Wiktionary:Tea room

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A place to ask for help on finding quotations, etymologies, or other information about particular words. The Tea room is named to accompany the Beer parlour.

For questions about the general Wiktionary policies, use the Beer parlour; for technical questions, use the Grease pit. For questions about specific content, you're in the right place.

Tea room archives edit
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Please do not edit section titles as this breaks links on talk pages and in other discussion fora.

Oldest tagged RFTs

• Bereshit
  -to
  code point
  Sukhumi
  manso
  over skyerne er himlen altid blå
  regnbuefamilie
  multivarious
  Indon
  α΄
  orignal
  don't try to teach grandma how to suck eggs
  speech recognition
  hazelly
  pirmas
  ne bis in idem
  Euthemia
  otocrane
  hagdon
  caviar to the general
  lipsati
  native bread
  RGSS
  arena rock
  pasar por las horcas caudinas
  one over the eight
  rhina
  Wesson
  smuggling raisins
  monolid
  ကာလယဲ
  smeť
  search up
  war hero
  war-hero
  watercressing
  green privilege
  Chinese landing
  Dağ Türkleri
  one's heart bleeds
  phrogging
  ၐြဳ
  one's house in order
  efilism
  mukt
  tjälknöl
  radiendocrinology
  lightning bruiser
  Jacboson
  Andersdr
  on someone's ass
  churtle
  Lipović
  dunnarf
  Єфінгар
  Ефингар
  unprovenienced
  quirinalis
  Ilyinichna
  linear
  Черняк
  harkee
  most
  shadowing
  belly dance
  half
  Surinam
  away
  series
  address
  amen
  joke
  how much
  imaginary
  catalogue
  on purpose
  notch
  based
  berm
  rayon
  bok choy
  Aster
  nasal cavity
  dies Mercurii
  -stan
  monosemic
  tweener
  tacet
  take its toll
  no thank you
  eat like a horse
  چھہ
  червь
  sum of its parts
  uninvited
  gender-neutral
  classique
  carhouse
  turn the tide
  chicken-or-egg question
  cornus
  family
  

March 2025

Royd

The English sense of royd (Yorkshire dialect for a clearing) recently failed RFV and I can see why but it would be a shame to not note this meaning somewhere. There are place names such as Royd and Wood Royd in Sheffield and Hebden Royd and Mytholmroyd (virtually coterminous with and hence synonymous with it) in Calderdale, Gilroyd in Barnsley and Prince Royd in Huddersfield. There are also personal names like Ackroyd and Murgatroyd and various roads and houses called ‘the Royd’ (including a care home as far away from Yorkshire as Handsworth Wood, Birmingham!), ‘the royds’ and ‘Royd house’, so we should really have an entry for Royd or -royd instead. Any thoughts on that? Overlordnat1 (talk) 08:24, 1 March 2025 (UTC)

• I thought the same. We could accept those places as quotations to keep royd. Or perhaps we didn't search enough for quotes for royd. I'm undoing the RFV for now while the discussion remains. Pious Eterino (talk) 20:42, 1 March 2025 (UTC)

If it passes RFV, fine. But if there's no evidence that the word on its own survived into modern English, I don't see why the rules should be bent. — Sgconlaw (talk) 20:46, 1 March 2025 (UTC)

There are some quotes on Google Books that I can't access Pious Eterino (talk) 20:51, 1 March 2025 (UTC)

And this is promising, though it is difficult to tell when it was written. Pious Eterino (talk) 20:53, 1 March 2025 (UTC)

Even if it didn't survive in itself, can't we say "now only in place names and personal names"? Mihia (talk) 21:02, 2 March 2025 (UTC)

Yes. Cf. قَشْلَة (qašla), كَفْر (kafr); in the first one I expressed it in the etymology as I already had to touch upon chronology, rather than a usage note as in the second. Both make a {{label}} redundant and optional. Fay Freak (talk) 21:42, 2 March 2025 (UTC)

unfortunately

What is the difference between our two senses? Our quotes don't make this clear imo. PUC – 18:11, 1 March 2025 (UTC)

The distinction that can be made is more syntactic than semantic. The second definition, seems to be for use as a sentence adverb, the first as a traditional adverb. Unfortunately[sentence adverb], the usage example was unfortunately[normal adverb] misplaced under the first definition. The first definition is likely in decline for many Englishes, but certainly in the US, in my experience. DCDuring (talk) 19:33, 1 March 2025 (UTC)

Agreed on all points. Nicodene (talk) 05:10, 2 March 2025 (UTC)

Buoyed by agreement, I've moved the existing usex and added two that fit the first adverb definition, one modifying a verb, the other an adjective. DCDuring (talk) 17:06, 2 March 2025 (UTC)

click off

• To click outside or next to an element, for instance a window in a graphical user interface.

Is this actually an idiomatic or phrasal-verb sense of "click off", or is it just "click" + "off" in the sense of "away from"? Mihia (talk) 21:58, 2 March 2025 (UTC)

I agree with your impulse to question this. To my eye, the entryworthiness of click off is quite dubious, as follows: I hold that the sense "to click outside or next to an element" is SoP, and I hold that its antonym, to click on (an element), is likewise SoP. One can compare step off, which has idiomatic and &lit senses, and one might at first think that click off could exist for the same reasons, but personally I find it dubious to argue that check off and tick off (on a checkbox or tick box) have an idiomatically established synonym in click off. They don't; the fact that a listener would understand the meaning in context is not the same as saying that the collocation has idiomatic establishment. The same theme goes for the other alleged nonliteral/non-SoP senses at click off — there is some aspect of forcing "quasi-translation" here — the person who created the entry unduly conflated the concepts of [1] idiomatically established synonyms versus [2] extempore improvisations in speech that a listener can comprehend contextually but that fall short of that status. But such a notion is untenable because if it were entertained then the population of alleged phrasal verbs would be gargantuan and limitless, unbounded. For example, I could joke to my interlocutor that I am going to spatula up a cake batter instead of whip up a cake batter, but that doesn't mean that spatula up is an established synonym of whip up. Having rejected those alleged senses, we are then left with solely the &lit sense, and Wiktionary doesn't enter collocations that have only &lit senses. Quercus solaris (talk) 00:32, 3 March 2025 (UTC)

I sent it to RFD. Mihia (talk) 18:43, 3 March 2025 (UTC)

Possible misspellings in definitions

If you're interested in fixing misspellings or adding missing words that are used in definitions, I've just updated the listing of possible problems at Wiktionary:Spell check/likely misspellings. -- Beland (talk) 01:05, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

@User:Beland Useful. How often do you intend to update it? DCDuring (talk) 17:34, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

New dumps become available on the 1st and 20th of every month, so twice a month is the most often it could feasibly be updated. That might be too often if it stomps on work-in-progress and the actual dictionary entries change slowly. By "stomp" I mean that the easiest way to update the list is to simply delete everything there and post the new results. That erases any notes added to list entries, and also doesn't take into account edits made between midnight on dump day and when the results are posted (which is maybe 2-10 days depending on the dump; the 20th-of-the-month dumps don't include page history so are available for download a lot faster). I can prevent stomping from affecting workflow by moving any notes to a separate section and updating the list after looking at the recent page history, but that's a bit more manual overhead.

This is less of a problem if we don't have a backlog of unresolved manual notes hanging around. For example, it looks like you've found a bunch of entries that are legitimate alternate forms. Creating a Wiktionary entry that uses Template:alternative spelling of, Template:alternative form of, etc. will prevent these items from showing up on the list in the future, without the need to add a note to the list. I added some suggestions to the top of the page along these lines, but I'm open to whatever workflow editors find most productive.

At the other extreme, it's been over a year since the last update, and that seems like too long. I'm happy to do an update any time editors feel the list has gotten stale; I'm much more active on Wikipedia than here, so I might not notice that on my own. But if someone pings me I'll get that notice pretty quick. I update some reports for Wikipedia copy editors once a month because it's easier to avoid stomping due to the faster turnaround of the 20th-of-the-month dumps. I could do that here as well if editors are actively using the report, or I'm open to suggestions. -- Beland (talk) 19:41, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

One of the biggest wastes of time for users of this or any other periodically updated list of problem entries is to go to the entry with the identified potential problem only to find some else has handled it. I wonder whether we could come up with technical improvements to address this. Spitballing some approaches:

1. a checkbox updatable from the displayed list that indicated outcomes of improvement efforts, eg, problem solved, no problem existed, uncertain (=possibly a "hard problem"). A numerical- or letter-grade might be a nice of implementing or even indicating degree of confidence.
2. sublists that are specialized by language (L2) and/or other heading L3 or more under which the error appears. It is easier to completely dispose of a short, specialized list that an long and/or heterogeneous list or mark which items on such a list have been more or less resolved.
3. for this particular list we could allow a user to trigger, from the displayed list, a search for the offending term. If not found, the problems must have been resolved.

I note that, in contrast, lists of completely missing entries do not have this problem because of the coloring of links (red/blue/orange). This may contribute to the enthusiasm and haste with which missing entries are added. With new entry lists, the problem is with items that many users think are not worth entering because likely unattestable or hard to attest or likely to be RfDed.

As Wiktionary has achieved a high level of coverage of terms, it is probably time to focus on tools that can aid contributors in resolving possible entry quality problems that require human judgment. DCDuring (talk) 21:02, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

Where is it?

Where is the “LGBT slang” sense of work referred to in the “Alternative forms” section? OweOwnAwe (talk) 03:36, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

@OweOwnAwe: We have it as a form, not a separate sense. J3133 (talk) 08:50, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

• I've had a go at adding it. Finding senses where it's actually spelled "work" is hard, just because of how often the word is used in other contexts. Smurrayinchester (talk) 08:58, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

  Thanks! OweOwnAwe (talk) 17:19, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

testificate

A couple of years ago someone reverted an edit on the page testificate by someone who was attempting to add a sense of the word that had originated from minecraft. I don't doubt that at the time it might not have met the criteria for inclusion, as it was only a couple of years after the game had come out, however the use of said word has persisted. I managed to find all three of these sources within less than half an hour, and while I recognize they aren't great sources - and that one of them is heavily *referencing* the game - they all are outside of reference to the world of minecraft. For a suggestion of a definition, it would probably be something similar to the internet slang defintion of NPC, perhaps slightly less derogatory. if anyone wants better sources, I can probably find some - again, these were found rather quickly. All this to say that if one looks at my edit history one can see that I have made a number of constructive edits, I genuinely think this might be a word someone could come across and want to know what it means - and as such, I feel like that sense of the word should be included. https://x.com/fnftestguy/status/1764407355628806604 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SS3U4UnRXJM https://www.worldanvil.com/block/490968 Again, please know that this me attempting to contribute constructively, and that if consensus thinks I'm full of nonsense, I will obviously not push the issue. Froglegseternal (talk) 07:51, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

Okay. On my quest for more reliable sources I'm realizing that pretty much everything either references minecraft or is derivative of minecraft (i.e., minecraft fan content present in another game). I could've sworn I've heard the phrase used in a non-minecraft context, but I might just be so firmly entrenched in the community that I made this up. Retracting this, unless someone else has something they want to say. Froglegseternal (talk) 08:45, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

I commend your impulse to give it lexicographic coverage. And I also commend your judgment in reaching the conclusion that it probably needs more time, seeping further into the wider world, before it meets Wiktionary:CFI. In the meantime, at least, when people who need to look it up are searching the web for it, they can get an answer without too much trouble, because of it being covered by Urban Dictionary and by various glossaries of Minecraft on the web. If its non-Minecraft-adjacent use grows, then Wiktionary will be ready for it. Quercus solaris (talk) 16:13, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

And this discussion should be archived on Talk:testificate. DCDuring (talk) 17:36, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

I backlinked from there to here, so far. After a bit I will look up how to do the subst-type thing and do it in this case. Quercus solaris (talk) 00:29, 5 March 2025 (UTC)

Is this discussion done? It is a great explicitification of the decision process. Maybe it should be on display here for a while. DCDuring (talk) 01:15, 5 March 2025 (UTC)

I don't think we've archived anything recently. CitationsFreak (talk) 17:34, 13 March 2025 (UTC)

Attributive/adjectival horror

There's a bit of tabloidese where "horror" is used either attributively or adjectivally to describe something that causes a brutal injury or death - often a foul in sports or a car crash. For example, "Crystal Palace striker Jean-Philippe Mateta has said he will come back “stronger than ever” after being hospitalised in a horror clash with Millwall’s goalkeeper at Selhurst Park on Saturday". Is this a distinct sense, do we think, or is it just an unconventional attributive use of sense 2 "Something horrible; that which excites horror"? Smurrayinchester (talk) 08:31, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

MWOnline has an adj. def.: "calculated to inspire feelings of dread or horror". I don't think 'calculated' is broad enough, but they think that it's worth an extra PoS. DCDuring (talk) 01:34, 5 March 2025 (UTC)

Their adj might well refer to "horror novel", "horror movie" etc., not to tabloidese. 2A00:23C5:FE1C:3701:857D:9973:3D20:ED11 01:40, 5 March 2025 (UTC)

Unless you can say, “It was a very horror film, but not as horror as The Texas Chain Saw Massacre”, the MWOnline sense does not pass the most common test for being an adjective, nor in fact any of the other tests.  ​‑‑Lambiam 20:01, 5 March 2025 (UTC)

IMO it is the attributive use of the noun sense “something horrible”, being replaceable by horrible. Things that have been called a horror experience include having one’s iPhone stolen,^[2] getting bad service with bad food,^[3] or staying in a hostel with a snoring roommate.^[4]  ​‑‑Lambiam 20:26, 5 March 2025 (UTC)

(be) up someone's ass

• 2014 August 28, Christine Regan Lake, Sophia’s Lovers, Lulu.com, →ISBN, page 67:

  "I've always had an issue with authority so working for someone who was up my ass and micromanaging me wasn't exactly an ideal scenario for me. Let's just say, it provided a very fertile place for my anger to thrive."

We also have get up someone's ass. Should that entry and the cite above be moved to up someone's ass or does it make more sense to just add be up someone's ass? (Do get up someone's ass and be up someone's ass have distinct senses? How many other verbs can "up someone's ass" be used with / can it be used without verbs?) - -sche (discuss) 23:29, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

You can crawl up someone's ass, in which case you are all up in their ass, which is to say, all up in their business. Why are you up my ass? I don't like it when you're up my ass. I think the lemma should be up someone's ass, and the crawling and the getting and the being are copulatively corollary to it. One can be up one's ass, too, that is, up one's own ass, which is anything from self-involved to self-absorbed to full of oneself. He's so far up his own ass, he can't even breathe. Quercus solaris (talk) 00:23, 5 March 2025 (UTC)

Core lemma prep. phrase with hard redirects from and/or usage examples of the main collocations. DCDuring (talk) 01:31, 5 March 2025 (UTC)

beastly

As has already been noted by another user on the talk page, we currently say that this word is basically restricted to the United Kingdom. I'm personally not aware that it is typical of the UK at all; but even if so, I doubt that it should be tagged "UK" without any weasel word such as "especially" or "chiefly". 2.202.159.64 04:53, 5 March 2025 (UTC)

My guess is that whoever tagged it was thinking of the dated "very unpleasant" sense, which I think is very British (almost stereotypically so), but tagged every sense for some reason. For what it's worth though, Google ngrams shows "beastly" in all its senses falling into obscurity in American English in the 20th century - by 1980, it scrapes 0.00001% usage - while remaining consistently strong in British English - even at its lowest point, it's used 4 times as often, and that's not taking into account the weaknesses of ngrams in terms of properly isolating British and American writing. I think an "especially" might be warranted. Smurrayinchester (talk) 08:45, 5 March 2025 (UTC)

Excellent points. Thematically related: Just yesterday I happened to skim the portion of Wikipedia where it claims that notional agreement for grammatical number is (quote-unquote) "exclusively" British, but any American with a nonwooden ear will know that the correct idea there should be on the lines of "especially" or "usually". I didn't bother to fix it yesterday because I have to choose my battles among possibilities for edit wars with Randy in Boise. Randy may have specified "exclusively" so that his boss or friend or whoever would be told by Wikipedia that Randy was right. Quercus solaris (talk) 15:40, 5 March 2025 (UTC)

PS: I snarkily kid, but this does touch on an underlying pedagogical fact. I feel certain that many readers assume (no matter how childish it is to assume it) that a geolect label saying nothing but the region (i.e., without any qualifier) denotes literal exclusiveness to that region, meaning that other varieties are "not allowed" (by whom, by the Man Upstairs presumably?) to use the form and that they "never" use it except as a "mistake". That's the other likelihood for where Randy got his misapprehension (leading to his "exclusively"). One way to handle this problem would be to always specify "especially" or "chiefly" whenever it applies. I advocate that approach, although I predict that probably someone will complain that it isn't terse enough and that there are too many "especiallies" written down and it hurts their eyes to see them all, regardless of their being both accurate and pedagogically necessary. Quercus solaris (talk) 15:56, 5 March 2025 (UTC)

Went ahead and marked the whole entry as "chiefly British", while the dated slang sense is just "British". Smurrayinchester (talk) 08:59, 21 March 2025 (UTC)

Declining the undeclinable

The Greek pronoun όλα is classified in the headword line as undeclinable, but next thing we see a declension table. What gives?  ​‑‑Lambiam 19:06, 5 March 2025 (UTC)

r colored vowel in north and other words?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R-colored_vowel#Examples Zbutie3.14 (talk) 18:26, 6 March 2025 (UTC)

want nachos and reheat nachos

Please move to want someone's nachos and reheat someone's nachos, the forms shown in all citations. 2A00:23C5:FE1C:3701:E10B:695A:5C92:3759 19:05, 7 March 2025 (UTC)

 Done This, that and the other (talk) 10:50, 12 March 2025 (UTC)

"bronchiae"

We have an entry bronchiae. I don't think that word exists! Eric Kvaalen (talk) 19:41, 7 March 2025 (UTC)

 Done. You're right. I fixed it. It is {{misconstruction of}} bronchia, not {{synonym of}} it. Done. Quercus solaris (talk) 23:05, 7 March 2025 (UTC)

PS: masc-fem-neut Latin declensions — English speakers sometimes mix them up for naturalized words (e.g., -us/-i, -a/-ae, -um/-a). That's where they get *"diverticuli", for example. IMO Wiktionary should mark them, most accurately, as misconstructions, although "misspelling" is close enough until it gets optimized. Reason: the writer didn't misspell the appropriate syllable but rather used the wrong syllable. Quercus solaris (talk) 23:11, 7 March 2025 (UTC)

Thanks! Eric Kvaalen (talk) 09:21, 8 March 2025 (UTC)

‌ We sometimes call these hypercorrect. Vox Sciurorum (talk) 17:12, 9 March 2025 (UTC)

True that *octopi, for example, is a hypercorrection. But at least the misapprehension in that case is based on a plausible notion: they see the terminal syllable -us and they assume that -i for Latin first-declension plural applies, which it often would for many words in -us. In contrast, pairs such as *diverticulus/*diverticuli are differentiable as (members of the class of) just plain misremembering or misassuming which declension applies. More of a misconstruction than anything else. Thus, I think for dumbdownmaxx⁠ing purposes it's best for the entry to say "misconstruction of X" without any label mentioning hypercorrection, because some readers would just assume without checking that "hypercorrection" always means "especially correct" or "technically the most correct option although insisting on it is too persnickety." That's what "hypercorrection" means when someone insists that formulas "ought to be" changed to formulae or that carcinomas "ought to be" changed to carcinomata (but no, that's a misapprehension, because STEM English idiomatically uses the regularized plural more often, having naturalized the word all the way from an unadapted borrowing into an adapted borrowing; a good major dictionary such as MWU or AHD shows this by listing the regularized plural first and the Latinate one second, which I noted here in case anyone asks "who says"). Rather than leave any nuance to the reader's perceptiveness (which is near zero, from the dumbdownmaxxing perspective), best to just convey "mistake". Quercus solaris (talk) 22:52, 9 March 2025 (UTC)

on the batter

Which sense of batter does this derive from? Jin and Tonik (talk) 12:04, 8 March 2025 (UTC)

One we don't currently have, apparently: batter meaning "to have sex" (presumably by the same logic as bonk, bang, pound etc). Smurrayinchester (talk) 12:32, 8 March 2025 (UTC)

(Re-reading, it might also come from barter). Smurrayinchester (talk) 12:35, 8 March 2025 (UTC)

Green's has batter (“semen, etc.”). DCDuring (talk) 16:06, 8 March 2025 (UTC)

And why does it appear in "derived terms" at beautiful?? 2A00:23C5:FE1C:3701:BD8F:976:A4DC:6C26 16:40, 9 March 2025 (UTC)

A possible meaning of woke

According to Infopédia, a Portuguese dictionary, woke may mean "promoting political correctness and cancel culture by advocating for unreasonable or extremist proposals based on positions of moral superiority". Is the term sometimes used with this meaning in English too, or is it Portuguese-only? Davi6596 (talk) 03:19, 9 March 2025 (UTC)

I would say that it would be a more specific form of how people currently use the word. The main meaning would be "in support of left-leaning causes". Typically derogatory, in my experience. CitationsFreak (talk) 08:56, 9 March 2025 (UTC)

Quite true, although the word is also now undergoing a semantic broadening, as it is coming to refer to any butthurt urge to impose cancellation on others, whether from the left or from the right. Thus a new set of hyponymous terms has arisen as "the woke left" and "the woke right". The best exposition on this phenomenon that I have yet bothered to read is the one that John McWhorter published a few weeks ago. —Quercus solaris (talk) 23:21, 9 March 2025 (UTC)

I asked that because wokismo's sense 1 is literally wokeism, but sense 2 is what I quoted (but translated differently). And I think both senses are covered by wokeism nowadays, since its derogatory meaning seems translingual AFAIK. Davi6596 (talk) 00:07, 10 March 2025 (UTC)

woke right might merit its own definition because it seems paradoxical Purplebackpack89 14:31, 12 March 2025 (UTC)

My edit of woke's sense 4 is an attempt to describe that broadening and thus cover woke right. But, because this term isn't intuitive, as Purplebackpack said, it isn't SoP and is entry-worthy. Davi6596 (talk) 12:09, 18 March 2025 (UTC)

I kinda disagree here because nobody would call a tankie "woke". (Wait, is it actually derogatory? I've seen people proudly say "I'm a tankie" before! I thought it just meant an auth-left supporter? Anyway...) It's a very specific subsection of leftist politics that is often called woke: it always has to do with political correctness, intersectional thinking, "blackwashing", censorship of what is deemed hate speech, and cancel culture. That sort of thing.

Nobody says urbanizing, bike lanes, taxes on billionaires, UBI, China or North Korea are woke.

That's why people are also talking about the 'woke right', because they engage in the same sort of censorship and virtue signaling as the so-called 'woke left'; concerning different topics of course. Mostly "satanism". MedK1 (talk) 13:17, 25 March 2025 (UTC)

The meaning is dependent on who uses the term. The far right uses the term as a derogatory label for anything the speaker does not like (such as a desire to treat all people in an equal and decent way, regardless of gender, colour or ethnicity). Thus, in the war against "woke", a desk plaque saying "Be kind to everyone" may be removed as being unacceptable.^[5] At the left side of the spectrum, the term is used in an approbative sense for being aware, not only that the equal and decent treatment of all people, regardless of gender, colour or ethnicity, leaves something to be desired, but also that there is a systematic aspect to this.  ​‑‑Lambiam 13:45, 12 March 2025 (UTC)

Can sense 2 of wokismo be incorporated into woke and wokeism in some way, or is it better to simply define wokismo as wokeism? Davi6596 (talk) 14:56, 12 March 2025 (UTC)

Treatment of people as equal is opposite to being aware - context responsive. You do not treat people equally even with respect to your own emotional eventuality (state). I think equality is enforcing simplicity in place of pragmatic awareness 85.237.234.194 05:09, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

Heh. There is a frequent claim that the 'right' (etc.) "don't know what woke means" or "use woke to refer to anything about gender or race", but this claim is an invention that nobody is given an opportunity to deny. I suspect it is pretty well recognised really that "woke" is the militant, scolding (wokescold), perma-offended attitude that won't tolerate any opposing opinion. Nobody is complaining about seeing women or black people succeeding, but rather about forced tokenism. 2A00:23C5:FE1C:3701:B12B:824A:E20E:ED73 05:12, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

BTW, I think wokeness should be defined simply as "the quality or state of being woke". The meaning of woke depends on context, and its possible senses are already listed in its entry. Davi6596 (talk) 13:21, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

I agree with that; in general, just as a pragmatic measure, whenever there've been multiple discussions about how to define a word, and the definition keeps getting changed and/or is rather long, it's beneficial to centralize it to one entry rather than having (e.g.) "X-ly" and "X-ness" and "X" either redundantly present the same long definitions of X or (often) present subtly different ideas of X that fall out of sync with each other. (If I could think of a sensible way to define either atheist or atheism in terms of the other word, I think it'd be beneficial to centralize that pair's shades of meaning to one entry, too...) - -sche (discuss) 17:31, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

I don't like how that'd force readers to go through an extra click. MedK1 (talk) 13:18, 25 March 2025 (UTC)

on => Serbocroatian

Hi

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/on#Serbo-Croatian

In the inflection table from on I cant find the forms njihov or njegov. Is this OK?

Greetings Rasmusklump (talk) 11:26, 10 March 2025 (UTC)

bornt

We label this as Geordie, but I think it also exists in some other (American? African-American?) dialects. I can find it in the speech of one of the characters in Woody Guthrie's 1983 Bound for Glory ("oughtta been bornt sooner"), and in the speech of a Black character in American author Rivers Solomon's 2017 sci-fi An Unkindness of Ghosts (which has both "been bornt" and "Maybe we all should’ve bornt ourselves in another time, another place"). I'm not sure what dialects, exactly, it belongs to (and thus how best to expand the label, beyond the copout of "Geordie and some other dialects"). - -sche (discuss) 01:39, 12 March 2025 (UTC)

subsuntive

This word turns up in some of our Guaraní inflection tables (see e.g. kuaa) but we don't have an entry for it. Google results suggest it is NNSE. But what does it mean? This, that and the other (talk) 10:53, 12 March 2025 (UTC)

An unusual spelling of subsumptive; Guarani has a so-called subsumptive voice,^[6] in Spanish voz subsuntiva.^[7]  ​‑‑Lambiam 13:14, 12 March 2025 (UTC)

@Lambiam thanks. It seems we are missing an entry for the Spanish subsuntivo as well! This, that and the other (talk) 02:20, 13 March 2025 (UTC)

I have added a linguistic sense to the entry for subsumptive. I have not found Spanish subsuntivo in any sense in dictionaries and uses only in the linguistic sense, by two linguists in publications on the grammar of Guarani, so I doubt this warrants an entry here.  ​‑‑Lambiam 11:13, 13 March 2025 (UTC)

appingo

Latin appingo, appingere. To paint, to write. John C. Traupman, Latin & English Dictionary, Bantam, 1988, p. 18. 72.33.2.44 16:26, 12 March 2025 (UTC)

Also, appingo (ad-pango): to fasten. Our main sources (Gaffiot/L&S) mention it, you can create the page if you want/can, otherwise I'll do it myself. Saumache (talk) 14:01, 13 March 2025 (UTC)

내한 vs. 래조

내한 is only used by South Koreans, as North Koreans call their country 조선. Implying that the North Korean standard is 래한 (as the entry does) is inaccurate, and mentioning 래조 within the 내한 entry both complicates navigation for those looking for North Korea-specific terms, and places the North Korean variety in a position of subordination to the South Korean one.

I propose creating a new entry, 래조, to reflect the North Korean standard. Of course, this would be tagged as {{lb|ko|North Korea}}. Tobiascide (talk) 01:17, 13 March 2025 (UTC)

Tobiascide, Who uses 래한? Anyone? Is the entry simply mistaken to say 래한 is the North Korean standard, and is (part of) the solution to simply change the entry's mention of 래한 to 래조?
(I have noted Wiktionary's failure to acknowledge North Korean on occasion myself, e.g. entries for North-Korean-only terms that give only South Korean and not North Korean pronunciations...) - -sche (discuss) 18:39, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

fruity

Reading The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien I came across the adjective fruity to describe a laughter or a voice. I don't think any of the current definitions of fruity in Wiktionary describe the intended meaning. I'm not a native speaker though 91.126.42.74 05:37, 14 March 2025 (UTC)

Yes, this is not uncommon, though perhaps a bit dated. It means something like "deep and rich" (like a fruit, I guess). — Sgconlaw (talk) 11:45, 14 March 2025 (UTC)

Merriam–Webster has: “of a voice : rich and deep”, giving a sentence by Tolkien as usage example: “They … have long clever brown fingers, good-natured faces, and laugh deep fruity laughs (especially after dinner, which they have twice a day when they can get it).”^[8] The work is not stated, but it sounds to me like part of a description of hobbits.  ​‑‑Lambiam 16:55, 14 March 2025 (UTC)

See plummy. 2A00:23C5:FE1C:3701:2452:AA6A:7CD1:369A 11:46, 14 March 2025 (UTC)

Is dozen a determiner?

We only have it as a noun, but the Collins Concise English Dictionary also has it as a determiner. The Random House Unabridged Dictionary of American English, on the other hand, has it as a noun and an adjective. J3133 (talk) 08:51, 14 March 2025 (UTC)

I would like to know the answer too. I am still a bit fuzzy on the concept of a determiner, though it seems from some of our number entries that numbers can act as determiners in some cases. For example, one hundred and one and 101, in the sense "a great many; numerous" ("perhaps the readers may need 101 ways to cook two-minute noodles"), is marked as a determiner. (101 was featured as a WOTD in February.) — Sgconlaw (talk) 11:43, 14 March 2025 (UTC)

CGEL (2005) distinguishes between determiner (a word class) and determinatives (a syntactic function) (AFAICR). All cardinal numbers can be used as determinatives. There are complications that led CGEL (1985) to the creation of predeterminer. See w:English determiner. DCDuring (talk) 12:48, 14 March 2025 (UTC)

• Many languages require a determiner before a noun. In those languages, numbers (one, two...) and "some" are considered determiners and may be used in place of "the" or "an" (related: many languages also use the same word for "an" and "one"). If numbers and "some" are considered determiners, then "dozen" should be too. Purplebackpack89 15:18, 14 March 2025 (UTC)

"Dozen" doesn't behave like "five" or "the". You can say "I bought five eggs" or "I bought the eggs" but (in my dialect, at least) you can't say "I bought *dozen eggs": I need to put a determiner before it (e.g. "I bought a dozen eggs/five dozen eggs"). The cardinal numeral "hundred" behaves the same way. If CGEL says that all cardinal numbers can be determinatives, perhaps the same arguments apply to "dozen" as to "hundred": I haven't read its analysis yet so I don't know what evidence there is for calling either a determinative.--Urszag (talk) 15:25, 14 March 2025 (UTC)

The problem I have with "dozen" as a determiner is that I can't think of a way to use it without a determiner or a number in front of it in the singular, and it seems to be always followed by "of" in the plural when modifying anything. This seems to parallel larger numbers like hundred, thousand and million, as well as score. It's different from words for standard sets of things such as set, batch and team, which seem to act like units of measure such as foot,quart and acre. With pair, you find older usage like "I bought 4 pair", but mostly it's more like "3 pairs of shoes".

The whole phrase containing "dozen" seems to function like a determiner, as in "I bought a dozen cupcakes" / "I bought a cupcake" / "I bought 3 cupcakes"- but "dozen" itself doesn't. Chuck Entz (talk) 17:06, 14 March 2025 (UTC)

Many quantifiers that can function as determiners when used alone also find use with core determiners preceding them ('the/these/those/some/any few/dozen/four eggs'). But that dozen, couple, pair, trio, octet, and hundred among others (almost?) always need a preceding determiner in all but perhaps a few lects of English suggest that they should not have a determiner PoS. DCDuring (talk) 17:27, 14 March 2025 (UTC)

I consulted CGEL. It refers to "dozens" as a (quantificational) noun on pages 349, 351, but says on page 351 that these plural nouns should be distinguished from the singular in constructions such as "a dozen spiders" and "three hundred voters", which it says are determiner + head noun constructions. Rastall 2019 argues that not only "dozen", but also various other words such as "many", "most" and "second" should be categorized as numerals and not as adjectives.--Urszag (talk) 17:32, 14 March 2025 (UTC)

A belated comment for this thread. My gut is convinced that a lot of and a couple of and a few dozen and dozens of function unitarily as determiners of an open compound nature. But I can't prove it and am many years away from consuming and grokking CGEL, at my current rate. I just scribbled this note as something that I hope to follow up on someday, years from now. Quercus solaris (talk) 01:11, 19 March 2025 (UTC)

Swedish entries with masculine/feminine gender

Today 108.30.78.192 (as of now, this is the only contribution) changed Swedish man from masculine to common gender, with the edit summary:

Switched from noun type masculine gender to common gender, because masculine is not a grammatical gender in modern Swedish. The only grammatical genders in Swedish are common and neuter, and 'man' is of common gender, as evidenced by its singular definite form 'mannen'. https://svenska.se/saol/?id=1840128&pz=5

However, there are some entries for nouns used in modern Swedish with masculine/feminine gender (in Category:Swedish masculine nouns and Category:Swedish feminine nouns), e.g., ande, näder, premetro, rackare, and notably pojke (“boy”). Are these supposed to be changed or was this edit incorrect? I did not find guidelines for gender in Wiktionary:Swedish entry guidelines. J3133 (talk) 07:54, 15 March 2025 (UTC)

The template {{sv-noun}} accepts the genders c, f, m and n. This commingles the natural genders with the grammatical genders (see Gender in Danish and Swedish), which seems murky to me. What if the grammatical gender is neuter but the natural gender is masculine, as in “Han, Guds lamm, har offrat sig”^[9]? The Swedish Wikitionary does not mention genders but only gives the definite forms that determine the grammatical gender, and the template {{da-noun}} accepts only c and n. IMO {{sv-noun}} should do likewise.  ​‑‑Lambiam 08:50, 15 March 2025 (UTC)

OED first attestation policy

I am trying to add as much "First attested in the" as I can in my edits to English entries. I am more and more encountering situations where the OED first attestation dates are not congruent with other sources I use (mainly the Middle English Compendium). I just read their preface, finding nothing explaining this issue I was wondering if any of you were aware of some policies the OED uses in ascribing first attestation to a said word, such as not going as far as Middle English for Romance-Latin borrowings (the case in which I am met with the most incongruencies) but going back to Old English for inherited terms; or, the feature is not all that reliable and not to be gullibly trusted. In my view, first attestation would be the first time a given term has been seen in use in any historical form of a given language, orthography bearing no relevance. Saumache (talk) 17:22, 15 March 2025 (UTC)

The first thing to be aware of is that the OED has always treated Old English, Middle English and Scots as part of English, but we don't. The same is true of the MW dictionary that we imported entries from eons ago, which is why you see a constant stream of rfvs asking if a term made it past Middle English. I don't deal much with "first attested" dates, but I don't think we treat the date of first attestation in Middle English as the date of first attestation in an English entry. Not that such information is banned from English etymologies, but it would need to be qualified properly. Chuck Entz (talk) 18:36, 15 March 2025 (UTC)

I see, but if I follow your "I don't think we treat the date of first attestation in Middle English as the date of first attestation in an English entry", it would mean that every English term derived from ME has its first attestation at the quite arbitrary date of 1500 and the template in this very case is then rendered useless; maybe I just missunderstood the goal of it completely. It would be nice if someone who knew how we treat (if there is even consensus about it) first attestations in this case would comment. Saumache (talk) 18:53, 15 March 2025 (UTC)

For the similar template {{defdate}} I disregard the arbitrary boundary between Middle and Modern English. Vox Sciurorum (talk) 19:16, 15 March 2025 (UTC)

Is there no difference at all between the two templates? I agree with you on the issue but I'm not going to do as I please here: my query is not really about the relevance of set boundaries which are pretty much needed but if the vocabulary handed over by the different forms of English can be treated as of a single language and as such, terms in their first attestation. Saumache (talk) 19:54, 15 March 2025 (UTC)

@Saumache: pardon my ignorance, but what template are you using for the "first attestations"? It seems to me that there is very little difference between a first attestation and the date from which a definition or sense is first used, since the latter can only be determined from the former. If there are two templates, I think they should be merged into one, or one of them should be deprecated in favour of the other. — Sgconlaw (talk) 22:14, 15 March 2025 (UTC)

I use {{etydate}}, which is more fit for etymology headers and {{defdate}} for single definitions, though nothing is said about such a dichotomy in either's documentation. Saumache (talk) 09:55, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

@Saumache: thanks. In that case I feel that {{etydate}} should be deprecated in favour of {{defdate}}. It is more accurate and useful that each sense of a term be dated using {{defdate}} rather than to have a broad statement in the etymology section that a term is first attested in a certain period, which would only apply to the earliest used sense. — Sgconlaw (talk) 19:54, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

Dating each sense would be a tedious task and not something I think the common editor would take on. Having it stated in the etymology header seems mandatory, the time at which the word was first uttered/written is tightly bound to its morphological origin. It is not about its earliest sense but its earliest overall usage (allbeit in a certain sense), which solely bears etymological value since other senses flow from it. Saumache (talk) 13:11, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

@Saumache: then you should just put the earliest attestation against the relevant sense which is the oldest using {{defdate}}. — Sgconlaw (talk) 13:13, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

Who knows if the original/oldest sense won't be the last in a large panel of senses. Again, I think it belongs up there in the etymology section. Saumache (talk) 13:17, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

See also: Wiktionary:Beer parlour/2024/December § Template:defdate and pre-1500 dates

Fay Freak (talk) 23:33, 15 March 2025 (UTC)

Well, the problem was not resolved in this discussion and I tend to agree with those who oppose OP's proposal. Saumache (talk) 09:58, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

In general, I agree with Vox here (and also regarding defdate / the BP discussion). IMO having a bunch of entries (the, of, they, in, ...) say "First attested in 1500. From Middle English foo, attested since 1325." would be silly, and less helpful than "First attested in 1325, in Middle English, as foo." Of course, it could be argued that in such cases, when it comes to etydate, it could make sense to simply omit that "First attested..." clause and just have "From Middle English foo, attested since...". - -sche (discuss) 19:16, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

+1. For Korean specifically, we already have e.g. "First attested as Middle Korean 아옥〮 (àwók) in the Gugeupbang eonhae (救急方諺解 / 구급방언해), 下:81a^[10], 1466". With that bias in mind, this seems clearly like the most logical presentation ;-) 🌙🐇 ^{⠀talk⠀ ⠀contribs⠀} 20:24, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

I think I'll start using something like "First attested in 1325, in Middle English, as foo.", it is by far the most comprehensive and complete while still being placed at the start of the etymology section, which I regard as the right place to put it at. Saumache (talk) 12:54, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

@Saumache: I think we should reach some consensus on the placement of such information first. In the past, I have actually been relocating such information out of the etymology section into the definition section using {{defdate}}. It seems counterproductive if different editors are doing opposing things. I don’t think such information relates strongly to etymology. It’s more a matter of usage, so it belongs in the definition section under each respective sense. — Sgconlaw (talk) 13:08, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

I understand, I am quoting what I said a little higher in this same thread: "Dating each sense would be a tedious task and not something I think the common editor would take on. Having it stated in the etymology header seems mandatory, the time at which the word was first uttered/written is tightly bound to its morphological origin. It is not about its earliest sense but its earliest overall usage (allbeit in a certain sense), which solely bears etymological value since other senses flow from it.". Saumache (talk) 13:14, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

Well, I'll go on with my edits and make changes accordingly after some move is made towards solving the issue and consensus met. Saumache (talk) 11:10, 18 March 2025 (UTC)

I've also relocated such information out of the etymology section when possible. I think {{defdate}} is preferable, since it's more specific, and mentioning the dating in the etymology is mostly useful for coinages or cases where the editor doesn't know which sense the attestation date refers to. In cases where there's only one sense, or where one sense is clearly more modern, I think it makes more sense to use {{defdate}} Andrew Sheedy (talk) 05:18, 20 March 2025 (UTC)

Why &lit at all?

Looking at fast one I wonder why we bother with those &lit lines at all ("Used other than figuratively or idiomatically"). Anything can be used literally: that's how language works: you put words together to form phrases. Senses like "fast one" meaning "anything that is fast" make us look pretty dumb. 2A00:23C5:FE1C:3701:B12B:824A:E20E:ED73 23:01, 15 March 2025 (UTC)

Contrast highlights that which you want to expose. Why is your belt buckle of metal or are your shirt buttons of a distinct colour when this finish could have the same dull black, brown, blue or white colour as the rest of the clothing piece? Fay Freak (talk) 23:27, 15 March 2025 (UTC)

I agree that it’s redundant and shouldn’t be used. — Sgconlaw (talk) 23:29, 15 March 2025 (UTC)

It is redundant with foreknowledge. Editors don’t rely on readers applying grammatical rules, therefore make explicit that which readers should have thought by themselves, but might have been suppressed by the impression of the gloss of the idiomatic sense, which gives off an air of exclusivity. A motion to delete {{&lit}} would fail, expressing distrust in the discretion of our editors more than in our readers, who naturally should be distrusted more since they consult a dictionary. Fay Freak (talk) 23:42, 15 March 2025 (UTC)

Indeed. Moreover, {{&lit}} might seem silly to a native speaker, but I suspect it is very useful for English learners, especially those who don't have a good grasp of the underlying construction (adj + one in this case). This, that and the other (talk) 02:31, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

I always found it useful, myself, noting that phrases with literal senses can be used other than figuratively”. And if a phrase cannot be used literally, then I feel like the fact we only list the figurative sense is enough indication that it’s the only one that exists. Polomo47 (talk) 17:06, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

Agreed, particularly for potentially offensive terms - if we didn't have the &lit at exotic cheroot, for instance, I would read it as implying that it's only ever a euphemism for cannabis, when Google Books does also contain examples of it being used straight to mean "a cigar from a faraway country". Similarly, sometimes tired and emotional really does mean "worn out and full of emotions" - if we didn't have the &lit, we'd be accidentally accusing a lot of people of drunkeness! Smurrayinchester (talk) 08:40, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

Compare the instances where we don't use &lit, for example fried egg or police car. The use of the sense basically informs readers that there is an idiomatic sense of the phrase, but not one so baked in that it would be considered jarring to use words together to mean something non-idiomatic. bd2412 T 05:13, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

@Bd2412: if we were meant to infer that, I’m afraid it was lost on me. 🙂 — Sgconlaw (talk) 05:57, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

I find those examples weak, preferring ground squirrel = (ground squirrel) as a more memorable example. DCDuring (talk) 19:43, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

I don't make it a priority to go around adding &lits (although I add them occasionally), but I agree with TTO. There probably are cases where it'd be weird to use &lit — "the way out of a paper bag is through the hole in the top"? — but in a case like fast one where it's common to use the literal sense, I think the help which acknowledging the literal sense provides to the sort of people who are looking the word(s) up outweighs the "harm" to people who already know what the words mean. - -sche (discuss) 18:58, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

I agree. And I believe that having &lit is helpful to a wiki dictionary because it tends to disinvite (by preempting) a certain kind of drive-by edit: one where a passerby feels the need to edit the entry only because the literal meaning was "missing" (that is, judged to be lacking from a certain predictable viewpoint). Quercus solaris (talk) 21:47, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

I also agree. We currently have 338 English phrasal verb entries where {{&lit}} is used. By accounting for their literal/non-idiomatic senses in this way, we not only pre-empt the kinds of edits that you describe, but also enable these entries to serve as definition/translation targets for non-English verbs that are defined by the literally-meant English phrasal verb (e.g. виїхати, meaning literally to drive out and ride out, i.e. to drive or ride in an outward direction). Voltaigne (talk) 18:40, 18 March 2025 (UTC)

Me too. Of course it's not obligatory to add "&lit", but it should be highly desirable to add it whenever there is a realistic chance that a user will come across the phrase in a literal sense. The idea of making the template depecrated is quite absurd to me. Lots of users will be misled to interpret a literal use as a figurative one if we don't remind them of that possibility. 2.201.0.103 02:24, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

I just happened across the example of country house in John Lyons's Semantics (vol 2, p. 536) where he argues a case for something like {{&lit}}. He would probably argue that our entry is wrong to have the first sense (the supersense) in that entry, which should be &lit-ed. DCDuring (talk) 19:39, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

It deserves a thoughtful look. I may be able to rekajigger it such that the sense list is only one layer deep (i.e., # with no ##). One complication is that some country things are towner than others, literally — especially in locales where town has subsumed a bit of country over the decades and centuries — even though they remain country at heart or at the core (hardcore heartcore). You can't always take it away,^^^ lol. Quercus solaris (talk) 16:47, 18 March 2025 (UTC). Update:  Done. The entry may not yet be perfect, but it's better than it's ever yet been. That's continual improvement for yə (he slifted sententiously). Quercus solaris (talk) 17:34, 18 March 2025 (UTC)

Original drill-rappin' IP: if there is a consensus on this, let's policy-ify it. Write it down. So next time you can say "ugh, newbie, you haven't read the &lit rules". Best wishes, 2A00:23C5:FE1C:3701:6439:7FE9:917C:AB93

Good point. I don't know where all it may be documented already, but a key place to document it would be at WT:CFI § Idiomaticity, where a link to {{&lit}} should be given. One or two sentences could say something about the pros and cons of including &lit senses, and that consensus holds that the pros outweigh the cons. I would take a crack at it myself, but I am too much of a stray cur to have edit-button privileges at the WT:CFI page. Quercus solaris (talk) 01:00, 19 March 2025 (UTC)

gregarize

Definition mentions gregaria, which isn't English. What's it supposed to mean? Ungreaaseddish (talk) 10:27, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

@Ungreaaseddish: It means author wasn’t speaking English anymore because he was in Italy. Fixed it for you. Fay Freak (talk) 11:33, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

It still didn’t make sense, so I’ve reworded it so that ‘gregarious’ is used correctly, as an adjective not a noun, in the definition. Overlordnat1 (talk) 01:02, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

Quasi/Quasi-

Is it just me, or do the English recordings for quasi/quasi- sound like /kwæzaɪ/ & /kwæzi/ rather than any of the listed pronunciations? If so, should the audio get replaced, or should those pronunciations be added? 2600:8805:905:6C10:1472:2E92:15B9:BAD3 18:37, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

Your ears need checkin' Ungreaaseddish (talk) 18:41, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

The recordings sound fine to me. — Sgconlaw (talk) 21:00, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

After coming back to it, I have no clue what I was thinking 2600:8805:905:6C10:1472:2E92:15B9:BAD3 21:02, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

— Sgconlaw (talk) 21:04, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

倍 has the wrong data in zh/data/ltc-pron

倍's data in Module:zh/data/ltc-pron is listed as "並咍一開 上薄亥" (resulting in a Baxter transcription of "bojX"). However, Kroll's A Student's Dictionary of Classical and Medieval Chinese lists the Baxter as "bwojX". This means the data string should instead be "並灰一合 上蒲罪" (the second fanqie character picked from 琲, which is homophonous). This would result in a Baxter of "bwojX", and additionally, the autoderived Mandarin pronunciation would match the actual attested one. (The Cantonese pronunciation differs slightly because it would be the literary pronunciation, whereas what's listed in the Wiktionary entry is a colloquial pronunciation.) Iwsfutcmd (talk) 05:25, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

σμῖλαξ

definitions given for this word seem anachronistic - are we seriously meant to believe the ancient Greeks used this word for American sarsparilla vines or African black-eyed peas? Which makes me seriously doubt its use for convolvulus sp. Griffon77 (talk) 20:27, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

Everyone else but us is anachronistic, since I checked plausibility of the senses when putting the current version out. Case in point you have not read much into the senses you picked up either, like all those ignoramuses glossing ancient Mediterranean beans as Phaseolus vulgaris, otherwise you would realize that I intentionally said cowpea and not black-eyed pea, for I do not rest upon Western supermarket knowledge: if the rarer term is more accurate it is granted. Fay Freak (talk) 21:16, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

Smilax aspera is Mediterranean.

Vigna unguiculata "From there [Africa] they [cowpeas] traveled north to the Mediterranean, where they were used by the Greeks and Romans. The first written references to the cowpea were in 300 BC ", all per WP.

Convolvulus spp. are native in much of the world, including the Mediterranean, per Plants of the World Online. I haven't investigated which of the 200-250 species might be native to the Mediterranean or introduced there before classical times. There are also many genera hard to distinguish from Convolvulus in tribe Convolvuleae and family Convolvulaceae. DCDuring (talk) 21:24, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

It is safe to assume the most obnoxious one Convolvulus arvensis familiar to all places settled or frequented by the ancient Hellenes, the acquaintance with which weed should show Griffon77’s “serious doubt” jarring enough, and rather cast it upon his general relationship with gardening. Beyond that, the archaeological as well as philological investigation to such detail as to distinguish many species two thousand years ago would be too challenging to have been investigated.

I have already entered several old names for Convolvulus spp. in Arabic: مَدَاد (madād), لَبْلَاب (lablāb), عَصَب (ʕaṣab), عُلَّيْق (ʕullayq), سَقَمُونِيَا (saqamūniyā), رُخَامَى (ruḵāmā), بَيَاض (bayāḍ), شُبْرُق (šubruq), شُبْرُم (šubrum). Now I won’t give you the literature places for all and have to soothe guy with the assurance of a comprehensive overview being already imparted to Wiktionary, but as a beginner one can see an investigation for the bulk of living plant names in Mandaville, James Paul (2011) Bedouin Ethnobotany. Plant Concepts and Uses in a Desert Pastoral World, Tucson: University of Arizona Press, →ISBN, page 345 seqq., checking with a table whether modern bedouin phytonyms can be confirmed to correspond to descriptions ins 9th and 10th century plant books and thus stable since antiquity—which has peculiar likelihood for such commonly encountered species. Fay Freak (talk) 22:13, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

OK, next question, the entry follows Liddell and Scott in equating milax and smilax, but their citations don't match their assertion that milax is old and smilax is the new form. rather the trees are referred to as milos, milax, or Romanized milaces, and the vines as smilax by the same authors. is there evidence this is the same word or are they really two different words? Griffon77 (talk) 03:49, 19 March 2025 (UTC)

@Griffon77: σμῖλαξ (smîlax), μῖλαξ (mîlax), μῖλος (mîlos), σμῖλος (smîlos) are all attested in the sense “yew”, and I linked you all Dioscurides places for all senses with this lemma form, except for “holm oak”, which is apparently in Theophrastus times only “in Arcadia” either μῖλαξ (mîlax) or σμῖλαξ (smîlax), the transmission of the Theophrastus text differs here, you find many authors taking it as σμῖλαξ (smîlax) instead of LSJ’s μῖλαξ (mîlax), querying "σμῖλαξ" "Quercus", and the same text of Pliny the Elder describing milaces you find with smilax instead of milax all over in many many editions, query smilax quoque, as you say. I tend to assume like Liddell-Scott and Georges it is indeed the same word.

Note possible toponymy, Μίλητος has been contended to be from μῖλαξ (mîlax, “yew”), while in mythology Areia hid her son in a yew-tree and therefore called him, who would found the city, Miletus, acc. to a scholion to Apollonios Rhodios with varying [σ] transmission (the Wikipedia author describing Areia’s story tripped over the meaning); given that we know the city’s name in more ancient languages, this should give us a clue about the word’s Anatolian origin, since the s-mobile shows it to be Indo-European. Fay Freak (talk) 16:54, 19 March 2025 (UTC)

s-mobile occurs due to rebracketing, so it can happen any time until case endings in -os,-as,-us etc. are ellided. loanwords from non-indo-european languages are not excepted since the preceding greek word declension causes the rebracketing (adding or removing the intitial s). And Anatolia had both Indo-European and non-indo-european languages. Liddell and Scott imply this particular rebracketing occurs rather later than an indo-european core. rebracketing is characteristic of Indo-european in that it occurs so often and so early in the attested languages it can be impossible to ascertain which form is earliest. it may rarely, but not certainly occur with other case endings being appended to roots as well. Griffon77 (talk) 21:53, 19 March 2025 (UTC)

斷

Have the Middle Chinese distinction of initials d-/t- been lost in all listed languages? I know virtually nothing about Wu, where in the lemma multiple pronunciations are annotated as vernacular and literary. 物灵 (talk) 15:57, 18 March 2025 (UTC)

roentgen equivalent man

We used to have the following definition at man:

1. A clipping of "in man" or equivalent used in the CGS unit roentgen equivalent man.

I read that as saying that "man", when found in the phrase "roentgen equivalent man", is a clipping of "in man"; this probably doesn't actually merit a sense, but it seems technically correct: when people say "roentgen equivalent man", "man" is a clipping of "in man" and what they mean is "roentgen equivalent in man". However, at some point in the last year, that was changed to define man as:

1. Abbreviation of roentgen equivalent man.

I.e., an assertion that people use "man" itself as an abbreviation of the entire phrase "roentgen equivalent man". I wonder if this change was made by someone who misunderstood the definition, since the only citation provided uses "rem" (not "man") as the abbreviation of "roentgen equivalent man". I am inclined to simply remove the sense, because the current definition is mistaken (and the old definition isn't the sort of thing that should be handled as a definition of man, IMO, so I would not view restoring it as ideal, either). - -sche (discuss) 23:33, 18 March 2025 (UTC)

Yup, I agree — no need to keep it; should delete. Whoever changed the def to its current form simply made a mistake. Probably in haste. As for the origins, I would bet money that the (Manhattan Project–adjacent) people who named the rem circa 1945 originally wrote a postpositive form containing a comma or dash (thus roentgen equivalent, man or roentgen equivalent–man or roentgen equivalent—man, but they were typing on a typewriter, so they would have typed roentgen equivalent-man or roentgen equivalent--man). Just like LST means landing ship, tank, with the comma included. The military was chock full of such postpositive forms, because they worked well for the logistical cataloguing of the day (and still do). Then a bunch of other people played whisper down the lane with the term and typed it with only spaces because (1) they couldn't be arsed plus (2) they didn't even think critically about the syntax within the term anyway, it was just a parroted string of words, and punctuation is for losers anyway, cuz who really carez. In my working life I have seen these forces at work. These forces are strong in many people. Quercus solaris (talk) 00:28, 19 March 2025 (UTC)

senile angioma

Why is cherry angioma also called senile angioma? Is it, perhaps, much more frequent amongst the oldest population than younger people? --2001:14BB:A8:3F90:0:0:520D:6401 18:25, 19 March 2025 (UTC)

Yup, it was named for having higher incidence in older adults, although it is not at all specific to old age. Thus senile rather than senile. Some people deprecate the synonym because of needless inaptness. Quercus solaris (talk) 20:04, 19 March 2025 (UTC)

under the weather

I just randomly stumbled upon under the weather and find it's labeled with a pos of "adjective." I'm curious why it's not a phrase, or prepositional phrase even, since "under" is a preposition. It doesn't seem like it would qualify as a proverb. In general how does one decide that these three compound words together should be labeled an adjective? Thanks. Killeroonie (talk) 02:32, 20 March 2025 (UTC)

Can consider testing intensification ("She is very under the weather"), comparison ("She is more under the weather than him."), coordination ("She is under the weather and exhausted"; *"She is under the weather and the bed"), and question ("What is she"?; *"What is she under?"; *"Where is she?" using question word "where" for a prepositional phrase). Hftf (talk) 05:20, 20 March 2025 (UTC)

quirinalis

Someone nominated this Latin adjective for speedy deletion on the grounds that it should be capitalized. There is a usage note saying that it often is (although there's no alternative form at Quirinalis), but does the page belong at this form or the other? Ultimateria (talk) 02:45, 20 March 2025 (UTC)

Searching Google Books (not case-sensitive) for quirinalis (and each of its inflected forms) + aut (to weed out non-Latin hits) I can only find capitalized occurrences; if uncapitalized uses exist, they seem marginal, so I suspect the page should be moved to the capitalized form. - -sche (discuss) 05:46, 20 March 2025 (UTC)

I was the one to request the page for speedy deletion, (too) many proper-noun derived Latin adjectives are lowercase on this website or have the more common uppercase form as an alternative: I will try to make some list when I have time. It's not the first time I pointed at the issue, see Camēnālis. Saumache (talk) 19:21, 20 March 2025 (UTC)

childe

Wondering what to do when a(n irregular!) plural has been attested for only one sense of an (obscure!) English noun? I recently added a vampire-related sense to childe and was able to attest childer as its plural form. No plural form was indicated for either of the other two seemingly archaic senses. Could just be an oversight though. I'm not an expert at finding or interpreting archaic texts. WordyAndNerdy (talk) 00:24, 21 March 2025 (UTC)

If a particular plural is sense-specific, my instinct would be to have the relevant definition (in the singular word's entry) mention it, as you've done at childe, and (in the plural word's entry) gloss the plural as sense-specific too, i.e. define childer like plural of childe (“obsolete form of child", "vampire turned by oneself”). The info could alternatively go in a usage note rather than the definition if there's too much info to fit in the definition; I see leaf notes the last sense's unusual plural in the definition, while leafs has a usage note. (But if someone can work out how to search for the "child of noble birth" sense, it may be, as you too seem to suspect, that it also pluralizes this way and the plural is not sense-specific.) - -sche (discuss) 22:19, 21 March 2025 (UTC)

Good points! Would be handy to have a template for indicating sense-specific plurals. I wonder whether the "child of noble birth" sense is legitimately distinct from the third sense? Kinda seems from the early history of the entry that 1) an IP might've tried to add a definition based on a mistaken understanding of the cognomen sense (it's not gender- or birth-order-neutral), 2) this got "corrected" into the current format, and 3) someone later added the cognomen definition. Is this an error that's endured for nearly 20 years? WordyAndNerdy (talk) 09:08, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

get again - Catch? Kill? Something else?

We have two senses at get - currently 23 ("to catch a criminal or enact retribution") and 30 ("to kill") - which feel too narrow to me, and possibly part of the same broader sense to do with disadvantaging or hurting someone, especially an adversary.

In particular, neither of the given quotes seem to back up the kill sense: my interpretation of "They're coming to get you, Barbara" was always "They're coming to catch you" not "They're coming to kill you", while "He got Dancer and Prancer with an old German luger" is surely the same sense as "My son got me with a super soaker" and doesn't have to imply death. Could you ever say "The bullet hit him but didn't get him"? Maybe "He survived the war and old age got him in the end" is a better example? But then again you can still talk about diseases getting you without killing you - "I avoided flu all winter but it got me in the end." or even "I ate a healthy diet and exercised, but middle age got me eventually."

Argh. get is always a horribly vague verb that can mean almost anything, but can we think of a better for these senses? (And is the extra sense "To hit a target" covered by any of the senses currently there?) Smurrayinchester (talk) 06:32, 21 March 2025 (UTC)

Good lines of thought. I agree with your theme "possibly part of the same broader sense to do with disadvantaging or hurting someone, especially an adversary" as an underlying semantic theme successfully abstracted/induced from instances of various particular subsenses. That theme could be the sense that provides the grouping for a set of subsenses (if it isn't already — I'll go look at the entry). It is true that getting someone can sometimes mean killing them. It occurs when the person is a fugitive that the speaker asserts to be a baddie (e.g., terrorist, child molester, armed robber). They'll say something like "they finally got Bonnie and Clyde", or "we got him" in reference to Osama Bin Laden. Granted that the "got" there is ambiguous for "captured", "killed", or "captured and killed", but that's natural language for ya. Quercus solaris (talk) 20:58, 21 March 2025 (UTC)

I agree with your analysis that in the Barbara and Prancer quotes, "get" does not seem to definitionally mean "kill". Merriam-Webster has "to take vengeance on; specifically, [to] kill", which is a decent start to an idea, to mention "kill" or better yet "enact retribution on" only as a "sometimes especially..." clause of the general sense, not as its own sense — something the word can sometimes connote, but does not always definitionally denote. However, even "to take vengeance on" seems too narrow, because as you rightly point out, "the flu got me in the end" does not suggest death or vengeance. (Dictionary.com has both "take vengeance on", "kill", and "wound" as three separate senses, the last one using "The bullet got him in the leg" as an example.) My initial thought would be to define the general sense along the lines of "to catch", and then try to figure out how to mention the other possible connotations, like "to catch (and sometimes then enact retribution or violence upon)"? ("The bullet caught him in the leg", "we caught him [Osama] (and enacted retribution upon him)", etc.) - -sche (discuss) 22:40, 21 March 2025 (UTC)

-mander inflections

It seems wrong to have -mandered, -mandering, -manders. A suffix should not have inflection entries like plurals, because a suffix is added to a root word. Nobody takes a word and adds -manders to it. I've been seeing this a lot lately. Maybe more info about what the word "suffix" means should be presented when editing. 2A00:23C5:FE1C:3701:5C9F:C731:9B4B:F653 01:12, 23 March 2025 (UTC)

Should Kaohsiung be under Rhymes:English/jʊŋ or Rhymes:English/ʊŋ?

Hey, should Kaohsiung be under Rhymes:English/jʊŋ or Rhymes:English/ʊŋ? --Geographyinitiative (talk) 09:04, 23 March 2025 (UTC)

Label inconsistency

This discussion has been moved to Wiktionary:Beer parlour.

gross domestic product, syn. of GDP

Google Books Ngram Viewer shows that GDP has been in more common use (in their dataset) since 1958 than gross domestic product reaching 17 times more common since 2000. This is not a surprise given the difference in the number of syllables and the amount of type, paper, and ink used. OneLook shows more references covering GDP than cover gross domestic product. To me this argues for [[GDP]] being the main entry, with [[gross domestic product]] being a synonym (or something else) of GDP. The same might also apply to UN, NATO, USSR, USA, BRIC, DNA, and others. DCDuring (talk) 18:33, 23 March 2025 (UTC)

This is an interesting and worthwhile line of thought; and certainly for anacronymic common nouns it is already the norm (e.g., laser, radar, sonar, lidar, scuba), and certainly for a lot of other common nouns (e.g., DNA, RNA, HIV, GDP, FYI), it has a lot going for it, although I predict that to keep a lot of heads from exploding among Wiktionary's end-users/readers, some exceptions would best be made for at least some proper nouns, such as United Kingdom and United States of America, although not necessarily for others such as (say) NATO (aka Nato) or COMECON (aka Comecon). Not because the principle doesn't apply to the UK and the USA (it does, etically), but rather only because people are so used to thinking of the original proper name (emically) as being the canonical form and thus the dictionary form that the other treatment could seem like a mistake (or even, somehow, an affront) to many users. And there might be a tempest in a teapot over the notion that even if the lemmatization of the acronymic or initialistic form will be accepted, then "U.S." or "US" is a "better" choice for the lemma than "USA" is (sez who, sez you, sez me, etc). The possibility of a small class of exceptions is worth kicking around if more is ever done with this approach. Quercus solaris (talk) 05:17, 25 March 2025 (UTC)

There are also problems in principle with some initialisms covering multiple full expressions. In fact, almost always one full expression has become the meaning understood in general contexts, eg, DNA, DNR. I agree that the ones that are not pronounced as initialisms Nato, BRIC (why isn't it CRIB or CIRB better reflecting relative importance?), Comecon are probably more acceptable as main entries than the pure initialisms. Maybe we should settle for some kind of label in the full expression entry like, in gross domestic product, {{lb|en|usually|GDP}} and a category group like Category:Abbreviations more commonly used than what they abbreviate, though heads may explode. DCDuring (talk) 15:46, 25 March 2025 (UTC)

Agree — directionally valid. True that people would probably be predisposed to quibble endlessly about borderline toss-up cases as the discretization got applied to the spectrum of values for "how strong is the acronym-foremost effect in each term's case" (even for common nouns, let alone proper nouns), regarding the dichotomizing of "more commonly used [thus]" versus "[not so]". There would need to be some principle applied to it operationally, whereby the existing decision (for each term) is not to be overruled without a discussion similar to WT:RFV discussions. One could imagine something like "WT:Requests for expansion-foremost lemmatization" or "WT:Requests for acronym-foremost lemmatization". Quercus solaris (talk) 16:10, 25 March 2025 (UTC)

Google Ngrams is a good default corpus for frequency testing of such things. 5x greater frequency would be a good initial threshold. I think the labels might be a good place to start as implementation doesn't require anything other that a lack of a demand for a vote. DCDuring (talk) 21:40, 25 March 2025 (UTC)

Here is another aspect of the topic for consideration. The way Etymology sections work for all nonacronymic/noninitialistic words is that homographs all go on the same page (same entry) but have different etymology sections (eg, Etymology 1, Etymology 2, Etymology 3). Acronyms and initialisms present an awkwardness for that: for ones with literally dozens or (in some cases) even scores of meanings (expansions), Wiktionary puts them all in one section, where the [implied or expressed] etymology info is, quite simply, "All senses from acronymy or initializing" (whether or not Wiktinary has yet created an Etymology section to state that fact explicitly). It would not be feasible (i.e., too ungainly) to have a separate etymology section for each sense of any "prolifically homonymous" acronym or initialism. Therefore, the current handling would have to remain, and (thus) the nonlemma form of a lemmatized acronym or initialism (for [hypothetical] example, "always be closing" for [one of the many dozens of senses of "ABC" that exist in English]) would be the place where any etymological information besides the acronymic/initialistic letter correspondence itself would reside. Some of those forms (expansions) warrant WT entries of their own, whereas many others simply link out to the relevant WP entry. This is all well and good in my view; I am just pointing it out here. Quercus solaris (talk) 22:37, 25 March 2025 (UTC)

Ilyinichna

I'm not sure exactly how we should treat Russian patronymics. These are certainly not Russian- that would be in Cyrillic- but, as far as I know, the female versions are only used to represent Russian usage and the male versions are mostly borrowed as surnames. Right now, the only definition here is a misused template that's tagging this as a Russian entry, but I'm not sure what to replace it with. Chuck Entz (talk) 13:04, 24 March 2025 (UTC)

It's possible for a word in a language to be transliterated or transcribed using another script not standardly used to write that language. I don't think that always constitutes clear use of the word outside of the source language (e.g., it wouldn't if the word was only being mentioned, like in the context of discussing etymologies). But I feel like using a name to refer to a person would count as a use in whatever language the cited source is in, even in contexts where it is a transliteration of the person's name in another language. I tried checking criteria for inclusion but it isn't very helpful, just saying that "Given names (such as Gunther, Leslie, and Lyudmila) and family names (such as Baker, Bautista, Li, Nganga, and Nishimura) are words, and subject to the same criteria for inclusion as any other words." This seems to imply that we should have an entry for "Ilyinichna" in every language where that transliteration has attested use (English for sure; I don't know how many others).--Urszag (talk) 22:22, 24 March 2025 (UTC)

withcall

Have you ever seen this word? Would you ever use it? Would your friends use it? Therefore: is it in some way obsolete or archaic? Well, Leasnam won't have it! I would like some input from the general Wiktionary nerd coterie regarding whether it's reasonable for him to delete "archaic" or "obsolete" glosses, and pretend it's merely dialectal. I think I'm British and he's American (?) and I've certainly never seen this word, even in Scotland. Is he just dreaming of some Anglish dialect... show me the money. 2A00:23C5:FE1C:3701:FD1C:68CD:8DB8:EAC0 00:14, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

I’ve certainly seen it but it does have a slightly archaic or literary feel to it. Overlordnat1 (talk) 00:44, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

AmE native speaker. I must admit that I cannot recall ever hearing or seeing this word until now. FWIW. Quercus solaris (talk) 01:15, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

Addendum: Looking at the quotations assembled for it, I began to feel weird for not having seen it before. But then I checked OneLook and OED and found very little lexicographic coverage of it (i.e., only at Wiktionary and at a very scant OED entry). So now I don't feel as left out or behind the curve. Quercus solaris (talk) 01:20, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

I'm not a native speaker but I've been in English-only online places for pretty much as long as I have been in the internet as a whole.

I've never seen this word be used either, I definitely wouldn't understand it, and it doesn't feel archaic the way "thou" or "forsooth" do.

Its little lexicographic coverage makes me think it should — without doubt — have the rare label. But I believe the obsolete label might be warranted as well. MedK1 (talk) 01:59, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

Rare is fair, but it's not obsolete. Obsolete means it's no longer in [any] use, which it clearly is. I've added the label. Leasnam (talk) 04:50, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

That doesn't resolve the discussion, which was about you removing "archaic". I think it is archaic. Do you not? As shown in the history, the only "modern" citation was deliberate old-style posturing, and before that we were in the 1920s, and even those might be borderline. 2A00:23C5:FE1C:3701:FD1C:68CD:8DB8:EAC0 10:17, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

No, I do not think it's archaic. If I remember correctly, your reasoning is that the word is archaic because of the 2007 citation, which reads: Besides, seeing he is the author of secret contemplation, and estranged from all public affairs, and the highest of all the planets, he doth, as he withcalls his mind from outward business, so also make it ascend higher, […]. Now, the cite is certainly archaic, but this is due to the use of doth. If you rewrite the quote to use does (Besides, seeing he is the author of secret contemplation, and estranged from all public affairs, and the highest of all the planets, he does, as he withcalls his mind from outward business, so also make it ascend higher, […]) it is no longer archaic. So it isn't the employment of withcalls which renders the quote archaic, but rather doth. Furthermore, archaic is not related to date. A quote from the 1920's is not "archaic" simply because it's 100 years old. A label of archaic means the word or sense deliberately evokes a feeling of older language. Withcall does not do this. If I say "I need to withcall our meeting for today" none of this is archaic. Examples of archaic terms would be thou and forsooth mentioned above, and eftsoons, verbs ending in -eth, etc. Leasnam (talk) 13:26, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

@User:Leasnam On rereading, this argument seems specious. If one rewrites a citation replacing every archaic usage therein, then one is eliminating evidence of the evocative intent of the author. If an obscure or rare word is used in a context that shows uses of other terms that are archaic or obsolete, that seems to me to be a sure indication that the obscure/rare word is meant to evoke some past time, ie, meant to be archaic. DCDuring (talk) 19:07, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

It looks obsolete to me, but I suppose that it is archaic, strictly speaking.

1. Google NGrams has the lowercase form with a frequency of about 30 in a TRILLION. Uppercase is about 10 times more common. (The uppercase form is a toponym.))
2. Some instances of withcall in Google Boooks are scannos for with call.
3. I doubt that any normal English speaker could construct the meaning from the morphemes. Do we really think that it is "still likely to be understood by well-educated speakers"? Does well-educated mean "trained in English morphology"?
4. Wiktionary is the only OneLook reference to have an entry.

In addition, the definition is awful, a cloud of glosses, some synonymous, some unsupported by the citations. DCDuring (talk) 14:32, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

It's not a new formation, so the ability to construct the morpheme from its component parts is a non-issue. NGram Viewer is a non-issue because the citations on the page attest to it. Yes, I think the page can be cleaned up and the citations grouped under possibly 2 separate senses, but that it a non-issue for the sake of this argument. Leasnam (talk) 14:44, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

If a word is not encountered and its meaning is not readily constructed morphologically, then it is not "still likely to be understood by well-educated speakers". DCDuring (talk) 15:41, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

That's when "well-educated" people can simply learn the word, like one would a foreign term. It's really that simple. Leasnam (talk) 16:02, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

You mean learn from use-in-context? Something like the way one "learns" from reading Jabberwocky what a frumious banderesnatch or a slithy tove might be? DCDuring (talk) 17:49, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

No. Learn from a DICTIONARY, like us :} Leasnam (talk) 18:47, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

And I don't believe you either. I think it's pretty easy to reason it out from words like withdraw ("draw back"), withhold ("hold back"), withcall (??? - oh right, "call back"). See, it's easyyyyy Leasnam (talk) 18:48, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

<<Some instances of withcall in Google Boooks are scannos for with call>> - this also adds no value to this discussion, though I love the triple o's. Leasnam (talk) 14:51, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

The value is that the astonishingly low Google NGrams frequency count is an overestimate of the frequency of withcall. DCDuring (talk) 15:41, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

Yeah but no one in this discussion was mentioning that...Yes, there is a place called Withcall that could interfere with the NGram results, but we're not relying on the results, the citations are confirmed and sufficient Leasnam (talk) 15:54, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

I was simply strengthening the point that the frequency is exceedingly low. I was counting the lowercase usage only, as I said. DCDuring (talk) 17:49, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

I think some of the more recent uses are ad hoc mistakes blending "withdraw" and "recall" (you can find similar uses of redraw - here's "the army redrew from France" and "residents without dementia start redrawing from the group") rather than being continued uses of the Middle English term. Which doesn't necessarily count against it for CFI, but it does add to the confusion of what to label it. Smurrayinchester (talk) 15:30, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

That seems plausible. I think this is a good reason to label it "rare", and not use labels like "archaic" or "dated".--Urszag (talk) 00:09, 27 March 2025 (UTC)

I think that a reason why this difference of opinion arises (across multiple cases) is that the glossary doesn't yet help well enough with the intended meaning of the label "archaic" versus the label "dated". The sentence there that portrays a simple tripartite gradient of strength of oldishness, flowing as "dated → archaic → obsolete", may be more misleading than helpful, given that multiple Wiktionarians don't agree that WT intends to use "archaic" in that way. It should be replaced with something better. Simultaneously, what would be clearer and more accurate in conveying established WT intent is a sentence, probably not at the glossary (for readers) but rather at Wiktionary:Obsolete and archaic terms § Archaic (for editors), explaining (something to the effect of), "In making the subjective decision on whether to apply the label 'dated' or the label 'archaic', stick to 'dated' if you doubt that there is much of an effect whereby a fiction writer would reach for the word especially for the purpose of evoking an 'old-timey' feeling. Although this aspect is subjective, one nearly objective part of it is that when a word is both (a) dated and (b) so rare that many readers might not even have seen it before, then it does not work well for the purpose of 'intentionally reaching for 'old-timey' effect', and therefore it is merely 'dated and rare', rather than 'archaic'." Quercus solaris (talk) 14:54, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

Right, for a word to be archaic, rather than obsolete, it should be "still likely to be understood by well-educated speakers". This term would fail that test. IMO this discussion suggests that only lexicographers see the meaning with any confidence, though the author of the definition couldn't seem to pin the meaning down to a simple definition, resorting the shotgun-synonym approach. DCDuring (talk) 15:41, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

There's no need to make this personal. Your bias is showing. BTW, I didn't write the definition, I compiled it from multiple other sources, so try again (and fail) Leasnam (talk) 15:57, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

Piling up synonyms is authoring, just not good authoring. It is a style of definition used by MW 1913 and Century 1911 (and earlier) that we attempt to extirpate. Just delete the synonyms and definitions not supported by the cites. DCDuring (talk) 17:49, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

I've always regarded the label dated as pertaining to or evoking a certain time period, as with hearing one say "You'd like to go with me on holiday? I think that would be grand." - Now, notwithstanding this is still current in many dialects, however in the US this will quickly evoke the feeling of the 1940's-ish, or of someone who grew up in that era. Today it might still be heard, but it's still generally only used by older folks from that generation. Another example would be word as an affirmation. Anyone hearing this who was around at the time will automatically think of the early 1990's when this usage was common, but not so much today. I do agree that we as a community need to come together better on what we want these labels to really mean Leasnam (talk) 15:50, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

I added a bit of help-file info at archaic — a new subbullet below the existing (unchanged) main bullet. I believe that this new bit will stand up to scrutiny. If it does, then I will add to the end of it that "An example of such a word is withcall." Thanks all —Quercus solaris (talk) 16:13, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

I think that is helpful. Leasnam (talk) 16:24, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

It would make sense. As far as ‘grand’ is concerned I do hear an (Oregonian) American I know say it all the time but then he did previously live in Dublin and married someone from Hull before moving to the (English) Midlands, so I would imagine that’s why he says that (I’m not aware of the word being widely used with a colloquial meaning in Oregon but I may be wrong). Overlordnat1 (talk) 17:24, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

Update: FYI: I moved the help-tip bit to Wiktionary:Obsolete and archaic terms because others felt that it was inoptimal as an augmentation of the glossary entry. A need for some guidance such as this bit has been shown by the fact that Wiktionarians sometimes disagree about which such label properly applies. If people don't like this one as currently written, then they should offer a better replacement rather than nothing, IMO. Quercus solaris (talk) 00:34, 27 March 2025 (UTC)

Alrightie, I've been adding citations to withcall, and I must admit, it's pretty easy to find them. Date range is late 19th century to mid-late 20th century. The more recent cites tend to be found in official documentation. This clearly shows the word is not obsolete, and although I placed a "now [chiefly] dialectal" tag" on it, I'm beginning to have my doubts about that. When I have time later this evening, I'll look specifically for more recent cites only, and try to clean up and categorise the definitions (because as DCDuring alluded to further up, it is a mess), and this longstanding, beautiful, English word deserves better. Leasnam (talk) 18:36, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

@User:Leasnam The alleged non-archaic 2007 "citation" is from a translation by James Freake in 1651 of the original published in 1553. DCDuring (talk) 22:06, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

@User:Leasnam The 1981 authorless citation is actually from a transcript of an interview with US Secretary of State Alexander Haig, notorious for his unusual use of language (See this newspaper article. In particular, I do not see that any member of the synonym cloud is substitutable in the sentence. I would have thought that for "to with call them" we should read "to call them out". It is tedious to audit citations, so I stopped with the most recent two, but I wonder whether any of the other recent "citations" are spurious as well. DCDuring (talk) 23:43, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

I've added it back. You're making too many assumptions regarding that cite. It's valid. Leasnam (talk) 00:12, 27 March 2025 (UTC)

Okay, I was going to move it to Citations but I see you beat me to it ! :) Leasnam (talk) 00:23, 27 March 2025 (UTC)

Definitions have been divvied, and I did my [almost-]best to group cites to each (- I could have merged a couple of the definitions to be more general). I got tired...the more I searched, the more I found. This is why we should never rely on what we think, or what we think our friends would say. Leasnam (talk) 22:39, 28 March 2025 (UTC)

I don't understand the principles by which definitions and quotations are divvied. Presumably it would be by the type of complement, eg, words (writings, utterances), persons (other and reflexives), things, possibly subdivided by type. The synonym clouds of polysemic terms are more obstacle than help in this regard. DCDuring (talk) 14:32, 29 March 2025 (UTC)

I considered it, tbqh. Let's call what was done a Phase 1 modification... Leasnam (talk) 16:55, 29 March 2025 (UTC)

linear

As in linear TV/radio/broadcasting. This is apparently a retronym meant to distinguish traditional broadcasting (fixed schedule on a fixed channel, continuous) from streaming (on-demand, interruptible). What I have added to linear#Adjective sense 8 consists of a wordy definition, a too-long label, and too many usage examples. Help with this would be appreciated.

There is also a sense used in education about a way of using video in education, but it doesn't seem as well defined as the usage I have written a definition for. I believe that VCR, DVD, etc are non-linear in the sense used by educators in the 1970s and 80s because users can interrupt, re-view, even reverse, speed up, and slow down content in these media. This sense is SoP or close to it. DCDuring (talk) 19:50, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

clean on OPSEC

In that group chat that's been making headlines, when Hegseth says "We are currently clean on OPSEC", which of our definitions of clean is being used? - -sche (discuss) 05:19, 27 March 2025 (UTC)

A sense we don't currently have but is related to sense 1.4, I think: "Not suspicious" ("The FBI said his background check was clean") or maybe "not infiltrated/compromised" ("If you really want to make sure that your home or office is clean, the best course of action is to hire a company or private investigation firm like ours that offers bug sweep services.") - I'm not sure if those are distinct senses. Smurrayinchester (talk) 05:28, 27 March 2025 (UTC)

Thanks. I've started to overhaul the entry, and now such uses are covered. (So many senses bleed into other senses that it's like trying to divide a dialect continuum into lects: the ends of the spectrum are clearly different from each other, but each individual sense in between bleeds into at least one other sense enough that trying to figure out where to put dividing lines is difficult.) - -sche (discuss) 19:08, 27 March 2025 (UTC)

Looks a lot better! I wonder if the "Free from bugs" sense could be a bit broader, to cover the "clean on OPSEC" sense more explicitly, but I can't think of a succinct but clear way to say "Free from hidden objects or agents" and I think it's fine as it is. Smurrayinchester (talk) 19:58, 27 March 2025 (UTC)

I would have read Hegseth as meaning "free of (legal/political) liability". DCDuring (talk) 02:30, 28 March 2025 (UTC)

clean ("total" vs. "entire")

4. (obsolete) Total; utter. (still in "clean sweep")

• 1655, James Howell, “To the Right Honourable the Earl of Clare”, in Epistolæ Ho-Elianæ. Familiar Letters Domestic and Forren. […], 3rd edition, volume (please specify the page), London: […] Humphrey Mos[e]ley, […], →OCLC:

  Moreover, I find there are some Words now in French which are turned to a Countersense […] Cocu is taken for one whose Wife is light, and hath made him a passive Cuckold; whereas clean contrary, Cocu, which is the Cuckow, doth use to lay her Eggs in another Bird's Nest.

11. […] complete; entire.

• 1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Leviticus 23:22:

  When ye reap the harvest of your land, thou shalt not make clean riddance of corners of thy field.

Should these be combined? (And are we sure "clean contrary" is using clean as an adjective not the adverb?) - -sche (discuss) 05:25, 27 March 2025 (UTC)

"[C]lean contrary" looks adverbial to me, though a comma after "whereas" would make me surer. DCDuring (talk) 13:12, 27 March 2025 (UTC)

I have tentatively combined the senses and moved that quote to the adverb section. - -sche (discuss) 19:08, 27 March 2025 (UTC)

Genitive of chamaeleon in Latin

In Talk:lubenter it has been stated that 'Long ē is not found before a combination like "nt" in Latin', which makes me suspicious about the genitive chamaeleōntis, where there is a long ō before nt. Is it really so that ō + nt is possible in Latin, but ē + nt is not? -- Mölli-Möllerö (talk) 19:26, 27 March 2025 (UTC)

This is not a native Latin word, but a borrowing from Greek. It's possible in this context for a vowel to be short or long. Conveniently, Greek writes long and short "o" sounds with different letters. The spelling of Greek forms such as χαμαιλέοντος indicates that the -o- is short in the oblique stem in Greek, and therefore we can also assume that it is short in Latin.--Urszag (talk) 23:27, 28 March 2025 (UTC)

Canadian name for American football

The usage note claims this sport is called "football" in Canada. Is that really correct? Doesn't that refer to Canadian football? Smurrayinchester (talk) 12:26, 28 March 2025 (UTC)

bro (pronoun)

User:Fungustober removed the pronoun, arguing it's just the noun. Personally, I agree: it seems more sensible to me to view "bro doesn't pay rent, rent pays bro" as intentionally nonstandard meme grammar, and "bro said he finna go off" as certain dialects/registers having slightly different parameters for how nouns can be used, vs to posit that most common nouns are pronouns: The meme snowclone is endlessly productive AFAIK, and you can use all kinds of common nouns in the "bro said..." way, e.g. "n*gga done told the whole shabang" (Tech N9ne), "IP added it in diff", "guy thought he could win, huh? girl really showed him!", "we don’t care if it’s backwards, sis learned that all on her own", "kid saw X when he was about 5, then kid decided, nah", "Bernie said “hell naw” kid didn’t understand why. Then kid said...".
However, last time this came up, some people argued we should view these as pronouns, so I feel I should bring it up for discussion: should we also remove sis#Pronoun, or should we restore bro#Pronoun and add n*gga#Pronoun, guy#Pronoun, girl#Pronoun, etc? - -sche (discuss) 07:31, 30 March 2025 (UTC)

Is it an open class or a closed class? We haven’t got around to add the technical term bronoun; as the concept is too advanced, we have to doubt that the kids learning to talk that way know about any meme. Fay Freak (talk) 15:09, 30 March 2025 (UTC)

I think the people arguing that we should view those as pronouns don't actually understand what an English pronoun is or how it works, because every example people give of this type of thing just shows a regular noun. They don't act like English pronouns (they can take adjectives regardless of their role in a sentence, i.e. "lil bro really thought he could do something" versus the ungrammatical "lil he."), they can be replaced by specific English pronouns ("he really thought he could do something" doesn't change the meaning of the sentence, but "I really thought he could do something" or "She really thought he could do something" do), they don't decline like English pronouns (they can only be singular ("bro") or plural ("bros"), whereas English pronouns decline based on whether they're the subject of an action ("I"), the object of an action ("me"), possessive ("my" & "mine"), reflexive ("myself"), 1st ("I"), 2nd ("You"), or 3rd ("He/She/It/They/etc.") point of view. "Bro" can technically be possessive through "bro's," but that requires the use of the possessive clitic, which isn't really an inflection.), and they can take determiners ("my bro really thought he could do something," "my sis learned that all on her own," "that guy thought he could win, huh?" "that girl really showed him"), while pronouns can't ("my he" or "that he" are ungrammatical).

I'm happy with calling something a duck if it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, swims like a duck, etc. But if it doesn't do any of those, it's probably not a duck.

Fungustober (talk) 17:03, 30 March 2025 (UTC)

Черняк

I fixed the language codes in the Russian entry, but I can't figure out why it has 2 proper noun sections. The second one just looks like a sketchier duplicate of the first one. Pinging @Atitarev, the first person I can think of off the top of my head who would know. Thanks! Chuck Entz (talk) 00:47, 31 March 2025 (UTC)

Hi @Chuck Entz: Thanks, that was incorrect but I understand why. "A Russian surname from Ukrainian" is not 100% the same as "a Ukrainian surname (used in Russia, by Russians)" but maybe they are, to some extent?

Pinging @Benwing2, @Vahagn Petrosyan who I remember telling about the challenge with surnames like this. Anatoli T. ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 03:39, 31 March 2025 (UTC)

I wasn't able to edit for some time, was getting "Invalid CSRF token" error. Seems to have gone away now. Anatoli T. ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 03:41, 31 March 2025 (UTC)

This is a complicated issue involving race science. Westerners are not ready to discuss it, let's postpone it. (Do we classify Chuck Entz and his name as "US American," "Alemannic German" or "La Tène Celt")? Vahag (talk) 11:12, 31 March 2025 (UTC)

@Vahagn Petrosyan: How do you yourself want your surname to be treated in other languages or what would be correct or fair to categorise and display Петрося́н (Petrosján) in the Russian entry:

1. A Russian surname from Armenian
2. A transliteration of the Armenian surname Պետրոսյան (Petrosyan)

Something else or combined? Pls see definitions and categories on Черня́к (Černják). People seem to use all different types of templates and there is no consistency. There are, at least three ways.

My question is just about templates and categories but I would probably use "a (target language) surname from (source language)" when it is adopted into the language, which is rather blurred as well. Anatoli T. ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 00:20, 1 April 2025 (UTC)

@Atitarev: The only interesting way to organize names is by ethnicity, not language. {{R:xcl:HAnB}} collects all names of ethnic Armenians attested in whatever language or script, from Արախա (Araxa) and Դադարշիշ (Dadaršiš) attested only in Old Persian inscriptions circa 500 BC up to Armenians attested in manuscripts circa 1500 AD, normalizing everything into Armenian script in Old Armenian orthography. {{R:hy:HAzB}} collects all surnames of ethnic Armenians attested in whatever language or script, including the diaspora, normalizing everything into Armenian script in New Armenian orthography. Alexander Beider collects all surnames of ethnic Jews attested in whatever language or script, normalizing everything into Latin script in English orthography. So, "Surnames of Armenians" is a topic category like Category:Animals or Category:Rivers in Russia. Петросян (Petrosjan) goes into Category:ru:Surnames of Armenians and is displayed as:

• Petrosyan (an Armenian surname).

Пригожин (Prigožin) goes into Category:ru:Surnames of Jews and is displayed as:

• Prigozhin (a Jewish surname).

If it is also borne by ethnic Russians (should be checked, the only two Prigozhins I know – the music producer and the warlord – are Jews), it goes also into Category:ru:Surnames of Russians and is displayed as:

• Prigozhin (a Jewish surname)
• Prigozhin (a Russian surname).

Here is the difficult part: this presupposes a scientific categorization of ethnicities. A difficult task (do "Bosnians" exist?), but it can be done and was done systematically in the Soviet Union. As you know we all had or still have a special record in our passport showing the ethnicity (not the same thing as nationality/citizenship). Unfortunately, we are on the Anglo-Saxon Wiktionary where such topics are a taboo (try arguing Khan should not be in Category:English surnames). A more palatable but less interesting approach is categorizing by citizenship, like {{R:en:DAFN}} collecting all surnames of US American citizens. Vahag (talk) 17:51, 1 April 2025 (UTC)

harkee

Defined as animate imperative of hark. WTF???? TypeO889 (talk) 19:54, 31 March 2025 (UTC)

I think we can just remove it to show "imperative of hark" Leasnam (talk) 04:59, 1 April 2025 (UTC)

Done. Leasnam (talk) 05:00, 1 April 2025 (UTC)

bend it like Beckham

Can anyone find uses prior to the film Bend It Like Beckham (2002)? I can't. Wondering if the term predates the film, or was based on the title of the film. — Sgconlaw (talk) 21:34, 31 March 2025 (UTC)

I don’t recall ever hearing the phrase before the film came out FWIW (It’s probably not worth very much as I’m hardly the world’s biggest footy fan and my memory might be playing tricks on me). Overlordnat1 (talk) 06:00, 1 April 2025 (UTC)

April 2025

audio clip

Hi - at Icelandic blossi, the audio clip gives the pronunciation, but then continues to give further pronunciations for other words, or adds a comment. Other clips I've heard for Icelandic do not seem to do this. Leasnam (talk) 01:48, 1 April 2025 (UTC)

I just listened closely to it. Is he perchance saying "Blossi/810551" ? Leasnam (talk) 01:51, 1 April 2025 (UTC)

I think it is: átta, einn, núll, fimm, fimm, einn. Can this be corrected ? Leasnam (talk) 01:55, 1 April 2025 (UTC)

@Leasnam: You would have to ask at Commons. I'm sure it would be easy to edit that out, but I don't know the procedure to replace the current version. Chuck Entz (talk) 03:44, 1 April 2025 (UTC)

輕 and hang

Homophones in Cantonese, but for whatever reason, the zh-pron template doesn't show them as such. Insaneguy1083 (talk) 09:29, 1 April 2025 (UTC)

ganivelle

Is there an English word for this? Sea fence? Sand fence? See fr.wiki TypeO889 (talk) 11:03, 1 April 2025 (UTC)

I think the general type made of upright stakes is a "palisade fence". Oh look, WP has an article on sand fence. 2A00:23C5:FE1C:3701:F5D8:C7C2:FAB5:4BC6 16:17, 1 April 2025 (UTC)

controversional

I just wrote it like this by mistake and subsequently googled it. As expected it gets lots of hits, mostly I'm sure by non-native and less educated native speakers. However, I'm puzzled by this article published by US linguist Michael K. Brame. 84.57.154.5 12:13, 1 April 2025 (UTC)

I've created the entry, calling it "usually nonstandard" and citing the article mentioned above. 84.57.154.5 12:58, 2 April 2025 (UTC)

face-stalking, facestalking

Both entries are for Nouns, but both include many citations that are clearly verbs, along the lines of "I was face-stalking him". 2A00:23C5:FE1C:3701:F5D8:C7C2:FAB5:4BC6 16:13, 1 April 2025 (UTC)

honest injun

• How to deal with this situation where somebody thinks s/he owns an entry by virtue of ancestry? ("my people"; "unless you're indigenous like me"). [11]
• Or by virtue of majority ("Soap is in favor of my decision").
• Surely the best strategy would be to check other sources (like the dictionary that we reference), or citable books and texts (where if children are using the phrase innocently at play, it is probably not intended as a horrible slur).
• Alternatively, if the "my people" do have control over an entry, then what happens if several members of the people disagree about it? Should there be policy? Ethnic voting?

2A00:23C5:FE1C:3701:5CD7:4B81:B90D:F39 22:52, 1 April 2025 (UTC)

It is a topic that deserves thorough thought. But where did children of generations past (whose speech is quoted in those citable books and texts) get the idea (or unthinking assumption) that the phrase was just sweet innocent fun? Did they grow up around adults who agreed that it was sweet innocent fun? Were those adults right about that? One might counter that it doesn't matter, even if they were wrong: we can still state the fact that they *thought* it was humorous, or sweet or innocent. But first consider another line of thought: Consider the word gringo in American English. Even though lots of people — even plenty of White people clowning around with self-deprecating humor — often use the term lightheartedly, should a dictionary label it as "humorous", or even merely "sometimes humorous"? Here's a problem with doing so: a dictionary usage label of "humorous" is usually interpreted by many readers as having some degree of eticness rather than pure emicness specific to an ingroup of speakers (notwithstanding the fact that most readers can't state it in those terms because they're not familiar with those words). They may thus think (assume) that the dictionary is asserting concurrence about the humorousness. An egregious example: racist White people will often laugh when they say the term n--ger rich (to them, it is humorous, whenever it is not instead being used in a bitterly humorless way), but even so, a dictionary should not label that term as "humorous", because again, some readers could be expected to think (assume) that the dictionary (its editorial voice or persona) was agreeing that that term is humorous. One might argue that the honest injun phrase was not intentionally hateful (especially in the mouths of babes), so it's different from any n-word-derived phrase. But that's difficult to defend upon analysis, for the same reason as with gringo or white trash: there is denigration associated with the term's origin that doesn't fully wash away even when someone is using the term lightheartedly. A dictionary thus should not label those terms as "humorous" — even despite the fact that a standup comic can get laughs by using them. It should not label the terms honest injun or Jewish overdrive as humorous and be thought to imply meaning "construable by all speakers as humorous" when all it really meant was "emically humorous within the dominant ethnic group's culture in a past era" or "humorous to an in-group". Dictionaries could even potentially use a label such as "humorous to an in-group" to show explicitly that that's merely what they mean, but if they did, then the next predictable objection is that it is needless to say, so they shouldn't say it: it is needless to say that racist White people often laugh when they use the term n--ger rich, so why should a dictionary bother to say it. Regarding "the dictionary that we reference" in OP question: I looked up honest injun therein (NOAD 2e, Kindle; it is s.v. injun, not s.v. honest), and the labels are "dated" and "offensive", but not "humorous". Quercus solaris (talk) 05:25, 3 April 2025 (UTC)

Wouldn't potentially offensive be better than humorous, offensive? As to humorous, I am reminded of labels like ironic, which is not really lexical, but rather discourse-related and dependent on intent. Some decades ago, honest injun was just a way that children used to assert the veracity of a statement or the trustworthiness of a promise, which seems neither humorous nor offensive. But I can certainly see that injun is potentially offensive. Many of our more evaluative labels seem so specific to a moment (decades?) in time. See discussion of folk medicine and alternative medicine. DCDuring (talk) 22:22, 3 April 2025 (UTC)

I think that labels should indicate how a term is used at the present. If the term is now regarded as offensive by some, then that is what the label should state. If it used to be, but is no longer, considered humorous, that is a matter that can be left to a usage note. — Sgconlaw (talk) 23:22, 3 April 2025 (UTC)

I too would like some more (reliable) information about when/where/how this was "humorous". I can believe that (some) people in the past used the term without intending it to be offensive (which is a separate matter from whether it was or is offensive), but I'm not sure they intended to be regarded (or were regarded) as being funny, either...? Hollywood seems to have embraced it (for a time) as a stock phrase of (old-timey? or merely then-contemporary?) children, which might make it "quaint" (for some people), but that is not really a label. - -sche (discuss) 05:42, 4 April 2025 (UTC)

I don't think sometime-possibly-intended humor (or irony, sarcasm, etc.) has much place here. Offense and possible/sometime offense are not matters of intent, though we still have the problem of reliable information.

Honest injun is most likely to be encountered in works of Mark Twain and others from the mid 19th century and later and in US westerns (TV and film), especially of the 1950s. Applying some anachronistic and debatable label seems more likely to mislead a current reader/viewer of such works. DCDuring (talk) 15:38, 4 April 2025 (UTC)

family

"Usage notes: In some dialects, family is used as a plural (only) noun."

Which dialects? All definitions? Which definitions? Wouldn't we at least need examples? DCDuring (talk) 13:48, 2 April 2025 (UTC)

Agreed. I think what they were really after was to state that in some dialects, for a family of humans (relatives, mom, dad, kids, etc), notional agreement is the norm and formal agreement is uncommon. My understanding about BrE (as an AmE speaker) is that this is true of couple in BrE (for a pair of human significant others). I'm going to boldly modify the usage note at family because it is counterfactual as currently worded. Quercus solaris (talk) 02:37, 3 April 2025 (UTC)

Decate

When a person or animal missing and is considered dead 72.27.149.119 21:25, 3 April 2025 (UTC)

good#Usage_notes_2

I wonder if somebody could rewrite that rather pompous note in plain, simple English. 2A00:23C5:FE1C:3701:2581:80AA:C256:937C 00:30, 5 April 2025 (UTC)

It's just a statement of facts. I removed a lousy-stinkin-booklover word that wasn't crucial to retain. The few words in it that aren't dumbed down extra good are linked, ripe for the clickin to show exactly what they mean. Quercus solaris (talk) 04:22, 5 April 2025 (UTC)

pyroclastic flow

This entry is listed as both countable and uncountable, and someone added a quote that uses the word in an uncountable sense.

As someone who has read literally hundreds of peer-reviewed scientific papers and books on this and related topics, I can say that I have never come across an uncountable usage such as this (I admit if you searched enough you may find the rare one or two incorrect uses like this from foreign authors for whom English is not a first language). The uncountable quote provided is from a random trade paperback work of fiction, and I maintain that the author of this work is simply a perpetrator of bad grammar in this case.

At least in the sense provided and defined, it should always be countable. However, I would allow for the possibility that in the English language this entry could be used in the uncountable sense, for example, as in: "Pyroclastic flow is a form of volcanic effusion in which the eruption column collapses due to its density and falls to the earth, surging along the ground, obliterating and incinerating everything in its path". But I would argue that this usage is not the specific, standalone noun pyroclastic flow, but rather just the common noun flow prefaced with the adjective pyroclastic. If the difference is trifling, I think it could be added as a second definition or a second sense under the first definition.

But truly, no one really uses the term like this—it would be written as "A pyroclastic flow is…" or "Pyroclastic flows are…" (following from the earlier contrived example). This word is not a "type" of flow like laminar flow or turbulent flow, and shouldn't be treated as such, even if random authors of trade fiction use it incorrectly as such and can be quoted.

Hermes Thrice Great (talk) 04:41, 5 April 2025 (UTC)

I'd be inclined to defer to you as an initiate on the topic, but what do you make of this attestation, though ("Viscous debris flow is different not only from inertial debris flow but also from granular flow, pyroclastic flow and snow avalanche, because the effect of inelastic collision of particles does not play an important role in viscous debris flow.")? Is it possible that the uncountable sense does indeed sometimes stand in parallel with other kinds of (uncountable) flow of a bunch of particles (as seen in this example) but its use in that way is rare (versus nonexistent)? It could be defined and marked with the label "rare". I do agree with your principle that if a citation is using a word in a way that strains idiomaticness among initiates (for a reason such as a fiction writer not being familiar with its usual idiomatic uses), it is OK for Wiktionary to deweight the value of that citation, even without "censoring" it (i.e., even without trying to deny or hide its existence); this can be accomplished by not showing that citation in the entry and instead showing it only on the /Citations subpage, with an editorial comment applied saying something to the effect of "this is not an example of usual idiomatic use". Quercus solaris (talk) 05:00, 5 April 2025 (UTC)

As I mentioned in the OP, usage like this, in my opinion, is not usage of the highly specific noun pyroclastic flow , but rather usage of the word flow, with the qualifying adjective pyroclastic, and this is borne out by its inclusion in your example in a list of other types of flows, such as granular and inertial debris. Notice how the citation you reference is not volcanology literature, but physics literature, discussing types of flow in general (and actually, a later in the text pyroclastic flow is used several times in its correct, countable sense). Therefore in my opinion this usage should not be considered usage of this particular entry, or otherwise if people here are emphatic that it must be, it could be a second definition or second sense.

Edit: also, I’ll just add that from a scientific/fluid dynamics sense, pyroclastic flows are an example of turbulent flow—there is no "type" of flow from a fluid dynamical perspective that is "pyroclastic" in behavior. A pyroclastic flow is a kind of dense, turbulent flow that consists of gas and pyroclasts. Therefore I find this sort of usage to be a bit nonsensical.

Hermes Thrice Great (talk) 03:40, 6 April 2025 (UTC)

Yes, I know just what you mean there. In fact, it makes me think just now that the way to handle this instance, and others like it, is to use {{&lit}}. I am going to do it boldly because I believe that it will stick. Quercus solaris (talk) 04:19, 6 April 2025 (UTC)

統一/reunification

統一 is listed as a translation of reunification, but the word 'reunification' does not appear on the 統一 page. I think that 'reunification' should be on the 統一 page if it is a correct translation, but if it is not, then 統一 should not be listed as a translation of 'reunification'. --Geographyinitiative (talk) 09:09, 5 April 2025 (UTC)

inferus

I'm not sure that these definitions are correct. I'd change it but I don't want to make anything worse.

At the very least, it looks like senses 2 and 3 are nouns, not adjectives. If this is the case, these should be split. (Sense 1 should be in the adjective section, but then a noun section should be made for sense 2 and 3.)

Also, the example seems misplaced seeing as sense 3's parenthetical note says "(in the neuter plural)" whereas the example is in the masculine singular.

Further, I'm not so sure that the "(in the masculine plural)" versus "(in the neuter plural)" is even correct. At least judging from the Vulgate, the noun is always masculine (I count 29 instances where it's definitely masculine, 3 instances of "inferorum", and 3 instances of "inferis"), usually plural but sometimes singular. I don't know how Christians have used this word outside the Vulgate, but I highly doubt that there was ever a consistent distinction between using the masculine for "souls of the dead" versus using the neuter for "the netherworld, the underworld, Hell", especially seeing as the Vulgate uses the masculine for the latter. (In fact, I'm not even sure that this distinction is relevant. I think sense 3 is the noun's actual definition, and then sense 2 is just a sort of metonymy.)

2601:49:8400:392:80:759E:1FEF:4EA5 18:16, 5 April 2025 (UTC)

Undelete glownigger

According to Wiktionary:Requests for deletion/English, "[a] request can be closed once a month has passed after the nomination was posted". Well then, a month has already passed since the opening of the thread concerning the undeletion of the entry "glownigger", which meets the inclusion criteria, and there was consensus for it to be restored. In this regard, I would like to request that it be restored. A kind IP advised me to open a thread here so that "everybody can discuss it together" in a single place, although that "single place" already exists on the page linked at the beginning of this text. As a non-native English speaker, I do not understand the excessive fuss over a single word, so I would appreciate it if the censorship ceases. With kind regards, RodRabelo7 (talk) 02:47, 7 April 2025 (UTC)

Lexemes in quotations

In a quotation I had added to emphyteusis, I had emboldened both emphyteusis and emphyteutic. Someone with the username 0DF (it seemed to have confused the system) reverted the latter with the helpful justification: "Only the lexeme is emboldened in quotations". I object to this on two counts: Firstly, the semantics of the term "lexeme" is loose, so it is reasonable to regard plurals, adjectival forms etc of the same word as forms within the same lexeme in various contexts. In particular, on the principle that the quotations are intended primarily to serve the interests of the user rather than arbitrary legislative whim, any obvious derivations of the same root should indeed be emphasised to lend point and perspective to the quotation. This would apply most strongly to non-native Anglophones, but to Anglophones as well. Whether the derived adjective is regarded by various parties as technically belonging in the same lexeme or not, Any comment? JonRichfield (talk) 04:58, 7 April 2025 (UTC)