Talk:abusive

The following information has failed Wiktionary's verification process (permalink).

Failure to be verified means that insufficient eligible citations of this usage have been found, and the entry therefore does not meet Wiktionary inclusion criteria at the present time. We have archived here the disputed information, the verification discussion, and any documentation gathered so far, pending further evidence.
Do not re-add this information to the article without also submitting proof that it meets Wiktionary's criteria for inclusion.

"(obsolete) Given to misusing. (Attested only in the mid 17th century.)" No citation is given. This seems to be saying the same thing as "(archaic) Tending to misuse; practising or containing abuse. (First attested in the late 16th century.)" Or can anyone differentiate them? Note I did just edit the entry a little myself, since it has a lot of overlapping definitions: I requested cleanup years ago but that usually goes ignored. Equinox ◑ 20:05, 11 April 2020 (UTC)Reply

@Equinox: I don't have access to the Shorter OED so can't verify the citation from there, but I think the existence of this sense is an editing artefact. The sense was introduced by these edits back in 2013. It seems like it might have been a mistake, since the "Given to misusing; also, full of abuses" sense—now edited to "Tending to misuse"—was accidentally hidden under the quotations, and I suspect Speednat was intending to replace it and didn't see that it had been kept there. That sense was then rescued from the quotations list here, but was left alongside the other one that was probably meant to replace it. At any rate the sense is saying exactly the same thing. Nizolan (talk) 19:46, 19 April 2020 (UTC)Reply

@Nizolan: All right, sometimes looking at the history reveals interesting things you can't see from the actual finished page (and I've ranted before about the possibility of a "loop" where people keep adding and removing the same stuff because they don't check the history). I didn't check the history :) Equinox ◑ 00:14, 5 May 2020 (UTC)Reply

Given the history, I have speedied this one. Kiwima (talk) 21:08, 8 May 2020 (UTC)Reply