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The (auto-generated?) category text says that the category should "contain names of specific newsgroups, not merely terms related to newsgroups". However, we would never include entries for newsgroup names. The existing category terms are "related" ones, e.g. alt.2600er. What to do? Equinox◑21:45, 1 December 2023 (UTC)
GermanOfferte(“bid, offer”) borrows from French offerte. The only sense listed in the FR entry is that of a participle, but the provided reference source actually lists two noun senses which are missing from the entry. They seem to be religious in natura, although the German word means "(commercial) offer".
The etymological reference used in the German entry says:
→ from synonymous historical offerte Fr. (today offre Fr.) < offrir Fr. 'to offer, to present'
So it sounds like there might have been a non-religious historical sense of the French word as well. Could anyone with knowledge of French please update the entry, so that the German etymology makes a bit more sense? I imagine this is related to Italianofferta(“offer”).
In spite of a diligent search, I’ve found only two GBS results in which offerte is used as a noun in a non-religious sense: one from 1784 and one from 1896. In neither use is the sense the commercial one of a quotation (an offer to provide a product or service for some price issued in response to a request). The paucity of attestations of a noun sense makes me suspect that the Dutch and German terms arose by shortening some common combination of a French feminine noun + offerte, although I do not readily see a plausible candidate for the noun.
A French grammar for use in Dutch high schools warns against the use of offerte for offre in a list of common Hollandicisms. So it is in fact plausible that the Belgian uses are not diachronic witnesses of a historical sense, but instances of synchronic contamination by Dutch. --Lambiam12:50, 6 December 2023 (UTC)
Is there a difference between these two terms? I would have thought that the former is a hypernym of the latter, but I'm not sure. We state that a religious order is "a lineage of communities and organizations of people who live in some way set apart from society in accordance with their specific religious devotion, usually characterized by the principles of its founder's religious practice", a definition which looks like it could apply equally well to monastic order. @Andrew Sheedy? PUC – 18:05, 2 December 2023 (UTC)
The members of a monastic order generally live a communal life of devotion in separation from the "secular world", such as in a monastery or abbey. The members of non-monastic orders, which include the mendicant orders, are more "outgoing". The distinction is not a clear-cut one, though. --Lambiam23:11, 2 December 2023 (UTC)
Yes, religious order is a hypernym of monastic order. The existing definition of the former isn't very good. It looks like it dates back to the creation of the entry in 2008 by Dan Polansky. I'll see if I can improve it. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 01:32, 3 December 2023 (UTC)
I could be mistaken, but I believe that the word "religious" (at least as Catholics use it), in the strictest sense, refers specifically to the three evangelical counsels (poverty, chastity, and obedience). So a "religious order" would be an order which requires its members to swear these three solemn vows (i.e. the vow of poverty, the vow of chastity, and the vow of obedience, and these vows are "solemn" which has a technical meaning. Not all vows are solemn) and to live their lives accordingly. This would make "religious order" synonymous with "institute of consecrated life". That said, the phrase "religious order" is often thrown around in a broader sense, to refer to any "society of apostolic life" or similar group which resembles a religious order. I'm sure a lot more detail regarding these distinctions is to be found in the Code of Canon law. But I would say it's not necessarily a hypernym. I think a "monastic order" is any order whose members are monks. There are probably some "monastic" orders which are not "religious". I can't think of any off the top of my head but I'd think it's at least conceptually possible. 2601:49:8400:26B:99:D0D2:1BB2:D46600:57, 5 December 2023 (UTC)
2 represents a definition associated with a causal theory; 1 represents a more subjective, naive view. 3 and 4 may be deemed to differ by (un)countability, though definition 3 seems too weak to support that. DCDuring (talk) 20:01, 3 December 2023 (UTC)
I'm surprised there's no entry for this. Judging by the talk page, it looks like there used to be one but it got deleted because it didn't meet the verification requirements? For what it's worth, I've definitely heard "kiriban" used before, online (especially on deviantART back in the day).
It's loaned from Japanese キリ番, so even if it doesn't meet the requirements for an English entry then I think it would still be useful to include a Japanese entry:
And then a page should be made for キリばん (and きりばん and キリバン) which should link to the main Japanese entry キリ番 (which apparently is a shortening of 切りのいい番号, at least according to jisho.org . So it might be good to add an etymology to the キリ番 entry).
I agree, I think "good digits" is a very unclear definition, but I didn't want to mess with it.
A kiriban--as I understand it--is any "special" number (for lack of a better word) such as 1000000 (nice round number), or 1111111 (the same number repeating), or 1234567 (numbers in a nice sequence), etc. I suppose in Japanese there may be many more such numbers (on account of this: https://en.wikipedia.orghttps://dictious.com/en/Japanese_wordplay#Numeric_substitution ) And when one of these numbers is reached (view counts, likes, friend counts, etc.), then it's time to celebrate by making a post about it. (At least that's my experience with it, on English-speaking websites such as deviantART back in the day. I do not know if the practice is exactly the same in Japan or not, and I don't know if this was just a passing fad or if it's still a common practice). 2601:49:8400:26B:61C7:12FC:9F4:6DED14:58, 13 December 2023 (UTC)
I have modified the entry for the Bulgarian word сметана. The Chitanka dictionary says that it is singular only, but I am struggling to find a way to indicate this in the head-word line. {{bg-noun}} does not have an option for singular. What's the best way of doing this? Or, do we just leave it to the Declension section?
@Kiril kovachev @Chernorizets.
Thanks SimonWikt (talk) 11:29, 5 December 2023 (UTC)
"A mist of very cold droplets that freeze upon impact and coat internal organs or parts of a ship with ice, potentially causing it to capsize." Is this right? "Internal organs" and "parts of a ship" seems like a weird combination of things to coat, especially when the external skin isn't part of the list (not sure how frost would coat an internal organ without coating the external body first). - -sche(discuss)16:03, 5 December 2023 (UTC)
Yes, "coating internal organs ... potentially causing it to capsize" is also very strange wording. Given that definition, I would half-expect to see dead racoons upside-down, but with no externally apparent damage. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │Tala við mig19:24, 5 December 2023 (UTC)
I agree that something is off about the writing in that spot. I recommend deletingdeleted the words "internal organs or" as a WT:BOLD move, and let someone else reintroduce that bit (and fix/explain it) if they are so sure that it belongs. The sense referring to plants may have been mistakenly conflated with the nautical sense; black frost can injure plant organs. Quercus solaris (talk) 23:11, 5 December 2023 (UTC)
Hi. I've just created an English sense at ded for "(slang) A person who inflicts dedovshchina (a kind of hazing ritual)". I would appreciate any citations, etymology, etc. (I suppose it comes from Russian directly and not as an English clipping.) I only encountered this word today, in a news article, but it seems quite widespread. Equinox◑01:01, 6 December 2023 (UTC)
I propose a new definition for efilism. Here's the current definition:
A philosophical position based on observations of reality that all sentient beings do not produce anything except waste and suffering and should go extinct.
Why I believe the current definition is bad
It is wrong, misleading, or hyperbolic: not all (probably not even most) efilists would claim that sentient life only produces suffering and waste. Typically, their argument is based on the premise that there is more suffering than pleasure in life.
It is somewhat provocative: it implies "all sentient beings do not produce anything except waste and suffering" is merely an "observation of reality".
So, I propose a new definition:
The philosophical position that the existence of sentient life is bad because it produces more suffering than pleasure, and should therefore go extinct.
Why I believe this definition is better
It is more precise: It explicitly states the premise contained within efilism, that there is more suffering than pleasure, and refrains from hyperbole.
It is less redundant: It removes "based on observations of reality" in favor of a plain statement of efilism's premise.
Making such a survey would be a tricky endeavor because it's rife for misinterpretation. Some Efilists would actually sometimes say that "life produces nothing but waste and suffering" when they're speaking rhetorically, but most of them would disagree in literal terms. If you ask them to clarify what they're saying, they'd elaborate that life does in fact produce some pleasure as well, but not enough pleasure as it does suffering.
Either way, whether most Efilists would agree with that statement or not is irrelevant to what the definition should be. Efilism is distinguished by being negative-utilitarian, antinatalist, and pro-Benevolent World Exploder. The statements "life produces nothing but waste and suffering" or "life produces more suffering than pleasure" are merely justifications for the Benevolent World Exploder, and they're not the only ones. Zero Contradictions (talk) 21:41, 6 December 2023 (UTC)
I can't comment on the definition as I know nothing about efilism, but I like how the new definition says "and should therefore go extinct". The old definition was missing the "therefore" which makes it very unclear that the "should go extinct" is the conclusion to a line of reasoning. If you want to make it even clearer, maybe also include utilitarianism as part of the definition, since that seems to be their major premise. 2601:49:8400:26B:2D50:654A:A2BC:A53C22:03, 6 December 2023 (UTC)
Infix has a much longer history of use than interfix. The boundaries of these terms are unclear to me. We call -fucking- and -bloody- infixes, but some linguists insist that they are disqualified from being interfixes because they are words, not affixes. DCDuring (talk) 23:14, 6 December 2023 (UTC)
I'm reasonably sure that it isn't right. The better course of action would be
attestation of any definitions for each term and
cleanup of the associated categories
The cleanup may be more difficult if we need to introduce a Wiktionary-specific definition for one or the other term. DCDuring (talk) 13:55, 7 December 2023 (UTC)
(e/c) Strictly speaking, the entries still prescribe a difference, that an interfix is "inserted between two morphemes" whereas an infix is "inserted inside a root", but as DCDuring says, I suspect we may just need to treat this like an RFV and just start looking for cites which either use or disprove the various definitions, because I can't find many general (not-language-specific i.e. not just discussing Basque interfixes but interfixes generally) reference works that define interfix in the first place, and no two of them agree on what it is. The only other dictionary I've spotted which has interfix is Cambridge, which admittedly does define it as an infix that's meaningless {{subst:dash}} but if Cambridge is right, then the bigger distinction our entries have been prescribing this whole time, about whether the i*fix goes between morphemes or inside a root, is wrong and needs to be removed. encyclopedia.com claims an interfix is "n element used to unite words and bases: the THEMATIC VOWELS -i- in agriculture, -o- in biography, and -a- in Strip-a-gram are interfixed vowels; the middle words in editor-in-chief, writer-cum-publisher, Rent-a-Car, and Sun 'n Sand are interfixed words; -ma- and -ummy- in thingamabob/thingummybob are interfixed syllables." Those are clearly not all meaningless. So we probably just need to try and cite (and have) both definitions, and just explain that interfix seems to be new (not in Century or the 1930s OED) and uncommon and that few users of it agree on a definition of it. - -sche(discuss)14:03, 7 December 2023 (UTC)
For English, we could select (non-rare) definitions for these that help us create 'good' categories. Or we could use the older sense of infix, which seems to have included both of these kinds of morphemes, to put them both in a single category. We could put all of the pharma items in a subcategory (or in Translingual???) to effectively highlight the others. I don't know whether these two kinds are distinguished in other languages. They may also have different attributes than they seem to have in English. DCDuring (talk) 22:56, 7 December 2023 (UTC)
That is likely the case, if we assume that there is no etymological fallacy when morphologists coin or appropriate words. A question arises about whether there is any semantic element to either definition. Also, I conjecture that in the past infix included things we might call interfixes now.
Side issue: the assignment of pharmaceutical i*fixes to the infix (-col-) vs interfix (-cort-) categories seems haphazard and inconsistent at the moment. It seems likely there has been confusion of these terms, not only on Wiktionary. I would not be surprised to find uses (not only on Wiktionary) that do not strictly adhere to the "was it added to a root" vs "was it added between morphemes" distinction. We would probably benefit from a usage note in each crosslinking the other and explaining the prescribed distinction. DCDuring's cleanup (so interfix no longer definitionally has to be empty) seems good. - -sche(discuss)13:42, 7 December 2023 (UTC)
I can find and have added citations to Citations:interfix which speak of interfixes which are not meaningless, but change the meaning by adding diminution or iteration. "Meaninglessness" does not seem definitional. I think the current setup (after the removal of "empty" as a requirement) of the entries is broadly correct: interfix is mainly used for things inserted between morphemes, whereas infix can be used for something inserted anywhere, either likewise between morphemes (as definition 4 of infix, as in these cites) or inside a morpheme (like fucking in some mor-fucking-pheme, definition 1). - -sche(discuss)00:00, 8 December 2023 (UTC)
I actually thought I was making it on the spanish wiktionary where some native speakers may be able to help but I guess it's good to have one on the English site too. I learned about this phrase recently and wanted to make it easier to find info about it since there isn't a ton from what I could see.
The way I was introduced to the phrase was carros por puestos but I see now that articles often drop the s. So I'm not sure if the article should be moved or renamed or what. Any thoughts?
Also, I was a little confused if in the Spanish section the quote should be in spanish and have an english translation or vice versa.
Any help fixing up my first page would be appreciated so I can checkout the edit history and learn from it.
Since it's on the English Wiktionary, the definition is supposed to be in English. If you want to give a definition in Spanish, you need to use the Spanish Wiktionary instead. As for the quote, you are correct. For Spanish words, the quote should be in Spanish (and then it's also good to have an English translation of the quote, although the translation isn't required). 2601:49:8400:26B:99:D0D2:1BB2:D46612:46, 7 December 2023 (UTC)
Also, I don't think it should get an English section since I don't believe it's an English word. I believe the rule is that Spanish-to-English loanwords should get both a Spanish section and an English section, but Spanish words which are not loaned into English should only get a Spanish section (no English section), even if that word occasionally appears in English texts (like the example you linked to). I have revised your entries to how I think they should be. (Also, I've added a translation, but I don't really know Spanish, so please fix any error in that.) 2601:49:8400:26B:99:D0D2:1BB2:D46613:12, 7 December 2023 (UTC)
Before chemists got good at isolating the active chemicals from herbal preparations and figuring out their molecular structure, herbalists and scientists called whatever was responsible for the effects of the herb its "active principle" and generally named it (in Latin) after the plant it came from. Thus caffeine was originally just vaguely known as something in coffee (Latin cafēa) that gave it its effects.
Likewise, whatever it was in willow bark that gave it its effects was called salicin (from Latin salix). Later, chemists isolated salicylic acid, and also isolated it from meadowsweet, which was then known as Spiraea ulmaria. After German chemists managed to make acetylsalicylic acid from it to get rid of some nasty side-effects, the Bayer company came up with the brand name "a" (as in acetyl) + "spir" (as in Spiraea) + -in, and "the active principle of willow bark and meadowsweet" became aspirin.
That seems a bit wrong to me, for several reasons. Primarily I would have thought that, for this sense, the word is most often (or "chiefly") used to describe Christ's return to life after being dead, in which case it could be marked as (religion) or (Christianity). To me, fantasy would be a good label for goblin or orc, but not resurrection.
And then it's often used figuratively — a sense that's missing from the entry — as in "The resurrection of the Seahawks' season was mainly due to innovations of the new coach."
I've just noticed that the same IP editor also tried to make the same edits to the entries for the equivalent Portuguese and Spanish words: ressurreição & resurrección. However, the template was added to each of those in a kind of no-man's-land, so it's not visible unless you look at the source code. I'll delete those "fanatasy" references there too, but if you're keen the entries might do with similar enhancement as at resurrection.
I'm not sure about the situation in other languages. At least, in some Slavic languages, the term resurrection may be translated in different ways depending on its sense. Tollef Salemann (talk) 08:49, 9 December 2023 (UTC)
Regarding "near-death experience", I think if people use it to refer to someone who has recovered after, say, being in bed with influenza for two straight weeks, then I would say it counts as figurative use — i.e. it's a kind of "comeback". I'm not sure I've heard it used like that myself, but if you think it's common usage, then you could add a separate sense
In books written in Portuguese the term is often not capitalized. Conversely, one can easily find uses of capitalized Cristianismo, so I guess these are just alternative spellings. As far as I see the rules given in the 1990 agreement (Section XIX) are inconclusive. The closest I see is the rule that the names of disciplines are written with minuscules (matemática), but then the rule states that they may optionally also be written with a majuscule (Matemática). --Lambiam23:46, 9 December 2023 (UTC)
Lacking these definitions:
1. scientific knowledge used in practical ways in industry, for example in designing new machines
2. machines or equipment designed using technology
But the last time it was editted was November, so why did noone notice this.
Duchuyfootball (talk) 09:42, 10 December 2023 (UTC)
I think the first two definitions were meant to cover this; note that the first quotation uses the term technology companies. The wording might be amenable to improvement, but finding a truly satisfactory definition is not easy. The trigonometric identities are part of the scientific knowledge used in practical ways in industry, but one wouldn’t normally include them under the umbrella of technology. I think the core concept involves the notion of the embodiment in a physical device of a science-based process, intended for practical use. Figurative uses apart, all three ingredients seem to be needed: (1) embodiment in a physical device; (2) of a science-based process; (3) intended for practical use. The term may then refer to such devices themselves, the processes embodied in them, and the art of designing and developing such devices and processes. --Lambiam19:15, 10 December 2023 (UTC)
What was there before my edit was inadequate. What's there now (which is what you were seeing when you commented, I believe) is adequate albeit subject to whatever tweaking of wordsmithery anyone wants to do. I view it as hard to improve, for the reasons that you mentioned. Quercus solaris (talk) 19:24, 10 December 2023 (UTC)
for the Ancient Greek is plainly wrong, since it refers to PIE *treb, where *trep is probably meant. Also (at least on my system (Firefox running under Linux) there are strange red blots following the word Hittite.
@Jonathan Ryshpan I reverted the *treb edit, made by an account that hasn't made any other Indo-European-related edits anywhere. As for the Hittite: for me, there are cuneiform characters there, which are red because they're linking to an entry that hasn't been created yet. It may be that you don't have the right font to see them, or you just don't know what cuneiform looks like. It's a historically extremely important writing system, since it was the main writing system among the great civilizations of the Ancient Near East for thousands of years. Chuck Entz (talk) 03:27, 11 December 2023 (UTC)
Sense 2 looks like sum of parts: "in workflows and administration, regarding delineation of responsibilities: To the extent that the matter concerns my role; to the extent that I am obligated by my position/role/office to be involved (in a certain process)." Does it have some business-specific meaning, or is it just an &lit? Equinox◑12:55, 11 December 2023 (UTC)
Sense 1 is not really a definition: it's a list of synonyms, with a silly bit about pragmatics in some circumstances that could be applied to sense 2 or to many other terms. Sense 2 is verbose, but at least it's a definition. It doesn't have to be worded as restricted to administration/management: it could be applied in a family, indeed to any group discussion about a shared matter with different potential perspectives. DCDuring (talk) 14:36, 11 December 2023 (UTC)
Sense 1 is not really a definition: it's a list of synonyms, with a silly bit about pragmatics in some circumstances that could be applied to sense 2 or to many other terms. Sense 2 is verbose, but at least it's a definition. It doesn't have to be worded as restricted to administration/management: it could be applied in a family, indeed to any group discussion about a shared matter with different potential perspectives. DCDuring (talk) 14:36, 11 December 2023 (UTC)
I wouldn't want to add something like that unless there was evidence or a significant consensus here. Lots of expressions can sometimes be used disparagingly. That doesn't make a usage note, label, or altered definition necessary for all of them. DCDuring (talk) 18:28, 11 December 2023 (UTC)
It depends on who is saying it (the boss or someone standing up for his perspective), context etc. Anything the boss says can be dismissive of other opinions, even if prefaced by something like IMHO. DCDuring (talk) 18:32, 11 December 2023 (UTC)
Consider: "I've already told him what I think. As far as I'm concerned he can go to the devil." Do you think "IMHO" would work here? I don't. Equinox◑20:07, 11 December 2023 (UTC)
I wouldn't include the article in such cases. I prefer having the minimum idiomatic part for proverbs in most cases, and "the" is not needed for the proverb to have their meaning. (Indeed, "nails that stick up get hammered down" has some usage as well.) CitationsFreak (talk) 02:04, 12 December 2023 (UTC)
I disagree. Certain proverbs are always used with the same article, but that isn't evident from the entries without it. How is one to know that "the squeaky wheel gets the grease" cannot ordinarily be "a squeaky wheel gets the grease"? Or if we don't include articles, how is a reader supposed to have any confidence in whether murder will out is said with a definite article or not? I'm with everyone else here. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 02:31, 12 December 2023 (UTC)
My suggestion is to put a usage note saying something along the lines of "When used in the singular, the common form is 'the squeaky...', not 'a squeaky...'". CitationsFreak (talk) 04:27, 12 December 2023 (UTC)
I sympathize with the desire to lemmatize the minimum idiomatic part when possible, and to exclude the from e.g. The Netherlands or The Rock... but with many proverbs, the minimum idiomatic part is the idea rather than any one phrasing. Because the wording can be "the squeaky wheel gets the grease", "your squeaky wheel will get oiled", "the squeaky wheel is oiled", "it's the squeaking wheel that gets the oil", "the wheel that squeaks that gets the oil" or any of a number of other wordings (all can be found on Google Books), lemmatizing even squeaky wheel gets the grease is already not lemmatizing the minimum idiomatic part—the adjective doesn't have to be "squeaky" for the proverb to have its meaning, the verb doesn't have to be "gets", and the noun doesn't have to be "grease". But we can't lemmatize squeak(y/ing) wheel (VERB INDICATING RECEIPT) (grease/oil), so we've already fallen back towards the idea of lemmatizing a common phrasing instead and having redirections from other phrasings. Given that, I don't think it's necessarily a problem to include "the", as long as we have redirects from the the-less forms. - -sche(discuss)03:42, 12 December 2023 (UTC)
I would say that "squeaky wheel gets the grease" and "squeaky wheel will get the oil", etc., are the minimum idiomatic alternative forms. The fact that one has the definition and one is an alt form isn't a concern to me. CitationsFreak (talk) 04:24, 12 December 2023 (UTC)
One issue that seems to arise in particular with proverbs is that they get used in many variant forms—see, for example, square peg in a round hole. I think we should lemmatize at what most people regard as the standard form (which often begins with the) and either indicate the variants as alternative forms or, if there are too many, add a usage note. — Sgconlaw (talk) 04:59, 12 December 2023 (UTC)
There are no alt forms of "square peg...". The "standard form" can be a redirect, I have no issue with that. It's just that it feels wrong to have the main page have something that's not a needed element. CitationsFreak (talk) 00:47, 14 December 2023 (UTC)
See my comments on Talk:realpolitik. The terms given as synonyms are machiavellianism and pragmatism, which are hardly synonymous with one another by any stretch. Machiavellianism is a closer synonym for realpolitik. Pragmatic should probably be replaced or removed from the definition as well, but I'd like to solicit a few suggestions first. At any rate the list of synonyms should not contain words that aren't at least vaguely, plausibly synonymous among themselves and it would be altogether dishonest to say that realpolitik is merely pragmatism as a political philosophy or practice. AP295 (talk) 04:17, 12 December 2023 (UTC)
You're right — pragmatism is more hypernym than synonym of Machiavellianism (or of realpolitik). At the very least, the entry should be changed to reflect that fact (i.e., hyper|en|pragmatism not syn|en|pragmatism). Many thesauri have (and still do) lump anything analogous or overlapping into the nominal "synonym" category, with a notion that it is done advisedly and the reader understands why, but that's not what Wiktionary should do. It is better to put things at the see-also relation than to use a flawed (overbroad) definition of what synonymy is. Quercus solaris (talk) 22:22, 12 December 2023 (UTC)
So far as I know we dont put dots in chemical formulas. Maybe we did a hundred years ago, but the Webster formula is different from what we have and should probably be changed. That said, you may be right that this is a synonym for the newer, more systematic name, as a lot of other chemical terms have been aligned with patterns in recent decades by IUPAC. —Soap—17:36, 13 December 2023 (UTC)
I'm in the middle of a dispute and we can't seem to come to an agreement. My proposed entry is a practice wherein banks lend out more money than they hold in reserve. I feel that in the original definition, the part about deposit liabilities is somewhat misleading and should not be present. Fractional reserve banking allows banks to lend out more than just what their clients have deposited, see https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/022416/why-banks-dont-need-your-money-make-loans.asp The term "deposit liabilities" is jargon and would probably misguide most readers. It is against the guidelines: 4. Avoid specialized termsAP295 (talk) 10:55, 12 December 2023 (UTC)
This is a facile excuse, and not at all what you were provoking me with earlier. The definition was far worse and more vague before I made any edits. The whole point of fractional reserve banking is to create interest bearing debt. See the link I posted to see why simply using jargon like "deposit liabilities" does not give the reader an accurate idea of what fractional reserve banking is. Suggest something else if you think it's too vague. That's fair, but the entry should not use jargon. AP295 (talk) 11:24, 12 December 2023 (UTC)
Per the link: "In today’s modern economy, most money takes the form of deposits, but rather than being created by a group of savers entrusting the bank with holding their money, deposits are actually created when banks extend credit (i.e., create new loans). As Joseph Schumpeter once wrote, “It is much more realistic to say that the banks 'create credit,' that is, that they create deposits in their act of lending than to say that they lend the deposits that have been entrusted to them.” When a bank makes a loan, there are two corresponding entries that are made on its balance sheet, one on the assets side and one on the liabilities side. The loan counts as an asset to the bank and it is simultaneously offset by a newly created deposit, which is a liability of the bank to the depositor holder. Contrary to the story described above, loans actually create deposits."
If you’re implying that readers don’t know all that, removing all mention of deposits and liabilities (as you did) is not likely to enlighten them: A practice whereby banks lend out more money than they hold in reserve. would simply be baffling to an uninformed reader, because you have provided no explanatory context whatsoever. Theknightwho (talk) 11:42, 12 December 2023 (UTC)
I feel that a practice wherein banks lend out more money than they hold in reserve communicates the idea succinctly and without the use of any such jargon. If you have a better idea, let's hear it. AP295 (talk) 11:44, 12 December 2023 (UTC)
The same for you. Anyone can stonewall another editor with generic complaints while ignoring their points. This seems to be your habit, e.g. https://en.wiktionary.orghttps://dictious.com/en/Talk:wooden_language You seem to have a grudge ever since I made the thread about "offensive" vs "derogatory" in the beer parlour and have made it a point to give me a hard time. This petty, passive-aggressive sniveling is an incredibly indecent way to treat someone. Grow a spine and have some goddamned manners. AP295 (talk) 11:48, 12 December 2023 (UTC)
And if you don't care to have a productive discourse about it, then stop reverting my edits. You are the only editor who's been this sour toward me, and that says a lot. Do you really like the present definition? Do you think it's fair to the reader? Even if you don't like me (for reasons known only to yourself) then at the very least you should see that I'm trying to improve the entry. What could possibly motivate you to be so wretched toward me? AP295 (talk) 12:14, 12 December 2023 (UTC)
At any rate, it's a tricky definition and there's a lot of misinformation surrounding the topic. I want to get it right and I cannot do this if I'm being obstructed at every step. I'm not saying I'm always correct. Hardly. Yet nobody deserves the grief of having other editors grasp at every straw to obstruct well-intended edits and harass them until they become involved in a content dispute or edit war and generally waste their time, which seems to be your object. AP295 (talk) 12:34, 12 December 2023 (UTC)
I've tried for a compromise, because someone has to. I think it looks pretty good and it's certainly more specific than before. AP295 (talk) 12:58, 12 December 2023 (UTC)
@Fenakhay This wasn't a revert, it was an attempt at compromise. See above. Theknightwho insisted that it was too vague without mentioning "deposit liabilities". Fine. I added something about them, but he reverted that too. He hasn't made any suggestions whatsoever aside from stonewalling my attempts to improve the entry. It could also be put it some "additional notes" section if it's not appropriate in the definition itself, though it seemed fine. I can try for another if Theknightwho doesn't like this one either. Please unlock the entry so we can continue to work on it. AP295 (talk) 13:22, 12 December 2023 (UTC)
I seem to be the only one trying to work on it at all. What can I do if Theknightwho just stonewalls me? The definition is only halfway there, and frankly pretty bad in its current state. AP295 (talk) 13:28, 12 December 2023 (UTC)
Not a fun night, I've got to say. Better than if I hadn't tried though. I suppose I'll await developments until the lock expires, but if Theknightwho isn't going to cooperate here or anywhere else then I can only try for a compromise and submit it. AP295 (talk) 13:36, 12 December 2023 (UTC)
Theknightwho now bastardizing an entry I made not too long ago, changing the definition in a way I explicitly cautioned against on the discussion page after hours of working on it and the entry. Reverted my revert. He's quite obviously harassing me at this point. Would someone please talk to him? I put a lot of work into that entry.
This isn’t relevant to the thread, but I also fail to see how you have a point: you said the entry shouldn’t describe media outlets that engage in propaganda laundering as “trustworthy”, and suggest using the word “trusted”. The current definition does the latter, and (importantly) is not limited to one type of propaganda laundering, since the important thing is that the presentation style makes it trusted, and not that it is specifically journalistic or whatever. Theknightwho (talk) 14:03, 12 December 2023 (UTC)
You've filled it with bogus idiom and marketing jargon, which is obviously what I had intended to avoid. You're clearly following me around and harassing me. Again I wonder, why are you such a prick to me? AP295 (talk) 14:07, 12 December 2023 (UTC)
Stock phrases like, target audience, legitimizing misinformation. Obviously not an improvement, at any rate. You've now locked the entry, which I created and spent hours working on over the last few days. You act as though I've run over your dog. AP295 (talk) 14:11, 12 December 2023 (UTC)
You're impossible. Kindly undo your bullshit edit and unlock the entry that I painstakingly wrote and kept notes on. Is this really what you want your monument to look like? Posterity will wonder, "why was Theknightwho such an obnoxious prick to AP295?" Only you can prevent this. AP295 (talk) 14:18, 12 December 2023 (UTC)
I don't have time to arbitrate this right now, but this is not going to cause the planet to implode in the next day or so. You've been extremely annoying, so I can understand why @Theknightwho might lose objectivity. Still, it's more likely posterity will ask: "why is @AP295 throwing tantrums and calling someone all kinds of awful names over a dictionary entry?" Through the course of this discussion the emotional state you're projecting has progressed from young adult to teenager to child. Please stop! You're only hurting yourself. Most people's eyes are glazing over at all of this verbiage you've been throwing out and they're wishing someone else would deal with this. I think you both should step back and chill out for a day or two. Chuck Entz (talk) 14:57, 12 December 2023 (UTC)
Also, there is another change that I was thinking of making, but I am hesitant to do so, as I am neither a Latin expert nor a theologian. But the change that I wanted to make is that I'm pretty sure "in (+ ablative)" is sometimes used with a sense of directionality (i.e. "into"), at least in church Latin.
Here's an example of what I'm talking about. The baptismal formula (cf. Matthew 28:19) includes the phrase "in nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti". Note that nomine is ablative. In English we say "I baptize you in the name of the Father etc." which is technically correct but a little misleading, as the English word "in" is ambiguous: "in" generally means "in" (location, English sense 1) but can also mean "into" (direction, English sense 2), and I am pretty sure that in this instance it's to be understood in the directional sense. The baptizer is baptizing the other person into Christ (cf. Galatians 3:27), i.e. the person who receives baptism--before he receives baptism--is outside of the Church (Christ's mystical body)... and, then--after he receives baptism--he is a member of the Church (Christ's body). The baptism is what brings him into Christ. This I believe is clearer in the Greek: εἰς τὸ ὄνομα τοῦ Πατρὸς καὶ τοῦ Υἱοῦ καὶ τοῦ Ἁγίου Πνεύματος (which I think can only mean "into"). 2601:49:8400:26B:61C7:12FC:9F4:6DED14:34, 13 December 2023 (UTC)
I’m sorry, but “baptizing them into the name of ...” does IMO not make a great deal of sense in any language. L&S give quite a few senses for εἰς(eis) other than “into”, such as “in regard to”, “in respect of”. Might εἰς τὸ ὄνομα(eis tò ónoma) be a calque of an Aramaic idiom? --Lambiam22:26, 13 December 2023 (UTC)
Re: "into the name" - it does sound kind of strange, but not too strange in light of this idea that the "name" of a thing is somehow equivalent to the thing's essence (i.e. the phrase "the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit" means the same thing as "the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit"). But as I am not a theologian, I refrain from further comment.
However, assuming that this is what's going on here, then what the baptismal formula is actually saying is "I baptize you into the Trinity (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit)", which is similar to the wording found in Galatians 3:27 ("baptized into Christ"). This makes sense in light of this idea that the Church is Christ's "mystical body". (Initiation into the Church is an initiation into Christ. And since Christ is inseparable from the Trinity, this would also be an initiation into the Trinity. Hence baptism into the Trinity, or baptism into the name of the Trinity.) And if this is what's going on, then the Latin presumably means the same thing as the Greek.
I suppose the alternative possibility is, as you said, the word εἰς might have a broader range of meanings, or this could be a calque of a Hebrew or Aramaic idiom.
Your observation is one that is commonly made and commented upon by theologians, often in the context of the Creed ("Credo in (unum) Deum"). I'm also not qualified to say whether it merits its own sense or not. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 17:31, 19 December 2023 (UTC)
The construction is also found in Matthew 18:20: οὗ γάρ εἰσι δύο ἢ τρεῖς συνηγμένοι εἰς τὸ ἐμὸν ὄνομα, ἐκεῖ εἰμι ἐν μέσῳ αὐτῶν. --Lambiam22:35, 13 December 2023 (UTC)
As I understand it, the ablative implies direction from, not to. My interpretation would be that the act is said to be on behalf of or taking part in the essence/power of the Trinity as the source of its authority- the preposition doesn't refer to the recipient at all. Chuck Entz (talk) 17:53, 19 December 2023 (UTC)
0-4-0+0-4-0 is a kind of locomotive (based on the notation classifying locomotives by their wheel and axle arrangement). So far as I am aware, there is no locomotive with the notation 0-2-0+0-2-0. bd2412T01:59, 14 December 2023 (UTC)
'Bias' - two notes
I didn't notice an indication of pronunciation of the plural of 'bias.' The entry says the plural is 'biases' or 'biasses,' but there's no pronunciation guide. I fee there should be. Additionally, it could be noted that the more American-English way of pronouncing 'biases,' is BY-a-siz, whereas the more English-English way of pronouncing the word is BY-a-seez.
Secondly, I'm not 100% sure whether this needs to be added to the entry, but I wonder whether a note could be added about bowls (i.e. lawn-bowls.) The balls in the sport have a deliberate weighting on one side of the ball (I believe there are many other similar sports that do the same thing, come to think of it,) and that is called the ball's bias. Therefore, in bowls, 'bias,' can be a noun, "The ball's bias caused it to curve around the opponent's blocking ball perfectly." Probably not much as a verb, except perhaps in unusual circumstances, "The constructor biased the ball perfectly in line with the sport's rules." And as an adjective, "The ball had an unusually large bias to the left." 114.23.160.4501:24, 14 December 2023 (UTC)
"Vagitate" isn't a good example; I revised the etymology. It represents a Latin frequentative form (whether real or imagined I'm not entirely sure). In the case of words like "pneumatism", the -t- goes back (even if not directly) to the stem of the Greek suffix -μα found at the end of πνεῦμα(pneûma), πνεύματος(pneúmatos); compare στίγμα(stígma), genitive στίγματος(stígmatos). "Egotism" and "hyletics" have no comparable etymological justification, and so can be regarded as containing an 'interfix' (although they could be treated alternatively as formed directly by analogy with particular other words, or as having reanalyzed suffixes of the form -tism, -tic(s)).--Urszag (talk) 04:36, 14 December 2023 (UTC)
We should remove cases where the t was present in the etyma of the word, and if only a few cases remain and these can be analysed as being influenced by other words (rather than as adding an infix/interfix -t-), I would rather analyse those that way too. Or do other references posit the existence of an interfix or infix -t-? - -sche(discuss)23:21, 20 December 2023 (UTC)
Of the three entries which were left in the category, epileptor had been listed as epilepsy + -t- + -or but seems more likely to be epileptic + -or without positing -t- (the definition is also questionable)m and orgastic seems comparable to sarcastic, pleonastic and the like. - -sche(discuss)19:04, 1 January 2024 (UTC)
Sense 1 of noun section 1 (the singular noun people that now takes plural verbs and sometimes pluralizes to peoples): "Used as plural of person; There were so many people at the restaurant last night."
Noun section 2, the plural noun: "plural of person"
🤔 Nothing about the restaurant usex, most of the other cites, or the definition as currently written seems distinct from any other typical noun; men or knitters can be plugged into the usex in place of people and into the definition in place of human beings and persons. AFAICT, sense 1 of noun section 1 should be merged with noun section 2 like this, yes? Or is the sense supposed to cover the obsolete use of people with singular verbs as in the "XXII people was in this parrish drownd" cite, which is currently only explicitly addressed in the usage notes...? in that case we should still move the modern usexes to noun section 2, move that section to the top, and label XXII people was{{lb|en|obsolete|or|dialectal}}, no? - -sche(discuss)12:15, 15 December 2023 (UTC)
I agree with your proposed edit, but is the 1607 quote even needed? Might be a good example of a very early usage, but I feel that this is just going to confuse people. Maybe move it to the bottom of the list of quotes? (Also, is usex / usexes an actual word? I have never heard it before, and there's no page for it.) 2601:49:8400:26B:6D9A:6EB3:8AAE:305115:20, 15 December 2023 (UTC)
It’s not plural. “Grammatical number is a morphological category”. Similarly said on German Wikipedia. English peculiarly requires constructio ad sensum. In VSO sentences which are the default in West Semitic in general the verb does not use the plural forms for the predicate verb but we would not claim it to be plural just because the subject noun is plural. Likewise we have learnt to avoid to speak of plural and singular where an unmarked form denotes multiple instances of a species and the marked form one, e.g. شَجَر(šajar, “trees”), شَجَرَة(šajara, “tree”), both are singular, the former noted as collective and the later as singulative. Whether or not something refers to multiple things or new subjects do (“they”) is irrelevant. Fay Freak (talk) 15:50, 15 December 2023 (UTC)
@Fay Freak: But English personis the suppletive and less formal plural of person. While taking a plural verb does not diagnose it as plural, it takes the plural form of the determiners this and that, as in "We don't need those people!", and that is conclusive. We can also say, "Six people were hurt", which again supports plurality. --RichardW57 (talk) 23:20, 15 December 2023 (UTC)
@RichardW57: This is more sound. In a phrase tree the number property is inherited. With inaccurate reasoning, Wiktionary editors fail to follow coherent approaches, and I distrust plural claims being any oftener correct than by sheer chance. How is United States singular? I’d love to believe they got at least that one right, but I don’t know what they refer to. Now and yore the term takes these, not this. As for suppletion it is again an exterior association; people is also the suppletive of man or anything else one prefers to not explicitly refer to for some reason, so I question how strictly or loosely the term suppletion may be used, and the multitude of possible theories about it also illustrates how one form (people/person) does not necessarily highlight the grammatical property of the other (person/people) but the suppletive relation is only assumed after recognizing a deficiency in paradigm so we have a petitio principii here. Fay Freak (talk) 23:54, 15 December 2023 (UTC)
@Fay Freak: Certainly for my usage, 'people' functions as a plural of 'person'. I would contradict an assertion, 'There were only three people there.' with 'No, there was only one there'. In counting, I would only go 'one man', 'two people',... if I were intending to give more information than the number, but then realised that 'two men' would be wrong, e.g. because one of the two was a girl and the other was a man. Indeed, for my speech, 'persons' is extremely formal. --RichardW57 (talk) 00:09, 16 December 2023 (UTC)
@RichardW57: If you can observe the psychological process, it is probably right. I’d probably say it is an extension of one of the noun senses of people though and does not warrant its own section. The section does not indicate either that some of the senses already are plural, or pluraletantum, used in one sense suppletively for person or man, for a semi-sense: none of the senses is non-lemma. It is weird that the countable—uncountable dichotomy is usually stitched onto singular nouns: now within one entry we have pluraliatantum that are uncountable, as opposed to singulars which can be counted and pluralized morphologically. Fay Freak (talk) 01:33, 16 December 2023 (UTC)
I would have gone the other way, eliminating the second noun header, except for the usage note, which IMHO carries all the water for the second noun heading. As for grammatical number, I doubt that most normal folks/people (!!!) care about anything other than whether the word used with a given definition requires a singular or plural verb or pronoun. (I don't think "many" in a usage example conveys that unambiguously.) DCDuring (talk) 17:26, 15 December 2023 (UTC)
own (etymology 2) ... and also pwn (pronunciation)
For own, is there any real difference between sense 5 the same as sense 3? I think sense 5 should be a subsense of sense 3, or else removed entirely.
Also, senses 10, 11, 12, and 14 all look like they could be merged into sense 9, and some of the example quotes in sense 8 (intransitive) look like they belong under sense 9 (transitive). Also, sense 13 isn't clearly defined, but it might fall under sense 1 or sense 9.
I am not familiar with this slang, but it appears to be a nominalized form of sense 5. I'm just wondering if this is exclusively "Internet slang", or if it is ever used outside the Internet? (For that matter, just how commonly used is it, even online?)
As for pwn, it says that this word was originally pronounced the same as "own", but it doesn't give any sources/citations. Is there any evidence for this (other than the fact that it probably originated as a typo)? I personally have never heard it pronounced as "own". I've heard it pronounced as /poʊn/ ("own" with a 'p' before it) and, less commonly, I've heard "pawn" (the same as the chess piece), but never just plain "own" without a 'p'. 2601:49:8400:26B:6D9A:6EB3:8AAE:305115:16, 15 December 2023 (UTC)
The Oxford English Dictionary doesn't mention "flamingo" as a Portuguese form: it cites the Portuguese form "flamengo" instead. On the assumption that the Portuguese etymology that we give is correct, I've removed Portuguese "flamingo" from the English etymology section.--Urszag (talk) 04:52, 16 December 2023 (UTC)
It seems to be more complex than I anticipated. After noticing that the etymology that we gave did not match the entry for Spanish flamenco, I think that the "flame" etymology itself is not very certain. Accordingly, I made some further edits, but more attention would be helpful.--Urszag (talk) 05:37, 16 December 2023 (UTC)
Senses 10 and 11 come close, but I kind of get what you mean. I would word it "A maternal figure who is respected for her wisdom, experience, and sound advice". I wonder if we can expend sense 11 to include this. Leasnam (talk) 22:20, 18 December 2023 (UTC)
Two senses, both cited from Goodfellas. Perhaps only sense 2 is accurate, and the cite under sense 1 is misplaced? (Wonderfool seemed unsure when he first made the entry.) Equinox◑23:42, 16 December 2023 (UTC)
I've centralized things on the seemingly more common form bust... and consolidated the two definitions into one which better fits how it seems to be used (also considering how other dictionaries define it). - -sche(discuss)17:48, 10 January 2024 (UTC)
The quotation, ... שבוכה ומוצצת ומוצצת ובוכה ..., is not sourced. My Hebrew skills are insufficient to filter through the Google results. Can someone please add a citation? (It actually looks like something I might some day be interested in reading, though maybe only in translation.) Thanks! Peter Chastain (talk) 01:40, 17 December 2023 (UTC)
It is the second verse of the lyrics of the song שיהיה לך טוב ("Sheyihiye Lecha Tov") by אפרת גוש (Efrat Gosh). I am not sure whether the singer is the lyricist and how thus should be attributed. --Lambiam21:19, 17 December 2023 (UTC)
Etymology and descendants of letters/scripts?
Currently most letter pages dont have an etymology or descendants section, there are a few pages with them like most of Latin, Brahmi 𑀅, Aramaic 𐡀 etc. The templates could be standardized and added to letter pages. AleksiB 1945 (talk) 11:33, 17 December 2023 (UTC)
I take it you mean 'glyph origin' rather than 'etymology'? (I see that there's some inconsistency on the way Wiktionary has headed these sections. I think any attempt to show the letterform's derivation should be headed as a 'glyph origin', not as an 'etymology'. Letter names (and the letters themselves) should get an 'etymology' section, but the letterforms (glyphs) should get a 'glyph origin' section.)
I agree that some unification could be useful, but, at the same time, it might be hard to draw the line between which glyphs are identical and which are derivative. Like do we say that the English letter 'A' is derived from the Latin letter 'A', or do we just say that these are the same letter? The former would require a 'glyph origin' section under the Latin entry and a separate 'glyph origin' section under the English entry, while the latter would only require a single 'glyph origin' section (under the Translingual entry). 2601:49:8400:26B:6853:D1CF:AED1:2FA415:05, 17 December 2023 (UTC)
Some unification is needed we could add the glyph origin section just under the Latin entry as both use the same script, if there is only a single unicode then just one entry but all sections shouldnt be merged as sometimes the letter has different names and represent different phonemes like <c> in English, Polish, Turkish, Xhosa and Tamazight languages and the letter may also be a word like English "a". AleksiB 1945 (talk) 09:33, 18 December 2023 (UTC)
In my humble opinion, most sources on the topic are rubbish. A fairly high level of expertise in paleography is required and most linguists simply don't have that. That's graphematic, semiology, etc. See for example Wikipedia's Brahmi Script article with lengthy discussion to conclude from the start it was probably instated de novo. The way these letters are used is graphematics, bordering on orthography, which is easier with standardized scripts. Are ligatures more deserving of entries than digraphs? 79.140.117.17714:10, 3 January 2024 (UTC)
Whether that be so or not, the greater problem is that Unicode has not been invented to talk about letters but at best to produce language about language (as was the case from the beginning concerning programming languages). For truthful and sane discussion the knowledgeable editor needs images, otherwise the information is difficult to shoehorn into an etymology section and we are back in the 20th century when cuneiform characters were referred to indirectly rather than printed because it fits well into the lines. We would need a kind of “letter style-sheet language” at a granularity that only exist at font-levels. Fay Freak (talk) 14:28, 3 January 2024 (UTC)
I've recently created the page for Ancient Greek ἄπαστον (a Hesychian word, meaning 'prison'). While the only etymology I could find in reputable dictionaries was a derivation from ἄπαστος 'fasting' (in Bailly), I got curious and found a possible alternative etymology, which is currently listed in the entry as a second contender. This alternative etymology would propose a semitic origin, with a pretty good match in Safaitic ḥabīsat ('enclosure') - and further Arabic حَبَّسَ 'to imprison'. Way later in history, in Ottoman times, a similar borrowing happened, leading (through Ottoman Turkish) to Modern Greek χάψη.
Now I have two questions: (1) Is there a credible source that mentions the same/a similar etymology, and (2) if yes, can someone add the proper script for the Safaitic form? I only have access to a resource that gives a transcription. AntiquatedMan (talk) 08:34, 18 December 2023 (UTC)
Yes, they don't necessarily have to be fancruft. The point is that a category of "things from X" is different from a category of "things relating to X". Equinox◑12:29, 19 December 2023 (UTC)
A long time ago in a galaxy far far away (can’t recall where; probably the Beer Parlour or Tea Room), I asked if it was necessary to have both “Category:English terms derived from Star Wars” and “Category:Star Wars” (and their Trekkie analogues), and whether we could simplify by just using the latter one. I think the conclusion of the discussion was that the former is for terms derived from the franchise but not actually used in the franchise, while the latter is for terms meeting CFI appearing in the franchise. I repeat my view in that discussion that it will probably be hard to get editors to maintain this distinction, so maybe it is better to just put all of the terms in the latter category. — Sgconlaw (talk) 12:47, 19 December 2023 (UTC)
That's not the distinction I would draw between the two. Compare Category:English terms derived from the Bible (English words/expressions which have a biblical origin but are used idiomatically outside of a Christian context) and Category:en:Bible (English terms about the Bible). I would definitely oppose merging these; that the distinction is not well maintained in practice doesn't mean it doesn't exist. PUC – 13:10, 19 December 2023 (UTC)
This needs more discussion, and not just for these two categories. We aren't all on the same page.
I've always understood Category:English terms derived from the Bible as a gathering place for terms which have acquired a life of their own, an idiomatic meaning that is not necessarily biblical (indeed I'm sure some of them are used without people even being aware of their biblical origin). But when I look at the contents this isn't always clear. As for Cat:en:Bible, I'm not sure what we should put there, it's a bit of a grab bag.
Similarly, I would reserve Category:English terms derived from Star Wars for terms originating from the Star Wars universe which have really entered the language, such as dark side of the Force (even though the connection to Star Wars is still obvious to everyone who uses the expression, I believe, so that might not be the most convincing example). I would also put Appendix:Snowclones/the X strikes back in that category, even though the snowclones are not literally used in Star Wars. I would not put words there that are just used in the franchise and do not have an idiomatic meaning outside of it. I don't even know why we have an entry for Imperial Stormtrooper, in fact. As for Cat:en:Star Wars, same problem: its use is pretty fuzzy imo. Should we put terms about Star Wars in there? Or something Imperial Stormtrooper (if we really must keep it, which I don't think we do)?
@PUC: my mistake, then. But we really need some clarity about how these pairs of categories are supposed to be used. It is really quite silly to have terms put into both of the categories.
I think the starting point that everyone agrees on is that terms have to comply with the CFI (including the requirement for idiomaticity), so terms which are purely in-universe should be cleared out.
Re terms being in both categories: terms should be in both categories if both categories apply, like autobahn is in both CAT:English terms derived from German and CAT:en:Germany because the word derives from German and relates to the topic of Germany (wheres abreaction is only categorized as etymologically derived but not semantically related, and German flute is only categorized as semantically related but not etymologically derived). - -sche(discuss)21:19, 9 April 2024 (UTC)
In general, no, the terms in various "...terms derived from " categories will not all also be in "CAT:foo:" categories, because a term or phrase can have been coined in some franchise without having any topical relation to it. According to our entry, "superlaser" was coined by Star Wars (and so belongs in the "derived from" category), but it doesn't have any particular topical connection to it, since any very powerful laser in any franchise or in the real world can be a "superlaser" (so it isn't and shouldn't be in the "Star Wars" topic category). Likewise "walking carpet" (it had been in CAT:en:Star Wars for the past year, but only because a user known for adding incorrect categories added it to the "fictional people(!) and Star Wars cats). For some franchises, the overlap may be higher, but it's not inherent or predictable. - -sche(discuss)02:28, 10 April 2024 (UTC)
The distinction, as J3133 said, is that "derived from Star Wars" is etymological (for terms which are derived from Star Wars), whereas "CAT:foo:Star Wars" is semantic (for terms about the topic of Star Wars, regardless of whether the terms originated from or are used in the franchise or not). This/this misses the mark, because "terms that are not used in the franchise but are inspired by it in" is (in respect of the two qualifiers I've bolded) not the scope of "CAT:foo:Star Wars". Perhaps it helps to substitute a language/nation in place of the franchise: Category:English terms derived from German is for cases where an English word is etymologically derived from German, whether it semantically relates to German(y) or not: alpenglow and the art of the possible exist anywhere, but derive etymologically from German. CAT:en:Germany is for words that semantically relate to Germany in some way, regardless of whether the terms originate from German (Ostpolitik) or not (Federal Intelligence Service, German flute). The distinction between "derived from Star Wars" and "CAT:foo:Star Wars" is the same. The issue of terms which have not "really entered the language" is intended to be solved by FICTION, I think (the question of where to categorize terms that were first used in the franchise, and are not used outside the franchise, should never come up, because such terms would fail RFV). - -sche(discuss)21:02, 9 April 2024 (UTC)
@-sche: sorry, I am rather confused about how to apply this etymological/semantic split. Let me see if I can clarify this in my mind by writing up draft usage notes for the categories:
"Category:en:Star Wars" – this category is for terms related to the Star Wars franchise. If a term is etymologically related to a term used in the Star Wars franchise, place it in "Category:English terms derived from Star Wars". If a term relates to the franchise in some way but is not etymologically related to a term used in the franchise, place it in this parent category.
For the first one, broadly yes, although for precision let's say terms "used in and derived from" Star Wars, since we want terms Star Wars coined (or at least popularized?), not just any term "used in" Star Wars like moon. And we should change the underlying boilerplate all the fiction-franchise categories draw on, not just manually and individually change the Star Wars and Star Trek category descriptions. "Etymologically related" terms like "Darth Vader-esque" are in a funny grey area; my instinct is to put them in the topic category ("CAT:foo:Star Wars"), and when I poke around, it seems like that's what the entries I can find are doing, e.g. Whovian is in "CAT:en:Doctor Who" and Voldemortian is in "CAT:en:Harry Potter", even though a case could be made for them being etymologically "derived from Star Wars" (after all, if a German term is borrowed by French, and then English borrows that French term, the resulting English term is still "derived from German" even if "German" is not the most immediate ancestor). Maybe more people can weigh in on that. Your classification of "Star Wars" itself as "a term relates to the franchise in some way but is not etymologically related to a term used in the franchise" is also interesting. "Star Wars" technically appears in the works, e.g. in the title card of the movies and title page of the books, but at first I would nonetheless have the same intuition you seem to, that a title doesn't count as "derived from" the work... but on further reflection, it probably is better to say that a term used in a title is still "derived from" the work, just like a term used in the body of the work: I see Sophie's choice is in Category:English terms derived from fiction, Nineteen Eighty-Four is in Category:English terms derived from Nineteen Eighty-Four, etc... so probably "Star Wars" counts as "derived from" Star Wars. I don't see the categories as being mutually exclusive, i.e., it seems fine to me for a term to be in both categories if both categories apply, because it's not predictable—it's not inherently the case that both apply—a term could derive from a franchise, but not be topically connected to it. For example, I am inclined to remove cromulent and say the quiet part loud from Category:en:The Simpsons, because as the category says, "It should contain terms directly related to The Simpsons. Please do not include terms that merely have a tangential connection to The Simpsons." and nothing about the word cromulent or its meaning suggests a connection to the Simpsons, it merely happens to have been coined by the Simpsons. I suspect their categorization into Category:en:The Simpsons is a mistake by someone confused about the category's scope. Likewise, I think cloaking device is a general thing, coined by but applicable to (and now used by) plenty of other fiction franchises and lately even some real-world things, just like transmat. So I think "If a term is etymologically related to a term used in the Star Wars franchise, place it in "Category:English terms derived from Star Wars". If a term relates to the franchise in some way but is not etymologically related to a term used in the franchise, place it in this parent category." still needs workshopping. - -sche(discuss)23:51, 9 April 2024 (UTC)
@Sgconlaw, -sche: Here's how I would categorize some of the terms mentioned above.
@Sgconlaw, Ioaxxere: Sgconlaw removed Hand Solo from “Category:English terms derived from Star Wars” and added “Category:en:Star Wars”. This change seems incorrect, as “an act of masturbation” does not relate to the franchise. Despite not appearing in the franchise itself, I would place this term in the etymological/derivation category because of its etymological (not semantic) relation to Star Wars. J3133 (talk) 05:32, 10 April 2024 (UTC)
@J3133: yes, that was before PUC pointed out to me that I had not fully understood what you were referring to earlier in the above discussion. But it seems to me that there is still a difference of opinion as the view expressed by @Ioaxxere is closer to what I had originally thought the distinction was. Nevertheless, if we are going along the lines of an etymological/semantic split, then it would seem to me that a specific reference to the franchise is irrelevant so long as a term is etymologically derived from a term from the franchise. Thus, Vaderesque (from Darth Vader), Yoda condition (from Yoda) and, yes, Hand Solo (from Han Solo) are all “terms derived from Star Wars”. Only Glup Shitto isn’t, as I can’t see anything on its entry page suggesting it is derived from a term used in the franchise. — Sgconlaw (talk) 12:15, 10 April 2024 (UTC)
Bonbon - where is it usually neuter and where is it usually masculine in Germany?
On the English entry for the German word Bonbon, it states “The word is almost exclusively neuter in northern and central Germany. The masculine is quite common in the south.” But on the German entry, it says “Norddeutsche Sprecher bevorzugen meist das Maskulinum, mittel- und süddeutsche Sprecher meist das Neutrum.” These contradict each other and I’m wondering which is more accurate? 2601:85:C681:82A0:7C98:A460:DE3F:CB0913:09, 18 December 2023 (UTC)
I've noticed on some Tamil entries on Wiktionary that recently, many entries have "Kongu Tamil" definitions, which correspond to W. on DDSA, and corresponds to rare, dialectal. There are loads of these categories on DDSA but I never knew what they meant. Where can I find out? Cyrohdn3 (talk) 14:12, 18 December 2023 (UTC)
It appears that one of the senses is missing from the proper noun section. I'm not sure the best way to word this, but I'm thinking something like "realm of the dead". This would be the Old Testament biblical usage of the word "hell", as a calque of Greek Hades (sense 3) or Hebrew Sheol. It's also perhaps the way we could translate the "underworld" of the Greek myths (e.g. "Odysseus went down to hell"). It's a broader definition than the one that's currently listed, as this is not necessarily a place of torment nor is it limited to the damned.
In fact, I'd say this broader definition is the primary sense, although maybe not quite as common as the "place of torment for the damned" definition. The latter is pretty clearly as a totum pro parte expression and in many cases would more properly be called Gehenna (sense 1 and probably 2 and maybe even 3) or the inferno (sense missing), although these terms would be limited to Christian or Judeo-Christian contexts. Now in Christian usage it gets complicated by the doctrine of the harrowing of hell and the opening of the gates of heaven, but the word "hell" nevertheless retains this broader definition in some contexts. If it didn't have this broader definition at all, then phrases such as "decent into hell" and "harrowing of hell" wouldn't make much sense (at least according to Christian orthodoxy). 2601:49:8400:26B:6853:D1CF:AED1:2FA417:40, 18 December 2023 (UTC)
I'm inclined to agree. Medieval theology divided hell into four levels: hell proper (the place of the damned), purgatory, the limbo of the Fathers (bosom of Abraham, to which Christ descended), and the limbo of the infants. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 17:26, 19 December 2023 (UTC)
Ingenuity and extortion
What does ingenuity mean in the context of the Wiktionary's definition of "extort":
"To take or seize from an unwilling person by physical force, menace, duress, torture, or any undue or illegal exercise of power or ingenuity."? Daask (talk) 20:23, 18 December 2023 (UTC)
Essentially "superior intelligence" (sense 1). Suppose you know a less intelligent person and you trick them into rewriting their will to benefit yourself. (I don't know whether that is actually extortion — maybe the definition is off? — but it's certainly a way to get things from somebody unethically.) Equinox◑20:26, 18 December 2023 (UTC)
I blame Webster 1913. "Ingenuity" not in the definitions offered by Webster 1828 or Century 1911. MWOnline has "also: to gain especially by ingenuity or compelling argument". MW3 has a longer definition along the same lines with supporting quotes from Jane Austen and Seymour Freidin.
I would think that "ingenuity" is so distinct from the other means in our definition as to warrant a separate definition and some attestation. DCDuring (talk) 22:34, 18 December 2023 (UTC)
I agree regarding "trick them into rewriting their will" etc above. Thus, "ingenuity" there refers to cleverness and/or sophism. MWU s.v. extort (as accessed today) breaks it into 2 subsenses, and "ingenuity" is mentioned for the second one, where "extort a confession" is their ux. So the interrogator might get a confession out of you either by blackmail-type words or by tricking you, and either of those can be extortion, according to MWU's definition of extort. Quercus solaris (talk) 23:35, 18 December 2023 (UTC)
Responding to all the above: my general feeling is that extortion is an active process, not (say) sucking in money by refusing to declare tax. I am not "extorting" sth from you if I simply steal money from daddy's mattress that you never knew about. I am extorting if I demand that you pay me, else I'll tell the public about your diaper fetish etc. Equinox◑12:33, 19 December 2023 (UTC)
True, but Daask's question points up the confusing sloppiness of our definition. We usually take the trouble to separate senses that are so different. To me there seem to be a few (sub?)senses: one for use of physical force or threat of physical force, another for use of threat of public exposure or embarassment, another for threats of the use of power or authority (firing, official harrassment, legal process, job reassignment, etc.), and another for trickery (though this seems likely to involve some kind of threat).
By twister, do we just mean tornado, in which case this shouldn't be on a separate line? Or do we mean something else in which case it should be clarified? By watersprout (a kind of branch on a tree), do we mean waterspout (a tornado-like thing over water)? - -sche(discuss)21:03, 18 December 2023 (UTC)
@-sche As far as I can tell — the author seems to think the word is from Japanese, which is what I know — the definitions should be "tornado" (big), "whirlwind"/"dust devil" (much smaller than a tornado, bit bigger than an eddy), and "waterspout", as you identified. I'm not sure why "sprout" and "watersprout" are both there, but I would assume it's supposed to just be "waterspout". Kiril kovachev (talk・contribs) 21:20, 18 December 2023 (UTC)
How common is this idiom? What's its most common form in English? I'm surprised I currently can't find any version of it on wiktionary. Am I correct in assuming it derives from the AtomicDoomsday Clock? —Caoimhin ceallach (talk) 18:10, 20 December 2023 (UTC)
Woops. Yes that's the one. The reason I think it's connected is that I can't find idiomatic usages from before 1947, when it was first set. (The Doomsday Clock is more relevant than ever btw, although fewer people have heard of it now. It has been inching towards midnight since the 90s and currently stands at 90 seconds to midnight, because of continued nuclear proliferation, the collapse of US-Russia treaties, and insufficient action on climate change.) —Caoimhin ceallach (talk) 23:57, 20 December 2023 (UTC)
1926{{RQ:L.M. Montgomery The Blue Castle|chapter XXIV|page=101|passage=Valancy, pale, subdued-looking, her slanted eyes smudged with purple, in her snuff-brown dress, moving quietly about, finding seats for people, consulting in undertones with minister and undertaker, marshalling the “mourners” into the parlour, was so decorous and proper and Stirlingish that her family took heart of grace.
Hey everyone- I got a good holiday party small talk issue for you! I just changed driver licence to recognize that many states of the USA call a driver's license a "driver licence". Originally the entry seemed to imply that only New Zealand and Australia used that terminology. So the entry is a little stilted toward NZ and AU at this point; not sure how to correct. This is an ANZUS-wide official usage in some jurisdictions. Needs your eyes and edits. Also, I would question whether some of these are alternative forms or synonyms- I would lean toward alternative forms. Thanks. --Geographyinitiative (talk) 14:49, 21 December 2023 (UTC)(Modified)
I would just use Google NGrams (differentiating "US" from "UK") for relative frequency to select the main entries or US and UK. One could use Google News for Canada, India, ANZ, etc. DCDuring (talk) 15:03, 22 December 2023 (UTC)
California driver licenseThere is also the issue what it says on the card that is the driver(’s) licenc/se itself, which is not reflected in the Google NGrams graphs. In California the heading used to say operator’s license of California, until this was changed first to California license and next to driver license without genitive ’s. --Lambiam20:13, 23 December 2023 (UTC)
The US spelling is always license, regardless of the first word, so I would only make this change at the pages with the s spellings. —Soap—09:54, 24 December 2023 (UTC)
They appear to be the same, the radical C16H33 of hexadecane. I saw no substantial uses (as opposed to mentions) in original English texts later than the 19th century. --Lambiam21:04, 23 December 2023 (UTC)
Proper nouns are not commonly used uncountably or in plural form. There are many pokers, even in common speech, so that one seems especially like a common noun. But most(?) of these (and other game names) are more commonly used in the senses that are uncountable (eg, modified by much) than other senses. Whatever It would not add much useful knowledge for our users to have both proper noun and common noun sections, IMHO. OTOH, trademark/copyright/patent status and capitalization does differentiate some newer games from the more traditional ones. WT:NSE and WT:BRAND have bearing on whether these newer ones meet WT:CFI, though application of these policies is fraught with difficulties. DCDuring (talk) 19:03, 23 December 2023 (UTC)
Nutella and hummus are both popular sandwich spreads. One name is a proper noun, the other a common noun. It is likewise quite possible that some names for games are common nouns while others are proper nouns. One indication of a term being a proper noun is that it is left untranslated. US President George Bush is not referred to as *George Buisson in France, and what the English call a Caterpillar tractor the French call un tracteur Caterpillar, not *un tracteur Chenille. An indication that a term is a common noun is that it is commonly not capitalized. Do not expect there to be an unambiguous and foolproof decision criterion. --Lambiam20:51, 23 December 2023 (UTC)
What's the use of a blocking filter just for lacking blank lines (or too much blank lines)? I thought a bot was especially created to correct such things. It just will deter new users from creating pages, I'm afraid, and for minor syntax aspects only.
And the filter does get to show off code for very Pavlovian escalating response: Warn ("W"), Disallow ("D"), W,W,D,D, W,W,W,D(,D,D). This is useful for dealing with would-be contributors who are "on the spectrum" and/or unregistered. DCDuring (talk) 19:11, 23 December 2023 (UTC)
What about the bot correcting that? This is nothing but blank spaces, which is rather unimportant. There was no problem with that just a few days ago. 212.195.74.16619:14, 23 December 2023 (UTC)
Bots are not magical: someone has to run them and make sure they’re doing their job properly. Please just be considerate to other users and learn how to format entries properly, instead of trying to add something which is throwing warnings 10 times in a row (I can see the logs). Theknightwho (talk) 19:23, 23 December 2023 (UTC)
Problem with Christmas verb (word of the day for 25th!)
Christmas verb 2.1: "intransitive: To celebrate Christmas." The only quotation says that "the family, Christmased out, went early to bed". This can't be intransitive (the family were Christmased out; seems to be passive; "Chrismasing out" was done to the family, the grammatical object). Also I don't think the definition is even correct. Equinox◑01:04, 24 December 2023 (UTC)
To be -ed out is a formula that works with many nouns, especially foods and tasks (e.g., I'm turkeyed out, I'm meetinged out, I'm all broccoli'd out), albeit restricted to informal registers. A general formula for a definition might be something like "to have had one's fill of ". Quercus solaris (talk) 04:28, 24 December 2023 (UTC)
Yeah. I've removed that quote as not a good quote for the sense given. I'm not sure how best to handle this endlessly productive phenomenon: maybe with a sense at out, and then a sense at Christmas#Verb, turkey#Verb, etc like "to subject to Christmas", "...to turkey", etc? Because you can also be "Christmased to death", "turkeyed to death", "meetinged to death", or be google books:"meetinged into apathy", etc. - -sche(discuss)17:59, 24 December 2023 (UTC)
I created this entry on the basis that at least 5 books list it as a synonym of Blanford's fox, but I now question whether it should be deleted. The term only appears in books in lists of "also known as" names, and what I've realized is that the term may only appear there in the first place due to what might be a misunderstanding:
In 1877 Blanford analyzed two fox specimens and referred to one as "the little Baluchistan fox". On closer reading, I think the term wasn't intended to be read as a species name, but merely as a way of referring to that specific specimen: in the same paragraph he refers to the other fox specimen from Bushehr as "the small Bushire fox". I'm thinking Baluchistan fox/Bushire fox were intended to be read as (adjective) (noun), and that latter readers (such as myself) mistook it as a species name? –Vuccala (talk)18:52, 24 December 2023 (UTC)
@Vuccala: in taxonomy, the original description is everything- any modifications are constrained in a number of ways. Here, it's irrelevant. The question is whether the name has been used (not mentioned) by enough people as evidenced by occurrence in the right kind of sources. The elephant in the room as far as vernacular names are concerned is that scientists prefer to use the taxonomic names and non-scientists don't write much about most of the taxa that the scientists have assigned these vernacular names to. There are exceptions where hobbyists such as birders or collectors of various sorts are involved, and anything that can be grown, kept as a pet, hunted, gathered for use, or bought and sold has a paper trail. That leaves lots of gray areas. Chuck Entz (talk) 19:44, 24 December 2023 (UTC)
@Chuck_Entz thank you, I'll doublecheck all those vernacular fox synonyms and rfd any I may have added too hastily. In this case he used the term just in the preliminary remarks before the proper species description. Vuccᴀʟᴀ (talk) 02:04, 30 December 2023 (UTC)
Yes, everyone's favourite holiday topic; I'm sorry; an IP edit made it pop up on my watchlist. We list two definitions, but I don't think either (let alone the pair we currently contrast as distinct) reflects how the term is used. It's not obvious to me from the definitions or cites(!) that our def 1 (one who believes races have differences) and def 2 (one who believes different races exist) are distinguished in practice, and IMO the entry misses a key element. My inclination is to revise it along the lines of race realism: "(euphemistic) A believer of scientific racism.", or at least along the lines of "A person who believes empirical evidence exists to support the notion that different races exist and have innate differences, particularly one who believes racism is justified; euphemism forscientific racist." Thoughts? - -sche(discuss)21:07, 24 December 2023 (UTC)
Actually, it may mean a number of things, but it usually comes down to "someone who believes that racial differences in intelligence are a scientific fact". It could also be "someone who believes racial differences in propensity to violence are a scientific fact". 2A00:23C7:1DA9:B601:9E67:9D1A:D5E3:8C7C12:21, 25 December 2023 (UTC)
Is the term used ironically then? Personally, I’d be disinclined to call people “realists” if they believe that something rejected by the overwhelming majority of the scientific community is nevertheless a "scientific fact". What is next? “Shape-of-Earth realists” for flat-earthers? --Lambiam23:41, 26 December 2023 (UTC)
Yes, I agree with both of you, my understanding is that it's a euphemism in precisely the same vein as flat-earthers potentially calling themselves “Shape-of-Earth realists”, used by people who believe racist stereotypes are real. - -sche(discuss)01:23, 27 December 2023 (UTC)
"incorporating various pre-Christian, pagan and secular customs" This seems like an Anglocentric view. In many countries Christmas is exclusively a religious holiday (much like Easter). I don't think pagan customs are universal either; pre-Christian for sure (in Europe, anyway) but the majority of pagan customs of Christmas I could find were of Germanic origin. — This unsigned comment was added by A westman (talk • contribs) at 21:34, 25 December 2023.
But isn't it more inclusive to mention that not everyone considers Christmas a religious holiday? Just defining it as "A festival or holiday commemorating the birth of Jesus Christ which is celebrated in Western Christianity and in most places on December 25" actually narrows the definition. — Sgconlaw (talk) 14:16, 25 December 2023 (UTC)
Then you are wrong. Baltic and Slavic religious customs are even more pagan than those of the Germanic peoples, more so for any region the more recent Christianization is, but are less likely talked about, so you didn’t “find”, a kind of inherited taqiyya due to the aggressive and intolerant nature of the Christian neighbours. What is is not at all exactly that what is mentioned or is generally understood, as folk etymology is different from the historical understanding of a well-read Wiktionary author. Charlemagne was a fascist, it’s only that that which is passed down from the past is judged by historically available standards that we aren’t that strict with ideological ascriptions.
What do you compare with what if neither paganism nor Christianity, since God is dead, exist anymore? You likely won’t get a reasonable answer from anyone about whether their celebration is more Christian or pagan or what, for that’s not even the point of it, though your parish’s minister claim it to have such a point, even church congresses are there to socialize (sometimes exclusively to hook up, in the whole history of the Federal Republic of Germany according to witness statements), gemeinschaft is first, weltanschauung follows suit, hence more recently annual get-togethers are adapted completely without previous religious characterization, e.g. what custom does Christmas in Dubai incorporate? I am not reductionist enough to posit that it is there to commemorate Mammon; it follows that none of those tribalist assumptions described a condicio sine qua non from the beginning, more like a usage context.
It is probable that outside of Europe colonialism has grafted syncretic feasts where what we could understand as “pagan” is only homeopathically concentrated, but that does not disprove the point. You are not even reading the andcorrectly. Feasts are one of the least essentialist things humans design, even if you don’t wrap your mind around such a monist perspective that religious beliefs don’t even exist but are epiphenomenal, their names secondary and as much an ephemeral wastebasket as the diagnosis of a personality disorder: today it’s a church, next year it is a brothel, but the atmosphere of the building stays, some mosques have been churches and vice versa, the same happens with holidays. A very long way of saying you overthink it and take some thing too serious, if too hard for you in the partied out evening. Fay Freak (talk) 18:32, 25 December 2023 (UTC)
Are we sure that this is derived as a subsense of the fishing term (subsense 4 of etymology 2)? I have absolutely no idea where the Internet term came from, so this is all speculation, but I've always pictured it coming not from etymology 2 but from etymology 1.
A "troll" is the ogre thing from folklore and fantasy. I think the most plausible explanation is that people are called "trolls" online because they behave in a way that's typical of or reminiscent of a troll (i.e. aggressive, low intelligence, likes to harass people, etc.). It's akin to subsense 1 or 2 of subsense 2 of etymology 1. Then I think the verb "trolling" probably comes from the noun.
I do see there's an etymology note saying that the Internet "troll" (noun) is possibly influenced by etymology 1, but the definition itself places it in the fishing category. I just find that strange, since the fishing term seems to be somewhat obscure to non-fishing people; I mean it seems almost like a kind of technical jargon that a lot of Internet users probably wouldn't have even been familiar with. Maybe if the term had originated from a fishing message board then this would seem more plausible, but it probably just came from 4chan or something similar, which leads me to question whether the term's originator actually had the fishing term in mind, even unconsciously. If anything, he'd more probably have had etymology 1 in mind (given the popularity of the fantasy genre at that time, especially among the more nerdy people). 2601:49:8400:26B:E9D4:64B4:DE48:F34813:40, 26 December 2023 (UTC)
The OED treats it as an extension from the fishing sense (the verb is from "to fish using a certain method" > "to attract or lure" > the Internet sense, and the noun is derived from the verb), though as you point out it notes that the noun is likely to have been influenced by troll (etymology 1) and this has been noted in the entry. If you can find a reliable source suggesting otherwise, do share it here (or, better still, at the Etymology Scriptorium). — Sgconlaw (talk) 13:45, 26 December 2023 (UTC)
It pre-dates 4chan by a very long time, and even pre-dates Web browsers. (It was used on Usenet newsgroups.) I have always seen the etymology given as the fishing one. Incidentally, the modern sense of "someone being mean on the Internet" is not what it meant originally. It used to be someone who stirred up trouble for fun, e.g. deliberately posting controversial arguments to sit back and watch the "flames" (angry debate) that followed. Equinox◑02:58, 27 December 2023 (UTC)
I think there has been figurative extension of the "fishing" sense for a long time. Eg, I recall "trolling" being used in the 1960s to describe straights trying to lure gays to with the intent of beating them up. (I don't think we need to have this specifically memorialized in a definition, even if attestable.) It would be useful to see what early figurative use the OED has. Century 1911 has "allure, entice", with a cite from a sermon of "Hammond", probably Henry Hammond (1605–1660).
Also, sense 2.1 of Etymology 1 (IP trolls) should probably appear under Etymology 2. The connection with ogres seems like a folk etymology. I thought the idea was that with ownership of a (usually purchased, sometimes out of bankruptcies) patent one could troll (search?) for all those who arguably violated the patent. The phenomenon was possible because many patents were not well defended by whoever won the original patent. DCDuring (talk) 17:21, 27 December 2023 (UTC)
@DCDuring: well, again I’m taking guidance from OED on this. I suspect that the IP sense alludes to the common motif of a troll sitting at a bridge and demanding payment from people who wish to cross, but OED does not mention this in its entry so I’ve not referred to it. — Sgconlaw (talk) 19:05, 27 December 2023 (UTC)
I think I was wrong about it belonging in Ety 2. I attribute my opinion to a frustrated youth spent reading about fishing, but never going out on a fishing boat. Looking at the history of usage of patent troll, it seems as if the term was coined as a pejorative around 1999. One story is that folks at Intel coined patent troll as a euphemism for patent extortionist! DCDuring (talk) 19:38, 27 December 2023 (UTC)
I'd think it intransitive. In the example sentence, "streets" is not a direct object but, rather, the location of the walking. It's an idiomatic expression which basically means "I walked along the streets". Basically, an intransitive verb followed by a prepositional phrase with a null preposition.
I just don't think it's transitive because nothing is being done to the streets. I mean isn't that what a transitive verb is? It's a verb which takes a direct object. The subject is doing something to the direct object.
Now this might not be relevant, but I found a similar construction in the Japanese language:
男の子が ４人 線路の 上を歩いてる…… (literally: "4 boys are walkingthe top of the railroad tracks...")
Here the phrase "the top of the railroad tracks" is followed be the particle を, which is ordinarily used with transitive verbs to indicate the direct object, not location. However, the を page does give sense 3, which says it's used with intransitive verbs in this exact situation.
Just thought it was interesting that in these two completely unrelated languages, "walk" grammatically seems kind of transitive at first glance, although, contextually, it has to be intransitive. Wonder if there's a reason for this. 2601:49:8400:26B:E9D4:64B4:DE48:F34814:33, 26 December 2023 (UTC)
It's definitely transitive. You can say "I walked the street from one end to the other." The object is generalized in the example, but it's still an object. Chuck Entz (talk) 15:09, 26 December 2023 (UTC)
Does it help to consider the sentences with other verbs? E.g., instead of I walked the streets, I trod the streets (actors trod the boards), I roamed the streets or I saw the streets? The streets are even less changed or acted upon in I saw the streets than in I walked the streets, but they're still the object of the verb. - -sche(discuss)18:26, 27 December 2023 (UTC)
Seems similar to run three laps and run around, inwhich around is from a fused preposition on-. Nevertheless, to walk a round makes sense and the missing -n could be accusative-dative in origin, in support of the analysis as direct object, where dative fused with locative a long time ago. 79.140.117.17713:55, 3 January 2024 (UTC)
I've been fixing entries where people misnotated /ɛ/ as /e/ (in accents that don't have /e/ and don't have /eɪ/ in the words in question, e.g. breadfruit). Here, someone claims Canadians pronounce this /ˈmʌskeɡ/ specifically in contrast to other people pronouncing it /ˈmʌskɛɡ/. Is this true, Canadians rhyme the last syllable with The Hague, in which case we should use the conventional notation used on other words with that vowel, /eɪ/? Or do Canadians say it like keg? - -sche(discuss)20:41, 26 December 2023 (UTC)
@-sche: But note that Received Pronunciation and meme upper-class pronunciation from old US movies actually employs /e/ for short ⟨e⟩, so there was a point, though it be more often a typo. We had it in that recent discussion about English IPA vowels and ʌ in American English pronunciations that IPA turns out copypasta like the majority of things easier solved by social proof, and the very Geoff Lindsey linked there has mentioned how this vowel has become lower: hence UK, SSBE and MLE (the last two accent labels hitherto almost always introduced by me) are right with , whereas in other cases vowel values are claimed for them or US English which are copied over from Daniel Jones and his contemporaries so we kind of have a mixed system, where has more easily been ousted because for this one does not need as much a fine ear as for hearing that we don’t have ɪ̯ and ʊ̯ in falling diphthongs, which I wrap my head around for two months, where I even added for Australian since more urban or MLE-type Australian I was listening to has it like that, WP on Australian English phonology: “A recent change is the lowering of /e/ to the region. (Cox & Fletcher (2017))”. Fay Freak (talk) 21:10, 26 December 2023 (UTC)
Upon further reflection, I think the reason it seems plausible is because it's not uncommon for Canadians (at least where I live) to pronounce "-eg" as something approaching /eɪɡ/, such as in words like beg, leg, keg, etc. I myself pronounce these with a higher vowel than /ɛ/. And the ordinary pronunciation of egg that I hear and use is /eɪɡ/. So I think this is part of a broader pattern of vowel-raising. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 21:07, 27 December 2023 (UTC)
I fixed the use of /e/ for GenAm /ɛ/, but we could stand to reference the other pronunciations, e,g. /twəlfθ/ with a schwa - is that dialectal, colloquial? Incidentally, the OED has /twɛl(f)θ/ with the /f/ optional, but we currently only list the /θ/ as optional / delible, not the /f/... - -sche(discuss)21:48, 26 December 2023 (UTC)
I always say /twɛlθ/ personally, though /twɛlf/ is another possible British pronunciation that would sound distinctly AAVE to me if I heard it said by an American (though there are of course some careful/pedantic speakers everywhere who say /twɛlfθ/). The pronunciations with a schwa or a /v/ in the middle of the word are rather weird though and it's odd that we list fewer possible pronunciations for twelfths than we do for twelfth. --Overlordnat1 (talk) 09:37, 27 December 2023 (UTC)
arsech, arcoth et al: plural not attested, uncountable, or unpluralizable?
These are listed as "plural not attested", but I don't think that's the right/best label: it doesn't seem like we should expect a plural form and it just happens to be unattested, it seems like we wouldn't expect these to pluralize. So can these be described as "uncountable" instead? (Or... there has been talk before about whether it makes sense that we conflate "does not pluralize" into "uncountable", but examples of words which are not uncountable but merely unpluralizable have been elusive... are these examples?) - -sche(discuss)01:17, 27 December 2023 (UTC)
I've switched all of these to just use {{head}} and not say that they expect a plural form. I notice we only have some of them as English nouns, others we have as Translingual symbols. - -sche(discuss)18:01, 10 January 2024 (UTC)
Our cites suggest this word is restricted to the study of Ancient Greece and Rome. What would be the appropriate context label to use here? Is this a calque of some ancient term? This, that and the other (talk) 12:20, 27 December 2023 (UTC)
I've added some cites (to the entry and cites page) about guest-friendship among Germanic and/or Eskimo-Aleut peoples. Is it a calque of a Germanic term, or just a native (to English) Germanic expression? Latin and Greek seem to use other terms for this (xenia, hospitium, etc) which don't correspond part-for-part in a way that seems like it could lead to a calque. For a label, maybe "historical"? It seems like the most common form is with a hyphen, so perhaps we should move the entry, too. - -sche(discuss)16:47, 27 December 2023 (UTC)
After moving the lemma to the more common (hyphenated) spelling, I notice a lot more of the cites are about Germanic culture, so it may be a calque of a Germanic term. - -sche(discuss)18:56, 10 January 2024 (UTC)
Why don't we mystify normal users by saying it is invariant, in the same spirit in which we confuse them by saying "plural only" for scissors, vespers, and ablutions, when the each are different "in construction", respectively, 'either singular or plural in construction', 'singular in construction', and 'plural in construction'? DCDuring (talk) 20:07, 28 December 2023 (UTC)
At "scissors" we don't say "plural only". I think the entry is quite correct. With "vespers" I'm not sure how it's construed, but if it takes singular agreement, we should remove "plural only". Generally, a word is only plural when it takes plural agreement. The best indicators are "these, those, many, few" and numbers. Verbs are also indicators, but less good, because there's constructio ad sensum as in "the team are" (which is not a plural but a collective singular capable of taking either singular or plural verb without a clear change in meaning). If you find any substandard use of the term "plural", you should just go ahead and correct it. 88.64.225.5301:50, 30 December 2023 (UTC)
We say the US and Canada flap both /t/s: /ˈmɛt.əˌdeɪ.tə/ →
but that Australian only flaps the second /t/: /ˈmet.əˌdæɪ.tə/ →
is that right? what causes only the second /t/ and not the first to be flapped? - -sche(discuss)22:27, 27 December 2023 (UTC)
Inflection of Sanskrit noun āruh
I'm not not at all sure I've interpreted MW properly on the declension of the feminine noun आरुह्(āruh). I don't know when the input to external sandhi (including the case-endings beginning with consonants) is 'k' rather than 'ṭ'. Always? Sometimes? I've assumed it always is for nom. s., voc. s. and loc. p., but even this may be wrong and going beyond MW's laconic "(k)". --RichardW57 (talk) 23:26, 27 December 2023 (UTC)
I miss the mathematical sense of this verb, with a function as its object. I can't find this meaning in OED or in Merriam-Webster, either. However, ChatGPT is well aware of it:
Discussing a function typically involves analyzing various aspects of the function to gain a comprehensive understanding. This can include:
Graphical Analysis: Examining the graph of the function to understand its behavior, critical points, and overall shape.
Domain and Range: Determining the set of input values (domain) and the corresponding output values (range) that the function can take.
Symmetry: Investigating whether the function exhibits any symmetry, such as being even or odd.
Limits: Studying the behavior of the function as the input approaches certain values, especially at critical points.
Derivatives and Integrals: Calculating derivatives to find slopes and critical points, and integrals to determine the area under the curve.
Roots and Intercepts: Identifying where the function crosses the x-axis (roots) or y-axis (intercepts).
Asymptotes: Examining any asymptotic behavior, where the function approaches certain values as the input goes to infinity or negative infinity.
Function Operations: If the function involves multiple parts, discussing how these parts are combined or manipulated.
Real-world Interpretation: Interpreting the meaning of the function in the context of a real-world problem if applicable.
Overall, discussing a function aims to provide a thorough analysis of its characteristics and implications.
Do you have any citations that unambiguously support a distinct mathematics-specific definition? There may be a reason why OED et al. don't have a distinct definition. BTW, does discussion require proof and/or calculation or is it intended to exclude those as requirements. DCDuring (talk) 14:35, 29 December 2023 (UTC)
Some citations: I'm not entirely convinced about the term but it should exist under some name. It occurred to me as I recalled my mathematics classes where we had a type of exercise starting like ábrázold és diszkutáld(“graph/sketch and discuss”). There is even an article about this sense in the Hungarian Wikipedia (unfortunately without interwikis). This is the only case I ever encountered the Hungarian verb diszkutál (other verbs are used for its other, more common senses). Based on its etymology, the obvious choice was "discuss", and ChatGPT apparently recognized it (unless it hallucinated the answer) but there might be another word more commonly used in this sense (e.g. "describe" or "examine"), that's why I wanted to confirm it here.
There may be several reasons why I haven't found this meaning in the given two dictionaries, e.g. (1) they meant to include it in a more generic sense, (2a) they found it too technical to be included, (2b) they haven't encountered this sense in the database they processed but they may include this sense (or subsense) in the next edition, or (3) another word is more common in this sense.
In short, discussion roughly means determining the initial conditions under which the given exercise can be performed (e.g. excluding cases when the denominator would be zero) or the given statement can be meaningfully interpreted. In other words, this discussion doesn't require or include proof or calculations (or at least not those needed for the solution proper of the exercise).
The Hungarian Wikipedia article defines it as follows: "In mathematics, a discussion is a thorough, complete examination of the solution of a problem in terms of whether the procedure used in the solution is indeed applicable to each and every possibility allowed by the conditions of the problem, whether there are any degenerate cases, and if it's not applicable, which cases are considered exceptional with respect to the solution, and whether the solution is unambiguous. Sometimes the word is also used in a not entirely identical sense, similarly to the term function analysis (function characterization)."
I think you hit the nail on the head when you said that lexicographers may believe that the usage is included in the general sense. I myself would not want to differentiate various levels of rigor in different contexts. Even in mathematical contexts the standards and scope may differ by audience, specialty and speaker. DCDuring (talk) 17:31, 29 December 2023 (UTC)
Whether the German term "Kurvendiskussion" is SoP or not, it definitely translates analysis of some sort, not discussion, and it is a likely cognate or otherwise related to the Hungarian. The extent of analysis carried out in high-school curricula is naturally limited and the meaning of discussion in science articles as an exchange of opinions is probably unrelated, although usage in higher mathematics wouldn't be surprising. I guess that the Latin root implies sectioning the graph in discrete parts. 185.109.152.8010:20, 4 January 2024 (UTC)
Looking for Old East Slavic experts
I have recently created an article for an Estonian toponym - Keava. This toponym is (most likely) first mentioned in an old East Slavic chronicle, but the placename is preceded by the word осекъ(osekŭ). What does this word mean? Estonian sources claim that this does not mean "fortress", "castle", but instead "wooden palisade", "wooden thing meant for blocking" (not the best translation). Could someone please clarify? Thank you. Strombones (talk) 21:36, 29 December 2023 (UTC)
In Ulukhanov, I. S., editor (2000), “осѣкъ”, in Словарь древнерусского языка (XI–XIV вв.): в 10 т. (in Russian), volume 6 (овадъ – покласти), Moscow: Russian Lang., Azbukovnik, →ISBN, page 200, Old East Slavic осѣкъ(osěkŭ) is "a military fortification in the forest made from felled trees" (synonymous with Russian засека(zaseka, “abatis, barricade of felled trees”)). Whence Russian осек(osek) (from Russian Wiktionary: "dialectal: a place fenced with trees or branches fallen on top of each other; a fence made from such trees, branches"), which looks like a deverbal of the verb осечьpf(osečʹ) (also from Russian Wiktionary: same as обсечь: to truncate, cut off). Voltaigne (talk) 22:22, 29 December 2023 (UTC)
Here's another reference for осѣкъ(osěkŭ). Same definition as above. Sreznevsky, Izmail I. (1902) “осѣкъ”, in Матеріалы для Словаря древне-русскаго языка по письменнымъ памятникамъ (in Russian), volume 2 (Л – П), Saint Petersburg: Department of Russian Language and Literature of the Imperial Academy of Sciences, column 753. Voltaigne (talk) 22:34, 29 December 2023 (UTC)
The adjective sense ("sounding like Swedish") has been around for a long time now, so I guess it's justified (?). I've nevertheless RFV'd it because we'd need some examples. I also wonder whether it really refers to Swedish specifically. Maybe it could describe other languages with a kind of jumping, "up-and-down" intonation? 88.64.225.5301:22, 30 December 2023 (UTC)
I believe this reference is based on the "Swedish Chef" character from The Muppets:
1995, Jones, Tanya, Ophelia O. and the mortgage bandits, →OCLC:
“You mean when she read that God-awful poem in her hurdy-gurdy Swedish chef accent?
1996, Svensson, Charlotte Rosen, Culture shock!, →OCLC:
Swedes are often said to sing while they speak. (Listen to Floyd, the Muppet’s Swedish chef, singing “Hurdy Gurdy” and you’ll understand this.)
2009, The great big bumper book of marmite, →OCLC:
Just don’t do what the Swedish chef from The Muppet Show does and start playing tennis with the meatballs, or start waving your cooking utensils about the kitchen and shouting ‘hurdy gurdy’ at your mates.
Does fandom apply to real-world people, like Presidents?
I ask because Camelot is listed as "fandom slang", which feels ... off. I think it's because JFK was a real person who impacted countless American's lives in various ways by policies and speeches and the other ordinary actions a president does, while "fandom slang" refers to more fictional stuff. CitationsFreak (talk) 10:04, 30 December 2023 (UTC)
I agree that it feels off. Fandom is for sports too (besides fiction), but not for beliefs (political, cosmological, ideological, or religious). IMO the other existing label, "US politics", is enough by itself — the reader knows that politics involves both admirers and detractors. The writing was catachrestic in other ways too. Someone wrote "mysticism" where "mystique" is the appropriate word. I fixed that error. I also removed the questionable label on a WT:BOLD basis. Revertible if contested. Quercus solaris (talk) 04:17, 31 December 2023 (UTC)
The OED lists this term as being from 1869 (although the entry has not been revised yet.) They do not mention Henry Gee in it, and I am unable to find anything that relates to this term. If the statement is accurate, then someone must have said it around 1539, where the site says that he became mayor of Chester and encouraged horse-racing. CitationsFreak (talk) 03:42, 31 December 2023 (UTC)
Can I get some more input on whether this is an "orthographic borrowing" or not? My understanding has been that the "orthographic borrowing" template was primarily intended for Japanese or Korean borrowing a Chinese character with a different pronunciation (or vice versa), and that changes to the pronunciation of words borrowed from French (German, etc) into English are expectable and are do not mean Berlin, Nantes etc are all "orthographic borrowings" into English. - -sche(discuss)02:49, 31 December 2023 (UTC)
What is Adam saying 59s into ? It sounds like he's saying Waffle House looks "absolutely booted" and from context might mean "run down" or maybe "empty"? Wiktionary and other online dictionaries only define "booted" as "wearing boots", some bird thing (Dictionary.com), or "drunk or high" (Urban Dictionary), none of which seem obviously applicable. Buildingquestion (talk) 23:17, 31 December 2023 (UTC)
Religious order on Wikipedia.Wikipedia and 
Done by User:Cnilep (here). Voltaigne (talk) 17:33, 12 December 2023 (UTC)
