Wiktionary:Tea room/2015/January

I feel like we should have an entry for cause and effect, but for some reason I feel if I create it, it will unfortunately be deleted. Is it a keeper? --Enterloppd (talk) 23:13, 1 January 2015 (UTC)

I've given it a stab. ---> Tooironic (talk) 04:17, 2 January 2015 (UTC)

You've defined it as karma?! For example...? Equinox ◑ 06:51, 2 January 2015 (UTC)

I can imagine it happen, though probably only as a weakly metaphor-ish interjectional: "Why does this keep happening to me?" "You are nasty to people, they return the favour. Cause and effect.". But the other senses are quite SOPpy, and I doubt even this usage is common or standard. Ultimately this should be determined by citations, I think. — Keφr 11:56, 2 January 2015 (UTC)

I'm just flagging an inconsistency here. The termination here is -iz, which would make the word masculine or feminine, but the gender stated is neuter. Is it *sibiz, feminine, matching the gender in Dutch; or is it *sibi, neuter, matching the gender in German. Given the comparative rarity of neuter i-stems (such as *mari, sea), I imagine the first alternative is more likely. Dave crowley (talk) 05:35, 3 January 2015 (UTC)

Let's move it. Leasnam (talk) 16:29, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

Are we missing the medical sense - i.e. "we found shadows on your X-ray"? ---> Tooironic (talk) 07:49, 3 January 2015 (UTC)

• I've extended sense #1 a little. SemperBlotto (talk) 09:03, 4 January 2015 (UTC)

tidy-up and tidy up exist as separate entries, both claiming to be a verb. Is the former not a noun? Compare clean-up, clean up. — This comment was unsigned.

They are probably both found as nouns. I'm not so sure that all the inflected forms of tidy-up (especially tidied-up and tidies-up) exist. The gerund tidying-up might and the bare form tidy-up might, as the entry suggests. As a matter of style I would never write the hyphenated form for any inflection of the verb, but others seem to differ. DCDuring TALK 18:42, 3 January 2015 (UTC)

Can someone better qualified than I have a look at this? I believe the third 'noun' usage is in fact an adjective. There is, however, no section for use of the word as an adjective while we speak of landmark events in history and landmark rulings in law. Perhaps I'm missing something? Happy New Year to all S a g a C i t y (talk) 12:00, 4 January 2015 (UTC)

It's attributive usage, like "crisis point" or "tractor parts". You can't be "very landmark", or say "the event was landmark". It's not truly adjectival. Equinox ◑ 15:59, 4 January 2015 (UTC)

It's plausible as an adjective, "a very landmark ruling". I say plausible because I haven't checked for usage. Renard Migrant (talk) 16:03, 4 January 2015 (UTC)

google books:"very landmark" has enough citations without searching for more, including a couple from Jimmy Carter. google books:"quite landmark" gets 5 hits that I can see and google books:"the most landmark" gets hits as well. Renard Migrant (talk) 16:19, 4 January 2015 (UTC)

What is the specific, official, meaning of FLIFO. Any dictionary I can find, including here, only states it means flight information, but I am sure it has an official, more technical meaning. Thanks. --Dmol (talk) 22:26, 4 January 2015 (UTC)

Are these worthy of entries, or should they be parsed as individual words? ---> Tooironic (talk) 04:43, 5 January 2015 (UTC)

Neither is in a OneLook reference. In no small measure seems to use measure in a sense, possibly archaic or even obsolete, and in a construction that is not common. In no small part uses the same construction, but a common and current definition of part. DCDuring TALK 14:32, 6 January 2015 (UTC)

The pinyin at this page was wrong for the example 她借着闪烁的烛光读书, which is «tā jiè zhe shǎnshuò de zhúguāng dúshū» and used to be «tā jiè zhù shǎnshuò de 燭guāng dúshū». I tried to correct it, but the template doesn't let me fix it. Right now, the phrase is given only in simpl. characters with beside it, and the pinyin is only half corrected in that the character in the middle of the pinyin is now properly pinyin-ized, but the "zhe" (著｜着) is transliterated to zhuó. How do I fix this? Also, see how Google perfectly transliterates «她借著閃爍的燭光讀書». Why does the template get things wrong? And the phrase is translated with the past tense, but could well be present tense without context, right?

The Pinyin is now fixed, all I needed was the tr= optional parameter. MGorrone (talk) 15:15, 5 January 2015 (UTC)

How can we add the sense as in, "having a conversation with you is like talking to a brick wall"? ---> Tooironic (talk) 14:13, 6 January 2015 (UTC)

Well, I've had a try now. ---> Tooironic (talk) 14:15, 6 January 2015 (UTC)

If stopcock is 'UK', then what do Americans call their stopcocks? Thanks. Kaixinguo (talk) 18:00, 6 January 2015 (UTC)

To judge from the Wikipedia article on the stopcock, Americans don't have them. I'd guess residential water supply is set up differently in the U.S.  From my childhood in Texas I vaguely remember my father talking about turning the water off "at the mains" when work needed to be done on the pipes. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 19:19, 6 January 2015 (UTC)

"shutoff valve" DTLHS (talk) 19:27, 6 January 2015 (UTC)

• Huh. My wife and I are both US-East-Coast-born English speakers, and we both call the shutoff valve for a toilet a stopcock. Neither of us has spent any time living in the UK. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 19:56, 6 January 2015 (UTC)

shut-off valve. DCDuring TALK 20:48, 6 January 2015 (UTC)

By the Pawley they-call-it-an-X,-we-call-it-a-Y principle, we need an entry for shut-off valve. DCDuring TALK 20:50, 6 January 2015 (UTC)

Thanks, everyone. I don't know who Pawley is. I think we can use 'shut-off valve' as well in the UK. https://www.google.co.uk/#q=%22water+off+at+the+shut-off+valve%22+site:.co.uk has only two result, but https://www.google.co.uk/#q=%22the+shut-off+valve%22+site:.co.uk does have some results; although it doesn't seem to refer to the 'stopcock in the road' (the water mains shut-off valve), it does have some more general usage as far as I can see.

Sadly, 'stopcock' is being usurped by 'stop tap', leading to one water board website to explain that 'stop tap' means the same thing as 'stopcock'. Kaixinguo (talk) 22:59, 6 January 2015 (UTC)

How about ballcock? Ball rooster :) ? Kaixinguo (talk) 23:00, 6 January 2015 (UTC)

• @Kaixinguo: Andrew Pawley is a New Zealand linguist who wrote an interesting 20-page article ("Lexicalization", in Deborah Tannen and James E Alatis eds, Languages and Linguistics: The Interdependence of Theory, Data, and Application (GURT '85)) listing various types of evidence that support treating a collocation as part of the lexicon, ie, worth/requiring a dictionary entry. User:DCDuring/Pawley has a summary of the 1985 article that someone here prepared. DCDuring TALK 23:58, 6 January 2015 (UTC)

Ooh thanks, that sounds interesting. Kaixinguo (talk) 00:21, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

It is interesting, but it is a long way from providing us with what we need for speedier RfD discussions. DCDuring TALK 01:07, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

As an American and a chemist, I can assure you that we do have our "stopcocks" and I have used and heard that term frequently since Chem01. The usage may be unusual outside a lab, but it is quite common in reference to simple valves. Ur-Abraxas (talk) 01:29, 21 March 2015 (UTC)

• shut-off valve and shutoff valve combined are more common than stopcock at COCA, but stopcock is more common than either individually. OTOH, 10 of the 13 uses of stopcock were in a medical or lab setting and one was a recollection of an Irish orphanage. FWIW, I would have use spigot for one of the other uses and valve for the other. DCDuring TALK 03:00, 21 March 2015 (UTC)

From my experience and intuition, sort of sounds to be more British and kind of more AmEn, maybe because sort of being direct borrow from French. Google Ngram suggest they're not, the only English dialect where they are close is BrEN2009 around year 1840. The rest of dialects are the same, in all kind of gaining momentum around 1940. In AmEn, % are higher. Any knowledge or idea? Sobreira (talk) 20:14, 6 January 2015 (UTC)

I only sorta, kinda get what you're tryna say. Wanna try again? DCDuring TALK 20:52, 6 January 2015 (UTC)

I am not positive (given your suspicion that sort of is more used in BrEn) is due to any association of the word sort being ultimately from an Old French word. The word sort has been in English for hundreds of years. It is no longer thought of as being connected at all to French, or France...that mindset may have existed in Mediaeval times in Middle English but it certainly doesnt exist today. In English, the two variations sort of and kind of (despite the ultimate origin of the two words sort and kind) are not representative of any Germanic-Latinate pair in the same way that cow and beef are. Both were created in English as variations because the words are synonyms. Leasnam (talk) 16:18, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

Merci Sobreira (talk) 10:41, 29 January 2015 (UTC)

Is it an alternative spelling of acquiescence, or a misspelling? — Ungoliant ^(falai) 22:21, 6 January 2015 (UTC)

I think it was originally entered as a typo, so presumably misspelling, but how common? Renard Migrant (talk) 23:10, 6 January 2015 (UTC)

On w:Crimean Gothic, an IP added the following text, talking about the presence of -d- in the word for 4 (Germanic *fedwōr): "However, one should not forget "fetherstane" (cromlech), from Old Northumbrian (Germanic) "four stone", which indicates a partial survival of this D in some dialects of West Germanic." Is it true that there are attestations of this word in Old English which preserve the original -d- intact? —CodeCat 20:58, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

Absolutely! But not as -d-, it has been modified to -ð-, as in the prefix fiþer- (“four-, tetra-”). Leasnam (talk) 06:34, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

So the IP was wrong, and this is not a remnant of the -d- of *fedwōr? —CodeCat 11:23, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

Well, it depends on how strict or exclusive you choose to be. Would I consider it to be a remnant? Yes. The prefix ultimately is tied to, if not derived from the numeral *fedwōr, so the Old English prefix fiþer- does preserve a reflex of the more original form of the word in regards to it containing a medial dental consonant. But I wouldnt say that it is a survival in the word for 'four', I have never seen a dental in any form or variation of Old English fēower. Leasnam (talk) 15:48, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

Should this not be a proper noun? I don't usually edit English entries so I am checking here. Kaixinguo (talk) 13:55, 10 January 2015 (UTC)

Maybe, but since there's no clear definition of the difference between a proper noun and a common noun, it's impossible to know for sure. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 14:25, 10 January 2015 (UTC)

Hello all,

I'm very new, indeed I joined to add this very word, but I'm also an avid dictionary enthusiast and I greatly appreciate the service done here for mankind, bravo!

So, when I searched online for this term, there are bloggers and individuals using it as I do, very few, it seems very new. It is of concern to me as the term fits me rather well. No "outrovert" was listed here, so I created it, and then signed up immediately afterwards. Since, checking for the term, brings up a false definition! At least it is not one I, or anyone else online, is using.

Outrovert is not just a pointless other term for extrovert, and here I'm a tad annoyed, I shall confess, extroverts already have so much attention and are assumed 'normal', introverts are my under-dog brethren, and "outrovert" is actually being used, in the wild, to mean, well as I already defined it in my entry, an introvert that takes to the outdoors for their solace and recharging time, rather than hiding indoors. It's such a positive term, and one empowering a minority of people to club together, I see it as rather a poor use, and even an injustice, to have it being a mere synonym of extrovert, as a silly quip from introvert. No no no.

Kindest regards, K

I've restored your preferred sense (reworded somewhat to be a suitable definition for a noun rather than an adjective and to be more concise) but left the "extrovert" sense as well, and I've started a request for verification for both senses so that we can see how the word is actually used in durably archived sources. It's possible, of course, that both senses are attested. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 21:31, 10 January 2015 (UTC)

Thanks Angr!

People who invent a word for their personality, and get upset about who uses it, tend to be making up words that nobody else uses. We will see how the RFV turns out. Equinox ◑ 01:23, 11 January 2015 (UTC)

Surprised we don't have this relatively common idiom. Still not exactly sure what it means though. Any ideas? ---> Tooironic (talk) 05:49, 11 January 2015 (UTC)

• See footloose and fancy free SemperBlotto (talk) 07:59, 11 January 2015 (UTC)

  Oh. That's weird that it didn't come up. ---> Tooironic (talk) 12:56, 11 January 2015 (UTC)

  I've made it a redirect. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 13:14, 11 January 2015 (UTC)

  Many thanks. ---> Tooironic (talk) 02:23, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

Is this really an eye dialect spelling? Isn't the pronunciation somewhat peculiar? --Fsojic (talk) 09:29, 11 January 2015 (UTC)

No, it's not eye dialect, though "goverment" would be. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 09:35, 11 January 2015 (UTC)

@Angr: If it isn't eye dialect, what is it? It certainly seems to me to be attestable as eye dialect, however else it may be used. DCDuring TALK 10:29, 11 January 2015 (UTC)

It's just a nonstandard form. It would only be eye dialect if the standard pronunciation of government were /ɡʌbmɪnt/. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 10:32, 11 January 2015 (UTC)

@Angr:

1. I think we have a lot of use of {{eye dialect}} to clean up if we use that definition rather than "the use of misspellings to identify a colloquial or uneducated speaker" (AHD, WordNet and its followers). I don't think we have been using the term as the coiner intended. If we had been, we would/should have created {{pronunciation spelling}} to cover the spelling we now include and show as eye dialect.
2. The spelling is certainly often used as a way of indicating something negative about those who purportedly use the "non-standard" pronunciation, which is implied as being one used by poorly educated speakers from "red" states. DCDuring TALK 11:44, 11 January 2015 (UTC)

Yes, people have long been misusing {{eye dialect}} here. I try to clean it up as I discover it. I've changed it now to:

{{nonstandard spelling of|government|nodot=1|lang=en}} {{i|used to reflect a nonstandard pronunciation}}

—Aɴɢʀ (talk) 11:49, 11 January 2015 (UTC)

We could also call it simply an alternative spelling of gubmint. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 11:51, 11 January 2015 (UTC)

The question is, should gubmint follow the same formatting as gub'mint? Or does it deserve a full entry? --Fsojic (talk) 14:45, 11 January 2015 (UTC)

They are both eye dialect by the definition of eye dialect that has been used here and seems to be the one most accepted, non-prescriptivist one. DCDuring TALK 16:30, 11 January 2015 (UTC)

The definition we have here isn't different from the one implied by Angr or the one we can find on wikipedia, it has just been misunderstood because it's incomplete, in that it doesn't say that the spelling is only suggestive and doesn't reflect an actual change in pronunciation. So this doesn't apply to gubmint. --Fsojic (talk) 17:30, 11 January 2015 (UTC)

• I don't see why this would not be eye dialect. I disagree with Angr, and with their edit in gub'mint. Some definitions here: AHD; Wiktionary in old revision before Angr changed it: this revision: "Nonstandard spellings, deliberately used by an author to indicate that the speaker uses a nonstandard or dialectal speech." --Dan Polansky (talk) 18:21, 11 January 2015 (UTC)

  Later: Angr may be right, and my diff wrong. We need to clarify that. I placed some quotations at Citations:eye dialect. Please let us collect more quotations, even mentions; I think mentions will be more helpful to clarify the various meanings in which "eye dialect" is used. --Dan Polansky (talk) 18:50, 11 January 2015 (UTC)

  The wikipedia article sums it up pretty well:

Eye dialect is the use of nonstandard spelling for speech to draw attention to an ironically standard pronunciation. The term was coined by George P. Krapp to refer to the literary technique of using nonstandard spelling that implies a pronunciation of the given word that is actually standard, such as wimmin for women; the spelling indicates that the character's speech overall is dialectal, foreign, or uneducated. This form of nonstandard spelling differs from others in that a difference in spelling does not indicate a difference in pronunciation of a word. That is, it is dialect to the eye rather than to the ear. It suggests that a character "would use a vulgar pronunciation if there were one" and "is at the level of ignorance where one misspells in this fashion, hence mispronounces as well."

The term is less commonly also used to refer to pronunciation spellings, that is, spellings of words that indicate that they are pronounced in a nonstandard way. For example, an author might write dat as an attempt at accurate transcription of a nonstandard pronunciation of that.

I think we should just stick to the former definition (as does, again, the article), and speak of "pronunciation spelling" in relevant cases. --Fsojic (talk) 19:16, 11 January 2015 (UTC)

You are proposing a change in our practice. I'll quote from Talk:eye dialect: "RFV-failed as sense in that entry (but kept as the definition of the term in our glossary, because it's how our entries and templates use it)." In sense definitions, it seems Wiktionary has been using "eye dialect" in the broader, AHD sense; you now want to change that. The current manner by which Wiktionary uses the term should be verifiable by the current content of Category:English eye dialect. --Dan Polansky (talk) 19:30, 11 January 2015 (UTC)

See also Appendix:Glossary#E, "eye dialect". --Dan Polansky (talk) 19:34, 11 January 2015 (UTC)

I do. Wiktionary is a linguistic work, and should be as accurate as possible. There is no reason for us to choose the broader meaning that encompasses two different concepts, especially when there is an appropriate terminology at hand. --Fsojic (talk) 19:58, 11 January 2015 (UTC)

You are implying that the broader meaning is inaccurate, which I do not think to be the case. "cat" originally used to refer only to the domestic animal, and now is used in a new sense to also refer to the likes of tiger, and being late on scene does not make the broader meaning of "cat" inaccurate. If the narrower meaning is much more widely used, a switch in Wiktionary practice may be advisable, though. Such a switch is much better suited for Beer parlour than to Tea room, which discusses individual words rather than changes in practice and policy. --Dan Polansky (talk) 20:08, 11 January 2015 (UTC)

The difference is that eye dialect is a technical term, and cat isn't. Eye dialect is more comparable to felid; it has a firm definition in its field, and although nonspecialists may sometimes use it imprecisely, a reference work like a dictionary should be careful to use it in its technically correct sense. So even if we find that eye dialect is sometimes used to mean nonstandard spellings that reflect a nonstandard pronunciation, we can add that definition (with an appropriate label like "loosely" or "by extension" or something), but we still shouldn't use the {{eye dialect}} tag in the nonspecialist sense. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 20:36, 11 January 2015 (UTC)

If eye dialect is a term with a technical sense and a more general sense closely connected with the component terms, the technical sense is totally inappropriate for use in a definiens in a general-purpose dictionary for the general population, as Wiktionary is. It seems that the better approach would be to rename or redirect {{eye dialect of}} to {{pronunciation spelling}} and then use hard categories or switches to add categories for finer distinctions. This particularly true as the history of our use of the template clearly uses a definition close to spelling pronunciation and not the narrow, original sense. Clearly we need to show a bit more respect to the work done in the past before wantonly attempting poorly thought-through unilateral reforms. DCDuring TALK 23:08, 11 January 2015 (UTC)

I don't feel any particular need to show respect to poorly researched work done in the past. People who don't know what eye dialect is shouldn't go around labeling things {{eye dialect of}}. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 20:56, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

Such an approach is not appropriate for a work funded by charitable donations and volunteer effort and intended to serve a broad population of users. It smacks of elitist prescriptivism. The use of technical definitions of terms that seem to have a surface meaning significantly different from the technical one is wrong for Wiktionary in all cases, as wrong as using obsolete, rare, and sesquipedalian words unnecessarily in entries. Non-academic published works try to find terms that allow better communication with normal folk.

It seems to me that the solution to the problem is to redirect {{eye dialect}} to {{pronunciation spelling}} immediately, bot-edit all uses of {{eye dialect}} to {{pronunciation spelling}} when convenient, and look for the relatively few instances of actual "eye dialect" and hard categorize them to subcategories of Category:eye dialect. The last thing we need to do is once more subject curious readers unnecessarily to the ambiguity of a term such as eye dialect. DCDuring TALK 21:20, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

Without getting into the question of which meaning of "eye dialect" is correct, my impression is that the number of entries which use it in the way DCDuring describes do dwarf the entries which use it in the way Angr describes. Hence, if we want to discontinue use of the term with the meaning DCDuring describes, his suggestion of bot-renaming all current uses is sound, and I would add that we should probably also discontinue {{eye-dialect of}}, lest new uses take us quickly back to the current lopsided ratio of DCDuring-like-uses to Angr-like-uses. However, I question if "pronunciation spelling" is the best replacement term; The American Heritage Guide to Contemporary Usage and Style suggests that it means the same thing as "pronunciation respelling" and refers to a nonstandard spelling used to more closely reflect a (standard) pronunciation. But perhaps if we included, by default, text along the lines of what is currently added by the optional from= parameter, it would work. I.e., by default the template would display " of x, representing a dialectal pronunciation.", and by setting the from= parameter one could optionally specify which dialect. - -sche (discuss) 04:55, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

Support Sounds good to me, though I hypothesize that most folks wouldn't look up the term in The American Heritage Guide to Contemporary Usage and Style but rather in a reference such as those at “pronunciation spelling”, in OneLook Dictionary Search., specifically RHU and AHD to find a more transparent meaning or construct the transparent meaning from the components. RHU uses pronunciation spelling to mark the entries we have been calling eye dialect. DCDuring TALK 11:45, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

Support —Mr. Granger (talk • contribs) 15:52, 17 January 2015 (UTC)

Would "judging by" warrant an entry as a conjunction with the meaning of "according to"? E.g. Judging by the market reports, this sort of product sells well. ---> Tooironic (talk) 09:19, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

IMO no. Standard grammatical construct. Could also say "if we judge by __", "when judged by __" etc. which is not the case with "accord" ("*I hope it will accord to __"). Equinox ◑ 18:37, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

I see. Thanks. ---> Tooironic (talk) 02:22, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

anyone knows what Sabre means??

• Did you consider looking at our entry for sabre? SemperBlotto (talk) 12:01, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

I'm sure someone does. But I don't know what you mean: sabre, any of w:Sabre (disambiguation), or something else? DCDuring TALK 12:07, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

To which sense does the quotation belong? DTLHS (talk) 00:51, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

I'm discussing the cocktail called the Ramos Gin Fizz. Its creator H.C. Ramos called it a New Orleans Fizz, but his name was ultimately the one that stuck. I'm tempted to say the following: The New Orleans Fizz first served by H.C. Ramos didn’t become eponymous with its creator until the early 1900s. I'm not sure this is acceptable, however, and I think I have two related concerns:

• Can something become eponymous? (my guess is yes)
• Can something be eponymous with someone? (I have no idea)

I do see some scattered usage in Google searches but nothing that's set my mind at ease. With thanks —JamesLucas (" " / +) 14:03, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

A quick look at COCA finds with to be the only preposition that heads a prepositional phrase complementing eponymous. But Google books search shows abundant use with of and to also. DCDuring TALK 18:28, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for that source. I did see plenty of uses of "eponymous with" but none of them seemed particularly reputable. I think I'm going to scrap this. —JamesLucas (" " / +) 21:14, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

Was just watching a TV show where one of the characters visits a fortune teller who says, "You will have some very interesting connections in Indonesia in the future. You’re coming and going, coming and going. Indonesia has got your name on it." Was wondering how we can cover this construction of "x has your name on it" on Wiktionary? ---> Tooironic (talk) 02:38, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

We have have one's name on it. Cassell's Dictionary of Slang has have one's name on.

Google "have|has|had|having|got my|your|his|their name|names on" (Books • Groups • Scholar) and Google "have|has|had|having|got my|your|his|their name|names on it" (Books • Groups • Scholar) show that the literal senses dominate. The extended, non-SoP meanings include "is owned by one" (nearly literal} and "is destined for one". Variant forms like "have one's name all over" and "have one's name written all over" will show a higher proportion of the extended meanings, I think. DCDuring TALK 03:58, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

• Wasn't the original form referring to a bullet "with ones name on it" - meaning one was certain to be shot? Maybe World War One? SemperBlotto (talk) 08:21, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

  I doubt that it was the original usage, but it certainly popularized the "destiny" sense of the term. DCDuring TALK 11:53, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

• I've moved have one's name on it to have one's name on in line with the first usage example, which had her instead of it. Feel free to move it back, split the entry etc. It's just a suggestion. DCDuring TALK 12:05, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

• Looks much better now. Thanks. ---> Tooironic (talk) 14:57, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

I think we have a problem here. An affair or love affair just means a romantic or sexual relationship between two people who are not married to each other right? It doesn't have to be adulterous as far as I know. ---> Tooironic (talk) 07:07, 14 January 2015 (UTC) What I mean is, it can refer to an adulterous relationship, but it can also refer to a non-adulterous one. ---> Tooironic (talk) 07:10, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

My understanding is that any two people can have a "love affair", but a plain "affair" in the context of the relationship of two people tends to imply that at least one of them is married to someone else. --Catsidhe ^{(verba, facta)} 11:16, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

Or in a steady relationship. Usually talking about marriage, just not always. Renard Migrant (talk) 11:54, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

I think there is always an element of betrayal, that, for at least one partner, the affair is not with the person with whom one is in a more public, long-term committed relationship. DCDuring TALK 12:11, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

From my understanding, this phrase can have two meanings: 1) it's possible 2) it's not impossible. For example, if my friend says she will never accept a low-paying job, and I say, "you never know", what I mean is that she could actually find herself in a situation where she might accept a low-paying job, that the future is unpredictable. I am not, as the entry currently suggests, speculating about a slight possibility - I am actually expressing doubt about an impossibility. Right? ---> Tooironic (talk) 10:58, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

I interpret that as "actually, there is a slight possibility that you will accept a low-paying job". Equinox ◑ 11:34, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

Today's Guardian newspaper has a picture of these strange German things. There is no entry in the German Wiktionary but their Wikipedia has an entry for w:de:Silvesterklaus. My German is not good enough to add an entry here, and I don't know if it should be "Silvesterklaus", "Silvesterchlaus" or even "Silvesterkläuse". I don't know how to translate it as the English Wikipedia doesn't seem to have an entry. Any ideas? SemperBlotto (talk) 11:02, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

I think it's Silvesterklaus with the nominative plural Silvesterkläuse. I know that in France every day has a saint's name and the 31st of December it's Saint Sylvestre, so la Saint-Sylvestre is the most common name for New Year's Eve. Renard Migrant (talk) 11:52, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

Chlaus I think is an archaic form of Klaus. Also see Silvester which explains what I was saying about saints. Quite common in Europe it seems, but not whatsoever in the UK! Renard Migrant (talk) 11:53, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

Chlaus (IPA ) would be a Swiss German form of Klaus and related to Nikolaus (called Chlaus in Switzerland as well). I've never heard of a Silvesterklaus or anything of this kind. It's probably restricted to Switzerland, or southern Germany at most.Kolmiel (talk) 16:47, 19 January 2015 (UTC)

Yeah. It's a Swiss thing, it seems even restricted to a certain part of Switzerland. (I hadn't seen the Wikipedia article you'd mentioned.)Kolmiel (talk) 16:52, 19 January 2015 (UTC)

It's true, of course, that Silvester (also spelt Sylvester) is the normal German word for New Year's Eve. (Actually the only word there is, I think.) But the chlaus-thing is not common at all. As I said I had never heard of it, even though I'm not uninterested in regional traditions.Kolmiel (talk) 17:00, 19 January 2015 (UTC)

I was wondering about this greek. This word basically means whole,everything or like the whole universe. Is this where peter pan got his name? I would certainly like to know the origin of the peter pan name and if it came from this word.

Peter Pan’s name comes from the Greek god Πάν. See the etymology on that page. —Stephen ^(Talk) 11:41, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

apparently truculence in French means vividness of style. This is rather different from the meaning in English. Only the English definition is currently available in Wiktionary. RP

• I have added a French entry with definition taken from the French Wiktionary (ditto truculent and truculer). SemperBlotto (talk) 08:18, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

hi. i would like the below verse translated into sanskrit. Live every moment, Laugh everyday, Love beyond words, Accept Life.

Sorry, it is too complex and difficult. I would have to spend hours trying to understand the meaning of some of those lines. I usually allot only five minutes or so to a free Sanskrit translation. —Stephen ^(Talk) 11:37, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

You almost certainly mean "Laugh every day", not "Laugh everyday". 81.132.196.237 18:44, 17 January 2015 (UTC)

venturi effect, venturi mask, venturi scrubber, venturi tube. From a glance in Google Books, I think for each of these terms the V is overwhelming or always capitalized. Not so sure about venturi itself. Equinox ◑ 15:35, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

A look at COCA suggests otherwise, but does not provide enough data to be relied on. I am afraid that each collocation needs to be looked at individually. Some attributive use of lower-case venturi seems to be attributive use in the sense "venturi tube". DCDuring TALK 15:47, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

venturi scrubber looks more common than Venturi scrubber in running text at Google Books, based on sample of 30. DCDuring TALK 15:55, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

None of the following suggests overwhelming capitalization: venturi scrubber,Venturi scrubber at the Google Books Ngram Viewer., venturi effect,Venturi effect at the Google Books Ngram Viewer., venturi tube, Venturi tube at the Google Books Ngram Viewer.. --Dan Polansky (talk) 16:11, 17 January 2015 (UTC)

Can someone check a definitive dictionary for the pronunciation of this? I've only ever seen it used in writing by Gilbert White, I don't know if it's an alternate spelling of the more common word, and has a diphthong, or if it comes from french damme, and has the same vowel as that one, or perhaps as the other sense of dam, the structure? edit: copied to tea room, I was confused about which section to use for these discussions — This comment was unsigned.

Out of curiosity, why wouldn't you "check a definitive dictionary"?

I would pronounce it like dame#French. I think that the dam spelling is intended to avoid pronouncing dame to rhyme with aim. DCDuring TALK 16:49, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

Are we talking about the English word? If so, etymology 2 is pronounced just like etymology 1, and they're both homophonous with damn and rhyme with ham and jam. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 00:13, 16 January 2015 (UTC)

I'd say the pronunciation of etymology 2 of dam is . Renard Migrant (talk) 00:26, 16 January 2015 (UTC)

Or , depending upon who you ask. ;) Tharthan (talk) 00:09, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

I'm a bit unsure how to write the entry schering en inslag. These are two nouns, and the combined phrase acts grammatically like any other conjunction of two nouns. It can be compared to something like fire and water in English. Because it's two nouns, it doesn't really have grammatical gender, and plurals in Dutch have no gender. But this is not really a plural either because it doesn't require plural verb inflection, just like an English phrase would (both "fire and water is" and "fire and water are" can be used). So what is it? —CodeCat 23:42, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

dvandva ? --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 23:45, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

From what I can see, that term also has a semantic implication. It looks like a dvandva is something that uses two words to denote a semantic "boundary" where the combination includes everything in between. That wouldn't necessarily apply here, especially as this combination is an idiom with a totally different meaning. —CodeCat 23:51, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

The definition for dvandvas is how they behave syntactically, not what the resulting compound means. Idiomacity is just an additional semantic constraint that precludes exchangeability of the constituents. Wikipedia article is too biased in favor of grc/sa, a better overview can be found here. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 21:33, 17 January 2015 (UTC)

Like fish and chips, clicks and mortar? We seem to class them as nouns, though "noun phrase" might be more accurate. Equinox ◑ 23:55, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

But in a language like Dutch, the gender is not clearly determined either, which makes it more difficult to call it a real noun. Unfortunately, gender inflection in Dutch adjectives is rather rudimentary, so it's not so easy to figure out what the gender of a combination like this is. I wonder how languages like Spanish handle it. —CodeCat 00:00, 16 January 2015 (UTC)

I would leave them genderless. Spanish, French, etc. would use the gender of both nouns, mixed genders being masculine. In Russian, it would only matter if they are animate or inanimate. --Anatoli T. ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 00:08, 16 January 2015 (UTC)

If it's genderless, then it can't be a noun. Which kind of makes sense, because it's two nouns. Also, if such a phrase is used as the subject, does the verb inflect as singular, plural or either in those languages? If it can be singular, what gender does an adjective have? For example, if you say "X and Y is/are (adjective)"? —CodeCat 00:11, 16 January 2015 (UTC)

In German, they would either be a noun phrase in the plural and thus without gender (Feuer und Wasser sind, never *Feuer und Wasser ist). Or they would be nouns of their own right with a gender, most often neuter (e.g. das Hab und Gut, das Fish & Chips).Kolmiel (talk) 16:40, 19 January 2015 (UTC) --- (Or at least I can't think of any that are singular and do not have a gender. Of course, gender might sometimes vary, but speakers would give it a gender.)Kolmiel (talk) 16:45, 19 January 2015 (UTC)

Is this word attestable in English too? ---> Tooironic (talk) 11:20, 16 January 2015 (UTC)

Indeed it is. Smurrayinchester (talk) 12:31, 16 January 2015 (UTC)

Many thanks. ---> Tooironic (talk) 15:59, 17 January 2015 (UTC)

There is a discussion if singular they can be used to refer to animals or objects at Talk:they#Singular_senses. We are thinking of combining senses for unknown gender singular and known gender singular if there are citations for singular with an animal or object as its referent. Timeraner (talk) 16:58, 16 January 2015 (UTC)

Years ago as a kid, I used to read those Commando war comics. One word that often came up was "kato". It was used by Japanese characters as an insult for the allies, as in "Die, you kato dog". But I could not find any evidence of it now. Anyone remember it, or able to find it.--Dmol (talk) 20:10, 16 January 2015 (UTC)

This was on WT:REE for some years. I searched a few times, but found nothing, so eventually removed it. Equinox ◑ 00:56, 17 January 2015 (UTC)

Japanese is such a bonkers language in terms of homophones, but one "kato" (actually "katō"), 下等, means something like "inferior" or "low-class". I wonder whether it could be that? 81.132.196.237 13:03, 17 January 2015 (UTC)

There is a sense missing. I mean the one that is often found in casual online forums or speech as in "someone farted "cough" brian". Can someone add that sense please? I would really appreciate that. Thank you. 89.241.25.94 00:55, 17 January 2015 (UTC)

I've taken a run at this, but the non-gloss definition could be improved (replaced?) and more usage examples added. DCDuring TALK 02:05, 17 January 2015 (UTC)

You don't think it would qualify as an interjection? DTLHS (talk) 02:57, 17 January 2015 (UTC)

I think hardly anything qualifies as an interjection except for words that are: 1, not derived homonyms of words of other word classes, 2, are expressions of emotion (broadly defined), and, 3, occur in grammatical isolation from the sentence(s) surrounding them. Others here classify anything that is in grammatical isolation as an interjection, which would included absolute expressions and prosentences if they were consistent. I have not seen a definition offered here that would include all and only what we include as interjections. DCDuring TALK 03:09, 17 January 2015 (UTC)

This letter, meaning the absence of vowal (and double following consonant), seems to be no more popular in modern Tifinagh writings. For example, my reference book (see here) do not use it, but notes the double consonant.

For example : ⴰⵎⴻⵍⴰⵍ => ⴰⵎⵍⵍⴰⵍ

Transliteration is the same (amellal). Pronounciation is /a.məl.'læl/

--Lucyin (talk) 17:57, 17 January 2015 (UTC)

I see both forms are in Wiktionary. So, it should be evidenced that it is the same word, with the same pronounciation, just differences in orthography conventions.

--Lucyin (talk) 18:01, 17 January 2015 (UTC)

I completed both articles with alternative forms and pronounciation. Is it right ?

--Lucyin (talk) 18:15, 17 January 2015 (UTC)

@Lucyin Normally we would mark one as an alternative spelling of the other. See dramatize and dramatise for an example. It doesn't really matter which you pick to be the "main" form and which to be the alternative form. This, that and the other (talk) 08:40, 27 January 2015 (UTC)

Chuck Entz and I have a dispute on the wiktionary page for blasphemy. You can see my correction and his revert here. My attempt to resolve our disagreement can be read here.

A draft version, that I submit for comments to Tea room participants, can be seen here. Contrast it with the reverted version.

Reasons I favor the draft version:

• While I am fine with including the definition of word as "insulting a deity", this is incomplete because these are not redundant. A God is a deity, but a deity is not necessarily a God. A deity can be demigod, non-god, natural object, etc.
• Per WT:NPOV poilcy, wiktionary definition should express all significant meaning, viewpoint. The predominant use, most widespread meaning of blasphemy relates to "certain speech and action against God or a sacred entity". (See any major dictionary or encyclopedia; for exampe: Meriam Webster (2012), Blasphemy, Quote: "great disrespect shown to God or to something holy"; The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (2013), Quote: "Contemptuous or profane speech or action concerning God or a sacred entity."). The older/reverted version did not mention "God" anywhere, not even once.
• The older version alleged the word to mean "irreverence to deities". But "blasphemy against deities" fails attestation, clearly widespread use, per WT:CFI policy.

Which version of blasphemy definition is more consistent with WT:NPOV and WT:CFI, and why?

RLoutfy (talk) 21:49, 17 January 2015 (UTC)

If blasphemy can't apply to any deity, but only to a god, then "deity" should be replaced. Otherwise, it is fine as it is, "god" is redundant as "deity" already encompasses it (see the definitions at deity). NPOV means that we should describe all meanings, so limiting it to just "God" is showing a preference to the monotheistic view of religion, which of course is definitely not neutral. —CodeCat 21:56, 17 January 2015 (UTC)

I think we should have both, monotheistic and polytheistic usage, to respect WT:NPOV. The current version is inadvertently pushing only the polytheistic angle, which is not the widespread sense of use of word blasphemy.

Can you attest, per WT:CFI guidelines, that the word blasphemy applies to "any deity" or "deities"? I find none for "deities", nor for "any deity" (universal sense). Yes, there is some historical usage for "deity" as well as "gods", but predominant usage is "God or sacred entity". RLoutfy (talk) 22:12, 17 January 2015 (UTC)

That's a slippery slope, though, because there are as many POVs as there are religions and gods. Are we to replace "deity" with "God, Jehovah, Allah, Brahma, Odin, Jupiter..."? We use the term "deity" because it encompasses all those things. That said, it's easy to find references of blaspheming against a variety of things. Just look for "blaspheme against (insert deity here)". —CodeCat 22:17, 17 January 2015 (UTC)

The context of any above is demi-god, natural objects, non-gods - all of which can be deities in various pagan traditions. My concern is that blasphemy doesn't apply to any deity, nor deities. Disrespect, criticism, cursing demigod deity, non-god deity, natural object deity was/is not blasphemy in some pagan traditions.

The word God, in English, includes the various contextual sense of words you list. On search you recommend, I have done that already (e.g. "blaspheme against deities") - a sense reflected on the current wiktionary page. I get two hits on google (one in a forum), none in any book, none in scholarly publications. The results for "blasphemy of deities" thus fail WT:CFI.

Why not include both poly- and mono- theistic versions of the definition? RLoutfy (talk) 22:40, 17 January 2015 (UTC)

It may not be blasphemy in some religions, but it is in others. For example, what an Ancient Greek might have considered blasphemy against Zeus is probably not considered blasphemy by modern-day Orthodox Christians. Recently, many people considered the publication of pictures of Mohammed blasphemy, but many others did not. This is the slippery slope. We can't possibly list every single sect's nuanced version of blasphemy. So the definition we have is general enough to include the overall aspects that these various definitions of each religion have in common.

And as for your search, have you tried searching for things like "blasphemy against Odin", "blasphemy against Artemis" or "blasphemy against Vishnu"? —CodeCat 22:57, 17 January 2015 (UTC)

"Blasphemy against Odin" etc are not mentioned on the wiktionary page. All it mentions is "deity" and "deities". That is what is relevant for WT:CFI.

Show me WT:CFI-compliant attested use of "blasphemy against deities", or "blasphemy against demi-god/nongod deity".

Once again, I am not saying "do not use deity" or "replace deity everywhere on the page with the term God" on blasphemy page. I am suggesting that include both "God" (widespread) and "deity" (fringe, historic) sense of meanings, for WT:NPOV. I am also suggesting that we remove "deities" per WT:CFI. RLoutfy (talk) 23:15, 17 January 2015 (UTC)

Um... but you realise Odin is a deity, right? Therefore, the definition fits. That's what's relevant for CFI. Furthermore, people still use the word "blasphemy" to refer to an act against a polytheistic god or other kind of deity. So that's a modern sense, modern utterances are still created with that meaning. And "fringe" is completely irrelevant for a dictionary entry. —CodeCat 23:20, 17 January 2015 (UTC)

Yes I know. And that would be covered by including the "blasphemy against deity" sense of meaning. The issue is that that is not the only, nor even widespread sense of the meaning. That creates WT:NPOV issue.

Your position ignores the fact that deity or deities do not mean God in Islam, for example. The Shahada (Arabic: الشهادة) of Islam states, "There is no god but God". Blasphemy in Islamic context isn't "Contemptuous or profane speech or action concerning deity or deities". Blasphemy in Islam, for example, is "Contemptuous or profane speech or action concerning God". For neutral point of view, the monotheistic version of the definition should be included. RLoutfy (talk) 23:29, 17 January 2015 (UTC)

Then it's the entry deity you want changed. It currently defines it as "a divine being; a god or goddess". This definition includes the Islamic god. But I get the feeling you're just trying to push your POV while calling it neutral. I already said that we can't include every single religious group's particular definition of what blasphemy is. The current general definition already includes the Islamic definition. Any act that is blasphemy by Islam is also blasphemy by the current definition in the entry, if I'm not mistaken. For example, insulting the Islamic god does fit the description "act of insulting or showing contempt or lack of reverence for any religion's deity or deities". If you don't understand that then I don't know what else to tell you. —CodeCat 23:36, 17 January 2015 (UTC)

Wow, did PaM hire a gang of Islam kooks to come and screw us up, after he got banned? Equinox ◑ 23:50, 17 January 2015 (UTC)

Codecat - Not at all. I do not want "deity" page changed. It matches the widespread meaning of that word.

My focus is the blasphemy page. I am saying include both definitions, monotheistic and polytheistic senses of definition. I gave three reasons above (God is deity, but a deity is not necessarily God; etc). I have even added references to help you verify attested use. Monotheistic concept of God is different than monotheistic concept of deity (god) - I have given you proof above. You are alleging that polytheistic definition covers the monotheistic definition, which is neither true nor have you provided evidence/attested-use to prove so.

I am open to constructive collaboration with you to improve the blasphemy page. While you accuse me of POV, I refuse to accuse you of anything. Let us assume good faith. RLoutfy (talk) 00:05, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

Would changing it to 'against a god' make you that much happier? In term of polytheismgoogle books:"blasphemy against Odin" google books:"blasphemy against Vishnu" both get a hit. You seem to be by your own admission, ardently arguing to replace one word with a synonym of that word. Renard Migrant (talk) 00:25, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

I am not seeking replacement of "deity" to "god". I am seeking that we add, "4. Disrespect, contemptuous or profane speech or action concerning God" with capital G. That is the widespread use, and attested in every major dictionary and encyclopedia I have checked (see two examples above). RLoutfy (talk) 00:34, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

But as I said, that sense is redundant to the existing one, because a capital God is a deity. —CodeCat 00:38, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

(edit conflict) The "God" is "a god", which is a deity. And which God is the God depends entirely upon who you ask. You are seeking to make a distinction without a difference, to include a specific example of a general term purely so that monotheists can feel fuzzy and included because they can then continue to make believe that their God is not somehow "a god", and that they are uniquely special, and the definition is written specifically for their God, and not for any of those heathen imposters who call themselves "God".

You are pushing a point of view (that "God" is somehow not "a god") which is semantically nonsensical, and you are pushing it in a passive-aggressive "I'm being nice and reasonable so you aren't allowed to call what I'm saying bullshit", "I'm being NPOV if I say I am" way. And I'd have a bit more respect for your position if this argument were not literally the only thing you've done on Wiktionary under this name. --Catsidhe ^{(verba, facta)} 00:44, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

CodeCat - Not so. See: google books:"God is not a deity" for attested counter-examples. RLoutfy (talk) 00:47, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

Most of those examples are part of sentences which directly contradict you ("But the true God is not a Deity who can neither help nor injure men"... ie., God is a Deity), and even if not, the existence of a sentence does nothing to argue for the truth of that sentence. See: google books:"I am a teapot" for attested examples. --Catsidhe ^{(verba, facta)} 00:55, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

Attestation doesn't make truth, google books:"Elvis Presley is alive" and so on. RLoutfy has made his point, it's been rejected, and we should all move on. Good day everyone. Renard Migrant (talk) 01:20, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

Catsidhe - See Pierson →ISBN.

Quote - "The Pagan gods and goddesses of pre-Christian Europe like Odin, Thor, Mars, Aphrodite and Venus are deities. Deities are human like. God is not a deity."

If you want to go by "most of the examples", then most examples of attested use of "blasphemy" are with the word "God", not with the word "deity", never with the word "deities". The current blasphemy page never uses the word god or God even once. Once again, I am not asking to replace deity with god on that page. I am asking, why not include both polytheistic definition and monotheistic definition. I have already shown attested examples that it is not redundant - "God is not god" in some cases, "God is not deity" in some cases, and "deity is not God" in some cases. A WT:NPOV version would include all attested sense of meanings.

Folks - I am not going to edit the disputed page, if I fail to persuade you. I do appreciate your feedback here, and that I sense is the purpose of Tea House. I am going to sign off for now. I hope you will weigh the evidence on both sides, and revise if appropriate, or leave the page unchanged if appropriate. RLoutfy (talk) 01:27, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

Pushing your own point of view against majority wishes while citing WT:NPOV. That'll make you popular. Renard Migrant (talk) 01:31, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

Chiming in. My thoughts, after reading this through:

• Checking this user's global contributions shows an odd focus on blasphemy.
• The above arguments made by RLoutfy fail to follow logic, and fail to persuade. I can find no sense in the motion to change the blasphemy entry.

Keep unchanged. The context of this user's edits makes this whole thread seem like part of a broader obsession that I neither share nor understand. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 22:34, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

The entry says that "billiard" is an adjective but no examples are given. If it is referring to uses such as "billiard ball", I feel rather doubtful that it is a true adjective. 109.151.61.151 14:58, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

Now moved under the noun section. Equinox ◑ 15:22, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

Is this standard usage or is it a misrepresentation of summons as a plural? — Ungoliant ^(falai) 16:55, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

Not standard usage at all. As you know, the contributor who added that isn't a native speaker of English and tends to overlook a lot of details Chuck Entz (talk) 17:16, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

Perhaps it can be formatted like kudo, with a second etymology section. — Ungoliant ^(falai) 17:24, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

I've greatly expanded our entry on that, and although the usage notes may need more work, I think the senses are now pretty complete — as complete as what Century had and what Merriam-Webster has. There's just one use of the word that I'm not sure how to cover:

• Was Simpson there? — Never that I saw.

Merriam-Webster has this as pronoun 2 sense 2b, "according to what : to the extent of what — used after a negative", but that definition makes it sound more like a conjunction than a pronoun. - -sche (discuss) 04:52, 19 January 2015 (UTC)

• I don't see why MWO def for conjunction 1a(4): "used as a function word to introduce a subordinate clause modifying an adverb or adverbial expression <will go anywhere that he is invited>", isn't sufficient for the usage example. Also couldn't one say, in response to "Was Simpson there?", "Twice that I saw."? Ie, not with a negative. How is the negative supposed to change the grammar, so that switches word class from conjunction to pronoun? DCDuring TALK 19:16, 19 January 2015 (UTC)

Good point re "twice that I saw". OK, I've added two usexes (one with a negative, one without) of this sort of usage to that sense. - -sche (discuss) 17:05, 22 January 2015 (UTC)

In the translations for the first sense: "Dutch: auto (nl) m, wagen (nl) m, automobiel (nl) m (deprecated)"

I had a bit of a chuckle at "deprecated" there. Seriously though, I think deprecated is an inappropriate word here. Is "automobiel" archaic? Obsolete? Just old-fashioned? This, that and the other (talk) 08:40, 19 January 2015 (UTC)

Probably just dated. People wouldn't use it. —CodeCat 16:57, 19 January 2015 (UTC)

The current definition of "manslaugter" seems to be wrong because it explicitly defines it as "unwillful" killing. It seems that manslaughter can be both "willful" and "unwillful". Wikipedia's w:manslaughter distinguishes between "voluntary manslaughter" and "involuntary manslaughter". ---- This is particularly relevant because we translate "manslaughter" with German Totschlag and Dutch doodslag, both of which are explicitly restricted to "voluntary manslaughter", i.e. killing with a will to kill but without prearrangement or premeditiation. ---- An alternative definition could be something like: A criminal act of killing a human being considered less culpable than murder, with legal definitions varying by jurisdiction (unless there is someone who could provide a more detailed definition fitting the situation in the "Anglo-Saxon" laws). What do you think?Kolmiel (talk) 16:33, 19 January 2015 (UTC)

AHD has: "The killing of a person without malice aforethought but with either the intention to commit an unlawful act that leads to an unintended death, or with an otherwise murderous intent that is extenuated by some partial defense, such as acting under the influence of an extreme emotional disturbance occasioned by a substantial provocation on the part of the victim."

Legal definitions are complicated and may differ by jurisdiction, eg, by country and, in the US, by state. In the absence of an ability to definitively analyze all laws for the jurisdictions, we either have to restrict our definition(s) to what we can cite or rely on authorities while avoiding copyright violations. DCDuring TALK 19:27, 19 January 2015 (UTC)

All right. Thanks. (And sorry for answering so late) ... Now what would you propose? At any rate the current definition is wrong, isn't it? We could probably use "malice aforethought". My English isn't good enough to give a perfect solution, just something along the lines of: "The crime of killing a person unlawfully, distinguished from murder by the lack of malice aforethought, and therefore considered less culpable. (Precise legal definitions vary by jurisdiction.)" Do you think you could make some edit of this kind? I mean what harm can it do if the current definition is explicitly wrong?Kolmiel (talk) 17:35, 25 January 2015 (UTC)

@Kolmiel: I have reworded using Webster 1913, which is copyright-free. I can't distinguish the substance from more modern definitions. DCDuring TALK 19:28, 25 January 2015 (UTC)

Okay. Thank you! It's certainly better now. The translations might still be wrong or misleading in some cases. I don't know, but they should be checked. I've adapted the German translations, they should be fine.Kolmiel (talk) 21:58, 27 January 2015 (UTC)

When I was young in the 70's I didn't know what my peers were getting me high on. So I wonder now if I'm being a drug in my adult life what was Hashish mixed with in the 70's? Was in heroin, was it opium, was it cocaine? To ask what it really was is the very ignorance of my youth and it greatly concerns me today. All my mental illness may stem off of the drug I was taking and if it wasn't pure hashish then I'm concerned about what I'm to do about it today. What the question I ask is what are the additives they mixed with hashish back in the 70's to know what I can do about it in my adult life? This opinion only stems off of what drug we are when it comes to that we need to take notice it is how our mind works today. I can understand when we where just teens they would give us an unpure derivative of hashish for a cheaper price. Maybe none of us knew what it would do until they decided to get me high on the drug. How dumb of me when I trusted anyone and everyone I was with. It is time to concern ourselves in 2015 what is legal in the six states that cannabis is legal when it amounts to a pure extraction of marijuana.

Sorry, but this is a dictionary staffed by volunteers, not the Source Of All Knowledge. Even if one of us knew about that stuff, it wouldn't be ethical to discuss it here. The closest thing we have is definitions for slang terms for drugs, but I wouldn't stake my life or well-being on their accuracy. Chuck Entz (talk) 07:17, 21 January 2015 (UTC)

Hello,

I use Wiktionary too seldom to remember the knobs and buttons....

Could someone establish a link between "soulte" in French and "tasinko" in Finnish ? They are the same word in both languages It would be useful to create the English translation too (amount one has to pay to somebody in case of unequal shares in an inheritance)

Thanks!

--BeeJay (talk) 10:22, 21 January 2015 (UTC)

I just read this on the ManCity homepage: "Our live stream is available in all territories excluding those listed below, but you can watch the game courtesy of these alternative broadcasters."

However I don't quite understand the meaning of courtesy in that sentence, since English is not my native tongue. Could someone explain that to me? What is a game courtesy?--31.17.153.189 15:30, 21 January 2015 (UTC)

• See the preposition courtesy of. (I've added your quote) SemperBlotto (talk) 15:38, 21 January 2015 (UTC)
• (EC) In this case, it's part of the phrase "courtesy of", meaning "thanks to". Another way to write it would be "You can watch the game, thanks to these alternative broadcasters", or "These alternative broadcasters will let you watch the game". Smurrayinchester (talk) 15:40, 21 January 2015 (UTC)

"A feeble utterance or complaint. I don't want to hear a peep out of you!" That's not my understanding of the word. I think it means the smallest possible sound (along the lines of whit or jot for the smallest possible amount), so "not a peep" means not even the smallest sound — whereas our definition of "a feeble utterance or complaint" suggests something closer to "no dissent". Equinox ◑ 19:29, 21 January 2015 (UTC)

I just edited Wikipedia's article on "bicarbonate" to include the date (1814) on which the term was coined.

If you want to add that information to Wikitionary's article on "bicarbonate", here's the information:

The term "bicarbonate" was coined in 1814 by the English chemist William Hyde Wollaston.

William Hyde Wollaston (1814) "A synoptic scale of chemical equivalents," Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, 104 : 1-22. On page 11, Wollaston coins the term "bicarbonate": "The next question that occurs relates to the composition of this crystallized carbonate of potash, which I am induced to call bi-carbonate of potash, for the purpose of marking more decidedly the distinction between this salt and that which is commonly called a subcarbonate, and in order to refer at once to the double dose of carbonic acid contained in it."

VexorAbVikipædia (talk) 05:02, 22 January 2015 (UTC)

• Thanks. DCDuring TALK 14:26, 23 January 2015 (UTC)

Wirlu is a Martuthunira word that references gloss as "the blackheart tree". Related languages use wirlu to denote acacias, so the blackheart is probably an acacia. Can anyone figure out which one? The Lincoln Library of Essential Information (1962), page 1072, says "The Blackwood, or Blackheart, an Australian species (A. melanorylon), now grown in California", while Australian Dry-zone Acacias for Human Food (1992, →ISBN, page 62, lists it as a common name of Acacia coriacea. @DCDuring since it's a taxonomic issue. - -sche (discuss) 19:35, 22 January 2015 (UTC)

• I'm not finding blackheart as a vernacular for any species of Acacia. I searched for additional sources both at Google books, at the general taxonomy and plant taxonomy sites and some specialized Australian and acacia sites. No further joy for blackheart. A melanoxylon is usually called blackwood. It is native to the eastern parts of Australia from Tasmania to southern Queensland. There is also an Australian species called blackheart sassafras (Atherosperma moschatum), but it is only native to Tasmania and Victoria. But Martuthunira was spoken in Western Australia per WP. DCDuring TALK 23:38, 22 January 2015 (UTC)

  This search on a Western Australia database for acacia tree species native to the Pilbara found a long list that included A. coriacea. I'd go with that or get in touch with someone in language studies or botany at the University of Western Australia. HTH. DCDuring TALK 23:59, 22 January 2015 (UTC)

  That's a lot more information than I had been able to find! Thank you! - -sche (discuss) 03:00, 23 January 2015 (UTC)

The ety says "Used in English since the 14th century, and as a term of abuse since the 17th century." Yet we have no definition of "pork" as a term of abuse. Equinox ◑ 14:01, 23 January 2015 (UTC)

This looks like a job for the OED.

But, could it be that for "as a term of abuse" it should be "pejoratively" and refer to the sense we limit to US political slang? DCDuring TALK 16:51, 23 January 2015 (UTC)

probably related to the verb form, which possibly comes from "stab with a pork sword" 22:49, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

Discussion moved to Wiktionary:Etymology scriptorium/2015/January#forecastle.

It seems the source for an etymology was removed some time ago, also possibly on pages of other charaters to which I added etymologies from that site: * http://www.kanjinetworks.com/eng/kanji-dictionary/online-kanji-etymology-dictionary.cfm Habemus (talk) 17:38, 25 January 2015 (UTC)

german bekommen in sense 3 is marked intransitive, but the example shows otherwise. I want to simply change it but perhaps the example is ungrammatical?

It's considered intransitive because the object is in the dative rather than the accusative: Das Essen bekommt ihm (not ihn) nicht. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 20:14, 26 January 2015 (UTC)

Do transitive verbs have to take an accusative object? —CodeCat 20:17, 26 January 2015 (UTC)

Yes. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 20:39, 26 January 2015 (UTC)

It's probably not used in Mandarin at all, "nou5gian2" is not valid POJ and, it may be lô͘ -kiáⁿ. @Wyang, WikiWinters. --Anatoli T. ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 22:00, 26 January 2015 (UTC)

Understandable. Are we sure that it doesn't have any Teochew usage? WikiWinters (talk) 22:25, 26 January 2015 (UTC)

It was added a long time ago as the Teochew translation of "child". I don't know if "nou5gian2" is a valid transliteration for Teochew and we currently don't have methods for handling this dialect. Only Mandarin, Cantonese, Min Nan, Min Dong, Wu, Hakka + Middle Chinese and Old Chinese. In order to make an entry work for any dialect not covered, some work may need to be done. If there is no reliable data available, then maybe we should just skip it, since Mandarin "nújiǎn" and Min Nan "lô͘ -kiáⁿ" readings may be non-existent and Teochew can't be added with confidence. Removing Pinyin and POJ readings will result in no PoS categories. --Anatoli T. ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 23:26, 26 January 2015 (UTC)

Just to clarify. I'm not saying "nou5gian2" is wrong but it's not a valid Min Nan (Hokkien) transliteration. --Anatoli T. ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 23:28, 26 January 2015 (UTC)

Teochew added to Module:zh-pron. Wyang (talk) 01:35, 27 January 2015 (UTC)

Striking. Thanks! @Wyang Teochew probably needs categories? --Anatoli T. ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 01:49, 27 January 2015 (UTC)

Is this a valid Asturian verb, or an invention of Wonderfool? See Special:WhatLinksHere/desendoldcar. - -sche (discuss) 02:38, 27 January 2015 (UTC)

Probably a typo for desendolcar. Unless Asturian is very strange, that looks phonotactically rather unlikely. Chuck Entz (talk) 03:08, 27 January 2015 (UTC)

I have deleted that crap. — Ungoliant ^(falai) 03:22, 27 January 2015 (UTC)

seco has the perfect secuī, but this verb has circumsecāvī. Is this correct? —CodeCat 16:11, 27 January 2015 (UTC)

Both Lewis & Short and the Oxford Latin Dictionary say circumseco has no perfect forms. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 10:25, 28 January 2015 (UTC)

Could we take a look and see if there's any documented etymology for this phrase? The verb "hasta" seems to take on a different meaning, typical for expressions, but the lack of history leaves me thinking we could find it. What do you think? Secretkeeper12 (talk) 18:58, 27 January 2015 (UTC)

• hasta is an adverb, not a verb. Sobreira (talk) 10:44, 29 January 2015 (UTC)
  • Actually it's a preposition. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 10:47, 29 January 2015 (UTC)
    • Ups, sorry, true. Sobreira (talk) 14:09, 3 March 2016 (UTC)

Does "child abuser" and "child abuser" have hypens between them?
How do I figure this stuff out?
Why is there a page for "rapists" but no page for "child abuser"

Because "child abuser" is SOP. A child abuser is one who abuses a child, whether sexually, mentally, or emotionally. Similarly a "dog abuser" would be one who abuses a dog, whether sexually, mentally, or emotionally. Ad infinitum. SOP. Tharthan (talk) 23:52, 27 January 2015 (UTC)

This article from the Washington Post has a nice graphic, though the resolution is not high. The article itself holds no surprises for the linguists among us. DCDuring TALK 03:41, 28 January 2015 (UTC)

You can get higher resolution by clicking on the image. The only thing I disagree with is its implication that the Indo-European languages are split into two major groups, Indo-Iranian and European. That's a convenient way of thinking about it, maybe, but it has no linguistic basis. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 09:58, 28 January 2015 (UTC)

The enlarged image is not very high resolution, as I found when I printed it. Some of the labels are not legible to normal folks who do not have an internalized lexicon of language names to draw on. I still am or can remember being normal in that way.

I'm sure the author of the image would be happy to make a higher-resolution on available on some basis, though probably not a WMF-acceptable public license. DCDuring TALK 13:05, 28 January 2015 (UTC)

There's a higher resolution at io9, and also at the artists original comic, although that version is partly fictionalised according to the setting of her story (post-apocalyptic Iceland and Scandinavia). Smurrayinchester (talk) 13:28, 28 January 2015 (UTC)

Thanks. The author's version is quite legible, the other a little less so. DCDuring TALK 13:46, 28 January 2015 (UTC)

Nice graphic indeed! - -sche (discuss) 18:29, 28 January 2015 (UTC)

As Ulmanor pointed out, we were mentioned, briefly, by American public radio. - -sche (discuss) 18:29, 28 January 2015 (UTC)

Joining BNC, COCA, COHA, Time magazine, and GloWBE at the BYU motherlode of free corpora is a compilation of all terms used in Wikipedia.

From the e-mail announcment:

"We have just recently released the BYU Wikipedia Corpus, which is composed of 1.9 billion words in 4.4 million articles. With this new corpus, you can now search Wikipedia in the same way that you can search the other corpora​ from BYU — by word and phrase, part of speech, variable strings, synonyms, comparisons of words, collocates, and concordance lines.

"Most importantly, however, with this interface you can quickly and easily create and then search personalized "virtual corpora" from the 4,400,000 web pages. For example, in just a few seconds you could create a corpus with 500-1000 pages (perhaps 500,000-1,000,000 words of text) related to microbiology, economics, basketball, Buddhism, or thousands of other topics. You can then modify any of these corpora -- adding, deleting, or moving texts; grouping corpora into categories, etc.

"Once you’ve created a virtual corpus, you can limit your search to just that portion of Wikipedia — for example, to see collocates or concordance lines. You can also compare the frequency of words and phrases across these different virtual corpora, or find which of the 4.4 million pages use a given word or phrase the most (and then create a virtual corpus from those results).

"And perhaps best of all, you can quickly and easily create keyword lists for these virtual corpora, including multi-word expressions. So if you are researching, teaching, or studying finance, for example, you can quickly create a "finance” corpus. You can then find keywords (e.g. nouns, verbs, or adjectives) related to this topic, and see many examples of these words or phrases in context from that virtual corpus.

"Hopefully you can see how powerful of a tool this corpus is. Rather than having to scour the Web to create your own corpus for a particular topic, just find the relevant pages from Wikipedia. And then use the data from Wikipedia to focus in on the words and phrases of that topic.

"We hope that this new corpus is of use to you in your teaching and research."

You should register. If you can legitimately claim to be affiliated with an academic institution and be engaged in language research, you can probably get better access than I get (Level 1). But level 1 allows a useful searching. I have not run up against any limits. DCDuring TALK 18:44, 28 January 2015 (UTC)

An IP suggests (see the entry's recent history) that this term is more offensive than our entry currently suggests. - -sche (discuss) 07:48, 29 January 2015 (UTC)

BTW, displaying the language

Talk pages of individual entries are not usually monitored by editors, and messages posted there may not be noticed and responded to. You may want to post your message to the Tea Room or Information desk instead.

implies, in std English, that the talk page is there just bcz your geeks haven't found a way to suppress display of the talk pages. And means that accumulating insights about an entry over the years and decades won't happen without additional effort. (Or has the geek locked in your steamer trunk created a facility to let a chosen few know when article-talk pages are edited, and you prefer hoi polloi not knowing such a facility exists)?
--Cranky Wikipedian • t 07:52, 29 January 2015 (UTC)

Wow you sound like a jerk. Anyway, see Talk:stealer for a response to your original query. Equinox ◑ 13:31, 29 January 2015 (UTC)

Discussion moved to Wiktionary:Etymology scriptorium/2015/January#my word.

Should the first-person singular pluperfect subjunctive indicative of meminī be meminīssem or meminissem? --kc_kennylau (talk) 12:10, 29 January 2015 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure the i is short; it should be meminissem. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 13:26, 29 January 2015 (UTC)

@Angr, JohnC5 There is one source that suggests otherwise. --kc_kennylau (talk) 13:33, 29 January 2015 (UTC)

Which source is that? I checked three different books on my bookshelf and they all give the ending of the pluperfect subjunctive as -issem, -issēs, -isset, -issēmus, -issētis, -issent; and they all do mark vowels that are long by nature before double consonants (something not all sources do), so the lack of a macron over the i really does indicate a short vowel. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 13:38, 29 January 2015 (UTC)

@Angr http://www.cultus.hk/latin_lessons/conjugation/defective/memini.html --kc_kennylau (talk) 13:51, 29 January 2015 (UTC)

I trust print sources, which are more likely to have been proofread, over online sources. That link omits the macron over the final e of the 2nd person singular, and the implication that the i was short in the 1st and 2nd plural, but long in all the other persons, strikes me as especially suspect. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 14:34, 29 January 2015 (UTC)

@Kc kennylau, Angr Allen and Greenough provide meminissem explicitly. —JohnC5 ^{(Talk | contribs)} 19:39, 29 January 2015 (UTC)

I've made yet another ranking of Latin epithets. This time I've ranked them by how many books they actually appear in, so the ranking is now much more reflective of how likely someone is to come across an epithet (if they read random Google books). I've automatically grouped the conjugations now (though it's not always perfect). Each entry gets up to 5 example species for reference (which are ordered how much they helped push the entry to the top of the list). This is pretty much the sort of thing I always wanted to do with the list but never had time to.

Thanks to the work of Wiktionary's editors, the majority of the top epithets already have entries, but here's some select missing ones (and the scientific names they're most likely to be found in):

1. arundinaceus, arundinacea, arundinaceum,

   e.g. Phalaris arundinacea, Festuca arundinacea, Maranta arundinacea, Bambusa arundinacea, Acrocephalus arundinaceus

2. junceus, juncea, junceum

   e.g. Brassica juncea, Crotalaria juncea, Spartium junceum, Chondrilla juncea, Solidago juncea

3. carpio

   e.g. Cyprinus carpio, Carpiodes carpio, Floridichthys carpio, Salmo carpio

4. leucocephalus, leucocephala, leucocephalum; leucocephalos

   e.g. Leucaena leucocephala, Haliaeetus leucocephalus, Oxyura leucocephala, Columba leucocephala, Amazona leucocephala

5. dactylon; dactylus, dactyla, dactylum

   e.g. Cynodon dactylon, Panicum dactylon, Capriola dactylon; Grapholita dactyla, Lepanthes dactyla, Porroglossum dactylum

6. papyrifer, papyrifera

   e.g. Betula papyrifera, Broussonetia papyrifera, Edgeworthia papyrifera, Boswellia papyrifera, Fatsia papyrifera

7. cannabinus, cannabina, cannabinum

   e.g. Hibiscus cannabinus, Apocynum cannabinum, Eupatorium cannabinum, Carduelis cannabina, Sesbania cannabina

8. leucopus

   e.g. Peromyscus leucopus, Saguinus leucopus, Lepilemur leucopus, Sminthopsis leucopus, Rattus leucopus

The full top 1250 is here. It's a long list. You can scan through for red-linked epithets. I'll try to make a condensed list just of the top missing ones another time (hopefully soon). Any feedback welcome. —Pengo (talk) 12:11, 29 January 2015 (UTC)

(the words next to the numbers were mostly redlinks when I posted this, in case anyone's wondering.) Nice work, DCDuring :) —21:22, 29 January 2015 (UTC)

It would be nice if we had automatic entry creation for the Latin inflected forms from the Latin inflection line templates. It would also be handy to wrap the epithets in {{l|la}} to make it more obvious which do not have Latin L2 sections.

I've been trying to make sure that we have the genus names, including obsolete ones, that are sometimes used as specific epithets, either in the nominative, eg, Bufo bufo or genitive Nonagria typhae (< Typha). DCDuring TALK 23:15, 29 January 2015 (UTC)

Ok, I'm now listing any genera which sound similar to the epithets. Let me know if there's a general case where it's not grouping things together that it should. The stemmer which forms groups is based on some odd code that was originally designed only for Latin nouns, and it didn't seem to work that well even for that. I've tweaked it a bit to work more broadly. I'm not sure it handles all genitive forms, so let me know if you come across any common problem. I'm sure it's more broad than ideal, but I guess that's better than too narrow.

I've now included all species and synonyms from the Catalogue of Life, not just ones seen in books. Each species gets one free "point", as if it had been seen in a single book. This hopefully gives a more "complete" view.

I've made book/volume counts visible now so you can judge whether an epithet is something popular or anomalous so you can better judge how much time to spend on it and whether it warrants an entry or an inclusion as an alternative form or whatever. Making the numbers visible seemed necessary as adding all species adds a lot of noise to the data. The numbers also add a lot of visible clutter to the list, so let me know if they're useful or how to better format them. I was thinking of maybe hiding anything above a certain number, because it's probably more useful just to know which ones are rare. e.g. "cola (2)" generally means there are two species with the epithet "cola" and neither of them were seen in any book. "Cola (2270)" means that either that the genus Cola has a huge number of species, or Cola species are seen in a bunch of books. Most likely a combination of the two. But it's probably not that useful to know exactly how high the number is.

I've wrapped the epithets now in {{l|la}}. Does that do anything practical other than add #Latin to the links? I did {{l|mul}} for the genus links. Lemme know if you something else would be better. Sorry I've clobbered your edits, but hopefully the changes are worthwhile. Enjoy. Pengo (talk) 09:19, 30 January 2015 (UTC)

First of all, thanks. This makes it easier to work on.

Some of the generic names that serve as epithets are obsolete ones. I don't see a reasonable way of getting at them. Some are buried in Wikispecies synonyms, but getting them would probably be a long run for a short slide, as it would be a very incomplete list and many aren't ever used as epithets.

The practical value of enclosure in {{l|la}} is that it yields color-coding to differentiate links to Latin L2 sections from those to other L2s, which could be Translingual, English, Italian, or indeed almost any Roman-script language. I wouldn't have asked except I guessed it was relatively easy to execute. DCDuring TALK 10:33, 30 January 2015 (UTC)

Ahhh.. I just discovered the "OrangeLinks" preference. Awesome :)

I've hidden numbers larger than 100 now because it was getting too messy. (see here for the version with too many numbers). Now, basically, you can take any number as a caution that the entry might not be particularly significant, and otherwise assume that it's common enough.

There are a lot of synonyms that can show up in the list now, but it looks like you've found others. If you find another good source, let me know. At some point I might try scraping Wikipedia or Wikispecies but probably not soon. Pengo (talk) 11:32, 30 January 2015 (UTC)

I had forgotten about the substantial loading-performance penalty of so many instances of {{l}} (or any template). #Latin would be better for this purpose - or multiple subpages. DCDuring TALK 13:06, 30 January 2015 (UTC)

@DCDuring Out of curiosity I made an obsolete genus list with the obsolete genera I found in the Catalogue of Life. There's 41,938. Don't know what specific use there might be for it (so I've made no attempt to format it). It's still from the same data source, so it's not going to contain anything new for the "epithets on the page" list. To be honest, I'm more interested in the obsolete genera that haven't made the list (e.g. Lamblia), as they're less well documented elsewhere. Pengo (talk) 20:18, 31 January 2015 (UTC)

@Pengo, Chuck Entz: There's a case to be made that obsolete taxa should be a class that has a higher priority than the class of taxa that are current but not often used and without any corresponding vernacular name. These names, when they do come up, are often hard to research. If we had external links to the bodies of old taxonomic literature that had them (like the Biodiversity Heritage Library), we would be providing a service. Better yet would be links to successor taxa if we could determine them. Those in Century 1911, Webster 1913, the old encyclopedias (Encyclopedia Britannica), or well-known natural histories of the 18th and 19th centuries would be a good set to start with. Within these taxa, genera and higher taxa are probably more valuable than species names (other than type species names). All that is conjectural. I am not all that familiar with the full range of relevant older taxonomic literature.

There must be some online sources that facilitate search for obsolete taxa, possibly specialized by groupings at the family level or higher (eg, The Plant List).

Of course. I continue to believe that those in current use or with a vernacular name in any language are the highest priority. DCDuring TALK 22:22, 31 January 2015 (UTC)

Not sure what you're thinking of around facilitating search for obsolete taxa. I can think of a few ways to generate lists of candidate obsolete/un-databased taxa. When I went through Google Books' 2-grams I searched only for exact matches of CoL's species. I was thinking I could re-run the search and make it more fuzzy to include anything which looks a bit like a binomial name. (E.g. a Latinate-looking genus and a previously seen epithet), and then I could sort these by how much they look like a binomial (while excluding already known ones of course). Another possibility would be to search texts (like the ones you suggested, or perhaps pubmed) for telling phrases along the lines of "the species Capitalized-word lowercase-word (Family ...iae)". However, even if one of these methods (or a combination) produced mostly good results (i.e. forgotten/obsolete species, missing from other databases), there'd still be a huge manual task of searching for and sorting through evidence and documenting each species and genus. Will be something I keep in mind for a future project though. Pengo (talk) 23:49, 31 January 2015 (UTC)

Can you think of a way to get the taxa entries from a late edition of Century c. 1911 or earlier? Those would include a good number of obsolete taxa, arguably some of the more important ones, and would have good out-of-copyright definitions to boot. DCDuring TALK 05:27, 1 February 2015 (UTC)

@DCDuring How goes it? OK, so Ecphymotes, an obsolete lizard genus, is defined in Century, Volume 3 (1895) (the online search fails, so you'll likely have to download the PDF or another format and search that, or you can try any of the other scans of Volume 3 on archive.org and see if their search is broken too: 1897, 1897, 1904.) Other candidates in this volume are: Epenthesis, Eupagurus, and Exocephala. Century is pretty difficult to work with because no one's ever cleaned up the OCR (that I can find), so there's no way to even get a list of head words. See how you go with these. If you can make something from them, and you don't find it too tedious to work with, and you want to work on more of these, I'll have a go at making a larger list. Pengo (talk) 15:40, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

I got lucky with the first one I picked Ecphymotes and was able to make a substantive entry, relatively quickly (40 minutes). This is not low-hanging fruit. DCDuring TALK 20:00, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

@DCDuring Ah well, it took quite a while to find just those examples. I thought the most useful part of the Century entry (or the quickest way to use it) would be to use the etymology and the definition, and mention it was obsolete. Though I just spent way too long trying to transcribe the Greek to add an etymology to Ecphymotes. To use the obvious cliché, it's Greek to me (and I have no idea which diacritics to use). ἑκφυμα or ὲκφυμα?, so I'm going to give up before I get to the further etymology which they have under "ecphyma". Pengo (talk) 05:24, 21 February 2015 (UTC)

The two sites I use that have the Century 1911 pages, but only the scans apparently, though they might have a list of headwords. One site is , the other is the one behind “Ecphymotes”, in The Century Dictionary , New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911, →OCLC.. DCDuring TALK 06:46, 21 February 2015 (UTC)

It is said that the English word egg was ultimately from Proto-Germanic ajją, but in the page for the Proto-Germanic word ajją, it says that in Old Saxon and Middle Low German, a form of the word "egg" is also spelled as "egg", does anyone have any evidence to prove that? was it actually a Norse or Old/Middle English borrowing? --Neptune Purple Heart 13:37, 29 January 2015 (UTC)

The native English word for egg was "ey", with the plural "eyren". However, that form died out AFAIK several hundred years ago, replaced by "egg", with the plural "eggs", from Old Norse. Nevertheless, both "egg" and "ey" are from the same Proto-Germanic root. Tharthan (talk) 14:22, 29 January 2015 (UTC)

That wasn't the question, though. The OP was asking about the Old Saxon and Middle Low German spelling egg. I don't know where that comes from, but if it's real, I suspect it's a borrowing from Old Norse, just like English egg is. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 14:37, 29 January 2015 (UTC)

Reading through the question again, I realise that I misread it before. Whoops. Tharthan (talk)

The bodycon page] does not give a definition, it only cites an off hand definition in one source. That definition is "body conscious". "Body conforming" might be better as it describes what it is as opposed to its effect. You can certainly be conscious of your body (or someone else's) without wearing skin tight clothes.

P.S. The link insertion feature on this tea room page seems to have some problems. When I first gave it a link it told me "the page does not exist". By careful editing I was able to compensate for this.

• You need stronger glasses. The definition given is:- "figure-hugging, skintight, form-fitting". SemperBlotto (talk) 16:56, 29 January 2015 (UTC)

There is a page that confuses me: dèan coimeas air, which says this phrase is a verb. I believe, at best, it is a (...n idiomatic) verbal phrase.

• dèan is a verb meaning "do", or "make".
• I believe that in this case, coimeas ("comparison") is a verbal noun of coimeas ("compare").
• air ("of"/"for") in this phrase, I believe, is a preposition.

How do these elements combine to form a single verb? If it is a verb, how is it conjugated? I assume by conjugating the verb:

• dèan (past rinn, future nì, verbal noun dèanamh, past participle dèanta)

Granted, I am fairly new to Wiktionary, but this seems a case of trying to force a square peg in a round hole. Kibi78704 (talk) 03:42, 31 January 2015 (UTC)

We usually list idiomatic verb phrases as verbs here. See kick the bucket for an English example. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 22:14, 31 January 2015 (UTC)

On the Macbeth page there is no etymology. Does anyone know why shakespeare used this or is it unknown?

He took the name from a real Scottish king, Mac Bethad. bethad is equivalent to the modern Gaelic beatha, meaning "life". Macbeth (MacBheatha) means "son of life", which is a flattering way to refer to oneself. There's more information about the real Macbeth at the Wikipedia I linked. Smurrayinchester (talk) 09:15, 31 January 2015 (UTC)

Thank you!

There's actually a pattern in Old and Middle Irish of "Mac ..." names: Mac Laisre (Son of the Flame), Mac Coirbb, Mac Tire (son of the Land / Wolf), Mac Raith (Son of the Fortress), and so on. And we can tell that they were analysed in a unit as single names. --Catsidhe ^{(verba, facta)} 01:02, 1 February 2015 (UTC)

Hello,

For the English word "a" (indefinite article), it gives a stressed and an unstressed pronunciation. Could someone please make it clear that the unstressed version is the usual one? I don't know how to format entries myself and I don't want to mess it up. Thanks. --Money money tickle parsnip (talk) 21:43, 31 January 2015 (UTC)

I'm not sure how we would do this. I thought of changing "stressed" to "stressed for emphasis" (since you'd never pronounce a in a dog like the letter A, unless you were e.g. contrasting it with the dog), but then emphasis is the purpose of stress. I think it has to be taken as understood that function words are not generally stressed in English; a certainly isn't the only entry we'd have to change, otherwise. Equinox ◑ 22:41, 31 January 2015 (UTC)