Wiktionary:Tea room/2023/January

If someone has not been swimming in weeks / months / years / a while, should I say she has not swam in years or she has not swum in years? Swum is more common when I compare the Google Books Ngrams for hasn't or haven't swum in to hasn't or haven't swam in, but swam is more common when I search for those phrases on the web... - -sche (discuss) 01:16, 1 January 2023 (UTC)

Well, the use of swam as past participle is usually proscribed so formally it'd need to be swum. It's fairly common in everyday speech though, appears fairly often in printed text, and is old enough that it's attested in Shakespeare (As You Like It IV, 1: "I will scarce think you have swam in a gondola"), so reasonably it might not seem wrong to you. I don't think there's anything specific about the "... in years" etc. construction. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 01:38, 1 January 2023 (UTC)

"I haven't been swimming in years"/"I haven't gone swimming in years". I'd like to avoid the past participle if I could. DCDuring (talk) 02:51, 1 January 2023 (UTC)

There's definitely a general trend among some speakers, especially in uneducated or informal speech and for certain words in certain dialects in particular, to use the perfect in place of the pluperfect. Sometimes a non-standard form of the perfect tense is also used for the pluperfect in such cases. What immediately comes to mind is the Brummie habit (also true of the West Midlands more generally to a lesser extent) of saying et for both ate and eaten, writ for both wrote and written (apparently also a Scouse thing, according to our usage note) and took for taken (though I can't say I've particularly noticed swum being replaced with swam). I think you're right that 'been/gone swimming' is something you're more likely to hear in any case, so perhaps a better example would be 'I haven't swum here, I caught the ferry instead', where 'swum' can't be substituted for 'been/gone swimming' --Overlordnat1 (talk) 03:05, 1 January 2023 (UTC)

@-sche If you search in the NYT archives, constructions like "have swam", "has swam" are common up through about 1900, and after that they disappear, which suggests the copy-editing got better around then. "have swam" is proscribed as User:Al-Muqanna notes but "have swum" sounds weird to most people's ears. Benwing2 (talk) 04:46, 1 January 2023 (UTC)

@Overlordnat1 Your use of terms like "perfect" and "pluperfect" is all mixed up; look them up. As for the phenomenon you are describing (of using the simple past form in place of the past participle), it is extremely common but proscribed, and some people have created blended forms like "dranken" and "tooken" for the past participle. Benwing2 (talk) 04:48, 1 January 2023 (UTC)

@Benwing2 I see what you mean, I should've realised that she has (not) swum is a sentence in the present perfect tense rather than the past perfect (pluperfect) tense, like she had (not) swum is. Other blended forms like putten, getten and etten also spring to mind. --Overlordnat1 (talk) 06:02, 1 January 2023 (UTC)

I think a better test is "those who have swVm" (somewhere), since it has fewer extraneous structures, sounds more natural, and is harder to avoid by substitution. If I search for "those who have swum the" in Google Books, I get 17 hits- but only 1 for "those who have swam the". For me, "those who have swum the English channel" sounds much more natural than "those who have swam the English Channel". Chuck Entz (talk) 20:59, 1 January 2023 (UTC)

Should we add something like |past_ptc2=swam|past_ptc2_qual=proscribed to the headword template? 70.172.194.25 21:48, 3 January 2023 (UTC)

There was a similar question recently on the language section of the Wikipedia reference desk: “he should have drank/drunk more milk”.  --Lambiam 17:17, 1 January 2023 (UTC)

• I note that we do not have a convenient way (other than by a Cirrus search, which is not very convenient to do without error) to look at all and only the (strong) English verbs that have multiple acceptable/attestable forms in their simple past and past participle. We do have categories for different types of strong verbs. Those that have multiple acceptable forms should be of special interest. It would be nice if we could rank the forms by frequency. DCDuring (talk) 22:14, 1 January 2023 (UTC)

This is claimed to be the origin of Italian sbraitare, Romanian rage, rare French raire, and French railler + cognates (including English "to rail at"). Treccani's etymology for sbraitare confidently mentions ragere, and it's variously mentioned as Vulgar Latin or Late Latin in the etymologies. Closer to the truth is TLFi , which says ragere occurs once in a 10th-century text meaning "moo". Given that, I strongly suspect this is a nonce word formed by analogy to the Romance terms, not the other way around. If so we should delete this from all the etymologies. Thoughts? Benwing2 (talk) 04:42, 1 January 2023 (UTC)

It's a 10th-century manuscript but the text itself is the Hermeneumata Vaticana (which can be seen here ). The Hermeneumata manuscripts derive from much earlier sources, perhaps 3rd–4th century. The FEW, which tends to be comprehensive about these things, does not seem to doubt that it's legitimate Late Latin . —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 13:10, 1 January 2023 (UTC)

@Al-Muqanna Thanks. It still seems strange to me that the word is attested in only one place yet found its way into Romance terms. Are there other terms of this nature? Benwing2 (talk) 19:25, 1 January 2023 (UTC)

I don't think it's too surprising—given that a lot of the Latin literature that's come down to us (especially from the Late Latin era) is quite restricted thematically it's inevitable that there'll be terms that were widespread colloquially and have Romance descendants but are hapaxes in the surviving written corpus. Apparently trichia, the probable root of French tresse, might be another example—until recently it was thought to be purely reconstructed (it's starred in the FEW and our own entry) but a recent study has flagged up its presence in a 4th-century Latin hagiography. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 02:53, 2 January 2023 (UTC)

Is this chiefly a US-UK distinction (or rather a North American vs. non-American Commonwealth distinction)? ←₰-→ Lingo ^Bingo _Dingo (talk) 11:12, 1 January 2023 (UTC)

If Google Ngram Viewer is a good indicator, stamping ground is older than stomping ground, both for American English and British English, with stomping starting to stomp out stamping in American use after 1960, and British English trailing behind with both the adoption of the original version of the idiom and the change. There may be no simple answer to the question, but the evolution of Canadian English after 1945 is influenced more by US English than by UK English.  --Lambiam 17:39, 1 January 2023 (UTC)

@Sauerklee replaced the rfdef with 4 definitions:

1. grubby, slovenly
2. in black
3. doubtful, unreliable
4. shabby, abrased
5. disreputable

This seemed to me like a lot of different definitions for something that's apparently almost unattested, and they don't seem to follow from the definition for the verb- so I reverted the edit. However, my Latin is entirely self-taught and I don't have much depth in the language, so I thought I would ask others who know more than I do. What do you think? Chuck Entz (talk) 21:57, 1 January 2023 (UTC)

I don't know where they got those definitions from. I tried searching the glosses themselves and it didn't turn up anything. It's hard to find the word at all, but Forcellini gives some citations and they're pretty much what you'd expect from the root (asterno, "to prostrate oneself"): "cetera nam foribus plebes astrata rogabat", "the rest of the people begged prostrate outside", and a transferred sense "enrolled, registered": "Quicumque non est astratus ad militiam ..." ("Whoever is not enrolled in the army ..."), In Medieval Latin dictionaries there are some other, adjectival senses of astratus: "starry", "excellent (like a star)", via aster; "inhabited", via a medieval sense of astrum as "hearth", but those don't match any of the above. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 23:11, 1 January 2023 (UTC)

I've added the obvious "prostrate" sense with the quotation (modern editions have it with ad-), not the transferred one since I can't find a modern source for the citation, and some of the medieval info. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 00:56, 2 January 2023 (UTC)

Currently has two senses, the second one just saying that it's a pro-war slogan. That's not a separate sense, to my mind. Perhaps a usage note would be enough. Equinox ◑ 02:33, 2 January 2023 (UTC)

I'm not sure sense 1 is idiomatic/non-SOP. 70.172.194.25 17:06, 2 January 2023 (UTC)

Me too, this seems rather transparent. Thadh (talk) 17:07, 2 January 2023 (UTC)

I suggest to delete, even if it's now a common phrase among both Putin supporters and opponents, it's not idiomatic and has little linguistic value. --Anatoli T. ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 05:09, 6 January 2023 (UTC)

Apart from the noun sense, is sennight (and also sevennight) an adjective or adverb? The relevant senses at sennight are currently listed under an adverb heading, but then I noticed that a similar sense under week ("Seven days after (sometimes before) a specified date", for example in "I'll see you Thursday week") is under an adjective heading. — Sgconlaw (talk) 12:36, 2 January 2023 (UTC)

The senses with "come" and "gone" are nouns, not adverbs or adjectives. "Come" can be used with any noun denoting an event or time period (see OED come, v. 34b.)—in the second quotation there's even an article, "a se'enight". The other sense is probably best taken as a postpositive adjective in the same way as week is currently handled unless there are any examples of it modifying a verb directly, though both it and week could perhaps also just be considered a specific attributive use of the noun. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 12:58, 2 January 2023 (UTC)

@Al-Muqanna: thanks. I'll update the entry. — Sgconlaw (talk) 18:58, 5 January 2023 (UTC)

Should this be lower case? It's not a proper noun. Equinox ◑ 22:26, 2 January 2023 (UTC)

Yes, I believe it should be. I have moved the page to akokono. Feel free to change back if you feel I made a mistake. I Love Pets 12 (talk) 23:37, 2 January 2023 (UTC)

I sometimes see sentences like:

• 2018 June 7, "Egypt repatriates stolen ancient artifacts from France", AP (Cairo)

  "Egypt says it has repatriated nine illegally smuggled artifacts, including statuary and coffins, from France."

• 2023 January 2, "Egypt repatriates looted ancient Green Coffin sarcophagus from US", Al-Jazeera (sotry: the sarcophagus "has been returned to Egypt from the Houston")

Is this covered by our entry? I suppose sense 2 can technically be substituted into the sentences: "Egypt returns (artworks, museum exhibits, etc.) to their country of origin". But it feels backwards, because AFAIK the normal word order when Egypt is the recipient and France or America is the giver/returner is "France/America repatriates ", not "Egypt repatriates ".
BTW, we present sense 1 as transitive but one of the cites looks intransitive, where a person thinks "it would be easier to repatriate from Changchun than northern Haerbin". - -sche (discuss) 00:29, 3 January 2023 (UTC)

It is not relevant who the recipient is; the subject is the actor effectuating the transfer.  --Lambiam 18:25, 6 January 2023 (UTC)

Editors and Admins please check Talk:veznin + nisanyansozluk zero hits + check salmaklı in serious translation tables. Some book results, it is in https://tr.wiktionary.orghttps://dictious.com/en/salmakl%C4%B1. I wish they'd call whatever they like and say it is regional. Flāvidus (talk) 23:27, 5 January 2023 (UTC)

I have listed this at Wiktionary:Requests for verification/Non-English#veznin.  --Lambiam 18:18, 6 January 2023 (UTC)

When a liturgical text is commonly set to music and the setting is called the same thing as the text, should we have a separate definition for this? I notice we're pretty inconsistent about this:

1. credo, Agnus Dei, and Miserere mention the possibility of the text being set to music within the definition for the text itself;
2. Nunc dimittis, introit, and offertory mention the text being either spoken or sung (but don't specifically mention their use as a name for a musical composition using the words of the text);
3. Magnificat, Gloria, and Te Deum simply speak of sung hymns;
4. alleluia only mentions the individual word and musical compositions (not the liturgical text preceding the Gospel in Catholic Mass);
5. Sanctus, De Profundis, and Ave Maria mention the text/prayer only and not musical settings;
6. kyrie, requiem, and Benedictus define the musical setting separately;
7. We are simply missing some entries, like Exsultet, Asperges, Salve Regina, and Regina Caeli.

Note also the inconsistent capitalization. I'm leaning towards simply mentioning the possibility of musical settings within the definitions, rather than having a separate sense. Non-entry-worthy titles can also be used in the same way. One can speak of "Bach and Palaestrina's Credos", but it's also easy to cite, for instance, "His O magnum mysterium". Finally, what criteria should we use to evaluate whether these have lexical significance at all? Should we actually include De Profundis but not Alma Redemptoris Mater? Andrew Sheedy (talk) 00:36, 6 January 2023 (UTC)

It is a bit inconsistent. I've already reworked the introit entry quite heavily to get rid of a number of unwittingly redundant senses based on the Catholic definition, and I suspect the two marked "chiefly Protestant" are redundant too but they're a bit outside my wheel-house. In general, I do think it's fine to say "1. a Christian prayer, 2. a musical setting of this prayer" (albeit I don't think this applies to introit and offertory since they refer to a genre of prayer and not a particular text—"he composed an Agnus Dei" means a piece of music, "he composed an offertory" means the prayer). It might seem like bloat but it's also not too different from all the entries that distinguish countable and uncountable senses of a term, e.g. pleonasm, and I think it can be helpful to people who are less familiar with the Christian liturgical context or who are only likely to encounter these as pieces of music. Of course it also depends on the musical sense actually being attestable.

With regards to the missing entries, my preference would probably be for all of the ones you mention to have entries, though what sort of entry depends on the case (asperges does exist in lower-case form already, Exsultet deserves a proper noun entry but seems poorly attested in countable form). I don't think any of the four you mention are borderline but my inclination for what to include in general is to be capacious and say that if a prayer is regularly referred to as "the ..." then an entry can be made for it—I don't think this set is that large, and liturgical prayers have had a sizeable lexical influence that survives in references to Sundays by their masses' traditional introits and the like (e.g. Quasimodo, Laetare Sunday, etc.). —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 01:09, 6 January 2023 (UTC)

Just as a small aside, I think we should ensure that these are properly grouped together in the settings that they are usually composed (or sung):

• Kyrie (also Kyrie eleison), Gloria, Credo, Sanctus, Benedictus, Agnus Dei (sometimes Agnus informally)
• Magnificat, Nunc dimittis (sometimes Nunc informally)

Theknightwho (talk) 21:49, 7 January 2023 (UTC)

Thank you both for the feedback and suggestions. I might not get around to harmonizing/creating these for a while, so free to do it for me. Otherwise, I'll do it on my next break. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 01:38, 9 January 2023 (UTC)

I'm a little busy, but I might do them a bit later. I also forgot to put Mag as an informal term for Magnificat, and Mag and Nunc for the two collectively (which probably isn't SOP in a musical context, as the vast majority of them are composed and published as a pair; and even where they aren't, the term can also refer to a performance of the two in evensong). Interestingly, there doesn't seem to be a common formal name for these settings, unlike with mass. It's just Magnificat and Nunc dimittis. Theknightwho (talk) 19:47, 9 January 2023 (UTC)

I notice a particular English usage which seems to have become much more common in recent decades, and which appears to have originated in American English, and still remains strongest in the US, although increasingly spreading to non-US English as well: phrases such as "the LGBT community", "the BDSM community", "the autism community", "the African-American community", "the Latino community", etc – they all seem to be based on the same pattern, the "the X community", where X is some identity group. I look at the existing senses of community, none of them seem to me to entirely capture this usage. Sense (1) "A group sharing a common understanding, and often the same language, law, manners, and/or tradition", is in the same ballpark, but doesn't quite seem to capture it – while many of those "communities" may possess some degree of "common understanding", that's not what defines any of them. Having "the same language" obviously is important to "the Latino community" (although it is still possible to identify as "Latino" even if one can't speak Spanish), but again seems rather secondary to the others. None of these "communities" have distinctive "law" as such; in some cases they may be associated with particular "manners" or "traditions", although the appropriateness of those terms is variable. I'm wondering if maybe this usage would be best served by a separate sense, because to me it does seem somewhat distinctive? SomethingForDeletion (talk) 02:16, 6 January 2023 (UTC)

Good catch. It seems like we're missing a sense like "a group of people who share some specified characteristic or interest". Other dictionaries do have such a sense. It doesn't seem to be limited to any particular phrasing like "the X community", either, since I can also find e.g. "the community of Mac OS shareware developers" (i.e. the collective of all developers of Mac OS shareware), "the community of Mac users" (all Mac uses, collectively), "the community of MAC planners and operators", etc, and it can be plural ("leaders from the country's Muslim and Jewish communities", or "...LGBT and Jewish communities"). - -sche (discuss) 02:57, 6 January 2023 (UTC)

I think the use of “common understanding” in sense 1 is worded broadly enough to include this sense. The second half of the definition is prefaced by “often” which means things like language, etc., are not pre-requisites. Perhaps just reword the definition to “common characteristics or understanding”. — Sgconlaw (talk) 11:53, 6 January 2023 (UTC)

We could at least have a usage example for it if it seems to push the definition a bit. DCDuring (talk) 15:46, 6 January 2023 (UTC)

With respect to "often", I still think that's too strong. If it was weakened a little bit, to "sometimes", I would have no objection. Regarding "common characteristics or understanding", since a "common understanding" is a sub-category of "common characteristics", do we need the "or understanding bit", or could we just make it "common characteristics"? If we want to keep some mention of "common understanding", we could make that one of the "often"/"sometimes" features. What do you think? SomethingForDeletion (talk) 21:30, 6 January 2023 (UTC)

"Common characteristics" is better than, and can replace, "common understanding" IMO. The most well-established collocations like the international community, the business community, the intelligence community, etc., as well as identity-related ones like the Muslim community etc., are defined by objective characteristics and not (internal) understanding, though when slapping a collective label on a group there's often an implication that they think the same way. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 21:33, 6 January 2023 (UTC)

I guess that’s fine. — Sgconlaw (talk) 19:47, 10 January 2023 (UTC)

I concur with - -sche that this was a good catch in the first place, and "common characteristics" by Al-Muqanna is pretty good, but it's because "common characteristics" and "common understanding" do not envelope each other, either way. What SomethingForDeletion noticed is that when we speak of the X community lumping all those with a "common characteristic" or featureplex, they often aren't much of a community in the sense of communing with each other in a friendly, kindred, or even desiring to be co-identified way. So they are often not a group with "common understanding", usually with the full range of diversity in a typical general population, they just share a characteristic or set of characteristics, so they may even be lumped as a community as an exonym from others pointing toward them. Obversely, many people of "common understanding", who tend to be community in the volitional or subjectively interrelational sense, may hardly share "common characteristics" important enough to underlie that aspect of themselves, so you can be 'part' of the society of the 'LGBTQ' community without being LGBTQ yourself, and you can be pro-mother's love without being a mammal, or a nurseling sapling, or having a mother at all. So I think it's great that the distinction was noticed, and we clearly need both senses in related entries. And intersection this, we must recognize both objective or objectivizing grouping, and because community in most uses has a strong connotation of harmonious actuality, intent or value, we must also recognize the strong subjective criteria for most senses of community. People complain precisely of being in a group and "feeling no sense of community" in, from, or about it. While rhetoric tries to bring folks together by appealing to this repertoire of expectations, desires and behaviors where there may be no "common characteristics" per se which otherwise cause political alliance. Because by now in 2023, large inroads have been made for generations into family and community of choice and even nationality and contrary to apparent gender or other fact, identity of choice, and this is not a fringe factor, most of the demographic spread now insists on it for themselves. Pandelver (talk) 21:35, 15 January 2023 (UTC)

I am also concerned (both major senses of that, too!) to see SomethingForDeletion's name in this Tea Room tier go red, is SomethingForDeletion okay, and will SomethingForDeletion in new avatar or someone else craft the added new sense into the entry? Pandelver (talk) 21:47, 15 January 2023 (UTC)

SomethingForDeletion has never had a user or talk page here. They seem to be mostly active on Wikipedia, and their 3 edits here are the entirety of their Wiktionary contributions. Chuck Entz (talk) 22:14, 15 January 2023 (UTC)

Ahem? Thanks for what is known, Check Entz. Are SomethingForDeletion and Meatsgains, both on Wikipedia, the same they? Pandelver (talk) 23:41, 15 January 2023 (UTC)

My name is redlinked just because I haven't bothered creating a user page for myself here as yet. Maybe some day I shall. If you are asking if I am the same person as "Meatsgains", the answer is "no", I don't know who that person is, other than that they aren't me. I am, however, the person with this username on English Wikipedia, and Wikidata. SomethingForDeletion (talk) 03:08, 17 January 2023 (UTC)

Most noble SomethingForDeletion, pleasure to meet your virtual self. In this quasicorollarisubthread in which we, your colleagues, at your service, marvel at your magnificent existence, did I not, er, see on your W user page, up in its heading section, a message from Meatsgains as if they spoke through your own august vocal apparati, such that, hearing them as your own voice, as it were, we were spelled to believe that a bodybuilding gymholic was part of you (plural, may it be), SomethingForDeletion?Pandelver (talk) 17:19, 21 January 2023 (UTC)

To meet all or part of your virtual self, that is, sans Meat. Ergo, again, a gain. Pandelver (talk) 17:20, 21 January 2023 (UTC)

At а то (a to) I see this usage example:

Не броса́йте их, а то ведь они́ мо́гут умере́ть. ― Ne brosájte ix, a to vedʹ oní mógut umerétʹ. ― Don't throw them, or they could die (as you very well know).

Should that not be ‘abandon’ rather than ‘throw’? PJTraill (talk) 19:00, 6 January 2023 (UTC)

@PJTraill: Probably. If I think about it, it isn’t actually “throw” to be used anywhere, there are many and more contexts where “drop” would make sense instead, while if one throws then there is rather the intention to kill so a warning is of no use; броса́ть (brosátʹ) may have to separate the senses “to throw” and “to drop”, as is also done in the definitions of Russian Wiktionary, unless you opine that it means neither “to throw” nor “to drop” but is a hypernym of both only implying that the hands are or grip is retracted in any manner. Fay Freak (talk) 13:08, 8 January 2023 (UTC)

A "Pronoun" POS was just added for this entry. In AAVE usage, African American women are referred to as sisters, so this seems like simply short for "the sister", and thus a noun. Chuck Entz (talk) 06:44, 7 January 2023 (UTC)

We have a pronoun sense at bro too. 70.172.194.25 06:57, 7 January 2023 (UTC)

We have a pronoun sense, part of MLE, at man too. mans is treated as a pronoun at the Wikipedia page on MTE too, which is something that I'm sure I heard the character of J-Roc in Trailer Park Boys say on a few occasions, so it might be worth us having a pronoun sense at mans. This possibility is mentioned in the reference we have at styll too. In fact, we could say the same for AAVE uses of nigger/nigga. --Overlordnat1 (talk) 10:03, 7 January 2023 (UTC)

mans as the first word of a sentence is easy to find online, but I've held off adding it in the worry it might just be a passing fad. —Soap— 11:48, 7 January 2023 (UTC)

This seems a bit like an appeal to etymology: there are plenty of languages where pronouns developed out of common nouns for "man" and the like (an obvious case is the German indefinite pronoun man). —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 15:47, 7 January 2023 (UTC)

I see two distinguishable things here:

1. The AAVE usage the entries currently cover, "bro said...", "sis done told everybody". These fulfil some pronoun functions, but seemingly only(?) in places they could be nouns and where other nouns are used. They seem to lack some other characteristics of pronouns, e.g., how often are they inflected outside the nominative? It seems any noun can be subbed in to sentences like our usexes, cf. "n*gga done told the whole shabang" in Tech N9ne's Cotton Soldier. "IP added it in diff." "Guy thought he could win, huh? Girl really showed him!" Even "we don’t care if it’s backwards sis learned that all on her own" in sis is paralleled by e.g. " when he was about 5, then kid decided, nah" or "Bernie said “hell naw” kid didn’t understand why. Then kid said “where am I”". This suggests this is just a way nouns can be used in this dialect and/or register. (See also " was ready to take a drink and then dude said "to the queen"".) Occam's razor might suggest not positing a new pronoun POS for kid, bro, sis, IP, etc if these can be explained as the existing noun.
2. A separate usage of bro / bros / broself does exist (see google:broself) which is consciously constructed as a pronoun (sometimes used while making fun of bros, sometimes making fun of pronouns, sometimes in other ways, perhaps even sometimes sincerely / non-jocularly), which seems to come from different people than the AAVE "bro said..." / "sis done told..." usage.

Cites of type 2 (if any are durable) would clearly support a pronoun section, but because both the inflected forms and users/label differ from type 1, I'd be wary of combining them with type 1. Type 1 on its own seems borderline, since it seems like it could be a noun in all(?) the places it's used, and other nouns are readily also plugged into those places. Are there cites of use in other case forms (e.g. possessive), or references calling it a pronoun, like I can find for man? - -sche (discuss) 17:25, 7 January 2023 (UTC)

Well, if it's a pronoun (especially a third-person pronoun) then by definition a noun can syntactically be used in all the places it's used since a pronoun references a noun. Rigorously the question is basically a pragmatic one: does it convey the same meaning to use "the sister" instead of "sis"? Maybe not in those citations. Something like man is easier to treat pronominally because it's first-person, though this paper (page 2) also argues for a nigga as a pronoun on the same basis. Even then, though, pronouns have to be distinguished from "imposters", i.e. nouns referenced in an anomalous person like "the authors" in "the authors have said in our previous work..." The category isn't enormously clear-cut linguistically so we would need to make a qualitative judgement. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 17:51, 7 January 2023 (UTC)

In the nominative, sure, but replacing e.g. he wrote it himself with the contractor wrote it the contractor's self is awkward, perhaps nonstandard. So (fluently) having certain case forms like the reflexive seems to be suggestive of pronoun-ness. If AAVE bro, sis, kid, dude, etc have not gained this or other characteristics that would be more easily explained as pronounal than nounal, and iff these are not viewed by grammarians as having shifted from nouns to pronouns (are they?), it seems suggestive of them remaining nouns. But I'd love to hear arguments otherwise, for why they are pronouns. I think we may need to provide some definitions at sis, since just saying "clipping of sister" doesn't capture the way only some senses can be clipped and remain just as common or acceptable whereas clipping others is rare. This would then assist with clarifying the semantics of this AAVE use, which is not "sibling" but rather in the area of senses 5 and 8 (the latter of which is perhaps overly narrowly defined, and the distinction between which, especially when looking at their usexes, is less than clear).
(There are uses of bro as an unambiguous pronoun with a reflexive form broself, but they're a different phenomenon coming from different people than the AAVE phenomenon.) - -sche (discuss) 19:53, 7 January 2023 (UTC)

(The entry currently says sis is nominative FWIW.) The existence of other distinctive forms might be indicative but certainly isn't treated as a necessary condition of pronominality in the literature even when testing for pronoun vs. imposter; see the nigga paper (not a phrase I thought I'd be writing today) where the reflexive is simply myself (example 9 on page 2). That paper also notes various other standards or indications of pronominal binding, which I've provided with test sentences (not AAVE, but just to give a rough idea—the ₁ means they refer to a single thing, so "John introduced him" is fine but *"John₁ introduced him₁" is not):

(a) semantic bleaching (clearly true for "sis", I think, but probably not "kid"), (b) it "binds pronouns in the relevant domain" ("sis₁ is talking about her₁ experiences"?), (c) it "cannot be bound by a local or c-commanding pronominal antecedent" ("she₁ thinks sis₁ is better than us" should be impossible), and (d) it "binds anaphor in the relevant domain" ("Sally₁ is late, but sis₁ is definitely coming"). —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 20:19, 7 January 2023 (UTC)

That makes sense, I suppose. (We do already have quite a few "defective"/suppletive Category:English third person pronouns.) - -sche (discuss) 00:11, 8 January 2023 (UTC)

...looks like bullshit to me. The capitalized "Ambiguity Prevention" made me lol and think it is some kind of official Grammar Police Safety Department recommendation. Celui qui crée ébauches de football anglais (talk) 11:03, 7 January 2023 (UTC)

Bullshit. What could instead be done is these are switched to some sort of syntax templates. Vininn126 (talk) 11:07, 7 January 2023 (UTC)

It should just be deleted since it's also just wrong, "entry for children" can mean "entering for (the purpose of) children" in exactly the same way as the person who added it is complaining that "entry to children" can mean "entering to (get to) children", so while one might be more standard both of them are ambiguous without context. Incidentally this usage note was added in 2006 by an IP to complain about "to" being used in a usex. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 13:43, 7 January 2023 (UTC)

Yes, delete. It doesn't make much sense to me. — Sgconlaw (talk) 14:29, 7 January 2023 (UTC)

• Great, it only took 16 years to get rid of this bullshit. We´re getting a tiny bit more efficient, but let´s try to aim for under a decade for any future bullshit-removal. I know we can do it if we pull up our socks. Celui qui crée ébauches de football anglais (talk) 18:26, 7 January 2023 (UTC)

I'm not sure the computing definition "datum in a database" is correct incidentally, a single datum would probably correspond to a cell whereas (at least in my experience) an entry is an entire row. Apparently there's also a technical meaning, an entry being an index that points to a record. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 18:45, 7 January 2023 (UTC)

@Soap has the etymology currently as From {{der|en|grc|βαθύς||deep}} + {{m|grc|λιμνίον}}, diminutive of {{m|grc|λίμνη||lake}}., whereas I had it as From {{af|en|bathy-|λιμνίον|lang2=grc}}, diminutive of {{m|grc|λίμνη||lake}}. I believe this way is better as it adds the words to all the appropriate categories. I also suggested we use {{cln}} if we wish to keep the etymology as it is but for the categorization, to which Soap complained (on discord), I'd like to get external input. Vininn126 (talk) 15:01, 7 January 2023 (UTC)

Just use the category/cln IMO. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 18:46, 7 January 2023 (UTC)

I had just been wondering if it were possible, with all our templates and modules, to have the system read βαθύς as bathy- whenever it appears in an English entry, and likewise for other scientific terms derived from classical languages. Finding out that it was not possible, I lost interest and don't think this is a problem worth solving any more. All of these proposed solutions would add a great and unnecessary burden far out of proportion to what tiny benefit they would bring. I'm sure nobody is going to volunteer to manually type out thousands of {{cln}} templates or whatever other solution we as a community decide on. For all I know, this so-called problem wasn't even noticed until earlier today when I was just idly wondering.

This discussion looks to me like the beginning of yet another rule for rules' sake, where we will decide on something that makes editing more difficult, but which only gets brought up when someone needs a reason to complain about another user not doing things quite right. I oppose this change. Best regards, —Soap— 21:49, 7 January 2023 (UTC)

Thousands is by far an exaggeration and I think misses the point of the conversation. It's CLEARLY not that many. Vininn126 (talk) 21:53, 7 January 2023 (UTC)

There isn't any change being proposed, {{cln}} is already widely used for this purpose. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 21:59, 7 January 2023 (UTC)

This bothers me more than it should, so I'll just let it go. I do think there are quite a lot of pages that will need to have the template manually added, though. —Soap— 10:48, 11 January 2023 (UTC)

I've just now created bathyphile and used the template from thermophile. I just want to be clear, since this is going to come up over and over, that Im patterning it after the other page and am not going back on my words from just a few hours ago. I dont see any way forward other than to just leave the option open for describing the etymology either way .... with scientific terminology it's hard to decide whether a word is really English or belongs to international vocabulary. —Soap— 14:31, 11 January 2023 (UTC)

The only reason for the ambiguity on bathylimnion is that limnion isn't an English word (though I'd ultimately have preferred Vininn's original proposal, which reflects similar articles and is much more likely to reflect the coinage process with a standard prefix being applied to a borrowed term). Something like thermophile is adequately covered by thermo- and -phile, which note the Greek etymologies, and its coinage as a techical term also postdates the naturalisation of both of those affixes in English so there's no reason to specify a Greek etymology (the OED doesn't). There are some cases, e.g. arboriferous, where it's ambiguous whether a term was re-coined in English or borrowed from New Latin, but I don't think that applies to either bathyphile or thermophile. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 16:51, 11 January 2023 (UTC)

The Ancient Greek word σάτρα is currently given as comic Old Persian for 'gold'. However, a 2004 article by Andreas Willi puts forth a compelling argument that the line (Ar. Ach. 100) from which this word is taken, should rather be segmented as ἱ αρταμαν' εξαρξα ναπισσ' οασ' ατρα. He takes ατρα to represent Old Median *aθrā 'here, then'. If this interpretation is accepted, what should happen to the entry for (non-existent) 'σάτρα'? AntiquatedMan (talk) 11:03, 8 January 2023 (UTC)

This entry only refers to paintings. I am finding recently an increase in usage refering to such things as AI chatbots. Could I extend the entry a bit more? Opinions? ALGRIF talk 12:39, 8 January 2023 (UTC)

Are most of these sources using pretender in the sense of "to pretend/claim"? Can we even say this meaning is nonstandard and that the word is a false friend "and does not mean pretend in the sense of to claim that or act as if something is different from what it actually is"? (Admittedly, I added the Latin America and nonstandard labels, based on the RfV discussion. The false friend usage note was already there.) Examples:

• "No tenemos precedentes que nos guíen en asunto de esta naturaleza. La cuestión está justificada y yo no pretendo saber lo que las cortes decidirán."
• "No pretendo saber todo lo que sucederá en mi vida este próximo año. Pero sí sé algunas cosas porque Él me lo ha dicho."

It seems hard to interpret these in any other way. This collocation is also in the Concise Oxford Spanish Dictionary. SpanishDict distinguishes the sense "expect" and the sense "claim", but lists both, the latter with a "Latin America" label. Is this a semantic loan from English? 70.172.194.25 08:09, 9 January 2023 (UTC)

Quite a lot of cases where it's rendered "claim" or "pretend" on linguee . Some of these might be mistranslated but e.g. "¿Cómo podemos cerrar los ojos y pretender que no está pasando nada?", in a European Parliament record, seems fairly straightforward. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 21:39, 9 January 2023 (UTC)

• Adjective:
  • 現代漢語詞典 2009 (形) 視力缺陷的一種，能看清近處的東西，看不清遠處的東西。
  • 現代漢語詞典 2002 視力缺陷的一種，能看清近處的東西，看不清遠處的東西。 (PoS unspecified, but we can assume it is the same as the 2009 version)
  • 商務新詞典 全新版 2015 This is the only large dictionary that I have on hand視力缺陷的一種，能看清近的東西，看不清遠的東西。 (PoS unspecified, but the definition is almost the same as Xiandai Hanyu Cidian)
• Noun:
  • 臺灣客家話常用詞辭典: 名 醫學上指眼球的前後徑過長，使光線焦點落於視網膜之前，造成視覺影像模糊不清的眼病。
  • 臺灣閩南話常用詞辭典 名 醫學上指由於眼球的前後徑過長，使得焦點落於視網膜之前，造成影像模糊不清。
  • 重編國語辭典修訂本: 醫學上指由於眼球的前後徑過長，使與視軸平行進入眼中的光線，焦點落於視網膜之前，稱為「近視」。 (PoS unspecified, but we can assume it would be the same as the other two Ministry of Education dictionaries)

So it appears that the PoS is adjective for the Mainland, and noun for Taiwan. @justinrleung, I think the noun part should be kept. Also @RcAlex36 who seems to be well-versed in medical terms. – Wpi31 (talk) 05:47, 10 January 2023 (UTC)

@Wpi31: How would you distinguish the noun sense from the adjective sense? Would you say the Cantonese example would be a noun usage? Any other indications for the nominal nature of this word? Xiandai Hanyu Guifan Cidian also treats this as an adjective. I don't think any monolingual dictionary has two definitions (noun and adjective) for this, which is probably indicative of something. — justin(r)leung _{{ (t...) | c=› }} 20:13, 10 January 2023 (UTC)

@justinrleung: The usage of classifiers or possessive particles (e.g. 的) is indicative of a noun usage, such as in google:"我的近視" -"近視眼" -"近視度數".

The existing Cantonese example can still be analysed an adjective usage, though I would argue it is an omission of the possessive particle: 細佬近視好深。(compare 佢屋企好大)

Other more "regular" use of a noun are , though I should note that is somewhat ambiguous

Note that in Cantonese the following constructions are common for an adjective, but:

• *好近視 "very short-sighted" does not seem to be attested
• google:"近視咗" "to become short-sighted" only has less than 20 ghits, minus duplicates

so if we were to only leave one PoS for 近視 in Cantonese, it would have to be noun, not adjective, which can explain 99.9% of all of the usage. The same could probably be said for Hakka and Min. I would guess that this is more complicated in Mandarin, and perhaps both PoS are needed. –

– Wpi31 (talk) 05:37, 11 January 2023 (UTC)

PS: personally I treat 近視 as a uncountable noun, so the Cantonese classifier for it is 啲. – Wpi31 (talk) 09:11, 11 January 2023 (UTC)

I'm fine with both PoS (noun and adjective) actually. RcAlex36 (talk) 04:10, 12 January 2023 (UTC)

• I usually go by what the guifan cidian says. It lists three senses: adjective for the pathology sense, adjective for the figurative sense (that we currently don't include) and verb for the "look up close" meaning (we don't have that either). In short, more work is needed. I do not see the case for a noun sense since medical symptoms are predominately verbs in Chinese. ---> Tooironic (talk) 04:23, 19 January 2023 (UTC)

Better as fetus in fetu or juts in fetu? Vininn126 (talk) 11:57, 10 January 2023 (UTC)

We already have fetus in fetu and foetus in foetu but fetu doesn't actually seem to be an actual declension of the Latin word fetus. Does fetu exist in any other English phrases? --Overlordnat1 (talk) 12:58, 10 January 2023 (UTC)

If it does it's extremely rare, a quick scan on google scholar comes up with nothing. Vininn126 (talk) 13:07, 10 January 2023 (UTC)

We show Latin fetūs as a first/second-declension adjective, but fourth declension as a noun. Latin fetū is the fourth-declension ablative singular. Latin in governs either accusative or ablative, depending on the sense, with ablative for "in, at, on, upon, from (space)". Short answer: yes, fetu is an actual declension of the Latin word fetus. Chuck Entz (talk) 13:57, 10 January 2023 (UTC)

Yes, fetus the noun acts like a verb + -tus form so 4th-declension, and in fetu is valid. Compare various phrases involving in statu (in statu pupillari, in statu nascendi) etc. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 14:30, 10 January 2023 (UTC)

We should probably add a pronunciation - the one I heard from a SciShow video was /ɪn 'fi.t͡ʃu:/, does have one have a different experience? Vininn126 (talk) 14:05, 10 January 2023 (UTC)

On Youglish the most common pronunciation seems to be /'fɛ.tu:/ (no yod). There's also /'fi.tu:/ (also no yod). —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 16:18, 10 January 2023 (UTC)

I believe this should just be at lord it (currently a hard redirect) since it's easy to find many examples without "over": , , , , etc. etc. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 22:13, 10 January 2023 (UTC)

哈嘍

哈佬

(technically an rfv-pron, but also a general rfc/rfv/rfm) Certain pronunciations are added automatically by bots or by preload templates, some of them are very sus, e.g. Mandarin hālǎo for 哈佬 or Cantonese haa1 lau3 for 哈嘍. There seems to be some sort of conflation of these words, and I would recommend checking them thoroughly. – Wpi31 (talk) 11:28, 11 January 2023 (UTC)

Is this really masculine? If so, can someone explain what grammatical principle is at work here? 70.172.194.25 01:24, 12 January 2023 (UTC)

It is feminine. — Fenakhay ^{(حيطي · مساهماتي)} 07:17, 13 January 2023 (UTC)

That makes more sense, thanks for changing it. 70.172.194.25 07:18, 13 January 2023 (UTC)

While doing my biannual adding-pretty-pics-to-Wikt project, I came across the hummingbird hawkmoth, which is an animal named after three other animals (hummingbird, hawk, moth - and you could call it 4 if you include "bird" as well). I thought it would be fun trivia to see if there are any other such examples. 10 points for any other 3-animal compound animals, and 50 points for any 4-animal compound animals Celui qui crée ébauches de football anglais (talk) 12:34, 12 January 2023 (UTC)

I've long been fond of the شترگاوپلنگ (šotorgâvpalang), the camel-cow-leopard (giraffe). There are also broad- and narrow-bordered (bumble-)bee hawk-moths, and the antlion fly. (It's not named after animals, but shout-out to Aglaope infausta BTW, which English calls the almond tree leaf skeletonizer moth...the German name is much shorter, Trauerwidderchen. Also: the ugly worm lizard, which I would've just described as a worm lizard... frankly the neglected worm lizard is uglier, IMO...) - -sche (discuss) 16:22, 12 January 2023 (UTC)

This Quora offers bulldog ant, tarantula hawk wasp, zebra bullhead shark, cockatoo waspfish, and two others I wouldn't count, plus some doubly-named animals where you can reverse the names and get a different animal (rat kangaroo, kangaroo rat). - -sche (discuss) 16:38, 12 January 2023 (UTC)

hummingbird (bird) hawkmoth (hawk, moth) gets me to 5. I wonder whether hummingbird hawkmoth is actually attestable, strictly speaking. DCDuring (talk) 13:43, 13 January 2023 (UTC)

Search on the plural, and you'll find more than enough. The best I could come up with for the question at hand was mole cricket wasp, which is a wasp that preys on mole crickets: mole, cricket, wasp, mole cricket. Chuck Entz (talk) 03:04, 15 January 2023 (UTC)

For a tentative 6, you can include ming Celui qui crée ébauches de football anglais (talk) 22:39, 15 January 2023 (UTC)

My favorite is the peacock mantis shrimp. Guess we dont have a page for it yet. Definitely an interesting animal, and like your original example .... it's not a peacock, not a mantis, and not a shrimp. —Soap— 11:02, 14 January 2023 (UTC)

• bluegrass sod webworm moth ⇒ bluegrass (blue , grass ) webworm moth (webworm, worm , moth) - 7, though you can certainly complain about webworm moth, webworm, and moth (which have no corresponding taxon) DCDuring (talk) 05:46, 15 January 2023 (UTC)

Note the word "animal" above. I would also question interpreting the adjective "blue" as an animal name. Chuck Entz (talk) 06:03, 15 January 2023 (UTC)

I accept "blue" as an animal, and retrospectively award DCDuring 6969 points. Celui qui crée ébauches de football anglais (talk) 22:39, 15 January 2023 (UTC)

The following colors designate animals with well-defined taxonomic names: white, copper, red, blue, yellow, rust, and brown. There may be others. It would be fair to mount RfVs against these.

BTW, do we get extra points if the component terms designate multiple taxa, from different families, orders, or classes? (Examples: red: redstart, red drum; blue: bluefish, Polyommatinae; white: Pieridae, white bean?; brown: Satyrinae spp., brown trout;) DCDuring (talk) 23:25, 15 January 2023 (UTC)

Mr During, you're making my job as Pointmaster very difficult. Do you have a particular species in mind, so I had arbitrarily assign you huge points? Celui qui crée ébauches de football anglais (talk) 08:09, 16 January 2023 (UTC)

Should we have the sense “sobriquet of Elizabeth I”? We have Shakespeare’s sobriquet, the Bard. J3133 (talk) 18:09, 12 January 2023 (UTC)

I don't see why not. Perhaps it could also appear as a Latin entry and a female first name too? There are two people on Wikipedia with this name, so it's rare, but it seems to be used occasionally in Italy and Spanish-speaking countries (see and ). --Overlordnat1 (talk) 19:44, 12 January 2023 (UTC)

It should definitively have an English entry, but I don't see much evidence of it as a Latin name: expected forms like Glorianam and Glorianae appear to only turn up scan errors, with one exception that I can find (a 1952 Oxford magazine where it apparently refers to Elizabeth). As a term for Elizabeth I it was coined by Edmund Spenser, in English. It's also a fairly well-established generic English personal name, attestable by searching 'Gloriana obituary' and the like. I expect in Italy and Spain it's just an elaboration of Gloria. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 03:36, 13 January 2023 (UTC)

I have created the entry. @Al-Muqanna: Apparently it was not coined by Edmund Spenser—Wikipedia states, “it is recorded that the troops at Tilbury hailed her with cries of "Gloriana, Gloriana, Gloriana", after the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588” (two years before The Faerie Queene was published). J3133 (talk) 07:58, 13 January 2023 (UTC)

It looks good. In a way, Benjamin Britten was referring to Elizabeth II rather than Elizabeth I when he wrote Gloriana, as he wrote it for her coronation. Also, the theme to the British TV series Victoria about Queen Victoria, called Victoria the suite (on YT), has the refrain ‘Gloriana hallelujah’ repeatedly sung, despite being about Victoria not Elizabeth I (but it’s probably not worth mentioning that). It looks like it’s mainly an American first name, judging by the many online obituaries, but it seems to be used in Costa Rica more than most countries judging by a FaceBook search. It would make a lot of sense if it were a diminutive of Gloria but I can’t find any proof of that. Overlordnat1 (talk) 09:43, 13 January 2023 (UTC)

@J3133: Wikipedia's assertion is uncited and the only published references to it are from the 2010s and appear to be copied from Wikipedia, so I've removed it as spurious. It's absent in the primary sources for the speech itself, and on the face of it, it's unlikely (though not impossible) that her troops would have spontaneously made up a word to acclaim her. There are on the other hand plenty of sources for it being coined by Spenser. The rest of the entry seems good. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 13:53, 13 January 2023 (UTC)

@Catonif, Sartma Question about Italian reflexive verbs. Is it possible to have a transitive reflexive verb? It seems it should be possible because si can be dative as well as accusative. If so, do these verbs still take essere or do they take avere? I ask because Module:it-verb assumes all reflexive verbs take essere, but if some such verbs take avere, I'll need to make changes to the module. Benwing2 (talk) 03:16, 13 January 2023 (UTC)

Yes, they exist when the pronominal particle is the indirect object, as you said. They take essere, eg: "Mi sono mangiato una pizza". I wouldn't really call them "reflexives" though: I and @Ser be etre shi discussed a while ago about using a better name for them, like "pronominal transitive". Catonif (talk) 07:04, 13 January 2023 (UTC)

@Benwing2: In Italian they are called "verbi transitivi pronominali" (pronominal transitive verbs), and they are something different from reflexive verbs. Some verbs like lavarsi can be both reflexive ("mi lavo tutti i giorni") and pronominal transitive ("mi lavo i capelli tutti i giorni"). — Sartma ^{【𒁾𒁉 ● 𒊭 𒌑𒊑𒀉𒁲】} 14:15, 13 January 2023 (UTC)

I noticed that this word has the diacritic off to the right rather than on top of the "u", both in its entry and on this page when I copy-paste it from my browser's URL bar, which is weird because it appears normal in the URL bar. I'm not sure if this is relevant, but I'm using Chrome 109 on Windows 11. TTWIDEE (talk) 09:30, 13 January 2023 (UTC)

I've noticed this a lot with the pinyin caron in particular for whatever reason. At the moment it's broken for me at the Wiki article for Ŭ where it says "compare Ǔ ǔ (caron)" but fine otherwise. Since it's ultimately down to the browser and the available fonts it's hard to fix at the website level I think. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 14:03, 13 January 2023 (UTC)

Yup, it looks fine to me when viewed on Safari on an iPad. — Sgconlaw (talk) 04:59, 14 January 2023 (UTC)

I am confident that this is to do with the font you are using, not your browser, so you may be able to fix it with a font choice (possibly via CSS). Not all fonts render combining diacritics correctly, as I have noticed in sans serif Russian in Wikipedia (e.g. at Russian Grammar), but I cannot say offhand what font that resolves to in my Firefox on Linux (though I ought really to try and fix it). PJTraill (talk) 16:11, 14 January 2023 (UTC)

I haven't installed any custom fonts or anything though. I checked on Chrome 109 on Android and it worked fine, so I think this is probably a Windows thing. TTWIDEE (talk) 09:05, 21 January 2023 (UTC)

I'm Australian and usually put the stress on the last syllable (non-standard, I know). I checked some examples of "Mandarin" in AusE on youglish.com, and it seems I'm not the only one from Australia who does that. Does anyone have any views on this? ---> Tooironic (talk) 00:44, 14 January 2023 (UTC)

I tend to do the same and I'm English and looking on YouGlish it's not that uncommon. Here is Jeremy Paxman saying it in that way when presenting University Challenge(link 19 out of 178, if you restrict the search to UK). --Overlordnat1 (talk) 00:57, 14 January 2023 (UTC)

In fact I've noticed that, at Cantonese, we only give CantonESE as a possible pronunciation but there are many people in many countries, though less often Americans, in YouGlish clips who say CANtonese. I nearly always say ChinESE and CantonESE but not necessarily in longer phrases. I say 'CHINese restaurant' and 'CANtonese restaurant'. Also, I say TV as tee VEE unless I'm talking about the magazine 'TV Times' (TEE vee times). --Overlordnat1 (talk) 01:15, 14 January 2023 (UTC)

Anecdotally I've heard last-syllable stress on "Mandarin" and first-syllable stress on "Cantonese" in the UK, I don't think either of them are strange. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 01:43, 14 January 2023 (UTC)

I've noticed a few oddities on the American and British English pronunciation differences page that apparently are sourced from official pronouncing dictionaries but are never heard in practice and thankfully I don't think we include any dodgy ones (like the allegedly British 'PanaMA' instead of 'PAnama' and even worse 'MarDI Gras' instead of 'MARdi Gras'). We do exclusively list American pronunciations at Abu Dhabi but then follow that up with two British sound files demonstrating different pronunciations to both each other and the listed American pronunciations though. I say 'A-boo Dah-bee' rather than 'A-boo Da-bee' but there are many American pronunciations similar to these British ones on YouGlish as well as the ones we list as American starting with 'Ah'. --Overlordnat1 (talk) 03:01, 14 January 2023 (UTC)

It’s not unusual for the stress on a word to be on one syllable when the word is pronounced alone, and on a different syllable when it is pronounced in a compound. — Sgconlaw (talk) 05:03, 14 January 2023 (UTC)

To be fair though, the audios at Adu Dhabi were done by a Wonderfool, who makes slip-ups on around 1.5% on ocassions. Celui qui crée ébauches de football anglais (talk) 08:12, 16 January 2023 (UTC)

• Thank you for everyone's input. I have added the variant pronunciation. Feel free to make changes where fit. ---> Tooironic (talk) 03:06, 16 January 2023 (UTC)

Someone better versed in Latin than am I needs to go in and fix the entries and links for the verbs cited in my title; they appear to have been confused, particularly in the instance of the mostly poetically-deployed and inflectionally-defective flaveo, which has ascribed to it tenses that according to other authority do not exist in its conjugation (to wit, perfect, pluperfect and future perfect). 2600:6C5A:477F:D341:B199:68AF:F86E:37E3 15:44, 14 January 2023 (UTC)

Good catch on the mix-up. The regular perfect for flaveo would be flavui, which does actually seem attested in New Latin (e.g.), but should be marked as such with a usage note. Whoever added flavi as the perfect may have seen it in texts and wrongly connected it to flaveo rather than flo. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 16:11, 14 January 2023 (UTC)

Have fixed the inflected forms and entry for flaveo, let me know if I missed anything. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 16:23, 14 January 2023 (UTC)

At

ru:болеть I read that the perfective form is заболеть (zaboletʹ) (for both conjugations),

so I have just added that to болеть (boletʹ) here,

but заболеть (zaboletʹ) and ru:заболеть agree in only specifying the imperfective as заболевать (zabolevatʹ),

which does refer back to заболеть (zaboletʹ).

Is that all correct, and should заболеть (zaboletʹ) perhaps also refer to болеть (boletʹ) as another imperfective? PJTraill (talk) 16:02, 14 January 2023 (UTC)

This happens sometimes in Slavic languages, where заболевать and болеть are basically synonyms and заболеть might be the perfective. However, there is a little more nuance. It's more that болеть is an imperfective stative, whereas заболеть means "to start to hurt", and so заболевает can be understood as "it is starting to hurt". Vininn126 (talk) 16:08, 14 January 2023 (UTC)

@PJTraill: Basically, I sort of agree with User:Vininn126 about the nuances but we have a bit of established practices as well.

1. It is correct to add pf. заболе́ть (zabolétʹ) to impf. боле́ть (bolétʹ). Note that different aspect forms sometimes add some additional senses, in this case "to begin to ...".
2. The pf. заболе́ть (zabolétʹ) doesn't necessarily need impf. боле́ть (bolétʹ) as another impf. form for the above reasons but we add impf. бежа́ть (bežátʹ) to pf. побежа́ть (pobežátʹ) or pf. засмея́ться (zasmejátʹsja) to impf. смея́ться (smejátʹsja).

I've just added боле́ть (bolétʹ) as an alt. impf. form to заболе́ть (zabolétʹ) for completeness.

You will find that both approaches have points. I can see that зане́рвничать (zanérvničatʹ) doesn't have the imperfective form, entry created by User:Benwing2. Perhaps for the reason described by @Vininn126? Anatoli T. ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 01:53, 19 January 2023 (UTC)

Russian Wiktionary is not a reliable source you should be quoting. Заболеть may have болеть as another imperfective when the perf. I will check these entries when I have time. Anatoli T. ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 21:56, 17 January 2023 (UTC)

@Atitarev Yes, I'm not sure the practice for handling prefixed perfectives is completely ironed out, but generally I have not added the base (unprefixed/unsuffixed) form as an imperfective of the prefixed perfective unless the terms are really synonymous except for aspect. User:Vininn126 notes that за- often adds the meaning "to start to ..." so it would seem strange to me to add an unsuffixed imperfective that lacks this meaning as the imperfective counterpart of such a verb. Benwing2 (talk) 03:06, 19 January 2023 (UTC)

@Benwing2: Fair enough but note that majority of perfective verbs we have, don't always have a 100% matched meaning with the imperfective counterparts. по- (po-) may add "to do for some time" sense, за- (za-) "to start doing", etc. Anatoli T. ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 03:14, 19 January 2023 (UTC)

This is why we usually don't include po- forms as the pair of imperfective, there is too much of a semantic shift in Polish. Vininn126 (talk) 10:37, 19 January 2023 (UTC)

Can we use as an antonym to obstinate or headstrong I'm encouraged to ask while it is already in translation tables of open 4th. sense receptive Thanks. Flāvidus (talk) 02:21, 15 January 2023 (UTC)

Yesterday, I saw a Twitter post that described something as the "most mid", which led me to think if the comparatives of mid#Adjective exist despite the entry saying they don't... until I found out that I was looking at etymology 1 (sense 5 specifically), and there is another sense under etymology 5 saying that comparatives do exist.

So now the problem becomes: is the definition under etymology 1 sense 5 the same as that under etymology 5? I feel like they describe something as mediocre with a negative connotation, unless I can't spot out the nuances. There is also the problem of determining whether using "mid" under that definition is AAVE, because etymology 5 doesn't say that. ItMarki (talk) 05:39, 15 January 2023 (UTC)

Etym there suggests "from German Seiche (“sinking”)" but Seiche gives:

1. (dialect, vulgar) urine, piss
2. bullshit, nonsense, twaddle--

If there's a way that "urine" or "nonsense" relate to "sinking" it surely should be explained. IMHO. --178.148.194.92 15:15, 15 January 2023 (UTC)

It's linked to Latin siccus (“dry”) in the FEW (about 1/3 down column 2). The TLFi (seiche 2) says the etymology is obscure but perhaps related to sèche (“land revealed at low tide, mud flat”), likewise citing the FEW. The OED has the given etymology from German Seiche, which they gloss as "sinking (of water)", and they explicitly reject the "usually stated" connection to sèche but they don't give any reasoning for it.

From what I can see, the word does appear in older German sources but it seems to be a loan from French, given that it's noted as being pronounced with /ʃ/: " seine Wasser schwellen an und senken sich, zichen weiter und kehren wieder wie Ebbe und Fluth. Das ist die "Seiche" (spr. Sehsch) " . I can't find much to suggest "sinking" as a gloss for Seiche or seichen, which has apparently meant "urinate" since Old High German, and I'm left wondering if the OED misunderstood some euphemistic reference to piss like "Wasser lassen" as talking about "sinking". —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 20:22, 15 January 2023 (UTC)

Perhaps they got it confused with German Seige (“lowering, incline, tilt”, literally “sinking”), from Middle High German seige (“sinking, lowering, descending, tilt, direction, sight, calibration mark”), from Middle High German seigen (“to sink, cause to sink, reduce”), from Old High German seigen (“to make sink”) (?) Leasnam (talk) 22:12, 16 January 2023 (UTC)

That's possible as a conflation, though I think in that case the etymology probably doesn't make sense since it's supposed to be an orthographic borrowing, and I doubt Seige in German was being spelled with a ch in the relevant time period. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 22:33, 16 January 2023 (UTC)

Not sure if it is of any help but dialectally, I hear and sometimes say seicht (“of water, shallow”) without a t: sīch. SI has a quote dating back to the 16th century. — Fytcha〈 T | L | C 〉 15:17, 17 January 2023 (UTC)

That looks much more promising given the plausible link to sinken. The citation given at the entry from Kluge also says "hence literally ‘where the water has sunk into the ground,’ or ‘that which has sunk, or is low’", though it still leaves the loose end of the semantics and the pronunciation (which would apparently depend on a form like seiche actually being written in the corresponding time period often enough to be picked up). Maybe something stating that it's uncertain and citing both etymologies (sèche and seicht) would work? —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 15:28, 17 January 2023 (UTC)

This was added by an IP geolocating to Maryland who added a batch of Coptic terms, mostly referring to homosexuality. It has a picture of a happy male couple and usex about a man kissing his husband, but @Ⲫⲁϯⲟⲩⲉⲣϣⲓ left a message on the talk page vehemently disagreeing with the positive connotations. After all, Coptic was, until recently, solely a liturgical language of the Orthodox Christian church, and the etymology seems to reinforce the negative conntations. I'm concerned that we're whitewashing an extremely derogatory term along the lines of sodomite. Chuck Entz (talk) 14:23, 17 January 2023 (UTC)

If the etymology already says "a pejorative connotation in Coptic" then I assume there should be a derogatory label in any case. I would be inclined to RFV it as {{derogatory}}. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 14:27, 17 January 2023 (UTC)

Plus, homosexual (noun) is pretty dubious in English, too. We put (typically formal, distancing or dated) in the label, but I'm not convinced we should be using it in glosses as a generic term for a gay person, really. Theknightwho (talk) 16:03, 17 January 2023 (UTC)

This sort of whitewashing is a big problem in Wiktionary, e.g. in several cases, neutral Russian terms for "gay" used to have highly offensive terms listed as synonyms without any qualifiers or usage notes. Benwing2 (talk) 03:22, 19 January 2023 (UTC)

@Chuck Entz, Theknightwho, Benwing2: After doing some research, I cut the additional content from the entry, changed the gloss to "sodomite" following the sources and created the components ⲗⲁ- and ⲃⲟⲧⲉ. The etymology is confirmed at CDO and looks transparent. I haven't explicitly tagged the entry as derogatory yet, given my lack of relevant knowledge, but I note that Crum says the term is equivalent to Arabic لوطي, which we do label derogatory and gloss as "homosexual, sodomitic; pederastic". —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 04:25, 19 January 2023 (UTC)

@Al-Muqanna Thanks. Hard to see how "sodomite" isn't derogatory ... Benwing2 (talk) 04:26, 19 January 2023 (UTC)

Yeah, I guess it makes sense to add the label and if evidence somehow comes up that that's not the modern usage it can be removed. Done. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 05:03, 19 January 2023 (UTC)

Google mainly returns pages written in French or written by French people. Apokrif (talk) 15:28, 17 January 2023 (UTC)

One time, I brought fudge to an event and carelessly described it as "special fudge" because I only make it for special occasions and people tell me it's especially good. People thought I meant it had drugs in it, and I had to clarify. That's also what it means if "brownies are special"; if they're special in a non-drug way, people have to clarify "These special brownies. Not those kind of special brownies". This suggests people understand special to mean / have a definition "containing weed / drugs". Would this be a ... euphemism? 16:02, 18 January 2023 (UTC)

@Buildingquestion: Interesting. This list of cannabis slang also has go for a "special" walk as a euphemism for smoking it. SmallJarsWithGreenLabels (talk) 18:28, 19 January 2023 (UTC)

I accidentally capitalized the word "yakuwarigo", and I published it so now the word page has its name "Yakuwarigo" and it has to be "yakuwarigo" instead as this word doesn't need to get capitalized, and it cannot get capitalized after first sentence word.

Is there any way (other than the administrators) for us users to edit the particular page word name, no?

Anyways- here is the link to the page: https://en.wiktionary.orghttps://dictious.com/en/Yakuwarigo The Dictionary Man20 (talk) 21:16, 18 January 2023 (UTC)

Have you been copying things straight from Wikipedia again? Theknightwho (talk) 21:23, 18 January 2023 (UTC)

Edit: given the definition is identical to the first line of the Wikipedia article, I'm going to say you have been. You have been explicitly told not to do that, because it creates sub-standard definitions. Please stop. Theknightwho (talk) 21:30, 18 January 2023 (UTC)

@The Dictionary Man20 Yes, you need to stop plagiarizing from Wikipedia and pay more attention to Wiktionary conventions. For example, you created Baader–Meinhof effect with an en-dash in it (no doubt cutting/pasting the term from Wikipedia), when in Wiktionary we use regular hyphens. Similarly the capitalization of Shaviliuk Gambit, Damiano Defence and lots of other terms you created is wrong; the second word should not be capitalized (and many of these terms are encyclopedic in nature and may not belong in Wiktionary at all). Benwing2 (talk) 03:19, 19 January 2023 (UTC)

should there be an explanation for the semantic shift from Russian масло (oil painting) to Romanian maslă (four suits of playing cards) ? i had to do some google searching to understand the connection. or is it unnecessary?

maslă <- link for reference Throwawayaccount565 (talk) 02:54, 19 January 2023 (UTC)

@Throwawayaccount565, Bogdan: “suit” is масть (mastʹ) in Russian and Ukrainian. I don’t see the related ма́сло (máslo) having acquired this sense or the preceding sense of “colour” (which was first concrete colour as paint applied onto something like oil then abstract colour), specifically not even in the 18th century. (Even less likely the sense is South Slavic.) Maybe a hyperslavization. Fay Freak (talk) 05:20, 19 January 2023 (UTC)

I guess it's likely it was borrowed from Russian масть (mastʹ), but it was adapted to Romanian using the existing maslu (or even, overlapping a previous maslă meaning oil painting). Bogdan (talk) 09:23, 19 January 2023 (UTC)

@Sartma, Catonif Sorry to keep pinging you two :) ... I notice that we are not being consistent about handling apocopated vs. non-apocopated verbal expressions. For example, we have 164 lemmas involving fare + something else, along with 19 lemmas involving far + something else. In some cases, the same expression occurs in both variants, e.g. far parte and fare parte, but in most cases a given expression occurs in only one variant. I don't see a lot of logic as to which expression gets which variant; there are no expressions of the form far + something beginning with a vowel, but e.g. we have far pesare vs. fare saltare and far da battistrada vs. fare da paravento with the same structure in both. We need to clean this up, but I'm not completely sure how. Should we standardize on fare? If so, should we include soft redirects for the far versions of some or all of the expressions? As I'm not a native Italian speaker I don't know which ones sound better in which variant but I can guess maybe it sounds better to use far + infinitive + something else based on the frequency of expressions occurring one way or another. Following are lists of the expressions:

Benwing2 (talk) 18:55, 19 January 2023 (UTC)

Yes, I also noticed this some time ago. I think we're safe to lemmatize at fare, and the redirects aren't a bad idea, but IMO far + , eg: far saltare, far valere, far girare la testa (sidenote: hey this looks SOP), etc. should be lemmatized apocopated, since saying fare saltare etc. out loud is one of the best ways to sound mockingly non-native, right after omitting articles before possessive pronouns and saying /ʎ/ as . I also feel the same about far parte, so in conclusion, I'd say to use far for verbs and parte, and fare everywhere else, not as clean as a solution as one might have hoped though. Catonif (talk) 19:26, 19 January 2023 (UTC)

@Benwing2, @Catonif: I'm not sure I agree. Fare saltare, fare valere, fare girare la testa are all completely fine. fare can always be non-apocopated. Sure, the apocopated version might be more common, especially when speaking, but that doesn't make the non-apocopated version wrong, or "non native". I have no issues writing it, and using it even when speaking. — Sartma ^{【𒁾𒁉 ● 𒊭 𒌑𒊑𒀉𒁲】} 23:47, 19 January 2023 (UTC)

@Catonif Thanks. I found a few others using other verbs (I think this is a complete list):

• dar volta
• gettar fumo negli occhi
• lasciar perdere
• pestar l'acqua nel mortaio
• tentar non nuoce
• toccar terra
• aver luogo (given as an alt form of avere luogo)
• metter acqua nel vino
• voler bene (given as an alt form of volere bene)
• voler dire

How should we handle these? Benwing2 (talk) 22:00, 19 January 2023 (UTC)

Potentially we could put them all at fare X and include a usage note in some of the terms about the apocopated version being more common in speech. Benwing2 (talk) 03:43, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

@Benwing2: Of the items you listed, I would only keep tentar non nuoce as is, since it's a proverb, and its form is fixed. All others are just idioms that can use either far or fare. — Sartma ^{【𒁾𒁉 ● 𒊭 𒌑𒊑𒀉𒁲】} 10:14, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

I mean, either the apocopated or the non-apocopated (anapocopated?) form. — Sartma ^{【𒁾𒁉 ● 𒊭 𒌑𒊑𒀉𒁲】} 10:15, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

@Benwing2: Your proposal to put everything under fare, with a usage note about far sounds good to me. — Sartma ^{【𒁾𒁉 ● 𒊭 𒌑𒊑𒀉𒁲】} 10:39, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

@Sartma Interesting, you really say things like "Non mi fare girare la testa"? Might be a Northern thing, here it's unhearable. Looking at Ngrams, the form, though very uncommon, indeed seems to exist, but the ratio of occurrence makes me very uneasy about lemmatizing in those forms, see: far saltare, voler dire, far parte. Should we lemmatize at a form so drastically rarer? For comparison, see fare baldoria, fare capriole, the cases where I suggested to not apocope. I'd say that another semi-exception, together with far parte, is voler bene, though I admit "volere bene" is somewhat more hearable than "fare parte". Catonif (talk) 12:54, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

@Catonif: I don't know what to say, I do, lol. Especially if there is a preposition or something in front of it (like per volere dire, per fare parte, etc.), or if I want to emphasise the expression. fare/far (or apocopated/anapocopated) can go with all of the above (proverbs excluded). I do agree that there is a clear tendency to use the apocopated version, so we could lemmatize at far instead of fare. I'd be fine with either. — Sartma ^{【𒁾𒁉 ● 𒊭 𒌑𒊑𒀉𒁲】} 17:55, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

OK, sounds good, let's follow what User:Catonif suggests; there are only a few that need changing. Benwing2 (talk) 18:04, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

@Benwing2: I would delete all these apocopic forms and similar. Talk:tener presente is strong precedent for doing so, and I have in the past used it as justification for deleting similar apocopic forms. Imetsia (talk) 17:35, 29 January 2023 (UTC)

@Imetsia More that you "would" it seems like you've already just moved them all and deleted all redirects, I had not realised. I'd call an elaborate discussion like this stronger than an RFD, and although I'm really not happy to rekindle the embers, I have to stress that the consensus reached here would indeed agree on having tenere presente with an -e, while disallowing to have volere dire, and it does so with clear and consistent reasoning. Please read the post thoroughly and check the Ngrams links. I'm sorry for reaching you late on this thing, I would have told you sooner if I had fully realised you were doing this. @Benwing2, Sartma. Catonif (talk) 18:41, 31 July 2023 (UTC)

@Imetsia, Catonif, Sartma I am inclined to agree. Catonif, correct me if I'm wrong but the summary was this:

"in conclusion, I'd say to use far for verbs and parte, and fare everywhere else"

This presumably applies to all verbs, not just fare? BTW we should ideally use soft redirects not hard ones, even though it's a bit more work to create them. Benwing2 (talk) 19:07, 31 July 2023 (UTC)

If we agree that we should always have "far + verb" (apocopated) but "fare + noun/adj/etc." (non-apocopated), that's fine. Tentatively, I would say it's similar to how the DO and Zingarelli do it (although I haven't surveyed their entries exhaustively).

I would've liked to have been involved in the above discussion from the start, and for someone to at least have replied to my comment before. Looking through and citing the discussion in all my recent page moves, I interpreted the consensus reached here differently. Imetsia (talk) 19:59, 31 July 2023 (UTC)

@Benwing2, Catonif: I can restore all the apocopated forms, but did we come to an agreement on what to do with the non-apocopated verbal phrases? Should they be hard redirects, soft redirects, alt forms, or deleted? Imetsia (talk) 14:32, 1 August 2023 (UTC)

@Benwing2, Imetsia You're right, sorry, but I noticed your message only now when I did answer you. As the final generalised thing I would suggest (which when amended we better slap into WT:AIT):

Multiword verbs apocopate the first verb from -re to -r if the following word is also a verb (e.g. voler dire, far saltare) but left non-apocopated as -re if it is not the case (e.g. fare finta, tenere presente).

To this one would also mention possible exceptions such as far parte and voler bene, if we do agree on having them as such (how to the big dictionaries you mentioned handle these?). Tentar non nuoce will obviously remain unaffected as it's a proverb, not a verb as the above thing states. As for the alts, I'd be fine with them as hard redirs, since it's something that is already done for multiword terms, but I'd be fine if other options end up being chosen. Catonif (talk) 17:18, 2 August 2023 (UTC)

@Catonif: Alright, I recreated all the pages with hard redirects for the non-apocopated. I also think this solution is best. I don't think I missed any, but you can double check.

The only outliers remaining with how the big dictionaries lemmatize are dare volta (apocopated in DO, but not in Zingarelli), lasciare perdere (not apocopated in either), volere dire (not apocopated in DO, but apocopated in Zingarelli), and fare parte (apocopated in both). To be consistent, I would apply our rules (apocopate for fare + verb; don't otherwise) to the cases where the dictionaries disagree. That leaves just lasciare perdere and fare parte, which I would make exceptions for in order to be consistent with the mainstream dictionaries. Imetsia (talk (more)) 18:26, 2 August 2023 (UTC)

@Catonif, Sartma I'm trying to figure out the best way of handling verbs that at least potentially have diphthongization in stressed positions. It seems to only involve o; forms like niego from negare are currently marked archaic in accordance with Treccani. Module:it-verb can support independently specifying one or more unstressed and stressed stems, i.e. it can support any combination of o, uo and both o+uo or uo+o as possibilities for either the stressed or unstressed forms. But that doesn't tell us how to handle such verbs. My tendency has been to declare that a verb like affocare has stressed affuòco or popular/poetic affòco but unstressed affocàvi in keeping with the etymology, and that unstressed uo forms like affuocàvi come from a parallel verb affuocare, which has uo throughout. But maybe this is wrong. What do you think? Benwing2 (talk) 09:08, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

@Benwing2: I think both affocare and affuocare are just two forms of the same verb. It's an archaic/literary form, I never heard anybody in my life using it, so I don't have any strong opinion about how to treat it (I don't consider this modern/standard Italian).

Zingarelli has a note:

• v. tr. (io affuòco o affòco, tu affuòchi o affòchi; in tutta la coniug., -uò- o poet. -ò- se accentato, -ò- o -uò- se non accentato)

That is: throughout the conjugation, you have:

1. in stressed syllables: -uò- (poetic: -ò-)
2. in unstressed syllables: -uò- or -ò- (with no difference in register)

Not sure whether this can be proved in attested sources, though, and pass our attestation criteria, but again, that's probably a different topic. — Sartma ^{【𒁾𒁉 ● 𒊭 𒌑𒊑𒀉𒁲】} 10:36, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

@Sartma Thanks! Any comments on the other verbs I mention above? Are they the same? Benwing2 (talk) 17:59, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

@Benwing2: Oh, sorry. Zingarelli has notes for each of those, with slightly different details.

• infocare (which I personally wouldn't consider Modern Italian, but either literary or regional): "-ò- preferably becomes -uò- in stressed syllables"
• abbonare (I never heard anybody saying abbuonare): "throughout the conjugation, -uò- or -ò- in stressed syllables, -o- or -uo- in unstressed syllables.
• mazzolare (given as popolare "vernacular". I would only say mazzuolare): "-ò- preferably becomes -uò- in stressed syllables"
• risolare: given as alternative to risuolare: "conjugated as suolare" (very technical meaning, I never heard this word but while I would understand risuolare, I would have no clue of what risolare would mean).
• rotare: given as alternative to ruotare (I would never accept this as Standard Italian, to me it's 100% regional or literary): "throughout the conjugation, -o- becomes -uo-, especially if stressed".
• sonare: given as alternative to suonare (regional or literary to me, definitely not Standard Italian): "throughout the conjugation, -o- becomes -uo-, especially if stressed".

— Sartma ^{【𒁾𒁉 ● 𒊭 𒌑𒊑𒀉𒁲】} 18:20, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

@Sartma Thanks so much! This is super helpful. One final question is whether Zingarelli has anything specific to say about archaic/poetic/literary/etc. forms of riessere. Our current conjugation lists a bunch of archaic and apocopated forms; when cleaning up essere I have the "regular" conjugation that lists only the modern forms, followed by a second conjugation labeled "including lesser-used forms:" that includes all the archaic/poetic/literary/etc. forms given in Treccani, Hoepli and/or DOP. However, none of these three sources lists any archaic forms for riessere. Maybe I should just remove all the existing archaic forms and not list them, but if Zingarelli lists them, I can put them in. Benwing2 (talk) 18:33, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

@Sartma BTW abbonare has two different meanings; the more common one meaning "subscribe" does not alternate with abbuonare but there's also a less common one "forgive (part of a debt); (archaic) ameliorate, make better" that does alternate with abbuonare. Benwing2 (talk) 18:37, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

@-sche, Catonif, Sartma, Imetsia Can one of you native Italian speakers help me understand the distinction in Italian between spregiativo "derogatory" and peggiorativo "pejorative"? I ask because Treccani gives both types of forms for various nouns. For example, for fagotto "bundle", Treccani's entry gives the following derived nouns:

1. "dim." (= diminutive) fagottino (also regionally a type of sweet pastry), as well as uncommon fagottello;
2. "accr." (= augmentative) fagottone;
3. "spreg." (= derogatory) fagottuccio;
4. "pegg." (= pejorative) fagottaccio.

Meanwhile for libro "book", Treccani gives the following:

1. diminutive libretto (also with other meanings), librino and more commonly libriccino, librettino;
2. "dim. e spreg." (= combination diminutive + derogatory) libruccio, librettuccio, libricciolo;
3. "spreg." (= derogatory) libriciattolo, as well as literary librattolo ("mi condusse ad uno scrittoio ove erano molti librattoli unti e gualciti"; I. Nievo);
4. "accr." (= augmentative) librone;
5. "pegg." (= pejorative) libraccio.

There was a discussion a month ago or so (Wiktionary:Beer parlour/2022/December#"derogatory" -> "pejorative" in categories and labels) about the difference between "derogatory" and "pejorative" that led to renaming Category:Italian derogatory suffixes to Category:Italian pejorative suffixes. The outcome of that discussion was not to split derogatory vs. pejorative even though derogatory terms in English seemed fundamentally different and nastier (e.g. the realm of ethnic slurs and such) than pejorative terms in Italian, Russian, etc. This makes me rethink this a bit, though.

Treccani itself defines spregiativo as "procedimento grammaticale consistente nell’aggiungere al tema di sostantivi e aggettivi un suffisso (-accio, -uccio, -astro,-ucolo, -aglia) che esprime un’intenzione di disprezzo" i.e. it expresses disprezzo (scorn or contempt), while peggiorativo is defined as "procedimento grammaticale che consiste nell’aggiungere al tema di un sostantivo o di un aggettivo un suffisso (in italiano generalm. -àccio) che significa cattiva qualità, o cattivo stato, o sim" i.e. it expresses a "bad quality or state". This sounds to me like spregiativo expresses a worse sentiment than peggiorativo but it's hard for me to see how this works out practically. For example, if you're describing a worn-out, falling-apart book is it a libraccio or a libriciattolo? What about a new but shoddily-made book? What about a trashily-written book such as one of those dime-a-dozen Harlequin romance novels? What about a book that expresses despicable ideas such as Mein Kampf?

I am planning on implementing the ability to add diminutives, augmentatives and pejoratives to Italian noun and probably adjective headwords. Such support already exists for Russian nouns and adjectives (as well as the ability to specify relational adjectives corresponding to nouns, and adverbs and abstract nouns corresponding to adjectives). The Russian support does not currently handle inline modifiers but I will probably add them to the Italian headwords so that (short) nuances of meaning and usage can be given (obviously, long descriptive phrases should not go in the headword; instead, create a lemma entry for the term and put such information there). However I wonder if diminutive/augmentative/pejorative will be enough given the shades of meaning and associated terms distinguished by Treccani. Do I need to support both derogatory and pejorative variants? Do I need to support things like diminutive+derogatory variants (libruccio, librettuccio, libricciolo)?

Thanks for any input you can provide.

Benwing2 (talk) 06:28, 21 January 2023 (UTC)

@Benwing2: I think the main difference between pejorative and derogatory is that the first refers to the actual quality/state of the object, the second is a judgment of the speaker, and doesn't say anything about the object per se. I think that's why pejorative is describe as a grammatical process (adding a suffix to imply that the object per se has a certain characteristic), while derogatory isn't (it's just a word, in some cases and just incidentally formed by the addition of suffixes, that, when used, implies a judgment of value held by the speaker). There is obviously an overlap between the two, because you can use a pejorative word in a derogatory way, but I'm not sure the opposite is possible (a derogatory word doesn't necessarily imply a pejorative meaning). If a libraccio can be either in bad conditions or considered bad by the speaker, a libriciattolo or librettuccio is definitely considered of little worth by the speaker, but it could be a new expensive hard cover edition, inlaid in gold. — Sartma ^{【𒁾𒁉 ● 𒊭 𒌑𒊑𒀉𒁲】} 10:29, 21 January 2023 (UTC)

The Romance Languages by Harris and Vincent claims that Italian feminine plural -e derives from nominative plural Latin -ae. I was always under the impression it comes from Latin -ās, which seems to have replaced -ae in the nominative in Proto-Romance, according to evidence from Old French, Old Occitan and Old Sursilvan (all of which had a nom-acc distinction). Essentially, -as > -ai > -e. This explains why Italians say amiche not #amice plural of amica (but amici plural of amico). It also explains why the feminine plural article (l)e triggers syntactic gemination in many Italian dialects (e.g. Neapolitan), while the masculine plural article does not do so in those same dialects. There is other evidence, as covered by Wikipedia's article on Romance plurals (which, in full disclosure, I probably wrote). My question is ... how well-accepted is this theory? The same theory claims that -i plural of -e is phonologically motivated as -es > -ei > -i, while the alternative theory presumably appeals to the analogy of -i plural of -o. I'm asking because I'm cleaning up Italian suffixes and want to make sure the etymologies are accurate. Benwing2 (talk) 07:20, 21 January 2023 (UTC)

Ah, thank you for that wonderfully written and easy to understand essay. I'd read it before and my eyes lit up when I saw this section title because I wanted to share the link to the Wikipedia article.

Anyway, linguistic scholarship is a slow-moving science .... the majority opinion in published literature is probably with the -ae theory, just because so much old literature is still circulating, in some cases probably from the 1800's. We could scour the libraries of all the world and probably count on our hands the number of papers that have been published in scholarly journals about this exact subject in the last fifty years. So, I hope we don't need to concede to majority opinion on this issue .... I think the so-called (but badly named) accusative theory makes much more sense, and that a scholar who looked at both theories with an open mind would probably side with the accusative theory, even if a few doubts still remain, such as Romanian needing to go through the same sound changes in parallel. If we can narrow down our definition of a majority to people who've written specifically about this one subject, and considered both sides, perhaps we can put the old theory to bed. —Soap— 10:29, 21 January 2023 (UTC)

@Soap Thanks. I think I read the "accusative" theory in Giacomo Devoto's book on Italian dialects. Benwing2 (talk) 19:14, 21 January 2023 (UTC)

The problem is that the second-person singular present indicative ending of verbs in -are, such as ami, shows that Latin -ās became Italian -i, not Italian -e. Or do the proponents of the amiche < amīcās hypothesis have an alternative explanation for ami? —Mahāgaja · talk 20:19, 22 January 2023 (UTC)

Yes, that can be explained as analogy from other verbs where second-person singular present indicative -s was preceded by another vowel. See reddit, jstor. One thing that I think is not as solid as the Wikipedia article currently presents it as is the hypothesis that "nominative plural ending -as in the 1st declension" was "attested in Old Latin and replaced by -ae in literary Classical Latin." I recently read a paper about the nominative plural ending -as, "Again on as-nominatives: A New Approach to the Problem", Giovanbattista Galdi (2012) and Galdi says there are various hypotheses of the orgin of the form, including influence/borrowing from Oscan (so not strictly speaking a native retention in Latin) or analogy after the instability of final -m caused singular nominative -a and accusative -am to be felt to be homophonous.--Urszag (talk) 21:42, 22 January 2023 (UTC)

In this clip, at 1:00, the speaker says that prior to confirmation, he had to consider that photos of anti-aircraft systems on buildings in Moscow could be "deepfakes". That's German, but would this use of "deepfake" (~a realistic-looking "photo" generated by AI deep learning) also occur in English? Our entry scopes deepfake way more narrowly, to only cases where one person's face was put onto another person's body. Wikipedia also says it's when "existing image or video is replaced with someone else's likeness".
But can't you also have an audio google:"deepfake of his voice" which need not involve any visuals of anyone's faces or bodies? And if you AI-generate a photo of someone from scratch with e.g. Stable Diffusion (doing whatever incriminating thing you would otherwise have FaceSwapped them onto someone else's body to be doing), couldn't that also be a deepfake? (And what if, as the Welt correspondent is discussing, you generated a fake photo of a thing?) - -sche (discuss) 01:40, 22 January 2023 (UTC)

AI-facilitated profile replacement, especially in videos, is still by far the most common sense judging from Google but I think the colloquial usage of deepfake has become broader over the last few years. I've seen it applied to things that are really just common or garden fakes. There is a similar usage here, where a realistic-style caricature is termed a deepfake despite not being AI-generated or involving face replacement. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 02:27, 22 January 2023 (UTC)

You can’t create AI fakes without human action, nor are there good fakes without some probability calculations or more-or-less intelligent guesses by computing devices in photoediting software, nor without good guidance by software users. If you haven’t done the fake, as the speaker, you don’t know either in which concentration it partook, so the definition somewhat relies on a false dichotomy, too.

You can totally search for military deepfake, there is a lot said about it. From a military perspective, it makes no sense to restrict the usage to fake faces, and we see it as a vague catchword for planning.

As for the voice stuff, it is clear from derived terminology, as well as the original application area of video speeches, that there never was a restriction to imagery, as there is deepfake phishing, voice deepfake for forms of scams. “Deepfake vishing, a type of narrowcast threat, uses cloned voices for social engineering phone calls.” Then there is a natural progression to deepfake text. Fay Freak (talk) 23:54, 27 January 2023 (UTC)

@-sche:  Done I had to carefully contextualize defining words to regloss our noun entry in order to evite inexact explanation of what this word has a lexical tendency to signify. Fay Freak (talk) 00:13, 28 January 2023 (UTC)

Six months ago the idea of making Kyiv, not Kiev, the lemma entry was last discussed, inconclusively, at Wiktionary:Tea room/2022/July#Kyiv and Kiev. (No I haven’t been stalking this, just happened to be clearing old browser tabs today.)

Good discussion there. I missed it, so without repeating anything, I’ll add a few points and dispel misunderstandings:

• Historical usage: the spelling Kiev was only used from the 19th century (only found three earlier mentions: 1793, 1797, and 1798), and only became prevailing in the 20th. Others were used in the 17th, 18th, 19th and into the early 20th: Kiou, Kiow, Kiovia, Kiowia, Kioff, Kiof, Kiew, Kief, Kieff, &c. Kyiv is attested by 1929, but only gained use with decolonization of Ukraine. See Citations:Kiev.
• It follows that no one is using contemporaneous historical spelling, because Volodymyr of Kyiv died nearly eight centuries before anyone ever wrote Kiev in English, and four centuries before anyone even mentioned the city in English.
• Historical subject context: Kyiv is certainly used in recent books on Ukrainian history. Less so in Russian history, but even there significantly more than before with the innovations of critical theory, decolonization, and postcolonial, regional, multiethnic, transnational, and global approaches to history. There is a question of colonial bias that is increasingly being recognized by scholars since the 1950s.
• Split usage was discussed, à la Byzantium/Constantinople/Istanbul. But Kyiv has never been renamed. I do not see much evidence of switching between spellings in different contexts in a single article or book: I have seen one or two counter-examples, but for the most part writers are either retaining the Russian-derived spelling or adopting the Ukrainian-derived one. I have seen some style guides updated recently for the Ukrainian spelling, but none that decided to keep the Russian. I think they are perceived as two spellings of the same name.
• The note on political overtones at Kiev#Usage notes is vague, and fails to serve the reader. It should state what political overtones the spellings convey. IMO today Kyiv is neutral, while Kiev is sometimes used to express rejection of Ukraine, and can be perceived as such. Practical advice to a writer should warn of this.
• Is it time to label Kiev as “dated,” especially in light of its possible negative connotations?
• Lots at w:Kyiv#Name.

Pinging @Vininn126, @Thadh, @Surjection, @-sche, @Mahagaja, @Lambiam, @Theknightwho, @Fay Freak, @Equinox, @Benwing2, @Atitarev.

 —Michael Z. 2023-01-22 19:31 z 19:31, 22 January 2023 (UTC)

I have the following responses:

• If you follow these spellings, the phonological underlying form is either "Kiov" or "Kiev". Before the twentieth century, no form was used representing the modern Ukrainian pronunciation, which is probably closest to a native English long /iː/
• What? What does that have anything to do with anything? Vienna is still written Vienna and not Wien even if the English name for the city came quite a while after the city's foundation. Same goes for quite a lot of major cities in Europe.
• We shouldn't be ahead of actual usage.
• I know that I might be optimistic, but if hopefully this whole shitshow ends in the foreseeable future, it seems much more impartial to assess the situation then. If people stick with the popularised new spelling, so be it, but right now it's still very iffy.
• I count myself as a supporter of Ukraine in the war and I do find Kyiv politically loaded. Hence my whole speech above. No matter my own political views, we should stay as objective as possible.
• It's not dated, it's still widely used.
• I must note that w:Kievan Rus, w:Kievan Letter, w:Kievan Chronicle are still hosted at the -ie- variant, I still believe this is fair and we should host the historical sense at Kiev. Note also that the section you sent states that "Kiev is the traditional English name for the city".

Thadh (talk) 20:21, 22 January 2023 (UTC)

No. You are too much into progressivist ideology. You can just continue with Kiev and acknowledge yourself a conservative. Merely employing an unchic spelling does not make you a colonialist, imperialist, uncritical and all those nasty things, especially if you are conscious of your viewpoints, independently of the peripheral values aka connotations associated by others with your language, and it is wrong to try to induce the impression that people who disagree with the politically correct imperative are somehow backwards or out of touch and therefore their usage is dated, this is not what “dated” means. You are making a total non sequitur here, deriving the categorization of a term as outmoded from “possibly negative connotations”. German Weib is also a very current word despite many negative connotations, because many ignore these, and our usage note expands upon this circumstance, beyond the raw label as “archaic”, analogous to which however the label “dated” for “Kiev” is inappropriate as not representing that strong trends.

There are markers in language whose collective frequency may enable for conclusions concerning someone’s political disposition, and as long as and in as much as people continue their personal and collective weltanschauungen none of them become dated, which, to exemplify my abstract reasoning obscure to the less sober minds, in its extreme means that as long as Kremlebots exists “Kiev” cannot be dated, but as you should see by this discussion and the previous there are also other current standpoints by which the spelling is used, so you cannot put if off as only remaining as a kind of propagandastic or strongly partisan term either. But note in particular that of course Ukrainians may have a predilection for a spelling resembling their native designation, and now that the country has become a popular subject there is a natural tendency favouring a higher frequency of their form, so the datasets you perceive tend to by biased: Those perhaps language-interested people who dealt with Ukraine before it was cool are easily unfazed by the recent mainstream, and for the latter, not having a soothfast opinion beside being hypebeasts, using “Kyiv” was merely easy enough as not even difficult or too ridiculous suddenly to pronounce, unlike English Türkiye, whereas we dictionary editors also have to weigh the language trends by the (inferrible) convictions behind their usages to make statements about what strata lexical items belong to, as these convictions that speakers have make language rules. In such fashion Weib can have the label “archaic” only with a caveat whereas your fancy about Kiev attempting to demote it to an idiom of stuck-in-the-past people to gain some visual distance to the evil is not anymore properly descriptive. It has a usage note and that it is vague is not wrong, vagueness is how the language of the dictionary editor, too, works, depending on how much he knows and can express. Fay Freak (talk) 20:24, 22 January 2023 (UTC)

@Mzajac: Thanks for pinging. If I were to decide on the lemma, I would definitely vote "Kyiv" over "Kiev" - among other things, "Kyiv" is more respectful to Ukraine and Ukrainians, a country at war for its identity and it's progressive. And we know many cases when city names in English have been renamed to match the source language. So, I'll vote, if it comes to it.

The attestability counter-arguments are valid, though. "Kiev" is still more common and also used in combinations like "Kievan Rus". The "ie"/"ye" is also the Old East Slavic, the original middle vowel combination - Кꙑевъ (Kyevŭ), which also shows in the Ukrainian inflected forms. Ки́їв belongs to ї-є alternation type of word where "ї" shows only in the lemma but "є", elsewhere, e.g. Ки́їв (Kýjiv) (nominative/accusative case) -> Ки́єва (Kýjeva) (genitive case). Anatoli T. ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 22:47, 22 January 2023 (UTC)

@Mzajac I'll repeat what I believe and what I think I said earlier; we should probably use Kyiv for the modern city but Kiev for historical uses, as it's closer to the historical form. IMO it's only a matter of time before we switch to Kyiv in any case, as more and more reliable English-language sources are making the switch. At a certain point, continuing to use Kiev will come across as unambiguously pro-Russian and anti-Ukrainian, which will reflect badly on Wiktionary. That said, I understand the concern about switching given that only 3-4 years ago, Kiev was clearly more popular (see Google Ngrams, which reflects usage up through 2019). In the meantime, the usage note should clearly discuss the fact that using either spelling carries some political connotations, and there may not be a truly neutral term at this point. Benwing2 (talk) 00:58, 23 January 2023 (UTC)

This is a point, but it is still very wrong to label it now or then “dated”, or introduce the other forms as “dated form of”, to be clear about it before it happens (though maybe we should wait for it until Ukraine wins, to jump on the bandwagon of the Moscow regime being humiliated, which will also make it appear a more organic change and possible also be the right timeframe for Wiktionary marketing reasons, as media will be likely to talk about the dictionary entry having been moved). There was a major paradigm difference and slanted take upon the dictionary matter with OP, which to expose I had to regress further. Being “respectful”, or within the elevated societal academic circles of the most respectable people, is of course no actual reason why the dictionary entry can be moved and an alternative form relabelled as of a different chronolect. Fay Freak (talk) 02:46, 23 January 2023 (UTC)

Yeah, let's make Kyiv the lemma for the three modern senses (capital of Ukraine, metonym for government of Ukraine, oblast in Ukraine); especially for the last year or two, it's the only form I've seen in English-language texts, apart from overtly pro-Russian ones. It's a pity Google Ngrams don't show more recent years (although the data might be faulty if they did, since they have an issue with listing old books which have been reprinted with no changes under the date of the new printing, cf. recent edit-history comments about bid and, for a separate issue, color). The one historical sense could stay on Kiev, sure; splitting senses across pages and cross-linking each to the other is not ideal and can seem circular to some people, but sometimes it's the best approach (cf. egoism vs egotism, besague vs besagew, blacksnake vs black snake). - -sche (discuss) 01:56, 23 January 2023 (UTC)

There's right and there's wrong and there's what people actually use. As a descriptive dictionary, we should always go with the latter first. That shouldn't stop us from informing the reader (using a neutral point of view) of all the variants, as well as any connotations/baggage attached to any or all of them. Chuck Entz (talk) 02:58, 23 January 2023 (UTC)

My experience has been that use of Kiev has drastically fallen since the war started, and it won't be long before we hit the one year mark (i.e. since usage drastically changed in favour of Kyiv). Given we mandate that citations span at least a year for CFI, it feels reasonable to apply the same standard when deciding if an alternative form has become the primary one. Theknightwho (talk) 16:01, 23 January 2023 (UTC)

Wow, thanks for the strong and thoughtful responses. I’ll just collectively address a few point stated or implied.

• It appears obvious to me that all the forms used up to the early eighteenth century are based on Ukrainian and Central European phonology and orthography, not Russian: Kiou, Kiow, and Latinized Kiovia, Kiowia (and considering the historical interchangeability of Latin letters u and v). The first two are pretty good transcriptions of modern Ukrainian (Ukrainian Київ only sounds like “KEEVE” to people who have zero knowledge of Ukrainian and are under pressure to get another article out during Trump hearings). During that period maps of Ukraine were commissioned by Ukrainian (Ruthenian) and Polish nobility and drawn by Europeans who used Latin, and had no contact with Russian.
• I did not mean to imply that every use of Kiev is now political in intent. I do strongly imply that it is always potentially political in perception, and anyone with a clue ought to consider not using Kiev. And the dictionary’s job is to give people the clue.
• Further to that, to ignore the decolonizing aspect is not a “neutral POV.” Consider the gist of the substantive usage notes in entries such as all lives matter, aboriginal and Aboriginal, Eskimo, and uncomfortable lack of one in Indian.
• I am flabbergasted by the almost universal, baseless assumptions and “should probably’s” that there is a Kyiv/Kiev usage split for modern and history subject context. Does any dictionary record this? Is there any quantitative data from corpora? Most history and other sources that use Kyiv use Kyivan princes, the Kyivan state, Kyivan Rus, and Kyivite.

 —Michael Z. 2023-01-23 18:31 z 18:31, 23 January 2023 (UTC)

Regarding context label or even a separate lemma for history subject, let’s see what the pro dictionaries do. Note that “encyclopedic” entries sometimes diverge from the usual lexicographical standards.

• Dictionary.com (Random House Unabridged Dictionary 2023): Kyiv. “a city in and the capital of Ukraine . . . .” Kiev is mentioned in the etymology but has no entry. Kievan. “of or relating to Kyiv,” etcetera. Gives the etymology using the lemma: “Kyiv + -an.”
• Dictionary.com (Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition): Kiev. “the capital of Ukraine, on the Dnieper River: formed the first Russian state by the late 9th century; university (1834). Pop: 2 623 000 (2005 est).” Wow, that was not even good in 2012. In objective historiography there was no Russian state until the thirteenth century. Kyiv’s university dates from 1615.
• Dictionary.com (The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, 3rd ed., 2005) Kiev. Not so New.
• Merriam-Webster.com (2023) Kyiv. “variants or Kiev or less commonly Kyyiv.” Kyivan. “variants or Kievan.” No main entry for Kiev.
• Collins English Dictionary (2023) Kyiv. “derived forms Kyivan.” Kiev. “the former English name of Kyiv.”
• Cambridge Advanced Learner’s Dictionary & Thesaurus (n.d.) has no encyclopedic entry, only chicken Kiev. “also chicken Kyiv, Chicken Kyiv).”
• Oxford English Dictionary (3rd ed., updated March 2022) Kiev, n. “now also Kyiv.” has no encyclopedic entry, only documents the name as used in chicken Kyiv, etcetera. Kievan, adj. (not fully updated for the 3rd edition) “also Kievian.” By the way, the OED uses the spelling Kyiv, e.g., in the etymology of Tripolye., n.: “< Tripolye, the name of a village (Ukrainian Trypillia) near Kyiv in Ukraine.”

None of these says there is any indication of different usage in the subject of history. The spelling Kiev is no more “historical” than using Kievan Russia for Kyivan Rus, an entity that all historians agree was not Russia: it belongs in history. The only difference is that Kiev has become dated more recently than Russia meaning Rus. —Michael Z. 2023-01-23 19:29 z 19:29, 23 January 2023 (UTC)

That your “most” is maybe because you like to read right-on sources, as the others are not “critical” (actually a synonym of “crypto-Marxist”) or similarly fall through the sieve. The enemy is always the minority.

It is difficult to weigh incommensurable corpora. Every selection creating a corpus will be biased, to find an end. At the same time it is weird to pigeonhole our very material struggles with creating accurate impressions of usage by means of our, in spite of all the digital revolution, stubborn resources into a having fallen victim to a kind of ideological hivemind, controlled by one or the other colonialist mindset—neither the editors nor the readers have a particular interest to discern “decolonizing” or “colonizing” aspects in our entries, unlike you editors of Wikipedia, who appear to know it all, we aren’t acute enough to understand what this means and deconstruct it expressly with every step we take. Note that we love to ignore reference works as we ourselves are a secondary source that does corpus work! (You are dropping arguments all the time that people here are untouched by, but they are too polite or too routined to tell you.) But matters thus standing, we can as baselessly have everything on the Kyiv page for convenience and move it for so base a reason as marketing. Fay Freak (talk) 20:08, 23 January 2023 (UTC)

My most is based on my experience and some of my own semi-systematic corpus work. I can provide examples. It is of course partial, and I look forward to additions others would offer.

But a lot of professionals have systematically looked at the corpora and their own lexicographical publishing policies and updated their dictionary entries. We don’t want ours to look a bit clueless next to theirs, do we?

Anyway, there’s nothing so obtuse about decolonization, which much of the world has been gradually implementing throughout our lives but Russia largely has not, and is now reversing. The Russian and Soviet empires and people from them set the prevailing usage in Western academia. A minority in academia has always been aware of the imperial bias in Slavic studies and trying to counter it with objectivity (like when most stopped pretending that Rus and Russia were synonyms), and now that the Russian Federation invaded Ukraine in 2014, 2015, and 2022, more people are more aware of it (linking again to a very good overview, and I can offer more specific academic sources for anyone interested). All it requires is showing people respect.

Anyway, you’re welcome to not be interested, but that doesn’t make me wrong.

(Hm, the US politicians banning “critical race theory” in school curriculums are crypto-Marxists? Interesting idea.)  —Michael Z. 2023-01-23 20:46 z 20:46, 23 January 2023 (UTC)

Ah, I see: “crypto-Marxist” is a label for people who don’t poo-poo w:critical theory? Elsewhere in Wiki land it’s been said that I should be prevented from contributing because I’m an “ultranationalist.” Oh well.  —Michael Z. 2023-01-23 23:28 z 23:28, 23 January 2023 (UTC)

The above message goes beyond a normal discussion. I suggest to review the behaviour of the above user. Are we allowing Putin's propaganda here?! --Anatoli T. ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 00:43, 24 January 2023 (UTC)

@Atitarev: Hey Anatoli, assume good faith, I have discerned enough sarcasm in Overlordnat1’s message; the actual message may be that this is the disposition of a good deal of the population in his country (I imagined Britain, and it seems that humour) for practical matters, and they continue to use Kiev. One would need to be stupid enough to believe those Kremlin stories about denazification of Ukraine needed, and this looked to me like the assumption here; actually a great part of people less versed with the interwebs fancies those stories: Study about Germans believing Russian propaganda from November 2022. (Also, (s)he is probably a bit young.) Fay Freak (talk) 01:05, 24 January 2023 (UTC)

@Fay Freak: You'll be surprised how many do believe in the Kremlin propaganda, I am sure you witness it yourself in Germany. He/she can believe whatever they want, it's not about what they believe in but about what they write. It's not a kindergarten here.

I've opened a discussion here: wt:BP#Review the anti-Ukrainian propaganda edit by User:Overlordnat1. Let's not talk about the behaviour here. Anatoli T. ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 01:20, 24 January 2023 (UTC)

I asked myself for a minute how you could be sure they say one and not the other, as similar or homophonous as they would be, but indeed the question about the most casual form can be reliably answered with a linguistic experiment (→ experimental linguistics): Someone would have to walk about in a British or Irish city and challenge people to write a sentence containing a city name, which however would have to be pronounced neutrally or varyingly. (Not in the US, they are too bad at geography, of course a joke ting.) Fay Freak (talk) 00:16, 24 January 2023 (UTC)

Wow, unexpectedly ugly remark for a public forum, @Overlordnat1. I don’t think choosing a dictionary lemma for a place name is about Putin or Zelenskyy. It is partly about how people have chosen to see their identity, including the naming of their homeland and parts of it (Ukrainians have consistently chosen Ukrainian place names for over three decades, through their elected governments’ actions).

But regardless of how helpful or not that is to editing dictionary entries, associating national symbols of Ukraine (like the office of its elected head of state and elected government) with Nazism doesn’t seem to meet the code of conduct. I’d prefer comments resembling anti-Ukrainian hate speech to remain absent here. Please strike or remove the comment. —Michael Z. 2023-01-24 00:42 z 00:42, 24 January 2023 (UTC)

@Mzajac: I propose a block and discuss the length. This is unacceptable. He will probably be welcome at the Russian Wiktionary, though. Anatoli T. ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 00:48, 24 January 2023 (UTC)

Thanks. Maybe they’ll reconsider their comment and avoid the need for a discussion. But I won’t object to a block. —Michael Z. 00:53, 24 January 2023 (UTC)

No, the fact that you are too interested makes you wrong, and we are not interested either in not looking clueless if we don’t have the clue. Aside from that neither country at war is interested either: The different grades of politeness do not shape reality, the battlefield creates it independently of it, on which Russian speakers also heartily participate for the more Western regime, while no one is being wronged nor supported by one or the other designation in a language in which it is an exoticism anyway.

Dictionaries have bare problems reflecting language of less advantaged classes. They may rely a lot on newspaper articles and specialized academic works when neither the former nor the latter are the most-read works but always had only a privileged minority subscribing to them, so for Category:Multicultural London English, more widely attained a sociolect than King's English, every one of these dictionaries lacks almost every word of it. Always easier to document some tiny minority happening to have some journals instead of the roadman and how he thinks a word is written. Those dictionaries are weird enough with toponyms in particular anyway, like not having the country Georgia. When international crime syndicates write “Kyiv” predominantly, I will believe this form has won, not when uncle journalist writes it in his leading articles. (The Mafia are the true Europeans, they know no borders and invest in the stablest trends.)

You have missed the point about systematic corpus work: How does one count together corpora of various kinds? One weighs; iudex non calculat, philologus non calculat. And you are suspect of questionable preference for corpora which we would like to look behind, which end up of an average that was summed up or alluded to by me as right-on, critical, crypto-Marxist, progressivist, polite, many words for the same thing, and that even though theoretically this is of the elitist thinking found in the Kremlin and Moscow high society that one would expect you to loathe. How can we make our best that our lemmatization choices are not biased towards the linguistic habit of the elite, and of that even only a selection? Fay Freak (talk) 23:55, 23 January 2023 (UTC)

@Fay Freak I should point out that you have contributed a not insignificant number of words to this discussion, and that accusations of being "too interested" seem to apply to you as well. Theknightwho (talk) 00:59, 24 January 2023 (UTC)

So are you saying the right lemma can’t be determined? Or that I’m missing some consensus principal under which Wiktionary operates? Or that you will get back to us after some research on how roadmen expect to see the name of Ukraine's capital spelled? Or just you don’t want to change it? What’s the practical gist of your input here?  —Michael Z. 01:02, 24 January 2023 (UTC)

The right lemma so far is undetermined, it can well be either; others too have revealed that they are unsure about the corpora and their representativeness of the language as a whole, through all strata, through their experience of what can be found in such corpora. I will not be against changing it, but I have disagreed with the reasons given by which you reached the conclusion and have made it clear that I cannot vouch for the accuracy of the decision.

Theknightwho, I am spoiled by philosophy and the laws and enjoy arguing for the correct view, it is a kind of perverse exercise that I have been too used to dispense to the benefit of this project, and you are astute to observe that I have been too interested in no decision in this matter being taken that would be regrettable, maybe feelgoodery is the most important factor in the end. I also let you’ll be wrong, the result won’t be bad either. Fay Freak (talk) 01:29, 24 January 2023 (UTC)

Meaning you’re not convinced that it is the prevailing spelling in the overall corpus?  —Michael Z. 01:53, 24 January 2023 (UTC)

I was tagged by someone for some reason. My position has already been stated by somebody else, but I'll state it for myself too: we should limit ourselves purely to the lexicography. If (I'm inventing the numbers) the usage in 2022 was 20% "Kyiv" and 80% "Kiev", then that's our business. Whether politicians are right or wrong is not our business. The only exception to this is where there is an official renaming of a place (cf. Burma/Myanmar, or the creation of new chemical element names) and even then we should err on the side of caution and try to find real citations rather than ones talking about word usage. If you people are so hard into free speech then why do you want us to limit the way we speak? Equinox ◑ 03:22, 28 January 2023 (UTC)

The Latin-alphabet spelling Kyiv became officially regulated in 1996, legislated in 2010, officially adopted by the UN in 2012 and the BGN/PCGN in 2020. Correction: US BGN adopted Kyiv in 2006, and deprecated Kiev in 2020. —Michael Z. 20:45, 28 January 2023 (UTC)

Not sure what you mean by real citations vs. ones talking about usage: survey the corpus instead of looking at dictionaries? Well, Google Books search restricted to 2021–today and English-language sources returns the following (I think the millions numbers are bogus, but not sure).

• "Kyiv" -"Kiev" Page 9 of about 1,510,000 results (85 actually shown)
• "Kiev" -"Kyiv" Page 4 of about 2,130,000 results (40 actually shown)

Google Scholar, since 2023:

• "Kyiv" -"Kiev" About 1,320 results
• "Kiev" -"Kyiv" About 819 results

These exclusive searches are indicative, and they will omit any sources with notes and bibliographies that use Kyiv in the text but cite older sources with Kiev in title, location of publication, or in direct quotations. —Michael Z. 05:23, 28 January 2023 (UTC)

In Scholar, it looks like Kyiv has been the majority usage starting from 2014.  —Michael Z. 05:33, 28 January 2023 (UTC)

In Google Books they both returned 9 pages of results in 2020, and Kyiv wins by 9 to 7 pages in 2021, 9 to 5 pages in 2022, and 20 to 8 total results in 2023. —Michael Z. 05:42, 28 January 2023 (UTC)

OK. So let's forget there's any war. Other than our "war bias", what is our Wiktionary rule for making USAGE NOTES when Google tells us that form X is used 10% more than form Y, for example? We could put such notes at entries like miniscule/minuscule, but nobody cares, because they aren't politically charged. Equinox ◑ 05:41, 28 January 2023 (UTC)

Relative frequency will vary in academic sources, popular books, news, radio, everyday speech, &c, so it’s impossible to get an authoritative number. But a less common variant gets an also or rare label in a dictionary, and dated, archaic, obsolete, or historical when it’s becoming deprecated, disused, or context-restricted.  —Michael Z. 05:51, 28 January 2023 (UTC)

In regards to whether "Kiev" should be labeled as dated, no, I don't think it fits that criteria yet, although it is certainly moving rather swiftly in that direction. Megathonic (talk) 04:33, 28 January 2023 (UTC)

I think it is mildly deprecated but the label deprecated may be too strong. It is also sometimes used to, or perceived to, convey a pejorative connotation, but it may be too strong to call it pejorative or offensive. Although the Russian head of state, Kremlin releases and publications, and Russian media pointedly use the old spelling, including in blatant pejoratives like “the pro-Nazi Kiev regime.”

But these are among the reasons Kyiv has become current. For example, AP avoids the word, but explains the colonial connotation, NPR’s invited expert mentions Russian nationalism, and CBC’s mentions historical Russification.

Not that it is archaic or anything, but in the past it was prevailing and considered normal and correct, but now it is not: a synchronic shift to a new prevailing spelling that can be summed up by labelling the old one “dated” or “old-fashioned.”  —Michael Z. 20:39, 28 January 2023 (UTC)

Based on everything shown here (official name, recent usage, cites, news reports, etc.), it seems very clear to me that Kyiv should be the lemma for the modern city, related region, and other modern entities. Even without the war, it seems that Kyiv was in majority usage beforehand. It seems weird that there's this much discussion over what should be a simple change. AG202 (talk) 13:42, 28 January 2023 (UTC)

Yes, it is by every measure the official version of the name in English. Updating accordingly would be easy, if not for the lingering mentality of Russian imperialism, disguised as various historical arguments. Nicodene (talk) 14:02, 28 January 2023 (UTC)

Agreed, Kyiv should be the main lemma, and "alternative form" put under the entry for Kiev. Megathonic (talk) 17:03, 28 January 2023 (UTC)

Consensus seems to be veering towards changing this. The Google Scholar results are persuasive, too. Theknightwho (talk) 17:46, 28 January 2023 (UTC)

(Someone please double-check my search results, because I was a bit surprised it was that clear myself.)  —Michael Z. 17:59, 28 January 2023 (UTC)

I have similar results. The change to "Kyiv" as the predominant spelling has clearly already happened. Megathonic (talk) 19:42, 28 January 2023 (UTC)

I'm not convinced Google Scholar is representative to the real picture:

• Google Books (21st century): Kiev -Kyiv (1.310.000 results) vs Kyiv -Kiev (231.000)
• Google Books (2020s): Kiev -Kyiv (494.000) vs Kyiv -Kiev (172.000)
• Google News (2023): Kiev -Kyiv (11.300.000) vs Kyiv -Kiev (6.440.000)

Now, I'm not aware of any good corpus of the English language because frankly I don't edit it nor am interested in its trends of usage, but surely it's not as simple as "Google Scholar - a resource biased to academic literature - gives roughly 1.5 times as many results for the new spelling so it's obviously more common with the people". Thadh (talk) 21:11, 28 January 2023 (UTC)

The numbers Google reports at the top are completely fake (based on some unfiltered internal number, I presume). You have to page to the last page of results and use the number of pages to determine how many actual results there are. (I doubt Google has indexed over 1,500,000 newly published books in the last three years that mention Kyiv or Kiev.)

And I think if you don’t use quotation marks, searching for Kyiv finds Kiev, and vice versa.  —Michael Z. 21:26, 28 January 2023 (UTC)

On the last point, it doesn't.

On the first points, maybe it is based on an internal number, but that doesn't really matter because the it works both ways so the numbers are representative for the real picture on Gbooks, and five times as many hits for Kiev than for Kyiv does show quite a different picture than the one seen at Scholar.

Again, if there is a more solid corpus of English, I'm all in for using that, but I don't know any so I'm using what I have and getting vastly different results. Thadh (talk) 07:30, 29 January 2023 (UTC)

Ive become very skeptical of Google page results lately. ngrams seems more reliable, but apparently it hasnt updated since 2019. —Soap— 15:52, 30 January 2023 (UTC)

This is especially where editorial deference (can't remember the right word) and proper research comes into play, and why you can't just look at numbers. To give a case study, just look at the Google News results for Kiev: they are all the same and clearly have a specific bias: TRT News, a Turkish state news source that's been criticized for failing to meet journalism ethics and standards; Al Mayadeen, a news source that is quoted to have called Ukraine a " state"; World Socialist Web Site, which is expressively pro-Putin if you go into the tweets from the authors; Urdu Point which uses both Kyiv and Kiev depending on the author and doesn't show as much editing when publishing articles; Xinhua News Agency, the official state news agency of the PRC; and the list goes on and on. Those news sites either clearly have a stake and strong bias in the matter and/or lack an editorial process (meaning that they can publish more articles in sheer number). On the other hand, the Kyiv results are much more diverse and show actual newspapers who are trusted sources here and in many other places: NYT, NPR, Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, Reuters, AP News, TIME, CNN, The Independent, BBC, and more. Hell, even Daily Mail uses "Kyiv". Overall, this only goes to show, for me at least, where the current "Kiev" usage is coming from and gives more reason why we should prefer "Kyiv" as the lemma. AG202 (talk) 07:40, 29 January 2023 (UTC)

Doesn’t the circumstance that Kyiv appears in more editorially controlled resources imply that it is exactly not the dominant form but rather the desired form? If you actively try to use one form over the other, this does not mean use has shifted to the former but biases the superficial picture, as I have warned about bias—especially in trusted sources? What do you trust them in, linguistically? That they prefer majority-accepted forms or rather instead that they attempt to spearhead them? Lack of editorial process is often good for linguistics. (The other day, I was also scolded for relying on conscious speech too much for assessing pronunciation.) Fay Freak (talk) 15:55, 29 January 2023 (UTC)

Not necessarily. In most of the sources listed that use Kiev as well, they have a specific stake that makes that spelling their own desired form. The only source that doesn't just ends up using both spellings. I'd also trust the multiple trustworthy sources that we've used many times over openly Russian-biased sources that have a stake in using Kiev. To me, this is really mainly a shift in what folks see as the official name and with all the other evidence already provided, it's clear that Kyiv is what's used more overall. AG202 (talk) 16:13, 29 January 2023 (UTC)

Of course Kyiv is the "desired form". That doesn't change the fact that it's now established itself as the dominant spelling too. I'm inclined to think there is overall consensus to switch the main lemma to Kyiv, but if that's not so clearly evident, we should just force a vote on it to settle this already. Megathonic (talk) 17:04, 29 January 2023 (UTC)

At this rate I'd be inclined to go with a vote (with a simple majority consensus), but I am worried that it'd be a lightning rod for certain groups of folks. Thus, I'd really just prefer that this shift be made on our own based on the discussion here. AG202 (talk) 15:57, 30 January 2023 (UTC)

• Make Kiev the main entry per Google Ngram Viewer: Kyiv, Kiev at Google Ngram Viewer. Whatever its flaws, GNV is the golden standard for these kinds of decisions: it is a tool designed for statistical comparisons like this and has data until 2019. "Kiev" is the winner in all the English corpora in GNV I checked; in corpus "English Fiction", "Kyiv" performs especially poorly, with its frequency ratio of 10. Whichever entry is made the main one, the readers will surely appreciate an excellent unbiased usage note on the subject of the preferred form/spelling, including GNV information but also other data, including Google Scholar, major newspapers, Britannica, etc. --Dan Polansky (talk) 15:36, 30 January 2023 (UTC)

  The problem with Google Ngram is that it's out-of-date. Usage has very rapidly changed since 2019; normally this change would take longer, but Russia's invasion of Ukraine has accelerated it. Waiting a few years until Google Ngram data for 2022 and 2023 is available would be a mistake. Britannica already lists Kyiv as the name, with alternative spellings of "Kiev, Kiyev, Kyyiv". Google Scholar and major dictionaries comport with this, and major newspapers overwhelmingly prefer Kyiv. Megathonic (talk) 15:47, 30 January 2023 (UTC)

  The out-of-date argument has some force since the data goes back to 2019 (4 years back), but that is not too bad. It is not obvious that Wiktionary ought to respond to the very latest trends, especially politically motivated ones, given the very clear results spanning multiple decades. In "English Fiction" corpus, it seems very unlikely that Kyiv has outperformed Kiev by 2023, although that is just a guess. --Dan Polansky (talk) 16:10, 30 January 2023 (UTC)

  To respond to this point: it's highly relevant that the data is out of date. It would only be "not too bad" if there had not been an event that caused a major shift in usage. Theknightwho (talk) 18:11, 8 February 2023 (UTC)

  In addition to what Megathonic already said, GNV is far from the end-all be-all, especially with name changes. I mean just look at the query for Macedonia,North Macedonia, with Macedonia being much more common, but that's not the official name of the country anymore, so we rightfully shifted the entry to North Macedonia and Wikipedia did so with North Macedonia. Similar thing with Eswatini and Eswatini. With recent changes and shifts, GNV cannot be the basis for language change. AG202 (talk) 15:54, 30 January 2023 (UTC)

  The Macedonia case seems unconvincing since "Macedonia" is not only the name of what is named "North Macedonia" but also of other entities; and thus, it is not clear that GNV can be meaningfully used for this test case at all. As for "Eswatini", I am not clear about what the case is; is it Eswatini, eSwatini at Google Ngram Viewer? Something else? What does GNV say there and what is the preferred outcome, concerning Eswatini? The question remains whether one considers 2019 to be too long ago and wants to respond to latest trends on a in-year basis. --Dan Polansky (talk) 16:10, 30 January 2023 (UTC)

  Eswatini,Swaziland, would be the query as Swaziland used to be the official name in English. And regardless, both cases show that GNV does not always show proper trends for name changes. AG202 (talk) 16:25, 30 January 2023 (UTC)

  As for Swaziland, GNV shows that literature up to 2019 clearly prefers "Swaziland". Per Wikipedia, "Swaziland" was officially renamed to "Eswatini" in 2018, so there is no surprise. Sure, if one considers the official name to be more important than prevalence in corpora, as for the choice of the main entry in the dictionary, then "Eswatini" is the choice for the main entry. At this point, Wiktionary's Swaziland is still a full entry, not a "synonym of" entry or the like, and I do not know of any policy covering this kind of issues. GNV is my long-time favorite. --Dan Polansky (talk) 16:39, 30 January 2023 (UTC)

  I should add that the data posted above by Thadh also suggests Kiev as the preferable spelling. The fact that the matter is politically charged makes the analysis more complex; since, the behavior of major dictionaries can be anthropologically explained as a desire to be politically correct and show solidarity with Ukraine rather than by following a neutral objective standard; what the actual case is we do not know, and maybe they do follow an objective standard. Needless to say, my position is that Russia ought to cease hostilities and withdraw all forces from the internationally recognized territory of Ukraine immediately (it ought to cease what is a war by any sane definition of "war"), but as for lexicography, that is beside the point. --Dan Polansky (talk) 16:18, 30 January 2023 (UTC)

  The discussion about strict corpus counts, and about North Macedonia bring to mind two points.

  1) If we went by strict frequency over a long period, would we not historically have ended up in the unsavoury situation of having negro or gypsy (caps thus) as main entry? Lexicography is not a pure science or math. The spelling Kiev is somewhat deprecated because it carries certain connotations, and choice of main headword doesn’t merely reflect some statistic but constitutes advice to readers.

  2) Remember this is an encyclopedic entry (“about facts and concepts, and not only a word or term”), describing a name that exists in culture and history. Should not the facts about a name carry some weight in how we apply it to the referent?

   —Michael Z. 15:10, 8 February 2023 (UTC)

  @mzajac: Kyiv carries as many connotations as Kiev does, and the fact that you are obviously politically very much in favour of one of the two variants doesn't mean we as a politically neutral dictionary should be. This is why we should base ourselves on hard science in this case, because politics go both ways and aren't taken into account in good lexicography. Thadh (talk) 15:48, 8 February 2023 (UTC)

  You obviously have a political stance, even if it is to express an apolitical or “neutral” position. Sorry, “everything is political,” they say. Maybe it’s best to discuss the subject and not each other.

  Practical lexicography is also a craft. Statistical lexicology might be the sole focus of some other website. Just imagine the “hard science” entry: “Romani: alternative form of gypsy.” —Michael Z. 16:33, 8 February 2023 (UTC)

  Considering I fully support Ukraine in the current war, I'm sorry to say you're wrong. The fact you cannot separate your personal stance from the one this dictionary should be making says more about you than about the matter at hand. The matter at hand is: There is a war ongoing and we shouldn't take sides in it as a dictionary, and choosing a form based on an ongoing political conflict and disregarding sources that continue to use the older variant as "biased" and thus unusable is bad science. Moreover, this shift in usage, even if not related to the war, would be so recent that it's not clear to me it would pass our criteria for "spanning at least a year". Thadh (talk) 17:08, 8 February 2023 (UTC)

  I was not suggesting any of those things. You are misinterpreting me.

  Amorality is not a positive quality in human undertakings. Data can be amoral, I suppose, but knowledge is not and the practices of science and the humanities mustn’t be. Physicists and mathematicians have codes of ethics. If we refuse to consider whether what we do is ethical, then we can’t know that it is.

  The shift to the spelling Kyiv in current usage crossed over the hump of prevalence in the fall of 2019. No matter where you want to start counting your year, it’s passed.

  @Thadh, I’m asking you again to please stop making evaluations of me personally. —Michael Z. 18:05, 8 February 2023 (UTC)

  The entry has already been moved. Let's please avoid continuing this type of back-and-forth if possible. (Also it definitely passes CFI's spanning a year requirement). AG202 (talk) 19:08, 8 February 2023 (UTC)

For record-keeping, at this point for changing the modern senses to "Kyiv", I see 7 votes to explicitly put the lemmas at Kyiv, 1-2 votes to keep it at "Kiev", and 3 users that are in between. In the prior discussion in July 2022, there were 5 votes for "Kyiv" and again 2 votes to keep it at "Kiev", with 2 users neither here nor there. I really do not want this discussion to die out once again, and after this cools down, an executive decision needs to be made on what exactly to do. Otherwise, we will repeat ourselves yet again in a few months. AG202 (talk) 16:36, 30 January 2023 (UTC)

I was thinking a couple days ago this same thing, that someone needed to bite the bullet and actually make the move we've discussed, and since no-one else has done it, I have. Ideally we might centralize the usage notes in one place, too. - -sche (discuss) 20:28, 30 January 2023 (UTC)

I've moved all the usage notes and citations to the entry for Kyiv. Megathonic (talk) 05:41, 31 January 2023 (UTC)

Should the definitions (and subsequently the translations) of beth be combined into one, i.e the letter found in Semetic languages script, or are they differentiated per language? The same isn't done at gimel or aleph etc. نعم البدل (talk) 18:49, 23 January 2023 (UTC)

Probably into one. The primary mistake of the definition was to conceptualize alphabets or scripts as Unicode blocks, even though there are intermediate forms and only some typical idealized scripts are encoded (and printed by types). The style of aleph looks the most professional of the three. Fay Freak (talk) 20:19, 23 January 2023 (UTC)

I had reason ;) to look up this old Norse name, and saw that the two articles (Halldór and Halldor) had many overlaps and logically refer to the same name. Being a newbie, I tried to put some of the "common" etymology from Old Norse in a new/separate article, and added the bokmål version (hoping get the links to the Wikipedia entries both for English, and bokmål, which I saw for a while, but it then disappeared - how do I bring these back?). Anyway, I have probably violated several principles and made lots of mistakes while massacring these pages, so if anyone wants to add the finishing touches to what I thought were improvements, please do. Hfossa (talk) 08:46, 24 January 2023 (UTC)

(Very surprised there's no workgroup for English, pinging @GareginRA since they participated in Talk:be § Transitivity) I've removed all the transitive labels on the entry for to be, but I wanted to continue the discussion further. Part of the reason I removed the labels is because, upon a cursory search after being rather confused, no other source I've seen thus far has labeled "to be" as transitive. This includes Merriam-Webster, Collins, Dictionary.com (outside of a sense I don't think we cover already), Oxford Learner's Dictionary, and Cambridge. This leaves "copulative", "intransitive", and/or "auxiliary" on most of the senses, and I wanted to make sure that these are the right labels that should be used. Ex: Are senses 18 (to indicate time of day), 19 (to indicate passage of time), and 21 (to indicate weather) copulative? They currently don't have the label. Overall, there just needs to be a bit more clarity for the entry. AG202 (talk) 14:04, 24 January 2023 (UTC)

Transitivity is one of those words that's used a lot in technical literature without a single universally accepted definition, but it would be pretty unusual to consider "to be" in the relevant senses "transitive". Copulative verbs are generally considered intransitive (e.g.), given that they link the subject to a complement and not an object. I think Garegin and the IP are right that some kind of passivisability is an expected implication of transitivity, and semantically it clearly isn't transitive (there's no transfer of action), so I think your removing the label was correct. I'd take the senses with a dummy subject you mention to be copulative too, syntactically "it is rainy" is not different from "that town is often rainy" IMO. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 14:20, 24 January 2023 (UTC)

It seems it is copulative, because you always imply a subject that is prone to changes (time, amount of time, weather). Another example might be probability of something ("It was impossible to ...", "It is likely", "It is rarely the case"), although I am not sure. By the way, thank you for your reaction. --GareginRA (talk) 22:16, 24 January 2023 (UTC)

British commentators frequently say the name of the American Abrams tank with three syllables, as if it were Abrahams, e.g. 2:09, 5:59. Is the British pronunciation of the surname Abrams three syllables, like the British pronunciation of Graeme is two syllables where Americans have (in both cases) one fewer syllable, or are they just all misremembering the name of the tank and thinking it's Abrahams? (I do also hear several British talking heads consistently metathesize the consonants in Prigozhin's name.) - -sche (discuss) 00:10, 25 January 2023 (UTC)

Im pretty sure that's just a mistake. Abram and Abraham are different names ... or at least that's what I was taught .... and not just two variants of the same name. —Soap— 09:48, 26 January 2023 (UTC)

The closest I can find on YouGlish is a debate in the House of Commons where Debbie Abrahams has her name mistranscribed as Debbie Abrams in the captions. on this occasion John Bercow gabbles her name as Debbie Abru-ams but on other occasions he can be heard saying Debbie Abru-hams as you would expect. I can't find any examples of the tank being called Abrahams at all on YouGlish. I also suspect it is a simple mistake and I wouldn't confuse the two names myself. --Overlordnat1 (talk) 12:02, 26 January 2023 (UTC)

I saw that clearerly has been deleted. Should clearlier also be deleted? In A Student's Introduction to English Grammar, page 281, I read

The -ly suffix is never compatible with grade inflection : neither *clearlier nor *clearerly is possible. That means grade for -ly adverbs must always be expressed in the non - inflectional way (You should speak more clearly).

So, is clearlier really used in some texts. If so, maybe an explicative note should be added to warn the reader.

Thanks in advance for your explanations. Pamputt (talk) 10:02, 26 January 2023 (UTC)

An obvious counterexample is friendlier, and Im sure there are hundreds more. I wonder if the authors of that book meant something much more restricted, but ... even if theyre wrong about this being an absolute rule, there are clearly many adjectives whose comparatives are only formed with the more ___ construction, and I admit that clearlier sounds a lot more clumsy to me than friendlier. —Soap— 10:10, 26 January 2023 (UTC)

friendly is an adjective, not a -ly-adverb like clearly. From context, I'm assuming "The -ly suffix is never compatible with grade inflection" means "The -ly suffix is never compatible with grade inflection".--Urszag (talk) 00:29, 27 January 2023 (UTC)

It's easily attestable (in poetry etc.) so no it shouldn't be deleted, I'll add some citations. The snippet from the grammar is correct as a rule of thumb, but "never" is wrong. @Soap: The grammar is talking about adverbs, friendly > friendlier is an adjective. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 10:13, 26 January 2023 (UTC)

Clearlier should be given a lot less prominence in the headword line in clearly: more clearly is about five thousand times more common, so at least "more clearly" should be listed first and "clearlier" should be tagged as rare or indeed nonstandard (though when a form is that rare, I am sometimes inclined to move it to usage notes). - -sche (discuss) 11:44, 26 January 2023 (UTC)

Is there a way to add a <q:rare> to the headword? Vininn126 (talk) 11:55, 26 January 2023 (UTC)

"Archaic" might be more correct judging from usage @-sche, Vininn126, it doesn't look nonstandard prior to about the 19th century (judging from where it shows up) and the use in poetry also tends to suggest archaism. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 12:01, 26 January 2023 (UTC)

Sure, the solution would still probably be , can the template accept that? I'd assume so. Vininn126 (talk) 12:10, 26 January 2023 (UTC) Vininn126 (talk) 12:10, 26 January 2023 (UTC)

Yes, comparatives from -ly adverbs are possible, but rare and usually dated: e.g. smoothlier, widelier. Equinox ◑ 00:32, 27 January 2023 (UTC)

(Notifying Eirikr, TAKASUGI Shinji, Atitarev, Fish bowl, Poketalker, Cnilep, Marlin Setia1, Huhu9001, 荒巻モロゾフ, 片割れ靴下, Onionbar, Shen233, Alves9, Cpt.Guapo, Sartma, Lugria):

I think Wiktionary currently ignores an entire sub-part of speech: 副詞 (optionally) taking に/と. The easiest example would probably be 自然; excerpts from a couple of dictionaries:

• 大辞林: （「に」や「と」を伴うこともある）
• 新明解: ―に／―と
• 大辞泉: （「に」や「と」を伴って副詞的に用いる）

(Not that it is authoritative but jisho.org describes these as Adverb taking the 'to' particle)

Whether a 副詞 takes に/と is both lexically (evidenced by the fact that monolingual dictionaries document it) as well as practically relevant and I thus propose that we start documenting this category as part of the headword (as we do for different verb/adjective classes). — Fytcha〈 T | L | C 〉 11:28, 26 January 2023 (UTC)

Support. -- Huhu9001 (talk) 13:21, 26 January 2023 (UTC)

Support. — Sartma ^{【𒁾𒁉 ● 𒊭 𒌑𒊑𒀉𒁲】} 15:14, 26 January 2023 (UTC)

• I'm not opposed to documenting and categorizing such words.

I am potentially concerned about how any visible changes might be implemented.

In the past, I've generally used ====Usage notes==== to explain particle usage. There are lots of adverbs in Japanese that can be used bare, or with adverbial / quotative particle と (to), or with adverbial / directional particle に (ni).

For so-called -na adjectives like 自然 (shizen), we usually haven't included any ===Adverb=== POS section, since pretty much any and every such adjective can be used adverbially with に (ni), and this is shown in the inflection table that should be included in these entries (using {{ja-na}}). This one 自然 (shizen) is a bit special in optionally taking と (to) instead, or just being used on its own without a particle.

FWIW, for categories, I'd suggest something simpler than Jisho.org's naming scheme, perhaps "Japanese 'to' adverbs", "Japanese 'ni' adverbs", and "Japanese bare adverbs" (including the language name, which I think we need to do for our categories). Since -na adjectives all get this by default (I can't think of any exceptions), we might consider modifying the inflection template {{ja-na}} to add these terms to the "Japanese 'ni' adverbs" category, using the supplied kana string as the sortkey. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 21:52, 26 January 2023 (UTC)

• I agree that a category may be useful. Precisely how such a category would be implemented or displayed is somewhat beyond me. Cnilep (talk) 00:33, 27 January 2023 (UTC)

There is debate as to whether the definition of breastfeeding should encompass biological males. The user arguing that it should appeals to common usage. Do a majority of English speakers globally refer to both male-sex and female-sex parents when they say "breastfeeding"? Are there data to support this claim? The following professionally-edited dictionaries refer to women and/or mothers in their definitions of breastfeeding. Cambridge Collins Oxford Learner's Dictionary Merriam-Webster — This unsigned comment was added by Tony1800 (talk • contribs).

I personally prefer the definition that Robbie_SWE uses, and honestly we don't even need to mention a person; breastfeed hasn't mentioned a mother or anyone almost since its inception. Also, note that we do not necessarily follow a "majority of English speakers" (according to whom?), but in my experience, we can try to be as encompassing as possible while preserving readability; ex: changing the definitions of wife & husband to be gender-neutral in terms of their spouses. I would also avoid lines of discussion focusing around "what is a woman" as that will not help. Also pinging @Robbie_SWE. — This unsigned comment was added by AG202 (talk • contribs).

Writing a definition (of any word!) can be tricky, because it should cover not just the most common subset of referent, but the full scope of the word, what is definitional. It might be helpful to consider a less "charged" topic, e.g. merchandise: it'd be tempting to define it as "goods which are sold", in line with other dictionaries (Merriam-Webster: "commodities or goods that are bought and sold", Collins: "goods that are bought, sold, or traded") ... but that doesn't cover the scope of the word. Before every Superbowl t-shirts etc are made with the name of each team, but only the winners' shirts get sold while the other merchandise is unsellable and gets donated; elsewhere, someone could be bringing their merchandise to market when their truck crashes and the merchandise is destroyed: merchandise doesn't definitionally require being sold or even offered for sale, and we do other dictionaries one better by capturing what they miss ("goods which are or were offered or intended for sale").
Anyone(!) can induce lactation, and the word breastfeed(ing) can encompass all cases... the word "typically" can be helpful in many situations, and here one might consider saying something like "...a lactating adult, typically a woman", but that seems to draw more attention to the fact that it's not always women, so I don't know whether you'd find that better(?)... and actually, even "an adult" may be too narrow, since there've been cases where people who were legally minors have given birth (and breastfed the babies); even an "a person" is too narrow, as both the noun breastfeeding and the verb breastfeeding can be used when animals do it (a she-wolf to Romulus, rats in a lab, monkeys in nature, etc). So maybe it should say something like "...a person or sometimes animal which is lactating"...? (Or "...a person (typically a woman) or sometimes an animal..."?) - -sche (discuss) 01:45, 28 January 2023 (UTC)

What -sche said. The word "breastfeeding" is defined in terms of what is being done (feeding) and how (by breast); the word does not by itself entail ascribing any additional qualities to who is doing it beyond having the ability to feed a baby by breast.--Urszag (talk) 02:16, 28 January 2023 (UTC)

The entry does need an extension definition to cover mammals other than humans. I don't think that people think of themselves as mammals, even when breastfeeding is the subject, so the general mammal definition probably needs to be on a separate line. Probably people who have direct experience of the whole lifecycle of mammals wouldn't need a separate definition. MWOnline's definition, at breastfeed ("to feed (a baby) from a mother's breast") covers both human and non-human mammals, but at a cost. AHD almost manages a one-line, inclusive definition: "To feed (a baby) milk from the breast; suckle.". Baby makes both definitions a bit speciesist. (Though one can say baby , baby alone, with miminal context, means "human baby".) DCDuring (talk) 02:25, 28 January 2023 (UTC)

(Yeah, MWO's "mother" runs into the separate issue that the person breastfeeding the baby can be e.g. a wet nurse and not the mother or parent at all.) - -sche (discuss) 11:23, 28 January 2023 (UTC)

Wet nurses are mothers too. The definition never said that the feeder was the mother of the child being fed. The number of spontaneous lactation cases is not significant enough to warrant space in the main definition, especially when the main definition is otherwise so short. I do think the current definition that sticks to "feeding from the breast" is at least correct, which makes it an improvement over all of the proposed definitions in terms of "adults" which started this debate. - Tony1800, 14:45 28 January 2023 (UTC)

@Tony1800 Please don't manually sign comments, because it means the time might not be accurate, and it also misses out the user link. Use ~~~~ to do it automatically. Theknightwho (talk) 17:51, 28 January 2023 (UTC)

The standard for including a definition is three citations. Thus, breastfeeding by men & nonbinary people warrants inclusion. I'd see no reason to separate the definition into different genders or sexes (or whether they are an adult or minor), as this information is ultimately irrelevant and need not be mentioned at all. Megathonic (talk) 19:43, 30 January 2023 (UTC)

For context: User talk:64.229.90.199

I've been informed that the NYT is not an acceptable CFI citation source? Is that right? -- 64.229.90.199 06:54, 28 January 2023 (UTC)

Nah, it's a perfectly acceptable source. If the article in question appeared in print and not just the online version, there's no doubt. And even if it was online-only (I'm not sure NYT does that), given the precedent for acceptability of VICE News and Huffington Post which if anything have lower editorial standards, I assume NYT would be fine as well. 70.172.194.25 07:06, 28 January 2023 (UTC)

Yes, NYT meets CFI since it appears in print but in general any well-known news site is "good enough" for most of us. It seems like 70.172.194.25 was too hasty in applying the hot word template without verifying the actual date of coinage. Anyway, I hope all of this drama hasn't put you off editing in the future. Ioaxxere (talk) 07:48, 28 January 2023 (UTC)

Blocking for using the NYT (print version indicated in the weblink) because it is fake news, definitely seemed odd -- 64.229.90.199 08:49, 28 January 2023 (UTC)

I added the hot word template because I saw Equinox complaining on the talk page and it seemed like a recent coinage. But now I see that most of these forms are not hot words. (Edit: actually, I stand by the tagging of virivore and virovory. There's nothing relevant in Google Books/Scholar prior to 2023. But feel free to prove me wrong. The reddit quote on Citations:virovory isn't technically durably archived.) 70.172.194.25 07:51, 28 January 2023 (UTC)

• I think Equinox was intoxicated when he made that edit (it happens sometimes, and if he's been on a Friday-night editing spree and posts something at 6:30 am on Saturday, we can safely assume that he's sozzled). Celui qui crée ébauches de football anglais (talk) 13:07, 28 January 2023 (UTC)

Created by Angelucci and all defined as just "a type of rice". According to Italian law categorizes all types of rice into the above four categories approximately by the size of the grain. Does this make these terms non-SOP? They aren't in any Wikipedia that I can find. If non-SOP, how should they be defined? Benwing2 (talk) 07:46, 28 January 2023 (UTC)

I'd like to ask what this page is for. To me, it looks a lot like an entry that failed verification, and so doesn't really seem to be something we should have. (Pinging @Daniel Carrero who created it.) — Sgconlaw (talk) 21:37, 28 January 2023 (UTC)

More like a WP entry. The phrase "symbol swearing" isn't used in the illustrations, and such strings of symbols are almost completely ad hoc, and so don't warrant entries themselves. kwami (talk) 01:26, 29 January 2023 (UTC)

It's more along the lines of the snowclone appendixes, except it's missing all the structure: instead of "X with a capital Y", it's just "X". There is a term in mainspace for this, though: "grawlixes". Chuck Entz (talk) 01:44, 29 January 2023 (UTC)

Which is how I came across this appendix, as I have set grawlix as a future WOTD. I don’t really see how having a snowclone appendix for this makes sense, though. As Kwami points out, the strings of images or characters used to indicate swearing are pretty much random. — Sgconlaw (talk) 04:15, 29 January 2023 (UTC)

The entry grawlix documents an English term for the linguistic phenomenon, the appendix entry documents the linguistic phenomenon itself. I actually don't see much reason to delete this. It's definitely verifiable, and is in use in many languages. Something comparable would be Appendix:Capital letter, which explains the various meanings of capitalization, and likewise Appendix:Repetition. That said, I have no idea how anyone would find this, and one could argue that it isn't really lexical. 98.170.164.88 23:26, 29 January 2023 (UTC)

I think the last point is the key thing – these clusters of symbols aren’t lexical. — Sgconlaw (talk) 00:46, 30 January 2023 (UTC)

"Symbol swearing" does not seem to be the recognised English phrase for this. Equinox ◑ 01:01, 30 January 2023 (UTC)

@Catonif, Sartma, Imetsia As native Italian speakers - is this spelling with í rather than ì an "alternative typographic form" as it asserts now, or just a misspelling? If the latter, does it belong here? Benwing2 (talk) 06:47, 30 January 2023 (UTC)

It is an alternative typographic form, but does not belong here. Every word with -ì/-ù can be written as -í/-ú but that's not something worth documenting in separate entries. Catonif (talk) 07:09, 30 January 2023 (UTC)

@Benwing2: I confirm too, just a regular typographic alternative not worth documenting. It's generally used by people/writers/editors who argue the impossibility of having a "grave /i/ or /u/", since those sounds are "acute" by nature... But then again, most Italians don't even notice whether an accent is acute or grave anyway. In school we're just taught to write a "little line o tick" above the letter, so "natively", as long as there's a little something above the letter it's more than enough. The amount of perchè (misspelling of perché) in commercials and newspapers, and people handwriting things like <perchĕ>, are there to remind everybody of this native insensitivity. — Sartma ^{【𒁾𒁉 ● 𒊭 𒌑𒊑𒀉𒁲】} 09:49, 30 January 2023 (UTC)

Im not a good writer. Sometimes I struggle with basic tasks like choosing how to word a definition. In this case Im even having trouble wording my request for help, but Ive been looking at wash one's mouth out and just cant come up with any better words. Rather than repeat what I said on the talk page I'll just leave this wide open, meaning any edits of any kind that we can come together on would be an improvement over what it looks like now. The usages we have for defn 2 imply that when said to adults, it most often does not refer to simply foul language, but rather to lying. Thanks for any help. —Soap— 13:16, 30 January 2023 (UTC)

In particular, what I cant seem to get past is the telicity ..... wash is a short duration verb, but the definition I came up with implies that it's something people start and stay with .... although i was originally skeptical, i think there might be some contamination from watch your mouth. —Soap— 13:37, 30 January 2023 (UTC)

I've never heard this used in the way the definition suggests—it sounds like it's talking about a chilling effect. All the citations are about showing remorse, either for lying or making a mistake. The idea is that you're washing your mouth because something "dirty" has passed through it, whether that's profanity, lying, or anything else that's bad. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 14:13, 30 January 2023 (UTC)

Okay thank you. That suggests to me that the watch your mouth theory has some merit after all. Before I edited the page, we had the definition as exactly that, with the same cites that are still there now. I don't want to go back to the way it was, though, as even if there's some sense contamination the two expressions are clearly not synonyms. I'm still just stuck for words. How would we turn "to have one's speech silenced" (for an indefinite duration) into an active telic verb? Still, I think the definition we have currently is at least close to that, ..... if this thread doesn't really get much attention I'll try to put this behind me and just accept that it's good enough without being an excellent entry. —Soap— 13:13, 31 January 2023 (UTC)

It seems to me that this entry should be marked as historical. Looking in the COHA corpus, the only non-historical uses (in English - there are quite a few instances in Spanish text in the corpus) after 1890 are in a single article about Chile in TIME magazine in 1925, and one instance in Tropic of Cancer in 1934. --ColinFine (talk) 22:47, 30 January 2023 (UTC)

Well, it would make sense to call references to specific things like the Whig Junto historical, i.e. referring to something that no longer exists, but the generic sense should probably rather be called archaic. The OED's cites also dry up in the 19th century. (Good candidate for the currently very lonely Category:Late Modern English, incidentally.) —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 23:08, 30 January 2023 (UTC)

Should we rename the category? Is it possible it's so nearly empty because people are reluctant to describe old-fashioned terms as being Late Modern English? Searching very briefly on the Internet it seems that we're not the only ones using the term that way, but that some people also use it to mean what to me makes a lot more sense .... English from the 1600s up to the present day (and continuing). Also, if Late Modern English has ended, what would we call contemporary English? I get that late can mean deceased, but I've only seen the term in linguistics to mean the last stage of something ... either of the whole language, or a substage within a stage such as Late Old Japanese (which was followed by Early Middle Japanese). —Soap— 14:10, 31 January 2023 (UTC)

I've added "archaic" to the entry. I think it should have a "see also" to "Junto", but we have no entry for "Junto" or "Essex Junto" or "Whig Junto". Should we? --ColinFine (talk) 19:05, 31 January 2023 (UTC)