Wiktionary:Feedback

This page is for collecting feedback from Wiktionary readers. It should be cleaned out on a three-month basis, as new comments are constantly being added. Feel free to reply to and discuss comments here, though bear in mind that the people who leave the feedback may never come back to read replies. By convention, the feedback is not archived.

Links: Wiki Javascript (for adding to your WMF Wiki.)

Frequently asked questions

Do you have general questions about the Wiktionary? See Help:FAQ.

• Q. X isn’t a real word! Why do you have an entry for it?
• A. Like most dictionaries, Wiktionary describes and records how people use languages, and does not try to prescribe what is supposedly right or wrong. In some cases, labels are added to warn people that certain usages may be regarded as, for example, derogatory to some people or regarded by some people as proscribed (generally recommended not to be used). If you really feel that an entry should not in Wiktionary, discuss the matter with other editors at Wiktionary:Tea room. Alternatively, if you have done a search at websites such as Google Books and the Internet Archive and cannot find uses of the term, you can request for the entry to be verified at Wiktionary:Requests for verification (see that page for instructions).

• Q. Why don’t you provide audio files giving the pronunciations of all entries?
• A. The recording of audio files requires volunteer editors who have the right equipment and software, and who know how to upload these files to the Wikimedia Commons. All this is somewhat time-consuming, and it seems that at the moment we simply don’t have editors who are able to do this for us regularly. We suggest that you learn how to read the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) transcriptions of pronunciations. For English entries, you can visit Appendix:English pronunciation, which you can also reach by clicking on the “(key)” link next to the word IPA on entry pages.

• Q. How do I propose that a Wiktionary for another language be started?
• A. See incubator:Help:Manual.

For questions about the Word of the Day, see Wiktionary:Word of the day/FAQ.

February 2025

Word of the day: We are having a holoalphabetic month—each day features a term starting with a different letter of the alphabet (and two numbers)!

Nothing major, just wanted to give a kudos for the holoalphabetic month thing! Anything to make language learning more interesting is a good thing in my opinion. I strongly and firmly believe (more emphatically by the day) that language is the root of all knowledge and communication is the secondary effect of that - but both are incredibly important. On that note, I have been running through a list of different sources for a daily "word of the day" and "quote of the day" for a little while now, and one of the things I have noticed that kind of bothers me - which I noticed before starting this routine - is just what exactly constitutes a "word" and when it is or is not appropriate to add a "new word" to any dictionary.

So that kind of is exactly the type of thing Wikimedia projects are directly concerned with, and ultimately there is no great answer I think, though I will say it is an entirely different thing when finding that Wiktionary has a page for an obscure "word" and when finding OED or Cambridge has "Officially™️" endorsed some obscure word as legitimate.*

Simply put, Wikimedia is an important and awesome project and idea but there is kind of a balancing act that has gotten out of balance in many ways between the Wikimedia side of things, the Institutional™️ side of things (which has a balancing act in itself between academia, government, commerce, and religion/general public), and the general populace that is somewhere between, if y'know what I mean.

• See:

Todays Word of the Day from OED: https://www.oed.com/dictionary/hipoisie_n

Which led me to: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/hipoisie

Which led me to: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/hippolite

Which led me to: https://www.oed.com/dictionary/hippolith_n , https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/hippolith

Which led to this ancient book which is the only source I could find via google scholar containing the word "hippolith" which seems sort of ominous but appropriate: https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=E9JVAAAAcAAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PA3&dq=%22hippolith%22&ots=fMHCoM45Zb&sig=YdczU3O7kNEw2u6gNmxgnYtglLQ#v=onepage&q=%22hippolith%22&f=false (De fatis politicae imperialis disquisitionem/An investigation into the fate of imperial politics By Heinrich Gottlieb Francke, Adam Ludwig)

There are a lot more thoughts on these topics brought to mind by these findings but they are far beyond the scope of a simple feedback so I will save those for another time and possibly place.

Thanks! — This unsigned comment was added by Relevantusername2020 (talk • contribs) at 09:21, 3 February 2025.

Hi, @Relevantusername2020. I'm not sure I fully understand what you're asking about, but as regards the terms which are acceptable for inclusion in the Wiktionary, see "Wiktionary:Criteria for inclusion". — Sgconlaw (talk) 11:22, 3 February 2025 (UTC)

No worries, there was no question. I don't think all feedback needs to be either critical or asking for clarification - consider it an overly verbose thumbs up 👍 Relevantusername2020 (talk) 20:31, 3 February 2025 (UTC)

saver#Old_Frisian

Hideous. --72.206.125.109 16:03, 4 February 2025 (UTC)

I've seen worse 90.167.219.140 10:50, 22 February 2025 (UTC)

"Not dictionary material"

What does that mean? Does it mean something not covered by books? My page was recently deleted due to that. 49.145.107.76 11:23, 9 February 2025 (UTC)

So, in order for something to be on the wiktionary, does it mean that it should have citations? 49.145.107.76 11:31, 9 February 2025 (UTC)

ὁ

I would have expected to see, also for this definite article, its gender, numerus and case. — This unsigned comment was added by Rolf Åberg (talk • contribs) at 10:15, 19 February 2025 (UTC).

Hej, Hr @Rolf Åberg, thank you for your observations on Ancient Greek. (2 & 1) Lemma 'titles' do not include a Section of grammatical recognition as inflectional forms do (e.g. τό (tó), ἡ (hē)). One can also check the Inflection table to see if the lemma.form is also a case of itself e.g. φυτόν (phutón) which is nominative singular neuter, but also accusative and vocative of itself (here it would be nice to have it)

2. [you note at Talk:ἀγαθοποιησόμενος] Yes!, of course: the 'title' of the Section should be 'Participle' like λυόμενος (luómenos), λελυμένος (leluménos). Thank you. ‑‑Sarri.greek ^♫ I 05:33, 21 February 2025 (UTC)

Heading of ?: renders incorrectly

I see the heading on the page ?: as ?\: (with the backslash). Could you fix the template? Okterakt (talk) 00:43, 21 February 2025 (UTC)

@Theknightwho this would be in your sphere. This, that and the other (talk) 01:02, 27 March 2025 (UTC)

March 2025

Wiktionary:Main_Page

Could you, please, leave the side bar automatically again? It's always folded or omitted, and it's bothersome to always have to unfold it back. Thanks in advance!

numbering of floors

Wiktionary recognises the different standards regarding how floors are numbered, both G/1/2/3 (typically Europe) and 1/2/3/4 (typically North America). But I find it very strange that Wiktionary do take this into consieration.

On article Stock#German it has the following:

im dritten Stock ― on the third floor (UK counting)/fourth floor (US counting)

This gives the implication that a floor labelled as "3" in Europe would be called "dritten Stock" in German, "third floor" in UK English, "fourth floor" in US English. But a floor labelled as "3" in North America would be called "zweiten Stock" in German, "second floor" in UK English, "third floor" in US English.

However, I would believe that the reality isn't like this. I would assume most people would call a floor labelled as "3" as the third floor, regardless of language or culture, regardless of where this building is located. Maybe I am the odd one for calling the floor labelled "3" as the third floor regardless of which country it is? There are also some buildings where the entrance is on the floor labelled as "2"; does this mean you have to call the floor labelled as "3" as "first floor" in UK English and "second floor" in US English?

So in conclusion, on the article Stock#German, it should rather say:

im dritten Stock ― on the third floor

This is because "dritten"/"third" here is referring to the floor with number 3, regardless of its relation to the ground.

But a change like this would apply to all articles. On article first floor, it would only have 1 meaning: the floor labelled 1. Then it can have a note about which cultures typically have this as the groud floor or the floor above the ground floor, but this doesn't change how the word is used or how it would be translated. Pon Pon the bon bon (talk) 11:39, 13 March 2025 (UTC)

As someone who lives in Germany, I can tell you that Americans absolutely do say things like "second floor" to refer to the floor of a building labelled as 1. Stock. On a simple level, if you're translating a German text "Er sprang vom ersten Stock" into US English, do you translate that as "He jumped from the first floor" (giving readers the false impression that he only fell a couple of feet) or as "He jumped from the second floor" (which is an accurate telling of what physically occurred)? Smurrayinchester (talk) 08:57, 3 April 2025 (UTC)

bikkje

Honestly I like Wiktionary a lot! what I'd like to see is more integration with WikiData, both with the lexemes and regular items. MonkeyPython (talk) 10:34, 15 March 2025 (UTC)

@MonkeyPython: see d:Wikidata:Wiktionary. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 20:47, 31 March 2025 (UTC)

Special:RandomInCategory

"https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Special:RandomInCategory/English_lemmas#English" seems to be broken. It's returning the same small set of entries over and over again. Gejyspa (talk) 09:56, 21 March 2025 (UTC)

Clicking on that link several times just now brought me to a variety of pages, with different amounts of letters, parts of speech, numbers of definitions per entry, number of languages per entry, etc. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 10:06, 21 March 2025 (UTC)

Were any of them Tuxedo, methanogenecity, HBS, pentangularly, Szczytno, Boșorod or Haggis McBaggis?

These are examples of some of ones that I see over and over again Gejyspa (talk) 10:22, 21 March 2025 (UTC)

None. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 10:46, 21 March 2025 (UTC)

Special:Random and Special:RandomInCategory unfortunately both use very poor sources of randomness. There's not too much we can do about it, since they're part of MediaWiki tself. — SURJECTION ^{/ T / C / L /} 11:42, 21 March 2025 (UTC)

melanated

In sense 1, the quotation dated 1994 March includes the word behaxior (sic). I assume this is in error. Can someone check the source of the quotation to see if that's how it's spelled there? If it is, I suggest inserting "[sic]" (or the template for sic if Wiktionary has one) in the quotation. —⁠71.105.243.101 20:21, 31 March 2025 (UTC)

 Done Merci. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 20:42, 31 March 2025 (UTC)

April 2025

Word of the day: kissing ball

It is not april fools today 87.39.232.51 08:14, 2 April 2025 (UTC)

It's part of a five-day April Fools' Day theme. — Sgconlaw (talk) 17:13, 2 April 2025 (UTC)

but the day was world optimus day so you could've done a word for it not a stupid joke 87.39.232.51 08:04, 4 April 2025 (UTC)

There are no results for “World Optimus Day”. J3133 (talk) 09:14, 4 April 2025 (UTC)

Word of the day: haboob

April Fools Day was two days ago — This unsigned comment was added by 87.39.232.51 (talk) at 08:43, 3 April 2025 (UTC).

See above. J3133 (talk) 16:52, 3 April 2025 (UTC)

Word of the day: kiss-her-in-the-buttery

Stop doing this, April Fools is over — This unsigned comment was added by 87.39.232.51 (talk) at 08:03, 4 April 2025 (UTC).

See above. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 08:07, 4 April 2025 (UTC)

What an obstinate IP! Polomo47 (talk) 15:34, 4 April 2025 (UTC)

Appendix:Spanish_pronunciation

I found that the word "mismo" (and probably many more words) do not have a acurrate IPA transcription. "Mismo" is transcribed as ['miz.mo] while the general and most common pronunciation is ['mis.mo] with no voiced [z]. It is true that in some dialects in Hispanoamérica the sound [z] would be present in this situation (before a voiced consonant or intervocalically) but it is not the majority of the dialects (even both dialects of which there are audio samples replaced this supposed [z] with a Voiceless glottal fricative [h] instead). Aside of this issue it would be very useful to add some dialects that generally differ in pronounciation in these cases (like castillian spanish, caribbean, rioplatense...) to at least show the various pronounciations certain sounds can take. I've seen this done in other languages and spanish is not precisely less important than them. I hope you can solve it or allow me to change it if possible. Thanks for your attention! — This unsigned comment was added by Kenghoul24 (talk • contribs).

@Kenghoul24: Thanks for commenting. I have noted some issues with Spanish pronunciation before and the automatic transcription is very good but not 100% perfect. Pronunciations on entries appear due to the templates {{es-IPA}} and {{es-pr}}, which themselves rely on Module:es-pronunc. So if you want to help us refine that, you'll have to edit that module, which requires an understanding of Spanish, IPA, and Lua. If you don't think you can do that directly, you can post to the talk page of the module to try to collaborate with more knowledgeable users. I myself am decent at Spanish, but only a little knowledgeable about IPA and Lua, so I can generally second what you wrote above, but can't implement all the fixes required. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 14:36, 8 April 2025 (UTC)

With the "decent at spanish", do you mean you are native? i mean i think that it's very hard for a non native speaker to get all the nuances of the language, including its many dialects (i couldn't do that in english for example). Regarding the requirements, I'm a native spanish speaker with knowledge of IPA for my dialect and some general IPA knowledge for other many dialects, I don't even know what Lua is tho. Thanks for answering! Kenghoul24 (talk) 14:45, 8 April 2025 (UTC)

Oh goodness no, I am not. We have these boxes we can put on our user pages and I have chosen a "2" out of "5" to show my skill level. I routinely have conversations in Spanish (or have, depending on my work environment, etc.) and have an understanding of the orthography, grammar, etc. at a level that is more than just stumbling around to babble in the language, but nowhere near bilingual or native fluency. We're very happy to have you here, Ken and I love all Latin languages, particularly Spanish, so I've put a lot of time into Spanish as well as English entries here. I'd love to help you however I can in working on our Spanish coverage. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 14:52, 8 April 2025 (UTC)

Wiktionary:Main_Page

Usage of mongrel and mongrelize.

These terms are considered to be highly racist (sometimes even taboo) when reference to people’s races. However, these words can be used to describe an animal, for example a mongrel bitch, in the sense female dog.

Oxford dictionary stated that the term mongrelize is used in biology, however it is nowadays completely taboo when describing a group of people that are racially mixed. — This unsigned comment was added by 45.64.242.239 (talk).

Courtesy links: mongrel, mongrelise, mongrelize. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 02:04, 10 April 2025 (UTC)

These entries already have labels contextualizing their use as extremely racist. Is there something more that you think we need to do here? —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 02:06, 10 April 2025 (UTC)

Wiktionary.org not working

I'm not sure if this is the proper page for technical stuff, but when I take search for a page in wiktionary.org (not en.wiktionary.org), it gives me a Wikipedia page. e.g., if I searched for 'bicycle,' it would sent me to the Wikipedia page for bicycle. Is anyone else experiencing this problem? —Rendite (talk) 02:32, 10 April 2025 (UTC)

Holy shit, we just commented about the same thing in the same MINUTE! WHAT??? TheDivineGoddess (talk) 02:33, 10 April 2025 (UTC)

There is already a phab: tickets for this, thanks. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 02:40, 10 April 2025 (UTC)

www.wiktionary.org redirects to wikipedia

Exactly what it says. wiktionary.org goes to wikipedia whenever I type anything in it. I didn't know if anyone knew about this. It seems like an accident. TheDivineGoddess (talk) 02:32, 10 April 2025 (UTC)

There is already a phab: tickets for this, thanks. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 02:41, 10 April 2025 (UTC)

brinkmanship

The layout looks just fine. How about a quick and simple menu for changing the default font to a Serif type?

--Ksenom_O (talk) 23:13, 11 April 2025 (UTC)

All of English Wiktionary redirects to Wikipedia

I am absolutely furious that all wiktionary searches now redirect to Wikipedia. Please make this stop. I am a heavy user of English wiktionary's entries on various languages for my work as an academic, and the site is borderline unusable now. — This unsigned comment was added by 222.253.145.107 (talk) at 08:32, 13 April 2025 (UTC).

There is a notice about this. The MediaWiki devs are aware of this issue, but are stuck bikeshedding about how to fix it. — SURJECTION ^{/ T / C / L /} 10:16, 13 April 2025 (UTC)