Wiktionary:Tea room/2022/April

The definition says that tama is a masculine "this" while the table of pronouns below says that it's a feminine and not even the nearest kind (medial instead of proximal). I don't know Afar at all, but clearly there is a contradiction somewhere. Mölli-Möllerö (talk) 08:29, 1 April 2022 (UTC)

@Mölli-Möllerö: Thanks for the catch, it's a copy-paste error. Thadh (talk) 08:33, 1 April 2022 (UTC)

There's a little mistake in this template: It gives the feminine genitive without "-s", but there is no such gender distinction:

• • (Herrn) Müllers Haus, das Haus des (Herrn) Müller
  • (Frau) Müllers Haus, das Haus der (Frau) Müller

So the word "masculine" in "masculine genitive" can be stricken, as can the entry "feminine genitive". 178.4.151.86 19:00, 1 April 2022 (UTC)

Pinging @-sche for example: Any sense in the IP's comments? This, that and the other (talk) 07:13, 3 April 2022 (UTC)

The following entries contain malformed MC pronunciation data:

1. Module:zh/data/ltc-pron/摵
2. Module:zh/data/ltc-pron/椔
3. Module:zh/data/ltc-pron/𧽸

The corresponding pages throw Lua errors when using Template:zh-pron with mc=y. They all seem to have been introduced in the original Automatically creating Middle Chinese pronunciation data set of revisions. Please rectify. --BKalmar (talk) 19:57, 1 April 2022 (UTC)

FWIW the data is probably ultimately from https://github.com/BYVoid/ytenx. —Fish bowl (talk) 07:22, 3 April 2022 (UTC)

The correct data for Module:zh/data/ltc-pron/摵 is:

return {
	"生東三開 入所六", 
	"精東三開 入子六", 
	"生耕二開 入山責"
}

And the correct data for Module:zh/data/ltc-pron/𧽸 is:

return {
	"見元三合 入居月"
}

I'm not sure what the correct data for Module:zh/data/ltc-pron/椔 should be, as my source only contains the two correctly-formatted entries. Perhaps the malformed entry should just be removed?

Iwsfutcmd (talk) 01:48, 5 April 2022 (UTC)

@BKalmar, Iwsfutcmd: Thanks. (Thanks @RcAlex36 for notifying me.) They have all been corrected. — justin(r)leung _{{ (t...) | c=› }} 18:15, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

Hey- the concept of 'Nur' as a lake appears in the words Lop Nur and Sogo Nur, as well as other lakes. However, I'm not clear if "Nur" is an English word (on it's own). How can I connect these two words? I plan to do a "See also" connection for these two, but that's a stop-gap. --Geographyinitiative (talk) 15:34, 2 April 2022 (UTC)

Generally, borrowings in toto of multi-word terms are treated as a whole integral piece. Constituent parts are not necessarily treated as part of the borrowing language's vocabulary.

By way of example, we have Danish New Jersey, but that doesn't make constituent word "New" a Danish word. Likewise, we have English Lop Nur, but that doesn't make constituent word "Nur" an English word. There may well be homographs in the borrowing language, such as English lop, but these are usually unrelated to the constituent words in the compound borrowing, or they were borrowed separately, as is the case with Danish Jersey. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 21:30, 3 April 2022 (UTC)

I'm not sure there's enough evidence to support "nur" being borrowed as a distinct word into English, but here are a couple potential citations: , . I suspect that it derives from Mongolian нуур (nuur, “lake”) and the cognates listed therein. 70.172.194.25 22:06, 5 April 2022 (UTC)

Are these Spanish-speaker errors common enough to keep? Equinox ◑ 07:24, 4 April 2022 (UTC)

There's more than enough on Google Scholar for both to pass RFV. 70.172.194.25 21:58, 5 April 2022 (UTC)

I guess. It's got a better claim than peacemaker (which could be an inadvertent typo, which these can't be). It's interesting the sorts of macaronic compounds like this that make it into scholarly writing. - -sche (discuss) 16:44, 10 April 2022 (UTC)

We should create a dictionary entry for this Chinese word Kai1 Wang3 "開往" in simplified characters "开往". This word has a definition of "(of a bus, train, etc) to leave for or heading for"

Probably not. It's sum of parts: 開 ("to drive") + 往 ("towards"). Not in any of the monolingual dictionaries. ---> Tooironic (talk) 08:27, 6 April 2022 (UTC)

I am just learning Ukrainian and don't feel qualified to add these words, but I'm pretty sure that кафе means cafe. I don't know whether кофе (coffee) is a word in Ukrainian, as it is in Russian. Can someone add Ukrainian entries for these words, as appropriate? Thanks! Peter Chastain (talk) 21:47, 5 April 2022 (UTC)

ка́ва (káva) means coffee.

кафе́ (kafé) means café; it is synonymous with кав'я́рня (kavʺjárnja).

ко́фе (kófe) means coffee; it is synonymous with ка́ва (káva). 70.172.194.25 21:53, 5 April 2022 (UTC)

@Peter Chastain Ukrainian entries for кафе́ and ко́фе have been added. Voltaigne (talk) 22:27, 5 April 2022 (UTC)

@Voltaigne, thanks very much. You and other contributors have made a huge difference in my new efforts to learn the Ukrainian language. Peter Chastain (talk) 05:38, 25 April 2022 (UTC)

When windows ‘blow’ then their seal breaks, letting in condensation. I’m having difficulty finding durable quotes, due to other meanings such as windows being blown in/out by an explosion or storm, glass blowing, or references to wind blowing in through a window, but here is a link explaining this meaning:- . Mainly a British usage? Overlordnat1 (talk) 22:04, 5 April 2022 (UTC)

I’ve now added the passage from checkatrade.com to the sense ‘suddenly fail destructively’ but if anyone can find a more durable quotation which is properly dated and with a named author please do. Does anyone think it should perhaps be listed as a separate sense? It seems likely to me that it should but I’m loath to do that unless and until I find better citations. Overlordnat1 (talk) 15:16, 12 April 2022 (UTC)

I was checking the most viewed pages, and noticed this word ranked highly: . If I had to guess, it may be because of the recent spotlight on Jada Smith, which recalled her past euphemistic use of the word to refer to affairs. I wonder if this meaning can be supported by citations or not. 70.172.194.25 22:15, 6 April 2022 (UTC)

It's attested, Citations:entanglement, and doesn't even seem to be recent; some cites are from the early 1900s, and I see a 1962 book which has "romantic entanglement" in a list of words for "love affair":

• 1962, William Coyle, Paragraphs for Practice: A Workbook in Rhetoric and Grammar, page 71:

  Americans also sympathized with his request that he face a firing squad instead of being hanged like a (criminal, transgressor, crook, malefactor). Rumors of an unhappy (amour, love affair, romantic entanglement, affair of the heart) .

My only question is whether it is really best handled via a (sub?)sense specific to love affairs, or as part of a more general sense (e.g. one cite I added there speaks of an affair with someone in the same breath as an apparently(?)-nonromantic entanglement i.e. involvement with terrorists). - -sche (discuss) 16:52, 10 April 2022 (UTC)

Splendid work, thank you! We could add it as a subsense of a more general sense if you think that's best, but I do personally think the affair meaning should be explicitly mentioned in some way. 70.172.194.25 17:16, 10 April 2022 (UTC)

Added like this. Please suggest or make any further changes which are necessary. - -sche (discuss) 21:22, 12 April 2022 (UTC)

The definitions are totally different. Can this be right? Equinox ◑ 22:16, 6 April 2022 (UTC)

The quotations do appear to support separate meanings. In case you think that the "gendervague" quotations are using it to refer to the same thing as "gender-vague", with just coincidental mentions of autism, here is an article by Brown (one of the quotees) who explains that the coinage "gendervague" specifically relates to neurological disorders: . 70.172.194.25 22:58, 6 April 2022 (UTC)

I'm surprised by the distinction, but it does seem to exist, as the IP says, though I suspect (as I generally expect whenever two senses are distinguished only by a hyphen) some use of each spelling with the other sense may exist... so it's another blacksnake situation. (I guess I shouldn't be surprised; words like genderspeak and genderism each have totally different, contranymic senses without even the possibility to distinguish them in spelling, hah.) - -sche (discuss) 17:07, 10 April 2022 (UTC)

There are two senses: 1. not disturbed or agitated; 2. calm. These seem to be the same thing, but I think the intention was probably to split the physical sense (undisturbed water) from the mental (an undisturbed mind). They have separate translations. Which sense should be which? Can it be made clearer? Equinox ◑ 18:36, 7 April 2022 (UTC)

One sense is about the state of mind of an animate agent (not necessarily a person, as suggested at calm; also a rhinoceros can seem undisturbed). A more material sense can refer to a liquid, such as water, but also to e.g. soil, a scene or an object. Moreover, that which is undisturbed can be a flow or a pattern or process. I think all these senses are in the core already present in the verb disturb. In general, we can only guess which sense editors had in mind when supplying translations. For ἀτάρακτος (atáraktos) Bailly has (I) a general passive sense of “non troublé” and hence “régulier, égal (mouvement); sans désordre, sans confusion (troupe de soldats); qui ne se laisse pas troubler (par la passion, etc.)”, and (II) an active sense, “qui ne cause aucun trouble”. LSJ gives “not disturbed, uniform; not disturbed, without confusion, steady (of soldiers), generally, quiet; not excited, calm” – the latter attested as applied to the sea. Bailly glosses ἀθόρυβος (athórubos) as “sans troubles, paisible”; LSJ has “without uproar; unperturbed; not causing confusion”. These Ancient Greek adjectives appear rather synonymous to me, covering a similarly wide range of senses as peaceful.  --Lambiam 15:31, 8 April 2022 (UTC)

The page magu says that the genitive of magu in both meanings is mao and not mau, yet the both this wiki's mau page and the Italian version say that it is the genitive of magu. Mölli-Möllerö (talk) 19:55, 7 April 2022 (UTC)

According to it's mao. Thadh (talk) 20:11, 7 April 2022 (UTC)

OK. I've deleted the Estonian section of mau in both en-wikt and it-wikt. Mölli-Möllerö (talk) 10:26, 8 April 2022 (UTC)

Isn't this a specialist term in linguistics, for when you adapt your language to the listener/reader? For example, in the pub I bump into someone and say "SORRY MATE!" but in Harrod's I say "I do beg your pardon, good sir". Should we have a subsense for this? Equinox ◑ 02:46, 8 April 2022 (UTC)

w:Communication accommodation theory? - JrawX (talk) 07:28, 8 April 2022 (UTC)

I found cites. I notice we had a sense along these lines(?), which Lambiam adjusted, and which I adjusted a little further (to allow for sign languages and writing, not just speaking), and was briefly tempted to move to be near the other linguistic subsense, under the general sense of "adaptation". - -sche (discuss) 17:20, 10 April 2022 (UTC)

In general, we would benefit from systematically reviewing language-related terms to find cases where someone has loosely written "speaking" where "communicating" (in writing, sign, etc) is meant / is more accurate... - -sche (discuss) 17:22, 10 April 2022 (UTC)

Is there a word for the type of formation seen in French abat-jour ("abates-light")? It could be (non-ideally) described as the nominalization of an indicative conjugation of a verb combined with an object, to refer to something that does the verb to the object. I'm guessing there might not be a specific term for it, but it does seem to be common in French, and it's not the same as "light-abater". I think garde-dame ("watches-lady") is another example, based on the hyphenation and lack of "de", although garde on its own is also a noun so it could be interpreted that way too (hence the two plural forms). 70.172.194.25 23:31, 8 April 2022 (UTC)

Could you potentially describe it as a sort of compound? Aside from that I think nominalization makes the most sense, I've seen other similar POS conversion. Vininn126 (talk) 07:31, 9 April 2022 (UTC)

Are you looking for something more specific / technical than verb-noun compound, which is how such constructions are currently categorized here? "Compounds in which the first element is a transitive verb, the second a noun functioning as its direct object, and whose referent is the person or thing doing the action." Voltaigne (talk) 10:15, 9 April 2022 (UTC)

@User:Voltaigne, thank you! Actually that category appears to be pretty much exactly what I was looking for (at least according to its current description, which I see is being debated below). 70.172.194.25 22:27, 9 April 2022 (UTC)

verb-noun compound lists all the English verb-noun compounds as ‘exocentric verb-noun compounds’ but all other languages simply as ‘verb-noun compounds’. Is there any reason for this? Can endocentric verb-noun compounds even exist? Overlordnat1 (talk) 11:11, 9 April 2022 (UTC)

There is no sense of exocentric by which the compound noun bafflegab in that category is exocentric. Elsewhere I saw the term exocentric explained as referring to the grammatical role of the compound differing from those of its constituents; compare the definition we have of endocentric. However, that does not make sense, since the grammatical role (like subject and object) of a term depends on how it is used in a sentence. I’d call tumbleweed a verb–noun compound, but here the noun is the subject of the intransitive verb, while the text at Category:Verb-noun compounds by language states: “Categories with compounds in which the first element is a transitive verb, the second a noun functioning as its direct object, and whose referent is the person or thing doing the action.” There are a few exocentric verb-noun compound categories for other languages, such as Category:German exocentric verb-noun compounds. There is one endocentric verb-noun compound cat, Category:Dutch endocentric verb-noun compounds. The description given there seems to me that of a (Dutch) verb–noun compound in general: “Dutch compounds in which the first element is a verbal stem, the second a nominal stem and the head of the compound.”  --Lambiam 11:54, 9 April 2022 (UTC)

Wikipedia presents a semantic classification of compounds in which an endocentric compound is one whose meaning is a modification (restriction) of the meaning of its head. So, since an airfield is a field (one that is used for a particular purpose), the compound airfield is endocentric, and similarly Dutch vliegveld, in which the first compound is the stem of a verb. An exocentric compound, in the classification at Wikipedia, is one in which the compound has no head (“a hyponym of some unexpressed semantic category (such as a person, plant, or animal): none (neither) of its components can be perceived as a formal head, and its meaning often cannot be transparently guessed from its constituent parts”). As examples, white-collar and scarecrow are given. In this semantic classification, a verb–noun compound will usually be exocentric when the noun is the object of the verb, as in scarecrow, erected to scare the crows. Theoretically, though, there could also be exocentric verb–noun compounds with the noun as subject.  --Lambiam 12:30, 9 April 2022 (UTC)

On this basis, the description currently provided on Category:Verb-noun compounds by language ("Compounds in which the first element is a transitive verb, the second a noun functioning as its direct object, and whose referent is the person or thing doing the action") needs to be changed or expanded, as it applies only to exocentric verb-noun compounds, and not to verb-noun compounds as a whole. (As an aside, Category:English endocentric compounds seems rather underutilized!) Voltaigne (talk) 14:35, 9 April 2022 (UTC)

1. Do we need Category:English noun-verb compounds in addition to Category:English verb-noun compounds?
2. Do we need, for example, Category:English noun-verb compound nouns and Category:English noun-verb compound verbs.
3. Should Category:English compound words contain only categories (including Category:English compound words needing additional categorization) or should it be the dustbin category itself?
4. Does this kind of discussion belong at WT:ES? DCDuring (talk) 15:56, 9 April 2022 (UTC)

   On points 1 and 2: are you thinking of words such as homebrew#Verb ("I homebrewed this beer") or airstrike#Verb ("The oil terminal was airstruck")? In the case of homebrew it isn't clear whether this should be analyzed as a compound of home#Noun + brew#Verb, or as a verbing of homebrew#Noun, because either way the resultant verb is conjugated the same. Conversely, airstruck appears to be the result of airstrike being analyzed as a noun-verb compound (air#Noun + strike#Verb), otherwise I imagine the past form would be airstriked. I think there's a danger that the more categories we create for English compounds, the more analytical dilemmas we give rise to (noun+verb vs compound noun --> verb, noun+noun vs verb+noun etc). For example, to spraypaint (verb) - is this noun+verb, verb+verb, or verbed noun-noun compound?

   On point 4: Yes, this probably needs to be moved/be continued elsewhere, given that the discussion has gone beyond abat-jour. Voltaigne (talk) 23:02, 9 April 2022 (UTC)

How much subcategorization is maintainable? "Exocentric" vs "endocentric", "verb-noun" vs "noun-verb" ... "exocentric verb-noun" vs "endocentric noun-verb"? As Voltaigne says, the more categories we have, the more cases cause trouble or are blithely miscategorized by less-adept users. If we categorize "noun-noun", "noun-verb", etc, it invites adverb-noun (tickly-bender, and per our entries arrière-bras), "adjective-noun" (greathelm, thickhead, strongback, quickthorn, redshirt—side note, do we really need three etys that all say "red + shirt, because such people typically wear red shirts"? couldn't we present all the details as bullet points of a combined ety?), "adjective-adjective", "adverb-adverb", "adjective-adverb" and vice versa, "-verb", etc (German quicklebendig, schnelllebig, English thickset, slowmoving), verb-adjective (lookalike)... admittedly, it might be interesting to be able to look up some of these, e.g. to see how many adverb-noun compounds there are.
Also: should categories be based on etymological or superficial analysis? Consider e.g. slowworm / slowhound (folk-etymologically altered), or French hausse-col, apparently originally a Middle Dutch hals (“throat”) Middle Dutch kote (“coat”), but folk-etymologically reinterpreted like the verb-noun compounds OP mentioned (+ a lot of garde- armour words). Also consider terms that were adjective-noun, noun-noun, etc in one language, but now exist in another language, e.g. German Fastfood / oldschool, should they be categorized? - -sche (discuss) 15:06, 10 April 2022 (UTC)

Indeed. Have we already passed the point of unmaintainabilty with our current categorization with regards to exocentric and endocentric compounds? DCDuring (talk) 18:51, 10 April 2022 (UTC)

In diff, the US pronunciation was changed from /ˈkwɑɹ.ən.tin/, /ˈkwɔɹ.ən.tin/ to /ˈkwɔɹ.ən.tin/, /ˈkɔɹ.ən.tin/ with /ˈkwɑɹ.ən.tin/ restricted to NYC. Is this right? I think /ɑ/ is widespread as a less-common alternative, not just in NYC (and I expect /ɔ/ is also sometimes found in NYC; w:New York accent says "/ɔ/ /ɔr/ are kept strongly distinct from /ɑ/"). Conversely, I'm not familiar with /kɔɹ-/ like core. @Mahagaja. Merriam-Webster and Dictionary.com have /ˈkwɔɹ.ənˌtin/, /ˈkwɒɹ.ənˌtin/. (Dictionary.com also has /ˌkwɔɹ.ənˈtin/, /ˌkwɒɹ.ənˈtin/ with stress on the last syllable, something Cuomo seems to do at 2:09 here.) Cambridge and MacMillan only list /ˈkwɔːɹ-/ for the US (/ˈkwɒɹ-/ for the UK), though their audio files seem to have /kwɒɹ-/. - -sche (discuss) 22:50, 9 April 2022 (UTC)

A bit beside the point, but shouldn't it be /kwɔ.ɹə-/ (rather than /kwɔɹ.ə-/) in any case? Thadh (talk) 23:52, 9 April 2022 (UTC)

I could potentially maybe seeing both syllabifications, what with r colored vowels. As to the original point, I can neither deny it being restricted to NYC, but I'd say that first vowel with an /o/ personally. Vininn126 (talk) 00:42, 10 April 2022 (UTC)

@-sche: It's not exclusively NYC, but outside of NYC there aren't very many areas in the US that have /-ɑɹ-/ before a vowel in words where RP has /-ɒɹ-/. I refer to it privately as the "Flahrida ahrange juice" accent because it has /ˈflɑɹɪdə/ and /ˈɑɹɪnd͡ʒ/ rather than the /ˈflɔɹɪdə/ and /ˈɔɹɪnd͡ʒ/ that's typical in most of the rest of the country. In terms of Wells's lexical sets, although lot words typically have /ɑ/ in GenAm, words with the lot vowel plus /ɹ/ plus another vowel typically have /-ɔɹ-/ in North America, with the exception of NYC and some other areas of the East Coast. (A notable exception is the words sorry, sorrow, borrow, tomorrow, which have /-ɑɹ-/ in almost all parts of the US; for these words, /-ɔɹ-/ is a strong indicator of a Canadian accent. There's a joke that you can tell a Canadian by the way he says sorry – first, that he pronounces it /ˈsɔɹi/ and second, that he's apologizing at all. That said, there are parts of the US, especially New England I think, that do have /-ɔɹ-/ in these words.) As for the /w/, it may not be reflected in dictionaries yet, but it is common in the U.S. for speakers to drop the /w/ in the sequence /kwɔɹ/. In my own unguarded speech I have no /w/ in quarantine, quarry, quart, quarter, quartet, and quartz, though I do retain it in quark and quarrel for some reason. Quorum feels right both with and without the /w/. Finally, as to the syllable boundary, those are very uncertain in English in many cases, as English has a strong tendency to ambisyllabic consonants, but I do think it makes sense to consider r-colored vowels as having the /ɹ/ in the same syllable as the vowel it's coloring. —Mahāgaja · talk 08:07, 10 April 2022 (UTC)

Most of this matches how I speak, personally, especially dropping /w/. I think my o is a little more raised in this situation, but I've also heard people speak this way as well. Vininn126 (talk) 10:59, 10 April 2022 (UTC)

I agree about the raised vowel. I use /-ɔɹ-/ because it's traditional, but especially for those of us with the horse–hoarse merger, the vowel in question could just as accurately be transcribed /-oɹ-/. —Mahāgaja · talk 18:49, 10 April 2022 (UTC)

Okay, noted, but RP doesn't have vowel colouring, so why would the syllable boundary be the same there? Thadh (talk) 08:58, 11 April 2022 (UTC)

@Thadh: Even without r-coloring, stressed lax/"checked" vowels of English tend to attract consonants into their codas. Most phonologists interpret these consonants as ambisyllabic, but there's no convenient way to show ambisyllabicity in running text, so we show it as if the consonant were entirely in the coda of the preceding syllable, e.g. the RP pronunciation of otter is shown as /ˈɒt.ə/. I personally am not a big fan of showing syllable boundaries in English, partly because they're so hard to define, and partly because transcriptions like /ˈɒtə/ and /ˈkwɒɹəntiːn/ are completely unambiguous without them, but others seem to be partial to them and like to put them in where they're missing. (I usually show syllable boundaries only in cases like mosaic, where /moʊˈzeɪɪk/ might be confusing or interpreted as a typo.) —Mahāgaja · talk 07:38, 13 April 2022 (UTC)

This I think is dated, and means on alternate days - "and the chief interest of the scheme is that the three routes are followed in turn, day-and-day-about, with identical starting and arrival times". DonnanZ (talk) 09:58, 10 April 2022 (UTC)

If attestable, it deserves an entry. It certainly doesn't seem transparent to this American English speaker. DCDuring (talk) 14:02, 10 April 2022 (UTC)

I'm not sure it is properly attestable. The above quote came from the Railway Magazine of May-June 1942, and could conceivably be used without hyphens, as with turn and turn about. But it's worth a mention. DonnanZ (talk) 14:56, 10 April 2022 (UTC)

It looks snowclonish; compare shift and shift about (, , ).  --Lambiam 19:44, 10 April 2022 (UTC)

Well, it's rare enough, and I've never said it myself, but I'm English and understood it right away. It is attested. See from books google com a novel by Anthony Trollope where the sentence reads "He was quite willing that they should perform the task day and day about,—but should his wife omit the duty he must go in his wife's place". The link is https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/The_Complete_Works_Novels_Short_Stories/bFRjDwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=%22day-and-day-about%22&pg=PT4584&printsec=frontcover You can also find it in the OED - you need to do an Advanced Search, which searches all the example sentences, and then you find it under the word "sap" (noun, meaning 3) where the example sentence is "the Namur and Valiant took it day and day about to fight a sap battery". Note: neither of these examples shows the phrase to be hyphenated. If this phrase is entered in Wiktionary, maybe there should be a mention of it under "about". See the OED under "about", meaning A II 5 b ("in succession alternately"). 2A00:23C8:A7A3:4801:3012:FA85:8D30:D857 04:20, 11 April 2022 (UTC)

Are there any more such phrases? If there are we could save it as a snowclone, otherwise I think if it's just the two, it'd be "compare x other phrase". Vininn126 (talk) 08:49, 11 April 2022 (UTC)

There is no such word in English as "snowclone". It is just a made-up word. If you mean all the relevant phrases are just iterations of each other, then they may be, but there are many such phrases. Try "reading verse about" in books google com. Also, don't ask other people to do your research for you. Try the OED as your first port of call.2A00:23C8:A7A3:4801:733E:646C:63DA:CF9D 11:17, 11 April 2022 (UTC)

https://en.wikipedia.orghttps://dictious.com/en/Snowclone If you aren't willing to do the research, do not take part in the discussion ;) Vininn126 (talk) 11:18, 11 April 2022 (UTC)

Testiness aside, snowclone is a Wikimedia word, not in normal dictionaries. DonnanZ (talk) 11:46, 11 April 2022 (UTC)

Well, not in Oxford, but Collins has it, not that I understand the definition. DonnanZ (talk) 12:19, 11 April 2022 (UTC)

Snowclone is mostly limited to those who work with contemporary language, but it is readily attestable. Words with similar distribution include mondegreen, eggcorn, and Hobson-Jobson. DCDuring (talk) 14:30, 11 April 2022 (UTC)

How does day-and-day-about/day and day about compare in meaning to day in and day out/day in, day out/day in day out? DCDuring (talk) 14:30, 11 April 2022 (UTC)

"Day in, day out" means something like "all day, every day". He works in the shop day in, day out - he works long hours there every day. He works there day and day about means he works there on alternate days, every other day. Yes, admittedly, this usage is receding and may not be meaningful to many. I haven't looked it up on Ngrams but that could be interesting.2A00:23C8:A7A3:4801:733E:646C:63DA:CF9D 15:05, 11 April 2022 (UTC)

Finding an entry on Wiktionary is not "research". That is not a real word. 2A00:23C8:A7A3:4801:733E:646C:63DA:CF9D 15:01, 11 April 2022 (UTC)

It's a term we use to explain such structures, and whether or not it's in use outside of that has nothing to do with this conversation. Vininn126 (talk) 15:10, 11 April 2022 (UTC)

I don't find shift and shift about transparent either. DCDuring (talk) 14:32, 11 April 2022 (UTC)

• The construction apparently applies to singular periods of time at least from hour to year. Not all the usage is old, at least in Google web-wide search. Words like season and shift work, so perhaps other similar words as well. DCDuring (talk) 15:41, 11 April 2022 (UTC)

  I have looked it up on Ngrams. It was most common in the first decade of the 19th century, but also fairly common throughout that century, but use of it has since declined greatly, although not to zero. 2A00:23C8:A7A3:4801:733E:646C:63DA:CF9D 17:03, 11 April 2022 (UTC)

A Google search also produces examples of week and week about, month and month about and year and year about, all time-related. DonnanZ (talk) 17:56, 11 April 2022 (UTC)

So this might indeed be like a snowclone, in that case, . Vininn126 (talk) 17:58, 11 April 2022 (UTC)

To me every form using this construction, whatever the noun, is not transparent. The construction is not part of the grammar of all the major lects of English, just of some (UK, Ireland, at least; maybe ANZ, India; not US). If we are hoping to get people to rely on Wiktionary to decode texts (and speech), we need to have a way to make it easy for them to access an entry that either offers a definition of exactly what they encountered or that enables them to decode the construction by substituting the noun from the form they encountered into the expression in the snowclone entry. That would imply that we either have full entries for each attestable form of the snowclone or that we have a snowclone entry and redirects from each attestable form of the snowclone.

If we want to facilitate translations, I don't think that redirects to the snowclone are sufficient, because FLs may not use snowclones for the English snowclone. This tilts the choice between snowclone-and-redirects and full-entries-for-each-form toward full-entries-for-each-form, IMO. DCDuring (talk) 13:41, 12 April 2022 (UTC)

If there aren't that many we could probably add them all as separate entries. Vininn126 (talk) 14:39, 12 April 2022 (UTC)

There is no such word as "snowclone" and no such word as "lect". So this whole discussion is being conducted in an ignorant fashion. We are going round and round in circles simply because DCDuring has never heard the phrase - although Ngrams shows that it is used in US English. It is likely that more phrases built on the examples of "day and day about" could be found, and so there will no "complete list". To that extent, yes, "day and day about" provides a (limited) productive template. Take a look in books google com for "verse and verse about", as of people reading successive Bible verses. There are quite a few examples there of "verse and verse about". I don't think it should be implied this "format" is endlessly productive. E.g. if you were leafleting an area with a friend, and you said "we'll do alternate houses", it would be odd to say "we'll take it house and house about". Maybe day, shift, turn, verse, week, month, year will provide nearly all of the attested examples. I have already stated that an entry under "about", mirroring the OED entry under "about" could be put in, and maybe a separate entry for "day and day about". 2A00:23C8:A7A3:4801:733E:646C:63DA:CF9D 15:01, 12 April 2022 (UTC)

Of course the various words that you dislike are share by communities of speakers. If you don't believe us, then RfV the entries.

I doubt that the snowclone X and X about will turn out to be very productive in current English. But as a practical matter, we might need to have quite a few redirects or full entries to serve all those who wish to decode the terms or translate them. DCDuring (talk) 17:48, 12 April 2022 (UTC)

This whole thread is one long hissy fit because DCDuring apparently does not understand a phrase attested in both US and UK English. 2A00:23C8:A7A3:4801:733E:646C:63DA:CF9D 01:40, 14 April 2022 (UTC)

Can we ignore this guy already? Vininn126 (talk) 07:40, 14 April 2022 (UTC)

Is there evidence of attestation in US English? DCDuring (talk) 11:05, 14 April 2022 (UTC)

Yes - see Ngrams and search for the corpus of US English.2A00:23C8:A7A3:4801:947B:22DF:5B06:979 20:11, 14 April 2022 (UTC)

I wish you good luck in finding actual cites from that source that are demonstrably or even probably by US authors, unless Trollope is American and Australia was once part of the US. DCDuring (talk) 23:24, 14 April 2022 (UTC)

Cite is a verb, not a noun. Get your mouth out of the gutter.Why are Americans always so pleased with themselves for lacking a good education and speaking poor English? George Washington did not wish to see an idiocracy created. His speeches were in good English. 2A00:23C8:A7A3:4801:947B:22DF:5B06:979 05:33, 15 April 2022 (UTC)

You don't seem to have the right attitude to be a lexicographer, even an amateur. We are a descriptive dictionary, as are almost all dictionaries now. Perhaps you would like a dictionary like American Heritage Dictionary, which likes to lecture, though not berate, its readers. DCDuring (talk) 11:52, 15 April 2022 (UTC)

Whose English are you describing? That of the educated middle class? Or the uneducated and illiterate? If all attested words, however deprecated, are included, then they need to be flagged as such (as many words are flagged as "proscribed" in Wiktionary--although I think it is an odd term, as if someone had the right to "forbid" a usage). I spent years as a subeditor at a well-known publishing house -- and "cite" as a noun would have been vaporised in an instant. 2A00:23C8:A7A3:4801:733E:646C:63DA:CF9D 20:10, 15 April 2022 (UTC)

Lmao Vininn126 (talk) 20:14, 15 April 2022 (UTC)

We attempt to describe English as she is spoke by all. DCDuring (talk) 20:57, 15 April 2022 (UTC)

I agree that an entry for X and X about would be next to useless. DonnanZ (talk) 08:38, 14 April 2022 (UTC)

That is a generic issue with our listed snowclones; how could anyone expect someone puzzled by the phrase “as close to heaven as it gets” to find our entry Appendix:Snowclones/as X as it gets? It defies any plausibility. (We do have as good as it gets but (a) the user might not see the connection; and – worse – (b) the meaning is (hardly subtly) different, from an apologetic admission of a slight disappointment to a gushing appreciation.)  --Lambiam 11:09, 16 April 2022 (UTC)

It could work with redirects from the attestably "common" instances of the snowclone to the generic snowclone entry with the X,Y,Z placeholders. I agree that without such redirects a snowclone entry is of no value to normal users. DCDuring (talk) 20:28, 16 April 2022 (UTC)

Hey, are Echeng and Ezhou derived terms of E (an ancient nation in China located at those modern locations) or are Echeng and Ezhou merely related terms? Thanks for any guidance. Seems like related terms at best; maybe not even related terms in the sense meant on Wiktionary? Anyway, there seems to be a relationship since these two locations are mentioned one of the definitions for E. --Geographyinitiative (talk) 16:55, 11 April 2022 (UTC)

Cheng means city. Zhou means prefecture. So Echeng would be the city in the prefecture, the built-up town. 2A00:23C8:A7A3:4801:733E:646C:63DA:CF9D 17:08, 11 April 2022 (UTC)

That's just what I mean- there is clearly a relationship between E and Ezhou & Echeng. Is that relationship technically referred to as a "derived terms" relationship (as I did in this edit) or "related terms" relationship or something else? My gut is really "derived terms", but the page on Wiktionary Entry Layout kind of leans me toward "related terms". There is some kind of relation between the terms that a good dictionary resource would likely want to tell readers about. --Geographyinitiative (talk) 17:19, 11 April 2022 (UTC)

I think "related terms" works. The English word Echeng is not derived from the English word E, if we're being pedantic, since both are borrowed from Chinese. But the words are certainly related, as the Chinese word Echeng is derived from the Chinese word E. That said, if you were to list it under "derived terms" or even "see also" I wouldn't complain. 70.172.194.25 12:39, 12 April 2022 (UTC)

https://en.wiktionary.orghttps://dictious.com/en/memento#Latin

"second-person singular future active imperative of meminī"

Similarly it's listed in the future imperative section table here - https://en.wiktionary.orghttps://dictious.com/en/memini#Latin

However, I see people analysing it as morphologically a perfect imperative form (otherwise obsolete in Latin) - https://latin.stackexchange.com/questions/2345/is-mementote-semantically-a-future-imperative https://jcmckeown.com/fch7.php

I don't understand the issue enough, but my guess would be to suggest that the memento form might want to be listed in the present imperative slot in the table (with perfect-looking inflection). If that makes sense?

2A01:C23:5D01:800:880D:56F2:ECB5:31CC

Formally it is the future imperative. The English command remember is commonly also used when, semantically, thou shalt remember is in order. The first few commandments of the Ten Commandments in the Latin Vulgate translation all use the future tense: (II) Non habebis, (III) Non facies, (IV) Non adorabis, (V) Non assumes, so it is better to interpret (VI) Memento as also being in the future tense, even though the KJV just has Remember. The commandment is not to be mindful of the sabbath day right now, but to be so to the end of days.  --Lambiam 12:15, 13 April 2022 (UTC)

That's a rather well-chosen counterexample. Thank you! 2A01:C23:64DA:6500:903A:7F5C:830B:7E10 05:28, 14 April 2022 (UTC)

I was chatting with a Hebrew-speaking friend, who said that the tenses of the biblical commands for the negative ones are all not+future, and the two positive commandments are a imperative without any particular tense (memento/honora), that just being how negative/positive commands are formed in Hebrew. So I could imagine someone making the case by parallelism with the Hebrew source that it is indeed present tense imperative. But this is even more out of my depth; I'm just mentioning it as a curiosity :)

• Non habebis ( future indicative )
• Non facies ( future indicative )
• Non assumes ( future indicative )
• Memento ( ? imperative)
• Honora patrem tuum ( present imperative)
• Non occides ( future indicative )
• Non mœchaberis ( future indicative )
• Non furtum facies ( future indicative )
• Non loqueris ( present/future indicative)
• Non concupisces ( future indicative ) 2A01:C23:64DA:6500:55A8:32B8:15E7:50B5 14:51, 14 April 2022 (UTC)

In US statements about delivery of aid (most recently to Ukraine), drawdown seems to mean something like "provision, supply", e.g. recent announcements of a "drawdown of security assistance" (contranymic to what the word would normally mean), "this additional drawdown brings the total U.S. security assistance commitment to Ukraine to more than $2.4 billion". Unlike the banking sense, the equipment doesn't seem to be loaned, just given(?). Is this US and/or military-specific, or do other governments use it? And is the basic sense more like "provision / making-available (of equipment, to someone)" like the banking sense, or is it more like "reducing / drawing-down (of stockpiles)" (like the main sense), where it's only euphemistically applied to a case where the stockpiles are being drawn-down/reduced by giving them to someone? - -sche (discuss) 10:05, 14 April 2022 (UTC)

I think that the core idea is that one draws down from inventory or from some authorized appropriation or allocation. In finance, one could have a drawdown of cash, without lending being involved or the source of the cash being specified, but this draws attention to the limits on the amount of cash. I don't think the emphasis is on the supply, though drawdown has an official, bureaucratic, military tone to it which may be hard for a journalist to resist, so it may have come to be used in cases where the supply aspect seems the important one. DCDuring (talk) 11:31, 14 April 2022 (UTC)

BTW our entry for draw down seems to me both wrong (def. 2 "To acquire or pull in, as funding.") and deficient (omits usage such as draw down of inventory).

MWOnline has drawdown as "reduction" or "the process of depleting", which definitions include a few of our definitions, which read more like use cases than good, inclusive definitions. DCDuring (talk) 11:41, 14 April 2022 (UTC)

I am totally for normalised forms for languages with sparse attestation, like Yola and Middle English. Here is the issue I see regarding relying on attested-only forms: Yola has a word that means "to quiver, tremble, shiver" in bebber which has a variant bibber. Now, the present participle bibbern (“quivering, trembling, shivering”) is attested only for bibber. Not attested is the present participle *bebbern for bebber. But it can be deduced to be such.

So why do we show bibbern as the participle of bebber ? This is grossly misleading because it leads the user to think that the present participle of bebber changes the e to i in the present participle when actually it doesn't. bibbern should be shown at bibber. This sloppiness leads to confusion if someone wants (for any reason) to construct a sentence in Yola using our dictionary. This sort of thing is rampant in our Middle English entries as well so much so that it is the primary reason why I did not want to participate in the creation of Middle English entries, and do not trust or use them now despite the wonderful and admirable effort put forward by those who have faithfully worked to create them. All other dictionaries use consistent normalised headwords - not attested forms which might be one-off variants or dialectal corruptions. I know it's not the worst thing in the world, but are we all happy with the status quo ? If we are then it is what it is, right ? Personally, I don't think this is the best we can do. Leasnam (talk) 18:36, 14 April 2022 (UTC)

This is a problem I have thought about too.

One potential way of handling this would be to change the headword template to {{head|yol|verb|present participle|*bebbern}}, and then create Reconstructions:Yola/bebbern, where you can explain there that this specific form is not attested but bibbern is. You could even say that the attested bibbern is an alternative form of the reconstructed *bebbern (compare aflicão for precedent), although in this case it's better explained as the participle of bibber, which is an attested alternative lemma form.

With languages whose morphology is very well-understood, like Latin, you can create expected inflected forms in mainspace even if they aren't directly attested, as long as it's clear that they would have existed. I'm not sure where we draw the line for what languages we allow this for, though.

Another possibility would be to just not list forms that aren't attested. 70.172.194.25 22:48, 14 April 2022 (UTC)

Are the verbal senses SOP? Same goes for the French and Polish translations, e.g. see sense 3 of jouer and sense 8 of bawić. 70.172.194.25 20:59, 14 April 2022 (UTC)

Oh, I just clicked the Wikipedia link and it's about something completely different we don't mention. (Unless this is what sense 2 is supposed to refer to? I assumed it was roleplay among adults.) 70.172.194.25 21:11, 14 April 2022 (UTC)

I thought about that as well. But in the sense of "the sexual act", I seriously doubt that that's SOP. Any other one probably would be. to play doctor usually means two small children who examine each other, usually out of curiosity. that would be sense 2. Vininn126 (talk) 21:16, 14 April 2022 (UTC)

Oh, I just realized it had that sense label before, but then it was removed, and now you have readded it. It makes more sense to me now. I was not familiar with that meaning of the term beforehand. 70.172.194.25 21:35, 14 April 2022 (UTC)

To play doctors and nurses. 2A00:23C8:A7A3:4801:947B:22DF:5B06:979 05:30, 15 April 2022 (UTC)

According to the Wikipedia article w:Anoatok, the name of this house is an Eskimo word. But we don't have an entry. SpinningSpark 14:57, 15 April 2022 (UTC)

Possibly from an explorer's form of () Greenlandic Anoritooq, old spelling Anoritôq (a community in northwestern Greenland), from anori (wind) + -tooq. 70.172.194.25 16:37, 15 April 2022 (UTC)

Should we have a usage note or usage notes explaining the difference between bring, take and fetch when these verbs are used with their senses relating to movement? Cambridge and MacMillan already do this. Perhaps we could explain it more clearly than they do by using the words to and from though as I think determining when and where to use the forms bring to, bring from, take to and take from is the source of most of the confusion. Overlordnat1 (talk) 11:09, 16 April 2022 (UTC)

This is probably a humorous/jocular term, and the plural's weird. I'll probably return to the entry when I'm sober unless someone else fixes it Notusbutthem (talk) 20:56, 16 April 2022 (UTC)

The provided plural is much more attested than the "regular" plural, FWIW. Vininn126 (talk) 22:22, 16 April 2022 (UTC)

See also Wiktionary:Tea room/2021/July § hostess with the mostess, hostess with the mostest, hostess with the moistest(???).  --Lambiam 08:40, 18 April 2022 (UTC)

The entry for the English language noun "hoot", entry 3, "A fun event or person", has two translations into Spanish, "pera" and "polla".

I can find no such meaning for these words on Wiktionary or the online Diccionario de la lengua española. I also searched through print dictionaries, both English/Spanish and Spanish only, and again find no such meanings for these words.

I think that unless someone can provide a source for such meanings or cite a quotation, that these Spanish translations should be removed.

This is my first entry or foray into Wiktionary so I have no good idea how to do this or who would be interested in confirming, or not, my opinion.

AndyAxnot (talk) 00:45, 17 April 2022 (UTC)AndyAxnot

Good catch. Although it's probably correct in some context its presentation is lacking and can be misleading. ApisAzuli (talk) 08:15, 17 April 2022 (UTC)

If they are slang terms in Spanish, like they are in English, lexicographers of a more traditionalist bent may not have deemed them worthy of admission into their dictionaries.  --Lambiam 12:24, 18 April 2022 (UTC)

The conjugation template and the usage note seem to say that in this verb final "f" should alternate with internal "v". Is that correct? I'm not aware of any other verb with such an alternation, which does of course exist in nominals. My educated guess (not more, not less) would be that there are two alternative forms "to midwive" and "to midwife", both conjugated in the normal fashion. 90.186.72.208 03:03, 17 April 2022 (UTC)

"To midwive" seems to be attestable: . As a matter of fact, we currently have a verb entry at midwive, describing it as obsolete. So maybe the infinitive with a "v" is obsolete but the other forms are still in use? Dunno. I would ideally want to see text where the "f" infinitive and "v" conjugations are closely juxtaposed in order to establish that speakers treat it as an inflectional change rather than an alternative form; but searching for this on Google Books was not very fruitful. 70.172.194.25 03:10, 17 April 2022 (UTC)

Verbs using the voiced version is a pretty frequent occurrence in English - at least in pronunciation, perhaps that is what was meant. Compare bath bathe. Vininn126 (talk) 08:47, 17 April 2022 (UTC)

Happy Easter and thanks to you two for your input! -- From a historical perspective the alternations that exist in several English word stems between voiceless /f/, /θ/, /s/ and voiced /v/, /ð/, /z/ are due to the fact that in earlier Middle English only the voiceless fricatives were possible in word-final position. The voiced ones always had a vowel after them, usually a schwa /ə/. In later Middle English this schwa was generally lost and thereby /v/, /ð/, /z/ became possible also in word-final position. -- This means that if there was a Middle English verb midwiven, this would indeed become modern to midwive. But my point is not so much whether the v-form is more correct or the f-form. The point is that the entry as of now posits that the conjugation should be "to midwife, he midwives" and so on. And that is quite an unsual case, because the above-mentioned alternations otherwise do not occur within the conjugation of a verb, only between nouns and verbs (life - to live) or between noun singulars and noun plurals (one life - several lives). --Indeed, as the anonymous user said, the best test would be to see whether speakers actually conjugate the verb in this way. If that's the case, there's now arguing with reality. However, it would still be questionable whether such a conjugation would be the prescriptively "correct" or preferred way, as the usage note claims. 90.186.72.208 15:29, 17 April 2022 (UTC)

I can't remember the name of the website but there is a place where you can check youtube clips of given words, we could check variations of midwife (including verb forms to ensure we have the right form) to check if some pronounce it with /f/ or /v/. Vininn126 (talk) 15:33, 17 April 2022 (UTC)

The null hypothesis would be that any given person will use just "f" or just "v". To minimally prove this we need to show that the same person uses both. To complicate things further, there's also the possibility that a given person might randomly use either without respect to where in the conjugation table a given form is. That would require a larger body of evidence to eliminate- I'm not sure it's even possible with random YouTube clips. Chuck Entz (talk) 15:48, 17 April 2022 (UTC)

Right. But I think if speakers randomly use "to midwife" (and forms) as well as "to midwive" (and forms), that's still in line with the idea that there are merely two alternative verbs. The irregular case would only exist if there were a set of speakers who more or less consistently use /f/ in final position and /v/ in non-final position. If we don't have any clear indication of that, I'd edit the entries in such a way that "to midwife" has only f-forms and "to midwive" has only v-forms and the latter (being less common) is linked as an alternative form of "to midwife". 90.186.72.208 18:11, 17 April 2022 (UTC)

The website in question is Youglish. I’ve found at least 6 instances (most of the 236 hits are false positives) where people say ‘to midwife’ on YT there but none at all where they say ‘to midwive’, there is one hit for ‘he midwives’ though (“He midwives his son Israel through the travails of Egypt”) and one for ‘we midwife’ (“While we midwife the birth of the new structures and systems”). Overlordnat1 (talk) 20:41, 17 April 2022 (UTC)

I've updated the entry at midwive (adding cites, and removing the 'obsolete' label); and also (hopefully) improved the Usage note at midwife. Leasnam (talk) 02:47, 18 April 2022 (UTC)

Great job. We might consider creating another figurative definition: “To aid in the survival of” based on the YT quote found via Youglish (“He midwives his son Israel through the travails of Egypt”), I would do it myself but I’m having great difficulty finding other examples of the word being used in this way. Overlordnat1 (talk) 11:21, 18 April 2022 (UTC)

The answer is simple: midwife is not a verb in good English. You are talking here of a supposed normative form of a substandard usage. 2A00:23C8:A7A3:4801:C060:5DB1:1857:53E3 15:40, 18 April 2022 (UTC)

We'll be sure to run all words past you in future, to check which are good and which are bad. Equinox ◑ 15:42, 18 April 2022 (UTC)

Oh good, our little prescriptivist is back! thank god, our project is saved! Vininn126 (talk) 15:43, 18 April 2022 (UTC)

This reminds me of how knife is now the usual verb, but knive seems to be attested earlier and is in line with how the verb for strife (n.) is strive, etc. But yes, as 90.186 says, one would expect the infinitive with f to inflect with f, and v to inflect with v, not for them to mix! There are cases where consonants change, obviously, like bring-brought, but are there any where the change is between f and v, or even /ð/ and /θ/? We have a verb bath, but we (AFAICT correctly) distinguish its participle bathing with /-θ-/ from bathe's bathing with /-ð-/, so I might imagine other cases like loath#Verb would also have the same final consonant throughout their inflected forms. - -sche (discuss) 19:17, 19 April 2022 (UTC)

Are Shave and Shear doublets? I was reading through bescheren (Dutch and German), and the past tense for dutch is beschoren. Also, does bescheren have any relationship with share? Compare Beschert (Yiddish), I'm thinking be-shere. Many thanks! ADDSamuels (talk) 20:53, 17 April 2022 (UTC)

In the linguistic sense, a “doublet” is understood to be a pair of words derived from the same etymological root. The verb shave is thought to derive from Proto-Indo-European *skabʰ- (“to cut, split, form, carve”), whereas shear comes from Proto-Indo-European *(s)ker- (“to cut”). So no, these are not doublets. The scheren component of bescheren is related to share, which shares its roots with shear.  --Lambiam 08:28, 18 April 2022 (UTC)

I agree with the above. However, if it were possible to connect *skabʰ- with Proto-Indo-European *sek- (“to cut”), which might also be the root of *(s)ker-, then maaaaaybe an argument can be made to tie the two together, but that is a huuuuge stretch. Leasnam (talk) 14:35, 18 April 2022 (UTC)

Does the word medegevoel, meaning "compassion" or "sympathy", exist in Dutch? I've just seen it in a translation of a Max Stirner quote (with the original word being German Mitgefühl) on the Dutch Wikiquote. - Munmula (talk) 14:48, 18 April 2022 (UTC)

@Munmula: It does, see also . Thadh (talk) 15:20, 18 April 2022 (UTC)

Defined as "a crane system". What does this mean exactly? Is it a machine like a crane? A path for cranes to travel along? Equinox ◑ 18:16, 18 April 2022 (UTC)

"A crane system" does sound vague and ambiguous. According to Merriam-Webster, "craneway" means:

1. the part of an area served by a crane
2. the beams on which a crane trolley travels
3. the opening in the end of an industrial building which allows cranes to pass from the interior to the yard

- Munmula (talk) 18:37, 18 April 2022 (UTC)

I made it slightly less shit, but some input from a person with experience in the industry might help. Equinox ◑ 03:48, 7 May 2022 (UTC)

How should we account for what is known as sorghum whisk(e)y? It’s made from a syrup derived from the sap of the sorghum plant, not the grain. Should we just create a new entry called sorghum whisky/sorghum whiskey, treating it as an idiomatic set phrase, or add a new sense to our definition at whisky/whiskey? Overlordnat1 (talk) 09:28, 20 April 2022 (UTC)

Are there similar types of not-true whiskeys made from the same process? If so, new definition. Vininn126 (talk) 10:01, 20 April 2022 (UTC)

Whisky in the Tea room! We have a Beer parlour, but not yet a Whiskey saloon. The same process as is used for making malt whisky from barley or corn whiskey from corn will work for sorghum, and there is no a priori reason to sequester the resulting beverage in the not-true whiskey department. Because of the naturally high sugar level in sorghum, the malting step used for barley can be skipped. I think the term sorghum whiskey is just as much a sum-of-parts as corn whiskey. (IMO tying the definition of the latter to specifically whisky produced in the US in accordance with the regulations of the Tax and Trade Bureau is too narrow.)  --Lambiam 15:07, 20 April 2022 (UTC)

Oops, I did not read the question carefully enough. One can make whiskey from sorghum grain. I was not aware the term is used for a distilled (I presume) beverage made from sorghum sap, which looks like first making sorghum beer and then distilling it. In that case it is definitely not whisky as the term was understood before this product got to the market.  --Lambiam 15:21, 20 April 2022 (UTC)

It seems to be closer to rum, in that it is made from the crushed stalks of the sorghum plant rather than its grains (unlike sorghum beer and the other kind of sorghum whisky). Apparently it is also called sorghum rum (which begs the question: do we need an entry called sorghum rum, as it’s not really rum either because of the fact that it isn’t made from sugar cane). I may create these entries but I’ll hold off for a while to give people time to find other examples of not-true whiskies and not-true rums, if they exist (in which case I’ll just create new senses instead). Overlordnat1 (talk) 19:17, 20 April 2022 (UTC)

Na'vi (Avatar film) for "I see you" (and therefore "I know you/know your heart"). Worth an entry ? Leasnam (talk) 01:10, 21 April 2022 (UTC)

No, unless it can pass WT:FICTION- i.e., real humans in the real world using it to talk about real-world things. It might merit an appendix entry, depending on how well-known Na'vi is as an artificial language. Chuck Entz (talk) 02:17, 21 April 2022 (UTC)

The term unicorn is used by real humans in the real world, but not to talk about real-world things.  --Lambiam 19:18, 21 April 2022 (UTC)

Various websites on the internet suggest that the name Zoltan means "life". Is there any basis for this?

No.  --Lambiam 19:24, 21 April 2022 (UTC)

"To make a counter estimate of something's value." What is a "counter estimate"? Equinox ◑ 11:49, 22 April 2022 (UTC)

Whatstheword, a counter bid? Potentially SoP. ApisAzuli (talk) 12:43, 23 April 2022 (UTC)

An estimate by which you counter (contradict or respond to) another estimate, though this is (more?) often unspaced, e.g. X estimates one banana is worth five peanuts, I make a counterestimate (counter estimate?) countervaluing it at ten peanuts. Perhaps "estimate" should be changed to "assessment" since I see no reason it'd have to be "a rough calculation". Looking at google books:"countervaluing", perhaps the sense should be changed further, or we need one or more new senses, since I'm not sure the existing senses capture what's going on in "laws which mandate the collection of countervaluing duties to offset foreign export subsidies" (~"countering" and equalizing/offsetting the value of the subsidies?) or "To combat this tendency crip/queer subcultures rise as a countervaluing mechanism " (more like ~holding or assigning contrary values?). - -sche (discuss) 15:38, 24 April 2022 (UTC)

Should it have an entry? There are many uses in etymologies (Special:WhatLinksHere/-mate), though they could equally be converted to compounds with mate. Equinox ◑ 12:47, 22 April 2022 (UTC)

I think they're better as compounds. We could potentially make a big long derived terms box. Vininn126 (talk) 13:59, 22 April 2022 (UTC)

Okay. Anyone want to automate it? I'm busy chewing my toenails. Equinox ◑ 02:40, 24 April 2022 (UTC)

(BONUS CONTENT: I think it's also mostly wrong that we use that -man suffix instead of man compound on a ton of modern jobs. railwayman is a -man suffix?! Yeah? But I've been bullied into doing it too.) Equinox ◑ 02:41, 24 April 2022 (UTC)

Words ending in mate or man are almost always compounds. I don't think we are doing users or ourselves a service by showing these as suffixes. We are making ourselves look amateurish when we do this kind of thing.

Do we need some kind of standardized "see" pseudo-entry to direct users to the appropriate sense(s) of man and something analogous to {{suffixsee}} to provide automatic lists of such derived terms? DCDuring (talk) 15:15, 24 April 2022 (UTC)

That actually would make things really convenient. You could even seperate it out by where it is in the word. Honestly it'd be convenient to have automated related/derived sections, but that's a whole other can of worms... Vininn126 (talk) 15:24, 24 April 2022 (UTC)

Well, in England the final syllable of railwayman has a neutral vowel (schwa). There is a difference in pronunciation between railway man and railwayman. Of course, it is not compulsory to neutralise the vowel there, but there you have the reason.2A00:23C8:A7A3:4801:733E:646C:63DA:CF9D 06:52, 30 April 2022 (UTC)

FWIW, the RFD which resulted in -man being kept due to "no consensus" from ~7 participants was over a decade ago, and rested partly on arguments about the pronunciation, which seem obviously misguided (*-berry sometimes has reduced pronunciation too, but...). Perhaps a new RFD is in order, unless there was a more recent discussion somewhere I'm forgetting about? - -sche (discuss) 15:47, 24 April 2022 (UTC)

I never understood -man as a suffix either Leasnam (talk) 13:32, 25 April 2022 (UTC)

Maybe because you speak US English? 2A00:23C8:A7A3:4801:733E:646C:63DA:CF9D 06:53, 30 April 2022 (UTC)

Many terms ending in man have a reduced pronunciation in US English pronunciation. We even pronounce Leominster as a three-syllable word and Worcester as a two-syllable word, though we have almost as many toponyms Wooster as Worcester. DCDuring (talk) 01:06, 9 May 2022 (UTC)

Something's just not right about the entry at harp on. I think it needs review. On the one hand, we have harp on which means "to harp, and keep on harping" (cf carry on - it's progressive - that would be the phrasal verb and should be intransitive). Otherwise to harp + on is the use of the verb harp ("to pluck or strum", also "repeatedly mention something") + a preposition and means "to belabour (something)" and is transitive. One can also harp at something or someone. So the current definition should be at harp (which it already is). Leasnam (talk) 16:00, 22 April 2022 (UTC)

I have seen it transitively, for a person ("harping on me about X") or a thing ("harping on topic Y"). Equinox ◑ 16:06, 22 April 2022 (UTC)

(I wouldn't use it myself this way, though: to me it's intransitive, and "harping on" is like "ranting on", i.e. doing it at some length.) Equinox ◑ 16:35, 22 April 2022 (UTC)

It might be a US vs UK thing. Harp on is very popular in my neck of the woods of the sates. Vininn126 (talk) 16:37, 22 April 2022 (UTC)

Agree with Equinox - to harp on someone means to be critical of someone or nag them and has a direct object. You could alternative analyze it as "to harp + on someone" but that seems wrong in many ways. Vininn126 (talk) 16:34, 22 April 2022 (UTC)

Well, this is actually the crux of the matter. I don't see it as "to " but as "to ( )", like "to ( )" rather than as "to ". Leasnam (talk) 18:22, 22 April 2022 (UTC)

I'm not sure other people analyze it that way and most people would lemmatize it as harp on + someone. Vininn126 (talk) 18:23, 22 April 2022 (UTC)

In a use like “he kept harping on me” it is (IMO) unambiguously transitive, similar to hate on, hit on and many other English phrasal verbs with particle (on). — This unsigned comment was added by Lambiam (talk • contribs) at 20:07, 22 April 2022 (UTC).

In my view, for a phrasal verb to qualify as unambiguously transitive it must contain an adverbial particle which:

• can go after the direct object if it is a noun or non-personal pronoun: turn the radio on ✅, let somebody in ✅
• must go after the direct object if it is a personal pronoun: He fought them off ✅, He fought off them ❌

Harp on, hate on and hit on don't fulfil these criteria. IMO these are phrasal verbs which are fundamentally are a combination of intransitive verb + preposition (as opposed to transitive verb + adverbial particle), but which somehow "feel" transitive because of the strength of association between the two elements of the collocation (Hate can be used intransitively, as in haters gonna hate. Arguably this is the sense incorporated into hate on).

Turn on provides a classic example of a phrasal verb which can be either (1) unambigously transitive or (2) ambiguously (not really) transitive, with very different meanings:

1. She turned him on (she excited him) - This is an instance of "to

2. She turned on him (she rebelled against him) - This is an instance of "to , but "turn on" in the sense of "rebel against", "lash out at" etc. is such a well established usage that admittedly it does somehow "feel" transitive.

Note also that when spoken, the stress defaults to the adverbial particle "on" in example 1 and to the verb "turned" in example 2 (unless the speaker wishes to override this and stress a different word for emphasis). This is another characteristic distinction between the two types.

Anyway, this is just my view and the distinction outlined above doesn't appear to be generally reflected in the categorization or transitivity labelling of phrasal verbs on Wiktionary (not consistently, anyway)—but I think it would be good if we could account for it somehow (given its semantic and syntactical implications). Voltaigne (talk) 00:10, 23 April 2022 (UTC)

An afterthought: the analysis of harp on, hate on and hit on as transitive phrasal verbs (rather than intransitive verb + preposition) may also be influenced by the fact that "on" as a preposition is used figuratively in each case (i.e. not physically on the person). Voltaigne (talk) 00:20, 23 April 2022 (UTC)

I suppose I was unclear in my opening statement. Yes, harp on is transitive. That was not the issue I initially had. My concern was with regards to the sense, which isn't in the entry, that the missing "continuously harping" would would be intransitive if listed. Sorry for the confusion, all. Leasnam (talk) 20:49, 22 April 2022 (UTC)

Further, my primary question was whether harp on meaning "to repeatedly do (to someone)" was in fact a true phrasal verb, since it seemed to me a regular verb followed by an independent proposition, since an intransitive use of it would mean something totally different (e.g. he's harping on him vs. he's harping on) and on can be replaced with at, about, etc. Lambiam's examples of English phrasal verbs with particle (on) settled it though. Leasnam (talk) 20:52, 22 April 2022 (UTC)

I’d definitely say it’s a true phrasal verb. He’s harping on him sounds very odd in my idiolect compared to he’s harping on at him. The example he’s harping on is just short for he’s harping on about it which has a different meaning because harp on is followed by about rather than on. It’s probably true to say that harp on is a phrasal verb (that feels intransitive) in British English but that harp is an intransitive verb in American English. In both language varieties, the meaning changes depending on whether the verb or phrasal verb is followed by at or about. I would also say continuously harping on rather than continuously harping. Kudos to Voltaigne (talk) for an excellent and detailed analysis. Overlordnat1 (talk) 08:08, 23 April 2022 (UTC)

Honestly surprised we don't have this already. It would see there are enough variations this would be a good candidate as a snowclone of X like it's Y. But perhaps there's also be value in having "party like it's 1999" as its own lemma and having a link to the snowclones, seeing as it's the most common variant? Vininn126 (talk) 13:42, 23 April 2022 (UTC)

For context on the extent that variants may exist, a search in the iWeb corpus for PARTY like it BE _mc gives 192 hits for "... 1999" and a total of 291 hits for other years, with popular ones being 1989 (per Taylor Swift, 19 hits), 1776 (US declaration of independence, 14 hits), 1899 (turn of the century , 12 hits). Verb forms other than party also exist, but they seem quite rare. A search in the same corpus for VERB like it BE 1999 returns 65 hits for "party ..." and 4 hits for "coding ..." as well as 3 hits for "dance ..." and "dress ..." with all others showing even less prominence. Personally, I would support a main space entry and possibly a snowclone entry, though I need to read Wiktionary:Tea room/2022/April#day-and-day-about to get a better feel for the issue. —The Editor's Apprentice (talk) 21:28, 23 April 2022 (UTC)

Upon further reading, I do indeed support a snowclone entry in addition to a mainspace entry. The form party like it's 1999 has lexicalized in my opinion to the point it is its own reference point for other phrases instead of just being the most common among many or that the variants reference the Prince song that spawned it (most don't know this origin!). Given that, the formulas party like it's X and X like it's 1999 are "multi-use, customizable, instantly recognizable, time-worn, quoted or misquoted phrase that can be used in an entirely open array of different jokey variants by lazy journalists and writers" so they pass in my mind as snowclones. —The Editor's Apprentice (talk) 02:32, 24 April 2022 (UTC)

I have made the entry, however I'm sure a lot is missing. I just wanted to get the ball rolling. Would you take a look? Vininn126 (talk) 08:00, 25 April 2022 (UTC)

I've done a number of overall improvements of the entry. Another use is earlier than the one I've give, but it seems less independent (). I've also noticed other usage that doesn't literally refer to partying () and don't know if/how to document them. Lastly, I'm wondering how the inflection should be given because of the unusual way be inflects. He are the possibilities that I see, minus it's-its distinctions:

party like it is 1999	party like it was 1999
partying like it is 1999	partying like it was 1999
parties like it is 1999	partied like it was 1999

Take care. —The Editor's Apprentice (talk) 19:19, 25 April 2022 (UTC)

Also past tense: “partied like it was 1999”. Also two uses of the present prefect (“have partied like it was 1999”), and several of the future (“will party like it’s 1999”).  --Lambiam 21:08, 25 April 2022 (UTC)

The Stephen Brown a.k.a. translator argument: "I don't really know what it means so we should have an entry". It does seem... idiomatic. Equinox ◑ 02:43, 24 April 2022 (UTC)

Obviously SoP. Why should we be shilling for the estate of Prince (or whoever else now gets the royalties)? DCDuring (talk) 17:12, 26 April 2022 (UTC)

I strongly disagree. We don't use like 1999 that much to mean intensely. And most of the time it's lemmatized with party. Second of all having a SOP isn't ALWAYS bad. Vininn126 (talk) 17:15, 26 April 2022 (UTC)

Those aren't god arguments for it not being SoP. SoP wouldn't even be the primary concern in view of the original. The fact that it has escaped it's fictive environment is significant, that is fictive in the sense that 1999 is otherwise meaningless and therefore subject to reinterpretation, as "Bill Mayes parties like it's 19,99" attests to. I had assumed it has to be "1995" and that Kewler's demoscene production of same name was the origin, maybe because the scene was officially declared dead with the success of Windows 95 over Amiga, so I appreciate the heads-up very much. Whether Prince's '99 or Little Bitchard's '95, there's something about lexical indexing and self referentiality here is much more restricted than 1995, which would be inadmissable indeed. It is a metonym or metaphor. Time being of the essence, ngrams show steady upticks towards the '99 new year's, and a magazine contemplating how odd would it be to use the phrase when it is 1999 for once. S'pose most of you have been there.

Hence, as a speaker with morphologically indexed konjunktive, "Party like it was 1999" feels rather subjunctive, not the least because past-tense would violate agreement. Past and subjunctive are contradistinct because it has definitely been 1999 once, it isn't now, and it would be kewl if it were, "if tomorrow was X". I oppose a snowclone because many entries would be SoP nevertheless, that's why they are work without knowing the reference. Individual entries should suffice if they meet CFI. 89.15.239.90 23:42, 27 April 2022 (UTC)

Can we look at Etymology 1 sense 9 7 ? The label and definition read: (derogatory, added to nouns) Person who subscribes to a particular conspiracy theory or unorthodox belief. I'm feeling a lot of inappropriate personal feeling woven into this, it's alarming. For instance, if I take the word 'apple' and stick sense 9 suffix on it, I get 'appler' - "a person who subscribes to unorthodox beliefs or conspiracy theories regarding apples" and this term is inherently "derogatory" ? WTH ? ! The examples listed can be grouped by those qualities, but those qualities are not carried in or conveyed necessarily by the suffix itself. Leasnam (talk) 21:29, 25 April 2022 (UTC)

Looks better now. Thanks. Leasnam (talk) 17:34, 26 April 2022 (UTC)

It might help to have cites, to see whether X-ers' X is always a conspiracy theory (or regarded as such by people who call its supporters X-ers). The cites I see of google books:"the applers" are a different sense, "one who grows apples" ("the shepherds died off and the applers took over and grew orchards of Cortlands"). I can find web hits for e.g. "world-peacers", but I'm not sure this is the same sense: AFAICT "world-peacers" are people who support world peace, whereas "birthers" aren't people who support birth, they're people who adhere to a conspiracy theory about where Obama was born. (Or, they're people who give birth, but that's definition 1, not this.) google books:"forced-birthers" are people who support (forced) birth, but that just returns to the question of whether "world-peacers" and "forced-birthers" et al. (people who support X) is the same sense as "birther" (people who believe conspiracy theories about X) or not... - -sche (discuss) 06:39, 27 April 2022 (UTC)

Compare ism and ist. Chuck Entz (talk) 06:49, 27 April 2022 (UTC)

I am not comfortable with this. I can't deny that whoever added this sense thinks about those words like that. The only challenge is to see if it's linguistically and lexicographically sound.

"Birther" was lexical before Obama (The Happy Birth Book, eg.). So besides home-birth you have pro-birth as hyponym of pro-life, later in contrast to pro-choice, for somebody who delivers in a pro'ish manner, pro bono. Can this be sourced? Birth per se is not "a theory, opinion, or belief", anyway.

The sense of conspiracy in flat-earther is very clearly licensed by flat-earth being understood as wholecloth. That -er attaches to it might be sheer coincidence, seeing that earther has been and is common still in fiction (necessarily more common in ngrams because it includes the compound phrases ). Pressumably it meant a terran (compare German Erdling or Terraner).

Truther likewise predates 9/11 by a mile.

That leaves (anti-)vaxxer in the given examples, which is simply deverbal after backformation from the noun and it is agentive rather than patient, maybe partitive, in the sense that one takes (part in) the action of getting vax'd, while the physician is not so named. Anti- is a bona fide prefix. Although vaxer is not citable until recently, vaxer (physician) can be easily constructed from sense 1 and would be understood easily if given sufficient context. This vaxer regularly subscribes to the theory of germs, as much as a hammer abides by the laws of physics. That's not the point. An anti-vaxxer is first of all somebody who is on behavioral grounds obviously not willing to get a jab. That is a simple observation shared by everyone, not exclusive to the "theory, opinion, or belief" of the vaxxer. Conversely, a person who, vaxxer or not, contemplates that the anti-vaxxer will change eventually is on utilitarian grounds quite different from a vaxxer who simply ...

It is not enough that a morpheme can be extracted if it can only be reapplied to the same words by zero-derivation.

Also, since all of those topics are outrageous stereotypical Fox News material, I don't believe the morpheme is productive and citable outside the news-room, wherein the creation of short and punchy words is a valid strategy for headlines, typically with the most underspecified semantics, which contravenes the effort of finding a definition narrow enough to be distinguishable from the ones that were already in place. In fact, we have precisely that already under 7. "Used to form nouns shorter than more formal synonyms." If you have more examples new or old they may be more difficult to judge.

Nevertheless it should be deleted if the initial edit was obviously not well founded. 89.15.239.90 22:44, 27 April 2022 (UTC)

Is this right? I find no hits for "an argyraspide" in GBooks. Wikipedia only gives the plural, "argyraspides", which is of course from Greek and not an English plural with -s. Furthermore it usually seems to have a capital A. @SemperBlotto Equinox ◑ 20:06, 27 April 2022 (UTC)

The Ancient Greek term Ἀργυράσπιδες (Arguráspides) – which I think of as a proper noun – is a plurale tantum for the whole corps. Formally, it is the plural of Ἀργυράσπις (Arguráspis), from ἄργυρος (árguros) +‎ ἀσπίς (aspís), so if an English singular is needed, it should be Argyraspis. In fact, argyraspis is a common specific epithet (Acalyptris argyraspis, Acrocercops argyraspis, ...).  --Lambiam 09:54, 28 April 2022 (UTC)

There are plenty of uses of argyraspid in singular and English-style plural. DCDuring (talk) 01:39, 1 May 2022 (UTC)

Okay. I don't want to reject any adopted English form as long as it actually exists: I have seen such things from Greek. But this one looks a bit dodgy. God bless whoever does the cites. I have better things to do, like deciding whether Leasnam totally made up crowly, etc. Equinox ◑ 03:54, 7 May 2022 (UTC)

We say this is pronounced /ʒə.nə.vjɛv/ with three syllables; the French Wiktionary says it's /ʒən.vjɛv/ with only two. (Our Avignon pronunciations also differ.) Which is it? And as long as we're on the topic, what's the *gʷībā portion of the possible Celtic etymon mean? - -sche (discuss) 18:48, 28 April 2022 (UTC)

It has three syllables (at least that's one possibility; it's how I heard it in France). Equinox ◑ 18:50, 28 April 2022 (UTC)

Or four: www.youtube.com/watch?v=pCCCJxF9-mk.  --Lambiam 15:08, 29 April 2022 (UTC)

This is confusing:

Here (mas) it is described as:

• translingual
• neither singular nor plural
• metrological

Here (ma) it is described as:

• english
• plural of 'ma'
• astronomical

Is it slightly different for metrology versus astronomy?

Should they respectively be:

On 'mas':

• translingual
• plural of 'ma'
• metrology, astronomy
• abbreviation of milliarcseconds

On 'ma':

• translingual
• (plural mas)
• metrology, astronomy
• abbreviation of milliarcsecond

Aoziwe (talk) 12:57, 29 April 2022 (UTC)

I found an older, pre-internet, use of this word in A Midsummer Tempest by Poul Anderson. In Chapter XI, 'The Taproom of the Old Phoenix' there is the following exchange between Prince Rupert and Will, his companion:

(Will) "To Rupert: 'Fear not. It was her toaken led us heare.'

The prince shook himself. 'Aye.' With a stiff grin: 'Maybe I'll get used to trollery.'"

The verb "troll" is an ancient or at least medieval word (A Midsummer Tempest is set in an alternate late medieval history) and I see no reason why it cannot have the meaning of being led somewhere like a fish trolled for. I don't have the skill with the tags to enter this as a definition, and I am not sure that it's not a misprint of "drollery," either. Opinions?

(edit) Let me add that here there is a definition that seems much broader than the internet definition: "Art, craft or practice. Characteristic of. Class or group, collection of. Organisation or movement. Place of art, craft or practice." The site does not give any examples of use. Wastrel Way (talk) Eric — This unsigned comment was added by Wastrel Way (talk • contribs) at 16:43, 2022 April 30.

Inclusion at Wiktionary and the better commercial dictionaries is governed by citations, not plausible morphological derivation. The existence of diverse meanings of troll is certainly good grounds for searching for such citations. DCDuring (talk) 17:01, 30 April 2022 (UTC)

Taking a quick look at Google Books before 1880 (to exclude the numerous uses where a modern speaker would expect trolley as well as the internet uses) I find mostly typos and scannos for drollery. YMMV. DCDuring (talk) 17:18, 30 April 2022 (UTC)

I was going to create a page for ansägen. Is "to saw into" a good definition? Dngweh2s (talk) 18:06, 30 April 2022 (UTC)

@Dngweh2s: What about "incise with a saw"? –Austronesier (talk) 10:31, 1 May 2022 (UTC)

The definitions are way too old-fashioned... Zumbacool (talk) 21:47, 30 April 2022 (UTC)

Wow, that's gross. I tried to update it.

What does "Secured by thrift; well husbanded" mean? OED has this sense but it is supported by only a Shakespeare quote. It's RFV time. This, that and the other (talk) 04:27, 5 May 2022 (UTC)

In textiles, what do you call the process of combining strands of yarn, silk, etc.? Or the product derived from that process? I need this for the 併線 entry. Thanks. ---> Tooironic (talk) 22:44, 30 April 2022 (UTC)

To weave? Vininn126 (talk) 23:29, 30 April 2022 (UTC)

Yarn itself is produced by combining fibers in a process called spinning, which is a form of twisting. The result is a single thread. Combining threads to form a rope or similar is usually also done by twisting. The process can be repeated (a thick rope formed by twisting thinner ropes together formed by twisting threads together formed by twisting fibers together). Another way of combining threads or thinner ropes is by braiding. The term twisting is not specific to textiles, and I am not aware of a generic term that covers both twisting and braiding.  --Lambiam 12:59, 1 May 2022 (UTC)

Thank you both for responding. I think I'll leave the definition as is for now. I dare not modify it without fulling understanding the nuances. ---> Tooironic (talk) 08:32, 4 May 2022 (UTC)