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This page is for entries in English as well as Middle English, Scots, Yola and Fingallian. For entries in other languages, including Old English and English-based creoles, see Wiktionary:Requests for deletion/Non-English.
Scope of this request page:
In-scope: terms suspected to be multi-word sums of their parts such as “green leaf”
Scope: This page is for requests for deletion of pages, entries and senses in the main namespace for a reason other than that the term cannot be attested. The most common reason for posting an entry or a sense here is that it is a sum of parts, such as "green leaf". It is occasionally used for undeletion requests (requests to restore entries that may have been wrongly deleted).
Out of scope: This page is not for words whose existence or attestation is disputed, for which see Wiktionary:Requests for verification. Disputes regarding whether an entry falls afoul of any of the subsections in our criteria for inclusion that demand a particular kind of attestation (such as figurative use requirements for certain place names and the WT:BRAND criteria) should also go to RFV. Blatantly obvious candidates for deletion should only be tagged with {{delete|Reason for deletion}} and not listed.
Adding a request: To add a request for deletion, place the template {{rfd}} or {{rfd-sense}} to the questioned entry, and then make a new nomination here. The section title should be exactly the wikified entry title such as ]. The deletion of just part of a page may also be proposed here. If an entire section is being proposed for deletion, the tag {{rfd}} should be placed at the top; if only a sense is, the tag {{rfd-sense}} should be used, or the more precise {{rfd-redundant}} if it applies. In any of these cases, any editor, including non-admins, may act on the discussion.
Closing a request: A request can be closed once a month has passed after the nomination was posted, except for snowball cases. If a decision to delete or keep has not been reached due to insufficient discussion, {{look}} can be added and knowledgeable editors pinged. If there is sufficient discussion, but a decision cannot be reached because there is no consensus, the request can be closed as “no consensus”, in which case the status quo is maintained. The threshold for consensus is hinted at the ratio of 2/3 of supports to supports and opposes, but is not set in stone and other considerations than pure tallying can play a role; see the vote.
Deleting or removing the entry or sense (if it was deleted), or de-tagging it (if it was kept). In either case, the edit summary or deletion summary should indicate what is happening.
Adding a comment to the discussion here with either RFD-deleted or RFD-kept, indicating what action was taken.
Striking out the discussion header.
(Note: In some cases, like moves or redirections, the disposition is more complicated than simply “RFD-deleted” or “RFD-kept”.)
Archiving a request: At least a week after a request has been closed, if no one has objected to its disposition, the request should be archived to the entry's talk page. This is usually done using the aWa gadget, which can be enabled at WT:PREFS.
Agree this in principle could be SoP, but the relevant sense of toll is worded poorly (loss or damage incurred through a disaster), whereas the definition here does not reference a disaster per se. * Pppery *it has begun...05:00, 23 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
I would say that the "take ... toll" pattern is in itself idiomatic enough to keep, but there are the usual doubts and problems about how to lemmatise it, given the variations possible. Mihia (talk) 22:17, 15 May 2024 (UTC)Reply
This sense of "toll" seems to be usable for any figurative "cost" in the form of negative effects. Phrases like "exact a heavy toll" come to mind, not to mention "pay a price". "Take" is fairly strongly collocated because it alliterates and works well prosodically with "toll", in the same way the "pay" and "price" go together. Whatever comes in between is prosodically unimportant, so it can be almost anything that makes sense. Chuck Entz (talk) 00:08, 18 May 2024 (UTC)Reply
Either deletetake its toll or take a toll. Maybe it would be better if both are deleted and instead consolidated to something like take toll, mentioning the reflexive/impersonal sense? Besides, take its toll is basically just take a toll with a preposition.
Keep in some form. As far as I can recall, I have heard this most frequently in the context of hard work taking a toll on health or relationships, which seems fairly well detached from collecting a toll or a price. bd2412T20:28, 11 February 2025 (UTC)Reply
Lambiam (in the TR) and Chuck note occasional variation in the verb (exact, demand, etc). On one hand, variation exists for many idioms: one normally verbs one's way out of a paper bag, but Steve Martin told Ben Stiller "you couldn't act your way into a paper bag", there are occasional references to plastic bags instead, etc: occasional use with other verbs does not necessarily "unset" a set phrase. On the other hand, the pay... examples mean we do need either an entry for the phrase with pay..., or a sense at toll. But I don't know if that "unsets" this phrase: MW does have it.
If we keep it, we have to decide where to lemmatize it (as noted above), but the current situation where take its toll is the lemma and take a toll is a soft redirect seems fine, since Ngrams finds that take its toll is more common than take a toll.
It looks like there are 3 votes for delete/SOP (DCDuring, Chuck, Jimi), 3 votes to keep (Mihia, Allahverdi, bd), Pppery seems not to take a clear position (but might be saying delete?).
If it helps any, I think the main reason that this configuration is so common is the alliteration of the two stressed syllables, as in "pay the price", "bear the brunt", "live and learn", "set in stone", "now or never", "call it quits", "do or die", "get the girl", "have a heart", etc. Chuck Entz (talk) 21:43, 4 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
I'm of two minds. On the one hand, I hate this—"where are you at " (or "where you at"!) means exactly the same as "where are you". But people do say this. My nephew says it all the time. If it's worth keeping nonstandard grammar, then I guess we should keep it. Though the meaning does seem pretty transparent, and I doubt anybody will be left in the dark if we don't keep it. P Aculeius (talk) 04:06, 15 December 2024 (UTC)Reply
If kept, we should list the standard-grammar sense too (which I have now added), otherwise it looks as if "be at" only has a slang or non-standard use. As far as the non-standard use is concerned, does it occur only with "where"? If so, this should be mentioned. Mihia (talk) 21:47, 3 February 2025 (UTC)Reply
It seems perfectly intelligible with the very first sense of at, "In, near, or in the general vicinity of". Where are you at, where are you in the vicinity of? I am at the mall. I am at Dave's place. Etc. So delete IMO. - -sche(discuss)19:37, 4 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
Delete, not really seeing how this is a separate sense (requiring its own entry) from at(“in, near, or in the general vicinity of (a particular place)”, sense 1). I think this sense might be non-standard (at least to pedants), but that does not retract from it ultimately being SOP. LunaEatsTuna (talk) 05:32, 27 July 2025 (UTC)Reply
@Justin the Just: For me, at least, at is being used to mean in or located: “where are you at” is the same as saying “where are you located'', both of which are indeed synonyms of “where are you”. Comparing sense 1 of at, it does not exactly seem like a filler word with no meaning when used in be at. LunaEatsTuna (talk) 16:59, 27 July 2025 (UTC)Reply
Merriam-Webster considers it an adjective, unlike other dictionaries I checked. In any case, I've added a noun alt form section since school-age is attestable outside of attributive uses. If the adjective sense is deleted, the translation table should probably be moved to school-aged. I also created schoolage (with a noun header), which seems to occur only attributively. Einstein2 (talk) 20:07, 30 October 2023 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 1 day ago5 comments5 people in discussion
Rfd-sense. We shouldn't list given names as being from Chinese, they would either be anglicised (in which case indistinguishable from the other one listed above on the page) or transliterations (which we don't include for Chinese given names). – wpi (talk) 08:57, 26 November 2023 (UTC)Reply
Unlike the situation in European languages, I've been told that you can use more or less any combination of characters to form a Chinese given name. Therefore just about any combination of two Pinyin syllables would be attestable as a given name. That's a theoretical 400 + 400*400 = 160,400 Chinese given name entries. Plus some people have three-syllable names. I don't think this is worth our time. However, I'm not sure how I feel about excluding one particular language's (⇒ ethnicity's?) names from inclusion. This, that and the other (talk) 10:22, 24 January 2024 (UTC)Reply
Keep, since this is an RFD of an ==English== entry for "A female given name from Chinese" (not e.g. a Volodymyr-style entry for "A transliteration of the Chinese female given name 璐璐", or a ==Chinese== entry). If there are doubts about whether it exists as ==English== name, RFV it. If people want to delete ==Chinese== multi-character given names as SOP, that's a different discussion. I don't think we can expect someone who sees Rebecca and Lulu in English-language fiction, or nonfiction about Asian-Americans or Asian-Australians, etc, to intuit that they're 'supposed' to look up the etymology and English pronunciation of Rebecca as such, but look Lulu up as ... what, Lu + Lu? Not only in Chinese but also in English can you name your child any arbitrary string, as Elon Musk showed; as 83.151 said, our attestation criteria constrain which ones have entries, and if the general given-name category nonetheless gets swamped with one type of entries that we consider to undesirably crowd out other types of entries, we can move them to a separate (sub)category, like we did for alt forms in certain non-standardized languages where they were swamping out other lemmas in a way people didn't like. - -sche(discuss)19:54, 4 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
Et1 of foregoing is empty, but based on the definition, seems to correspond to Et1 of forego.
Et2 of foregoing points vaguely to forego which contains two et's.
Presumably User:Chuck_Entz reads Et2 of foregoing as a reference to Et1 of forego, otherwise why suggest the deletion of Et1 of foregoing? So then we would have two et's under foregoing that are both based on et1 of forego ...and nothing for et2 of forego.
I am strongly in favour of making the etymologies explicit in the foregoing entry, rather than missing or implicit.
I am neutral on the grammatical recognition of the adjectival form.
However, I thought a noun form should be added, per Talk:foregoing#noun (sorry if that's off-topic). Or is that already covered by the gerund label?
Latest comment: 2 months ago7 comments5 people in discussion
SOP: "love that is unrequited". I don't believe "even though reciprocation is desired" should be part of the definition. PUC – 09:38, 10 December 2023 (UTC)Reply
I did find a couple of counterexamples (unrequited love of a mother for their child: ) but they were picked out from a sea of examples that related to romantic love. I don't know what to make of it from a SOP point of view though. I'd lean keep but not strongly. In the event the term is deleted, translations should be moved to unrequited. This, that and the other (talk) 06:25, 11 December 2023 (UTC)Reply
Just for background: this was a route in California during the Spanish period connecting the missions in the region. It no longer exists in its old form, but it's symbolic of that period, and roads/highways that cover parts of the same route are often officially designated as part of it to empasize their connection to history. I think it's significant that "El" is capitalized, since it just means "the" in Spanish and it shows that the term isn't understood as the sum of its parts (I wonder if it makes any sense to have a Spanish entry at that capitalization). In fact, the term was probably not used for the modern concept during the mission period (any official route was so designated), but civic boosters in the past century or so resurrected it as a way to promote tourism by connecting their communities to what they portrayed as a romantic bygone era. I suppose it might be analogous to the Silk Road or the Royal Road, which we do have entries for, or the Appian Way, which we don't. Chuck Entz (talk) 20:55, 15 December 2023 (UTC)Reply
Maybe we should compare Spanishcamino real (camino construido a expensas del Estado) with King's highway. Oxford, for Queen's highway (published before QEII died), a mass noun by the way, says "the public road network, regarded as being under royal protection". Thus not roads owned by the monarch, although they can use them. DonnanZ (talk) 11:32, 16 December 2023 (UTC)Reply
Weak keep because "do not want" has an acronym tied to it. I'd absolutely say "delete" otherwise. We don't keep a special sense at am for cutesy slang like "am smol child" (where the subject is ungrammatically omitted), so I don't think @Equinox's reasoning to keep these is good reasoning. MedK1 (talk) 00:33, 18 December 2023 (UTC)Reply
Comment. On the face of it, could be anything: "do like", "do not like", "cannot compute", "am hungry", etc. etc., just a shorthand or telegraphese English with almost limitless variation and applicability. I would keep these only if genuinely they have become strongly idiomatic, which I wouldn't know. Mihia (talk) 21:01, 30 December 2024 (UTC)Reply
Delete "do want", keep "do not want". "Do want" seems to be sum-of-parts, even if an abnormal formation (in some cases these words can be said together grammatically). "Do not want" as an interjection, although clearly derived from the bootleg Star Wars mistranslation, is both recognizable and utilitarian enough that I'm pretty sure it's used out of context; that is, at least people hear it and understand the joke, using it as a general substitute for "no!", even if they don't connect it with Star Wars. P Aculeius (talk) 05:52, 31 January 2025 (UTC)Reply
Delete "do want" per Mihia as a pretty common nonstandard grammatical construction, keep "do not want" as it has gained additional meaning from the Star Wars meme. "Do not want" literally means that someone is refusing some offer or wishes for something to be changed, but here it is a synonym of "Nooo...", which is used to express dismay without necessarily implying any particular volition. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠23:08, 25 July 2025 (UTC)Reply
Keep, since it refers to reasons that are "tangential, dubious or unknown", so it's not SOP. Perhaps "for reasons" is also used (I've never heard it), but I don't think other collocations are possible. Theknightwho (talk) 01:07, 19 December 2023 (UTC)Reply
Well: "for reasons" and "due to reasons" and "owing to reasons" obey traditional grammar. "Because reasons" doesn't. Anyway, your point about the "tangentiality" is something separate. Equinox◑02:01, 19 December 2023 (UTC)Reply
Keep. I don't think this is simply a special use of because. In my experience, it's usually said with a pause between "because" and "reasons", with the "reasons" meant to be a humorous replacement for actual reasons that one does not want to elaborate on (or that don't actually exist). So instead of telling my friend I didn't go to the party "Because I didn't feel like it", I might say "Because, reasons...", which is perhaps a way of verbalizing "Because ". Which is not an SOP phrase and not dependent on the grammar of either word involved. I'm just speculating here, but this may also be the original phrase which gave rise to the Internet slang sense of because. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 17:45, 19 December 2023 (UTC)Reply
I’ve heard “because, NP” (e.g., “because, politicans”) used in conversations. I’m not certain what constitutes Internet slang (Facebook, TAFKAT, neither of which I use?). --Lambiam12:00, 20 December 2023 (UTC)Reply
Yes that's exactly what this is an example of. "Because cozzie livs" is one I've seen/heard a few times recently where it literally just means "because of cost of living pressures". It wouldn't surprise to hear it dropped into conversation but it still originated at net-speak. 49.188.70.13203:51, 25 June 2024 (UTC)Reply
Delete, pragmatics with many analogues. In stream-of-conscious-like colloquial language some conventions of grammar are more frequently broken. Fay Freak (talk) 11:31, 22 December 2023 (UTC)Reply
@Sgconlaw: I created it. It is listed as an alternative form of I can’t even at Dictionary.com. See, e.g., “What's the meaning of "I can't (emotes)"” (Reddit: “It means something is extremely funny.”), “What does I can’t. mean? I saw ppl saying that below a meme, is it means laughing out of control?” (HiNative: “In the context of laughing because of a funny meme (I can’t 😭) I can’t means “I can’t with this meme/post” or “this meme/post is way too funny””), “What does I can't with you mean?” (HiNative: ““I can’t with you” in slang terms can mean that dealing with you right now is too much! This may be meant seriously or used sarcastically in a funny way depending on context.”), “What’s with “I can’t with”?” (Reddit: “Yeah, it's a slang phrase. It is a shortening of "I can't deal with ... " but it's taken over as a phrase. It is not technically correct usage but it has become very common.”; Grammarphobia: “You won’t find this sense of “I can’t with” in standard references, but it’s definitely out there. And if enough people use it, we may be seeing it in dictionaries someday.”). I believe it is worthy of an entry. J3133 (talk) 14:07, 22 December 2023 (UTC)Reply
Keep but replace with link to "because", it's an example of "because {noun}" which isn't typically grammatical outside internet slang. 49.188.70.13203:43, 25 June 2024 (UTC)Reply
Comment. Telegraphese abbreviation with "because" could be anything: "because hungry", "because responsibilities", "because children", etc. Is "because reasons" enough of a distinct set phrase for us to list individually? I'm undecided. Mihia (talk) 00:03, 30 January 2025 (UTC)Reply
On the fence like Mihia, because while you could extend this use of "because" to almost anything, "because reasons" might be common enough to be recognizable as an idiom for inarticulate explanation. While I think it's transparent because I'm used to seeing it, I imagine a lot of people might be confused on seeing it for the first time, not recognizing it as a set phrase and thinking it to be a mistake, rather than a deliberately ungrammatical and vague collocation. This will only be more so if it fades from use; people will wonder why it was said, and an entry will help. So perhaps lean keep. P Aculeius (talk) 05:56, 31 January 2025 (UTC)Reply
I think WF has chosen the weakest link in the chain. There are entries for every hundred between two hundred and twenty-three hundred, including twenty hundred (for 24-hour clock), but no ten hundred for the 24-hour clock. It's pointless deleting this one without removing the others. DonnanZ (talk) 11:31, 19 December 2023 (UTC)Reply
Delete all the number senses. WT:CFI (established by this formal vote) is clear on this: "Numbers, numerals, and ordinals over 100 that are not single words or are sequences of digits should not be included in the dictionary, unless the number, numeral, or ordinal in question has a separate idiomatic sense that meets the CFI." The numerical use of eleven hundred, twelve hundred, and so on is already explained in "Appendix:English numerals". However, I think the 24-hour clock sense can stay. I am undecided on the year sense (leaning towards delete) as this is an infinite series—we should discuss this further. It may be better to explain this in a new appendix under "Appendix:Time". — Sgconlaw (talk) 12:16, 19 December 2023 (UTC)Reply
I accept that they are sum of parts and it is good that we have explained the clock sense at "hundred". People might not think to look at the hundred entry they could just as easily look at 12 or hours or try another dictionary or source. I note that we list eight o'clock which is also sum of parts. John Cross (talk) 08:30, 8 March 2025 (UTC)Reply
I didn't look for hours-specific cases, and don't see any offhand, but I would keep that sense regardless because we would already have an entry for the numerical sense, and "it's twelve hundred" in the hours context would be a complete sentence conveying meaning. bd2412T23:59, 18 April 2025 (UTC)Reply
@Sgconlaw: If there is no consensus for deletion of the entry itself, I assume you would not oppose adding this sense instead of having the entry incomplete. J3133 (talk) 13:04, 23 December 2023 (UTC)Reply
Broadly speaking, I would like to say Delete as limitless SoP pattern all "non-X" that mean "non- + X". This is why we have an entry for the prefix "non", so we don't have to individually list a million different compounds that all mean exactly what it says there. However, a fly in the ointment is that I do feel that we should keep, let's say, "non-runner" (at least in horseracing and vehicle senses) even though strictly this only means "non + runner", but I cannot exactly explain why, at least not at the moment. Mihia (talk) 19:51, 16 June 2024 (UTC)Reply
Delete. Author purposefully misunderstands CFI. As on PUC’s talk page, I’ve investigated and found that there are no legal peculiarities to the term. Fay Freak (talk) 11:26, 22 December 2023 (UTC)Reply
Keep - specialised term in economics. It refers to cartel-like behaviour where prices are fixed through implicit agreement, as opposed to a formal (hidden) agreement. Theknightwho (talk) 16:45, 23 December 2023 (UTC)Reply
I have given this way too much thought, and I think we should keep this as the economic equivalent of seafloor spreading, listed as precedent under WT:PRIOR. I was actually going to vote delete: This is clearly a set term of art in economics, but there is no real additional meaning imbued by the phrase beyond the literal meaning of the two terms (other than that it needs to be for the purposes of maximising profit - but to what other ends do businesses collude?). I searched for a plausible synonym, "unspoken collusion", and most of what I found was articles written for the lay reader, written by authors who clearly understand tacit collusion to be the "real" term. But seeing seafloor spreading convinced me we should keep this too. This, that and the other (talk) 12:31, 31 December 2023 (UTC)Reply
One cannot gather the meaning of seafloor spreading from either seafloor or spreading, so clearly it is not SoP. But tacit collusion is defined as "A form of collusion in which colluding parties do not explicitly share information with one another, achieving a collusive arrangement by an unspoken understanding". In other words, it is a form of collusion that is tacit. The way I see it, defining the term with many words does not in itself make it less SoP. — Sgconlaw (talk) 13:16, 31 December 2023 (UTC)Reply
I mean it makes senses to write articles about it. But everything interesting on it is encyclopedic information. This, that and the other’s simile goes beyond what my creativity tolerates. Of course there are specialised terms that are SoP. Fay Freak (talk) 13:55, 31 December 2023 (UTC)Reply
Can't one? I can't imagine what else seafloor spreading could refer to other than the expansion (spread verb sense 6) of the seafloor. (Admittedly it could refer to spreading the seafloor with some substance as one spreads bread with peanut butter, but that is rather far-fetched from a practical standpoint.) And yet, it is a term of art in geology, so it seems we are keeping it solely on that basis - to allow our readers to benefit from the additional info and context provided in the definition line. This, that and the other (talk) 02:56, 1 January 2024 (UTC)Reply
@This, that and the other: oh, I misunderstood you—I thought you meant seafloor spreading was some sort of economic term. If not it may warrant further examination. But it doesn’t change the point that I think tacit collusion is SoP. — Sgconlaw (talk) 04:23, 1 January 2024 (UTC)Reply
Isotope names
Latest comment: 1 month ago5 comments3 people in discussion
The naming of nuclides is very systematic (element name + mass number, hyphenated), and there is nothing here but borderline WT:SOP mixed with encyclopedic content. The table of nuclides has over 3000 known entries; for example, the known isotopes of uranium range in mass number from 214 to 242 (cf. w:Isotopes of uranium). An entry consisting of chemical symbol + mass number is also included.
We should treat these the same way we do chemical formulas like H₂O. This would mean that they must be attested in non-technical contexts, and the meaning of the terms must not be explained. Theoretically this would mean sending them to RFV, but I would be ok with mass deletion of ones that are virtually certain to fail these attestation requirements. — excarnateSojourner (ta·co)03:56, 27 October 2024 (UTC)Reply
If it is supposed to be a figurative sense, then it needs a figurative use, and with a figurative definition not conflated with a literal one. DCDuring (talk) 14:44, 27 December 2023 (UTC)Reply
What is probably needed is a cleanup of the entire English verb section with attention to things like the correspondence of trans/intrans labels to usage examples, placement of parentheses around objects in intransitive definitions as well as redundancy. DCDuring (talk) 14:49, 27 December 2023 (UTC)Reply
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This has gone uncommented upon in over a year. Unless there is a substantive change to this state of affairs, I will close this as showing no consensus for deletion, and leave it to editors to be bold in sorting out the contents of the entry. bd2412T04:38, 23 April 2025 (UTC)Reply
I would say keep as this appears to be somewhat idiomatic, at least if the current definition is to be trusted: it claims that items belonging to the “occasional furniture” category are specifically small, versatile and often made to be folded away/hidden. A quick Google search corroborates this with results of small, ergonomic stackable tables, seats, nightstands and a few commodes. A grand piano, sofa, dressing table, bed, etc. can be restricted to occasional (sense 3: “intended for use as the occasion requires”) use, but it does not appear that these items belong to this category, so I do not think this is actually SoP? Like, the occasional furniture label including a guest bed would be SoP but the occasional furniture designation including a pullout sofa / foldable bed whilst excluding (or, just, not including) a guest bed does not seem SoP to me. Tl;dr sense 3 of occasional does not infer smallness nor versatility, which is what occasional furniture (perhaps only ostensibly!) indicates from the brief research I did. @This, that and the other thoughts? I could very easily be misguided here. LunaEatsTuna (talk) 07:53, 26 July 2025 (UTC)Reply
@PUC: Perhaps we are actually missing a sense at occasional that means “(of furniture) lightweight, small, easily portable, storage-efficient ”? Perhaps a modern derivation from—a subsense of—occasional (“intended for use as the occasion requires”)? LunaEatsTuna (talk) 00:47, 27 July 2025 (UTC)Reply
I have added a sense to morel#Etymology 2 to include plants of general Solanum, Atropa, and Aralia. It is probably "archaic", if not obsolete, still occurring in dictionaries, usually in compounds (great morel and petit morel).
I don't think there are genera of mushrooms called morels other than the true morels of genus Morchella. I have yet to find recent instances of the sometimes toxic false morels of genus Gyromitra being called morels, except in the collocation "collected as morels", probably an example of the role of evolution in language. DCDuring (talk) 16:24, 4 January 2024 (UTC)Reply
Delete: I was wondering whether this was one of those words that were originally used in a generic sense and only later given a precise scientific definition, but the OED says it has always meant only a mushroom of the genus Morchella. Add to sense 1 that if the word is used unqualified, it generally means the common morel. — Sgconlaw (talk) 23:19, 28 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 10 months ago4 comments3 people in discussion
Sum of parts. It was added to the WT:REE request list, and uhh let's say that a recent user has been loudly begging for creations lately; thus it got created. But it is really nothing more than number + homophone. Equinox◑06:41, 7 January 2024 (UTC)Reply
No, as they would have been seen as "freaks" (as in oddballs) in 1969. (The OED lists this term as being coined in 1890, and these two groups were seen as the counterculture in the late '60s.)
However, the same source does list the hippie sense as its own thing. So, mayyybe it fits in? Feels a bit iffy to say that, since it is based on the same usage as "freak" as our sense 4, and any reclamation would be the same as reclamation of any insult. CitationsFreak (talk) 05:20, 21 January 2024 (UTC)Reply
I would put "hippie" and "drug addict" as subsenses under sense 4, or perhaps combined into one subsense, possibly with a label such as "now largely historical", or explicit mention of the 1960s, if it's considered that these senses are largely confined to the 1960s or references to the 1960s. Shocking to think of the 1960s as "historical"! Mihia (talk)
No. These two senses have a different (albeit derivative) meaning from sense 4. (And the notion that these senses were confined to the 1960s is just wrong.) Nurg (talk) 04:25, 5 October 2024 (UTC)Reply
I support turning these senses into subsenses, I'm not sure if that means I should vote 'keep' or 'delete' (I wouldn't want them to be deleted altogether without subsuming them under what is currently sense 4). --Overlordnat1 (talk) 06:54, 13 June 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 1 year ago5 comments3 people in discussion
Sense 2, defined as "Punning on bum (as a synonym of hobo).". That is not a real definition. The three citations do not appear to have the same meaning. Equinox◑12:07, 1 February 2024 (UTC)Reply
As far as I have encountered this word, it means a person only engaging in relations with a sexual element in order to avoid homelessness. Which for the first quote “a man who can only get excited by women who are real tramps” could mean that you yourself have to be kind of a tramp to accept such a boyfriend, otherwise too unorderly (sense 3) to care for himself; as with most sexualities the term is then used for the other party too, as by its formation the term implies to contain what one is attracted to. The definitions are unchanged since 2011’s creation by Doremítzwr, about whose reliability I have no information. Fay Freak (talk) 12:27, 1 February 2024 (UTC)Reply
Regarding sense 1: that also seems to be a pun (on "tramp" meaning a slutty woman) and does not refer to "tramp" in the hobo sense. Equinox◑12:29, 1 February 2024 (UTC)Reply
Also. Where we see again that one can employ a word in multiple of its assumed meanings simultaneously. But only by the peripheral understanding of it that serial monogamy is promiscuity, assuming our definition of tramp correct.
The psychological reality can of course be personality traits of a woman to make her inclined to any described livelihoods but various internalized expectations prevent her. For example if someone is borderliner (almost 2 % of the general population) they seek attachment to other people fast while simultaneously disengaging up to the point of homelessness due to self-devaluation. Or if someone has dependent personality disorder (almost 1 %, especially in women) after a breakup they will enter the next nightclub and anyone hooking up will be the boyfriend henceforth—which should sound ridiculous to sound people; people generally have a vague idea of the prevalent determination of life by irrational behaviours. But punning is of course no clear concept yet and thus the creator likely implemented more ideas in his definitions than users of the word could know or imply about psychological or behavorial reality. Fay Freak (talk) 13:07, 1 February 2024 (UTC)Reply
Delete as a clear case of SoP; a very common collocation but a collocation nonetheless. Keeping entries such as this one—that is, SoP collocation synonyms for otherwise specialised, uncommon or rare entries on Wiktionary—is a commonly proposed but IMO silly idea. By this same logic, we should have tens of thousands of entries for fear of X, X fetish and stuff like bad handwriting (who says griffonage?). Definitely a valid opinion but a goofy one that will open a (quite large) can of worms! LunaEatsTuna (talk) 08:04, 26 July 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 3 months ago6 comments5 people in discussion
SOP. Both the terms Magnificat and Nunc dimittis can refer to the canticle itself or to a musical setting of the canticle. While musical settings of the two canticles are frequently published together, as they are performed together in Anglicanevensong (or evening prayer) liturgies, that fact doesn't give the term any meaning beyond its component parts. Graham11 (talk) 05:28, 17 February 2024 (UTC)Reply
Keep - this refers to a specific musical setting with two parts, in the same way mass refers to a specific setting in a musical context. What distinguishes it is that they're written as one unit: you can't take a Magnificat from one setting and a Nunc dimittis from another and call them a "Magnificat and Nunc dimittis" with the meaning of "a musical setting of the Magnificat and Nunc dimittis". Theknightwho (talk) 02:57, 19 February 2024 (UTC)Reply
Keep per TheKnightWho's comments above. The vast majority (entirety?) of the time the Mag and Nunc are performed together as one unit with an organ accompaniment (so it might be better to slightly generalise our definition to say 'performed' rather than 'sung'). The very fact that it's hard to find 'Mag' meaning 'Magnificat' and 'Nunc' meaning 'Nunc Dimittis' outside of the phrase Mag and Nunc attests to this fact. --Overlordnat1 (talk) 09:36, 5 April 2025 (UTC)Reply
Only if we agree that diriment is an adjective. Doesn't sound like one. Merriam-Webster has an entry for "diriment impediment" but no entry for "diriment" alone. Equinox◑15:53, 24 February 2024 (UTC)Reply
I think it depends on whether "diriment impediment" or "diriment" existed first. If the adjective "diriment" is derived from the expression "diriment impediment", then "diriment impediment" should be kept per WT:JIFFY, isn't it? --Saviourofthe (talk) 17:02, 15 May 2024 (UTC)Reply
Honestly, part of me supports having "something"s used as placeholders to be in parentheses, as in "drink (something) like lemonade" or "spring to (someone's) defense". CitationsFreak (talk) 10:20, 10 March 2024 (UTC)Reply
More discussion needed. On the surface, it appears that -tive along with -ative, -itive, -utive etc. are just specific types of the -ive suffix. Useful for statistics or other language analyses, e.g. Category:"words ending in 'utive'", but I'm not sure a definition for each is necessary. Facts707 (talk) 07:28, 1 April 2024 (UTC)Reply
A complete list of English lemmas ending in -tive can be found here. It's a lot to go through, but I have yet to find one that isn't from t + -ive or the equivalent in Old French or Latin (except the -ative ones you mentioned, and some possible candidates for a -itive ending, such as behabitive). Chuck Entz (talk) 15:56, 17 May 2024 (UTC)Reply
We may need to consult people who know something about these fields (biology, sociology, etc) to be sure, but I'm not convinced all of theses senses are SoP. The emergency medicine sense in particular seems countable. — excarnateSojourner (ta·co)04:57, 27 October 2024 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 15 days ago3 comments3 people in discussion
SOP: compare blue-ribbon committee, blue-ribbon commission, blue-ribbon panel, blue-ribbon investigation. We're missing a sense at blue ribbon, however. PUC – 13:41, 23 March 2024 (UTC)Reply
@Lunabunn what is it about this sense of language resource that is more than just a "resource pertaining to a language"? Of course, if the term is used in computational linguistics, one expects that it will refer to resources that are relevant to computational linguistics, but that doesn't necessarily give the term more meaning than the sum of its parts. This, that and the other (talk) 00:30, 3 May 2024 (UTC)Reply
If it's SOP, how does araneomorph(“any of the Araneomorphae, a suborder of spiders whose fangs cross with a pinching action”) + funnel-web spider(“any spider of the families Atracidae, Macrothelidae, and Macrothelidae, all of which weave funnel-shaped webs”) give us araneomorph funnel-web spider(“any spider of the family Agelenidae”)? Doesn't seem SOP at all. Theknightwho (talk) 20:36, 8 May 2024 (UTC)Reply
Although I am not familiar with this expression, as far as I can tell I would lean towards keep, if only because of such similarity with the better-known or more widespread expression a good deal, or indeed literal sense such as "I got a good deal on my new car", which could confuse people as to the intended meaning of this "good deal". I don't think the present example makes the greatest sense ever relative to the definition, however. "You got everything packed? Good deal!" How does this "affirm, indicate agreement, or consent"? Can we find a clearer example? Mihia (talk) 18:42, 10 May 2024 (UTC)Reply
I have also noticed that, while great deal covers noun uses without "a", such as The audience is generally unaware of the great deal of work that goes into its creation (and in fact a great deal is missing (redirect only), and needs to be added if only for the adverb sense), the corresponding uses of good deal without the indefinite article, which could be directly substituted into e.g. The audience is generally unaware of the good deal of work that goes into its creation, are missing. Most probably the organisation of "(a) good deal" should be changed to mirror that of "(a) great deal", in which case the entry for "good deal" would be kept anyway, for the "ordinary" idiomatic uses. Mihia (talk) 20:40, 10 May 2024 (UTC)NOW DONEReply
As things stand, keep, because I don't see any sense of deal which would allow "good deal!" (in its interjection sense) to be interpreted successfully. I've heard this interjection, and in many of the contexts in which it's used, no deal is involved: "good deal!" functions like "awesome!". I added some cites, moved the usage note into the label, and tweaked the definition. Some other cites at google books:"oh, good deal" from much earlier might also be this sense. - -sche(discuss)07:25, 15 July 2025 (UTC)Reply
Kiwima actually deleted it because the original author provided a very unclear and unambiguous definition, not because it was SOP. newfiles (talk) 02:42, 16 May 2024 (UTC)Reply
N.B. Kiwima's note in the logs --- rfdef|en|OK, so that's what the test is used for, but the definition says nothing about what the test actually is. newfiles (talk) 04:50, 16 May 2024 (UTC)Reply
Thus, I recreated the term after finding the correct and accurate definition in the field of medicine. It wasn't an easy task to locate it. newfiles (talk) 04:52, 16 May 2024 (UTC)Reply
The OED entry pointed to by Mynewfiles isn't a real entry, just a little discussion of the use of the prefix dis- with en- and em-. However, it does say this:
When it comes to attestation requirements for affixes, we generally look for three words formed in the modern stage of the language using the affix. If we can attest those three words (or others like disemelevator) I would say this prefix can be kept. This, that and the other (talk) 03:28, 20 May 2024 (UTC)Reply
Heh, I see our entry for disemburden has for its etymology dis- + emburden. OED doesn't have an entry for the latter word, but we do. Equinox created it so it's almost certainly real. However, its absence from OED suggests that disemburden predates emburden, which would make our etymology diachronic. This, that and the other (talk) 03:31, 20 May 2024 (UTC)Reply
Weak delete. It does seem to be dis- + em- rather than disem-. (It does call to mind -icity, which I argued for keeping in 2011, but -icity has a pronunciation difference, relative to -ic + -ity, going for it... and it's been 14 years, maybe I or other people would feel differently about it if it were brought back up for discussion...) - -sche(discuss)21:59, 4 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 15 days ago3 comments3 people in discussion
The definition gives a wrong impression of idiomaticity because its focus is off. It's true that a make-work job is likely to be a "job that has less immediate financial benefit to the economy than it costs to support", but make-work job does not actually mean that; it just means "work assigned or taken on only to keep someone from being idle". In other words it's a plain SOP of make-work + job, and is no more entryworthy than make-work project, make-work activity, make-work policy, etc. PUC – 22:07, 19 May 2024 (UTC)Reply
I would keep this somehow, since it has connotations beyond the impossible situation (short of travelling at light-speed) that the words literally describe. There are, however, the problems mentioned earlier of how to list it, since there is no obvious infinitive form. Mihia (talk) 20:53, 20 May 2024 (UTC)Reply
Most metaphorical phrases denote impossible situations if taken literally (“the impossible happened”; “his eyes were fiery coals”; “my blood turned into ice”). The fact that they have nonliteral connotations is IMO an insufficient argument for considering them to be lexicalized. Lexicalization requires that these connotations are nonobvious, for example because the original meaning of some of its parts has become obsolete, as is the case for the expression shuffle off this mortal coil. --Lambiam09:53, 21 May 2024 (UTC)Reply
I don't think the connotations are completely obvious. Someone could think that "time stands still" referred to a very boring situation, one in which time dragged to an extreme degree, which is almost opposite to what it does often mean, e.g. in "I saw the car coming straight towards me, and for a moment time stood still". Having said that, the present quotations at the article do not all seem to very clearly illustrate this sense, which is the one I think the definition is referring to (though I don't think it is the greatest definition ever written), so this could need attention. Mihia (talk) 12:29, 21 May 2024 (UTC)Reply
You can also have a village where “time stands still” (or “stood still”), which can mean that nothing dramatic happens there so one’s soul can find rest, but also that the local traditions are old, allowing us to have a peep through a telescope back in time. Perhaps it can also mean other things; it is what you expect to see for a sum of parts that by themselves can have several meanings. Alternatively, one can say that “time was frozen”, with a similar range of meanings. --Lambiam14:53, 21 May 2024 (UTC)Reply
@Mihia: I feel that what you said actually supports my views. Why couldn't someone write that a performance was so boring that "time stood still" for her? It wouldn't be obviously wrong. I also agree with @Lambiam's views above. — Sgconlaw (talk) 16:42, 21 May 2024 (UTC)Reply
They can write that, and, in fact, at least one of the examples that we presently have may refer to this sense. (The examples are mixed up and do not (all) illustrate the sense that the present definition apparently refers to.) However, I doubt that an entry should be disqualified because it has a range of uses. In fact, the contrast between, say, "a village where time stood still" and the "car coming towards me"-type usage is even more reason to keep, I would say. Above all, and different from, let's say, "time drags", "time goes quickly", "time goes slowly", etc. etc., this one to me just feels like a set phrase that has an identity of its own, some quality greater than the sum of its parts. Mihia (talk) 17:56, 21 May 2024 (UTC)Reply
The cites that we have are no good (they are clearly straightforwardly saying that time (sense 1.4) stood still), but I think this can be salvaged. I've added one cite that feels more clearly idiomatic, using the phrase adjectivally to describe travel through a storm as as "a time-stands-still' ride", and I'm sure I've seen it as a standalone phrase ("The glasses hit the ground and shatter. Time stands still. What have I done?") but it's hard to search for. I've also added a second sense (used to refer to historic-feeling places such as "a town where time stands still"), although I'm not sure about the definition. Smurrayinchester (talk) 15:25, 30 May 2024 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 5 months ago23 comments12 people in discussion
Blatant SOP’s. Orange blossom’s mitigating circumstance is its handful of one-word Romance equivalents, which might perhaps insure survival as translation hub.
Delete as obvious SOP's, although I agree that orange blossom could be kept as a translation hub. I note that User:Purplebackpack89 gives no justification for their keep vote other than a statement on their user page that they disagree with the SOP principle (which is nonetheless a cornerstone principle of Wiktionary). Benwing2 (talk) 00:05, 3 June 2024 (UTC)Reply
Nothing wrong to get ‘stalked’ by more experienced editors. This is but part of an effort to make a quality dictionary. You on the other hand are a poor editor for taking everything personally and feeling intimidated by necessary actions of careful editors. Inqilābī20:13, 3 June 2024 (UTC)Reply
Blatant cherry picking perhaps? But seriously, there is no necessity for appleblossom to reference a separate entry apple blossom and thus require us to retain the latter, if there is no other reason to do so. appleblossom can simply be defined as "Apple blossom, i.e. the blossom of an apple tree", or something like that. Mihia (talk) 23:38, 6 June 2024 (UTC)Reply
It's not obvious to me that appleblossom satisfies CFI. It looks very strange to me and only one cite was provided (in the context of Johnny Appleseed, where the name suggests the unusual spelling). Benwing2 (talk) 03:45, 7 June 2024 (UTC)Reply
Oh yeah, I remember now. You know when your mind blots out something that is just too horrible to face? That must've been what happened to me here. Mihia (talk) 08:33, 7 June 2024 (UTC)Reply
I find capitalised appleblossom is used by plant nurseries for names of varieties. The real issue here though is the nominator's pickiness - it's either delete 'em all or keep 'em all. I prefer the latter. DonnanZ (talk) 10:12, 7 June 2024 (UTC)Reply
The nominator explained why (in his or her opinion) some should be kept and others deleted, namely that some have other meanings beyond the SoP, or in one case as a translation hub. So it is not mere "pickiness" as you put it. Mihia (talk) 14:40, 7 June 2024 (UTC)Reply
Keep all as likely set phrases, at least. Does anyone refer in any meaningful proportion to an "orange flower" (other than for a flower that is the color, orange), or an "apple bloom", or an "apricot flower"? bd2412T04:11, 10 June 2024 (UTC)Reply
@BD2412 Hi. I think you may be misunderstanding the difference between collocation and idiom. The canonical example of "strong tea" is often used in NLP as an example of a collocation that rarely occurs in the synonymous form "powerful tea"; but that does not make "strong tea" an idiom that would pass the SOP test. Same thing here; just because the term "blossom" is used more often with fruits than "flower" doesn't make these terms non-SOP. Benwing2 (talk) 04:16, 10 June 2024 (UTC)Reply
@BD2412 But are they really set phrases? If money grew on trees, we would be talking about "money blossoms". Generally any crop with recognizable flowers (no "corn blossoms" or "juniper blossoms", but almost everything else) that bears fruit will be referred to as having "blossoms". Chuck Entz (talk) 14:05, 10 June 2024 (UTC)Reply
Will they, though? I will say, I have heard "orange blossom" and "apple blossom" all my life, as well as "cherry blossom", which is not nominated here (and would not be surprised in the least if orangeblossom, appleblossom, and cherryblossom exist), but have also heard "pine flower" and "cactus flower". bd2412T14:21, 10 June 2024 (UTC)Reply
Note that definition 1 of blossom is "A flower, especially one indicating that a fruit tree is fruiting". Given that many types of fruit and fruit blossoms exist, I feel that this might be sufficient, rather than treating every case as a set phrase. Mihia (talk) 14:59, 10 June 2024 (UTC)Reply
@BD2412 But the SOP criterion (see WT:SOP) is specifically worded in terms of idiomaticity. It says nothing about set phrases per se. It specifically says anything non-idiomatic is an SOP (hence worthy of deletion). Benwing2 (talk) 15:58, 10 June 2024 (UTC)Reply
Weirdly, "demon core" brings up a massive amount of (mostly Chinese) fantasy fiction on Google Books. I can't make out from the context whether it has a meaning beyond "the core of a demon". Otherwise I'd tend to say delete. I did wonder if it would be also be a generic term for a plutonium core, particularly one used for tickling the dragon's tail, but I don't think it is. Smurrayinchester (talk) 08:52, 7 June 2024 (UTC)Reply
In principle these are archaeological sites and scientific artefacts of contemporary history, that have been small enough or recent enough to be moved around and not even recognized as such. Keep. Fay Freak (talk) 10:18, 7 June 2024 (UTC)Reply
Keep demon core. Being the subject of memes and pop history videos has led to some use of demon core as figure of speech (e.g. "the demon core of ...") Nicerink (talk) 10:33, 7 June 2024 (UTC)Reply
As I also mentioned in another thread, we need to be cautious about allowing "the X of Y" as qualifying figurative use because this pattern can be found with all manner of proper names -- even "Gettysburg Address" (e.g. "the Gettysburg Address of Baseball"), which most people have voted to delete. Mihia (talk) 14:37, 11 June 2024 (UTC)Reply
Seems to be the canonical version of the phrase, with the ‘is’ version being a humourous inversion. I’d keep this and delete the latter (but mention it in the usage notes or something). Nicodene (talk) 22:31, 14 June 2024 (UTC)Reply
I would prefer to list this as a negative form, because nobody's going to search for the math is mathing. It should be noted that it's not just ain't though; isn't will also do, and perhaps is not. —Soap—22:38, 14 June 2024 (UTC)Reply
Keep This would be my preference as well. I've heard it said various ways in the negative form owing to regional preferences for those constructions, they don't impact the meaning. Also, like @Nicodene:, I would shift the scrutiny to the positive entry as it strikes me as artificial at first glance. RogueScholar (talk) 20:06, 9 December 2024 (UTC)Reply
More likely I'd CREATE the negatives. If a phrase is used mostly in the negative, a definition should exist with the negative phraseology. That shouldn't be controversial. you can't judge a book by its cover, Rome wasn't built in a day, clothes don't make the man and many other phrases containing not, don't, can't, etc already have entries. And, for what it's worth, the negative polarity category seems to be a strange mishmash. Some of the things categorized in it already contain "no", "not", "don't", etc. Some of them are used in both the positive and negative. And one more thing: will your vote change if "the math is mathing" fails RfV? Purplebackpack8921:09, 16 June 2024 (UTC)Reply
@Purplebackpack89: All those examples are proverbs, which have a fixed wording. On the other hand, the math is mathing doesn't have a fixed wording. The quotes show various variations replacing "is" with "appears to be", "started", "just isn't", etc. If "the math is mathing" is never used in a positive context my vote could change although this isn't the case here. Ioaxxere (talk) 21:24, 16 June 2024 (UTC)Reply
Since one can say things like, they didn’t provide enough data for us to say whether the math is mathing, it seems better to use this as the main form. But isn't this SOP, with a verb sense of math (“to add up, compute; (by extension) to make sense”). Note that there is also the entirely positive collocation “the math did math”. --Lambiam21:28, 16 June 2024 (UTC)Reply
When you wrote this, there were many positive quotations, including one in precisely this form. I might be concerned for its safety if no quotations had been found after this term had been listed for a considerable time at RfV. Here at RfD we deal with different concerns, such as whether this is merely a sum of parts. --Lambiam09:48, 21 June 2024 (UTC)Reply
Hair remover is a simpler word more likely to be employed in everyday speech, while depilator(y) sounds more technical and inkhorn (and I came to know about the latter term just yesterday). We probably don’t have any such guidelines but I am of opinion that every synonym of a term should be valid entries. Inqilābī14:54, 6 July 2024 (UTC)Reply
I have never heard "Boots" used to mean "pharmacy", except when people are using it as an example where the specific company isn't actually relevant: if someone suggests you "pop down to Boots to get some sun cream", they're just saying you should go and buy some sun cream in town, and are unlikely to think the specifics of exactly where you buy it matter, without some additional establishing context that limits it to Boots in particular. However, you can do the same with any common chain of shops, depending on the product; the implication is that it's an example, not that the term actually carries the broader meaning. Theknightwho (talk) 03:47, 7 July 2024 (UTC)Reply
I would argue it should be kept in this case TBH, since it might be ambiguous; compare also entries like YouTube(“any website that allows users to upload content”, noun) and Pornhub(“any pornographic website”, noun). Regardless, I could not find any solid attests for Boots being a common way to refer to any pharmacy, hence my vote below. LunaEatsTuna (talk) 00:13, 7 December 2024 (UTC)Reply
@Sgconlaw: Well, LloydsPharmacy has sold off all of their pharmacies in the UK. As for Superdrug, if the shop in my town (which is next door to Boots!) is anything to go by, it doesn't have a pharmacy, concentrating on cosmetics, toiletries and the like. I think Boots would pass WT:BRAND in the UK, they do sell Boots-branded pharmaceuticals, and the name has been around for a very long time. DonnanZ (talk) 14:32, 30 June 2024 (UTC)Reply
Monoclonal antibodies are assigned names according to a complicated WHO naming sytem. The usual nomenclature is the following: a variable prefix; an infix referring to the medicine's target (target substem"); an infix referring to the source of the antibody ("source substem"; omitted in antibodies named after 2017); a suffix ("stem" = -mab for every antibody named before 2022). (E.g. abciximab: ab- + -ci-(“cardiovascular”) + -xi-(“chimeric”) + -mab(“antibody”).) -zumab, -ximab and -umab were created by JoeyChen in 2020 after removing the entries for the standalone -zu-, -xi- and -u- (I haven't found a relevant discussion prior to the changes). However, these are merely three of the frequently co-occurring combinations of and , and semantically are not more closely related to each other than e.g. and . Guidelines also treat source substems and stems as different entities. I find the treatment of these combinations as genuine suffixes misleading, therefore, I think they should be deleted (along with their categories) and removed from the etymology sections of antibody entries, while -zu-, -xi- and -u- should be reinstated as infixes. Einstein2 (talk) 20:29, 6 July 2024 (UTC)Reply
The prefix trans- is not normally capitalized, nor is the word trans-Siberian a proper adjective. To capitalize the T is nonstandard per capitalization of English words. It is not a valid form of the word, nor is it notable enough as a nonstandard form to merit inclusion, and should be deleted. It appears to be mistakenly reanalysed from Trans-Siberian Railway, which is indeed a proper noun.
On the other hand, transsiberian follows the older tradition of uncapitalizing a proper noun when it comes before a prefix (cf. other examples such as transalpine, transamerican, or transneptunian). This is perfectly standard in the English language, and is highly attested. What exactly do you find to be, “much more dubious”? Vex-Vectoꝛ15:30, 13 July 2024 (UTC)Reply
Thanks for the detailed explanation. A reminder to Donnanz that whether you personally like or loathe a word bears no relevance in our inclusion, and stating your opinions thus can be confusing and misleading in a formal procedure. Inqilābī18:58, 13 July 2024 (UTC)Reply
In keeping with my vote last time: keep. The fact that this has been snowcloned suggests that it has lexical value, as do the translations that Justin mentioned. This phrase is also used as something of a philosophy "catchphrase", apart from its literal context. In its original context (i.e. Descartes Meditations) it was SOP and non-idiomatic. But it has since taken on a life of its own as a set phrase. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 18:23, 22 July 2024 (UTC)Reply
@PUC: Yes, I guess you're right that the snowclone argument isn't very good. I mostly reiterated that argument because no one pushed back against it last time. Nonetheless, I still think it has lexical status as a philosophy "catchphrase". It's often the only thing people know about philosophy and I've heard people use it simply to signal, "Hey, I know some philosophy too!" But I'm simply trying to express my gut feeling that the phrase is lexically significant. If other people disagree, so be it. I'm not strongly attached to this entry. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 19:08, 25 July 2024 (UTC)Reply
I was thinking "fix that it was tagged as a proverb", but it's already been fixed, it's now a phrase. And @PUC, what rationale other than "it's not a proverb" do you have for deletion? Purplebackpack8903:12, 28 July 2024 (UTC)Reply
The fried egg test would apply if there were other kinds of gemstone that one could reasonably refer to as being plasma gemstone (for examples, if there were also gemstones fashioned from blood plasma), so that someone unfamiliar with he term could not know which sense is meant. An organ is not always a musical instrument, but in organ music it is obvious that this is about the instrument, not about someone’s lungs, so the combination is a transparent sum of its parts. Likewise here. --Lambiam17:54, 14 August 2024 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 9 months ago2 comments2 people in discussion
Rfd-sense "to live in isolation" as distinct from sense 1, "to be isolated from knowledge of current events". Maybe we can reword sense 1, but I disagree that this is a different sense. PUC – 14:41, 11 August 2024 (UTC)Reply
Delete – I am inclined to agree. This second sense seems very rare, perhaps it might simply be a misinterpretation of the first sense; through some searching I found only a handful of uses for "live under a rock" to mean "living in isolation" (such as being a recluse or extremely introverted) on Reddit and Twitter. IMO not worth combining into the first sense either unless there are some more usage examples to be found that I am missing, otherwise it seems like undue weight to me. LunaEatsTuna (talk) 14:26, 3 October 2024 (UTC)Reply
Keep. I have added quotes going back to 1839. There are uses of the wording going back decades earlier, but as a prepositional phrase analogous to as a matter of fact, I have not yet found anything earlier than 1839. However, from that time, there are plenty of sources using the term as a prepositional phrase thereafter. If not kept, it should be redirected to matter of law. bd2412T05:18, 9 September 2024 (UTC)Reply
Delete. If there was some evidence of the button being called "the door close", it would be different, but every Google Books hit for "pressed the door close" adds "button" afterwards. SOP. Smurrayinchester (talk) 13:48, 19 September 2024 (UTC)Reply
Keep. In lots of modern elevators the button only closes the door when the elevator is in fire service mode and does nothing during ordinary operation. Marsbar8 (talk) 22:28, 31 October 2024 (UTC)Reply
Leaning keep because most of elevators have buttons with symbols on them approximating |>|<| and |<|>|, that do not actually say "door open" and "door close", but nonetheless have the understood name. bd2412T17:49, 7 April 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 9 months ago5 comments5 people in discussion
Looks like straightforward Pig Latin to me, even when it's used to refer to police officers. Considering that there is at least one Pig Latin counterpart to pretty much every word in the English language, we shouldn't even get started on Pig Latin entries. Chuck Entz (talk) 18:04, 5 October 2024 (UTC)Reply
Delete – I agree: if we had a fancy "Pig Latin for X" template, there would easily be thousands of attestable entries. Additionally, considering Pig Latin words are all formed via the exact same rules, I feel like having entries for each would serve no useful purpose. (Was gonna write this message in Pig Latin, but I could not be bothered to work it out in my head).LunaEatsTuna (talk) 21:37, 6 October 2024 (UTC)Reply
Take to RFV - I'm not opposed to words derived from Pig Latin, where they occur in running English sentences not otherwise written in Pig Latin - I think there's a difference between "erehay omecay the igpays" and "Here come the igpays", with the latter showing lexicalization (see for instance, ixnay, amscray, kayfabe). That said... I'm not finding any examples of that. "igpay" only seems to appear on Google Books in the phrase "Igpay Atinlay". If there's actual examples of use to mean pigs (the animal) or police, then Keep. Smurrayinchester (talk) 08:27, 7 October 2024 (UTC)Reply
Not sure how common it would have to be to warrant inclusion as a misspelling, but a quick Google search (including also using Google Scholar and GBooks) reveals tons of results for this term from several journals and numerous books spanning 1977 to 2022. As such, I am leaning keep. LunaEatsTuna (talk) 01:52, 9 October 2024 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 6 months ago6 comments5 people in discussion
RFD-sense, in an unconventional sense (perhaps a more appropriate forum can be found). Rather than deletion, this discussion concerns the repurposing of sense #1 as an {{&lit}}. Sense #2 is also better repurposed as a {{synonym of}}. These two operations are easy to justify and perform; what leads me to bring this to discussion is the translation table, a mess which contains what I suspect is a mix of translations of the unidiomatic sense of the expression and the idiomatic ‘even though’ sense; language-wise, the translations on even if and even though do not overlap well, and importing adequate transitions to the latter will require expert attention. ―K(ə)tom (talk) 21:30, 31 October 2024 (UTC)Reply
IMO it is clearly SOP, so if retained it should be as an {{&lit}} because of sense #2 or as a translation hub. The translations that I am competent to check are also SOP, though; even the Greek translation. (Although we write at ακόμα και αν, ‘(literally: "even and if")’, a better literal translation is “even also if”, which is also used in English. The combination ακόμα και, meaning basically the same as the English adverb “even”, is also used standalone, and although ακόμα και αν(akóma kai an) is far more common, just ακόμα αν(akóma an) is also used.) --Lambiam09:26, 2 November 2024 (UTC)Reply
Regarding sense 2, "even though" -- "if" can mean "though" generally, as in e.g. "She is polite, if a little cold". Is there a special idiomaticity about sense 2 that makes it more than "even" + "if" in the sense "though"? Mihia (talk) 21:27, 22 November 2024 (UTC)Reply
I think we should keep both senses or neither. It would be unhelpful, I believe, to list one but not the other. Despite my earlier comment, I am now thinking keep both as helpful for clearly setting out the difference. (I say "clearly", but I think that sense 2 could be made clearer, which I intend to do.) Mihia (talk) 20:52, 5 January 2025 (UTC)Reply
Well, it’s idiomatic, as also the equivalents in my two native languages, which aren’t word-for-word and thus put the entry under the protection of WT:THUB, if not WT:PB. Though we also have we have visitors in English. It is hard to fathom here what makes you sound like a native speaker. Fay Freak (talk) 05:08, 9 November 2024 (UTC)Reply
Keep the second sense, "encountering an enemy", as clearly idiomatic: company does not list any senses that could infer enemies or bad guys in general. To me, at least, "we got company" clearly carries a very different meaning to "we have company"; disregarding tone (as we all know, English is a tonal language frfr), the latter example sounds like it could be referring to having people over, whereas the first hypothetical example immediately sounds much more threatening and negative, as if it involves a group of villains. While the first example can easily be a synonym for the second example, this does not work the other way around – "we have company" does not quite carry such connotations. Also, I have no idea why it is listed as a pronoun, and my professional cryptographer charged me extra for the first sense, so I was not able to afford to have it translated and thus am not sure what it means. But the second sense goes hard.LunaEatsTuna (talk) 09:25, 9 November 2024 (UTC)Reply
I would have speedy deleted this - the creator is generally clueless, and their inability to use Standard English is a serious hindrance to their participation on this site. But since we're here, maybe move/recreate at we have company and redirect nonstandard forms there. This, that and the other (talk) 08:06, 10 November 2024 (UTC)Reply
Redirect to company. Doing a search on Google Books, it looks like ‘getting company’ is not excluded to this phrase. (Example.) The only problem is that our entry for company wants this particular sense, so somebody has to expand that. This would be fine as an example sentence and a redirect, but it does not need a proper entry. (((Romanophile))) ♞ (contributions) 07:14, 19 January 2025 (UTC)Reply
Keep, I think. I very nearly agreed with you, but my Oxford has it as an attributive adjective, while Collins treats it as a modifier. DonnanZ (talk) 14:45, 21 November 2024 (UTC)Reply
Keep sense "Of or relating to plants". I have added the example "This substance is vegetable not mineral" which I think stands up as adjectival. Abstain for now on the sense "Of or relating to vegetables", but we need convincing examples to justify keeping it. Presently there are no examples at all. Mihia (talk) 16:03, 23 November 2024 (UTC)Reply
Right, reading back now, it seems obvious that sense 1 is valid (I wonder what went on in my head at the time). I guess what I’m questioning is, rather, sense 2, yeah. Polomo47 (talk) 19:00, 23 November 2024 (UTC)Reply
I would say that's exactly what it means. "Do you like my haircut?" isn't fishing for compliments even if the speaker is hoping the listener will say yes. "I'm so ugly and my hair always looks so stupid" is fishing for compliments. —Mahāgaja · talk13:36, 2 December 2024 (UTC)Reply
Not sure whether it should be at fish for compliments, as it's nearly always phrased as fishing for compliments, just because fishing is a gerund. But that's a policy issue—it's definitely not "sum of parts" and compliment fishing is not a typical way of phrasing it, so should redirect to fish(ing) for compliments. The definition could also use some work, as it seems hypercritical; this can be fixed by minor rewording. P Aculeius (talk) 14:34, 2 December 2024 (UTC)Reply
Noting that "fishing for compliments" is already an example at "fish". I wouldn't say that the example there is the greatest or clearest ever, though. Mihia (talk) 21:29, 3 December 2024 (UTC)Reply
Delete all, per nom. Let's pay attention, however, to the translation boxes in those pages. They may need to be renamed? (Although, those are all but useless anyway!) Polomo47 (talk) 22:12, 1 December 2024 (UTC)Reply
Google is a difficult one. I'm most concerned about ensuring the derived terms box is kept (see my comments about a "derived terms hub" under #Apple). Most of the derived terms are based on the name of the search engine, but many come from the company name itself (de-Google(d), Google tax, Googleplex, Googlephone, Googler etc, and even Gmail and Go). Where do we put these if sense 1 is deleted? It's misleading to imply that they derive from sense 2 (which would be the only sense remaining in the entry), but at the same time we would be doing our readers a disservice to selectively remove them from the list. The issue is circumvented if we keep the company name sense. Moreover, if the company name and the search engine were different, but the company name had still given rise to such a varied palette of derived terms, I would unhesitatingly vote to keep the company entry. So keep Google on that basis.
Should this be in RFV, just in case someone can find 3 citations independent of reference? If this doesn't get sent over, though, my vote is delete.Polomo47 (talk) 22:01, 1 December 2024 (UTC)Reply
Delete per nom – I presume that the page creator simply did not know about our policy on words originating from fiction. Otherwise send to RfV I suppose but eh, I really doubt that this type of entry would have any figurative uses: I did some searches on Gbooks, Twitter and Reddit but could not find any such uses outside of a fiction (Pokémon) context. P.S. I was going to try and throw an “Oh my Arceus!” (which ironically might be entry-worthy since it was invented by Pokénerds and not the show itself) somewhere in this text to be humorous but I could not find where so just pretend I placed it somewhere very clever and that everyone clapped and laughed at how funny I am. LunaEatsTuna (talk) 23:33, 2 December 2024 (UTC)Reply
Question: Did the word "Arceism" actually originate in the Pokémon universe, or was it invented by fans? I've never heard the word before, and I'm still not too clear on this question after googling the word. The linked Bulbapedia article doesn't contain the word. Khemehekis (talk) 08:27, 20 December 2024 (UTC)Reply
Send to RfV. This is a fan-coined term for a fanon concept, and has been in use for over a decade. Compare Jediism or Snapeism. Arceus is basically a creator deity in Pokémon canon – the first-ever Pokémon, said to have "shaped the world" – but this religion doesn't exist in the games. I wish people would spend five minutes doing research instead of spouting off erroneous assumptions based on a flawed interpretation of WT:FICTION. WordyAndNerdy (talk) 09:12, 20 December 2024 (UTC)Reply
Keep / Send to RfV – Actually, this term legitimately DOESN'T originate from the works themselves; it's a completely fanmade term for something that never gets named whatsoever in the games & anime & manga etc., as clarified by User:WordyAndNerdy. The arguments presented by the users above WordyAndNerdy were made under the false assumption that this term originated from the games themselves — but in actuality it's on par with Jediism and Snapeism, with each being an original fan term. Paintspot (talk) 05:03, 27 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
It seems like this term was not coined inside the Pokemon franchise for an in-universe fictional concept, but was instead coined "in the real world" to denote a thing that exists (at least as a joke) in the real world; thus, as with Whovian or Jediism, FICTION doesn't apply. So, yes, keep as far as RFD is concerned, but RFV if there are doubts that it's attested. - -sche(discuss)05:50, 15 June 2025 (UTC)Reply
Weak keep. Although this meaning of buffer is covered at Etymology 2 senses 1.3 + 1.7, I wonder if it’s immediately clear from reading the compound that the buffer comes pre-printer, not post-printer? I don’t think this nuance can be easily explained syntactically, because I can imagine the syntactically identical outflow buffer and inflow buffer. Polomo47 (talk) 06:44, 3 December 2024 (UTC)Reply
It sounds like this term refers specifically to a physical device - a standalone box that would sit there and do the buffering - as opposed to a simple memory buffer belonging to the computer (or printer). I'm not even quite sure that sense 1.3 at buffer captures this (it only says "storage medium"). Perhaps sense 1.3 and/or 1.7 need expanding, and they should almost certainly be moved together in the entry. This, that and the other (talk) 02:00, 4 December 2024 (UTC)Reply
Delete per nom. We do have articles like confirmation bias, normalcy bias and selection bias but these are fine (not SOP) as their meanings cannot be ascertained simply by their names alone. “Round number bias” is bias in favour of round numbers, just like “cat bias” would be bias in favour of felines or “example bias” would be bias in favour of examples (some meta humour for you); this word formation is not present in the other aforementioned examples (i.e. normalcy bias is not bias in favour of things or people that are normal). Thus, a clear case of SOP. LunaEatsTuna (talk) 12:43, 6 December 2024 (UTC)Reply
I would say so, although "moss-grown" implies that the moss grew on whatever it is, while "moss-covered" technically does not indicate how the moss got there, even though it probably grew in situ. P Aculeius (talk) 17:22, 7 December 2024 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 6 months ago7 comments3 people in discussion
All of these fail WT:COMPANY: company/corporation names are not allowed on Wikt. FYI I have purposefully excluded organisations (like airlines or councils), companies with three or more derived terms, and brands (which are allowed per WT:BRAND) from this RfD. The former two rationales are rather arbitrary, but I will nominate such corporations separately in the anticipation of possible discussions/refutations.
Unbundle. I think these need to be taken individually. For example, "Versace" is a shortcut for referencing expensive style, e.g., Simon Sebag Montefiore, Sashenka: A Novel (2008), p. 432: " She was met by a beautiful black-haired secretary, a Russian girl not much older than she, in a little black suit with a tiny skirt and colossal high heels, all set off by a clinking gold belt. Katinka knew at once, just from the girls proprietary slink, that this "Versace girl" was not exclusively Pasha's typist". bd2412T18:03, 28 December 2024 (UTC)Reply
@BD2412 You can create a noun sense for it! Something like, e.g. Temu. In this context, Versace (and I reckon Gucci) could be listed as a noun or perhaps an adjective for something expensive/flashy. In such contexts, it is not a proper noun. LunaEatsTuna (talk) 21:07, 28 December 2024 (UTC)Reply
@LunaEatsTuna: It is better to create the sense first and then debate the deletion of the proper noun referencing the company, the definition of which might then become the etymology for the new sense. bd2412T22:51, 28 December 2024 (UTC)Reply
@BD2412 If I made my aforementioned planned changes now (such as adding the company names to the ety) would you consider changing your vote? Bundling all of these entries, which are being nominated for deletion under the same policy, just saves time. I would have to edit them all twice if we decide to delete the proper noun senses, i.e. describe what the company is/does in the ety section instead of just mentioning the company name now (which would make the definition redundant/unnecessary). But I can do this if you would like, LunaEatsTuna (talk) 23:28, 28 December 2024 (UTC)Reply
There is a danger in removing every brand. I think it is wrongly classified as a proper noun; it should be a common noun, as you could say: "Can you buy me a Mars when you're at the shop? Here's the money." Personally I call them Mars bars, but anyway, apart from the vast difference in price, it's no different from buying a Bentley, Porsche, or even a Toyota. A Mars (bar) is different from other chocolate bars, in the same way as a Porsche is unlike a Toyota. DonnanZ (talk) 13:16, 10 December 2024 (UTC)Reply
Keep. It's a household noun, not a company name that could never meet CFI. And Wiktionary also lists the derivation Mars bar party (today I learned what that was -- I wasn't expecting that to be the definition!) Khemehekis (talk) 19:06, 14 June 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 2 months ago9 comments4 people in discussion
The belief that people of one sex or gender are inherently superior to others.
The notion that either gender is superior is sexism.
Discrimination or different treatment based on sex or gender, especially discrimination against women.
The fact that there is only one woman in a management position in that company makes it easy to believe that sexism runs rampant there.
Attitudes or actions that are based on or promote the expectation that people adhere to stereotypical social roles (gender roles) based on sex.
The sexism of making and promoting violent films for men and romantic comedies for women.
RFD sense 3. I don't understand why we need three definitions for one thing, but for now let's just check whether we really need sense 3 as well as sense 2. Isn't the sense 3 example a case of "different treatment based on sex or gender", i.e. what it says in sense 2? Mihia (talk) 22:54, 9 December 2024 (UTC)Reply
Senses 1 and 2 would be difficult to combine; the belief in the superiority (or inferiority?) of one sex and discrimination in favour of or against persons on the basis of sex should probably be distinguished. Sense 3, however, seems to be a specific subset of both of the first two senses, though the example sentence (fragment) falls more clearly under Sense 2. I'd say that Sense 3 can be deleted, though one could make a case for keeping the example. P Aculeius (talk) 23:28, 9 December 2024 (UTC)Reply
It seems to me that the difference between (1) and (2) is probably that (1) refers to a belief system, while (2) refers to an application of this belief. I agree that there is technically a distinction. On the other hand, we don't distinguish this in, let's say, ageism, which was under discussion earlier, and you could argue indeed that the sense 1 example also fits the sense 2 definition. I'm also not certain myself whether "sexism", as a belief system, refers always to a belief in the superiority of one sex, or could also refer to a belief that the different sexes should be treated or expected of differently. Mihia (talk) 00:50, 10 December 2024 (UTC)Reply
I'm not sure that ageism has ever been treated as a belief or philosophy as opposed to a practice, perhaps because everyone knows everyone will all experience each age if they live long enough. Sure, we have people opining about old fogeys or young whippersnappers, but that doesn't really translate into a philosophy the way that say, male chauvinism can exist entirely as an abstract or attitude with no action or power to discriminate on the basis of sex. Many more people believe in the superiority or inferiority of a particular sex than actually have the opportunity to act in accordance with that belief, or affect others meaningfully in the process.
So in the context of sexism, like racism, there are pervasive beliefs entirely separate from discriminatory actions that may or may not consciously arise from them. For instance, people who believe that women need to be protected or patronized, or that women are the natural caretakers of children or the home, may not believe that acting in accordance with such beliefs would be discriminatory, at least in the sense of holding men to be superior to women. I think that's what you're getting at with your last sentence—but formulating that into a definition could be tricky.
I agree that it can be regarded as sexism, though it might be hard to distinguish from the acknowledgement or accommodation of actual physical differences between the sexes. I suspect that the sharper the distinction is drawn, the more politicized it might become, because people have a wide range of opinions on every minute detail—and most people don't want to be labeled sexist! P Aculeius (talk) 01:26, 10 December 2024 (UTC)Reply
The problem with combining the first two senses—which would make sense 3 redundant, if it isn't already—is that while it's often hard to distinguish between belief and practice, as both example sentences 2 and 3 illustrate, IMO, we often do so in real life. We refer to people as "sexists" because of their attitudes, divorced from any specific actions they might take in conformity with their beliefs, and we refer to certain practices as "sexism" because of their effects and implied motivations, even in the absence of any philosophical basis for them. The two are frequently blended, which argues for consolidating the definitions, but also frequently distinguished, and the distinction is important. If the senses are consolidated, the definition should be worded carefully, and it may be difficult to do so without making such a definition convoluted. P Aculeius (talk) 15:26, 10 December 2024 (UTC)Reply
Keep. Sense 3 is for manifestations of sexism which are not explicitly discriminatory in intent or outcome (as in sense 2), nor underpinned by the belief that one sex/gender is inherently superior to another (as in sense 1). It's for cultural stereotypes and "microaggressions", like jokes about women being unfunny, bad drivers, or inordinately fond of shoes. This term has the same range of expressions as racism. If I wanted to map expressions of racism onto the current definitions of sexism, white supremacy reflects sense 1, racial segregation reflects sense 2, and the debate about appropriate Halloween costumes reflects sense 3. These phenomena are obviously different in terms of their scope, impact, and history. We'd be doing a major disservice if we tried to consolidate them all into a single muddled definition. Nuance is a necessity in this case. WordyAndNerdy (talk) 09:43, 20 December 2024 (UTC)Reply
My initial reaction is that we should improve the definition of sense 1 (to incorporate what sense 3 is getting at, i.e. merge 3 into 1 and 2), in line with how racism does not split "race A is superior to race B"-type racism and "race A inherently likes X, race B inherently likes Y"-type racism into separate definitions but covers both in the same definition(s). At least on first consideration, I'm not seeing why trying to split 'hardcore' discrimination / supremacist attitudes or actions and more microaggressive attitudes or actions into separate senses would be the best way of handling things (we don't seem to split racism, homophobia or other discriminations that way). This does make me notice that some of our other entries' definitions are lacking, though (for example, I've just tweaked transphobia to have a fuller definition like homophobia). - -sche(discuss)23:08, 26 December 2024 (UTC)Reply
I expanded sense 1. WAN's sureness that sense 3 needs to be a separate sense gives me pause, but ... it does seem to me that sense 3 is just another way of getting at sense 2, different treatment based on the idea that people of different sexes are (or should be) different. I could maybe see making sense 3 a subsense of sense 2 (revising its wording a bit)...?? Or just deleting it in favour of sense 2 (and sense 1), keeping the usex. As I said above, the phenomenon sense 3 is describing w.r.t. sex also exists for other X-isms w.r.t. X — a while ago Hollywood studio execs were mocked for the racism of only marketing certain kinds of films to Black people and being surprised to learn that "Black people like fun things, too" — but we don't (currently) make that a separate sense of racism or other isms AFAICT. - -sche(discuss)02:41, 30 April 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 7 months ago3 comments3 people in discussion
Sense: A thief or charlatan,
Sense: A major criminal, and
Sense: Someone who is successful at pursuing women; a player
all seem to be variations of sense 5: "A person who is adept at making deals or getting results, especially one who uses questionable methods." I think the first two are more obvious than the third, but the sense of "operator" as someone who schemes, connives, convinces, games the system, etc. covers all of them—it's just a specific example, if you look at the quotations—they don't really seem to imply that the successful pursuit of women is the meaning of "operator", but rather that an operator ought to be good at pursuing women. And that's the same as sense 5, IMO. The definition could use some work, and maybe the example sentences could be saved, but I don't think there's a separate meaning here. P Aculeius (talk) 20:51, 12 December 2024 (UTC)Reply
Merge senses 11–12 with 5 (and keep some of the quotations). I am on the fence about sense 13; the 1974 attest is clearly sense 5 (“great operators ... with the girls”) but I am not really sure of the other two.. LunaEatsTuna (talk) 09:32, 14 December 2024 (UTC)Reply
I see the other two #13 examples as just the same. The context shows that pursuing girls/women is the activity being referred to. Mihia (talk) 22:11, 15 December 2024 (UTC)Reply
Since "London" can refer to either the city proper or to Greater London, "London City" helps readers identify which is intended, even though it isn't a common way of doing so. The phrase also turns up in collocations such as "London City Airport", where again it distinguishes the city from the larger metropolitan area. The entry's usefulness comes in helping readers who might wonder whether "London City" is synonymous with one of these, or another place called "London", or whether it has some other specific meaning, such as "London Town". P Aculeius (talk) 21:54, 14 December 2024 (UTC)Reply
Some fun things that crossed my mind: reading about this (not your reply specifically) got the Wings album London Town on my mind. And it's great we have the entry. This line of thought was also how I figured out Kansas City, which I know from Kansas City / Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, is the actual name for the city — which should've been obvious, since Kansas is a state, lol. Polomo47 (talk) 03:22, 16 December 2024 (UTC)Reply
FWIW, I have never heard of "London City" either, not as a thing that people refer to in any significant way, and I lived there for a number of years. "London City Airport" I parse as the "City" airport in London, i.e. serving the City of London, not the airport in "London City". Mihia (talk) — Preceding undated comment added 00:40, 15 December 2024 (UTC)Reply
I’ve always parsed it as ‘the airport of the ‘City of London’’, rather than ‘the airport of London, the alleged city’ (unlike the two editors above) but then I do enjoy winding up Cockneys by telling them the fact that London isn’t even a city and Birmingham is the largest city in the UK. There is one Google Books hit which uses ‘London City’ twice in quick succession, though it’s not altogether clear which meaning is being referred to. A weak keep from me btw. Overlordnat1 (talk) 08:05, 16 December 2024 (UTC)Reply
The pronunciations I hear on YouGlish YouGlish I support the "London city-airport" argument: they sound as if they're saying London | City Airport. I think you misunderstood what the others said. They haven't said anything about an alleged city: they're talking about parsing the name with a "city-airport" grouping as opposed to a "London City" one. Polomo47 (talk) 12:39, 16 December 2024 (UTC)Reply
I think you're right that "London City" could be used as an abbreviation for "London City Airport" (but with a meaning like "London - City" or "London (City)", so still doesn't alter the fact that, in my opinion, "London City Airport" is "City airport of London" not "airport of London City"). Mihia (talk) 15:39, 16 December 2024 (UTC)Reply
A Google search—unfiltered—suggests that "London City Centre" is used by travel and some financial sites to describe central London. There are also the London City Lionesses, a women's soccer team. "London City" also seems to be used to describe things associated with at least two other places called "London": London, Ontario (London City Soccer Club), and London, Ohio (London City Schools). These are probably not the only instances of "London City"; they're just the first ones that turned up in fairly general searches. So clearly there is some use of the phrase, and it is sometimes used to distinguish the City of London from Greater London (I'm not arguing that it's "correct" or the proper name of the corporation), and sometimes used of completely different places. These uses may be a weak argument to keep the entry, but is there a stronger argument to delete than "I haven't heard this used" or "that's not how I personally parse it"? P Aculeius (talk) 15:54, 16 December 2024 (UTC)Reply
"London City Centre" means the city centre of London, not the centre of "London City". Yes, you can find "London City" used as part of proper names. This does not prove that "London City" exists by itself (I mean, in the case of London, England - I have no idea about other Londons). If you ask "London City Lionesses" where they are located, or originated, would they say "London City"? Mihia (talk) 16:02, 16 December 2024 (UTC)Reply
Again, I'm not contending that "London City" is the correct name of the City of London—I'm saying it's one way that the city can and is referred to in some instances, and therefore readers benefit from having an entry: they may run across the phrase "London City" with or without another word (airport, centre, schools, theatre, football club, etc.), and wonder whether it means the City of London, or just part of London, or some separate entity that may or may not overlap with London—just as Greater London or the Diocese of London do. The entry tells them that the phrase is synonymous with the City of London, and not with some other entity—although if it were also used of another entity, then the entry would also aid readers by informing them of which ones are sometimes referred to this way. Without an entry, someone running across "London City" would be left wondering whether it is or isn't the same entity as the "City of London". P Aculeius (talk) 17:26, 16 December 2024 (UTC)Reply
Delete – Regardless of the above arguments, is “London City” a generally valid entry for us? This might be SOP, just London + City.. we do not have Tokyo City, Los Angeles City, Mumbai City, São Paulo City, Shanghai City, Istanbul City etc, and a lot of these have their own metropolitan areas that could be confused for the city proper or centre or CBD whatever, i.e. Los Angeles County (colloquially Los Angeles) or the Greater Tokyo Area (colloquially Tokyo). London should not get special treatment nor should we create the aforementioned red-linked entries as city is used as a descriptor; by that same logic we might have Kingston City (which can have several senses) and hundreds of others that are not really helpful to readers. Instead, we can just—and indeed, we do—list the various senses at Kingston or London etc. That said, I would not oppose a redirect either. LunaEatsTuna (talk) 13:48, 17 December 2024 (UTC)Reply
I always thought that "New York City" had a particular explanation, i.e. to distinguish the city from the state, which, indeed, our entry does mention. Mihia (talk) 12:15, 29 December 2024 (UTC)Reply
Although "London City" is not in my experience a "regular" term, no doubt someone somewhere has put those two words together, so in that sense it can no doubt be "verified". However, I think it unlikely that it is used only in the sense "City of London". For example, "Things to do in London City" is talking about London as a whole. In the case that it does mean City of London, it could be construed as "London + district of London", i.e. the City district, in the same way as we see e.g. "Places to see in London Kensington" . Mihia (talk) 09:40, 2 January 2025 (UTC)Reply
Keep but RFV - If this term exists, it's clearly not SOP because it refers to a specific small part of London, not the city as a whole. I find its existence kind of dubious though, since I've only ever heard that phrasing used to refer to London City Airport (which is not itself in the City of London, although it is relatively close). Smurrayinchester (talk) 07:25, 16 April 2025 (UTC)Reply
I don't think it's the same, because the generic role sense suggests that the hats are something one can exchange at will (rather like Edward de Bono's "Six Thinking Hats", or the idea of "putting on one's thinking cap"). The Internet thing is different because this is an actual measurable privilege granted only to selected users (administrators, etc.) and not a figurative "mode" that anybody can choose to switch into. (I remember in old IRC days I used to refer to the chanop's distinguishing @ symbol as the "at-hat". But I probably made that up.) 2A00:23C5:FE1C:3701:11A4:1965:C286:A29001:21, 16 December 2024 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 7 months ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Rfd-sense
"A hypothetical fourth class of civic subjects, or fourth body (in Britain, after the Crown, and the two Houses of Parliament) which governed legislation." This doesn't seem idiomatic to me. These historical 'estates' are covered by the etymology, so we wouldn't be removing any information from the entry. The quote could be moved under 'used other than idiomatically'. Wikiuser815 (talk) 10:23, 15 December 2024 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 3 months ago30 comments13 people in discussion
The phrase refers to a friend who is imaginary, as such this is SoP. It could be made to redirect to "imaginary", where I've already added this as a collocation. Wikiuser815 (talk) 18:24, 17 December 2024 (UTC)Reply
Keep. An "imaginary friend" isn't merely a friend who is imaginary, but a specific psychological concept (I'm going to refrain from doing as the entry does, quoting from the lead of the Wikipedia article of this title) with a considerable amount of literature devoted to it—including a lengthy article on Wikipedia. I admit I'm only familiar with the concept as applied to children who develop artificial personas with whom they can interact—but on that basis alone I would consider this term to be more than sum-of-parts. P Aculeius (talk) 03:53, 18 December 2024 (UTC)Reply
This is a non sequitur since by necessity psychological concepts, as the mental reflection and preconception of the world, can be sums of parts. So man, as he designs himself to interact with others, typically maintains such a concept, and for greater effect vividly replays it when having the opportunity, as it is case at the relevant age. If I study medicine I also am an imaginary medical doctor in an imaginary hospital, if I study law I am an imaginary attorney or judge in an imaginary courtroom, and so on, but nothing similar is being verbalized in psychologese given that psychological researchers would have to have intersections with occupational professions as particular subsections of the population, which increases expense in study design but decreases interest in their research. Fay Freak (talk) 04:31, 18 December 2024 (UTC)Reply
Our definition seems wrong to me anyway. Is an "imaginary friend" really a "phenomenon where a friendship takes place " as we presently say? I understand it as actually referring to the (imaginary) person in that relationship. Mihia (talk) 10:29, 18 December 2024 (UTC)Reply
I disagree. One says "she has an imaginary friend", "I'm talking to my imaginary friend", etc.. You do not talk to a "phenomenon where a friendship takes place". The "imaginary friend" actually is the imaginary person. Google AI-generated definition is correct: "An imaginary friend is a character or personality that someone creates in their mind, often as a child." Mihia (talk) 14:19, 18 December 2024 (UTC)Reply
I agree that our definition is poor. I think it was taken verbatim from the lead of the Wikipedia article on the topic—which also needs work, IMO—or possibly vice-versa. But either way, it's certainly more than sum-of-parts. P Aculeius (talk) 14:34, 18 December 2024 (UTC)Reply
The acid test, as always, will be whether the (corrected) definition, when any dressing is removed, really means anything more than "a friend that is imaginary". It seems to me that a distinguishing feature of the non-purely-SoP "imaginary friend" could be that the imaginer actually interacts with the friend in some way (as, in fact, P Aculeius mentions above). For example, most likely the following isn't referring to "our type" of imaginary friend: "I think he made up that whole story about going there to meet a friend just to throw us off the scent. I think the meeting was imaginary, and the friend was an imaginary friend." The distinction does seem a little flimsy, however. I abstain. Mihia (talk) 18:27, 19 December 2024 (UTC)Reply
Compare imaginary illness, which in most cases means an illness thought to exist purely in the imagination of a hypochondriac, but can also refer to an illness imagined by someone else. The very fact that it can mean both these things makes it obvious, IMO, that the term is a sum of parts. --Lambiam15:57, 22 December 2024 (UTC)Reply
I think what I was trying to say, not very clearly now that I look again, is that someone could make a case for an "especially" entry; in other words, yes, it could mean any "imaginary" + "friend", but in particular it means the sort that you have a chat with. This is the sort of "especially" argument that we might see for "tram driver" and the like. Yes, obviously "tram driver" means "person who drives a tram", but in particular it means one who drives as an occupation and carries passengers on a public service. But, as I say, I am not personally arguing strongly for this. Mihia (talk) 18:23, 22 December 2024 (UTC)Reply
Delete. I don't blame the author for submitting this given how well known the concept is, but this is better suited for an encyclopedia rather than a dictionary. The meaning is too obvious. (((Romanophile))) ♞ (contributions) 12:08, 29 December 2024 (UTC)Reply
Isn’t the term “imaginary friend” also a euphemism for God (or other deities) among non-believers?
Example: “Are you praying to your imaginary friend again?”
I see the example you gave as SoP: someone saying that intends no more meaning than "friend who is imaginary". Yes, that definition is in disagreement with the interlocutor's, but that changes nothing. Compare groomer. Polomo47 (talk) 19:51, 22 February 2025 (UTC)Reply
@André Koehne, it's not just any translation that suffices: the translation needs to be idiomatic. The same sum-of-parts argument applies for both of the translations you mentioned, since they are word-for-word translations. Nominated the Portuguese page for deletion. Polomo47 (talk) 19:48, 22 February 2025 (UTC)Reply
I don't want to edit the French Wiktionary, so I didn't do anything there, but I do think the entry should be deleted. Not sure what you mean about the Wikipedia entry, though. Polomo47 (talk) 20:30, 22 February 2025 (UTC)Reply
Weak delete. Forgot to vote for a while; changed to weak because I could see the WT:PRIOR argument but I don't find it very strong in this case. Like, the examples we have on that page are also idiomatic for other reasons. Polomo47 (talk) 19:49, 22 February 2025 (UTC)Reply
Keep. The pertinent meaning ("the subject of a friendship or other interpersonal relationship taking place in the imagination rather than in physical reality") conveys something more specific than the parts. To repeat my earlier example, "I think he made up that whole story about going there to meet a friend just to throw us off the scent. I think the meeting was imaginary, and the friend was an imaginary friend" is not an "imaginary friend" in the pertinent sense. Mihia (talk) 00:04, 23 February 2025 (UTC)Reply
I'm now thinking the definition is simply incomplete, and that "imaginary friend" hasn't any such restricted meaning (which requires prior knowledge). We need to see if all "imaginary friends" are "friends that are imaginary" (no one seems to question it), and if all "friends that are imaginary" are "imaginary friends" (I say yes), in which case that's proof of SoP, no? Polomo47 (talk) 11:49, 27 February 2025 (UTC)Reply
I see it as similar to magic carpet which arose elsewhere recently. Yes, "magic carpet" can mean any carpet with magical properties, whatever they may be, and yet specifically it means a carpet that can fly. Although in some sense "magic carpet" in the "flying" sense is SoP, nevertheless we should in my opinion give it its own definition, and I would say the same principle applies, slightly more weakly, but still viably, just about, to "imaginary friend". Mihia (talk) 13:14, 27 February 2025 (UTC)Reply
Keep per WT:PRIOR. It's a technical term for a specific psychological concept. As pointed out by P Aculeius there's a bunch of literature and research related to this phenomenon. "Imaginary friends" seem to mainly manifest in young children. That's a narrowness of use that the definition ought to reflect. Can also be used as a disparaging reference to God (cf. sky daddy). WordyAndNerdy (talk) 01:35, 23 February 2025 (UTC)Reply
@LunaEatsTuna: For your sanity, I would advise you to not take Donnanz seriously, or even ignore his comments entirely, especially those made here at RFD. They're teeming with pointless trivia, passive-aggressive jabs, personal attacks and weird non sequitur. PUC – 14:50, 21 December 2024 (UTC)Reply
There was a user account for TypeO889 created around the time (1506, 19 December) when Luna threatened to sue me for libel in ankle-high. It has now been mysteriously deleted. This is not pointless trivia etc. DonnanZ (talk) 15:56, 21 December 2024 (UTC)Reply
I believe that the "/not s" placed in that comment was meant to indicate "not serious", although you did accuse two people of commenting under made-up identities. It sounds like this comment is also aimed at Luna, although it's a legitimate argument for deletion (I'm not saying I agree with it; I'm not sure), and the comment below under "baby cake" also seems to refer to this one. If you want to accuse someone—or multiple someones—of sockpuppetry, I believe there's a better way of doing it. P Aculeius (talk) 16:11, 21 December 2024 (UTC)Reply
Keep because "weird" isn't criteria enough for deletion and the OP doesn't make a tie-in to the CFI at all. If it really IS a color, and an attestable one, it probably should be kept anyway; most colors are (compare jungle green, ocean blue, etc. Purplebackpack8921:50, 26 December 2024 (UTC)Reply
The definitions of both this entry and autumn orange are comically lacking (bad labels, bad definitions, ...). If it refers to a specific colour, someone should add that; if not (like "18th century green"), it should be deleted. Possibly a question for RFV. - -sche(discuss)22:27, 26 December 2024 (UTC)Reply
Delete, because as far as I can tell neither "fall orange" nor "autumn orange" exist as colours (see "summer yellow" below), except to the extent that anyone might happen to associate orange with the season. There seems to be no specific colour that is regularly named this; it is not found in W3, no specific definition is provided, and there are no citations or quotations for any of these. I have no doubt that there are uses of the phrase in some durably archived sources, but I don't know of any that would amount to something less vague than the sum of its parts. P Aculeius (talk) 14:37, 28 December 2024 (UTC)Reply
But are these actual colours, or just whatever the creator wants them to mean? I used to write about colours, and list those that occurred in major dictionaries. I can't recall anything called "fall orange" or "summer yellow" referring to a specific colour—as far as I know, these phrases mean nothing more than the definitions say: an orange that reminds one of fall; a yellow reminiscent of summer (but wouldn't a fall yellow be just as valid? Is yellow more associated with summer than fall?). Webster's Third New International Dictionary has "Autumn", "Autumn blond", "Autumn brown", "Autumn glory", "Autumn leaf", and "Autumn oak", four of which are synonyms for colours defined elsewhere, but there's no "Autumn orange" or "Fall orange", and I don't see any "Summer" colours. These seem to be inventions of the editor who created them, and to the extent they have lexical meaning, it's just sum-of-parts, like "grape red" or "wood brown" or "cloud white", none of which refer to a specific colour—though there's a butterfly called "wood brown"—and so are just random and transparent descriptions. P Aculeius (talk) 01:03, 28 December 2024 (UTC)Reply
I don't see how plain RFV would help. No doubt "summer yellow" can very easily be cited, along with virtually unlimited other ad hoc compound colour names. It seems to me that we need citations that consistently use the term more precisely or specifically than as "the colour that the words conjure up in the mind". For example, sunset yellow is a specific dye with a specific chemical composition, which you would not know purely from the name. Or perhaps this is what you meant anyway. Mihia (talk) 16:22, 2 January 2025 (UTC)Reply
Delete both per nom. I wanted to see if barcode reader was an official name for that particular plastic handle-shaped handheld device thingy (in which case it would probably not be SOP), but it does not appear so. There are many objects and devices bearing this name. LunaEatsTuna (talk) 15:43, 8 January 2025 (UTC)Reply
Hm, this makes me conflicted. I still intuitively think that “barcode reader” is SoP, and so I’d think yhat “card reader” is also SoP, especially because it can mean a bunch of types of cards, and a bunch of types of readers — but I don’t have an intuitive issue with the entry. I’m not sure if I’d want it deleted, or if there’s some change that’d make it more acceptable for me... Polomo47 (talk) 16:35, 15 April 2025 (UTC)Reply
I actually looked better at the entry now, and the definition A data input device that reads data from a card-shaped storage medium. is just so weak — reader as data-input device is defined at reader, and so is a corresponding sense at card — that I’d have no issues with the entry’s deletion. If someone brings it to RfD, however, it is likely to be kept by WT:COALMINE or WT:THUB. Polomo47 (talk) 16:53, 15 April 2025 (UTC)Reply
I’m slightly on the fence here, card reader seems idiomatic as they can read phones and watches (and I even know one person who has a readable ring!), albeit card info contained on phones and watches. Barcode reader/scanner seems less so but they can be a gun-shaped gun/scanner/reader or rectangular and they can be wired to the counter by the till/register or mobile. Also some can read QR codes, do price checks, print price labels or stickers from a mobile printer, and scan a batch of barcodes for printing from a computer later on, as well as scan items for click and collect purposes - the most advanced ones can do all of the above, are mobile and (in my experience) are rectangular and go by the name HHT (handheld terminal). The entire counter of a self-service checkout that you scan items on could even be thought of as a ‘barcode scanner’. Overlordnat1 (talk) 19:31, 15 April 2025 (UTC)Reply
Keep Cockney rhyming slang, as a recognized "dialect" that is frequently used to explain the etymology of various words and phrases, not only in Wiktionary but other standard authorities, e.g. Partridge. I don't know whether the same is true of Australian rhyming slang. P Aculeius (talk) 20:02, 2 February 2025 (UTC)Reply
I dunno... The lemons I buy are not quite as bright in colour as what wikipedia calls Lemon (color) ( ⬬⬬ ), but more like ⬬⬬ or ⬬⬬ . When I keep the lemons for too long and they turn the mellow yellow RAL Classic colour "Lemon yellow" ( ⬬⬬ ) shown in the list on Wikipedia, I throw them away. In everyday use, neither lemon nor lemon yellow, used as a colour designation, correspond to a precise standard. IMO these terms refer to the colours of actual lemons, which vary over a considerable range. The use of a fancy name in a particular colour standard does not make it lexical; some other names from this standard are “Pearl blackberry” and “Fibrous green”. --Lambiam15:02, 10 January 2025 (UTC)Reply
Keep per Donnanz. And I would like the nominator to explain further why they think the word isn't lexicalized...what research led them to that claim? Why is sky blue lexicalized but lemon yellow isn't? Purplebackpack8921:32, 10 January 2025 (UTC)Reply
Keep, as a standard description of various bright yellows, even though the colour itself isn't standardized. Other dictionaries consider this to be the name of a colour. W3 defines it first as "a variable color averaging a brilliant greenish yellow", and secondly as a synonym for Cassel yellow or Chinese yellow. It would be silly to delete it simply because it isn't always the same hue, saturation, and value. P Aculeius (talk) 13:18, 14 January 2025 (UTC)Reply
The question is if it means anything more than lemon + yellow. Since the color of lemons is not fixed, "lemon yellow" will obviously refer to a color falling in a particular range of colors and that doesn't make it non-SOP. Svārtava (tɕ) 13:54, 14 January 2025 (UTC)Reply
It doesn't make it sum-of-parts either. By that definition, most of the colours defined by other dictionaries shouldn't have definitions either, because they're also variable. Ranges are definable too, and we shouldn't be coming up with excuses to delete entries that other dictionaries consider worthy of inclusion. P Aculeius (talk) 16:22, 14 January 2025 (UTC)Reply
And yet most of these aren't defined as colours in most dictionaries, which do include lemon yellow, either with a separate entry or under "lemon". OED, under "lemon", sense 5, shows "lemon-yellow" in use since at least 1807; Ridgway depicts "Lemon Yellow" on plate IV of Color Standards and Color Nomenclature (1912), which is widely used as a reference in taxonomy and the sciences. Not just anything that typically falls in the range of some general colour gives rise to a distinct name, which is why most of the above examples, except for "coal black", are redlinked: good luck finding them in dictionaries (I might not be surprised by "pumpkin orange") or art supply catalogues. P Aculeius (talk) 20:24, 2 February 2025 (UTC)Reply
I am opposed to including or excluding entries simply because other dictionaries include or exclude them. In particular, popular dictionaries almost certainly include certain terms (e.g. "lemon yellow") and exclude others (e.g. "grapefruit yellow") on the basis of how common or familiar they are (which we don't, provided that minimum citation requirements are met), and probably without applying our concept of SoP with any great strictness or consistency. Ideally we should have our own rules for potentially SoP colours -- if indeed we need additional specific rules -- so that different people can apply the rules and arrive at the same answer. Otherwise, it is arbitrary that someone says "I think that X is a 'proper colour' while Y is not", even when Y is as easily citable as X. Of course, if there is a "hard" definition, such as an exact dye or chemical (as in my elsewhere example sunset yellow) then that should be sufficient to keep. If we can't say anything more than, essentially, "colour of the stated thing", as is presently the case with "lemon yellow", then I am unclear what is our valid rationale for keeping the entry. I am also dubious about descriptive definitions such as "a vivid green", "a soft orange" etc. being in themselves sufficient, because these could be created for any "thing + colour" where "thing" has a known typical colour. Mihia (talk) 21:48, 2 February 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 5 months ago7 comments5 people in discussion
"Nickname of Dwayne De Rosario (born 1978), Canadian soccer player." I can't find a specific section of WT:CFI covering this (maybe I'm overlooking something) but this doesn't seem like the kind of thing we should include. - saph ^_^⠀talk⠀20:32, 5 January 2025 (UTC)Reply
I agree. In sports, it is quite common for players to have cool nicknames; these names are not really fit for a dictionary, though, are they? But, seeing as this is de jure allowed to be included, perhaps this should go to the Beer Parlour for opinions. LunaEatsTuna (talk) 17:55, 7 January 2025 (UTC)Reply
Keep. Is dictionary material. Famous nicknames can be found in dictionaries, and there's even entire dictionaries for them. (Plus, we could have a sort of reverse dictionary, where you look up famous people and see what nicknames they've gotten.) CitationsFreak (talk) 11:52, 9 February 2025 (UTC)Reply
Not humans. Terms that refer to a specific humans, or groups of them. And as for why some might look up them up, maybe they read a nickname and are curious as to who it refers to. Or maybe they're a writer search for a succulent sobriquet for a certain individual. CitationsFreak (talk) 12:12, 9 February 2025 (UTC)Reply
Keep. This is not the normal way that pronouns form possessives; -'s is regularly added to nouns, not pronouns, so pronominal forms like this, one's, and y'all's are unexpected enough to not be considered SOP. —Mahāgaja · talk05:50, 30 April 2025 (UTC)Reply
FWIW, a more recent discussion removed the pronoun section from bro, leaving it only as a noun (correctly, IMO), which we do regularly delete possessives of. Pronouns, OTOH ... I agree with Mahagaja, keep this; pronominal possessives formed with apostrophes are a small class and one we seem to keep (we also have him's), and which seems reasonable enough to me to keep. - -sche(discuss)17:45, 30 April 2025 (UTC)Reply
Delete: I looked through Gbooks for a while and did not find any occurrences of this word in an English sentence (without italics, that is). However, perhaps this is better suited for RfV?LunaEatsTuna (talk) 00:24, 12 February 2025 (UTC)Reply
Yeah, delete. It should be OK to include "The" in place names where it is officially used, there's about 15 hamlets around England named The Green, and oodles of streets with that name too. DonnanZ (talk) 11:21, 18 January 2025 (UTC)Reply
I think it's more convenient to have the entry at the D rather than moving it to D and adding a label like "(used with "the"). —Soap—09:31, 22 April 2025 (UTC)Reply
All the more reason not to have this one. All the Google Books hits are for that one and a few other published works with the same initials. There are also lots of scannos and some kind of (lowercase) term in linguistics or philosophy, but apparently not this.
The fact that this is on a "Battle for Dream Island" fandom wiki doesn't help- that group was so focused on their favorite spot on the internet that they fought for 11 years to get it on Wikipedia in spite of having none of the evidence for notability that Wikipedia requires. I hope this isn't a continuation of that battle. Chuck Entz (talk) 02:30, 18 January 2025 (UTC)Reply
Hello, while I can understand why you might think TWOW is just "another BFDI thing", I believe that it is seperate and notable enough to warrant its own definition of Wiktionary.
Firstly, on the BFDI Fandom wiki you are talking about, it explicitly states that "Ten Words of Wisdom is not a part of the BFDI franchise". While there are some similarities with TWOW and BFDI (them both having the same creator, many TWOW fans being BFDI fans, and most notably, the contestants are being represented as "booksonas", which are similar to a BFDI character), TWOW is its own thing seperate from BFDI, although the 2 communities do slightly overlap. However, there are many TWOW fans who are not a fan of BFDI, and there will be more fans of that type because of LingoTWOW: a TWOW with over 400 contestants that is hosted and announced by LingoLizard, a linguistics channel of 60000 subscribers, unrelated to BFDI.
Secondly, the TWOW community is quite sizeable, and there are many "TWOW"s. The second official season of Ten Words of Wisdom, "Eleven Words of Wisdom" has over 16,000 contestants, and the official Discord server regarding TWOW has over 5,000 members. There is also a list of TWOWs, which contains a lot of TWOWs. Take note that a lot of those TWOWs are named something along the lines of " TWOW", which denotes that it is a writing competition similar to carykh's Ten Words of Wisdom.
Thirdly, there are already many definitions related to object shows, BFDI, and TWOW on Wiktionary, such as object show, objectsona, and booksona.
Some final notes are that TWOW can also be used as a suffix (-TWOW, e.g. Magnetty TWOW) or more rarely, a prefix (TWOW-, e.g. TWOWlympics), a lot of the TWOW community and TWOWs operate on Discord (but recently, there have been many TWOWs on YouTube) and I will admit that I have a slight conflict of interest with the TWOW and MiniTWOW Wikis on Miraheze, due to me being staff on both wikis. - AFasterSlowpoke (talk) 20:49, 19 January 2025 (UTC)Reply
What is the reason for deletion? The entry is really poorly formatted right now, but I've seen the initalism quite often (i.e., seems attestable) and the content isn't hard to fix. Polomo47 (talk) 09:11, 21 January 2025 (UTC)Reply
Reason for the delete is Example: Nonsense, Crosswiki trolling. This seems to be an own invention and does not seem to be a verifiable spread. WikiBayer (talk) 17:05, 8 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
Okay, you’re obviously mistaken. The user most definitely did not make up the word, and the entry is not wrong enough that I’d consider it “trolling”. Polomo47 (talk) 17:15, 8 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
RFD sense 11. Don't see how the examples are any different from sense 10. Also the definitions of 11 seem too weak for the examples, or not quite to the point. Mihia (talk) 15:45, 21 January 2025 (UTC)Reply
I believe the problem is with the UXs under sense 11: those are wrong and should be under sense 10. Sense 10 ought to be like, "They screwed me ". Maybe this could go to RfV to see if it's really used with no "over">
Outside of that, I believe they are indeed separate senses because saying "screw those jerks" is not close to saying "you should screw those jerks". Polomo47 (talk) 16:30, 23 January 2025 (UTC)Reply
I don't see why #10 ought to be (essentially) any different from what it is at the moment (except possibly if it is to allow non-imperative use). As for "screw = screw over", have you checked the other senses to see whether this is covered elsewhere? To me, "screw over" usually means "cheat", sense 3. "You should screw those jerks", in a sense 10/11-relevant way, could be seen as a non-imperative use of #10. If #11 is supposed to cover this then, to me, the definitions need to be stronger. I can't see "You should screw those jerks" as really meaning e.g. "You should give up on those jerks". Or do you think otherwise? Mihia (talk) 19:53, 23 January 2025 (UTC)Reply
I'd say it's a mistake to list noun senses 6/7 and verb senses 2/3/10/11, because all of those simply reflect that screw is the minced equivalent of fuck and is therefore substitutable for it in most contexts. You could replace them with one noun entry reading "Equivalent to fuck, but less vulgar", and one verb entry saying the same thing.
With regard to the difference between 10 and 11 here, the overlap occurs only because sense 10 mentions "contemptuous dismissal". Sense 11 is dismissive, but not necessarily contemptuous; you can use the word to dismiss something that you don't necessarily disapprove of. Sense 10 is strongly pejorative, and that feels like a meaningful difference to me. 2601:647:C901:20C0:4131:EB5D:B72B:DB4A08:05, 11 April 2025 (UTC)Reply
Okay, but it's easy to attest countable usages, like here. I don't believe we usually require attestation of plurals when it's predictable like this. Polomo47 (talk) 16:27, 23 January 2025 (UTC)Reply
Can we find several other phrases involving sense #4 of "penetrative", i.e. "Pertaining to sexual activity involving penetration by the penis"? If we can cite general use then it would boost the case for deleting, I think. Mihia (talk) 22:57, 23 January 2025 (UTC)Reply
There's "penetrative and non-penetrative abuse", "non-penetrative and penetrative experiences" (of CSA, etc), "penetrative acts", ~ rape, ~assault, etc. I suspect that all of these collocations including "penetrative sex" sometimes refer to any penetration, e.g. insertion of fingers into a vagina, but they might also sometimes only refer to (certain, non-oral?) penile penetration. - -sche(discuss)19:55, 13 February 2025 (UTC)Reply
I am not apodictically reckoning the entry as one we have to keep, but as the situation stands we—and even more so non-lexicographers, not least youths—are thus confused about the terminology that from this and that that it would be a contradiction to keep contrasting terms we can make a case for keeping. The legal (?) terms you mention have more contextual peculiarities. Fay Freak (talk) 02:54, 14 February 2025 (UTC)Reply
In colloquial usage, I've usually seen this term exclude oral sex, as in these two Redditthreads. I wonder if we should split the definition into loosely and strictly accordingly. AG202 (talk) 23:14, 23 January 2025 (UTC)Reply
Delete: the fact that some uses include all kinds of penetration and others might include only some kinds of penetrative is interesting, but it seems to me like a feature of penetrative, because AFAICT the same differences in scope can be found in other phrases like penetrative abuse / acts / assault / experiences / rape (see also google books:"penetrative anal", google books:"penetrative vaginal"), so AFAICT all of these longer phrases are SOP. - -sche(discuss)01:54, 30 April 2025 (UTC)Reply
Assuming that "forward" is an adjective, we do not presently seem to have an adjectival sense that exactly fits. Are there other examples of such an adjectival sense of "forward"? Mihia (talk) 19:36, 24 January 2025 (UTC)Reply
Seems like a valid (if figurative?) use of the word, and I don't think it's exclusive to (or excluded from) an adjective form. The adverb header has quite a few senses that fit. Maybe we're missing a corresponding adjective sense. Polomo47 (talk) 19:39, 24 January 2025 (UTC)Reply
We may be missing a sense, but in envisaging how we would add it, it occurred to me that we would ideally have other examples to show. Or, possibly we could bundle it into an existing sense. Mihia (talk) 19:44, 24 January 2025 (UTC)Reply
Irrelevant. It’s your job to consider whether a reason to keep anything can be construed before you nominate an entry for deletion, as we have limited capacities to format quotes and formulate answers to everything. Daily Dot editors seem to like this spelling even. Fay Freak (talk) 19:54, 26 January 2025 (UTC)Reply
TBF it is a simple mistake to make; it should really be (though obviously this is not always case) up to the page creator to add an entry like trollbot as an alternative form of troll bot so that editors know that the alternative form not only exists but that the entry is thus kept via COALMINE. :3 LunaEatsTuna (talk) 00:46, 12 February 2025 (UTC)Reply
Merge: determine whether the capitalized or uncapitalized form is more common, and merge the other entry into it. Also, revise the definition as we don’t have meta definitions like “an occurrence of ” as it’s just needless duplication and potentially applies to every single term. — Sgconlaw (talk) 13:19, 29 January 2025 (UTC)Reply
I can see why one might imagine these are adjectives from the wording of some of the senses, but in each of the example sentences, which agree with those senses, "flatfooted" appears to be modifying a verb: caught, walk, hit, squatted, drink. Thus it appears to be correctly identified as an adverb. Also, if only which part of speech it is is in question, why is this entry—including the adjective—up for deletion? P Aculeius (talk) 19:54, 2 February 2025 (UTC)Reply
No, you're as confused as the editor who created the "adverb" must have been. My Oxford only lists the adjective for flat-footed, with flat-footedly as an adverb (see flatfootedly). It gives an example for the adjective flat-footed: many companies were caught flat-footed by international competition.
If I said I was caught naked, you can look at naked and find, quite rightly, that it's not an adverb. There is an adverb though - nakedly.
A possible test: "I was caught in a flatfooted manner" isn't the same as "I was caught flatfooted". The latter is more like "I was caught while I was flatfooted". Walking flatfooted seems different: you could say "I was walking in a flatfooted manner", though you could also say "I was flatfooted while I was walking". Chuck Entz (talk) 02:03, 3 February 2025 (UTC)Reply
I agree. The "caught flatfooted" example is clearly adjectival. The "squatted flatfooted" and "hit take-off board flatfooted" examples are probably adjectival too. "walk flatfooted" seems more ambiguous to me (would it be a "flat" adverb? ha-ha). Compare also barefoot. I've never heard of the "drinking" sense.
On balance, I would move all the adverb senses to adjective (not delete, since they are not already covered by adjectival senses), possibly tinkering with the definitions to make them clearly adjectival, and possibly 2 and 3 could be merged.
The "walking" example is under the definition "Putting the entire foot down at once, rather than landing on the ball of the foot and then lowering the rest of the foot", as if "landing on the ball of the foot" is a normal or natural way of walking. I have just tried this, and I find it incredibly awkward and unnatural. If I deliberately try not to walk "flatfooted" then I put my heel down first. See also . Should "ball" in fact be changed to "heel" or to "heel or ball"? Mihia (talk) 18:23, 4 February 2025 (UTC)Reply
IIRC, running is ball-of-the-foot first, while walking is heel-first, though the main rule in racewalking has to do with always having one foot in contact with the ground, not where on the foot the contact occurs. "Landing on the ball of the foot" sounds more like tiptoeing to me. Chuck Entz (talk) 03:23, 5 February 2025 (UTC)Reply
In any case, I suppose there is no reason why "flatfooted" shouldn't be an alternative to either, so I think I will change it to "heel or ball". Mihia (talk) 10:30, 5 February 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 5 months ago4 comments3 people in discussion
"Any in the subfamily Peramelinae of bandicoots". All the few uses of this collocation to be found at Google Books are either modifying a noun (eg, 'typical bandicoot nest') or simply typical + bandicoot. I haven't even found evidence that Perameles nasuta, the type species of the genus Perameles, or any other bandicoot species is called a 'typical bandicoot'. There is more chance that there might be a non-SoP term true bandicoot. DCDuring (talk) 13:10, 3 February 2025 (UTC)Reply
Some context: taxonomy is based on the concept of types. Any taxonomic group consists of everything that is closer to the type of that group than to the type of another group at the same level a.k.a rank. A typical x is an x that is closer to the type of the group of x's than most x's.
The problem with identifying typical x's with a specific group of x's is that "typical" is relative. That means that if you're talking about something in a different subfamily from the type, then typical members of the family are in the same subfamily as the type. If you're talking about something in the same subfamily, but a different tribe, then typical members of the subfamily are those in the same tribe as the type. You could theoretically follow this trend down to levels such as infrasubspecies or races, but there's probably no practical reason to do so. There are probably only a few plausible interpretations of "typical bandicoot" in the taxonomic sense- but there's no inherent semantic reason for that.
The hard part about verifying usage would be pinning down which level is meant. If "typical bandicoot" refers only to members of the same species, it contrasts not just with different species, but different genera, subtribes, tribes, subfamilies, and perhaps other levels in between. Chuck Entz (talk) 06:57, 5 February 2025 (UTC)Reply
To keep, I would be looking for a meaning along the lines of common gull (not a "common" + "gull") -- i.e. one in which the adjective "typical" doesn't just have its ordinary dictionary meaning, irrespective of what is being contrasted with what. To me this seems feasible in principle, but I'm not seeing anything promising in search results. It could also be hard to prove (especially with limited references) if, in fact, a "typical bandicoot" also is a "typical" + "bandicoot". But, as I say, strictly speaking I suppose it is a question for RFV ... Mihia (talk) 18:31, 5 February 2025 (UTC)Reply
Fails WT:COMPANY: the names of companies/corporations are not allowed on Wiktionary. We would, however, keep the verb sense. If this RfD was to pass, the Derived terms heading would be turned into Related terms, and the Etymology is being kept for the verb sense. LunaEatsTuna (talk) 01:37, 12 February 2025 (UTC)Reply
Well, corporation names are not allowed on Wiktionary. Unofficial names and abbreviations are allowed, like in the case of UPS, but FedEx is the official, formal name of the company (the FedEx Corporation), not a nickname nor an abbreviation, so it is not eligible as an entry. The verb sense is fine because it is a genericized trademark.. look at Hot Wheels for instance. The proper noun sense for the company is not listed but the noun is. If we allowed corporations there would be tens of thousands of entries just for random companies; we can leave those for Wikipedia! LunaEatsTuna (talk) 10:14, 12 February 2025 (UTC)Reply
I agree with that too. The situation with UPS and KFC is slightly complicated by the fact that they can be abbreviations for different things (albeit rarely) but we should allow abbreviations. Hot Wheels is a strange one, we have similar senses at Ford and Honda that refer to individual cars made by these corporations but but we only list the company name as a separate sense to the cars (and motorbikes) it makes at Honda. Overlordnat1 (talk) 11:38, 12 February 2025 (UTC)Reply
I have a suspicion that FedEx became a shorthand before it became the official company name (i.e., they changed it to "FedEx" because that is what people were calling it), in which case WT:JIFFY would apply. If this is not the case, however, then I would include the company name in the etymology, rather than as a definition. bd2412T17:13, 12 February 2025 (UTC)Reply
Quick update: According to Wikipedia (which we trust implicitly) the "FedEx" name was adopted in 2000. Google Books shows uses of "FedEx" in the 1980s/90s, and "FEDEX" going back to the 1970s. bd2412T17:21, 12 February 2025 (UTC)Reply
To be fair, Wikipedia cites this to the FedEx website, which also says that the original name of the company was "Federal Express", rebranded as FedEx for advertising purposes in 1994, and formally changing its name as a corporate entity in 2000. Either way, uses of "FedEx" prior to the rebrand should satisfy WT:JIFFY. bd2412T04:15, 17 February 2025 (UTC)Reply
In the matter of the merger of Federal Express Corporation and Flying Tiger Line, Inc., 16 NMB No. 112, in United States National Mediation Board, Determinations of the National Mediation Board, Volumes 16-17 (August 4, 1989), p. 433: On December 21, 1988, Federal Express (FedEx) notified the board by letter that FedEx and the Flying Tiger Line Flying Tigers had filed with the United States Department of Transportation (DOT) for approval of their intent to merge.
Air Force Journal of Logistics (1999), p. 9: In contrast to military organic transportation, express commercial carriers—such as Federal Express (Fedex), United Parcel Service, Airborne Express and Emory—are more responsive to customer demands and are able to adjust flight schedules and airlift capabilities on a daily basis if necessary. According to the Program Management Advisor for FedEx, they are able to fly an additional aircraft with only a few hours notice if necessary to ensure the on-time arrival of cargo.
"Keeping up in the Silver City", Meriden Record-Journal (December 30, 1984), p. C-1: SAYINGS IN: "Parts is parts" OUT: "Where's the beef?" IN: "I'll Fed-Ex it to you" OUT: "I'll send it Special Delivery" IN: "Awesome" OUT: "Gag me with a spoon"
"ZapMail zaps profits", Pacific Daily News (December 22, 1984), p. 48: FedEx said its profit fell to $10 million in the latest quarter from $30 million a year earlier.
Obv delete. All the British utilities (postal, gas, electric, etc.) have been nationalised since the 80s or earlier. But that's not the point. Even state organisations are still orgs, they are proper nouns for attempts at things. (Ha! Watch DOGE sail through RFV.) Homework: if an org called "Royal Mail" was either not royal, or not doing mail, would that give it more Wiktionary points? Or would it still be out of bounds by default, as an organisation name? GREENPEACE? 2A00:23C5:FE1C:3701:1070:8DBC:498C:45B105:33, 13 February 2025 (UTC)Reply
They have lost a lot of business with the growth of the Internet. And a political question: should it keep the Royal if it's sold to a Czech? Afterthought: I think you mean privatised, not nationalised. DonnanZ (talk) 07:59, 13 February 2025 (UTC)Reply
To put my concern another way: to me, it seems like "GTA 6 is taking a long time to develop" is information about GTA 6 (to be covered in w:GTA 6 or possibly GTA 6) which can be referred to in various ways — not just " before GTA 6", but e.g. "weed got legalized before they released GTA 6", or "...before GTA 6 dropped", "released", etc — rather than "before GTA 6" being an idiomatic lexical phrase that means "the other compared event is unlikely". (But clearly other smart people view it differently, which is why I brought it up, to find out if other people view it the way I do!) - -sche(discuss)21:30, 15 February 2025 (UTC)Reply
Really specious argument. It is an idiom. And if I had not had read it on Wiktionary I would not have understood those humorous YouTube comments and other joke tings. Fay Freak (talk) 02:57, 14 February 2025 (UTC)Reply
Keep. Generally used in satirical or hyperbolic contexts rather than as a literal comment on the game's release schedule. Arguably passes WT:PRIOR or WT:LIGHTBULB since understanding its meaning without explanation relies on knowing that GTA6 was stuck in development hell for a decade. That's an uncommon situation for a AAA game but it's not the only time it's happened recently. And yet "before DA4" isn't used in the same memetic way. WordyAndNerdy (talk) 04:18, 14 February 2025 (UTC)Reply
Keep, assuming that the definition is correct and usage of the expression is reasonably widespread. I see no obvious way of understanding this from the literal words. HOWEVER. I have read the etymology sentence "It indicates incredulity that an event is seemingly less strange than GTA 6 releasing" several times and I still don't understand it, or how it explains the usage. Can someone familiar with the term improve this? Struck per comment below. Mihia (talk) 15:42, 14 February 2025 (UTC)Reply
Video games generally have longer production cycles than TV shows or movies. But it's relatively rare for a highly-anticipated big-budget title like GTA to get stuck in development hell for ten years. It takes a perfect storm of things going wrong in combination with enough miraculously going right to keep the project on life support that long. Major publishers are notorious for ruthlessly cancelling projects. So there's a once in a blue moon quality to this phrase. It's unusual that GTA6's production has been delayed so long and even rarer that it's actually going to release against all odds. WordyAndNerdy (talk) 21:34, 14 February 2025 (UTC)Reply
I get that "GTA 6 releasing" is extremely delayed and overdue. What I don't get, is why, if something is known to be extremely delayed and overdue, it is "unlikely, implausible, bizarre or strange" that something else happens earlier. Mihia (talk) 10:29, 15 February 2025 (UTC)Reply
Yeah, the definition needs improvement; at least as I understand it, the comparison is not necessarily expressing that the other compared event was per se "unlikely, implausible" to ever happen, it's specifically suggesting incredulity at the other event happening before GTA 6 (despite GTA 6 having such a long head start, having been in development for so long that it should've happened already). I'm not sure that's "irony" so much as a simple observation that it's incredible for a game to be taking so long that e.g. Eminem's child grew old enough to have a child. To me it seems like the entry also currently fails to convey that "before GTA 6" can only(?) be used in comparisons (...in what I would regard as a literal way: saying X event, which occurred before GTA 6, happened "before GTA 6", and meaning by that statement that X occurred before GTA 6 occurred); if it can be used outside of comparisons, that needs to be demonstrated, and if it can't, I think we should try to make that clear by actually saying so in the definition or a usage note, (rather than just by hoping someone generalizes from the usexes that no other kind of use exists, since that's not an assumption people should make, as it would be wrong in other entries). (But, again, I question what the idiomaticity is... people are incredulous that something else (e.g. that started development later) happened "before GTA 6" in the same way the person I quoted above is incredulous that Mozart (who is dead) released new music before Another Hour, etc.) - -sche(discuss)17:51, 15 February 2025 (UTC)Reply
I really don't know. If e.g. "we got eminem being a grandpa before GTA 6" means "it's bizarre that we got eminem being a grandpa before GTA 6" so as to point out how long GTA 6 is taking, rather than actually "eminem being a grandpa is bizarre" per se, then, yes, the definition does seem wrong, and in fact there hardly is a definition, as far as I can see. Anyway, since I don't fully understand it I will strike my vote. Mihia (talk) 19:03, 15 February 2025 (UTC)Reply
It's less a statement of incredulity at any specific occurrence – such as a 52-year-old rapper's ~30-year-old daughter having a baby – preceding the release of GTA6 than it is an expression of bemusement over the game's unusual delay or the general passage of time. There was a period in the early-to-mid 2000s when Chinese Democracy was used as a similar pop culture reference point. Some of the older Urban Dictionary entries preserve traces of that usage.
"Where has time gone?"-style musings aren't remarkable in and of themselves (there's a whole subreddit dedicated to them). But this particular iteration (before GTA6) seems lexically noteworthy. The underlying connotations of the phrase – about anticipation and a decade gone – aren't readily discernible from its constituents. Older readers might not have the context to work out that this is mainly a joke about getting older among Millennial and Gen Z gamers. WordyAndNerdy (talk) 05:33, 21 February 2025 (UTC)Reply
To be clear, there's really nothing to indicate that the game has been in development hell or that its production has been delayed at all; seven years of primary development isn't really that unusual for major games anymore. The phrase is more in reference to the intense anticipation surrounding the game (even the announcement of the announcement of the trailer broke records on Twitter) and the amount of time since the last series entry (12 years)—but the development itself isn't really too unique or unusual. – Rhain☔ (he/him)01:38, 1 March 2025 (UTC)Reply
Keep—it seems quite idiomatic to me; I think the additional sense of this being said after something bizarre or implausible occurs adds a unique element to this word that, say, Half Life 3, Star Citizen or Beyond Good and Evil 2 lack. Additionally, these aforementioned games being used as examples of a long wait is quite rare in comparison to GTA 6 anyways. Compare also, perhaps, in Minecraft and in Roblox as valid entries (in my view, the nom may disagree with these as well) that are kinda vaguely sorta similar-ish to this entry. “I want to kill you in !! Rawr!” can be humorously said for any game one wishes. LunaEatsTuna (talk) 01:02, 18 February 2025 (UTC)Reply
Keep per strong demand from the GTA community. This term is very useful for anyone until GTA VI comes out. When GTA VI comes out then the term will be very notable. Ahri Boy (talk) 02:07, 8 March 2025 (UTC)Reply
Delete. I highly doubt the person who wrote of Eminem's grandfatherhood thought of "before" and "GTA 6" as being a single lexical item. Perhaps there is a spot in the Appendix for common points of comparison for elapsed time, but I'm not seeing it in this entry. -BRAINULATOR9 (TALK)01:05, 21 April 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 26 days ago12 comments9 people in discussion
Converted from speedy. It might be argued that this expression has specific connotations, so it might be best to run this entry through RFD. Svārtava (tɕ) 04:28, 16 February 2025 (UTC)Reply
Weak keep on the grounds that it (normally) means "just friends, not in a romantic/sexual relationship", as opposed to "just friends, not business partners / relatives / whatever", albeit this might often be obvious from context. Mihia (talk) 15:59, 21 February 2025 (UTC)Reply
Weak keep - It's a pretty transparent phrase, but there are collocations such as "a just friends" "the kind of just friends" and "he didn't do just friends" that aren't really grammatical unless this is an idiom. There's also the phrase "Historians will say they were just friends", a jocular way of calling two people gay, which only really makes sense if you specifically read the phrase as referring to the specific denial of a romantic relationship. Smurrayinchester (talk) 08:51, 25 February 2025 (UTC)Reply
Strong keep. I agree with others that the overtones are subtle. For me, that makes it more likely that all or part of the true meaning of the term could be missed and that is surely something we as the writers of a dictionary should be trying to help with. John Cross (talk) 07:18, 6 March 2025 (UTC)Reply
Keep per above; thought long and hard about it but I do think the context of this phrase's meaning ultimately adds to its idiomatically. LunaEatsTuna (talk) 19:06, 29 June 2025 (UTC)Reply
Weak delete, there are various ways to circumscribe related sentiments deriving from insecure attachment styles and shortened attention spans. We only begin to understand it, but for this entry, creators and talk page discussors didn’t and were at best as well confused after reading the entry. The present term can be translated as somebody who is in some respect desirous of entertaining romantic exchange (i.e. romantic) but struggles due to compatibility of personality and or environment with such goals (therefore a hopeless one).
At this occasion it is remarkable that we describe situationships as complicated and with but some equivalence, which is not wrong but not descriptive of what actually one fails to define, in this idea alleged to be defined by not being defined. Fay Freak (talk) 23:02, 21 February 2025 (UTC)Reply
Comment. I wonder whether the definition is correct anyway. It reads "A person who strongly desires a successful romantic relationship, but struggles greatly to find or maintain one in practice", but couldn't, say, a man who has been happily married for many years also be a "hopeless romantic" if he behaves in a soppily romantic way to his wife (often buying her red roses, writing her soppy love notes n stuff)? Mihia (talk) 10:36, 22 February 2025 (UTC)Reply
Delete unless someone can find actual idiomatic translations. @Saph, the Spanish translation is misformatted — it's supposed to be either romántico incurable or romántico empedernido. empedernido hasn't this meaning by itself. Polomo47 (talk) 16:36, 22 February 2025 (UTC)Reply
Weak delete. For me, not quite enough individuality, given existence of e.g. "hopeless optimist", "hopeless dreamer", "hopeless idealist", and so on. "hopeless romantic" can be an example at the relevant sense of "hopeless", which in fact it cunningly already is. Mihia (talk) 13:34, 27 February 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 5 months ago4 comments3 people in discussion
Sense "paradise" added by an IP last July. Probably a hoax, since there are no hits on Google for the citation given (which is incredibly vague, being only "Corley, M. 1782") and I can't find this sense anywhere. - saph ^_^⠀talk⠀21:40, 21 February 2025 (UTC)Reply
If it was real, I would expect it to be found in an old dictionary of some sort. Probably not a famous one, as that would already show up, but still a pre-1900 one. CitationsFreak (talk) 00:56, 22 February 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 5 months ago4 comments3 people in discussion
Rfd-sense: (impersonal, transitive) To have a common expression; used in singular passive voice or plural active voice to indicate a rumor or well-known fact.. Indeed not a verb, but a phrase, and supposed to be listed at they say (as it already is). Definitely not impersonal either. Shouldn't be a controversial delete, but I'm putting it here just in case.
they say survived my RFD with one of these increasingly troubling and unsatisfactory outcomes whereby keep and keep as THUB votes are conflated and apparently added together to result in a "full keep". Not that I feel enormously strongly about they sayper se, but this issue generally does need looking at. Mihia (talk) 19:07, 22 February 2025 (UTC)Reply
Is this sense really exclusive to "they"? Can you not write things like "people say 'when in Rome, do as the Romans do' ...". I suspect the true lemma here is just "say" and "they say" should be deleted as SoP. * Pppery *it has begun...19:18, 26 February 2025 (UTC)Reply
That's just sense 3 of say. Any other meaning stems from the subject of the sentence, be it they or people, both of which carry a meaning of undeterminedness. Polomo47 (talk) 00:49, 27 February 2025 (UTC)Reply
Could we "define" it as a "word of uncertain meaning" (which seems to be the case)? It would give us an anchor for the links. I don't like "certain set phrases" much though. If only for the musical instrument (using that term in its loosest sense!) then we should say so. Mihia (talk) 15:45, 24 February 2025 (UTC)Reply
{{n-g}} seems to fit such cases since honestly they are not (or unlikely to be) comprehended to have meaning in isolation, as opposed to elements like interfixes (-s-) positively known to have no meanings. Cf. lick, خر(xar). But this is what it has, without using the template. WT:EL does not allow us to have etymologies without POS and glosses. But the gloss line, understood broadly, is to describe what a morpheme is for, by what we understand. Fay Freak (talk) 16:42, 24 February 2025 (UTC)Reply
Yes indeed, it should be {{n-g|A word with uncertain meaning used in ...}}. If the PoS is uncertain too then I dunno, but if we have to choose something then noun might be a better bet than adj. Mihia (talk) 17:50, 24 February 2025 (UTC)Reply
I suppose it depends whether it was ever a "real word" distinct from "jaw" ety 1. We imply at jaw harp that "jaw" may have been the original form, but not from "jaw" ety 1 -- in which case this "jaw" must have meant something once, mustn't it, just that we don't now know what. On the other hand, if "jaw harp" and other "jaw" variants are simply a corruption of "Jew's harp" etc. then I agree, it doesn't have any independent existence. But this seems to be uncertain AFAICT. Mihia (talk) 22:02, 24 February 2025 (UTC)Reply
If the word has no known meaning, and even its existence is uncertain, don't you think "see also" is adequate — pending further scholarship? (I remember as a kid seeing "scarre" in the dictionary, a Shakespeare word, and my mind was blown because it said something like "uncertain meaning". What? There are words without definitions? Talk:altoruffled is another good one.) Otherwise we might as well have an entry for the cran in cranberry. 2A00:23C5:FE1C:3701:94A1:F093:C692:AC1C22:43, 24 February 2025 (UTC)Reply
Although, wouldn't a "see also" in a single ety section imply that it definitely is the "same word"? I think the interest here is that it might not be, even though on the face of it one would imagine that it "obviously is". Mihia (talk) 15:57, 27 February 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 25 days ago5 comments5 people in discussion
Rfd-adjective sense "taking offense, indignant". How is this different from the past participle of put out sense 3.1: "To cause someone to be out of sorts; to annoy, impose, inconvenience, or disturb"? PUC – 12:45, 1 March 2025 (UTC)Reply
@PUC: I see this from time to time—it is difficult to distinguish an adjective from a past-participle use of a verb (for example, one can say "She was miffed." Adjective or verb use?). I don't know if there's a way to do so. Happy to hear what people with a good knowledge of grammar say about this. — Sgconlaw (talk) 12:50, 1 March 2025 (UTC)Reply
Generally if one can insert "very" then it is an adjective. Since "very put out" is OK, that indicates adjectival use is possible. Mihia (talk) 22:00, 1 March 2025 (UTC)Reply
Keep "much put out" is a thing. This probably should've been RfVed, not RfDed. And, for seemingly the bazillionth time, a ton of participles can be both verbs and adjectives. Purplebackpack8921:22, 17 March 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 28 days ago5 comments4 people in discussion
RFD sense: "To click outside or next to an element, for instance a window in a graphical user interface."
I'm assuming a technically miswritten transitive definition, which, if I'm visualising it correctly, does not seem sufficiently idiomatic, but simply "click" + "Outside the area or region of" prepositional sense of "off", analogously to "click on (a screen element)". Or can anyone see something else in it? Mihia (talk) 18:28, 3 March 2025 (UTC)Reply
I don't think this is transitive, actually — it might be ambitransitive. “I opened this window, and now it won't let me click off!”. Means “to exit”, “to close out”. Not sure what this means for idiomaticity, though. Polomo47 (talk) 18:37, 3 March 2025 (UTC)Reply
I've been clicked off about this kind of "phrasal verb" at Wiktionary for about 16 years. There are many true phrasal verbs; there are some that only specialty phrasal verb dictionaries have; and there some that are more than sufficiently transparent, even in novel uses, such as above, to not be worthy of being in the lexicon. DCDuring (talk) 21:42, 3 March 2025 (UTC)Reply
Assuming it's a phrasal verb (i.e. "off" is an adverb, particle, whatever you want to call it, and not a preposition as I originally thought), which sense of "off" do you think is meant? Mihia (talk) 21:55, 3 March 2025 (UTC)Reply
This strongly appears to be an established idiomatic lexical unit, like sign off, in a way that other conceivable word combinations in this context e.g. "tap off" or "point off" or "exit off" aren't. It also gets stressed/intoned as an idiomatic unit, in a consistent way that "get off" is but "jump off" isn't in "Fred, get off/jump off the bed". Hftf (talk) 18:11, 29 June 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 3 months ago6 comments4 people in discussion
Rationale given for deletion highly inaccurate; inappropriate for deleting admin to claim it was "a vandal keeps recreating it" or "created in error", and, indeed, the deletion was in violation of an interaction ban. As for the claim "This phrase is never used alone"
a) The phrase need not be used alone to justify a redirect
b) That was never proven at RfV that it was never used alone
d) There are many additional instances that do not explicitly follow the exact phraseology of "the bride at every wedding, the corpse at every funeral"
I say recreate, yes. Those seem like useful redirects, and I didn't find anything in the RfD discussion that really justified deletion. Not sure where this RfV is. Polomo47 (talk) 17:22, 12 March 2025 (UTC)Reply
Rather than create redirects, why not look for occurrences of the bride at every wedding and the corpse at every funeral separately, and if at least three qualifying quotations for each can be found, create entries using {{short for|en|the bride at every wedding, the corpse at every funeral}}. — Sgconlaw (talk) 18:55, 12 March 2025 (UTC)Reply
I feel like I’m missing some important context here, because I couldn’t find the RfV in question. Would someone link me to it? Polomo47 (talk) 16:48, 16 March 2025 (UTC)Reply
"Unwanted redirect" is a common and valid justification for speedy deletion, because we rarely use redirects. If it had been the kind of "short for" entry that Sgconlaw suggested, sending it to RFV would have been appropriate, but we can afford to be more aggressive with redirects. I'm not convinced by PB89's defense above so I vote don't recreate. Ultimateria (talk) 19:27, 10 April 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 4 months ago4 comments3 people in discussion
Sense: “A Unix-likeoperating system, unrelated to Linux, for the Commodore 64 and Commodore 128.” Apparently it is supposed to be LUnix (but presumably added here because this entry already existed). The Wikipedia article was deleted (“I could find no adequate coverage of this operating system in order to justify an article on it. Any mentions found were brief mentions mostly just copied from this article or a deluge of a people misspelling Linux, even in books.”). J3133 (talk) 10:28, 13 March 2025 (UTC)Reply
Comment: well, it definitely exists, though it seems to have peaked in popularity more than twenty years ago, so even long-time fans of Commodore might not have heard of it. It's still archived and theoretically still being updated here if anyone's curious, so it's citable in the loosest sense through GitHub and its print mentions, but I don't know what to do. Do we file this under WT:BRAND? In which case it would surely not pass. Oh well. —Soap—01:04, 18 March 2025 (UTC)Reply
Strong keep. Just because it is rarer doesn’t mean it is redundant to keep this, and it indeed looks a pretty valid adjective like its commoner synonyms. OED has an entry for it too. Inqilābī18:49, 1 April 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 1 day ago7 comments6 people in discussion
Rfd-sense:
(formal, procedural) Choosing not to take a stance, at least for now, without binding future decisions.
Seems redundant to sense 3:
(law) A term used to allow a statement or proposal in communications, while allowing the party to return to their original position without being impeded by the described statement or proposal.
I can see how the relatively opaque definition of 3 would prevent someone who was looking for sense 4 from realizing that it was intended to already be present. If we delete 4 we should try to more intelligibly incorporate its sentiment into 3 (and broaden the label, since this is also used outside of law). - -sche(discuss)03:37, 22 March 2025 (UTC)Reply
I’d say without-prejudice correspondence may not always involve taking a stand. There are discussions on a possible settlement of the dispute, but parties don’t wish to be bound by any factual assertions or settlement proposals if the matter ultimately cannot be settled. — Sgconlaw (talk) 12:21, 22 March 2025 (UTC)Reply
Suits are withdrawn or dismissed with or without prejudice all the time, depending on the circumstances. All that would be necessary would be to indicate that "prejudice" indicates that the issue in dispute is treated as though adjudicated (whether or not it really was), so that it can't be raised again in the same dispute. I'm sure that can be worded more succinctly. Sense 3 is certainly both confusing and redundant. But why wouldn't the legal use of "prejudice" be covered under "prejudice", when "with" and "without" are used in their ordinary senses? "Without prejudice" seems SoP if "prejudice" includes the legal sense. P Aculeius (talk) 22:14, 22 March 2025 (UTC)Reply
I will leave guys to sort this out more intelligently. Without describing what is ordinary and general and intended I cannot include translations just yet.
unbeschadet+ genitive is a correct translation, it is used, as without prejudice to, in the context of statutory precepts excluding the derogation of others, or allowing the latter ones being an exception to the rule; the opposite being ungeachtet, notwithstanding, commanding the practitioner to ignore another provision in the given context.
The current definitions about “parties” and “legal interests“ have no meaning to me thus, and are suspect to be wrong as well. Unless the “party” is the legislator, the speaker of the law, himself, which is a twist and probably too much mental gymnastics, and still makes the definition unfortunate.
In English-language trade they as well pay without prejudice, and, now I think about it, whenever I read ohnePräjudiz in attorney letters, they probably learned it in international law firms or abroad. Our country bumpkins with law degrees found it hilarious, and the judge I asked about it esteemed it to mean the same as ohneAnerkennungeinerRechtspflicht(literally “without recognizing an obligation (in case it will be seen differently)”) (which the attorney letter in question thus had in pleonasm with that other anglicism).
They still use this idea of prejudice more broadly however in common law, as in “dismissed without prejudice”. Of course from German, Prussian, understanding the court always is prejudiced in the sense of recognizing his obligation to assess and decide the case. You only condition your declarations in the course of a litigation because you know it will be definite.
Wikipedia has a few ideas without coherence (and prejudice): It “is a legal term with different meanings, which depend on whether it is used in criminal, civil, or common law.” As etymologists taking the primary data serious, unlike Wikipedia, we should hypothesize that there are broad common law meanings which may have been restricted in EU English to continental dogmatics. The Wiktionary entry prejudice is a latent stub here and needs a historical investigation, but for now one might start to expand without prejudice. Fay Freak (talk) 05:49, 26 March 2025 (UTC)Reply
I have merged senses 3 and 4 like this, removing the label from the first part of the definition, since the phrase is used this way even outside law (and even in discussions on this wiki). - -sche(discuss)08:35, 26 July 2025 (UTC)Reply
Yeah, I’m going to erect a similar grotesque landmark in my neighborhood and wait for it to become famous, then add an entry for it on this project. No thanks: delete. Inqilābī12:55, 31 March 2025 (UTC)Reply
Rather you like it or not, the Hollywood sign is a very famous landmark not just in America but around the world. thus it deserves its own wiktionary page. Emezli (talk) 13:21, 31 March 2025 (UTC)Reply
Exactly it’s a very famous landmark that is apart of the history of Hollywood. there’s a page on Wiktionary about Hollywoodland, so the sign must have that strong of a significance to warrant its own Wikitionary page. Emezli (talk) 13:52, 31 March 2025 (UTC)Reply
What's the deletion rationale? All I see to start is restating the definition. CFI vis-a-vis landmarks and several other types of geographic features is ambiguous. This isn't a trademark or company. And please don't say "encyclopedic". Keep unless a real rationale is provided. Purplebackpack8916:24, 31 March 2025 (UTC)Reply
Well admittedly you are right that we don’t have a clear policy on landmarks and stuff. We had similar discussions about this at #Einang stone. We could keep or delete these words on a case-by-case basis. Attempts to amend CFI may be initiated through Beer Parlour discussions or vote. Regarding Hollywood Sign, it is probably less notable than Shrine of Democracy, which lacks an entry but is perhaps (more) worthy of inclusion, because renowned carvings arguably make for more lexicographically notable landmarks than mere signs, however famous: it’s like the difference between Al-Khazneh and the specific blue plaque commemorating Charles Dickens. Anyway, we can provisionally rely on RFD votes for ambiguous areas as this. Inqilābī17:51, 31 March 2025 (UTC)Reply
Initially, I was thinking this could ho either way for me. Then, I realized that the reason for inclusion of, say, Statue of Liberty is because it is first and foremost an idiomatic name! In comparison, the Hollywood Sign is a much more transparent formulation. While this is a particularly notable sign, I believe there are many signs in other places that can get a definite article. ow about those “welcome to” signs that appear so often in American media?
So,I say delete. Even if this is not 100% SoP, the combination of the term’s transparent formulation and the place-name policy’s exclusion of this sort of thing makes me want deletion. Just look at the entry: what is there to say in it?
The Hollywood sign is more than “just a sign” its a symbol of Hollywood seen in numerous movies and tv shows, been parodied and modified numerous times. It the very first thing you see when you descend into Los Angeles. people fought tooth and nail to get the sign restored. If you delete the page then you might as well delete the Eiffel Tower, Statue of Liberty, Golden Gate Bridge and Mount Rushmore!!! Emezli (talk) 20:17, 31 March 2025 (UTC)Reply
Weak keep. This does seem a little idiomatic to me, as it's not actually one sign. Each letter of the Hollywood Sign is a sign itself (or it was until the wooden sign(s) was/were replaced by a steel one, as the individual steel letters, being concreted together, are technically one structure). --Overlordnat1 (talk) 21:30, 31 March 2025 (UTC)Reply
Delete. Landmark names seem to me to be the same category as street names, where we do have policy - they shouldn't be included unless there's an additional figurative use (e.g. I have no problem with us having 10 Downing Street, which is used metonymically to mean the British government, but I'd object to us having 12 Downing Street) or there's something otherwise lexically important to the dictionary (I think the value of an entry for Stonehenge is marginal, but it's important as the basis of the terms henge and -henge - plus it would be weird to have Stonehenge as a village in Canada and not the much more famous Stonehenge). Neither of those apply here as far as I can tell. Smurrayinchester (talk) 10:17, 1 April 2025 (UTC)Reply
Don't deprecate images. I sometimes find good images to add to a non-place name page, when searching a Commons file for a place name. DonnanZ (talk) 12:59, 1 April 2025 (UTC)Reply
So many exclamation marks!!! Do you reckon they make you more convincing!!?? Note that Mount Rushmore is kept because it’s the name of a landform. The other entries you mentioned are indeed in a troublesome position, because they supposedly go against policy, but common practice is to include them. As such, someone may present any reason to single out terms for deletion — I mentioned mine above, having to do with idiomaticity and, well, usefulness.
Weak keep as a notable landmark; I do not see why would we delete this but keep others like the Statue of Liberty. Our policy on the inclusion of landmarks such as this one is on a case-by-case basis (perhaps poorly so), but this one really is iconic, even to non-Americans such as myself. I feel there is also a slight idiomatic-ness to it given, as Overlordnat1 points out, each letter is technically its own sign and there could hypothetically be other “Hollywood Signs” (e.g. any sign that says Hollywood on it), making this one the most distinctive. A very weak argument but there you go, hehe, LunaEatsTuna (talk) 20:43, 1 July 2025 (UTC)Reply
I do have a personal preference or bias here! At night sounds too bland to me, whereas by night has a literary feeling. The former is straightforward enough to be easily parsed as at + night. Literary(-ish) terms on the other hand are helpful to include in my opinion. Inqilābī18:07, 31 March 2025 (UTC)Reply
It's complicated: usually "at" goes with a point or boundary in time or space: "at midnight", "at 7 am", "at the seashore". You can't say "at day" (though, I suppose it might work as a poetic way to say "at daybreak"). The only other exception I can think of is "at sea". Chuck Entz (talk) 16:44, 31 March 2025 (UTC)Reply
We have the collocation template for such borderline cases where an entry would be unnecessary but a certain degree of idiomacy can supposedly be discerned. Inqilābī18:07, 31 March 2025 (UTC)Reply
Seems like #fall orange was deleted out of process (at least, there was no concluding deletion statement); also, I was for a bit frantically looking for its talk page for the rfd vote. Anyway, I’m not inclined to delete either of these… Keep unless someone can refer to any policy on color names justifying their deletion. Inqilābī18:52, 8 April 2025 (UTC)Reply
It's not hard to work out there were two "keep" votes and two "delete", hardly a reason for deletion. Anyway, Keep this one. It is a paint colour produced by Dulux. DonnanZ (talk) 21:18, 8 April 2025 (UTC)Reply
Because I saw it in the category for speedy deletion and I thought I remembered it as having already failed- my mistake. I should have followed my usual practice of letting other people close and delete these...Chuck Entz (talk) 14:26, 9 April 2025 (UTC)Reply
Weak keep as an idiomatic term; there is nothing inherently "orange" about a season of the year per se. Rather, the leaves of the trees that are shed during this season happen to be orange. I would be against, say, firetruck red. LunaEatsTuna (talk) 09:24, 11 April 2025 (UTC)Reply
Just noting that the OED has one 1994 quotation where the word is not capitalized: "The ‘tabloid’ is romanticized in relation to the larger, slower airplanes that it replaces." In the rest of the quotations the word is capitalized. Maybe send this to RFV to see if the word is used in a generic way? — Sgconlaw (talk) 20:47, 7 April 2025 (UTC)Reply
Lol. Or we can embrace it fully and make gay fear, gay hate as useful synonyms for homophobia, and clown fear for coulrophobia, water-loving for hydrophilic / hygroscopic... Polomo47 (talk) 21:24, 9 April 2025 (UTC)Reply
You seem to be under the delusion that anyone here "made these" - these words are already in use as demonstrated by the citations. First comes the usage, then the Wiktionary. Thought you'd have figured that out by now... Leasnam (talk) 04:47, 11 April 2025 (UTC)Reply
I did not mean to imply you came up with these, just as I did not come up with the strawmen I listed gay hate; gay fear (though this notably also means fear felt by gays, which indicates of SoP); clown fear.
Keep - Since Wiktionary is a descriptive dictionary. Plain English counterparts to terms like arachnophobia, catagelophobia, ilithiophobia (which we don't yet have...) , are becoming more and more popular as alternatives to the old scholarly-styled varieties, even in scholarly writing. They are already in use in the real world (as evidenced by citations), so the claim that they are Anglish is laughable. If you want to keep up and be relevant and distinguished from other dictionaries and depict up-to-date usage, I say keep them. Synonyms are always a good thing to have. Leasnam (talk) 05:23, 11 April 2025 (UTC)Reply
Okay, if hyphens no longer count, then they should go. waterfear is cited though. Furthermore, water fear is not "fear of water" (like being afraid of the water in your cup) but rather "fear of drowning", so it's somewhat idiomatic. Leasnam (talk) 06:25, 11 April 2025 (UTC)Reply
water fear can be used for anything water-related: look at the quotes in water fear — even the "fear" part is relative. From rabies to drowning to apolar molecules.
Also note that, of the quotes you added for waterfear, I’d only consider one of them valid. The second quote is the title of a YouTube video (what?? this is straight from one of Ms. Luna–Tuna’s parodies); the third shows a proper noun, the name of a movie.
Though, if I understand correctly, you do vote to delete the other terms? Yes, per WT:SOP, Idiomaticity rules apply to hyphenated compounds in the same way as to spaced phrases. Polomo47 (talk) 10:36, 11 April 2025 (UTC)Reply
Words in movie or book titles, or video titles count as usage, why wouldn't they ?
After I had retired for the night, I came to a weak conclusion that spider-fear might also be idiomatic, since it is unclear by the construction + , that the second element clearly denotes "fear of" (since these are all fairly recent constructions). Spider-fear at first sight could be interpreted as "a spider's fear" or "a spiderlike fear" rather than "a fear of spiders". Compare "spider sense", which does not mean "a sense of spiders " but rather the "sense that spiders have". So x + y constructions can vary in how they're interpreted, as spider-fear doesn't mean the "fear that spiders have".
Water fear has two senses: one related to "fear of drowning" the other to hydrophobia "resistance to becoming wet". The meaning cannot be deduced merely from the sum of parts, but from the context. This makes it somewhat idiomatic. Rabies and molecules can't actually emote fear. I've updated the entry to show each sense separately. Leasnam (talk) 13:10, 11 April 2025 (UTC)Reply
Hm, on second look, that use as a calque of hydrophobia might just be idiomatic. However, the others (related to drowning, or to drinking water) are not and would need to be replaced with {{&lit}}. Unless you think the meaning is uncertain because it could also mean “the fear that water feels”.
Aboutispider fear, people mply don’t speak of spiders having fears, much less in a comparative construction. If we did, though, we would definitely say “spider fear is different from human fear”, as well as “dog fear”, and so on. I find that a weak argument for idiomaticity. Polomo47 (talk) 15:55, 11 April 2025 (UTC)Reply
In regard to the Youtube video cite that was removed, the Description of the video states: The nosey Rottweiler Tara is overcoming her waterfear, this is the third attempt to make it to the stone and when she finally reaches to the stone she just wants out of there., so it's not only in the title, but also in the Description. The same Youtuber has posted a second video titled Rottweiler Tara overcoming waterfear 2 with the description Rottweiler Tara is trying to overcome her waterfear again, this time she just wants the ball.. This is clear evidence that waterfear is a real-world spelling (usage) of water fear. Furthermore, here is a video showing that water fear is more than simply being afraid of water ] Leasnam (talk) 14:29, 11 April 2025 (UTC)Reply
This is not a RFV. The concept of water fear undoubtably exists. And we've used words used in Youtube to demonstrate general usage many, many times before. Leasnam (talk) 15:53, 11 April 2025 (UTC)Reply
You looked for cites of unspaced waterfear to satisfy WT:COALMINE, and it cannot be satisfied if the quotations do not comply with WT:ATTEST. If I was doubting the existence of the concept, I would have gone to RFV; seeing as we are in RFD... Polomo47 (talk) 15:57, 11 April 2025 (UTC)Reply
...it doesn't seem to be able to be satisfied via a Google Books search. However, I am not opposed to leaving it as you've outlined further above. Leasnam (talk) 16:07, 11 April 2025 (UTC)Reply
...and spiders do have fears: they fear people, insects (save the ones they intend to prey upon), other animals, predation, hot temperatures, stormy weather, many things. Leasnam (talk) 16:07, 11 April 2025 (UTC)Reply
From the definition of compulsive, how do you even know that the condition denoted by the term charged with SOPness meets – due to psychosocial impairment – the criteria of a mental disorder? And even with an appropriate definition of that adjective. I am satisfied that WT:PRIOR applies. Fay Freak (talk) 15:41, 15 April 2025 (UTC)Reply
Of course, a condition meeting some technical criteria of a mental disorder does not necessarily make it into a lexical term that people are primarily going to use a dictionary to look up. I'm not convinced this entry is dictionary worthy but I guess we're already way way far down the slippery slope with "words" like Yemenite deaf-blind hypopigmentation syndrome. And maybe if it's really a synonym or whatever, happy to keep. Hftf (talk) 09:24, 1 July 2025 (UTC)Reply
That's not even what I'm getting at; the idea that these terms are worthy of belonging in a general dictionary, the place people go to look up words or lexical units of language, is silly. Hftf (talk) 18:32, 1 July 2025 (UTC)Reply
Undid the IP's move. This is not an RfV matter at all, it's whether this entry carries any kind of meaning, which doesn't seem to be the case for me. — SURJECTION/ T / C / L /15:58, 24 April 2025 (UTC)Reply
I have read the definition of object show several times on Wiktionary, TV Tropes, Reddit and Urban and I still have absolutely no idea what it means. Could anyone please attempt to explain it to my dumbass? Because I vaguely think this might have a shot at being entry-worthy but I cannot comment here without knowing what it is for. LunaEatsTuna (talk) 19:56, 24 April 2025 (UTC)Reply
I want to mention that my interpretation (which is also pretty much what the entry says) is that object show fans make their usernames on social media “X the object thingy” — as in, one of the objects that goes on object shows. Literally a thingy that is an object, thingy is a filler word, yes, but I don’t see relevance in that. If there is nothing more the IP can add (that is relevant), I’ll be saying delete. Polomo47 (talk) 14:31, 26 April 2025 (UTC)Reply
Delete per nom; I had to consider whether (the) morbs was derived from got the morbs, which would save this entry per WT:JIFFY, but there is no evidence that suggests this. LunaEatsTuna (talk) 17:53, 1 July 2025 (UTC)Reply
Someone will say no, but I say yes, delete. This is a dictionary, not a medical glossary, because we have neither the capacity nor the authority for it, and I don’t think it was ever a goal. Let people look on Wikipedia for what happens when you get ligma on each organ. Wikipedia has disclaimers, experts and references — we have not. Polomo47 (talk) 10:27, 28 April 2025 (UTC)Reply
Can we just ban DonnanZ from RfD? He has wasted countless hours of other users' time in replying to these discussions with what has lately ceased to resemble an argument of any sort. At this point, he serves only to say “keep” and play the martyr on every RfD discussion. Polomo47 (talk) 21:23, 28 April 2025 (UTC)Reply
I don't want to waste time on that user, as I have more rewarding things to do, including editing Wikipedia on occasion... DonnanZ (talk) 23:05, 28 April 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 1 month ago7 comments5 people in discussion
This was RFVed (WT:RFVE#ne'er a) but is clearly attested and Vex's rationale ("does not pass the fried-egg test") suggests RFD was meant, so I moved it here. It's possible to use "never a" in the same places as "ne'er a" (google books:"where never a"), so AFAICT the two must be equally either idiomatic or equally SOP, no? (I don't think the existence of nary has any effect, e.g. COALMINE, any more than onna and i'th' require us to have on a and in the.) Perhaps ne'er a and never a merit inclusion for WT:ONCE reasons? (The part of speech needs to be changed to "Phrase" or something better, I think.) (Edit: to clarify, count me as abstain.) - -sche(discuss) 16:58, 27 April 2025 (UTC) - -sche(discuss)02:14, 9 June 2025 (UTC)Reply
Right. (@83:) The examples of "ne'er a" I can find offhand, e.g. (from Google Books) "Where ne'er a plough had dared to go since Time his race begun", seem to use never in an expected meaning ("where never i.e. not ever had a plough dared to go..."), but I'm open to a WT:ONCE argument that the grammar is unusual, if anyone wants to make that argument, and I'm open to being reminded of examples where the meaning is not easy to interpret, if anyone has any. Otherwise, it does seem like the entries ne'er and a cover this adequately. - -sche(discuss)23:03, 9 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
As far as RfD is concerned, this should be a clear keep, since plunder does not typically mean embezzlement (although the two share many aspects) and — perhaps more importantly — economic does not typically mean “of public funds”, but rather “of money”... Maybe the definition is wrong, though, and that is a matter for RfV in my opinion. Polomo47 (talk) 01:27, 6 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
Delete – @Polomo47 I think this might not be idiomatic, and the definition looks incorrect. If we consider the etymology being economic(“pertaining to an economy”) + plunder(“to commit robbery or looting”), it ultimately suggests the taking (stealing) of money from the local economy. Embezzlement is one form of this; from a Google search, it seems that similar monetary crimes like the money laundering of public funds can also be called an economic plunder, as can seizing or outright stealing money from the economy. I think keeping this entry would perhaps be like keeping monetary plunder. (Semi-related, but from the search results that came up, the Philippines label looks incorrect as the word is used in many varieties of English). LunaEatsTuna (talk) 07:39, 7 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
If the current definition is wrong, and that broader definition is what would be appropriate, then, yes, this is SoP. The first results on Google seem to pertain to “accumulation by dispossession”.Polomo47 (talk) 14:03, 7 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
I would have thought Equinox could have done that himself. But how dare someone is a weird construction, created by Equinox. I am inclined to Keep this as my Oxford lists it under dare, "used to express indignation at something: how dare you talk to me like that!" DonnanZ (talk) 10:37, 5 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
Well, of course how dare someone is weird; however, on the basis that you can say you, he, she, they, and even common and proper nouns, and given that it would be unreasonable to either redirect those to the “you” form specifically or maintain separate entries for them all, and unless a better general form is found redirect. The “comparison” pointed out above as an argument for keeping makes... no sense? Yes, redirect that one too. Polomo47 (talk) 01:03, 6 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
No redirect is needed, as how dare someone is now shown as a related term. I am not keen on redirects, and Wikipedia is riddled with them. I have had to use hatnotes sometimes to get around them (like today, 9 May). DonnanZ (talk) 08:59, 6 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
Rfd-sense: Elon Musk. One of thousands named Elon, and notable in the past, what, <15 years? Of course, names of specific entities is a gray (that is also to say, not green) area in CfI, but this is just so baffling to me that I’d like to see what arguments could be presented in favor of the sense. Polomo47 (talk) 00:57, 6 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
There are any number of places where the locals are known for being laid back regarding schedules and punctuality. A common metaphor is to refer to them as being "on time" ("Hawaii time" is probably the best known), as if they were in a different time zone. This seems to be an extension of that.Chuck Entz (talk) 06:51, 7 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
Delete as not being dictionary material. This is just a recipe for accumulating lists of people, especially for common names like John, Susan, or Smith. — Sgconlaw (talk) 05:40, 6 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
Added “Musk” separately. That has more derived terms, which could be an argument for keeping, but it’s not yet CfI–compliant. Polomo47 (talk) 13:51, 6 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
Abstain for now, but leaning keep, re Musk: for better or worse, we currently do have a ton of entries for people who can be invoked by last name alone: Bush, Churchill, Clinton, Goebbels, Hitler, Lenin, Marx, Obama, Sunak, ... the only ones I thought to check that we're missing are Engels, Johnson, and Roosevelt. Abstain for now, but leaning delete, re Elon. On one end of the spectrum, if someone added a sense "Joseph Stalin" to Joseph, the case for deletion would (IMO) be open and shut, because no-one says "Joseph" in isolation without a last name or context and gets understood as meaning "Stalin". On the other end of the spectrum, the fact that we do have a sense "Adolf Hitler" at Hitler seems OK to me, and even having a sense "Adolf Hitler" at Adolf would seem OK to me (though we currently just have a usage note, which also works), because you can respond to something someone said with a sarcastic "OK, Adolf" and be understood as referring to Hitler. That, in turn, probably has to do with the commonness of Joseph vs the rarity of the surname Hitler and the (modern) uncommonness of the given name Adolf. It seems like there are not currently any Elons or Musks who come anywhere close to Elon Musk's prominence, but we may be too "near" to him in time to judge whether the names have become lastingly associated with a specific pol the way Adolf has (and the way Joseph hasn't). - -sche(discuss)17:55, 6 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
For what it means about my consistency, I would want most of these individuals-in-surname-entries deleted, but I don’t care enough about it. I could see value in including names that are all but synonymous with an individual, such as Goebbels and Hitler, but then there’s the problem that it’s only one person (not lexicalized?) and thus more suitable for their Wikipedia biography. On the other side of the issue, names like Clinton and Bush are just regular names! People get referred to by their surnames all the time in academical/journalistic literature... we’re not gonna add senses to the surname of every single historian saying it can be used to refer to them — Hobsbawm! With people like Sunak, this goes doubly. I bet no one outside of the UK will remember them in a few years — as a Brazilian, I do not, but maybe the USAmericans do. Polomo47 (talk) 18:33, 6 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
I admit I was surprised to find, when I checked, that we had Sunak, and I would not object to deleting him. One approach I have seen on a few entries, which might work, would be to reduce "Barack Obama", "Bill Clinton" et al from definition-lines to usexes, linking to their Wikipedia articles (they do, after all, attest the names). - -sche(discuss)00:25, 7 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
Yes, I do very much like that approach, actually, and was gonna mention it. The names of these people are great at illustrating the terms, as collocations and usexes should. Polomo47 (talk) 02:43, 7 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
There are many hits for "the Romanian Trump". Now hot, if attestations of this generic use of Trump as a common noun span a sufficient time span, it becomes includable, with some definition like "far-right populist politician espousing conspiracy theories, authoritarianism and pro-Russian views". A similar lot may befall the proper noun Musk, but we aren't there yet. ‑‑Lambiam12:01, 9 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
The question here is whether "who willingly has sex" is actually part of the definition. If it isn't then this is just "an adult who consents" and is SoP. My inclination is that it isn't - context rather than the specific terminology used is what specified what is being consented to, and hence this should be deleted. * Pppery *it has begun...15:26, 10 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
Actually, strong keep: ignore consenting and focus on adult, noun, “a fully grown human or other animal” and “a person who has reached the legal age of majority.” In many contexts in which “consenting adult” is used, it refers to a person who has reached the age of consent, sometimes 14–17 in countries where the legal age of majority is 18, which means the “consenting adults” are not legally adults. Thus, this term is actually entirely idiomatic. This would be unless we add a sense to adult which is “one who has reached the age of consent” (or whatever phrasing we would actually use). LunaEatsTuna (talk) 11:34, 17 June 2025 (UTC)Reply
@Polomo47 Do you know of any usage examples wherein adult means “one who has reached the age of consent”? If so, we can add that sense on said entry and delete this one. LunaEatsTuna (talk) 13:03, 17 June 2025 (UTC)Reply
@Polomo47: OED has an extended use sense that is “(also in extended and allusive use) a person who is considered old enough to decide whether to engage in a particular activity.” I reckon those attests you linked are uses for this figurative sense that we do not yet have. LunaEatsTuna (talk) 21:10, 1 July 2025 (UTC)Reply
I looked for some attests in which adult means “one who has reached the age of consent” but I could not find any, even as as clipping of consenting adult (if there is, ofc, this entry should then be deleted). Furthermore, Merriam-Webster also has a consenting adult entry and defines it as “a person who is legally considered old enough to decide to have sex ...” but their entry for adult (noun) never mentions an AoC sense. OED also has consenting adult and, like Merriam-Webster, their entry for adult (noun) lacks any age of consent sense. Longman has consenting adult as “someone who is considered to be old enough to decide whether they want to have sex”. @Zacwill, Fay Freak: In conclusion, consenting adult is definitely idiomatic and should be kept. :3 I am definitely on yet another watchlist for those Google searches. LunaEatsTuna (talk) 21:10, 1 July 2025 (UTC)Reply
The sexual nature depends on context, yes, delete. It’s worth noting that “above the age of consent” and “in adulthood” don’t always go together, but I attribute that to a fault in the definition, rather — as far as I can tell, anyone who says “consenting adult” should always mean “adult”, regardless of legislation. Polomo47 (talk) 02:51, 14 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
Keep. Ironically, WF nominated this, and was the entry's creator. It seems to be a legal term, and both my Oxford and Collins dictionaries include it. It's a shame that the delete voters apparently didn't do any homework. DonnanZ (talk) 09:31, 14 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
Hm, indeed. But a “thunder fire you” could be made. Or maybe “may thunder fire you”? Move there and keep only the interjection sense. Polomo47 (talk) 17:11, 11 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
All SOP phrases. A joke about a blonde, a Kerryman and a Newfie. The only extra detail is that it's usually a joke about them being stupid, but I think it's safe to assume that a joke will always cast someone in a negative light (and aren't there also blonde jokes also be about blondes being stereotypically promiscuous?) Smurrayinchester (talk) 09:58, 14 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
Re: "I think it's safe to assume that a joke will always cast someone in a negative light", I don't think that's true. Consider Chuck Norris jokes, which assume absurd ability on the part of the subject (e.g., "When Chuck Norris jumps in the water, he doesn't get wet. The water gets Chuck Norris"). bd2412T04:47, 17 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
This one I think also belongs to this group, but I admit it's slightly different in that it's a joke about an Irishman, not "Irish" in general - although we do also have Irish as meaning "Irish people" ("many Irish..."). Smurrayinchester (talk) 09:58, 14 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
Eh, the WT:LIGHTBULB test is based on this specifically. It also aligns with how I perceive idiomaticity: you wouldn't call a joke whose focus happens to be blonde a "blonde joke" — and, for that matter, very few jokes would specify a woman's hair color if not to make fun of it, so it's WT:FRIED insofar as blonde jokes always have one or two themes. Keep that one for that reason, but the definition is very bad.
I haven’t ever heard of Kerryman joke, Newfie joke, or Irish joke. The first has a pretty bad definition that would make it SoP; the second would be idiomatic if the definition is accurate, but it likely is not; the third is probably idiomatic if the usage note is correct (though I suspect all jokes about Irishmen call them idiots), and that should get a new sense. Polomo47 (talk) 16:12, 14 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
"dick joke" is used to refer to dirty jokes generally even if they don't involve the penis. "It all amounts to a dick joke." Fish567 (talk) 18:20, 15 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
Looks like a noun to me: "He is my friend" + "I am his friend"= "we are friends". As for modifiers: "he is a close friend","we are close friends", not "we are closely friends" nor "we are very friends". The same kind of construction can be used with any name of a reciprocal relationship: enemy, acquaintance, classmate, neighbor, rival, stranger, lover, etc. I would contend that "person who shares the same taste in music"/"two people who share the same taste in music" is more of the same. Chuck Entz (talk) 06:13, 15 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
Delete. The author did not understand English grammar. Some of our editors formulate many of our etymologies like this: Cognates with … Fay Freak (talk) 08:47, 15 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
Keep. The RFD'd sense isn't "We are friends" (clear SOP) but "I am friends" (not grammatical on a naive reading). A few hits that do modify it like an adjective:
1883 January 1, Grace Denio Litchfield, Only an Incident, Library of Alexandria, →ISBN:
"But you will not be less friends with me because I like you best?" " I will not ever be less friends with you," Phebe replied, soberly.
1893, Frances E. Crompton, The Gentle Heritage, page 70:
But still I do not like to say anything against him , for I think I am most friends with Bobby, but I think I love Paul most.
1985, Richard Hough, Mountbatten: Hero of Our Time, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, →ISBN:
This was well known among all the party at Heiligenberg , as was the story about Lord Derby approaching the King and asking him if he could not be more friends with his children and make them less afraid of him.
2012 November 28, Bruce Christianson, James Malcolm, Frank Stajano, Jonathan Anderson, Security Protocols XX: 20th International Workshop, Cambridge, UK, April 12-13, 2012, Revised Selected Papers, Springer, →ISBN, page 122:
If we are going back to the example you had earlier with us, if you are to trust my recommendation of Matt, then you have to be more friends with me than I am friends with Matt, because otherwise I could be playing a game on you.
2024 September 24, Noel Fielding, quotee, “Noel Fielding — things you didn't know about the Great British Bake Off presenter”, in Yahoo News:
Now I'm slightly friends with Kate Bush which is more than I could have hoped for. She's a genius.
friends seems to be reasonably unique. The others Chuck lists mostly exist but are very rare and possibly non-native. A few hits on Google Books for "I've been neighbo(u)rs with", only a single one for "I've been colleagues with" (by a non-native speaker), a handful for "I've been enemies with" (mostly again self-published romances by non-native speakers), and some are clearly not grammatical (I was going to say "I am lovers with him" is clearly ungrammatical but bizarrely "I am lovers with..." and "I was lovers with..." finds hits exclusively from LGBT writing - mostly lesbians. Is it a special term only used in the gay community?). I wonder if we should also have a sense at -s: "When appended to a noun defining a relationship, creates a pseudo-adjective referring to the state of being in that relationship." or similar. Smurrayinchester (talk) 14:45, 15 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
@Smurrayinchester: I support the creation of this particle. Not to be confused with another adjective formans in colloquial British English which is rarely covered by the dictionary, found in butters, lengers etc. Many of these -ers formations fly under the radar, and do not make it into books.
Both constructions could be argued to be arbitrary rather than lexicalized, as shown by your preconception that this would be ungrammatical. There is just no as close and general relationship as friendship, so people get away with comparing it while still remaining comprehensible, evoking a frequent collocation. Fay Freak (talk) 16:46, 15 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
Obviously still a noun, not an adjective. Collocation with 'more' is to be compared with 'He is more a lover than a fighter', 'I am more a gentleman than a scholar'. Does not pass any serious adjective tests (*'very friends'). If you want to treat it as a peculiar idiom because of its grammar, instead of the obvious solution of just noting this idiom under the head noun 'friend', then it should be 'be friends with' (and the numbers enthusiasts can then create all their 'will have been being friends with' entries). -- Hiztegilari (talk) 19:14, 15 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
@Hiztegilari "more a lover" is not analogous to "more friends", and any uncomparable adjective would fail "very X", so that's a poor test. Your "obvious solution" amounts to brushing the issue under the rug, and I can't support it. Theknightwho (talk) 19:58, 15 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
Also, while I can't find "very friends", I can find "slightly friends" (see above), "somewhat friends", "kind of friends" etc
2012 April 9, Katie Efird, My Perfect Life, Author House, →ISBN, page 66:
After Jenna leaves a girl in my class named Rebecca, who is somewhat friends with Adriana, sits down beside me.
2019, Titan Frey, Delivery at Zombie Lane, page back cover:
Molly is somewhat friends with Josh and she's Kenny's school crush.
2024, Reba Bale, My Kind of Girl: A Second Chance Lesbian Romance, Reba Bale:
“Hi, I'm Kathy. I'm kind of friends with Ava's mother."
The strongest point favoring the preservation of the adjective sense of friends is the fact that sentences with friends, as @Smurrayinchester suggests, permit a singular noun / pronoun as the subject (e.g. John is friends with Alex). If friends were a predicative noun, you'd expect it to agree in number with the subject (only John is a friend of Alex should be grammatical). The fact that it is able to not agree but still be grammatical suggests that friend with -s is functioning uniquely as an adjective. Like @Theknightwho says, trying to use comparable adjective tests for this word in the case that it's not a comparable adjective would of course reap failure; that is, very friends would fail in the same way that very daily would fail (and we can all agree that daily is an adjective).
I think a better counter to friends being an adjective is determining whether it sounds grammatical when used attributively. For me, postpositively, it sounds a bit weird, and prepositively, it's definitely ungrammatical. Compare a marriedperson (prepos. attr.) and a person married to their spouse (postpos. attr.) with a friends person (prepos. attr.) and a person friends with another (postpos. attr.). To be fair, I wouldn't say either form—I'd just use the predicative form, i.e. the he is friends with (...) form—but I wonder what others think about the grammaticality of attributive friends.
Just like what @bd2412, @-sche and @Polomo47 think, maybe the most sound solution for this would be to create the entry be friends as an idiom or some phrase, just like make friends is, and then assume that this adjective-seeming, plural form of friend is not an individual adjective but instead just a part of this idiom / phrase. Should the adjective sense still be kept, I think it'd be better to keep the sense at friends instead of entering a sense at -s that defines -s as an adjective-forming suffix. I'm not aware of many adjectives formed by a noun + -s, so I'm playing it safe and assuming that -s as an adjective-forming suffix is not (very) productive.
Notes
^ married here is an adjective, not a participle of the verb marry.
^ This contrasts with words formed by a noun + -ers as @Fay Freak points out, of which there are a bit more.
@Languagelover3000 @-sche @HiztegilariCounterpoint: you can't be "very friends", but you can be "potentially friends", "possibly friends" or "kinda friends" with someone - in other words, it can be modified by degree. We wouldn't have an entry for be running, for instance, which has similar semantics.
Another thing now making me think the best option would be to make the entry be friends is the fact that I've just realised all the grammatical sentences that have been given above can have their "adverbs" postposed without sounding too ungrammatical. Below are some excerpts of quotes or example sentences from above exemplifying this. The theoretical idiom "be friends" and the adverb modifying it are bolded.
You will not be less friends with me → You will not be friends less with me
I am most friends with Bobby → I am friends most with Bobby
If he could not be more friends with his children → If he could not be friends more with his children
Now I'm slightly friends with Kate Bush → Now I'm friends slightly with Kate Bush
I'm kind of friends with Ava's mother → I'm friends kind of with Ava's mother
Molly is somewhat friends with Josh → Molly is friends somewhat with Josh
For the above sentences, you could even put the word at the end of the sentence (e.g. Molly is friends with Josh somewhat).
Under the assumption that adverbs usually precede their head adjective but are not as restricted in position for their head verbs,1 I think this may seal the deal on the idea of this being an idiom / verb.
Compare he is very happy and he is happy very* vs. he drove home quickly; quickly, he drove home and he quickly drove home.
I respectfully disagree. It has very much entered the lexicon in the US in daily law enforcement interactions. I've also added three cites for reference. mysteryroom (talk) 19:43, 23 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
Those uses are just brand names qualifying a noun. Contrast Polaroid(“a print from a Polaroid brand instant camera”) where the brand name standing alone acquired a meaning. Vox Sciurorum (talk) 20:20, 23 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
Send to RfV. Whether sources exist demonstrating lexical use of a phrase is an RfV question, not an RfD question. bd2412T22:25, 23 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
Indeed. I'm very confused why Equinox would deem this term worthy of deletion when it is clearly attested and heard dozens of times per day on cop videos/shows and police scanners across the US. mysteryroom (talk) 22:31, 23 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
@Mysteryroom: I think you misunderstand me. I am not endorsing the entry being kept. WT:BRAND basically requires generic use of the brand name to show that the term has entered the lexicon. I do not believe any of the citations provided currently clearly do that. bd2412T16:14, 24 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 1 month ago2 comments2 people in discussion
This is the sense of away meaning "from a state or condition of being; out of existence". That entry has the much more common example of "I'll sleep the rest of the day away", and we don't have an entry for sleep away, for instance. 2A00:23C5:FE1C:3701:A818:1F7A:7CB0:A6F921:22, 25 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
I guess this is away sense 7? Most of the senses in that entry seem like the same thing, though... I’d like some more examples before committing to a "delete". Polomo47 (talk) 13:29, 28 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
Okay, this may have been lexicalized: I just heard got so effectively wiped up that they might as well have been cosplaying as a ShamWow commercial. Can someone try their hand at improving the definition? Polomo47 (talk) 08:58, 5 July 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 16 days ago5 comments4 people in discussion
Per my comment there, at the short description parameter of the RfD template: "This entry (glophonic) should not have been made at all; this string as a putative adjective is not a word in English, and the word osteoglophonic (which see for its referenced etymology) is not derived from this putative word (in fact a nonword). Most ghits in Google Books for this string are merely artifacts of hyphenated instances of "osteo-glophonic" or inadvisably (i.e., poorly) hyphenated instances of "An-glophonic"." Quercus solaris (talk) 04:22, 30 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
Since it was created with no definition and no cites, just an rfdef, I would delete this as "no usable content given" + the reasons given by Quercus. - -sche(discuss)21:39, 31 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
Alphabets used to write Greek, Zhuyin, Glagolitic, Proto-Canaanite. The last three have already been nominated some 13 years ago and had consensus to delete, but somehow remain as entries. Note that alphabets have been nominated for deletion time and time again, but the archives of these discussions are seldom linked to from their talk pages... Dutch alphabet and Hungarian alphabet seem to have a few.
First, it’s important to explain why I think the Translingual entries deserve deletion. I think that it’s formulaic in the sense that any binomial name, in a scientific paper, can get abbreviated by writing only the first letter of the genus name. It’s, thus, more a general pattern than a phenomenon to be independently categorized. If we were to independently categorize it, we’d list E. as initialism of Epidendrum/Eranthemum/Eremurus/Erodium...
Second, I do think E. coli should be kept in English because, in that context, it is not formulaic — only a handful of binomial names have entered English usage (i.e., usage outside of particularly scientific contexts, which show Translingual usage), and the E. there is no longer abbreviating anything. And, yes, it is an entry to be made language by language: in Portuguese you’ll only see coliformes fecais (lit. fecal coliforms) and tiranossauro. T. rex in Portuguese is a borrowing from English and pronounced as such. Polomo47 (talk) 15:18, 31 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
Ditto for German. T. rex only is pronounced as English, E. coli as German Latin pronunciation. I don't see criteria by which more abbreviations can be entered, however; in general it has to be avoided at some point. Maybe one needs some lab or clinical practice to know. Fay Freak (talk) 15:49, 31 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
C. difficile might be citeable in an "E. coli" way (i.e. used by laypeople who don't know the full name if they even realize it has one), although it's not as common; the common lay form is C. diff, which (whether we want to present it as Translingual or English) should certainly be kept. - -sche(discuss)22:05, 31 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
Reiterating that this is for WT:RFDO, since the entries are Translingual. My proposed solution is to repurpose C. diff, E. coli as English entries, look into attestations for C. difficile (sounds unlikely to have been lexicalized) and delete the rest (T. rex is already English. Is that the most common spelling in other languages?). Entries for other languages can then be added, e.g., to E. coli as suitable. Polomo47 (talk) 04:43, 4 June 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 1 day ago7 comments6 people in discussion
"(mathematics, sciences) A method that is beyond the range of standard or traditional approaches, often involving introducing new concepts like infinitesimals or hyperreal numbers in order to solve difficult problems."
Keep (or possibly add a new sense at nonstandard) Seems to be a specific concept - not just any method that is not standard, but a method that uses infinitesimals and infinities in rigorous ways as pioneered by Abraham Robinson (see Nonstandard analysis). The definition should be tightened up to focus on the second clause, but e.g. the textbook Nonstandard Methods in Ramsey Theory and Combinatorial Number Theory is specifically about the application of Robinson's methods to a type of mathematics. The book also uses "nonstandard analysis" (the technique of applying nonstandard methods) and "nonstandard universe" (the set of mathematical objects including infinitesimals and infinities), so maybe the key term is "nonstandard" however. Smurrayinchester (talk) 08:23, 3 June 2025 (UTC)Reply
Comment. In general, a nonstandard method can be any method that is not one of the standard methods of addressing some problem. As such it is SOP. In the book Nonstandard Methods in Ramsey Theory and Combinatorial Number Theory it is used as a mathematical term of art, in a non-{{&lit}} sense, derived from the term of art nonstandard analysis, and then means, “A method based on nonstandard analysis”. This abuse of terminology is probably due to nonstandard-analysis method being a bit too much of a mouthful.
Keep. I would definitely want an entry for red 40, and that appears to be an ellipsis of this, so I want this by proxy. This nomination is, of course, not questioning idiomaticity, but rather lexicality. Polomo (talk) 02:05, 8 July 2025 (UTC)Reply
Having an entry for red 40 (which I agree we should have) does not necessarily imply that FD&C Red No. 40 is a part of the language's lexicon nor that it should have an entry. Many of our (indeed lexical) shortened form entries, in a definition, do simply link to the associated encyclopedia article with the canonical name, which seems like an appropriate status quo. Delete. Hftf (talk) 04:38, 8 July 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 20 days ago4 comments3 people in discussion
I would think there is probably some metonymic sense with China's government or similar, but I don't know of it and don't immediately see it. Since the only sense is a "manmade structure" and Merriam Webster and Lexico do not have the metonymic sense I'm looking for, I'm putting this here. Alternately, this might be an "area" in some sense, like a district or county or town- it is called a "city" after all. Or parallel to Taj Mahal? --Geographyinitiative (talk) 11:40, 8 June 2025 (UTC)Reply
@Geographyinitiative I am slightly confused; what is your rationale for deletion? Is it for this type of entry (a palace or building)? Does Wikt have a policy that says whether we exclude buildings from our dictionary? LunaEatsTuna (talk) 22:04, 16 June 2025 (UTC)Reply
Delete as typographical errors, which I suspect to be the case; surely if this term had a misspelling it would be, based on its pronunciation, Holocost / holocost (which both incidentally exist as misspellings for this term). Where does cast come from? However, if there is an accent that pronounces it this was, rendering this a misspelling and not a typographical error, I might vote keep because this term (perhaps depressingly) actually has quite a lot of hits (47K) on Google. LunaEatsTuna (talk) 11:04, 17 June 2025 (UTC)Reply
The definition as written is impressively stupid (one would almost think it was WF-style trolling), so delete that, but googling around, it does seem like this might actually be the name of a specific (chocolate-chip-s'mores-y?) type of cookie you could make in your oven with no campfire involved, if anyone wants to attest and define that, a la birthday cake sometimes being a very specific flavour. - -sche(discuss)18:53, 15 June 2025 (UTC)Reply
@-sche That def can be technically deleted but the page can be repurposed into a new entry (technically a different sense) for a cookie that has the ingredients of a s'more. I found some recipes for a campfire cookie that is a type of cookie that tastes like/imitates the ingredients of a s'more: graham crackers, marshmallows and chocolate (most common foodstuffs to put inside). The campfire would make this word idiomatic (unlike, say, chocolate cookie, s'more cookie and others), so we can keep it. Here are some attests from those Wordpress-esque “momblog” recipe websites (which I proudly browse from time to time):
Campfire Cookies are my new favorite cookie recipe! These have all the flavors of s’mores cookies made with marshmallows, chocolate, honey, and graham crackers, these cookies are the essence of a summer campfire!
There was a time when graham crackers were a mandatory part of s’mores. Since replacing them with freshly-baked chocolate chip cookies, there is no turning back. I made Campfire Cookies as a surprise-treat for my sweethearts.
These campfire cookies are reminiscent of a warm fire, roasting marshmallows and eating sticky s’mores but without all the mess! With crushed graham crackers, toasted mini-marshmallows, and slightly melted chocolate, this may be my new favorite cookie of all time.
Thinking about how blatantly SOP (and dissimilar to the actual, idiomatic definition) the definition Mysteryroom entered was, and how plainly the first cite he added doesn't use the term—he even quoted the preceding sentence, "A meeting of all Campfire guardians will be held at the "Y" at 7 o'clock on Monday evening, March 24.", to make clear that in "Final arrangements for the Campfire cookie sale will be made at this time.", "Campfire" was the name of the group hosting the "cookie sale", the sentence was not using a term "Campfire cookie"—I cannot help but think: c'mon, Mysteryroom, are you trolling (or, depending on how people want to view it, earnestly using judgement this poor and sloppy) again already after you were just blocked? (Compare some of the cites offered for ace bare, discussed at WT:RFVE#ace_bare.) Another admin assessed back in April 2024, and it has also seemed to me, that this user learned Wiktionary's rules to waste people's time because they have to follow him around if they want to catch the (depending on how one wants to view it) trolling or problematic entries a competent editor would know better by now than to create, and put them through time-consuming RFDs and RFVs. I know a few editors have opined that the not-incorrect edits the user intermixes the trolling / bad edits into are worth it, but my inclination is to block and be done with it, given the number of times the user has been warned and even blocked already. In line with the block summary of the last block, I am blocking Mysteryroom for 3 months. To be clear, this block is not for this one entry, it is for a long history of such conduct as noted in prior blocks' summaries and discussed in prior RFVs, RFDs, and elsewhere. - -sche(discuss)19:12, 17 June 2025 (UTC)Reply
The definition is impressive as you say, but less so than the community’s commerce with the author is disappointing. His competence is demonstrated in the very locating problematic entries and putting them up for further input, even though this talent appears to entail unsatisfyingly explicit communication of the same, since it is driven by procedural memory more than declarative logics, which shows slow bettering only because of collective failure in psychoeducation. You are unacceptably stretching the definition of trolling. The procedure sanctifies the above entry, which is not going to be deleted on the whole anymore, and this was the point, not the – overtly – imperfect definition. If one writes a type of … it is told that the editor did not understand to describe the concept further, in so far as not described further, but the existence of an idiom is indicated. Fay Freak (talk) 10:23, 19 June 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 1 month ago6 comments5 people in discussion
Rfd-sense: "A chicken or turkey used as food."
Feels overly specific (I can find lots and lots of uses of "stuff the bird" used to refer to duck, quail, pigeon, partridge, grouse, pheasant, etc and frankly I suspect every single bird that we eat is in fact a bird) and redundant to sense 1. Smurrayinchester (talk) 07:28, 13 June 2025 (UTC)Reply
As written, so narrowly scoped to just chicken and turkey, it's wrong, yes. I could see generalizing this to "The meat of such an animal , used as food" and keeping that, in line with how we have the bird and the meat as separate senses at chicken and turkey and pig and cow; the senses (in all these entries) are labelled as differing in countability. (I see the counter-argument that this is a general phenomenon—any edible animal's meat can be referred to: I saw an alligator but ate some alligator—but the translations may differ.) - -sche(discuss)18:48, 15 June 2025 (UTC)Reply
I did consider that, but I couldn't find any evidence of uncountable "bird" (no sign of people eating "bird sandwiches", and all the hits for "ate bird" seem to be part of noun phrases like "ate bird seed" or bad hyphenations like "frig-ate bird"). I don't think we'd have a sense at hamster for "a hamster used as food", even though there are lots of hits for "ate a hamster" (the classic being "Freddie Starr ate my hamster"), because I couldn't find any "ate hamster". If you think it's salvageable, I could broaden the sense and move to RFV Smurrayinchester (talk) 07:53, 16 June 2025 (UTC)Reply
Three uses of uncountable bird:
We almost had bird for dinner that night.
While this is a rather revolting thought, it still fails to convey the hideous disgust one feels upon biting into undercooked bird.
Delete per Smurrayinchester's appreciatively thorough explanation; I also did some of my own searches but mostly found stuff like “I forget what we ate,” Bird said in an interview. There are some attests for “ate bird” (as a food) on Twitter but very few, e.g. , not enough to justify its own entry in my view. LunaEatsTuna (talk) 10:51, 17 June 2025 (UTC)Reply
Comment It's become a kind of a phrase to use in the comment sections of ads, at least on Instagram, regardless of the content, suggesting idiomatic use ScribeYearling (talk) 06:26, 18 June 2025 (UTC)Reply
Do not delete. This should absolutely be kept as legitimate slang. More specifically, "Nice try, Diddy" pertains to sexually explicit content and implies Diddy is trying to solicit sex, not simply "it could mean anyone." It's been used plenty of times, to the point of being cited by mainstream media, and therefore, there is no reason to delete it. Diddy's impact on the world of rap music in light of these allegations and his capturing of the popular imagination meets standards of notability. --2600:1700:45DF:10:A917:B1D:E291:617319:17, 3 July 2025 (UTC)Reply
Delete. The work ethic of the Protestants / Puritans is indeed an SoP construction. The minutia is interesting, of course, but it’s not dictionary material. This reminds me of English whiskey and how w:Brazilian wine definitely deserves a Wikipedia article explaining its characteristics, but the term itself is SoP. Polomo47 (talk) 02:55, 20 June 2025 (UTC)Reply
If there are figurative uses, like “Abby the atheist has a Protestant work ethic when it comes to knitting because she knits for twelve hours a day woah woah aahahdhrirururururururTHE FOG IS COMING THE FOG IS” then I reckon it could be kept. LunaEatsTuna (talk) 06:40, 26 July 2025 (UTC)Reply
Okay, I found some quotations on Gbooks and Twitter of figurative usage to mean general hard-work regardless of religion. So, delete this sense and replace it with the figurative one I added (technically speaking, a new word). LunaEatsTuna (talk) 06:51, 26 July 2025 (UTC)Reply
Neither audible nor internal speech is required, nor is the word "yes". Of course, the use of "say" in relation to speech acts muddies things up a bit: if you ask someone to "say hello" when you introduce them to someone else, it's okay if they merely shake hands or say "I'm pleased to meet you". Chuck Entz (talk) 23:43, 19 June 2025 (UTC)Reply
This uses yes noun sense 1. The problem, however — and I didn’t expect this — is that we don’t have an adequate sense at say to call this SoP. Are there other examples of saying something that need not be verbal nor written and also not verbatim? Polomo47 (talk) 03:04, 20 June 2025 (UTC)Reply
Comment. We have an entry say no. How is this different in terms of our CFI? I’m leaning towards the includability of say hello and say farewell (= say goodbye) in the figurative senses of “to witness an arrival” or “a departure”. ( 'Sentimental': Residents say hello to new, farewell to old at Hamilton Elementary;Review: Say hello to comedic drama 'The Farewell' ;Say hello to ‘Trolls,’ farewell to ‘Modern Family’ this week.) ‑‑Lambiam15:36, 21 June 2025 (UTC)Reply
I will say yes and vote keep. It's worth noting that Merriam-Webster has it, not that this fact makes any difference to the more doubting users. Some quotes would be welcome though. DonnanZ (talk) 11:19, 22 June 2025 (UTC)Reply
I was the one who removed the speedy request, but now I do agree with deleting, yes, per Ms. Luna–Tuna’s interpretation. Polomo47 (talk) 20:13, 3 July 2025 (UTC)Reply
The Polo mint is a peppermint sweet. I have never been called Donnie, but had the nicknames of Hodgie, Horse and Doc during my life. I call myself Don, short for Donald, from before that awful geezer named Donald moving into the White House. DonnanZ (talk) 11:46, 25 June 2025 (UTC)Reply
Without proper cytological comparisons or dogmatic foundations any deletion is not confidence-inspiring. I don’t think the description or classification of biology should be gut-feel driven. Fay Freak (talk) 23:25, 27 June 2025 (UTC)Reply
Actually, what I feel is that these lexicographical decisions should be determined by lexicographers (rather than biologists). A common, colloquial term like cancer cell, blood cell is easily parseable (as cells in cancer, cells in blood, cells in the brain — that too should be deleted), and so any arguments to its merit regarding biological nuances can’t really fix the matter of SoP and border on being encyclopedic. Now, I would be more careful with, e.g., epithelial cell. Polomo47 (talk) 23:37, 27 June 2025 (UTC)Reply
Sounds like a bandwagon fallacy. For me epithelial cell seemed an obvious SOP as containing the expected adjective – did not even need to be expected as pathosis forms pathological – for epithelium, but when I found the entry I began to suspect a system below the surface. Superficial parsing as SOP is easy when you get away with blurring the concepts. I was more interested in the peculiarity of the disordered cell kind cancer cell rather than being impressed by the regularity of the epithelial cell, like most people here know to read and apply IPA but are out of advice concerning the Extensions to the International Phonetic Alphabet transcribing disordered speech. Fay Freak (talk) 00:03, 28 June 2025 (UTC)Reply
Funnily enough, Mr. ’Fool nominated this entry for deletion almost 19 years ago before doing it again today! See the discussion-closing diff. Polomo47 (talk) 00:23, 27 June 2025 (UTC)Reply
I get their point. But I will vote keep as slang specific to just one video game should be allowed IMO, as long as said instance of slang (synonym ofword) passes the CFI. LunaEatsTuna (talk) 21:14, 27 June 2025 (UTC)Reply
It is very important to distinguish between in-universe terms (we don't include every alien race from Star Trek, or every weapon from Half-Life) and terms used outside the game universe to describe things in the game (like, say, hall of mirrors sense 3, or ghost piece). I don't know if WF is aware of this. 2A00:23C5:FE1C:3701:449D:665:DCB5:1EC21:26, 27 June 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 1 month ago2 comments2 people in discussion
Rfd-sense: “BDSM”. I know this is a subsense, but exactly how is this different from the primary sense? Is BDSM usage notable enough to deserve distinction into a subsense? The definition also seems pretty bad. Polomo47 (talk) 01:44, 27 June 2025 (UTC)Reply
@Polomo47 The definition is indeed bad. I wonder if we should split the sexual and non-sexual senses and rm the “(often sexual)” line from the first, slightly altering and improving upon the second (currently jarringly worded) sense. LunaEatsTuna (talk) 21:22, 27 June 2025 (UTC)Reply
Just FYI, I never added that insane usex for it. That might have been vandalism or a joke? keep the &lit sense itself but reinstate the old usex, which I'm pretty sure was something like " 'brown leaf' is a sum of parts" or something, idk don't have time to look right now. SnowyCinema (talk) 14:28, 30 June 2025 (UTC)Reply
It was
The expression "green leaf" is a sum of parts, since it has no idiomatic meaning: no meaning beyond "green" + "leaf".
Delete the sense, yes, as it is perfectly defined as an alternative form. However, the RfD discussion at Talk:sum of its parts really did not convince me of the expression’s idiomaticity — all the keepers were feelskeeping, which reminds me we do not have feelscrafting —, so we could perhaps revive that. Polomo (talk) 04:14, 6 July 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 1 month ago3 comments3 people in discussion
Is this sum-of-parts? I don’t think it’s in any other dictionaries, nor is it a commonly used idiom (or collocation, for that matter), seeing as Wiktionary is the first result on Google. Polomo47 (talk) 15:58, 27 June 2025 (UTC)Reply
@Inpacod2: White supremacy is the supremacy of the white (people). Black supremacy is the supremacy of the black (people). And so on. We have white supremacy and black supremacy; so I don't see why you are only challenging the "woke" one, since it's no better or worse than those (and IMO might even gain a little strength from the fact that it's probably a sort of pun/blend on the pre-existing whole phrase "white supremacy"). 2A00:23C5:FE1C:3701:449D:665:DCB5:1EC20:26, 27 June 2025 (UTC)Reply
I think these all are not SoP because they are circumscriptions for the ideologies people hold, who connect by some critical mass of association. Fay Freak (talk) 23:09, 27 June 2025 (UTC)Reply
Delete both, along with almost all the other "X supremacy(ist)" entries (except quantum supremacy and air supremacy), per sense 3 of supremacy and 1 of supremacist, from which we can understand all such words. (Sidenote: delete papal supremacy too but per senses 1 and 2.) Sense 3, in particular, talks about "groups", therefore, when paired with it, "black" and "white" are groups, not colors, and "woke" is even more obvious there. Thence comes their unidiomaticity. We need only those two entries and senses alone to understand what such terms mean.
With that said, though, could this turn out to be one of those useful "rare cases" mentioned in the forelast paragraph of the policy? Who knows‽ Consensus would be needed. Bytekast22:19, 28 June 2025 (UTC)Reply
So, bow to (“to subserviently adhere to (a tradition, etc.)”) is located there instead of at bow: I think kowtow (sense 2, “to grovel, act in a very submissive manner”) should be moved to kowtow to in this same manner, pending how kowtow is used and if it is used exclusively with to. @Inqilābī, Pppery I glossed through some Gbooks and only found such usages, suggesting we keep kowtow to; any idea? LunaEatsTuna (talk) 22:03, 15 July 2025 (UTC)Reply
Agreed, delete. It's also possible to 'bow before' and 'kowtow before', even symbolically rather than literally ('kowtow before the despotism of' is here) and the line 'and they'll all kowtow' appears in the song 'Brush Up Your Shakespeare', so it doesn't have to be followed by 'to' or 'before'. --Overlordnat1 (talk) 00:03, 16 July 2025 (UTC)Reply
I’m thinking it just might be best to list these translations at all day. If the idiomatic translations were at all similar to the English phrase, I’d support a separate THUB, but Catalan, Portuguese and Spanish de sol a sol (literally, “from sun to sun”) has nothing to do with it. I am not convinced any other blue translations (can’t easily verify red ones) are idiomatic either — the French one is definitely SoP. Polomo (talk) 16:51, 11 July 2025 (UTC)Reply
Keep and add more quotations (I've just added to it a request for them, and deleted the repeated quot. under Adjective). The entry has enough good references to attest it, now it needs good and reasonable quots. Delete only if those can't be found or used. Bytekast (talk) 12:33, 26 July 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 23 days ago3 comments2 people in discussion
Sense HTTP header. How would this be used in a sentence? Looks similar to programming keywords, which we don't include. Jberkel21:03, 3 July 2025 (UTC)Reply
I suspect it's pronounced run together, not as "hoo, man", and to me that merits a separate entry. Quotes or even audio clips would be nice.Lollipop (talk) 19:15, 13 July 2025 (UTC)Reply
It is the nickname given to the Dr Pepper that was bottled in a factory in Dublin, Texas. The bottle was still branded as Dr Pepper like all Dr Peppers; hence, it is not a brand name. LunaEatsTuna (talk) 02:58, 11 July 2025 (UTC)Reply
Checking out the bottle on the Wikipedia page, it has a faint yellow label reading "Dublin". So, it's a brand name, or at least it was a brand name 20-ish years ago. If it wasn't, then I'd vote to keep. CitationsFreak (talk) 07:01, 11 July 2025 (UTC)Reply
I do want to delete this, insofar as it is a Dr Pepper from Dublin. Yes, the ingredients may be different, but it is nevertheless a Dr Pepper — as in, being made with corn syrup is not a characteristic of Dr Pepper as far parsing the compound is concerned. If there were many Dublin manufacturing plants, and only the soda from one of them was called this, there could be a hint of idiomaticity. However, even then, I think this is pretty close to encyclopedic territory. Polomo (talk) 16:42, 11 July 2025 (UTC)Reply
You can infix pretty much any swear word to any idiom without anything lexically interesting happening. Adding a swear word to an phrase is just SOP, even if that swear word appears in the middle of the phrase. I can find variants of this with "damn", "damned", "goddamn", "bleeding" and "blasted", which are all SOP. Similarly, I can find "all the bloody tea in China" (and "all the tea in bloody China"), "all over the bloody place", "about bloody time", "all mouth and no bloody trousers", and that's just from the first page of Category:English idioms! Smurrayinchester (talk) 07:58, 11 July 2025 (UTC)Reply
Delete, when lemmatizing idioms, we want to look into what is essential to the idiom, and these intensifiers are not essential. Your examples show this well. Polomo (talk) 16:37, 11 July 2025 (UTC)Reply
This is almost certainly unlike taxonomic abbreviations like. E. coli and T. rex that can found used without previous nearby use of the full name. The sole citation shows exactly the kind of use one would must expect: use after the full name. Another kind of use would be the use of the abbreviation where N. was established as referring to genus Neopalpa. DCDuring (talk) 06:04, 13 July 2025 (UTC)Reply
Delete: this is a standard format of abbreviation that does not warrant entries in a dictionary. If we did allow them, it would mean adding millions of useless entries. — Sgconlaw (talk) 13:33, 13 July 2025 (UTC)Reply
Delete per the discussion somewhere else on this page. However, I must say again that Translingual entries go at WT:RFDN (maybe we should change this). Polomo (talk) 17:39, 13 July 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 8 days ago4 comments3 people in discussion
This was tagged for speedy deletion as SOP, but it has translations and we haven't dealt with this sort of entry in well over a decade.
It's borderline: pretty much every family of plants, animals or other organisms has this kind of a vernacular name. It consists of some representative or well known member of the family, or some characteristic the family is known by, modifying the noun "family". More often than not, the first part is taken from the taxonomic name- in the case, the family is the Amaranthaceae, which is named after the genus Amaranthus, which is known in English as the amaranths.
You can't always say the the first part of the name describes everything in it: prunes and almonds (not to mention salad burnet) belong to the rose family, but no one would call them roses. In the same way badgers, otters and polecats are all in the weasel family, Mustelidae, but they aren't weasels. On the other hand, although the first part of the name is not always predictable, the second part definitely is.
As the creator of this entry, I thought it best I give my two cents, even if I think it unfair to count my vote as I am biased in this situation.
My primary argument is not necessarily in the SOPness of their construction, but in their common usage. People commonly use the "amaranth family" to refer to the family Amaranthaceaespecifically, in the same way that East Asia refers to a specific group of culturally-related countries, not necessarily the coordinately eastern part of Asia. While East Asia could easily be said to be SOP, it is commonly used and has a specific group of subjects to which it refers; and I believe English vernacular botanical family names have the same quality.
However, not all of these terms are mere calques of the modern taxonomic name (which would not necessarily disqualify them even if they were). For example, the legume family is not a calque of the modern Fabaceae, but of the now-obsolete Leguminosae.
It is inarguable that these terms are edge cases, that I shall concede. However, these terms are in common usage in botanical spheres in a manner so frequently that they are, in some sense, set phrases. They are known to mean the specific taxonomic (not genealogical) family of related taxa. As someone who frequents such spheres, I may anecdotally attest to this, and I do hope you reconsider. VGPaleontologist (talk) 19:48, 19 July 2025 (UTC)Reply
I wish to further append to this English vernacular species' names calqued from their taxonomic names. The term American bird grasshopper is a direct calque of Schistocerca americana, yet is undoubtedly lemmatic, despite having no particular added meaning other than that it is of the species S. americana and has certain qualities associated therewith. It is my opinion that this term is of a similar situation. VGPaleontologist (talk) 20:00, 19 July 2025 (UTC)Reply
Weak delete. While I can certainly sympathise with wanting to include this phrase given how common it is, the meaning is too obvious. I feel like we should demote it to a collocation, but I do not know of a good spot for it either. — (((Romanophile))) ♞ (contributions) 10:17, 17 July 2025 (UTC)Reply
Keep and add the unidiomatic sense of bearing responsibility for problems caused, even if nothing is literally "broken" or "bought". bd2412T15:09, 20 July 2025 (UTC)Reply
See, e.g., 2006, Michael Anthony Epps, Why Are Parents Always Trippin'?, p. 73: "You Break It - You Buy It! If you break the bond of someone's trust, it can be a very expensive thing to replace".
2009, Brian Chikwava, , p. 114: "...them English say you break it you buy it; you have break this child's life; buy it or fix it; you run around saying you is Mr Big Man shop assistant, so what?"
Delete. Move the quotations to Citations:do. It looks like a variety of the sense of do used in "do somebody wrong" or "do me a favor." Maybe influenced by do a (linked back to do where the definition is currently number 17). Vox Sciurorum (talk) 13:02, 15 July 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 7 days ago2 comments2 people in discussion
I have no idea how this could have been an ‘inflection or subpage of deleted entry’, considering that it is simply an obsolete typographical variant of coeliac plexus. Here is evidence of its usage:
Undeleted (procedurally); as Romanophile said, it's an alternative spelling not an 'inflected form of a deleted entry' (and the thing it's an alternative spelling of was not deleted either!), and it seems to be sufficiently attested. - -sche(discuss)18:26, 20 July 2025 (UTC)Reply
@Donnanz: that's not an adequate reason for keeping the entry (which currently has no figurative or other sense apart from the road name sense), but I think you are well aware of that. — Sgconlaw (talk) 18:55, 17 July 2025 (UTC)Reply
Another editor thought it quote-worthy (and I don't need to tell you that WOTD thrives on quotes) so there is something idiomatic about the street. I have now added the Underground station in the street, and named after it. Wheels within wheels? DonnanZ (talk) 10:13, 18 July 2025 (UTC)Reply
As far as London is concerned, it's also a ward in the City of London, and I provided a reference to insure against deletion. Keep. DonnanZ (talk) 13:29, 17 July 2025 (UTC)Reply
As I mentioned below, "Delete the road name senses as these do not comply with WT:CFI". Of course other place name senses that comply with WT:CFI are not being challenged here. However, just because a term has one or more qualifying senses does not mean the non-qualifying sense gets "saved" thereby. — Sgconlaw (talk) 14:31, 17 July 2025 (UTC)Reply
From what I can gather, the old Bishops Gate came first, followed by the street name, then the ward. Ward boundaries have changed over time, currently it contains about two-thirds of the street. So it's difficult to separate the ward from the street. DonnanZ (talk) 15:32, 17 July 2025 (UTC)Reply
@Donnanz: with respect, it's not. We delete the words "street and" from the definition so that it refers only to the ward. The fact that the ward gets its name from the street is already explained in the etymology section. — Sgconlaw (talk) 19:00, 17 July 2025 (UTC)Reply
Delete the road name senses (or the entry, if it only consists of road name senses) as these do not comply with WT:CFI. Any useful information about the origin of the names should be relocated into the "Etymology" sections, where applicable. — Sgconlaw (talk) 12:39, 17 July 2025 (UTC)Reply
It concerns me that certain editors are still trying to empty Category:en:Named roads. I have stopped using it as it is far too toxic, and feel it might be better to delete the category itself, as it has proved to be nothing but trouble. DonnanZ (talk) 13:56, 17 July 2025 (UTC)Reply
@Donnanz: it has been pointed out on numerous occasions that if you disagree with WT:CFI it is open to you to start a fresh discussion about it. If you opt not to do so, then you can hardly complain if the policy (to me eminently sensible) is enforced. Also, your remark that "I have stopped using it" suggests you are continuing to create street-name entries that do not comply with the CFI and intentionally making them difficult to find. This is not behaviour we would expect of an experienced editor. I hope I'm wrong about this. — Sgconlaw (talk) 14:25, 17 July 2025 (UTC)Reply
Delete all per nom: there are millions of roads and streets that would easily satisfy the CFI's attestation policy if we were to include these—but we do not. LunaEatsTuna (talk) 03:58, 18 July 2025 (UTC)Reply
That has never happened, probably because of CFI. But some of these may have been created before CFI banned them. Cheapside was created in 2005, and Baker Street in 2007. Both were thought to be includable at the time. DonnanZ (talk) 09:13, 18 July 2025 (UTC)Reply
This is mixing up quite a few types of entries. Keep Cheapside - it's a neighbourhood and the definition is compliant. Ditto keep Bishopsgate. Merge the senses at Canal Street (so instead we have "A street and surrounding neighbourhood in New York City" and "A street and surrounding neighbourhood in Manchester"). Reformat Bay Street to match Wall Street. Delete Baker Street (unless there's some kind of metaphorical "Sherlock Holmes fandom" sense). Delete Burmah Road. Merge senses at Cable Street. Smurrayinchester (talk) 09:10, 18 July 2025 (UTC)Reply
@Smurrayinchester: as mentioned above, no sense which isn't a road name is being challenged here. Thus, for Cheapside, the district definition is fine. However, sense 1 "Any of several streets in English towns and cities that were originally marketplaces" isn't, and I think that in sense 2 the mention of the street in London should be relocated to the etymology section. I don't think the CFI allows any road sense to be retained in a definition simply because the word also applies to some other geographical location such as a neighbourhood or a village. Thus, I don't think the "street and surrounding neighbourhood" formulation is permitted without changing the CFI. — Sgconlaw (talk) 23:15, 18 July 2025 (UTC)Reply
I think there is danger of our entries becoming misleading if we're so dogmatic as to forbid the mention of streets even in CFI-compliant definitions. It's why we have the {{&lit}} template after all. Sometimes things are outside the scope of the dictionary, but if not mentioned suggest misleading things about the usage of terms within our scope. Smurrayinchester (talk) 07:38, 19 July 2025 (UTC)Reply
@Smurrayinchester: the information is not deleted; it is merely put in the "Etymology" section so I'd say there is no concern about entries being misleading. I don't buy the argument that if there are some qualifying senses in an entry, then non-qualifying senses related to the qualifying senses should be allowed. This would allow the circumvention of the whole of CFI—WT:BRAND, WT:COMPANY, and so on. This is a dangerous path to be on. — Sgconlaw (talk) 23:55, 19 July 2025 (UTC)Reply
I'm not going to look in every British street atlas for Cheapside, but there are eight in West Yorkshire, and three others in Greater London. As for neighbourhoods named after streets, it is better to omit the street category now following the CFI change, it's not compulsory. DonnanZ (talk) 08:45, 19 July 2025 (UTC)Reply
From the CFI: "All place names not listed above shall be included if they have three citations of figurative use that fulfill attestation requirements. Most manmade structures, including buildings, airports, ports, bridges, canals, dams, tunnels, individual roads and streets, as well as gardens, parks, and beaches may only be attested through figurative use."
I think only streets and roads have been "picked on", nothing else, even though entries for other structures exist. I believe there are manmade beaches, but they must be the exception rather than the rule, and we don't make a habit of including them anyway, unless it's in the name of a settlement. DonnanZ (talk) 09:25, 20 July 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 1 day ago12 comments6 people in discussion
Fails the CFI as the (official) name of an individual building—a detention centre. Note that this is not a nickname/unofficial name, like the entry's categories suggest. Per the CFI: “Most manmade structures, including buildings may only be attested through figurative use,” thus excluding detention centres. Not to mention, there are 39 such centres in the United States with Wikipedia articles that would be eligible for entries here under our attestation requirements if we allowed this entry to remain. LunaEatsTuna (talk) 07:41, 19 July 2025 (UTC)Reply
Well, it's called a hot word for a start. The WP article was started on 23 June, and Wiktionary hot on its heels. Apparently it is now open, though all and sundry are criticising it, and a certain Mr. Trump has paid a visit. With an area of 39 square miles, it can't be just one building. It could be classified as a populated place - hopefully the inmates outnumber the alligators. DonnanZ (talk) 15:53, 23 July 2025 (UTC)Reply
The first public use was in a video published by Uthmeyer on June 19, 2025. In the video he is heard saying, ”The governor tasked state leaders to identify places for new temporary detention facilities. I think this is the best one, as I call it, ‘Alligator Alcatraz’.” Later that day, he explained the name for Fox Business: “If somebody were to get out, there’s nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, only the alligators and pythons are waiting. That’s why I like to call it ‘Alligator Alcatraz’.” At the time, there was no site, only a proposal for a site, so the name can hardly have been official. When The New York Times reported, on June 23, 2025, on the fact that construction had started, they still called it “a detention facility for migrants nicknamed ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ ”. ‑‑Lambiam08:55, 26 July 2025 (UTC)Reply
@King of Hearts, Lambiam: It sounds to me like that name was perhaps a proposal for a then-unnamed site, especially due to its use by a involved party. If we require all names to immediately be official upon their coinage, then tens of thousands of buildings (think construction sites) would suddenly become eligible for inclusion. It is not really a 'nickname' if the area had no name and it was put forward (perhaps officially) as a proposed name; he was the one to propose the detention centre and name it, so I fail to see how it could really be a nickname? Also, relatedly, the earliest use of this name by him that I could find is on 17 June. LunaEatsTuna (talk) 20:50, 26 July 2025 (UTC)Reply
If you haven't read the WP article, I recommend you should do so; especially reference 10. There I found a photo of a road sign lettered "Alligator Alcatraz". The place was built with indecent haste. DonnanZ (talk) 21:43, 26 July 2025 (UTC)Reply
The area had and has a name, Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport. "Alligator Alcatraz" is a prison hastily built in that area. Looking at the names in List of immigrant detention sites in the United States, we see that most, especially the larger ones, have names that end with “Detention” or “Correctional” followed by “Center” or “Facility”. Not a single one has a frivolous fantasy name, as if it were an adventure game or Disney World attraction.
Here is another indicator, from a news article reporting on a press conference on June 25, 2025, in Tampa:
“We had a request from the federal government to (create the facility), and so ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ it is,” Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said at an earlier news conference, adopting the nickname coined by his attorney general for the Everglades facility.
Rather than deleting this verifiable sense, it should be defined more precisely. In this dissertation, on p. 10, the term is used for ridges that continue a pair of semilunar folds that form the ileocaecal valve. ‑‑Lambiam08:09, 26 July 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 3 days ago2 comments2 people in discussion
The page for this not-so-known fishing supplies company is obviously created for advertisement and the creator of the page looks like they have barely any experience judging from how the page looks. KawaiiAngelx (talk) 01:07, 25 July 2025 (UTC)Reply
Support: You can have non-English food, for example. It was a silly RFD. DonnanZ (talk) 14:10, 19 December 2023 (UTC)
Oppose it means “not” and “English” in all senses of that word, making it SoP. Delete the entire entry. — Sgconlaw (talk) 12:07, 23 December 2023 (UTC)
Fixed. Brits don't usually call autumn "fall". Keep somehow. DonnanZ (talk) 17:41, 27 December 2024 (UTC)
List of RAL colours on Wikipedia.Wikipedia . DonnanZ (talk) 19:37, 5 January 2025 (UTC)
