. In DICTIOUS you will not only get to know all the dictionary meanings for the word
, but we will also tell you about its etymology, its characteristics and you will know how to say
in singular and plural. Everything you need to know about the word
you have here. The definition of the word
will help you to be more precise and correct when speaking or writing your texts. Knowing the definition of
, as well as those of other words, enriches your vocabulary and provides you with more and better linguistic resources.
Welcome!
Hello, welcome to Wiktionary, and thank you for your contributions so far. Here are a few good links for newcomers:
- How to edit a page is a concise list of technical guidelines to the wiki format we use here: how to, for example, make text boldfaced or create hyperlinks. Feel free to practice in the sandbox. If you would like a slower introduction we have a short tutorial.
- Entry layout explained (ELE) is a detailed policy documenting how Wiktionary pages should be formatted. All entries should conform to this standard, the easiest way to do this is to copy exactly an existing page for a similar word.
- Our Criteria for inclusion (CFI) define exactly which words Wiktionary is interested in including. There is also a list of things that Wiktionary is not for a higher level overview.
- If you already have some experience with editing our sister project Wikipedia, then you may find our guide to Wikipedia users useful.
- The FAQ aims to answer most of your remaining questions, and there are several help pages that you can browse for more information.
- We have discussion rooms in which you can ask any question about Wiktionary or its entries, a glossary of our technical jargon, and some hints for dealing with the more common communication issues.
Also, please add a BabelBox to your userpage so we can help you with the languages you'll be working in.
I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wiktionarian! If you have any questions, bring them to the Wiktionary:Information desk, or ask me on my talk page. If you do so, please sign your posts with four tildes: ~~~~ which automatically produces your username and the current date and time.
Again, welcome! — Ungoliant (Falai) 03:48, 18 October 2012 (UTC)Reply
I already told you on my talk page, but I see that you have disregarded me and continued to create Swahili entries. They have a great deal of basic errors that you would recognise instantly if you were fluent or even conversational in Swahili. I will clean them all up, but again, I must ask you not to create any more entries until you have advanced in Swahili and are able to do so. —Μετάknowledgediscuss/deeds 00:08, 12 November 2017 (UTC)Reply
- @Metaknowledge -- this is not true, as you can see by my contributions, my most recent non-talk-page one was at 21:38 on 8 November 2017 (UTC), well before you said "I ask that you not create any more for now" at 23:44 on 8 November 2017 (UTC). I am only trying to help -- by saying things like this on my talk page it just makes me look bad to other Wiktionary editors and I think that is unfair. Habstinat (talk) 04:36, 15 November 2017 (UTC)Reply
- My mistake, I misread the timestamps. I apologise for the unjust accusation. —Μετάknowledgediscuss/deeds 04:40, 15 November 2017 (UTC)Reply
I just saw the message above, and I had completely forgotten our previous interaction in 2017. Your recent entries look good to me, so I guess you really have advanced in your Swahili — congratulations, and thanks for coming back. Anyway, I came to tell you about an old issue that continues to plague Swahili. Many years ago, we had a bot called Tbot that created entries automatically based on translations in English entries, which worked fine for many languages but was disastrous for Swahili, where a bunch of terrible translations were added. When you come across Tbot entries and clean them up, like you did here, you also have to go to the English entry it was based on and check the translations (mistreat#Translations) — what you will generally find is that the bad translation is still there, and it was usually added to all the translation tables that existed at the time (including parts of speech that make no sense). In this case, I've just removed it, along with another faulty translation. It's annoying, but we need to clean it up as we go along, and even when the Tbot entry has the correct definition, it's worth checking the English entry to make sure there aren't faulty translations as well before removing the Tbot tag. Thanks for helping! —Μετάknowledgediscuss/deeds 04:48, 8 June 2019 (UTC)Reply
- An example of what the relevant cleanup looks like: bite. —Μετάknowledgediscuss/deeds 04:57, 8 June 2019 (UTC)Reply
- hi @Metaknowledge, thank you for the compliment and thanks for letting me know more about the tbot entries. i'll be sure to go back and edit the translations too while fixing those -- might try to carefully go through Category:Tbot entries (Swahili) one of these days to knock them all out. --Habst (talk) 12:32, 8 June 2019 (UTC)Reply
- Some of them are also misspelt or not attested (like Swahilified names of countries that simply don't have any use when you search on Google Books), so I've had to delete Tbot entries as well (if you come across any like that, you can just ping me). On another topic, I'm not sure which dictionaries you're using, but words like ajinabi are sometimes marked as m-wa because, being animate, that's the agreement they take (as explained at Appendix:Swahili noun classes), but we still consider them to be whatever class they seem to be morphologically, which allows for correctly generating the plural. —Μετάknowledgediscuss/deeds 18:53, 8 June 2019 (UTC)Reply
- @Metaknowledge, yes, i did find aviya to be a misspelling and marked it that way. i'll ping you if i find any others. i mostly use this dictionary and this one along with a search on BBC swahili or google books. i'll keep that in mind though, thanks! --Habst (talk) 19:08, 8 June 2019 (UTC)Reply
- @Metaknowledge hi, i found majaliwea and magiribi which i think are misspellings, i think they are OK to be deleted as the only uses i found are in dictionaries that copy Wiktionary --Habst (talk) 15:28, 10 June 2019 (UTC)Reply
- Got 'em. By the way, the ping won't work unless you leave your signature in the same edit. —Μετάknowledgediscuss/deeds 23:33, 10 June 2019 (UTC)Reply
- @Metaknowledge ah forgot about that quirk -- well anyways i think paramidi should be deleted as well. thanks so much for your help! --Habst (talk) 22:34, 11 June 2019 (UTC)Reply
- hi @Metaknowledge, you can remove benbera and tukiyo now too. i'll let you know as i find more. thanks! --Habst (talk) 23:14, 29 June 2019 (UTC)Reply
- @Metaknowledge also this one: wafauasi. --Habst (talk) 23:42, 29 June 2019 (UTC)Reply
- @Metaknowledge also, marekiana. --Habst (talk) 14:38, 1 July 2019 (UTC)Reply
- @Metaknowledge also, mahail. --Habst (talk) 18:22, 3 July 2019 (UTC)Reply
- @Metaknowledge also, tunikwa. --Habst (talk) 19:54, 3 July 2019 (UTC)Reply
- @Metaknowledge also, mawasiyano. thanks again! --Habst (talk) 04:00, 5 July 2019 (UTC)Reply
@Metaknowledge also, uadhilifu. --Habst (talk) 17:35, 8 July 2019 (UTC) i changed my mind, i think this one is common enough to be listed as an alternative form. --Habst (talk) 17:37, 8 July 2019 (UTC)Reply- @Metaknowledge also, ndumi. --Habst (talk) 03:41, 17 July 2019 (UTC)Reply
- @Metaknowledge also, pilipi hoho. --Habst (talk) 17:21, 26 July 2019 (UTC)Reply
- @Metaknowledge also, kishugu. --Habst (talk) 18:29, 26 July 2019 (UTC)Reply
- @Metaknowledge also, chichimua. --Habst (talk) 00:27, 27 July 2019 (UTC)Reply
- @Metaknowledge also, ljuma. --Habst (talk) 01:20, 29 July 2019 (UTC)Reply
- @Metaknowledge also, kiyahudi. --Habst (talk) 02:24, 29 July 2019 (UTC)Reply
- @Metaknowledge also, kiroto. --Habst (talk) 16:05, 29 July 2019 (UTC)Reply
- @Metaknowledge also, kinyagu. --Habst (talk) 20:01, 29 July 2019 (UTC)Reply
- @Metaknowledge also, kadinoli. --Habst (talk) 18:41, 30 July 2019 (UTC)Reply
- @Metaknowledge also, ifadhi. --Habst (talk) 21:34, 30 July 2019 (UTC)Reply
Greetings, I would think it good if you place edit summaries on edits that remove content, like "drop wrong Swahili". Not everyone will agree with me, I guess. Thank you for checking our Swahili content. --Dan Polansky (talk) 07:43, 9 July 2019 (UTC)Reply
- yes, that's fair. on wikipedia nearly all of my edits have summaries -- the only reason i don't do it here is that AjaxEdit doesn't have an edit summary box, and my computer is often too slow to use the "normal" edit. i'll look in to either adding an edit summary form to AjaxEdit, or just switching to the regular editor whenever i need to remove content. --Habst (talk) 14:57, 9 July 2019 (UTC)Reply
There are a couple dozen pages that are now in Category:Pages with module errors, apparently because of your recent edits to Module:number_list. Please figure out what went wrong and fix it. Thanks! Chuck Entz (talk) 02:58, 19 July 2019 (UTC)Reply
- thank you for letting me know about this, i'm on it right now and will post here when it is fixed. my regrets that this happened to those entries. --Habst (talk) 03:00, 19 July 2019 (UTC)Reply
- silly mistake on my part, just fixed it and i checked all of those entries and they're no longer displaying any errors so they should be removed from the category shortly. thanks again for letting me know, i'll definitely be more careful to check that cat after editing modules in the future. --Habst (talk) 03:15, 19 July 2019 (UTC)Reply
… don’t miss our translation tables. I wasn’t aware that there are cereal lists templates. But Appendix:Grains is more fit for the purposes, created to patch a frequent vocabulary gap of polyglots. You can also add another row with new grains; I have not even added most of the dals relied upon in India. Fay Freak (talk) 23:06, 25 July 2019 (UTC)Reply
- User:Fay Freak thank you. i wish there was some automated / transclusion way to fill the appendices with the words from the templates. i did add a swahili row to Appendix:Chess pieces when i was getting started, and i may go through the other appendices later. i tend to prefer the list templates, though, because they show up in mainspace and also serve to categorize the terms automatically -- i.e. you can find them "naturally" by looking up words rather than having to go specifically to the appendix. there seems to be a lot of duplicate work in this field, especially if you include redundant tables like w:Chess_piece#Piece_names on our sister projects. --Habst (talk) 23:27, 25 July 2019 (UTC)Reply
I had deleted this Tbot entry because I couldn't find any evidence that it was actually used in books, magazines, etc and therefore that it didn't meet CFI. Have you found any evidence to the contrary? —Μετάknowledgediscuss/deeds 19:47, 30 July 2019 (UTC)Reply
- thanks for bringing this up. i think this is a real word that meets CFI, though looks like it may be loaned from a tribal language. i added a book cite to the page, plus the word is listed in the Unicode CLDR for swahili and a few sublanguages which seems to be pretty accurate. --Habst (talk) 20:09, 30 July 2019 (UTC)Reply
- CLDR doesn't do us any good, unfortunately. Are there two more books? I just didn't see anything at BGC. —Μετάknowledgediscuss/deeds 20:17, 30 July 2019 (UTC)Reply
- thanks, i added another cite. it's also listed as being present in this book on page 62, but google isn't showing me the page preview for some reason. also, i'm not sure what BGC means. --Habst (talk) 20:32, 30 July 2019 (UTC)Reply
- Just means books.google.com. I can't see it either, but I guess it's probably fine. Thanks for the diligence. —Μετάknowledgediscuss/deeds 20:41, 30 July 2019 (UTC)Reply
Hey. It's great to see some Swahili work happening. Thank you. What brought you here? Equinox ◑ 03:31, 31 July 2019 (UTC)Reply
- thank you for your compliment. i think i remember your name from all the way back when i first used to browse here in 2012. just by looking at the histories of most english words here i'm certainly very thankful for all you've done, it really has made the site a much better place.
- the basic answer to your question is that i've made a renewed effort to up my vocabulary in the language this summer, and to do that i've found it helpful to just add words here as i see them or to chip away at Category:Tbot entries (Swahili). more recently i've been focusing on the tbot list. it was very sad to learn of the bot owner's death in 2011 after living in Nairobi, and in a way i feel like i'm "finishing what he started" by clearing the swahili list eight years later. two months ago there were over 600 terms, about double any other language, and i've finally got it down to 50 left to rewrite.
- occasionally, i'll get sidetracked and add an english phrase or two or participate in an rfv/rfd. i know we've sparred on a few such discussions recently but i just wanted to make it clear that it's all policy, i actually do appreciate your contribs a lot even when i disagree with a vote. i still have a lot i want to do with swahili/sheng and other related languages, but i do have some fun plans for english too w.r.t. modern internet slang, twitch-speak and the like. feel free to ping me if you ever want my help or input with a project and i will try to do the same. --Habst (talk) 04:01, 31 July 2019 (UTC)Reply
- FRIEND EMOJI Equinox ◑ 04:03, 31 July 2019 (UTC)Reply
- Captain's log, additional: I'm fricking annoying. It's okay. I have a big voice on here because I have created a zillion entries but whatever, I am sadly not very multilingual (I can half-read a French newspaper, and I can remember just enough Arabic script to spot HALAL and COCA-COLA) but I'm just a jerk like the rest of ya. Your input at RFV etc. is welcomed. Well. Later. Equinox ◑ 04:10, 31 July 2019 (UTC)Reply
- In other news: asked a Canadian to throw some local slang at me. Response: ", I could probably come up with a list, but some I have to figure out how to spell since they are from a language I don't know how to write". Ooooops I meant English, not your local or native language. (Actually we want both. But I doubt the native is going to get much attention.) Equinox ◑ 04:21, 10 August 2019 (UTC)Reply
- @Equinox hm, you should get him to throw you his native slang and i'll look it over. there's some swahili slang trends like wamlambez which i'm interested in adding, and a lot of english garbage, but i often stop short of creating the page because i'm not confident i could defend them. maybe i should start messing with WT:LOP though that seems like a word graveyard in some ways. --Habst (talk) 04:41, 10 August 2019 (UTC)Reply
- I'll send it your way if I manage to get anything. Thanks for putting up with my bad temper! xxx Equinox ◑ 05:24, 10 August 2019 (UTC)Reply
- oh thanks, i haven't noticed any bad temper though. thanks for chipping in on some of my entries lately. --Habst (talk) 05:33, 10 August 2019 (UTC)Reply
i'm running a JWB job to fix swahili etymology sections that say {{etyl|xx|sw}} {{m|xx|XX}} to say either {{der|sw|xx|XX}} or {{bor|sw|xx|XX}} instead. it should be about 350 edits, and it'll be on these pages: User:Habst/JWB/etylcleanup. --Habst (talk) 20:29, 11 August 2019 (UTC)Reply
Interested parties are making assertions. Their "authority" has no force. This is not WP.
Show me a single instance of durably archived use as an ethnic slur. DCDuring (talk) 18:07, 14 August 2019 (UTC)Reply
- sorry for my delayed response here. looks like this has been resolved, though i did mention the BBC source in the term's RFV section (not to mention the original video). authoritative sources do have a place on wiktionary to back up culturally charged assertions in labels. thank you for your help with that term. --Habst (talk) 10:13, 29 October 2019 (UTC)Reply
Share your experience in this survey
Hi Habst,
The Wikimedia Foundation is asking for your feedback in a survey about your experience with Wiktionary and Wikimedia. The purpose of this survey is to learn how well the Foundation is supporting your work on wiki and how we can change or improve things in the future. The opinions you share will directly affect the current and future work of the Wikimedia Foundation.
Please take 15 to 25 minutes to give your feedback through this survey. It is available in various languages.
This survey is hosted by a third-party and governed by this privacy statement (in English).
Find more information about this project. Email us if you have any questions, or if you don't want to receive future messages about taking this survey.
Sincerely,
RMaung (WMF) 14:34, 9 September 2019 (UTC)Reply
Share your experience in this survey
Hi Habst,
A couple of weeks ago, we invited you to take the Community Insights Survey. It is the Wikimedia Foundation’s annual survey of our global communities. We want to learn how well we support your work on wiki. We are 10% towards our goal for participation. If you have not already taken the survey, you can help us reach our goal! Your voice matters to us.
Please take 15 to 25 minutes to give your feedback through this survey. It is available in various languages.
This survey is hosted by a third-party and governed by this privacy statement (in English).
Find more information about this project. Email us if you have any questions, or if you don't want to receive future messages about taking this survey.
Sincerely,
RMaung (WMF) 19:14, 20 September 2019 (UTC)Reply
Share your experience in this survey
Hi Habst,
There are only a few weeks left to take the Community Insights Survey! We are 30% towards our goal for participation. If you have not already taken the survey, you can help us reach our goal!
With this poll, the Wikimedia Foundation gathers feedback on how well we support your work on wiki. It only takes 15-25 minutes to complete, and it has a direct impact on the support we provide.
Please take 15 to 25 minutes to give your feedback through this survey. It is available in various languages.
This survey is hosted by a third-party and governed by this privacy statement (in English).
Find more information about this project. Email us if you have any questions, or if you don't want to receive future messages about taking this survey.
Sincerely,
RMaung (WMF) 17:04, 4 October 2019 (UTC)Reply
Hey, glad to see you keeping up with the work. I'm writing in because of the synonyms you're adding, some of which are not really synonymous. For example, uchawi and uganga are definitely different in the Swahili cultural context (you might employ uganga in order to cure an affliction caused by uchawi, in fact). Similarly, though I have more trouble putting my finger on it, a roho is more like a spirit that one has when living that continues after death, whereas a mzimu is a shade or ghost of someone who has died (or in class 18, where such ghosts reside). Culturally specific words are hell to define, and I freely admit we could do a better job with them, but at the very least, please be more cautious about adding synonyms. —Μετάknowledgediscuss/deeds 04:55, 29 October 2019 (UTC)Reply
- hi metaknowledge, thank you for your oversight and information. i'll fix uchawi, uganga, urogi, mzimu, and roho to refer to each other as related terms rather than strict synonyms, or maybe just having them in the same category would be enough. i'll also be more careful with synonyms and tend to categorization / see also rather than using
{{syn}} as often. --Habst (talk) 10:13, 29 October 2019 (UTC)Reply
- We use 'Related terms' only for etymologically related terms, but I suppose a 'See also' could never hurt. —Μετάknowledgediscuss/deeds 02:28, 30 October 2019 (UTC)Reply
Hi, I would like to say that I think the entries you made on Light Green and Dark Green in Swahili are incorrect. The sources I found list them as "Kijani Giza" and "Kijani Mwangaza". Considering the fact that regular green is "Kijani", and that you are the only editor on those pages, I think you might have gotten it confused with yellow (Manjano).
-MToumbola (talk) 17:06, 26 November 2019 (UTC)Reply
- hi @MToumbola, thank you for getting in touch and sorry for my late response. i saw those colors on the kentucky university swahili course slide deck listed as light and dark green, but i guess the exact translations of colors are subjective. you're free to add your translations or change them if you like. --Habst (talk) 18:40, 4 June 2020 (UTC)Reply
- Thanks for the reply! I've skimmed the Kentucky U slides before and managed to find errors by only passively reading-off the top of my head was the listing of "soka" as "American football" and not as a synonym of kandanda. Looking over the slide it seems than "manjani" is an amalgamation of manjano (yellow) and majani (leaves, the root of kijani itself) the slide switches to majani (no N) later on.
-MToumbola (talk) 18:31, 8 June 2020 (UTC)Reply
I haven't heard this one before (I guess it's just "joker"?), and I'm not seeing much in the way of cites. Have you found some that I've missed? (I'd rather ask you first than just send it to RFV.) —Μετάknowledgediscuss/deeds 07:21, 11 January 2020 (UTC)Reply
- i think i saw this on the BBC Swahili edition captioning a picture of a clown and rolled with it, but if you couldn't find supporting cites it's OK to remove. thank you for asking and sorry for the late response. --Habst (talk) 18:40, 4 June 2020 (UTC)Reply
- No worries. Yeah, I try to check with a dictionary before adding anything — if it's not in one of the usual places, then I take a close look at Google Books. That avoids potential one-offs like this. —Μετάknowledgediscuss/deeds 22:24, 4 June 2020 (UTC)Reply
Hi Habst. It's good to have you around again. I just saw you've added this word, which would be an interesting back-formation, but I've never seen it before and google books:"arifa la" isn't turning up much. Where did you see it? —Μετάknowledgediscuss/deeds 02:16, 4 June 2020 (UTC)Reply
- hi Metaknowledge, it is good to be back and i hope to contribute more again this summer. i think arifa's use as "notification" is a neologism but it has some other meaning going back a few decades, if you search google with the "lr=lang_sw" query param (neat trick so it only returns results that it thinks are in Swahili) or google books:"arifa ya" then you'll see that it's used by Google, Uber, and Whatsapp officially among others. what i got wrong is that it seems to be treated like an N-class noun with "arifa ya" rather than "arifa la". maybe it's not a back-formation at all but just a separate word? --Habst (talk) 18:30, 4 June 2020 (UTC)Reply
- The older BGC hits in class 9 are mostly Kenyan Hansard uses of "arifa ya Hoja" ("notice of a proposal" — I don't know much about parliamentary customs), but it's not in Madan. So given the reanalysis in maarifa and the lack of an appropriate form at ع ر ف, that points to a back-formation (which certainly doesn't mean it isn't its own separate word!). —Μετάknowledgediscuss/deeds 22:24, 4 June 2020 (UTC)Reply
Hi, Habst. If I were to nominate you to become an admin, would you accept? — Dentonius 16:10, 15 February 2021 (UTC)Reply
- Hi Dentonius, I'm very open to the idea but I have doubts that I would be confirmed considering I've been editing less recently, and all of the recently accepted admins seem to have more edits than me. I do anticipate having time and a lot more content to add this year, what do you anticipate my chances would be and is there a recent need for more admins? --Habst (talk) 17:20, 15 February 2021 (UTC)Reply
- Good questions. I'm not a salesman. Here are some honest answers. A. This is how I think people here would look at it: (1) they would start with the nominator. If the nominator is a person they like, it will give you a better chance. Unfortunately, I'm not a person most people here like. (2) They wouldn't really consider your edits but your efforts to tackle vandalism with the undo button. (3) A few would take an interest in your participation in RFD. They'd want to see that you're deleting lots of entries they consider useless. I find your contributions interesting because I see where you're more balanced and make an effort to save entries. (4) They'd look at how you interact with others. To the best of my knowledge, you aren't disruptive so that should be fine. They don't want admins who'll abuse their authority and block people willy-nillly. They want people who will try to understand others, discuss things, and work out solutions with words before resorting to the "big buttons." B. I was made aware that there's always a need for admins. It's often the case that admins go inactive so they'd prefer to have a few people helping them out doing the work of policing this server. As for your chances, honestly, I'd say less than 50%. Please, share your thoughts. What do you think? — Dentonius 17:52, 15 February 2021 (UTC)Reply
- Dentonius, thanks for your thoughtful response and thanks for reaching out in the first place. I think it would be wise to hold off on this for now due to my lack of recent activity, maybe if I resume editing this year it can be revisited. I hear and think I share your concerns about deletionism though, I hope I can make an impact on that without needing admin powers just yet. --Habst (talk) 18:01, 15 February 2021 (UTC)Reply
You added -dhini. I'm pretty sure this should be -idhini. Can you double check? tbm (talk) 07:42, 20 October 2022 (UTC)Reply
- I've marked it as RFV now. tbm (talk) 06:53, 6 March 2023 (UTC)Reply
You added mwaasi (“rebel”) but I think this is mwasi (from -asi). Can you please double check? tbm (talk) 05:40, 10 December 2022 (UTC)Reply
- I've marked it as RFV now. tbm (talk) 06:53, 6 March 2023 (UTC)Reply