Wiktionary talk:Hall of Fame
Archive
Some (mostly rather old) resolved threads, like suggestions for sections which were incorporated, are in this archive.
Misc suggestions
- Best example of a language that resembles somebody writing in French and suddenly giving up at the last moment: disque èrenr'gistrabl'ye. (I'm a fan of the anteroom of silliness.) —Μετάknowledgediscuss/deeds 06:31, 17 February 2013 (UTC)
- the longest entry we have? (which, btw, is this);
- and longest non-humorous word
- let's have subpages for specific languages
- and make this officia? --Dixtosa (talk) 13:46, 10 February 2015 (UTC)
- Something about this word is rather unusual to me: alingagngag. —Μετάknowledgediscuss/deeds 00:47, 8 April 2017 (UTC)
Most homophones
- Most homophones? Dreysman (talk) 17:56, 6 May 2015 (UTC)
- This is a good idea. I should try to track this down, or (if the code to search for that exceeds my limited abilities) ask in the GP. - -sche (discuss) 20:30, 10 January 2020 (UTC)
- Poking around online, I see the suggestion (which depends on the speaker's pronunciation of certain words) of cense, cents, scents, sense, since (and, if counting possessives, cent's), and a suggestion if homographs are allowed of rhos, roes, rose (flower), rose (rise), rows (not columns), rows (a boat), atop which one might consider Rose another word, one might be able to attest Ros with this pronunciation, and one might add possessives (rho's, roe's, row's, and Ro's).
Chinese, of course, has a lot, and should probably be considered separately; I see the claim that "Chinese author Li Ao that yì" is the sound of 205 different words/characters, including 乂, 义, 亿, 弋, 刈, 艺, and 忆. - -sche (discuss) 00:27, 11 January 2020 (UTC)- Our entry for yì lists 228 characters, though many of those are rare characters, rare pronunciations of common characters, and/or bound morphemes. That entry omits the character 一, which is pronounced yì in certain phonological environments due to tone sandhi. —Granger (talk · contribs) 00:52, 11 January 2020 (UTC)
- A bunch of those are just simplified or variant characters, and clearly don't represent separate words. And although I don't spot any mistakes offhand, those lists are of poor quality and frequently contain errors... —Μετάknowledgediscuss/deeds 01:36, 11 January 2020 (UTC)
- Our entry for yì lists 228 characters, though many of those are rare characters, rare pronunciations of common characters, and/or bound morphemes. That entry omits the character 一, which is pronounced yì in certain phonological environments due to tone sandhi. —Granger (talk · contribs) 00:52, 11 January 2020 (UTC)
Etymologies
How about something for words that have come from an excessive number of other languages? Currently I only see stuff like dragoman and Toki Pona, but I'm sure better examples exist. —Μετάknowledgediscuss/deeds 17:47, 9 March 2013 (UTC)
- Hm, that's a good idea, but I too am having a hard time thinking of examples. - -sche (discuss) 03:09, 10 March 2013 (UTC)
- Aha, there's "oka", which is English, from Italian, from French, from Turkish, where the Turkish is sometimes thought to be from Arabic, from Classical Syriac, from Greek, from Latin (so, it's seven steps removed from its etymon, without even going into the non-borrowing descent sequence: Latin from Old Latin from Proto-Italic from Proto-Indo-European). And "cukier" is Polish, from German, from Italian, from Arabic, from Persian, from Sanskrit (five steps, if that chain is correct). - -sche (discuss) 07:05, 10 March 2013 (UTC)
— Ungoliant (Falai) 13:23, 10 March 2013 (UTC)
- trump < possibly Italian < Latin < Etruscan < Ancient Greek < possibly Phrygian or Illyrian. — Ungoliant (Falai) 13:25, 10 March 2013 (UTC)
- I love the one at shaman#Etymology. —Μετάknowledgediscuss/deeds 00:11, 30 September 2013 (UTC)
- It's very impressive, if it's right. Apricot seems to have gone from Italy to Turkey and then back across the Mediterranean to Spain (and then up towards England), but shaman is even more well-travelled. It could use some inline refs, though... I'll see what I can do. - -sche (discuss) 01:48, 1 October 2013 (UTC)
- I love the one at shaman#Etymology. —Μετάknowledgediscuss/deeds 00:11, 30 September 2013 (UTC)
- I've added a section. Perhaps we could award honorable mentions to unusual etymology chains, too, like words loaned from Tuvalu into Xhosa and thence into Russian.) - -sche (discuss) 23:52, 17 January 2015 (UTC)
Most borrowings of the same word by the same language
The Narragansett term mishcùp (plural mishcùppaûog) was borrowed by English four times, as mishcup, scup, paugie, and scuppaug. (Even more impressively, the borrowings seem to have occurred over a relatively short timescale of no more than 200 years and quite probably less.) Are there other cases where one language has repeatedly borrowed the same word from another? If so, we could add a category.
See also #etymologies, where we're looking for examples of long/convoluted etymology chains.
- -sche (discuss) 22:21, 17 January 2015 (UTC)
- If inherited terms and indirect loanwords count, Portuguese has mancha, mágoa, mácula, malha, mangra and maquis from macula. — Ungoliant (falai) 18:31, 28 January 2015 (UTC)
- Impressive! It even has two distinct malhas, I see. Can you create entries for mangra and maquis?
- And now that I see that macchia is from macula, I suppose English itself has macula, mail, macchia and maquis from macula.
- (Which is not quite as impressive/inexplicable as borrowing the same term directly four times, but still impressive.)
- - -sche (discuss) 19:07, 28 January 2015 (UTC)
- Done. — Ungoliant (falai) 22:02, 28 January 2015 (UTC)
- Found a few more: English macle, mascle, mackle, macule, and Portuguese macla. — Ungoliant (falai) 22:26, 28 January 2015 (UTC)
- Re your edit summary: well, English does tend to steal words for any things it doesn't have words for yet... and also for things it does already have words for (e.g. royal, regal on top of kingly)... it just eats everything in sight, really. :b However, I think mackle and macule — words with the same very specific printing-jargon meaning, same Middle French source, and same basic /mVkVl/ form — are probably just forms of one another, rather than distinct words, whereas malha (“mail”, from French) and malha (“stain in fur”, from Latin) seem like distinct words, so Portuguese and English are actually tied. Has Portuguese ever used the Italianate macchia? Does it have its own macula-derived native designation of scrubland? Then it could retake the lead... :b - -sche (discuss) 06:19, 29 January 2015 (UTC)
- That would be maquis. I was unable to find evidence of a form that is derived directly from Corsican or Italian. — Ungoliant (falai) 06:28, 29 January 2015 (UTC)
- Oh, look at mail#Etymology 4, it looks like it’s also from macula. — Ungoliant (falai) 06:37, 29 January 2015 (UTC)
- Century merges our (former) mail#Etymology 4 and mail#Etymology 2, and if both are (as they say) from the same Old French root, that seems reasonable.
I meant does Portuguese have a native (non-borrowed) designation for scrubland? Maquis looks like a borrowing from French.
In trying to track down the precise chain of descent for mascle, I've discovered that it, and possibly some of the other terms, may actually derive from mascula, from a Germanic source related to mesh. - -sche (discuss) 09:25, 29 January 2015 (UTC)
- Century merges our (former) mail#Etymology 4 and mail#Etymology 2, and if both are (as they say) from the same Old French root, that seems reasonable.
- Re your edit summary: well, English does tend to steal words for any things it doesn't have words for yet... and also for things it does already have words for (e.g. royal, regal on top of kingly)... it just eats everything in sight, really. :b However, I think mackle and macule — words with the same very specific printing-jargon meaning, same Middle French source, and same basic /mVkVl/ form — are probably just forms of one another, rather than distinct words, whereas malha (“mail”, from French) and malha (“stain in fur”, from Latin) seem like distinct words, so Portuguese and English are actually tied. Has Portuguese ever used the Italianate macchia? Does it have its own macula-derived native designation of scrubland? Then it could retake the lead... :b - -sche (discuss) 06:19, 29 January 2015 (UTC)
- Vietnamese has cuốn, cuộn, cuợn, quận, quấn, quyển, quyền, quyến, and possibly uốn, all from Chinese 卷 (juǎn, “to roll; a roll”). Wyang (talk) 08:25, 29 January 2015 (UTC)
- Interesting. That looks like another case (like English scup, etc) of repeat direct borrowing of the same word. I wonder if in such cases, it's that different communities of speakers borrowed the word in different ways / for different purposes, and then all of the borrowings became part of the language, or what. - -sche (discuss) 09:25, 29 January 2015 (UTC)
- Every time Vietnam was conquered by China, the Chinese officials brought with them the Chinese pronunciation of the character at that time. Plus all the pronunciations brought there by the individual Chinese immigrants speaking all the different tongues... A similar thing exists in Chinese too - every time the remote area (say, Min) is reclaimed by the central regime or is populated by refugees from Central China due to famine or warfare, the officials and migrants bring their pronunciations with them, resulting in the Literary and colloquial readings of Chinese characters. Min is probably the hardest hit, having as many as 5-10 different layers of pronunciations of the same word, used in different circumstances. For example, Min Nan 生 (chheⁿ/chhiⁿ/seⁿ/siⁿ/seng), 旋 (chn̂g/chn̄g/sn̂g/soân/soan). Mandarin is no exemption, e.g. 落 (luò/là/lào/luō), although there was only one pronunciation in Middle Chinese. Wyang (talk) 23:52, 29 January 2015 (UTC)
- Fascinating! I suppose that's one of the neat effects of the writing system not being phonetic. - -sche (discuss) 01:23, 3 February 2015 (UTC)
- Every time Vietnam was conquered by China, the Chinese officials brought with them the Chinese pronunciation of the character at that time. Plus all the pronunciations brought there by the individual Chinese immigrants speaking all the different tongues... A similar thing exists in Chinese too - every time the remote area (say, Min) is reclaimed by the central regime or is populated by refugees from Central China due to famine or warfare, the officials and migrants bring their pronunciations with them, resulting in the Literary and colloquial readings of Chinese characters. Min is probably the hardest hit, having as many as 5-10 different layers of pronunciations of the same word, used in different circumstances. For example, Min Nan 生 (chheⁿ/chhiⁿ/seⁿ/siⁿ/seng), 旋 (chn̂g/chn̄g/sn̂g/soân/soan). Mandarin is no exemption, e.g. 落 (luò/là/lào/luō), although there was only one pronunciation in Middle Chinese. Wyang (talk) 23:52, 29 January 2015 (UTC)
- Interesting. That looks like another case (like English scup, etc) of repeat direct borrowing of the same word. I wonder if in such cases, it's that different communities of speakers borrowed the word in different ways / for different purposes, and then all of the borrowings became part of the language, or what. - -sche (discuss) 09:25, 29 January 2015 (UTC)
- Mancha, mágoa, malha and mangra are all naturally inherited descendants. This is why I like this etymological chain so much: the word at the same time underwent and avoided four sound changes. This chain alone disproves the Neogrammarian hypothesis. — Ungoliant (falai) 02:30, 3 February 2015 (UTC)
- From PG *frankô: Frank, frank, franc, franco, Franco, firangi. Containing other elements: French, lingua franca. — Ungoliant (falai) 19:19, 10 February 2015 (UTC)
- Here is another interesting one: PG *hringaz into Portuguese:
- — Ungoliant (falai) 18:49, 8 September 2015 (UTC)
- Borrowing from different descendants of a proto-language intuitively feels different from borrowing (via whatever routes) from an attested language, although I suppose there's no real distinction (the word is making its way from the source language via various routes into the target language either way). There are probably a lot of examples of multiple borrowing from proto-languages; English has borrowed Appendix:Proto-Sino-Tibetan/s-la at least four times (probably more). - -sche (discuss) 18:17, 20 February 2016 (UTC)
Most pronunciations
A recent edit combined with the power of Template:zh-pron has given "龍眼#Chinese" 11 Min Nan IPA pronunciations (22 if "Taipei" and "Zhangzhou" are considered separate), along with IPA for Mandarin, Cantonese, and Min Dong —suzukaze (t・c) 02:04, 24 August 2015 (UTC)
- Impressive! Re Taipei/Zhangzhou: I conceived the section as a count of how many ways a term could be pronounced, so if it's pronounced identically in Taipei and Zhangzhou, I would think of that as one (or in this case eleven) pronunciation which is used in two places. (Traditionally, the formatting would also convey that, by labelling the pronunciation
{{a|accent 1|accent 2}}rather than having separate lines.) But the Min Dong, Cantonese and Mandarin pronunciations bring the number up to 14. - -sche (discuss) 06:51, 24 August 2015 (UTC)
- The tiny tone numbers differ between Taipei and Zhangzhou. ("liɪŋ23-11" vs. "liɪŋ13⁻22"). —suzukaze (t・c) 07:01, 24 August 2015 (UTC)
Most contranymic
I don't know if this kind of thing could be clearly distinguished from merely "polysemous", but some words are so contranymic as to be basically unusable. My favourite example so far is claviform, which can mean either "club-shaped", "nail-shaped", or "key-shaped"; allosexual is another example. - -sche (discuss) 22:20, 3 August 2018 (UTC)
- I'm tempted to create a section for this, along the lines of "Unusably polysemic words" (probably in the Anteroom of Silliness, because like with Agrilus the information is correct, just...weird). My reservation continues to be that the distinction between this and simple polysemy is not hard-and-fast. Nonetheless, it does seem like even a very polysemous word such as "take" is still usable (the average person could work out which sense you meant in "I took her pen" based on context, even though it could be virtually any sense, including even one as unlikely as "have sex with" if the context were e.g. faux-Victorian erotica where the pen was a sentient being), whereas you functionally can't refer to something as claviform and have anyone know which sense you mean, unless you also specify in plain English what shape the thing has. What does anyone else think? What other words like this are there? - -sche (discuss) 21:02, 10 January 2020 (UTC)
- @-sche is devilfish an example of what you mean? Ioaxxere (talk) 01:30, 16 July 2023 (UTC)
- I suppose that ticks all the boxes... and may suggest this is not worthwhile to track after all (at least on the main page, although I still find it interesting to track here on talk), since there must be hundreds of polysemous common names of critters (even e.g. bluebird). - -sche (discuss) 15:32, 16 July 2023 (UTC)
If we end up creating this, I guess we would need to have at least three senses since there are many examples of words with two senses. Still, if a word has two contradictory senses in the same narrow semantic area, the resulting confusion can make the word remarkable. For example, acrotic has two different meanings and they are both medical. This may have led the word to be phased out in favor of other words for both senses. —Soap— 12:19, 15 July 2023 (UTC)
Surprisingly-attested 'literal' meanings
I'm not sure how to phrase this, but WT:RFV#racist (alleged to also be "one who competes in races") got me wondering: what unexpected literal meanings of words that more commonly mean something else do exist, especially if they have a separate etymology (the way a running race and a human race have separate etymologies)? I can think of mother (“moth catcher”) and flower (“one that flows”), which also have different pronunciations. really (“in a real, not unreal, way”) is sort of in this vein. - -sche (discuss) 10:28, 9 January 2020 (UTC)
- bunny (“resembling a bun”). Maybe resolve and redoubt, but those don't seem as surprising to me, as re- is very productive even when the result is homographic to something else. Bluer (“one who blues”) and procreationist also don't surprise me, perhaps because neither sense is that common (compared to the other). - -sche (discuss) 10:42, 9 January 2020 (UTC)
- I think this was our theme for April Fool's Day one year (including the word mother). I suppose there's inner and outer (some noun senses). I would expect the multiple meanings of -er to produce a lot of words with double meanings. Can canny mean "full of cans"? I'll keep thinking. —Granger (talk · contribs) 15:32, 9 January 2020 (UTC)
- Aha, so we did, featuring beer (“one who exists”), Catholic primates, sewer (“one who sews”), dialectal teenage (“brushwood”), gamergate ants, obolete alligator (“one who binds”) and the vinegary sense of mother.
- And: ooh, I can indeed find "canny" by itself in reference to sounds and "tin-canny" in reference to sounds and cars. - -sche (discuss) 20:10, 9 January 2020 (UTC)
- Beer made me realize peer (“one who pees”) also exists. - -sche (discuss) 00:14, 11 January 2020 (UTC)
- I think this was our theme for April Fool's Day one year (including the word mother). I suppose there's inner and outer (some noun senses). I would expect the multiple meanings of -er to produce a lot of words with double meanings. Can canny mean "full of cans"? I'll keep thinking. —Granger (talk · contribs) 15:32, 9 January 2020 (UTC)
- Coact is kind-of the opposite case: the literal meaning "co-act" exists, but so does an obsolete meaning "compel" (assuming it's really attested). Similarly, undated. - -sche (discuss) 20:29, 9 January 2020 (UTC)
@-sche: Today I thought of shower. —Granger (talk · contribs) 11:55, 21 June 2020 (UTC)
- And today I thought of the joke "What's brown and sticky? A stick." Is this sense of sticky attested? —Granger (talk · contribs) 21:07, 9 July 2020 (UTC)
- Can remembering be the reverse of dismembering? Very hard to search for. —Granger (talk · contribs) 18:55, 10 July 2020 (UTC)
- Ooh, maybe! I've put what I could find so far on Talk:remember. - -sche (discuss) 08:05, 2 October 2020 (UTC)
- We have singer (one that singes). —Granger (talk · contribs) 17:58, 24 September 2020 (UTC)
- Ooh, that's a good one. - -sche (discuss) 08:05, 2 October 2020 (UTC)
- I wonder if deliver can be attested in the Promethean sense... - -sche (discuss) 19:58, 13 February 2022 (UTC)
- I think we've thought of all the best ones in English. I'm holding off on adding glower because it's not a particularly common word in either sense. We might be able to branch out into other languages here, though the judgment of what is interesting might be difficult and highly subjective. For example Japanese せいけん has three completely unrelated meanings and a fourth that is still a distinct spelling, but such homophones are quite common in Japanese for various reasons. —Soap— 13:46, 15 July 2023 (UTC)
Most anagrams
...would be fun --Yesyesandmaybe (talk) 22:17, 15 January 2020 (UTC)
- TSA 25, parse 24, spear 23, phrase 20, slate 19. DTLHS (talk) 03:04, 18 January 2020 (UTC)
- Added, thanks. - -sche (discuss) 06:17, 18 January 2020 (UTC)
RFM discussion: January 2020
The following discussion has been moved from Wiktionary:Requests for moves, mergers and splits (permalink).
This discussion is no longer live and is left here as an archive. Please do not modify this conversation, but feel free to discuss its conclusions.
Whatcha think, should the "Hall of Fame" portion of User:-sche/exceptional be moved to the Wiktionary namespace, either as Wiktionary:Hall of Fame or some better title? (Optionally the "Anteroom of Silliness" too, or perhaps it should just be merged into WT:BJ.) That could make it more findable, and more "official" as a project page (and other people might feel less weird about adding categories and keeping it up to date), but could also add more pressure to keep it up to date (a neverending task). - -sche (discuss) 08:28, 11 January 2020 (UTC)
- Seems like a good idea to me. Some of the lists look feasible for me to eventually write scripts for, like "most etymology sections" and "most translations" (at least using the measure of largest number of language codes in translation templates), and "most semantic relations", and perhaps "longest etymological chains". — Eru·tuon 09:20, 11 January 2020 (UTC)
- I would support that. It's the kind of thing an average user might find interesting. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 17:58, 11 January 2020 (UTC)
- Support. Might attract some contributors, even if not "average users". DCDuring (talk) 05:57, 12 January 2020 (UTC)
- Moved to Wiktionary:Hall of Fame. (If anyone ever RFDOs this as cruft or whatnot and it is decided to delete it, just move it back to userspace instead.) - -sche (discuss) 06:18, 18 January 2020 (UTC)
Most synonyms, and a subset of that
I don't know if it would make sense to try to list words with the "most synonyms", since the issue of whether or not something is a synonym could be nebulous. Words like fuck and good and breast have a lot of synonyms that are very different from each other. I don't know how interesting a list of such words would be. However, some words have a lot of synonyms formed all from one "root", like octopuslike: octopal, octopean, octopian, octopic, octopine, octopodal, octopodean, octopodial, octopodian, octopodic, octopoid, octopoidal, octopusal, octopusesque, octopusial, octopusian, octopusish, octopusy... - -sche (discuss) 08:58, 20 February 2020 (UTC)
- @-sche Another example: the list at idiocy. Ioaxxere (talk) 00:11, 1 November 2023 (UTC)
"a very un-English-looking English word: kthxbye"
How is this measured? If we include netslang then I'm sure there are hundreds of weird-spelled words. Personally I was delighted to find a word that had xz or zx in sequence; it was some kind of weird chemical, you know, equinoxzolanone or what not. Equinox ◑ 23:11, 22 July 2020 (UTC)
Anti-pronunciation section
At statūs: "It is not clear how (or if) this word is pronounced." (Could go in the anteroom of silliness.) - -sche (discuss) 03:58, 24 July 2020 (UTC)
- I was a little dictionary-reader as a kid. I always liked words. And I remember my little mind being blown when I saw a word (this was in a 1970s Chambers dictionary, big red book) that had no definition. They didn't even try. It was just "a word in Shakespeare" basically. I think it was scarre...? Equinox ◑ 23:43, 24 July 2020 (UTC)
- Heh, we have a few of those ourselves, albeit mostly in extinct languages and/or with some effort at definition (search "of unclear meaning", "of uncertain meaning"). - -sche (discuss) 06:53, 25 July 2020 (UTC)
- That's what
{{rfdef}}is for, right? When you don't even want to try to define something --Kriss Barnes (talk) 13:32, 28 July 2020 (UTC)
- That's what
- Heh, we have a few of those ourselves, albeit mostly in extinct languages and/or with some effort at definition (search "of unclear meaning", "of uncertain meaning"). - -sche (discuss) 06:53, 25 July 2020 (UTC)
- @Equinox was that word perhaps pittie-ward? link: Chambers 20th c. Dictionary, p.1020 Vuccala (talk) 20:41, 16 March 2024 (UTC)
Oldest citations
This question has been asked before, and answered too. What's the oldest citation? I vaguely remember something from like 5000BC, and it was about a defecating elephant or something... --Java Beauty (talk) 16:04, 26 September 2020 (UTC)
- That's 𒄠𒋛 GreyishWorm (talk) 22:25, 21 November 2022 (UTC)
Most languages on one term
I wonder what entry would take this title. I'd propose it be added to this page. 2601:643:8300:9DF0:280E:C082:6215:F04F 04:15, 21 March 2023 (UTC)
- If you mean most translations, it's probably water. If you mean most languages that have a word spelled a particular way, I dont know, but it's probably something very short, like a or o. If that, we'd need to decide whether the letter itself counts as a word or not. —Soap— 04:48, 21 March 2023 (UTC)
- mi has 125 languages listed, which is more than o (93) but less than a (155). We could potentially list two winners: most languages for one spelling (winner would probably be a) and most languages for a spelling with more than one character (winner might be mi, unless someone can find one with more). —Granger (talk · contribs) 05:48, 21 March 2023 (UTC)
drawer, prayer, liver
drawer, prayer, and possibly liver on the list of words with (unintuitive) literal senses, which currently also specifies that the two meanings are unrelated. But the two meanings of drawer are in fact related since they go back to the same etymology. The two meanings of prayer are of course also related, and not that far apart semantically, and I wouldnt even oppose it if someone removed prayer from the list. As for, liver, our etymology seems to contradict itself ... does it come from live or not? If we keep these words listed, perhaps they could get a small list of their own after the others, since while they're still amusing, they're not really coincidences like the others. —Soap— 11:05, 15 July 2023 (UTC)
Long compound words
Ioaxxere (talk) 19:38, 31 July 2023 (UTC)
Words with way too many affixes (not incl scientific)
Ioaxxere (talk) 19:40, 31 July 2023 (UTC)
- -mentlessness occurs in four words that we list (https://dixtosa.toolforge.org/) though the only one that i'd think people would really think of as having three distinct suffixes is governmentlessness. —Soap— 21:49, 31 July 2023 (UTC)
- propreantepenultimate —Granger (talk · contribs) 03:52, 1 August 2023 (UTC)
- depthness, absolutely outrageous Ioaxxere (talk) 21:48, 10 August 2023 (UTC)
- sub-subunderlease (and friends). Theknightwho (talk) 23:27, 10 August 2023 (UTC)
- un-understandableness J3133 (talk) 12:18, 18 December 2023 (UTC)
Most supported vote
The vote that made Benwing a bureaucrat, with 52 votes in support, and no one opposing it. CitationsFreak (talk) 02:18, 10 October 2023 (UTC)
Most common 'word' across languages
Possibly a. See conversation on the Information Desk. —DIV (1.145.44.122 08:30, 2 November 2023 (UTC))
- sure, if we count letters as words. I'd be against it for that reason, and the ambiguity may be part of why this category hasnt been added to the list yet. —Soap— 09:32, 2 November 2023 (UTC)
- Mmmm.
- Ah, there's also discussion above, under Wiktionary_talk:Hall_of_Fame#Most_languages_on_one_term. (Sorry, hadn't noticed that before.) —DIV (1.145.44.122 10:16, 2 November 2023 (UTC))
- FWIW, to dismiss the ambiguity it could be done by categorising according to the number of letters. E.g. perhaps a for 1-letter words, perhaps ma for 2-letter words, and so on. (Again, in principle this might disadvantage other scripts, but I don't think that's a huge impediment.) —DIV (1.145.44.122 10:19, 2 November 2023 (UTC))
Draft table
| Number of letters | Most languages for entry in English WT ¹ | Most entries across WT's ² |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | A (230) a (166) |
⁞ a (112) I (93) |
| 2 | mi (127) ma (111) me (72) un (71) ja (66) |
⁞ un (93) go (85) no (83) me (82) ja & mi (76) |
| 3 | ina (80) man (79) ama (73) non (38) sun (27) bee (23) |
⁞ dog (117) eye (105) man (104) one (103) two (98) sun (94) air (95) red (89) ear (86) bee (81) set & uno (73) run & yes (72) |
| 4 | mata (145) lima (122) mama (70) baba (64) nana (57) papa (52) tata (43) |
⁞ tree (103) book (102) hand (99) fire (98) rain (97) five (95) fish (93) four & word (92) love (91) bread (89) blue & wind (83) king (82) iron (81) bear & gold (79) rice & take (70) |
| 5 | siyam (47) | ⁞ water (135) horse (101) three (97) house (96) woman (95) heart (92) black (91) mouth (87) money (82) |
| 6 | langit (34) | ⁞ father (94) flower (93) yellow (85) finger (83) orange (80) coffee (77) eleven (75) nephew (52) |
| 7 | talinga (39) | ⁞ stomach (68) freedom (63) |
| 8 | Portugal (34) | ⁞ language (101) computer (90) mountain (82) |
| 9 | Guatemala (24) | ⁞ butterfly (77) democracy (52) |
| 10 | Afganistan (24) | ⁞ dictionary (90) government (68) |
¹ en.wiktionary.org (inspected top-level headings in table of contents for each entry)
² ??.wiktionary.org (inspected "In other languages" box on en.wiktionary.org for each entry)
Comments on draft table
Original draft made on 2023-11-25 by trial and error inspecting promising candidates. —DIV (49.186.219.144 09:19, 25 November 2023 (UTC))
- mi (127), te (85), ama (73), ala (63), aba (56). Maybe others too, I haven't checked exhaustively. We should be able to get accurate answers by combing through the whole wiki with an automated script. —Granger (talk · contribs) 02:11, 26 November 2023 (UTC)
- That'd be nice. I figured that'd be the way to do it, but I wouldn't know how to implement it myself. You?
- I drafted the above table in the hope of sparking such bright ideas :-)
- —DIV (49.186.112.234 03:54, 7 December 2023 (UTC))
- Feel free to add directly to the draft table. (Please note the distinction between the two different columns of words.)
- —DIV (49.186.112.234 04:04, 7 December 2023 (UTC))
- I wrote a little Python program to get the winners for column 1:
- For length 1 the most languages in a single entry is 230 as seen in the following entries:
- For length 2 the most languages in a single entry is 127 as seen in the following entries:
- For length 3 the most languages in a single entry is 80 as seen in the following entries:
- For length 4 the most languages in a single entry is 145 as seen in the following entries:
- For length 5 the most languages in a single entry is 47 as seen in the following entries:
- For length 6 the most languages in a single entry is 34 as seen in the following entries:
- For length 7 the most languages in a single entry is 39 as seen in the following entries:
- For length 8 the most languages in a single entry is 34 as seen in the following entries:
- For length 9 the most languages in a single entry is 24 as seen in the following entries:
- For length 10 the most languages in a single entry is 24 as seen in the following entries:
- For length 11 the most languages in a single entry is 22 as seen in the following entries:
- For length 12 the most languages in a single entry is 27 as seen in the following entries:
- For length 13 the most languages in a single entry is 20 as seen in the following entries:
- For length 14 the most languages in a single entry is 8 as seen in the following entries:
- For length 15 the most languages in a single entry is 6 as seen in the following entries:
- For length 16 the most languages in a single entry is 9 as seen in the following entries:
- For length 17 the most languages in a single entry is 5 as seen in the following entries:
- For length 18 the most languages in a single entry is 4 as seen in the following entries:
- For length 19 the most languages in a single entry is 10 as seen in the following entries:
- For length 20 the most languages in a single entry is 7 as seen in the following entries:
- For length 21 the most languages in a single entry is 3 as seen in the following entries:
- For length 22 the most languages in a single entry is 4 as seen in the following entries:
- For length 23 the most languages in a single entry is 5 as seen in the following entries:
- For length 24 the most languages in a single entry is 4 as seen in the following entries:
- For length 25 the most languages in a single entry is 3 as seen in the following entries:
- For length 26 the most languages in a single entry is 3 as seen in the following entries:
- For length 27 the most languages in a single entry is 2 as seen in the following entries:
- For length 29 the most languages in a single entry is 2 as seen in the following entries:
- For length 30 the most languages in a single entry is 2 as seen in the following entries:
- For length 31 the most languages in a single entry is 3 as seen in the following entries:
- For length 32 the most languages in a single entry is 2 as seen in the following entries:
- For length 33 the most languages in a single entry is 2 as seen in the following entries:
- For length 34 the most languages in a single entry is 2 as seen in the following entries:
- For length 35 the most languages in a single entry is 2 as seen in the following entries:
- For length 36 the most languages in a single entry is 2 as seen in the following entries:
- For length 38 the most languages in a single entry is 2 as seen in the following entries:
- For length 39 the most languages in a single entry is 2 as seen in the following entries:
- For length 46 the most languages in a single entry is 2 as seen in the following entries:
- For length 48 the most languages in a single entry is 2 as seen in the following entries:
- For length 58 the most languages in a single entry is 2 as seen in the following entries:
- For length 63 the most languages in a single entry is 3 as seen in the following entries:
- I excluded entries with only one language. —Granger (talk · contribs) 05:24, 7 December 2023 (UTC)
- Oh. I added some baby talk words ... you know, nana mama papa baba tata type of words ... not having seen this. None of what I found comes close to 145, but maybe the words I added can still be on the list just so long as there aren't dozens of others with more entries than the lowest-ranking one I added. —Soap— 19:58, 20 January 2024 (UTC)
- I find it really interesting that length 4 actually beats both length 3 and 2. —Soap— 20:01, 20 January 2024 (UTC)
- Yes, that is interesting :-)
- Good work, Granger!
- —DIV (1.145.41.30 07:20, 6 February 2024 (UTC))
- I find it really interesting that length 4 actually beats both length 3 and 2. —Soap— 20:01, 20 January 2024 (UTC)
- Oh. I added some baby talk words ... you know, nana mama papa baba tata type of words ... not having seen this. None of what I found comes close to 145, but maybe the words I added can still be on the list just so long as there aren't dozens of others with more entries than the lowest-ranking one I added. —Soap— 19:58, 20 January 2024 (UTC)
- I excluded entries with only one language. —Granger (talk · contribs) 05:24, 7 December 2023 (UTC)
The right-hand column may be more difficult to assess with total rigour. It occurs to me that — theoretically — the word that occurs across the most Wiktionaries, for a given number of letters, might not exist at all in the English Wiktionary.
Another — theoretical — concern for either column is that the winning words might not be written in the "English alphabet", but instead use some other script. Fortunately many languages use the same script as English, or approximately so. As a very quick comparison, 中国 (China) appears in 49 Wiktionaries, and is defined for only 3 languages within the English Wiktionary. The simplest course would be to treat this as if it comprised two "letters" (or, equivalently, amend the existing column heading to "Number of characters"), in which case it lags quite far behind the current (draft) table entries for 2-letter words. Alternatively, it could perhaps be argued that the equivalent number of letters should be based upon the word's transcription — although pinyin is then not the only option — in which case the tally would be much more competitive. —DIV (1.145.127.239 13:49, 22 February 2024 (UTC))
Add words that end with J.
And talk about the etymology about it too. Heyandwhoa (talk) 18:29, 20 January 2024 (UTC)
Also add a section for citation pages for words that don't have their own entry yet.Actually make a shortcut for citation pages for redlinks. Like WT:RLC or something. Heyandwhoa (talk) 00:13, 21 January 2024 (UTC)- Maybe you could put something like this on your userpage or on a subpage of your userpage. —Soap— 03:44, 25 January 2024 (UTC)
- Good idea. —DIV (1.145.127.239 13:01, 22 February 2024 (UTC))
- Maybe you could put something like this on your userpage or on a subpage of your userpage. —Soap— 03:44, 25 January 2024 (UTC)
- . I don't think this is interesting enough to feature...? - -sche (discuss) 03:08, 25 January 2024 (UTC)
- Me neither. —DIV (1.145.127.239 13:01, 22 February 2024 (UTC))
- Replies end here. No more discussion please. Heyandwhoa (talk) 13:15, 22 February 2024 (UTC)
- Me neither. —DIV (1.145.127.239 13:01, 22 February 2024 (UTC))
Visibility of HoF
I'm not sure how I initially stumbled upon the HoF. Would it be appropriate to include it either directly on Wiktionary:Community_Portal, or perhaps one level down, under Category:Wiktionary_fun_stuff (simply add ]?)? —DIV (1.145.41.30 07:27, 6 February 2024 (UTC))
Most descendants
if we expand this list, we should come up with rules to determine how to count the words. For example i think we can all agree internationalisms shouldnt count, so maybe the initiating root has to be from Reconstruction namespace, therefore meaning it must be old. Another idea would be that words on this list must also appear on the list of longest etymological chains. —Soap— 17:41, 29 August 2024 (UTC)
also i meant to add that we should be going with words, not roots. With PIE roots it would get rapidly out of hand, for example. —Soap— 21:00, 29 August 2024 (UTC)
rice
kind of busy right now but it occurred to me that Austronesian *bəRas "rice" might be cognate to a lot of words, including questionably the set that gave rise to English rice. —Soap— 15:06, 9 September 2024 (UTC)
Greatest doublet set
Basically, the longest set or chain of doublets in a given language. I thought of this when dealing with English five and its five-to-six doublets. English father is also high up there with its five doublets, but surely, there are entries with even more. -BRAINULATOR9 (TALK) 03:44, 18 September 2024 (UTC)
Re diff, surely any counterintuitive numbers are just an artifact of "what has vs. hasn't been entered into Wiktionary", yes? More languages may have borrowed the "tea" word, but until someone enters them somewhere there's no way to know how numerous they are. Anyone feel like going on a water-like effort to find tea words? - -sche (discuss) 09:20, 23 September 2024 (UTC)