User talk:Andrew Sheedy

Feel free to write in either English or French.

• The latest spelling reform abolished month-name capitalisation everywhere. It’s true that a minority in Portugal ignored the reform, but that’s another story.
• Metaphonic is a term used in Portuguese grammar to describe certain plurals. Don’t change it just because you don’t know it!

Also, please don’t change non-English definitions into sentences.

Sorry if I’m sounding rude. Feel free to contact me if you have any questions regarding Portuguese, or editing in general. Cheers! — Ungoliant ^(falai) 22:35, 16 June 2015 (UTC)Reply

Thanks...I bumble my way around this place, hoping not to mess it up, but I sometimes make a dumb change that isn't right. I tried to avoid making content changes, unless I know what I'm doing, but I'm afraid I'm sticking my nose into editing jobs that I shouldn't today. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 22:45, 16 June 2015 (UTC)Reply

Please be more careful when you copy-paste information (which you shouldn't do unless you're sure it's correct, in any case). You need to change the code es to pt if you're putting something from a Spanish etymology into a Portuguese one, as you did here. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 02:22, 18 June 2015 (UTC)Reply

Thanks, I will. I didn't realize the code actually changed depending on the language the etymology was under. I promise I'll read some more of the help pages as soon as I have the time...(in a few days). Andrew Sheedy (talk) 16:15, 18 June 2015 (UTC)Reply

I've been fixing some of these myself now. Hopefully I'm making up for the ones I messed up. ;) Andrew Sheedy (talk) 18:57, 22 June 2015 (UTC)Reply

Hi Andrew. When there are multiple etymology sections, other headings get an extra level (except those that don’t refer to a specific etymology section, like References and sometimes See also and Pronunciation). — Ungoliant ^(falai) 18:51, 22 June 2015 (UTC)Reply

Got it. It's hard to know what I should change sometimes, because there are cases in which the levels aren't standard. It takes a while to learn all the rules and the exceptions to the rules. Thanks for your patience with this newbie. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 18:56, 22 June 2015 (UTC)Reply

Our style guides are outdated and we are working on updating them. There seems to be an informal consensus that definitions should not be capitalized and not end with a period. See Wiktionary:Beer parlour/2015/May#Poll 2. As with most disputed style conventions, use whatever you prefer when writing or completely reworking a definition, but do not change existing ones except to maintain consistency within a single article. --WikiTiki89 18:49, 2 July 2015 (UTC)Reply

@Wikitiki89 The only consensus I see is that we shouldn't have a mix of capitalizing/periods and non-capitalizing/no periods. Capitalizing with periods for English definitions is the current recommended style, whether or not everyone agrees with it. As a newbie, I'm not too familiar with the standard policy for dealing with controversies. Is your recommendation that I not change any existing ones a universal sentiment and not just your personal opinion? I'll follow your advice for now, however. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 19:13, 2 July 2015 (UTC)Reply

That is not my personal opinion, that is our general policy for anything that does not have a clear consensus. Also, notice how the page you linked to (Help:Writing definitions) was written mainly by two editors in 2009 and has barely been touched since then. I don't there ever was a consensus that that page is authoritative. Wiktionary:Entry layout explained, however, is technically authoritative, since it requires votes on all its content, but even it is out of date and explicitly ignored in many cases, which is why there were recent discussions to amend it. --WikiTiki89 19:24, 2 July 2015 (UTC)Reply

Thanks. I find that Wiktionary is quite confusing for new editors, since many things have varying degrees of authority without being labelled as such, and there are all sorts of inconsistencies. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 19:28, 2 July 2015 (UTC)Reply

It's mainly due to the fact that we have far fewer editors than Wikipedia. Some say it's even the reason we have fewer editors, so it's sort of a Catch-22. --WikiTiki89 19:31, 2 July 2015 (UTC)Reply

This section is reserved for words in languages I don't have a strong grasp of that I've added definitions to with reasonable certainty of their accuracy, but that I would like confirmed (and completed if need be) by a native speaker of that language. Anyone who speaks those languages like a native may cross them off after checking them for me. Otherwise, I will submit them to someone periodically. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 17:51, 3 July 2015 (UTC)Reply

• Keeping word lists like this is actually one of the few appropriate uses of your your user page (another being declaring your fluency in languages with a {{Babel}} box). Polansky talking to himself should not set an example to you (in fact, almost nothing else he does should). Though in this particular case, you could have added {{attention}} to the entry. Or just asked Ungoliant. — Keφr 15:31, 10 July 2015 (UTC)Reply

I did ask Ungoliant, and he suggested that I submit a list to him once in a while, though there seems to be little point making a list here, since I've only come across a single entry to which I've added a definition since then. I'm planning on creating myself a user page if it looks like I'll be able to continue editing. My stay here may not be long-term, and I don't want to create it just to leave it sitting there collecting dust. Good to know about the {{attention}} template. I'll probably just use that instead. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 15:39, 10 July 2015 (UTC)Reply

At Talk:sheer I have inserted a table of the top 100 nouns that follow sheer at COCA. I have sorted them approximately by type of noun, eg, (textile, geology, degree (quantity), contingency, "lack", and abstract, hard to measure abstract qualities. The "abstract qualities" can be used on a comparative scale if not one strictly quantifiable, eg, joy.

I did all this to see what was involved in assessing how to use corpus data to determine how many definitions a word might need and what they might be. I doubt that all of the classes of nouns need their own definition, but they all should be included.

Also, sheer as in "The sheer forces on the plane made landing very difficult." was represented only once in the corpus. DCDuring TALK 04:49, 3 February 2016 (UTC) My misspelling sheer for shear. DCDuring TALK 09:59, 3 February 2016 (UTC)Reply

Let me know if you think this approach seems useful. DCDuring TALK 04:50, 3 February 2016 (UTC)Reply

@DCDuring Thank you, that highlighted a semantical difference I hadn't noticed before, namely between quantity (as in "sheer numbers") and the "pure" sense as in "sheer joy." I think the contingency category falls under that latter sense. I would be interested in seeing more examples of the "pure, unmixed" sense that is labelled obsolete in the entry, to see how distinct it really is from the other "pure" sense. Maybe I'll take a look at Google Books tomorrow. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 05:07, 3 February 2016 (UTC)Reply

"Degree" meanings often emerge from other definitions. Some of the specific collocations would work with either definition.

It was fun to do this, but I'll need to speed it up a bit and make the format better. I was motivated by some reading I've been doing on corpus linguistics as applied to lexicography. DCDuring TALK 09:59, 3 February 2016 (UTC)Reply

Bonjour,

Merci pour la relecture, ton français est très bon. Comme tu sollicitais une relecture, je te propose quelques commentaires ici :

• "je ne suis pas tout à fait certain si que c'était ce fut exactement ce que tu voulais dire"
• "en général, en anglais, on n'utilise pas l'infinitif immédiatement après un autre verbe, mais plutôt le participe présent" : parfait ! Merci beaucoup, je tâcherai de m'en souvenir. En français, c'est le contraire, donc j'ai calqué la structure.
• "Peut-être que je rejoindrai le groupe plus tard, quand j'aiaurai plus de temps et quelque chose à contribuer proposer (ou peut-être que je pourrais vous aider avec les traductions dedu français en à l'anglais, si ça te tente). Mon français est bien mieux que c'était il y a une année, mais j'imagine que j'ai quand même fait des fautes, et je serais très reconnaissant si tu (ou quelqu'un d'autre) les corrigeais." : Il n'y a quasiment pas de fautes ! Ton français est très bon ! Merci encore pour la relecture et au plaisir d'échanger à nouveau dans le futur (and let me know if some of my sentences are not clear for you.

En passant, puisque tu lis si bien le français, tu seras peut-être intéressé pour lire les Actualités mensuelles du Wiktionnaire (French Wiktionary). Ce n'est pas très long et pas toujours intéressant, mais on y parle de l'avancée du Wiktionnaire et de dictionnaire Noé (talk) 09:41, 21 July 2016 (UTC)Reply

@Noé, merci pour la relecture ! Serait-ce bizarre de dire « que ce fut » dans une conversation normale ? Est-ce qu'on le remplacerait d'une locution plus familière dans ce cas ?

J'ai ajouté les Actualités à mon liste de suivi. Je pense que je les ai vues il y a quelques mois (et grâce à eux, découvert Linguisticae), mais à ce temps-là, elles ne m'intéressaient pas beaucoup et je les ai oubliées jusqu'à maintenant. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 02:44, 22 July 2016 (UTC)Reply

Oui, à l'oral on éviterait « que ce fut », on remplacerait probablement toute la phrase par « mais peut-être que ce n'était pas... ». Les Actualités ne sont pas toujours intéressantes, puisque nous ne sommes que deux à les écrire, parfois nous manquons de temps. J'espère que tu trouveras les prochaines à ton goût ! Noé (talk) 10:07, 22 July 2016 (UTC)Reply

Merci encore. :) Je trouve que les Actualités pour le mois de juin sont assez intérressantes, surtout les brèves et l'introduction aux youtubistes, qui m'aident à pratiquer ma compréhension aurale. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 03:14, 23 July 2016 (UTC)Reply

Could you please explain why you've reverted my edit at déconner? Do you feel that it's too vulgar a translation and that I should find a less vulgar equivalent? At any rate, it would be nice to know the reason for it, rather than simply assuming that you are censoring Wiktionary without justification. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 17:02, 5 September 2016 (UTC)Reply

• Nothing whatever to do with censorship. My issue is that I don't believe déconner is ever translated as ‘decunt’ since I'm not convinced that ‘decunt’ is a word with any real usage. If it is, this translation is so rare that it surely does not merit a fresh definition line of its own. Ƿidsiþ 06:29, 6 September 2016 (UTC)Reply

Hi Andrew!

Sorry, I continue to write in loose English everywhere! So, we activated Translate module for French Wiktionary to provide Actualités in English! So, I'll be trying to translate again, but I'll be very happy if you can proofread at some point or have a look at it. It is still an on-going process, because it's quite time-consuming. Then, I think we will try to translate each new pages but I am not sure it is of so much interesting for you guys, so let's see if we convince more readers...and maybe at some point you may think of creating your own magazine for English Wiktionary! Noé (talk) 14:39, 8 September 2016 (UTC)Reply

I agree that it might be less interesting for English speakers, since Actualités is about Wiktionnaire and French resources, but I'll be glad to help! (I may not always have time, but we'll see.) It would be neat to have the same sort of thing for Wiktionary, but I don't think I have the ambition to start it...! Andrew Sheedy (talk) 22:49, 8 September 2016 (UTC)Reply

FYI, {{t-}} is actually long-deprecated; it's been a redirect to {{t}} for almost three years now, aside from a four-month period when it was simply deleted. —Ruakh_TALK 06:17, 26 September 2016 (UTC)Reply

Thanks for letting me know, I had no idea this was the case! Andrew Sheedy (talk) 00:28, 27 September 2016 (UTC)Reply

I hope you don't mind me messaging you to say that voting is open on Wiktionary:Votes/pl-2017-01/Policy on place names. John Cross (talk) 09:02, 21 January 2017 (UTC)Reply

Add the following code to your custom CSS page (User:Andrew Sheedy/common.css):

.ns-0 .toclevel-2 {
    display:none;
}

— Ungoliant ^(falai) 16:28, 28 February 2017 (UTC)Reply

That's so much better, thank you! I often reference and edit Spanish entries, which are near the bottom of the list, so this will save me a lot of scrolling on some pages! Andrew Sheedy (talk) 23:24, 28 February 2017 (UTC)Reply

I think this "missing" word on your user page is just an error for farnesylate. (P.S. We have spare in the school sense now.) Equinox ◑ 00:17, 17 March 2017 (UTC)Reply

@Equinox. Good catch, thanks! And I'm the one who added the definition of "spare" today. ;) Thanks for the cite.

It makes me really happy to see someone going through my list. I don't have the time for much besides touching up entries as I look up words, so it's good to see that it isn't just getting longer and longer.... I'll add cites tomorrow for the words you've added from the book I got them from. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 05:03, 17 March 2017 (UTC)Reply

I was really shocked that we didn't have suprainiac. I mean, I just used that word last week. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 05:11, 17 March 2017 (UTC)Reply

It's sometimes interesting to see what gaps we have in our coverage. I'm really surprised that we're missing so much slang that I've seen/heard dozens of times. (I've held off on adding the ones on my user page until I have time to figure out (a) whether they're specific to Canada and (b) whether they're citable.) Andrew Sheedy (talk) 05:21, 17 March 2017 (UTC)Reply

I'm in the US and Eq. in the UK, so if you list them here, we can get a grip on the geographic spread of your slang pretty quickly. Citing is always harder (but Issuu can help). —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 06:02, 17 March 2017 (UTC)Reply

These are the ones I have on my user page (most of them, I'm also hesitant to add because I haven't quite figured out how to define them):

• bless (slang) (interjection) (possibly covered by etym. 2, but might have undergone a bit of a semantic shift)
• dead (slang) (interjection) (synonym of "RIP" below)
• dig (informal) (as in "take a dig at") (a jibe (etymology 3)) (I don't think this is specific to Canada, but I don't know how widespread it is)
• extra (Canada, US, slang) (adjective) (not sure how to define this one yet, but it's pretty common)
• ponytail (hair elastic) (not sure how localized this is, but I've heard it from at least 3 different people)
• rip/RIP (slang) (pronounced /ɹɪp/) (interjection) (mentioned in a Tea Room discussion; not sure how to define it yet, but used to emphasize stress in sentences like "I have three exams tomorrow, rip")
• savage (Canada, US, slang) (adjective) (of humour) (sarcastic, biting, but not necessarily ill-natured), (noun) (someone who jokes, teases sarcastically)

"Savage", "RIP/rip", and "dead" I hear or see almost every day. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 21:17, 17 March 2017 (UTC)Reply

I can attest to dead, dig, rip, and savage. Not sure about the rest. They're all hard to define; UD might help inspire the right phrasing. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 00:47, 18 March 2017 (UTC)Reply

If it's OK, I did a small correction in your message here: diff.

In case you didn't know, a link to the slash entry (/) must have a colon, I believe. The correct link is ] (not ]). When you don't type the colon, you are linking to "{{PAGENAME}}/" with a slash at the end, like this: User talk:Andrew Sheedy/. --Daniel Carrero (talk) 13:00, 3 April 2017 (UTC)Reply

OK, thanks. I knew that just linking a slash wouldn't give me what I want, but I wasn't sure how to fix it. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 02:37, 4 April 2017 (UTC)Reply

Dangit. There's something funny about the idea that being more familiar with RFVing entries (i.e. muscle memory) makes it harder to do it right when anything changes, bc you literally don't think about it. Equinox ◑ 05:45, 13 May 2017 (UTC)Reply

Haha, I imagine it's going to be a little while before everyone gets used to there being two RFV's (and knowing the way things are, it'll get changed back, just when we've finally figured things out...). Andrew Sheedy (talk) 06:19, 13 May 2017 (UTC)Reply

I'm confused how you can keep doing it wrong, though... the template throws a Lua error now if you omit the language code. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 07:15, 13 May 2017 (UTC)Reply

It's because I use some home-made dirty tools (not bots, just my own GUI, instead of Wiktionary browser). They are faster 95% of the time but I might slip up occasionally. Equinox ◑ 01:29, 19 November 2017 (UTC)Reply

Why are you too busy to play, huh? You get a whole month for only ten words, and nobody is forcing you to do them. You can ignore them if you're busy. Anyway: regarding using your words as a source: I'm not doing it right now because IMO some of them are sums of parts (2-inch blind?) and I already have some tens of thousands of words. But thanks, and I might come back to your page some day. Good man :) Equinox ◑ 01:26, 19 November 2017 (UTC)Reply

@Equinox My main difficulty now isn't so much time, but Internet access...I'm in a bit of a peculiar situation right now which means I only get Internet on breaks and weekends, and Wiktionary often doesn't make the cut! And I guess you probably won't need to supplement your lists for a while.... Also, I should really start creating some of the words on my own page...hopefully I'll have a chance sometime in a few months. A lot of the window covering terms are potentially SOP, which is partly why I haven't created them yet (aside from the difficulty in defining some of them). "2-inch blind" is one such example--I've heard it used specifically in reference to venetian blinds with 2" deep slats, which is certainly more than can be understood from the term itself. I don't know if it's citable though, or whether the narrowness of the sense it was used in was more contextual than denotative.

Anyway, as soon as I feel like I can contribute most of the time, I'll sign onto your list. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 03:59, 19 November 2017 (UTC)Reply

Sure, no stress, you're a great contributor and there will be open arms when you get the chance to laze around doing Wiktionary nonsense. Equinox ◑ 04:01, 19 November 2017 (UTC)Reply

Thanks, I look forward to it!

I think another reason I haven't created many entries for words I've collected is that doing the research to figure out whether a word is citeable and how I should define it is a bit of a bugger. I should probably be less obsessed with making entries as complete as possible, and just build them up more once I have time.... (Also I tend to like making lists of stuff I have to do far more than I like actually doing the stuff :P) Andrew Sheedy (talk) 04:08, 19 November 2017 (UTC)Reply

Hahaha, that's pretty much why I created EWDC. I have a ton of word lists (some are annotated, some I don't dare to look at) and I thought "what if OTHER PEOPLE ALSO USED MY LISTS". Jeez. You can't devote your entire life to adding words to a dictionary and also not let others play. I appreciate list-making <3 Equinox ◑ 04:11, 19 November 2017 (UTC)Reply

Hello! I'm pondering doing EWDC again. See User talk:Equinox/EWDC. Equinox ◑ 04:00, 31 December 2018 (UTC)Reply

Hi. Your edits at auf were a bit problematic. Basically you added two senses that have nothing to do with the preposition itself, but which are simply idiomatic uses with certain verbs.

• You said there's a sense "after" giving the the example "einer auf den anderen" (one after the other), which doesn't exist. I suppose that you took this from the verb folgen (“to follow”), which happens to be construed with "auf". So you say: "Es folgte einer auf den anderen." (One followed after the other.) But this is merely due to the specific construction of "folgen". You can't generalise it. In other words, "folgen auf" means "follow after", but "auf" as such doesn't mean "after".
• The same happened with the sense "per, for" that you added. This is an idiomatic construction of the verb kommen. You say: "Auf eine Katze kommen zwei Hunde." (For each cat there are two dogs.). But you can't generalise this construction in such a way that "auf" means "per, for" because it doesn't. (Note also that you wrote "auf einen Katze".)

Of course there can be mistakes in anybody's edits and that's totally okay. But you should probably be more careful regarding German and only make edits of which you are really certain. Thank you. 178.4.151.28 19:37, 29 March 2019 (UTC)Reply

Thank you for pointing out my errors...I apologize for introducing them into the entry. However, I was merely following the lead of two German-English dictionaries, Collins and Cambridge. I just realized I actually took the example "einer auf den anderen" from the former, which is problematic, but the errors come from those dictionaries (aside from my erroneous use of "einen" of course). Typically, I only add material that I can find in two professional dictionaries, but I will be more wary of their loose handling of idioms in the future. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 21:13, 29 March 2019 (UTC)Reply

IMHO glossing "per" is correct, because the synchronic literal sense is not apparent: on any seat comes one person each. I might discourage this sense under that etymology, but I don't think that it would be any help to allude to a possible confusion between auf, up, op versus ob, if, \*jabaina, versus je "per", if this je is likely akin to each, jeglich--the confusion would have to be rather old, I reckon, and thus intangible or at least intractable.

Likewise, I disagree that glossing the auf in auf etwas folgen were illogical in principle, but I agree that "after" is suboptimal, as much as it would be for follow-up. Further speculation leaves me utterly confused; I'll note that aufholen might correlate to folgen as much as überholen to überrollen--which is, not very much. Still, the individual etymologies are not very sattisfying, which driving me cookoo. 109.41.2.103 20:39, 30 July 2020 (UTC)Reply

Presumably do-goodism; cf. buenismo and note bonisme Catalan translation in the first entry. Equinox ◑ 03:24, 17 November 2019 (UTC)Reply

Thanks! I knew there was a word for it... I'll have to make sure it's citable (I came across it in a translation of something a Spanish-speaker said in Italian), but that shouldn't be hard to figure out. Now I just have to motivate myself to make the entry...it's so much easier just collecting words in my nice big list, *sigh*. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 03:29, 17 November 2019 (UTC)Reply

It seems bonisme (single n) might be a valid alt spelling in French too. Equinox ◑ 03:33, 17 November 2019 (UTC)Reply

OK, thanks! Andrew Sheedy (talk) 04:05, 17 November 2019 (UTC)Reply

There are various words on your user page that I think are SOP, or might not be worthy of creation, etc, but the fact that it is your user page makes me not want to edit it (plus, it would turn up on the watchlist of everybody who's ever talked to you). If you make it a subpage instead, I would leave some comments and remove words that have been defined. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 04:23, 3 April 2020 (UTC)Reply

@Metaknowledge OK, sure! I don't mind people editing my user page (Equinox has done it from time to time), but since I was eventually going to create a separate page anyway, here it is. I would certainly appreciate other people helping me with all those words, in whatever capacity. I tend to be too busy with university/family life to do more than just add words to the list or organize them a bit (usually because it takes time to find cites, figure out how to define, them, and/or figure out if they're inclusion-worthy in the first place). I do go through the list from time to time and remove words that have since been added, but it would be helpful to have someone else catching what I miss. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 16:32, 3 April 2020 (UTC)Reply

Although I imagine you don't want/need the extra work, feel free to sort any of the terms in the "unsorted" table, in any way that seems fitting to you (or suggest categories I can sort words into). Andrew Sheedy (talk) 16:37, 3 April 2020 (UTC)Reply

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ᗝᗯᗝ צבוע לבנה (talk) 13:20, 20 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

@צבוע לבנה: No problem! Thanks for your contributions. Just remember that Wiktionary is case sensitive. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 17:07, 20 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

Yes צבוע לבנה (talk) 17:32, 20 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

2A00:23C5:FE1C:3701:E554:283:652D:79BD 03:32, 5 June 2025 (UTC)Reply

Lol, good to see you Eq. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 04:13, 5 June 2025 (UTC)Reply