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Not in the OED. Also, as it is defined, it is very vague. BTW, the quotation for the main biologic sense needs to be properly formatted, with the quotation’s information greatly expanded. †﴾(u):Raifʻhār(t):Doremítzwr﴿16:04, 18 September 2009 (UTC)Reply
I very much doubt that a theologian would resort to science to defend a believed event, particularly one that is a supposed miracle. I do recall a teacher saying that parthenogenesis happens, so the virgin birth could have occurred... He was a science teacher, so should have known better. Offspring via parthenogenesis are inevitably female. Pingku18:40, 18 September 2009 (UTC)Reply
Cited, rewrote def somewhat since it does not seem to refer to any specific doctrine. Seems to be a literal use of partheno- + -genesis, rather than a copying of the scientific concept, AFAICT. -- Visviva13:34, 19 September 2009 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 8 years ago8 comments2 people in discussion
Perhaps I just require an explanation, but the usage notes are confusing to me. Why would the fact that parthenogenetic offspring are always female have anything to do with it? Proxyma (talk) 19:11, 6 November 2016 (UTC)Reply
Looking at the history of this page further, it seems to have been an outgrowth from the above discussion. Since the logic of the usage note is unclear, and it lacks citations that would help in cleaning it up, I'm going to go ahead and remove it. Proxyma (talk) 19:24, 6 November 2016 (UTC)Reply
@I'm_so_meta_even_this_acronym: Ok. I have a couple more questions though. First, is this really a "usage note" or an etymological one? It seems more like an argument about which sense of the prefix is most likely to contribute to the word's meaning, but I doubt that is going to contribute to the word's *usage* at all. Should the header be changed?
Getting back to the core issue, is the following an accepted way to reason about etymology? You may know better than I, so this is really just a question. But: -parens is a prefix that can mean "virgin" or "absence of fertilisation, asexual reproduction." Either of these as stated would technically apply to the Virgin Birth, although obviously the first is closer. We only reach the conclusion that only the first sense is applicable by considering an external scientific fact: no known asexual reproduction can lead to male offspring. But that was not part of the original definition of parens-, it's something we synthesized from elsewhere.
I guess the limits of my lexicographical knowledge are showing here, but perhaps what I'm really asking is: when we consider a definition, should we go beyond the words that are actually in the definition when considering its meaning (in this case external scientific reality), or should the logic be closed to the actual words themselves? Proxyma (talk) 19:59, 6 November 2016 (UTC)Reply
@Proxyma: I take your point about the placement of the note; it is better suited to its new home in the etymology section. (I assume you mean the prefix parthen-, from παρθένος(parthénos), rather than anything to do with the Latin parēns.) Your point re deciding the issue by reference to scientific facts that may be unknown to the writer in question is also valid; however, in this case, the scientific fact about that asexual reproduction is at the core of the biologic sense already, and isn't the important thing about Jesus' virgin birth from a theological perspective: Mary did not beget Jesus through sexual intercourse, so Mary's virginity was preserved; Jesus was not a monogametic masculinised clone of Mary and neither was he fatherless (God was his father, viaThe Holy Spirit); certainly the etymological sense was meant. Thanks for challenging the usage note, because, as a result, I found out about Kaguya. :-) — I.S.M.E.T.A.01:33, 8 November 2016 (UTC)Reply
