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Unless I'm missing something, keep and convert to a verb, it means something like "to suck one's fingers of something", totally sounds like an idiom, but naturally I've never heard of it since I don't 'speak' German. Mglovesfun (talk) 10:28, 12 August 2013 (UTC)Reply
(before edit conflict)Keep. It's a verb. Idiomatic expression. Russian has almost identical expression: "выса́сывать/вы́сосать из па́льца" - to make up something" (literally: to suck out of the finger). I've made some changes and added a user example. Not sure if "etwas" ("something") should be included in the lemma. --Anatoli(обсудить/вклад)11:20, 12 August 2013 (UTC)Reply
This one is different from a simple reflexive verb, like "sich große Mühe geben" - "to go to great lengths", "put in a lot of efforts". Besides, "sich" is in the dative case, not accusative. An example here with "sich" is sich auf den Weg machen (accusative here). --Anatoli(обсудить/вклад)11:39, 12 August 2013 (UTC)Reply
The fact that other pages do it wrong is not a reason to do the same mistake here. And the different cases are just due to the different verbs involved and have nothing to do with the phrase as a whole. -- Liliana•11:43, 12 August 2013 (UTC)Reply
I don't know how you can separate the particle from those expressions. A better Wiktionary example: "sich den Kopf zerbrechen" where "sich" is also in the dative case (not marked so in the entry). If you remove "sich" it simply means "break (someone's) head", not "rack (one's) brain". --Anatoli(обсудить/вклад)11:47, 12 August 2013 (UTC)Reply
But "sich" is misleading, because it implies that it is somehow part of the phrase, even though it must be replaced by the respective pronoun, like in "Zerbrichst du dir den Kopf?". Therefore, it should be at den Kopf zerbrechen and tagged {{reflexive}}, so people know they need to insert sich, mir, dir, euch etc. -- Liliana•12:02, 12 August 2013 (UTC)Reply
{{reflexive}} is a red link; I assume we would mark it {{context|reflexive}} even though reflexivity isn't a context. But German reflexives should actually always be marked {{context|dative reflexive}} or {{context|accusative reflexive}} since it really isn't always predictable which it will be. (But thanks to Anatoli for bringing this up; until now I had no idea how to say "pull (something) out of one's ass" in German.) —Angr12:39, 12 August 2013 (UTC)Reply
Dutch has an equivalent phrase, uit de duim zuigen. But I'm not sure how to handle its grammar either. It's not quite the same as the German phrase, because Dutch uses a possessive. However, Dutch lacks an indefinite/reflexive possessive equivalent to English one's so I had to substitute it with the article in the lemma form. I don't know if there is a better way to do that. —CodeCat13:01, 12 August 2013 (UTC)Reply
Doesn't men have a possessive? How would you say "One must take care of one's possessions" in Dutch? German uses sein for this. —Angr15:13, 12 August 2013 (UTC)Reply
In Irish I'd use the second person (effectively uit je duim zuigen but using Irish words); that's standard procedure in Irish dictionaries. Are there precedents in Dutch dictionaries? —Angr17:32, 12 August 2013 (UTC)Reply
Fair enough. Irish doesn't have a T-V distinction, and also, the lemma form is the 2nd person singular imperative, so lemma forms of phrases actually look more like zuig uit je duim; the agreement is thus with an implied 2nd person singular pronoun rather than with "one". —Angr19:34, 12 August 2013 (UTC)Reply
The discussion made me also think that German reflexive verbs are not handled very well, something is missing. For example, (sich) ] (sense 2 (introduce oneself) and 3 (imagine)). The {{context}} doesn't add to reflexive categories. Also, sense 2 of "sich vorstellen" governs accusative, sense 3 governs dative. This is not reflected anywhere in the entry. So, "ich stelle mich vor" means "I'm introducing myself", "ich stelle mir vor" means "I imagine" but if I look at the entry, I could think that sense 2 and 3 are used identically.
Re: "sich" being confusing. So are English "oneself", "one's" or equivalents in other languages, which we use in entries.
Re: German pronoun "sein" and Dutch "sijn". Like Dutch, "sein" is not gender-neutral either because there is "ihr" (her(s)) but it makes sense to use "sein" in lemma-forms, also "sich", even if it changes to (mich/mir, dich/dir, uns, euch). That's a dictionary convention. --Anatoli(обсудить/вклад)02:28, 13 August 2013 (UTC)Reply
Yes, we use one's in English entries, that is equivalent to German sein, which is perfectly fine in the lemma form. But it doesn't make sense to have sich in the lemma form: that is explicitly covered by {{reflexive}}! We could delete that context template altogether if we're putting sich in every lemma form anyway. -- Liliana•18:39, 13 August 2013 (UTC)Reply
