are quite a few entries with an ====Abbreviations==== section, so maybe it is still being used. For example, seee мужской род. That would be my preference. —Stephen(Talk)15:52, 3 May 2016 (UTC)Reply
In my opinion, we should use the header ====Abbreviations====, although some words that start out as abbreviations take on a slightly different shade of meaning or usage and then would have to be put under ====Synonyms==== or ====Related terms====. --WikiTiki8915:50, 3 May 2016 (UTC)Reply
I could be wrong, but I believe it was the POS header "===Abbreviation===" that was discontinued. I don't know anything about an "====Abbreviations====" subsection header. Chuck Entz (talk) 02:37, 4 May 2016 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 8 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
The third sense could use some attention:
Ostensible source/founder of Mithraism, the "mysteries" of the Roman Mysteriae Mithrae ("Mysteries of Mithras", "Mithraic Mysteries"), an astrology-centric, middle-platonic mystery cult of the 1st-4th century Roman Empire whose adherents worshiped in "caves" (i.e. Mithraea) in imitation of "Zoroaster". (Porphyry, De Antro Nympharum 6)
On this page, it says "A Korean character used in transliteration." But transliteration in which language. Chinese or Korean? TIA 21:17, 30 April 2016 (UTC)
Latest comment: 8 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion
Although I understand the concerns of this anon, I don't believe that recent changes are in line with how we treat German lemmas. Any input from more seasoned German-speaking users? --Robbie SWE (talk) 07:11, 2 May 2016 (UTC)Reply
The Pitjantjatjara word had a cleanup request from 21 February 2015 with the comment: "Almost certainly not Pitjantjatjara. It appears to be Ngaanyatjarra, but I can't be sure of that." IMHO that doesn't sound like it's a matter of RFC but of RFV. -Ikiaika (talk) 17:18, 6 May 2016 (UTC)Reply
Yes, but unattested items appearing in RfV could be deleted after just 30 days. RfVs for items in languages with very few contributors might not be seen for quite some time. RfC allows more time. DCDuringTALK17:34, 6 May 2016 (UTC)Reply
It had an RFC tag for over a year and nothing changed. I might be mistaken, but I doubt that anything would change in the nearest time and I doubt that there would be much attention for the entry. So I hope that this discussion brings some attention towards the entry and that the RFC/RFV can be resolved. As ngaa also has other entries ("Gamilaraay" and "Hiligaynon"), it wouldn't be completely deleted anyway and one could still find the 'Pitjantjatjara' entry through the version history. However, I'd be okay with changing it to RFC again and moving this discussion to Wiktionary:Requests for cleanup to raise some attention and to give the entry some more time.
There is heavy overlap between Pitjantjatjara, Yankunytjatjara and Ngaanyatjarra. Some would consider them dialects of the same language. To make matters worse, texts are often misidentified as being in one language when they are actually in one of the others; a lot of reference works relating to these languages are old, use idiosyncratic orthographies, and contain inaccuracies; and Ngaanyatjarra in particular seems to have quite little material available. All this makes it very difficult to sort out the entries in these languages. We really need the assistance of an expert in Western Desert languages to sort out the situation and help organise our coverage.
It probably is a matter for RFV, but I don't think there are many users here who would be able to deal with this problem. I'd favour keeping the RFC tag in place for now. I will have to go and look up a Ngaanyatjarra word list in a library when I have time. This, that and the other (talk) 06:06, 7 May 2016 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 8 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Many nouns in the category have a known gender: Given names of male persons are masculine, given names of female persons are feminine, names of cities are neuter. While it's easy to add the gender, it's maybe not so easy to verify it, and it's not so easy to add the genitive.
As for the gender:
For greater cities one should be able find examples like "das schöne Berlin", "in Berlin, das", "Berlin ... es". For smaller and less known cities it might be harder to find such examples.
Some examples for the gentive:
Catharina should have the genitives (der) Catharina and Catharinas, maybe also Catharina's (obsolete nowadays, though colloquially it might be written with a Deppenapostroph). Note that the proper noun genitive Catharinas is an exception of the rule that feminine nouns are invariable in the singular.
Kassel should have the genitives (des) Kassel and Kassels, maybe also Kassel's (obsolete nowadays, though colloquially it might be written with a Deppenapostroph).
Worms should have the genitives (des) Worms and Worms', maybe also Wormsens (similar to e.g. Klausens). "Wormsens Bischof" and "Bevölkerung Wormsens" can be found, but "Wormsens" is rare anyway.
When just adding the gender, the templates often automatically add a genitive which (often) is incorrect or incomplete in case of proper nouns.
-Ikiaika (talk) 22:19, 11 May 2016 (UTC)Reply
I don't know how one could prood either of these statements, but German should have it the name from Latin. The older German spellings Constantin and Constantinopel (now Konstantinopel) are evidences for this. In older German texts one maybe can even find the Latin names and maybe even declined the Latin way.
"Finnish: Konstantinus" looks like it even has the Latin ending -us, not a Greek os. I don't know how Finnish borrowed Latin and Greek words, but the entry Konstantinus says it's from Latin. Similary "Icelandic: Konstantínus", "Estonian: Constantinus" and "Turkish: Constantinus" (all in -us and not in -os) could be from Latin.
Latest comment: 8 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion
This user has been contributing quite a variety of new entries in good faith, but without a good understanding of what they were doing. Some cleanup has already been done, but at epithelially I ran into the definition "In a epithelial manner", and realized how much like an assembly line their definition-writing was. I think we need to take a second look at their edits with an eye for other examples of glib meaninglessness that might have slipped under the radar while we've been focusing on vandalism and serious incompetence. Chuck Entz (talk) 05:55, 21 June 2016 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 8 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion
In the French section, one of the definitions is "the regions (provincial France)", plural sic. What does this mean? Does province refer to "one of the regions of provincial France", perhaps? Or to provincial France as a whole? Side note, the English definitions could also use some work, e.g. "The most common subdivision of Canada, but exclusive of its territories" makes it sound like a province is one thing, the way death is "The cessation of life"; a better definition might be along the lines of "One of the subdivisions of Canada that is not a territory", but perhaps someone can come up with even better. - -sche(discuss)03:09, 1 July 2016 (UTC)Reply
In French you say en province meaning not much more than "elsewhere than in Paris", so yes, I would say that French province often corresponds with the English plural "regions, provinces". Ƿidsiþ11:34, 2 July 2016 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 8 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
The declension is incorrect. The vocative is Θωμᾶ (compare with Latin Thoma) and not Θωμᾶς and the word does not belong to the first declension. Same could be true for many other entries like Ἰωνᾶς, Σατανᾶς, Ἰησοῦς.
Sources:
"Grammatik des neutestamentlichen Sprachgebrauchs", edited by Alex. Buttmann, 1859, pg. 17 ff. (the declension pattern is there called "weak declension")
"Ausführliche Grammatik der griechischen Sprache", by Raphael Kühner, 2nd edition, first section of the first part, 1869, pg. 381 ff. (the declension pattern is there called "mixed declension")
No sources:
Smyth's grammar (e.g. here) is based on Attic Greek
Latest comment: 8 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
The accusative is also "Thomam" besides "Thoman". Same might be true for many other Latin nouns in as.
Here is a (Spanish?) grammar which has Thomas, Thomae, Thomae, Thoman and Thomam, Thoma, Thoma (by common Latin case order nom., gen., dat., acc., voc., abl.).
Thōmās, Thōmam with Greek nominative but Latin accusative (which fits to Latin genitive and dative)
Thōmas, Thōmam - though maybe Late, Middle or New Latin, compare with German Thomas [ˈtoːmas] and Lucas/Lukas [ˈluːkas] which (a) should have their length from Latin or (b) could have been used in New Latin but with German vowel length.
It seems to be copied from fr:void (NOT fr:voide which has a different regional label) and for some reason, changed from Occitan to Old French. Possibly one of those things where you've got two windows open and you edit the wrong one. FWIW FEW lists vuech and voig as the Old Provençal and voide does seem to be Old and/or Middle French, either as a feminine form or as a masculine and feminine form. Renard Migrant (talk) 19:36, 23 July 2016 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 7 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion
Those three entries are in Category:English clitics. 'd, linked to from 've, is not listed as a clitic but as a suffix. -'s (note the hyphen) has a verb part of speech with the headword line "-'s (clitic)" and then other parties of speech with the headword line "’s" (should that be moved to 's, with prominent cross-links between the two entries, or should the headword lines be updated to include the hyphen?). Can someone check that the entries are in the right category, check whether other entries like 'd belong in the clitic category, and check whether some of the POS sections of -'s should be moved or have their headword-lines updated? Some of the mess in -'s is probably my doing; I'm sorry. - -sche(discuss)19:35, 31 July 2016 (UTC)Reply
I second the request for clean up with regard to this issue. Given the discussion in Talk:'ve, it seems that clitics are not suffixes (for morphological reasons), though of course they are suffixes in the sense that they are written affixed to the ends of other words. Accordingly, I propose the following:
We should use section headings that reflect the POS served by the clitic, e.g. ====Verb====. My rationale is that, when parsing, clitics must be identified as having separate parts of speech from the words they are affixed to. Consider the sentences "she's talking" and "let's eat", where 's acts as an auxiliary verb and as a pronoun, respectively. Simply tagging this as suffix robs the parse of useful information.
We should use headword macros of the form {{head|en|POS|cat2=clitics|clitic}} for the appropriate POS. This lists the term in both, e.g., Category:English verbs and Category:English clitics and clearly marks the definition with "(clitic)". To my knowledge, there is no separate clitic headword macro, though one could be defined as suggested.
Note: This macro will also list the word in Category:English lemmas, which appears to be correct given the categorization of Category:English clitics. There are possible workarounds if this is not desired.
Undecided: We may also want to use "cat3=suffixes" in order to list the term in Category:English suffixes as well. Clitics aren't the same as other suffixes, but I suspect many users will expect to find them in Category:English suffixes because they occur at the ends of words. (Clitics can also be prefixes, though mostly in languages other than English; the only English candidate I can think of is s', as in s'ok. Noting this via category inclusion seems appropriate.)
We should avoid the use of hyphens in clitic page titles already demarcated with apostrophes. This seems to be the present trend, and it serves to establish clitics' distinction from other affixes (i.e., their syntactic independence). English clitics almost always have apostrophes where the hyphen would go; the only notable exception is -s', though this is a weird case as either a hybrid non-clitic plural -s and clitic possessive 's or a modified possessive 's after an existing s (itself not a suffix). (Note that -n't is not a clitic!)
We may nonetheless want to add usage notes indicating that the form should always occur affixed to the preceding word, unless we are confident that users will interpret the apostrophe itself to indicate that. (We currently assume users interpret the hyphen that way.)
Alternately: We could go the opposite route and always use hyphens in clitic page titles. This eliminates any possibility of confusion between clitics and other entries with apostrophes at either end such as 'twas and doin'. Further, it would separate the entries for s' as it occurs in, e.g., boys' club and s'ok (assuming the later had an entry and indeed is a clitic).
Latest comment: 8 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion
Firstly, this should be in a category, even if only the "non-entry" category that {{no entry}} adds. Secondly, the page it directs users to for more information never mentions it ... is せう an obsolete form of every sense of しょう, or only of some? - -sche(discuss)04:52, 1 August 2016 (UTC)Reply
Japanese kana entries are basically all about reading -- i.e., pronunciation. The historical kana rendering せう was formerly read as /ɕeu/. Over time, this pronunciation shifted to /ɕoː/, and during the spelling reforms of the Showa era, the kana spelling was changed to しょう to match the pronunciation. There is nothing in modern Japanese that is read as せう, with a modern pronunciation of /seu/.
I've reworded the usage note to match the above. Is that clearer?
By GBC it seems like "SchH" is used in English, but abbreviates German "Schutzhund" (or "Schutzhundeprüfung"). Alternative form could be SchH.. German forms could be Sch.H., SchH., SchH. German SchH could also abbreviate Schutzhundeprüfung. Related terms could be BH (Begleithundeprüfung), WH (Wachhundprüfung), maybe also AD (Ausdauerprüfung), FH (Fährtenprüfung), hyponyms could be SchH 1 or SchH I etc. But I'm not sure regarding the use/mention distinction. Exclusionist maybe could argue that SchH is often just mentioned and not used. -16:50, 18 September 2016 (UTC)
Latest comment: 8 years ago6 comments4 people in discussion
A very wordy, POV sense was added and the etymology morphed into an equally word and POV discourse on that sense. It looks like this will need to be split into two etymologies, and the new material will need to be pruned into something suitable for a dictionary- does anyone have a chainsaw? Chuck Entz (talk) 08:21, 14 August 2016 (UTC)Reply
I did some more cleaning including re-merging the etymologies; sorry, DCD, I did this before I read your comment. However, the OED shows plenty of usage for this sense back to the 1600s so I think the proposed 2008 etymology was one of those spurious back-formations. Ƿidsiþ09:23, 13 September 2016 (UTC)Reply
Yes. But I can't see a distinction between senses #1 and #2. It seems like the same thing (mild deformation of a sheet of metal) just one occurs in manufacturing and one occurs when the item is already in place (roofing). Presumably because oilcans are round and not flat sheets. I'd just reduce it to a single definition (like mine in brackets above) and be done with it. I assume existence is not an issue here? Renard Migrant (talk) 16:42, 17 August 2016 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 8 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
User:BrunoMed has just created a large number of new prefix entries, apparently from lists in appendices. I've dealt with the ones where he copied content whole from entries for prefixes ending with vowels to new entries for the same prefixes without those vowels. That still leaves the majority, which are nationality prefixes. For these, he copied the same content into every entry:
English
Etymology
Shortened unetymologically from [Latin country name] in compounds- 20th century formation, perhaps echoing terms like Afro-, Indo-, Sino- etc.
Prefix
[headword]
pertaining to [English country name], especially as a political entity
This mechanical, cookie-cutter approach may be right in some cases, but it's clearly wrong in others. For one thing, I have my doubts about whether these are all 20th-century coinages, and there are some which are obviously not "shortened unetymologically"- such as Malayo- from Malay. This last one shows that there was no checking for whether the English country name actually exists as a country name.
Would someone please check these and either fix them or delete them, where necessary?
4. ref has "Boenninghausen classified the characteristic symptoms into seven categories. They are: [...] 4. Quibus Auxilus (Concomitant Symptoms)". That should be an error. In caps quibus auxiliis is QUIBUS AUXILIIS and could be misread as QUIBUS AUXILUS, i.e. quibus auxilus, like [books.google.com/books?id=lc9zfg_dLF8C&pg=PA302&dq=%22quibus+auxilus%22 here] where a GBS gives QUIBUS AUXILIIS while searching for quibus auxilus. The correct spelling and a literal meaning can be found in the 2. ref: "Quis, quid, ubi, quibus auxiliis, cur, quomodo, quando? - Who, what, where, with what, why, how, when?". As the 4. ref should have an incorrect spelling, it could also have an incorrect meaning or an interpretation or something like that. The literal meaning however could be SoP (Sum of Parts), and so maybe the entry should be deleted. -84.161.40.14411:04, 7 October 2016 (UTC)Reply
That's the current-day successor formed from the party Die Grünen from West Germany and Bündnis 90 from East Germany (and I think some more minor organisations). I would consider nowadays' Die Grünen to be a pars pro toto. Korn [kʰũːɘ̃n] (talk) 11:50, 16 October 2016 (UTC)Reply
The German press and even some greens themself use die Grünen, der Grünen, den Grünen, die Grünen and at least in headlines also Grüne.
www.morgenpost.de/politik/article208712929/Von-den-Gruenen-gibt-es-Blumen-Pfiffe-und-unklare-Signale.html: "empfangen die Grünen Daimler-Chef"
www.taz.de/!5346251/: "bei den Grünen"
www.krone.at/welt/gruene-gegen-christbaum-unzeitgemaesses-ritual-debatte-vor-advent-story-538084 : "Grüne gegen Christbaum" and "ausgelöst von den Grünen"
www.gruene.at/mitmachen/mitglied-werden : "warum du es bei den Grünen werden solltest [...] weil die Grünen damit stärker werden [...] den Kurs der Grünen"
gruene.berlin/nachrichten/sicherheit-geht-vor-neuanfang-mit-den-gruenen-zaehlgemeinschaft-berlin-mitte : "haben die Grünen"
www.gruene.de/ueber-uns/bundesvorstand.html : "von BÜNDNIS 90/DIE GRÜNEN" and short "die GRÜNEN".
Latest comment: 8 years ago3 comments2 people in discussion
This entry is divided in a very odd fashion into three senses, with odd example sentences to go with them:
A singularia tantum for the plant with the example sentence: "The beet is a hardy species"
A countable sense for an "individual plant (organism) of that species". Example sentence: "They sell beets by the pound in the supermarket. All I want is the roots. Can I cut off the roots and buy them alone?"
A countable sense for the "root of such a plant".
This is especially odd since the plural mass noun sense (as in "she got beets on her new blouse") isn't mentioned in the lemma or in the plural entry.
The distiction between senses 1 and 2 is grammatical, not lexical, and I have merged them. One could just as well say "the tiger/alligator/oak is a species that...". Is "she got beets on her new blouse" using a different sense than (the plural of) the "root" sense? - -sche(discuss)20:30, 1 November 2016 (UTC)Reply
Not really. My point was that normal usage is closer to always plural than to always singular. There does seem to be a difference, but it probably isn't lexical: one could say "These are big beets- if you cook up even just one, it makes a decent serving of cooked beets". The first is countable and plural, while the second is a plural mass noun. Like most vegetables, mass noun usage tends to be plural only. You can still say "a cup of cooked beet", but "a cup of cooked beets" sounds more natural. Chuck Entz (talk) 03:47, 2 November 2016 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 7 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
The list of alternative forms includes many that have two syllables (eg, whoopy-doo) and therefore seem to me to be different terms. I don't know exactly how to characterize the relationship among words in the two groups of terms, but it is not that members of one group are alternative forms of one member of the other group. DCDuringTALK18:44, 20 November 2016 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 7 years ago6 comments3 people in discussion
This OCS word is only attested in the plural. We have it lemmatized twice, once at the (unattested) reconstructed singular кънига(kŭniga) / ⰽⱏⱀⰻⰳⰰ(kŭniga) and once at the plural кънигꙑ(kŭnigy). Presumably either the plural should be made into a form-of definition, or the singular should be deleted as unattested; what is the standard policy? —Vorziblix (talk) 22:12, 24 November 2016 (UTC)Reply
The SJS claims that the one-time attested кънигоу is an error for къниги; the expected dative singular would be *кънигѣ in any case, since it’s an a-stem. All of the other attestations given in SJS and SS, which cover almost all of the OCS canon, are plural forms. Do you know of sources that attest the singular? —Vorziblix (talk) 09:13, 25 November 2016 (UTC)Reply
I'm more concerned with the first and last definitions, though the middle one seems to be just a play on the other two.
The phrase is mostly used in the rhetorical question: "were you born in a barn?". Asking that is a way of indirectly criticizing someone for bad manners, especially with regard to leaving a door or window open. Another variation is to say "you must have been born in a barn."
The indirectness seems to be where things are going wrong. The best way to see this is by substituting in the definitions: "Were you [Lacking a sense of etiquette/ill-mannered]?". "Were you [leaving open a door or window]?". To start with, the time frame of the phrase is always in the past relative to the time period of the utterance as a whole, but the first and last definitions are in the same time frame. Also, this is a rhetorical question/metaphor, so the phrase isn't supposed to be true- it's just implied that the behavior of the other person is like what one might expect if it were.
At first I thought this could be fixed by moving the entry to "were you born in a barn", but the variations make that difficult.
This has only been directed at me specifically for leaving the door open. I never had the sense that it was about manners but about not knowing enough to close the door or having grown up in a place where it is customary to leave the door open (as if it would be typical to leave barn doors open, which, not having been around barns, let alone been born in one, I don't have sufficient information to comment on). Eric Partridge in A Dictionary of catch phrases actually gives leaving the door open as a sole usage for this phrase, without any attribution of any further underlying meaning. Unless it has been documented that people using this expression are specifically intending this as a comment on manners or etiquette (is there a difference?), lack of education, or humble upbringing, then it would seem to be synthesis to extend the meaning any further than "Close the door!". Thisisnotatest (talk) 06:45, 8 December 2016 (UTC)Reply
There is also a weird use to imply delusion of divinity, and related poetic reference to Bethlehem myths. "He thinks he was born in a born." - Amgine/t·e16:41, 7 March 2017 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 7 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
The third sense if super-long. Perhaps it could be condensed? As a whisky drinker, I'd like to have some mention of that beverage on the page too --Derrib9 (talk) 12:37, 17 December 2016 (UTC)Reply
Not an expert, so I can't really judge if these contributions from the same anon are unpolished gems or candidates for speedy deletion. Any takers? --Robbie SWE (talk) 18:40, 7 January 2017 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 7 years ago2 comments1 person in discussion
An anonymous editor added a noun sense ("shirtfront"). It's unclear which of the three etymologies it relates to, or if the sense is legitimate. Cnilep (talk) 08:17, 16 January 2017 (UTC)Reply
I found this in New Partridge 2014: "up your juke under the front of your clothing [...] UK, Scotland 1985". No etymology, though. Cnilep (talk) 04:24, 17 January 2017 (UTC)Reply
I'm the guilty party. No, it's not official, but Bokmål Wiktionary uses the language code nrm for Riksmål (and no, nb, nn for common Norwegian, Bokmål and Nynorsk respectively). I'm not sure what the best treatment is. DonnanZ (talk) 00:26, 25 March 2017 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 7 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion
The anon who created it, who was probably Wonderfool, who had never read a poem in his/her life, tagged it as poetic. Totally wrong, right? And I'd suggest merging the entry, along with many an, into many. --Quadcont (talk) 11:44, 28 January 2017 (UTC)Reply
“many a”, in OneLook Dictionary Search. shows that dictionaries include the term, usually as a redirect to many. I suppose what distinguishes many + [Noun] (plural) from many a + [Noun] (singular) is the emphasis on the individuality of the [Noun]. DCDuringTALK15:46, 28 January 2017 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 7 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
There are lots of mistakes and mis-used templates in this definition. There is also something wrong with the usage of the reference tag as well. I don't know how to fix such thing as I am new to Wiktionary but I attempted to fix it. Unfortunately, it didn't work. Pkbwcgs (talk) 14:15, 29 January 2017 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 7 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion
Re English noun: derived/related terms seem to be arbitrarily mixed up, and I think there's something wrong with the indentation levels. Equinox◑07:31, 4 February 2017 (UTC)Reply
There could be the following problems:
Two "=" were twice missing, now the levels should be correct.
"Related terms" are present twice.
Many or even all of the first "Related terms" are simply derived terms. Well, one could differ between real derived terms which are derivates (new terms formed by derivation, by adding affixes) and compounds (new terms formed by composition, by combining words), but both is placed under "Derived terms" here in Wiktionary.
Many hyponyms are also derived terms and many derived terms are also hyponyms. E.g. "birthday party" is a hyponym and a derived term of "party".
"party" has several meanings like political party and social gathering. So it might make sense to split it up by senses: "green party" is a hyponym and a derived term of the sense political party, "birthday party" is a hyponym and derived term of the sense social gathering. BTW: Both terms, "green party" and "birthday party", might be SOP, but that might be the case for several terms listet at party.
"political party" is derived term of party and could be both a hyponym and a synonym depending on the sense of "party". To sense 4, "A political group [...]", it should be a synonym. To sense 3, "A group of people forming one side [...]", it could be a hyponym.
Latest comment: 7 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
This has gone through RfD and RfV (not all definitions). I have partially cleaned it up, but I fear that I have lost objectivity. Accordingly, could someone take a look at what I've done and correct it and figure out what to do with the "Usage notes", formerly one of the two etymologies, the "Etymology" that I commented out, and the footnotes to the calques/translations in the translation table. DCDuringTALK01:13, 5 March 2017 (UTC)Reply
@Suzukaze-c: It should be cleaned up for the most part. The glyph origin is still incomplete. The problem is that the glyph origin is different for the three etymologies. Should we have different glyph origin sections (Glyph origin 1, 2, 3), or should they be lumped under one? Pinging @Wyang, Bumm13 as well. — justin(r)leung{ (t...) | c=› }00:55, 16 March 2017 (UTC)Reply
I've done some work on it. It seems to be a synonym of how only used as the interrogative part of rhetorical questions intended to highlight the unreality or illogic of something. It reminds me of a similar (but more personal) rhetorical question: what color is the sun in your world? I just added that one. Feel free to correct it. Chuck Entz (talk) 23:58, 18 March 2017 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 7 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Sense: "A bad place of abandon", with subsenses. I'm not entirely clear on what the author intended to communicate, maybe sense and subsenses should be deleted altogether. Subsense 2 seems to be inspired by a sense labelled "ironic" in the WNT, if so then it would just be an ironic use of the literal sense. Lingo Bingo Dingo (talk) 12:14, 14 March 2017 (UTC)Reply
@CodeCat That may be obvious to you as a native Dutch speaker, but with The Netherlands and Holland being synonyms in English how should we decide where that translation table goes? Not saying I disagree, I just honestly don't know. W3ird N3rd (talk) 14:35, 5 August 2017 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 7 years ago5 comments2 people in discussion
This list was created a few months ago by someone with apparently little knowledge of Zulu. In Zulu, all nouns, including names, must have a noun prefix in front of them, but it's lacking for these, which makes the list of relatively little lexicographical use. @Metaknowledge Any idea what to do with it? —CodeCat23:33, 8 April 2017 (UTC)Reply
I wouldn't say it's of little lexicographical use. It seems like the content is correct, so I'd add a note at the top about how it's very inexhaustive and the form of the prefix that names have when used in Zulu, and leave it at that. —Μετάknowledgediscuss/deeds23:37, 8 April 2017 (UTC)Reply
Except that I don't know the prefix. Normally, it would be class 1a (prefix u-), as you probably know, but there's some names beginning with vowels and Zulu doesn't allow two vowels to be adjacent in native vocabulary. In theory, the prefix would become a consonant before a vowel-initial word, so is wAmahle an attested name? Modern loans use hyphens instead, so I guess u-Amahle is another possibility. I have no idea. —CodeCat23:41, 8 April 2017 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 7 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
I can't even find the senses among those huge tables. Moreover, the senses are not marked with # in the wikitext. —CodeCat19:10, 14 April 2017 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 7 years ago9 comments3 people in discussion
Not as bad as the one above, but there's still a giant table in the place reserved for senses. Also, "stem set" is not an allowed section. —CodeCat19:12, 14 April 2017 (UTC)Reply
"Stem set" is the way Navajo roots change depending on mode and aspect. It is not a "conjugation" table in the standard meaning of it, but if you feel it better fits the practices here, I can make that change.
Then, regarding the "huge" table, it is how the Navajo vocabulary is built up, around roots to which various preffixes are added. In many Navajo verb pages, a lot of information is duplicated from verb to verb belonging to the same root. It is a lot more efficient and genuine to the language to gather this info inside a "root" page. This saves the burden to add to each verb their related verbs. See for instance yoołmas, haiłmáás, neiłmaas in their "related terms" section.
Then, a group of such verbs comes usually in a number of predefined "categories", as motion, successive, operative.. depending on the set of prefixes that the roots can take (for instance, yoołbąs, haiłbąąs, neiłbąąs follows the same pattern as the examples cited above).
In the same way a Indo-European root page just lists the descendant terms in the daughter languages, in the Navajo root pages I just list the verbs, arranged by sense, theme, transitivity and "category". (The only difference being that the Navajo root is not a reconstructed root, it's a lexical root).
I believe that for learners of the Navajo language these are of great help since it helps structuring the lexicon.
The one issue I had I admit is that the # sign doesn't work when I have multiple submeanings with verb tables inbetween them.
We have pages for roots of attested languages (Category:Roots by language), that's not really an issue. They are treated like any other morpheme. For Proto-Indo-European, though, we list terms derived from a root under "Derived terms". There's nothing in principle against there being a table under "Derived terms" instead of a list, and I think it is a better location than right underneath each sense.
As for stem sets, if it's not a conjugation table, then I assume that these would be considered separate verbs, am I correct? If so, then the situation resembles that of Proto-Indo-European as well, which also had various ways to derive stems for aspects. We list those under "Derived terms" also. See *leykʷ- for example. Would such a format work for Navajo? —CodeCat20:42, 14 April 2017 (UTC)Reply
Stem sets are not separate verbs, and if anything, are closer to a conjugation. For instance, yoołmas, yiłmáás, neiłmaas, all mean "he is rolling it", but the first one is progressive aspect (he rolls it along), the second is momentaneous (he is rolling it ), the third one is continuative (he is rolling it about). The difference is in the stem : -mas,-máás,-maas. Then each of these verbs can be conjugated for mode (imperfective, perfective, future...). Then many of these verbs can then take on lexical (non-aspectual) prefixes (just like English "to roll", "to roll up", "to roll out"...), like haiłmáás (he is rolling it out horizontally). That's why the notion of theme is so central to Athabaskan languages, because behind a given lexical verb actually hide multiple segments of somewhat predictable meaning, combining meaning, mode, aspect and lexical derivation. (sorry if that I'm not being clear enough).
Based on these premises, that's why I wanted to have the derived verbs right below each senseid, because the verbs are the incarnations of the themes. A meaning listed without actual verbs doesn't really make sense to me. I could move this to the derived section, but then it would be weird for the synonym section to come before the "derived" terms, because the derived terms are the root itself and a way to define it. And doing this would also make it very repetitive and not synoptic enough. Unless I'm allowed to have "derived terms" before "synonyms", and that I skip senses altogether? Julien Daux (talk) 22:18, 14 April 2017 (UTC)Reply
I haven't really ever dealt with these languages but I'm trying to understand. If you consider what you might call a "whole" verb, with all of its forms, what is included in this? Would you consider yoołmas, yiłmáás and neiłmaas to be different forms of a single verb? Why or why not? —CodeCat22:29, 14 April 2017 (UTC)Reply
This is a very good question, and actually this is the central question of all Athabaskan linguistics. Verb mechanism in these languages is so foreign that trying to define it in terms of European linguistics necessarily leads to some categorizations and views that don't belong to it.
The lexicographic "tradition" in Navajo is to consider yoołmas, yiłmáás and neiłmaas as separate "verbs", just like "gain" / "regain" or "perceive" / "receive" are in English, even though the first pair is a predictable derivation and the second much less so. This also fits the definition by which these are the bare shape before any inflection for person, tense or mode is added. Anything that remains after removing person, tense or mode is considered a verb (in Wiktionary and in all Navajo dictionaries). This definition is workable because first this how native speakers feel it (they actually explicitly told Young and Morgan after a survey to arrange their 1980 dictionary by lexical verbs rather than per root), and also because as in any language, some unpredictable or specialized meanings sometimes emerge from these lexical verbs, so it means they can clearly stand on their own (for instance haaʼeeł means "it floats up out", but can also mean "it (a baby) is miscarried, aborted". No other verb derived from this root has this specialized meaning).
Now, other views have emerged in the 1970 that the "real" verbal unit is not the verb (like neiłmaas), not the root (like -MÁÁZ, which can occur in various actual meanings, like "to roll" but also "to be spherical", not that far semantically, but some other roots do have much more disparateness), but the theme, which is the combination of : a root, a thematic prefix compound (possibly null), a thematic classifier (possibly null) and a category (motion, stative, successive, operative....). It is a virtual unit, whose awareness to Navajo native speakers still need to be tested, but whose explanatory power is enormous, and articulates the entire lexicon. James Kari was one of the first to investigate that route with the Alaskan Ahtna language. No such work has ever been carried out for Navajo, even though the reality of themes is a striking overarching phenomenon.
A theme is for instance "Ø + Ø + -MÁÁZ (motion)" (to roll) or "ʼa + ni + Ø + -TʼIʼ (motion)" (to stagger) (you'll agree that that would be weird to have pages named so on Wiktionary, but that's how the paper dictionary of Tlingit is construed). Like many motion themes, these themes can combine with the lexical derivation "ná + di + yi + Momentaneous aspect" (to start to...), to give the following lexical verbs: "ńdiimáás" (to start to roll), "ná + ʼa + di + ni + yi + Ø + mom(TʼIʼ)" = "ńdíʼníitʼééh" (to start to wobble). The question being, can all motion themes accept this derivational prefix? Skimming through Young's dictionary, one can notice that many such combinations are missing from his dictionary, raising the question whether this combination can be freely formed or if it is lexical constrained. Until one finds this out, it better to consider each of these lexical verbs as separate lexical units as opposed to the result of a productive derivational process.
Wow, ok. It seems, then, that Navajo verbs are quite similar to Proto-Indo-European ones, in that you have a root that can serve as the basis for one or more aspect stems, whose existance is unpredictable (not every root has every aspect) and whose meaning can also be idiosyncratic. However, I'm not quite clear on why it's necessary to list verbs by sense. The meaning of each verb is determined by the aspect/mood isn't it? —CodeCat00:19, 15 April 2017 (UTC)Reply
Well, two things: 1. I needed one place where to list the verbs belonging to the same theme instead of the copied-pasted list found at the end of each verb entry. 2. Showing the actual possible verbs demonstrates the theme's well-foundedness and also shows places where expected forms would be missing. Also because just listing a root and a theme (like a+ni+Ø+T'I') is way too abstract to be useful to anyone. This was actually the first draft I came up with when I started creating pages for root, and after a couple of these, I saw how useless and disconnected from reality it was. See for instance -CHĮ́ that I didn't have time to reformat.
(Keep in mind that when I'm showing 12 derived verbs in a given theme, there can actually be close to 100 in reality...).
One thing that is in my plate is also to create Wiktionary categories for each theme, like "Navajo verbs derived from the theme X". Currently, the verb entries do not show their appartenance to a theme, the Etymology section just lists the prefixes, but doesn't distinguish between those that are thematic from those that are derivational. Julien Daux (talk) 00:45, 15 April 2017 (UTC)Reply
I suppose that "huge table" refers to the theme/classifier tables. The tables look good to me. The Stem sets are important, and that's what they're called. I can't think of a better way to do them. Maybe the Stem sets could be reduced to mere bolded lines, placed under a headline such as ====Usage notes====. Not a very good solution, but if we're going to shoehorn Navajo stem sets into a format intended for English, it might work:
Latest comment: 7 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
The entry has "3. (substantive) a quadruped".
This misses the gender of the substantive. According to dictionaries there a three substantives, a masculine, a feminine and a neuter.
It misses the declension of the substantive. The entry would imply that they are declined like the adjective, but that's doubtful. It seems that the adjective has abl. sg. -ī and also -e (maybe in poetry out of metrical reasons?), and might have neuter pl. -ia and gen. pl. *-ium. The masculine and feminine substantive however might have abl. sg. *-e and gen. pl. -um; and the neuter substantive might have plural -ia, gen. *-ium, and abl. sg. *-ī (like e.g. animal).
A doubtful reference for the adjective declension:
Allen and Greenough's New Latin Grammar for schools and colleges founded on comparative grammar, 1903, p. 53f.: "121. [...] a. The Ablative Singular commonly ends in -ī, but sometimes -e. [...] 3. The following have regularly -ī:—āmēns, anceps, concors (and other compounds of cor), cōnsors (but as a substantive, -e), dēgener, hebes, ingēns, inops, memor (and compounds), pār (in prose), perpes, praeceps, praepes, teres. [...]" b. The Genitive Plural ends commonly in -ium, but has -um in the following:1— 1. Always in compos, dīves, inops, particeps, prīnceps, supplex, and compounds of nouns which have -um: as, quadru-pēs, bi-color. [...] 122. The following special points require notice:—[...] d. Many adjectives, from their signification, can be used only in the masculine and feminine. These may be called adjectives of common gender. Such are adulēscēns, youthful; [†dēses], -idis, slothful; inops, -opis, poor; sōspes, -itis, safe. [...] [...] 1 Forms in -um sometimes occur in a few others."
This would mean that adjectives like quadrupes have gen. pl. -um - which would usually imply that the neuter plural is -a and not -ia. BTW: As for the adjective inops, A&G says it has abl. -ī, gen. pl. -um and no neuter plural (so neither *-ia nor *-a). Maybe note that there is a substantive inopes with gen. pl. -um and a substantive inopia, so finding inopum or inopia doesn't necessarily attest a form of the adjective.
However, dictionaries and grammars sometimes do not to properly differ between the inflection of adjectives and substantivations. Based on cites or references given in dictionaries, it should be like stated before the quote. Examples of related words:
Cites (based on mentioned forms and given references/cites in dictionaries):
Note: thelatinlibrary.com (TLL), LacusCurtius (LC) etc. are just used as they are easy to mention, and although they could contain errors, the important parts should indeed appear in printed editions.
concolor:
Plinius at LC in book 8, 9, 21, 33 has "concolori" which might be abl.
versicolor:
Maybe also see versicolor. L&S: "abl. versicolori, Liv. 7, 10: versicolore, Prop. 4, 7, 50; Ov. F. 5, 356 [...] Subst.: versĭcŏlōrĭa, ium, n., dyed stuffs, colored woolens. constabat apud veteres lanae appellatione versicoloria non contineri, Dig. 32, 1, 70, § 12; 34, 2, 32, § 6" — Georges: "Plur. subst. [...] pingere versicolora (Ggstz. unicolora), Fronto epist. ad Ver. 1, 1. p. 113, 18 N."
Livius at TLL has: "Corpus alteri magnitudine eximium, versicolori veste pictisque et auro caelatis refulgens armis"
Ovid, also at TLL, has "sic haec est cultu versicolore decens?"
substantive:
Plinius at LC has "[...] stupueruntque litora flatu versicoloria pellente vela."
Marcus Cornelius Fronto's Epistulae (he lived in the 2nd century A.D., but his letters were found 1815 or later) at TLL has: "Quid si Parrhasium versicolora pingere juberet aut Apellen unicolora aut"
Digesta cited with versicoloria are from the 6th century, though they could quote or contain an older text. book 32 (chapter "Ulpianus libro 22 ad Sabinum") at archive.org: "Et constabat apud veteres lanae appellatione versicoloria non contineri"; book 34 (chapter "Paulus libro secundo ad Vitellium") at archive.org: "Labeo testamento suo Neratiae uxori suae nominatim legavit "vestem mundum muliebrem omnem ornamentaque muliebria omnia lanam linum purpuram versicoloria facta infectaque omnia" et cetera. Sed non mutat substantiam rerum non necessaria verborum multiplicatio, quia Labeo testamento lanam ac deinde versicoloria scripsit, quasi desit lana tincta lana esse, detractoque verbo "versicolorio" nihilo minus etiam versicoloria debebuntur, si non appareat aliam defuncti voluntatem fuisse."
sepes:
L&S: "six-footed: populi (formicae), App. M. 6, p. 177, 26."
Apulejus, Metamorphoses, liber VI. In: Apuleius The Golden Ass being the Metamorphoses of Lucius Apuleius with an English translation by W. Adlington (1566) revised by S. Gaselee, 1922, p. 264f.
Ruunt aliae superque aliae sepedum populorum undae summoque studio singulae granatim totum digerunt acervum separatimque distributis dissitisque generibus e conspectu perniciter abeunt.
Incontinently they came, the hosts of six-footed creatures one after another in waves, separating and dividing the grain, and after that they had put each kind of corn in order, they ran away again in all haste from her sight.
The Latin text is also at TLL. Elsewhere "sepedum populorum" was translated as ants (here, in German "Ameisen"). sepedum here could be an adjective like "of the six-footed peoples" or a substantive like "of the peoples of the six-footed [creatures/animals]". I guess it makes more sense as a substantive just as in the given English translation which uses hosts instead of peoples for populi.
bipes:
L&S: "neutr. plur. bipedia, Aug. Mor. Manich. 9 [...] Subst., mostly contemptuously, of men: hoc ministro omnium non bipedum solum sed etiam quadripedum impurissimo, Cic. Dom. 18, 48: Regulus omnium bipedum nequissimus, as great a rogue as walks on two legs, Modest. ap. Plin. Ep. 1, 5, 14; Cic. Dom. 18, 48; Lampr. Alex. Sev. 9"
3rd or 4th century, Augustinus, De moribus Manichaeorum at augustinus.it does have bipedia, and also quadrupedia: "[...], malum esse animalia in illis singulis nata elementis, serpentia in tenebris, natantia in aquis, volatilia in ventis, quadrupedia in igne, bipedia in fumo." and "Quis enim tantam perversitatem ferat, qua dicitur in tenebrarum gente, cui nihil admixtum erat luminis, animalia bipedia tam firmam, tam vegetam, [...]".
CCEL has an English translation: "[...] to the animals born in each of these elements,—serpents in the darkness, swimming creatures in the waters, flying creatures in the winds, quadrupeds in the fire, bipeds in the smoke." and "For is it not intolerable perversity to say that in the race of darkness, where there was no mixture of light, the biped animals had so sound and strong, [...]"
quadrupedi/quadripedi cursu Apul. Met. 6 - TLL has: "Et alacri statim nisu lorum quo fueram destinatus abrumpo meque quadripedi cursu proripio." A better source:
Apulejus, Metamorphoses, liber VI. In: Apuleius The Golden Ass being the Metamorphoses of Lucius Apuleius with an English translation by W. Adlington (1566) revised by S. Gaselee, 1922, p. 286ff.
Et alacri statim nisu lorum, quo fueram destinatus, abrumpo, meque quadripedi cursu proripio
Then while I devised these things, I broke suddenly the halter wherewith I was tied, and ran away with all my four feet1 1 Quadripedi cursu seems to be a phrase for galloping, as in modern Greek στὰ τέσσερα.
de quadrupede equo Gell. 18, 5, 5 - in PHI Latin Texts it's "de hoc anagnosta et de quadrupede eco uidetur?"
All the given cites for quadrupedia are for neuter substantives.
"gen. plur. quadrupedium, Capitol. Ver. 5, 2": At LC is "donata et viva animalia vel cicurum vel ferarum avium vel quadripedum" with the note "So P; quadrupedium B, Peter.". Translation at LC is: "and also live animals either tame or wild, winged or quadruped, of whatever kind were the meats that were served,". So it depends on manuscript or edition, and as avium is a substantive (gen. pl. of avis), so should be quadripedum/quadrupedium, although it's translated with an adjective in this English translation.
A GBS preview had "Gen. Pl. quadripedum, bipedum, alipedum usw. sehr oft [etc. very often]" - but it could be that that are the gen. pl.s of substantives and not necessarily of any adjective.
Missing:
Missing are cites for the abl. sg. of the substantives. The masculine and feminine quadrupēs should have abl. -e as they are substantives and have gen. pl. -um. quadrupedia could be a plurale tantum (there are many more neuter pluralia tantum derived from adjectives, e.g. in -ālia from -ālis). But L&S gives a cite for a singular: "crocodilum, quadripes malum et infestum, Plin. 8, 25, 37, § 89" (text at LC). It should be more likely that it belongs to the i-declension like animal with abl. sg. -ī.
Latest comment: 7 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion
Definition:
The viewpoint that women are or should be in all ways equal to men.
It started out as a minimally-formatted statement of opinion. It was rfc-ed before, but the cleanup apparently sanitized the definition to the point that there's nothing left beyond a very generic description of feminism. Given the collision of mutually-exclusive political narratives about the referent, this needs some very careful thought as to how to say what this is without taking sides. Chuck Entz (talk) 18:33, 28 April 2017 (UTC)Reply
Very "bold" of me (in the Wikipedian sense), but I just found three citations and wrote a new def: "(sometimes derogatory) A populist, non-academic approach to feminism, suggesting that women can attain equality with men through a positive, go-getting attitude, without the need to examine or change cultural institutions and biases." See what you think. Equinox◑13:20, 29 April 2017 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 7 years ago3 comments3 people in discussion
Part of the second definition of the noun авось(avosʹ) contains a definition that sounds more like an adverb: "may still; might yet; possibly". Was this inserted by mistake into the wrong POS header, or is there some way in which it can be rewritten into a nounish definition? — Eru·tuon00:14, 30 April 2017 (UTC)Reply
@Atitarev made that edit. I think it's correct. English uses both verbs and adverbs that have a similar sense (maybe, possibly, could be, might yet, may yet, could happen, etc.), and other languages may well translate a "may yet" with a particle or adverb. Atitarev probably had an example in mind when he made that edit. It would be helpful to add the example. That would make it clear. —Stephen(Talk)06:19, 6 May 2017 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 7 years ago8 comments5 people in discussion
Under etymology 3. Manifestly not a symbol in our usage. No definition. Should we add something to the noun section or just revert to a previous version? SemperBlotto (talk) 14:54, 1 May 2017 (UTC)Reply
It is an image symbol, should it go under U+1F34D 🍍 instead then? It's a traditional symbol in imagery and as a word meaning hospitality. The etymology is different from the fruit, since it comes from the existence of the fruit and is usage; and is unrelated to pine+apple that the name of the fruit comes from. The wording form is used in English in the U.S. South (so could be moved to "adjective" then?) The image/shape form is as well. -- 70.51.200.16215:06, 1 May 2017 (UTC)Reply
Image symbology is part of communication, and we have glyphs here like the unicode emoji symbols, so would seem to be appropriate that the hospitality definition for whence a pineapple appears, should appear on Wiktionary. -- 70.51.200.16215:08, 1 May 2017 (UTC)Reply
Ah, but that would be used in a string of emoji, or other symbolic communication. Wouldn't the men's room merit mentioning at U+1F6B9 🚹 ? (in which our definition actually says it's a men's room symbol); The term "Mens" or "Men's" is written on doors of men's rooms as well, so would seem to be written verbal communication, permitting additions there. (our definition at men's actually does say it means the men's room) -- 70.51.200.16205:21, 2 May 2017 (UTC)Reply
It's a symbol used on signage, so would seem to provide symbolic communication, thus could be lexical, in a symbolic/pictographic lexicon (which is being added to Unicode as we speak, with various emoji additions, etc); It is used in corporate naming of companies, locations and items (The word "pineapple" being attached to hospitality related things) -- 70.51.200.16205:21, 2 May 2017 (UTC)Reply
It is possible to find citations of pineapple used to refer to the woodcarving sometimes used to surmount a bedpost (eg, He fell when the pineapple he grabbed came loose from the bedpost). It MIGHT be possible to become convinced that this was a separate meaning of pineapple, somewhat analogous to the definition of landscape ("A picture representing a scene by land or sea, actual or fancied, the chief subject being the general aspect of nature, as fields, hills, forests, water. etc.").
I don't see any evidence that the word was actually used in the "Old South" (or anywhere else before the 20th century) in reference to symbolic pineapples. Some suspect that the pineapple-as-symbol-of-hospitality story is a "tradition" invented by Dole Food Company in the 20th century. Older decorative uses of the pineapple-like motif as decoration maybe attributable to the old meaning of pineapple ("pinecone") (See “pineapple”, in The Century Dictionary[…], New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911, →OCLC..), associated with Bacchus. DCDuring (talk) 15:42, 2 May 2017 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 7 years ago3 comments2 people in discussion
Verb entries 2 and 3 doesn't seem clearly differentiated. Entry 1 talks about technology, but seems to refer to hardware. Only entry 3 is labeled as computing, though all seem tech-related. It seems to me that the example phrase at entry 2 fits better under entry 3. --SentientBall (talk) 04:16, 2 May 2017 (UTC)Reply
I don't see that there is any transitive use of upgrade that is computing-specific. Differentiating transitive and intransitive use is a good first step in improving the entry, perhaps along the lines of MWOnline's:
transitive verb
to raise or improve the grade of: such as
a: to improve (livestock) by use of purebred sires
b: to advance to a job requiring a higher level of skill especially as part of a training program
c: to raise the quality of
d: to raise the classification and usually the price of without improving the quality
e: to extend the usefulness of (something, such as a device)
f: to assign a less serious status to upgraded the patient's condition to good
intransitive verb
to improve or replace especially software or a device for increased usefulness
I've added a missing noun sense, an adverb PoS section, transitive/intransitive labels, some new verb senses, some citations and usage examples. Senses a and f from MWOnline are clearly needed. I'm not as sure about b-e. DCDuring (talk) 19:16, 2 May 2017 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 7 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
I was asked to put a notice here. The etymology is poorly written; it needs to be formatted and more easier to read. I am not an expert on Greek, but I have an interest on that language. TatCoolBoy (talk) 02:57, 7 May 2017 (UTC)Reply
Entries with the text "from borrowing from"
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Latest comment: 7 years ago5 comments3 people in discussion
Someone has been replacing translations that are direct borrowings from English (i.e. the word malware in other languages) with other terms. I have checked the three Portuguese translations they added and found that malware is much more common (about 5 times) than the most common of them, and the other two are quite rare.
I appreciate your efforts and your participation in this discussion anon, but I feel that there are still some issues with your edits:
you have reintroduced the rare term software mal-intencionado, writing that it is “used by Microsoft in Brazil”; however, even in Microsoft’s website this term is significantly less common than malware;
the regional qualifiers you added to software malicioso and software mal-intencionado are absolutely incorrect; both (including software mal-intencionado, despite its rarity) are used in Brazil and Portugal;
you added the qualifier Anglicism to several translations and as a label in the definitions; surely that’s information that belongs in the etymology sections of their respective entries, not in the translation table.
Latest comment: 7 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
These words define themselves as "dinner", which can mean either "midday meal", "evening meal", or "main meal of the day, regardless of when it's eaten". Can you clarify which sense is meant if you know any of these languages? (A few entries define themselves as "lunch, dinner" or "dinner, supper", but I can't tell if the second word is intended as a synonym or an indication the word refers to both the midday and evening meals. Some entries are homographic with words meaning "evening", but that doesn't ensure they mean "evening meal", compare middag!) Strike through words you've done. - -sche(discuss)04:49, 9 May 2017 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 7 years ago4 comments4 people in discussion
Our entries disagree on whether mathematical terms like "plus", "minus", "times" and "over" are prepositions (as argued on Talk:minus and asserted by other dictionaries), or conjunctions. Does anyone want to argue against relabelling them prepositions? @Msh210, as a mathematician and a wiki-lexicographer, what is your view? - -sche(discuss)20:48, 13 May 2017 (UTC)Reply
"Plus" and "minus" can be used without a preceding word, which is not typically a feature of conjunctions. "Times" seems to be more in between, as you can say "fifty times that", where "that" appears to be the head of the phrase rather than "fifty". However, like plus and minus, "times" has started to be used without a preceding word as well. —CodeCat21:02, 13 May 2017 (UTC)Reply
Since the basic operations of arithmetic… postdate the Classic Latin Eight Parts of Speech, and since… we're not speaking Latin here, why be surprised if the words for them don't fit the Procrustean Paradigm?
Mathematicians would call them "operators" or "relations", and that's not a bad name. Check out "divided by", a participial phrase, but equivalent to a true preposition, "over". Parts Of Speech are for grade school (if that). Let's not let our zest for the Classics get in the way of numeracy the way the way it has of literacy.
Of course he's a linguist, not a lexicographer, so don't mind his descriptivism. The relevance of his comment to us is in its pointing out the difficulty of categorization; see other posts in that thread for more.
I agree that someone with too basic an understanding of English might have trouble getting this, when it is used in the way indicated, at least in written dialog, if not in speech, where tone and gesture supplement the words. But the sense of get(“to understand”) is fairly common and is used with any number of objects, though, eg, Get her.Did you get the car he was driving?I didn't get what they were trying to say., He wasn't getting it.. It's the same as or close to get in He didn't get the joke.
Latest comment: 7 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
The entries in this category use a parameter to specify a topical category inside the headword template. These should be modified to use {{topics}} instead. —CodeCat22:45, 25 May 2017 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 7 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Following Wiktionary:Tea room/2017/May#-cele_-coele_-coel_suffices, Kwataswagri and I edited these entries to more clearly distinguish the two suffixes, one from κήλη and one from κοῖλος. Entries which end in these suffixes probably need to be checked to see if they're linking to the right one. Any words which more commonly use the "wrong" suffix would be interesting to find. - -sche(discuss)05:59, 28 May 2017 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 7 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion
Is this Proto-Brythonic, or Latin? I thought our preference was to label e.g. Illyrian names attested only in Ancient Greek as ==Ancient Greek==, and explain in the definition that they are names of Illyrian individuals. This seems like a similar case. - -sche(discuss)03:15, 29 May 2017 (UTC)Reply
I still can't decide. Usually names are assimilated to a Latin declension class, but this doesn't seem to be. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 19:02, 31 May 2017 (UTC)Reply
Yes, it seems to be the same person. They seem to be working off of some source with the translations of PC/Computer terms into a wide variety of languages- I'm guessing something put out by Microsoft. Since they don't know most of the languages, they can't tell if the terms are idiomatic. The entry at malware seems to have been their initial and main focus, but they've been working on the whole range of terminology relevant to PC operating systems and software.
I brought up the subject of their edits here in March with a concern that they were editing in so many languages that they couldn't possibly know all of them. You confirmed that their edits seemed to be accurate, and the discussion was archived to User talk:Anth2943. That account has since been renamed, so it's now User talk:Deletedarticle. There have been a series of edits blanking the page and others reverting the blanking, but for the moment you can see the archived discussion there. Chuck Entz (talk) 16:03, 4 June 2017 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 7 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Language family names are generally both adjectives and nouns. But some of the entries here contain only an adjective definition, while others contain only a noun. Would anyone be willing to sort these out? —CodeCat16:11, 4 June 2017 (UTC)Reply
It's cleaned up - but does it now again miss a PoS? If the word can be both, determiner and pronoun, and if the term pronoun is used in a strict sence, then properly two PoS headers (===Determiner=== and ===Pronoun===) have to be added as in that. The definitions of the two PoS could even be very similar, but the examples would differ. Examples for the determiner should look like "several people were killed" (several + noun + verb) while for the pronoun it should look like "several were killed" (several + verb, no noun). In same cases it could be more complicated to determine the PoS because of possible ellipsis (compare with adjectives vs. nominalizations thereof). Sense 3 should indeed have a pronoun variant. By the definition I would think that sense 1 has none, while I'm not sure about 2. This should be real examples of a pronoun with a sense similar to 3, so if there are no objections, a pronoun should be attested by it:
2011, Daniel Baracskay, The Palestine Liberation Organization: Terrorism and Prospects for Peace in the Holy Land, p. 157 (google):
Several were killed in Feburary 2008 when a suicide bomber from Hamas attacked a shopping center in Dimona.
1811, Edward Augustus Kendal, Pocket Encyclopedia or a Dictionary of Arts, Sciences, and Polite Literature. Vol. I, London, p. 209 (google):
In 1538, a proclamation was issued against them, and several were burnt in Smithfield.
It's "The baptists in England ... . other sentence. In 1538 ...". Just like them is a pronoun, several should here be one too.
1820, A Graphic and Historical Description of the City of Edinburgh. Vol. 1. Views in Edinburgh and its Vicinity, London, p. 128 (google):
Thus several were burnt for heresy during this year; and when cardinal Beaton succeeded to the see of St. Andrews, a still greater persecution ensued.
There it is "... authors. another sentence. Thus several ...". Anyhow, "several" should still be a pronoun in this cite.
(If secondary sources could be used like in some other wiktionaries, then dictionary.com with "(as pronoun; functioning as plural): ..." could be used.)
Cambridge Grammar of the English Language argues against including several and many other determiners in the word class 'pronoun', but I don't think any dictionaries follow that advice. Consider this from page 421:
"The fused-head analysis avoids the need to recognise a large amount of overlap between the pronoun and determinative [sic] categories. In the present grammar, there are just four items that belong in both categories: what, which, we, and you." DCDuring (talk) 21:23, 29 June 2017 (UTC)Reply
Other dictionaries follow various courses: AHD, MWOnline, and WNW call it only a pronoun; Oxford (online), Cambridge (online) and Macmillan have "Determiner & Pronoun"; Collins English and COBUILD have "Determiner"; RHU shows no word class. DCDuring (talk) 22:03, 29 June 2017 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 7 years ago5 comments3 people in discussion
Labelled a "prefix", but with the form of a suffix (preceded by a hyphen). In the derived terms, it seems to be an interfix, and is spelled out as -é-. It seems like it should be moved to -é- and the POS should possibly be updated.
Oh, sorry; Navajo, the section that's tagged with {{rfc}}. (I wonder why the template accepts a language parameter but doesn't generate language-section links like {{rfv}}.) - -sche(discuss)19:12, 8 June 2017 (UTC)Reply
First, any morpheme found before the final stem has traditionally been considered a prefix in Athabaskan literature, but as typical of these languages, prefixes can be stacked up to 8 or more in a row, making them appear as infixes, but they really are prefixes (just like suffixes can be stacked in langages like Japanese or Turkish). Now, in all Navajo etymology sections here on Wikipedia the convention appears to be to hyphenate both before and after any non-initial and non-final morphemes. It is what it is, but it doesn't really change the actual nature of said morphemes.
Secondly, on the nature of -í, -é, -ba,... : these morphemes are actually postpositions found as part of a constituant of a prefix, but they never occur outside of these prefix combos, unlike postpositions -á, -aa... This means, they require a personal pronoun "prefix" before them (sh-é: about me, n-é: about you, b-é: about him,...) and the whole thing becomes a legit "prefix" (shé-, né-, bé-). So it seems we could move -í to -í- but where the logic might break is that some of these postpositional prefixes can also act as regular postpositions (like -á above) , so that positing both a pre- and a pre/post- hyphenated forms might lead to confusion and unnecessary repetitions.
If I had to choose, I would prefer to keep them classified as (pre-hyphenated) postpositions rather than prefixes (or even less so, suffixes). —Julien D. (talk) 22:43, 8 June 2017 (UTC)Reply
Also, see {{nv-prefix}} for a list of these postpositional prefixes so far referred to here in Wikipedia (second table). There is only a couple of them, so the situation is still manageable. —Julien D. (talk) 22:56, 8 June 2017 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 7 years ago8 comments5 people in discussion
They seem to think every word is a noun, add random invalid parameters to templates, and have also added odd "Zazaki language" definitions to some entries. —CodeCat13:24, 10 June 2017 (UTC)Reply
Looks like Vuzorg does not know English as well as they think they do (en-3 in their Babel box; I would speculate en-1 would be more accurate), and they do not quite understand the proper entry format. — Eru·tuon19:27, 10 June 2017 (UTC)Reply
Yes, but I would go further and say they don't understand the concepts behind the formatting, either. For instance, they had inca derived from "Indo-European English here", which shows they don't know what an etymology is for, and elsewhere they had a definition line that said "Zazaki language" before the actual definition lines, and added Category:zza:Grammar to several entries that weren't about grammar.
Their account was created a week after Marmase was globally locked in 2015, and they've avoided notice because, until today, no one has looked at or edited their work except for bots (and in one diff, User:Embryomystic editing like a bot). Unless Vahag can confirm the accuracy of their edits, I'm inclined to delete and remove it all as "No usable content given". Chuck Entz (talk) 20:50, 10 June 2017 (UTC)Reply
I have cleaned up after the user based on my Zazaki sources. His definitions are usually correct, but the formatting is terrible. I don't know if this is Marmase's sock. @Vuzorg, please look at the changes we made to your contributions and learn our formatting guidelines. --Vahag (talk) 10:26, 11 June 2017 (UTC)Reply
Hey what's problem there? I'm not sock puppet of Marmase. I only don't know formatting guidelines very well. I won't contribute anymore. And Eru·tuon, you, be careful when you speak about a subject, don't attack me, even you don't know me, you can't judge me and my English. Do I know you? No, so I don't talk about you. Vuzorg (talk) 19:25, 11 June 2017 (UTC)Reply
I don't think we currently have a German template that can handle adjective-declension nouns in German, or at least I'm not finding one. — Kleio (t · c) 15:17, 12 June 2017 (UTC)Reply
I added a line of code to {{de-decl-adj+noun-n}} so we can use it for these kinds of words. Could someone check the declension now (and at Junges) to make sure it's correct (My German is not good enough for me to be 100% certain)? BigDom09:12, 28 June 2017 (UTC)Reply
They look right to me. I added the table to Katzenjunges as well. Perhaps we should mention that the singular strong forms of these adjectival declensions are vanishingly rare, so things like dative singular Katzenjungem may be unattested or at least very difficult to attest. The only case I can think of where the strong declension would be found is headlinese, where articles are often omitted, e.g. Flüchtling hilft Obdachlosem "Refugee helps homeless person". —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 13:28, 29 June 2017 (UTC)Reply
A quick Google Books search for Katzenjungem does give a few legitimate hits by the looks of it, but Katzenjunger, Schwanenjungem and Schwanenjunger only bring up our entries(!) so I think you may have a point. BigDom14:29, 29 June 2017 (UTC)Reply
Wiktionary more often has rare, uncommon or unattested forms, or forms which are "vanishingly rare" and "may be unattested or at least very difficult to attest". Examples:
gelingen - by attestation it could be 3rd person with poetic 2nd person singular only.
Esquimensis (AFAIK it's from the 20th century) - by attestation it could be plural only. Printed Finish Nuntii Latini mentions the singular, but maybe only uses the plural, leaving the singular unattested. If there are three cites (with three cites it's attested in any case), then at least 9 cites would be missing to attest all forms.
Vocatives of several common nouns could be unattested. How often does you speak to things like "O beautiful toilette", "O you nice shoe"?
Only having a note for strong forms of German nouns of the adjectival declension and not for e.g. several vocatives, could make false implication. Reading that the German strong forms are rare or something but not reading that several vocatives are rare or something, could imply that the vocatives are properly attested which often isn't the case.
Maybe it would make more sense to add a link to an explanation page into the template like in Template:de-decl-noun-langname with "(explanation of the use and meaning of the forms)". On the explanation page the forms could be explained, and there it could be noted that strong forms are less common. -84.161.54.17119:07, 29 June 2017 (UTC)Reply
Having looked at the b.g.c hits for Katzenjungem, it seems the strong forms aren't as rare as I thought, so I retract my suggestion for commenting on its rarity. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 08:20, 30 June 2017 (UTC)Reply
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Last year, Haziqmir ran a (unapproved?) bot to add a bunch of Kashmiri entries, in Latin script, to the ends of existing entries, without regard for alphabetical order (see their talk page) or section dividers. - -sche(discuss)04:26, 20 June 2017 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 7 years ago3 comments3 people in discussion
Given the presence of -'re, I have to presume that 're is intended to document a stand-alone use of the morpheme, e.g. "'re you kiddin' me?". Accordingly, it should be considered a verb, not a suffix. Rriegs (talk) 03:51, 4 July 2017 (UTC)Reply
I don't know how to find citations of the 'standalone' use Rriegs mentions, although I imagine it could exist (I imagine standalone "'s 'e goin' or not?" and "'m I s'ppos'ta go?", or "s'e goin'..." and "m'I s'ppos'ta..." may also exist). In practice I guess this should be converted to a soft-redirect to -'re like 's to -'s. But if we could manage to cite standalone use, then I guess verb sections at 're and 's and 'm would be the way to handle it. (I note that the clitic "-'m" was at "'m", an oversight I fixed.) - -sche(discuss)16:35, 10 July 2017 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 7 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Translation table glosses that translate only part of the definition:
“fetch” for “(transitive) To fetch, bring, take.”
“adopt, assume (a position)” for “To adopt, assume, arrive at, or progress towards (a certain position, location, state).”
Glosses that point to God knows which definition:
“don”
“doff”
“betake”
Glosses written in a way that encourage incorrect translations:
“go or come” for “To cause to come or go or move.”: wrong transitivity
I’ve changed “respond to” to “respond to (a telephone call, a doorbell, etc)”, to prevent people from adding translations of the more typical use of “respond to”. The Finnish and Swedish translations need to be checked.
“colloquial: be” for “To be. Used to form the passive of verbs.”
I changed “become ill” to “to become ill with” to prevent intransitive translations from being added. The Bulgarian, Dutch and Swedish translations need to be checked.
In addition, some tables could be merged into other entries and changed to {{trans-see}}
Latest comment: 7 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
This Hebrew entry had no templates in it, and hadn't been edited by humans in 11 years. Aside from that, the definition only refers to its usage in the Hebrew scriptures, where it only occurs AFAIK in one of the divine names and as a divine name in its own right. It may have been an adjective at one time, but its meaning has been interpreted differently by different generations of scholars, and it certainly wasn't productive. Aside from that, the way we structure our Hebrew entries means that there should be inflected forms of multiple words that share the same spelling, but with different diacritics- all of which need to be added. The lack of categorization has meant that the deceptive bluelink has apparently kept it from being noticed by our Hebrew editors. Chuck Entz (talk) 05:10, 29 July 2017 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 7 years ago7 comments2 people in discussion
Definition one is copied verbatim from Century 1911:
Of or pertaining to the useful or mechanic arts, or to any academic, legal, science, engineering, business, or the like terminology with specific and precise meaning or (frequently, as a degree of distinction) shades of meaning; specially appropriate to any art, science or engineering field, or business
I am too tired to deal with this now, but it should not remain in this state. Other parts of the entry have wording problems (dated, etc.) as well. DCDuring (talk) 07:35, 3 August 2017 (UTC)Reply
I rolled it back. That may be the primary definition in Urban Dictionary or in your idiolect, but certainly not in that of most others. The "improvement" was shorter, but didn't provide the basic definition. See “technical”, in OneLook Dictionary Search. for the basic definition, usually the first shown, in the opinions of professional lexicographers. DCDuring (talk) 19:11, 11 August 2017 (UTC)Reply
@DCDuring I just thought of one explanation that would explain everything: you thought I had only changed the first sense and overlooked the other two senses and example. In that case your revert is perfectly understandable. If this is what happened, you can revert the revert (hmm..) and ignore what I said above. W3ird N3rd (talk) 23:19, 11 August 2017 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 7 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
First definition:
A Sanskrit philosophical term that may be literally rendered in English as nonduality: denoting that though differences and variegation appear in the human condition they are unreal or illusory and are not ultimately true.
This is supposed to be an English-language entry, not a Sanskrit one, and the wording smells of teaching Enlightenment to the ignorant. Chuck Entz (talk) 13:32, 15 August 2017 (UTC)Reply
Someone needs to go through the entries edited by all of the above accounts and IPs and rework them in the interest of what's best for the entries. As much as I dislike the games they're playing, I don't want to just revert everything they did- as I said, a number of their edits are at least partly an improvement, even if the overall pattern is harmful. It will take a bit more time and editorial judgment to do it right than I can put into it myself right now. Thanks! Chuck Entz (talk) 00:40, 21 August 2017 (UTC)Reply
@Chuck Entz, I took a look att Campista1891's contributions and made necessary changes. I'll take a look att the other two this evening. Thank you for keeping an eye on these edits — I've reverted several of them myself while tracking anons. --Robbie SWE (talk) 08:23, 21 August 2017 (UTC)Reply
No, "SOP" is a much better description- unless you think we should have entries like "四十三本"... Either delete it, or use {{&lit}} like the Chinese section already does. Chuck Entz (talk) 07:19, 22 August 2017 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 7 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
A mishmash of things have been stuck under "Related terms": some are derived terms, some are synonyms, some would belong under "See also", and some may just be junk. I don't have time to sort these out now - could someone else have a look? — Paul G (talk) 06:31, 23 August 2017 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 7 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Unsure how to fix template. Spaced forms need to be removed. "Further flung" etc. (with a space) is not an inflection of "far-flung" (with a hyphen). Equinox◑18:31, 3 September 2017 (UTC)Reply
No confusion: in this diff the IP copies the slovene section and gives the original a Slovak header. The only difference between the two is that header. Even if there should be a Slovak section, the current content is all Slovene- it should be removed as "no usable content given". Chuck Entz (talk) 02:20, 6 September 2017 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 7 years ago3 comments2 people in discussion
The Middle Chinese and Old Chinese readings (there should be three) seem to be out of place. It is also unclear what the different meanings are for the different readings. — justin(r)leung{ (t...) | c=› }03:15, 12 September 2017 (UTC)Reply
Note (Schuessler, 2007): "This word could be a cognate or variant of gǔ above, but the same graph also writes a word hù (ɣuoᴮ) ‘overnight wine’ [Shi 302, 2] with which it may be related since gū means ‘buy wine’. Karlgren (GSR 49b’) has assigned readings to meanings as given above, yet traditional commentaries and dictionaries don’t agree which reading, gū or hù, goes with which meaning." — justin(r)leung{ (t...) | c=› }03:22, 12 September 2017 (UTC)Reply
@Justinrleung: I did some re-editing, and I removed the RFC tag after I think the article is usable, without seeing here. As far as I know, the sence ‘to buy alcoholic drink’ has a definite pronunciation /*kuo/. The sense ‘overnight alcoholic drink’ does have different accounts in historical documents, and I accepted both, whithout thinking much. Any other thing need to do? Dokurrat (talk) 19:41, 19 September 2017 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 7 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
This was originally the Wikipedia article squeezed into dictionary format. A great deal of cleanup has already been done, but the "definition" is basically a string of quotes from a description of the alleged practices of this group, and not a definition at all. Chuck Entz (talk) 19:15, 15 September 2017 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 7 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion
The entire English section was changed to Translingual in this edit but I'm wondering if the initialism and noun senses should have remained as English. --Quesotiotyo (talk)
I've gotta say that I got a big "abusive" feeling from this user too. But I have my slapdown times so maybe I shouldn't try to judge. Still, if you have 20 edits and half of them are bitching, that is not a good sign. Equinox◑04:52, 3 October 2017 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 7 years ago8 comments3 people in discussion
This English entry was created 7 years ago by User:Leasnam with two senses:
To contradict; speak against.
To gainsay; renounce.
There were two quotes added at the time it was created. The first (on the first sense) is a quote from a science fiction short story which gives the word as an example of a made-up Germanized substitute for contradict, albeit in a sentence. The second (on the second sense), used it as a one-off science fiction coinage for some kind of telepathic or other deeper-level communication, which doesn't match the second sense at all.
User:-sche changed the second sense to (sort of) match the quote:
To direct conversation or questions (to).
I've only been able to find a couple of actual uses in Books (here and here) and a couple dozen uses in Groups (mostly not Usenet) by a few non-native speakers, supporting the "contradict" part of the first, so it might squeak by rfv. I'm not sure what the original second sense even means, since gainsay and contradict are synonyms and renounce means something else. The replacement second sense is only found in the one science fiction short story quoted, and it's in-universe at that.
I'm not sure exactly how to approach this. I'm not sure whether it would be worthwhile to rfv the first sense, but it should be labeled as rare or nonstandard, or something. I'm not sure if archaic makes sense, since I can't find anything more than a century old (Middle English has it, but under a different spelling). Maybe I'll rfv the second sense. The quotes already in the entry should probably be removed- if not, the author attribution needs to be corrected on both. Chuck Entz (talk) 04:34, 8 October 2017 (UTC)Reply
To me we seem to have as many as 5 definitions offered and two citations which are, erm, ambiguous, possibly irrelevant. For example, is "speak against" meant to be the same as "contradict" or is it something akin to "denounce"? I propose that we limit the damage that this entry can cause should it prove as wrong as it seems by inserting {{trans-see}} for each of the five definitions. And that we RfV each of the five definitions. Century 1911 doesn't have an entry, though they do have one for withsay.
The practice of starting an entry from its etymology, making sloppy definitions, and offering such shoddy "evidence" makes for bad entries, as we have seen before. DCDuring (talk) 15:00, 8 October 2017 (UTC)Reply
What we need to also do (in addition to the suggestions (?) mentioned above) is to quit thinking that entry creation is ever a final step in adding any term--preferably it is; but sometimes it is not, despite best efforts to make it so. The whole purpose of this project is to allow for multiple user inputs to ensure things are correct and balanced. So if it needs cleaning up, let's clean it up. Yeah, if you're expecting everything I do to be perfect all the time, well I've got disappointing news for you... Leasnam (talk) 13:41, 9 October 2017 (UTC)Reply
@DCDuring, and to answer to your comment about the etymological connection, No, the last known definition is not a surefire way to know how the word is used/will be used today, but it is absolutely the most logical place to start with, especially when the current usage is rather fuzzy Leasnam (talk) 13:57, 9 October 2017 (UTC)Reply
For sense #2, I believe we could also add "speak or answer back", no ? That is not an inherited sense, but it is analogous to what with- connotes in related modern words, like withdraw(“draw back”), withhold(“hold back”), so it seems like the author might mean "the only timeframe in which he could speak/answer back to the Spirit Ring" Leasnam (talk) 15:38, 9 October 2017 (UTC)Reply
Both the "1957" (really 1999) and 2010 quotes added to sense 2 are both from the same short story, "The days of Solomon Gursky", by Ian McDonald, which appeared in several anthologies. In both cases you attributed it to the editor of the anthology, not the author. Your other science fiction quote (added to sense 1) is from another short story that first appeared in 1984 in Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction magazine (now w:Asimov's Science Fiction), "Blued Moon" by w:Connie Willis (Asimov didn't write the story, he just had his name in the title of the magazine). As for sense 2, the context of "1957" quote shows that the word wasn't limited to responding, and in fact seems to be based on the idea of "speaking with", which isn't the same sense of with, at all. Chuck Entz (talk) 01:50, 10 October 2017 (UTC)Reply
@Chuck Entz, is it appropriate to call this an inherited word, or a (re)borrowing from Middle English ? I can't really find older uses of the word, and I don't have access to OED. If the word indeed shows a gap in use, I think it's good to show it with a label of nonstandard. Otherwise, if it continued throughout (doubtful), then rare might be better (?) . In any event, I feel weird saying it's inherited from ME...Leasnam (talk) 02:21, 10 October 2017 (UTC)Reply
ad hominem on Wikipedia.Wikipedia . DCDuring TALK 21:21, 10 April 2016 (UTC)
