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.

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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

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

November 2024

ummah

Is this usex OK? What are you doing akhi? Are you shoplifting? Astaghfirullah, look at the ummah today. - I find it difficult to understand and/or offensive. P. Sovjunk (talk) 17:39, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

I believe it means something like "What are you doing, brother? Are you shoplifting? I'm shocked at the behavior of the ummah today." It is a little unclear, yeah. CitationsFreak (talk) 18:11, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

(However, it isn't offensive, and implying it is feels offensive to me.) CitationsFreak (talk) 18:15, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

I don’t think it’s offensive, but we should just replace it with a more straightforward usage example that doesn’t require a reader to look up the words akhi and astaghfirullah just to figure out what it means. Something like “Sunnis are the largest denomination of Muslims, making up about 85–90% of the ummah.” — Sgconlaw (talk) 11:55, 2 November 2024 (UTC)

slave to sin, servant of sin

Should we have entries for these? Compare German Sündenknecht. PUC – 18:07, 2 November 2024 (UTC)

@Andrew Sheedy PUC – 18:07, 2 November 2024 (UTC)

In English, I don't think so. We have figurative senses of slave and servant that suit these expressions and all the similar ones. DCDuring (talk) 18:29, 2 November 2024 (UTC)

Hmm, I think I'm with DCDuring. They don't strike me as being sufficiently lexicalized to merit their own entries. You could also say "enslaved to sin" or "enslaved by sin" or "a slave of sin." The variety of different forms suggests to me that the concept is best expressed with figurative senses at "slave", "enslave(d)", and "servant". Andrew Sheedy (talk) 04:21, 3 November 2024 (UTC)

Researchship and research ship: heteronyms or homophones?

Are researchship and research ship (alternative form researchship) heteronyms or homophones? I had put them down as heteronyms (/ɹɪˈsɜːt͡ʃˌʃɪp/ or /ˈɹiːsɜːt͡ʃˌʃɪp/ (stress on the second or first syllable) v. /ɹɪˌsɜːt͡ʃˈʃɪp/ (stress on the third)), but @P. Sovjunk thinks they are homophones. I could be wrong, or can research ship be pronounced both ways? Thoughts? — Sgconlaw (talk) 22:14, 2 November 2024 (UTC)

Of course, in English, people can make up and use any words they want, and once used, they are captured in dictionaries. Researchship, which in my view is accented on the second syllable, would be much more idiomatically "a research position". Research ship - well, the word "research" in itself was once accented on the 2nd syllable, and purists still insist on that, but not many people in England still insist on that. Research ship would normally have the primary accent on re- and the second accent on ship. The third accentual pattern you offered doesn't exist. 2A00:23C7:1D84:FE01:3F7E:AC4A:8A85:B364 07:19, 3 November 2024 (UTC)

Just to be clear, are you suggesting the following?

• Researchship etymology 1 – /ɹɪˈsɜːt͡ʃˌʃɪp/. (Comment: since many people now pronounce research with the primary stress on the first syllable, presumably /ˈɹiːsɜːt͡ʃˌʃɪp/ also exists.)
• Research ship/researchship etymology 2 – /ɹɪˈsɜːt͡ʃˈʃɪp/.

— Sgconlaw (talk) 18:18, 4 November 2024 (UTC)

My instinct is to pronounce them the same (as /ˈɹiːsɜːt͡ʃˌʃɪp/), but I haven't heard the word "researchship" pronounced, so I don't know what is standard. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 18:45, 4 November 2024 (UTC)

Formatting of definitions for words borrowed into English

there are is category of words that fall at the border between being considered "foreign" and "accepted" (so for example, they might still be written in italics). for many of these lemmas, such as baizuo, chuunibyou, gongbang, etc., the original language also has a definition rather than an expected gloss. should these be updated and reformatted as a gloss instead? Juwan (talk) 20:03, 3 November 2024 (UTC)

Specific epithets associated with places

Many specific epithets are formed as Latinate adjectives. Many are associated with nouns, eg, toponyms, in various languages, eg, liberiacus (Liberia), noveboracensis (New York). For good reasons such noun entries do not have usually have adjective sections.

Under what heading should such specific entries appear on the associated English (in these cases) noun pages?

1. Descendants of, in the cases above, the English toponyms, because they are intended to associate a species name with a place.
2. Translations, though they are adjectives and the toponym has no adjective section
   1. as Translingual, though Translingual isn't a language.
   2. as Latin, though Latinists object to including scientific, ecclesiastical, medical, and legal Latin
3. See also, because they don't fit any other heading well.

Or should they not appear at all, because no user we care about would ever want to find such Latinate terms associated with toponyms or other nouns? DCDuring (talk) 13:31, 4 November 2024 (UTC)

Does this seem like a BP matter, possibly leading to a vote? DCDuring (talk) 15:33, 4 November 2024 (UTC)

• "Latinists object to including scientific, ecclesiastical, medical, and legal Latin":
  That's not true at all; e.g.: nōmen (“noun”) and polygōnum (“polygon”) are scientific (linguistics; mathematics), āmēn (“amen”) ecclesiastical, trochiscus (“pill”) medical. But that's different from faux- or pseudo-Latin like Serpens Cauda (literally “Snake Tail (not: Tail of the Snake, the Snake's Tail or Serpentis Cauda)”).
• noveboracensis, for example, does not descendent from New York, so "Descendants" section would be wrong.
• noveboracensis is no translation of New York, so that "Translations" section would be incorrect. However, there are adjectives like New Yorkian.

--17:47, 4 November 2024 (UTC)

Term for a certain kind of mistranslation

A name for when an attempt to translate via a calque fails solely because the "attempted word" is an accidental gap. A species of near miss or nice try. There's an established name for this, I seem to recall, but I can't think of it, and neither can Gemini it seems. An example would be if one language has a word such as "embridgification" (meaning bridging or bridgebuilding) but the target language happens to lack the homologous form by mere accident. Quercus solaris (talk) 02:56, 5 November 2024 (UTC)

We categorise those under Category:Non-native speakers' English. I guess it's a "pseudo-anglicism" although that only refers to English terms that don't exist in native speakers' vocabularies. Smurrayinchester (talk) 11:44, 6 November 2024 (UTC)

(There's also the Wikipedia page Crosslinguistic influence. That doesn't give any name for this error other than "calque") Smurrayinchester (talk) 11:58, 6 November 2024 (UTC)

Great link, thanks. I guess if a term specific to that subtype does exist, it is rare enough that I will give up trying to uncover it. Thanks again. Quercus solaris (talk) 15:05, 6 November 2024 (UTC)

objectsona

Hello, I don't do a lot on Wiktionary. My attention was drawn [1] to the word objectsona, and I noted that all the quotes are tweets. Is this considered good enough for inclusion around here? Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 10:48, 5 November 2024 (UTC)

railroad in roleplaying

The definition we give seems wrong, almost backwards - I understand it as meaning "Forcing players to stick rigidly to the dungeon master's planned plot, rather than allowing them improvise actions that change the path of the story." For example, if the DM wants players to steal an artifact from a dragon, but the players have the idea of making a magical copy of the artifact instead, the dungeon master might railroad them by saying "Magic can't copy this particular item." But I haven't played RPGs much, so before I edit this I wanted to check if other people had the same impression. Smurrayinchester (talk) 11:36, 6 November 2024 (UTC)

Yes, I think your definition is better than the existing one. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 08:23, 7 November 2024 (UTC)

Thanks. Changed the definition. Smurrayinchester (talk) 16:44, 14 November 2024 (UTC)

Hey can you pull around?

Which of the 27 senses of pull is this: “Why Do Drive-Thrus Ask Customers to ‘Pull Around’?”? Or is pull around a phrasal verb missing an entry?  --Lambiam 08:32, 7 November 2024 (UTC)

@Lambiam: I think we are missing the intransitive (?) sense "to drive a vehicle to a particular place". I'm not sure pull around is a specific phrasal verb; in the above article it seems to mean driving past a drive-through window, going around and pulling up to the same window. We also speak of cars "pulling up" to a curb, to a shop, etc. — Sgconlaw (talk) 12:27, 7 November 2024 (UTC)

But I don't think it works without something - either a preposition or an adverb. pull up, pull in, pull into, pull out, pull back, pull forward, pull over, pull around, but never just pull (unless your car has broken down). Is there some way we can format that without creating a dozen separate phrasal verbs? Smurrayinchester (talk) 13:41, 7 November 2024 (UTC)

@Lambiam, Smurrayinchester: maybe something like "Followed by out, over, up, etc.: to drive a vehicle in a particular direction or to a particular place", and then add some usage examples or quotations. — Sgconlaw (talk) 14:31, 7 November 2024 (UTC)

That's a good suggestion, have added it. Smurrayinchester (talk) 08:28, 8 November 2024 (UTC)

初次見面

(Notifying Benwing2, Fish bowl, Frigoris, Justinrleung, kc_kennylau, Mar vin kaiser, Michael Ly, ND381, RcAlex36, The dog2, Theknightwho, Tooironic, Wpi, 沈澄心, 恨国党非蠢即坏, LittleWhole): : Hi. Can someone please assess the frequency/currency of this phrase? It's commonly used by non-Chinese (Japanese or Korean speakers) in reference to their equivalent stock phrase or when trying to translate from Chinese into Japanese or Korean. I've got an example of such usage in my "Shadowing" book for Japanese learners (in four languages - Japanese, English, Chinese and Korean) - so I would oppose a deletion request.

Is it actually used by Chinese native speakers? Thanks in advance. Anatoli T. ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 01:55, 8 November 2024 (UTC)

@Atitarev: From my perspective, as a verb, it sounds conversational to me, though it might be SOP. For the phrase, I've never heard it used that way. Seems like a calque of 初めまして. --Mar vin kaiser (talk) 02:52, 8 November 2024 (UTC)

@Mar vin kaiser: Thanks. Indeed, seems like a calque of the Japanese 初(はじ)めまして (hajimemashite) or Korean 처음 뵙겠습니다 (cheo'eum boepgetseumnida). It has penetrated multiple textbooks and dictionaries, as a standard translation of those phrases, including books published in China or Taiwan. Anatoli T. ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 03:01, 8 November 2024 (UTC)

At least in Singapore, it's not a very common phrase. But I can understand it without any problem. The wording is quite self explanatory. 初次 sounds exceptionally formal tough. It's not something I would use in a casual setting. The dog2 (talk) 03:10, 8 November 2024 (UTC)

It's certainly citeable as a phrase but often in those various bi- or multilingual resources. The phrase in ja and ko are very formal, so that's an equivalent in that sense. Anatoli T. ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 03:25, 8 November 2024 (UTC)

@Atitarev: I don’t know how idiomatic it is. It is a possible collocation, but I don’t think it’s a particular phrase used natively. It seems to be SoP on the surface. I would need to see more actual usage of the phrase (even by non-native speakers) that may show that there is meaning more than the sum of its parts. — justin(r)leung _{{ (t...) | c=› }} 18:54, 8 November 2024 (UTC)

Hi @Justinrleung: Thanks. Please check the file in https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1EbCBAE8claNorzKm70uOopQuYOE8whQg?usp=sharing. I've saved just a few Japanese/Chinese and Korean/Chinese examples (as a phrase) from published books. To me, it seems an attempt to translate as close as possible equivalent phrases in Japanese and Korean into Chinese, which seems not as common among native Chinese speakers. There are many more examples in textbooks, phrasesbook and dictionaries. Perhaps usage notes?

(This somewhat reminds of the Russian на здоро́вье (na zdoróvʹje) when it's used in the sense cheers! (toast).) Anatoli T. ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 04:05, 10 November 2024 (UTC)

@Justinrleung: I've saved the references as screenshots in my link but I realised it's maybe not what you want. Basically I searched the Chinese phrase together with some Japanese and Korean translations in Google books. Anatoli T. ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 05:15, 11 November 2024 (UTC)

@Atitarev: The screenshots are a good starting point, but it would be good if you could include the actual Google Books links and cite them using the {{quote-book}}/{{zh-q}} templates. It would also be good to perhaps include examples where it might be less obviously translated from Japanese/Korean (i.e. things that are not phrasebooks/textbooks, but perhaps book translations that don't have the original Japanese/Korean right beside it). — justin(r)leung _{{ (t...) | c=› }} 06:24, 11 November 2024 (UTC)

@Justinrleung: I would need help quoting Chinese resources with the phrase used by native speakers and without Japanese or Korean. The usage is restricted on bilingual resources or translations from Japanese or Korean.

The below hits seem to be translations:

1. 初次见面 (1)
2. 初次見面(2)
3. 初次見面(3)
4. 初次見面(4)
5. 初次見面(5)

Anatoli T. ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 09:28, 11 November 2024 (UTC)

@Atitarev: I see that you added some quotations, but they are not given with any references. Could you please add {{quote-book}} to them? Otherwise, it would be copyvio. — justin(r)leung _{{ (t...) | c=› }} 16:19, 12 December 2024 (UTC)

たいと思う on 思う and たい

Hello. Can someone please say why 思う and たい usage notes have no about ～たいと思う with "to be going to" meaning? Frozen Bok (talk) 15:03, 8 November 2024 (UTC)

It's also for @Sgconlaw too. Frozen Bok (talk) 16:29, 8 November 2024 (UTC)

@Frozen Bok: not sure why I have been pinged, as I don't know Japanese and don't edit Japanese entries. Sorry I can't help. — Sgconlaw (talk) 18:04, 8 November 2024 (UTC)

@Frozen Bok: I don't think this means anything beyond the sum of the parts. — Fytcha〈 T | L | C 〉 22:31, 22 November 2024 (UTC)

@Fytcha Quote from Russian Wikipedia:

Добавляя к желательной форме на -たい словосочетание と思う, образуется выражение намерения: 行きたいと思う (собираюсь пойти, поехать)[2]

Dobavljaja k želatelʹnoj forme na -たい slovosočetanije と思う, obrazujetsja vyraženije namerenija: 行きたいと思う (sobirajusʹ pojti, pojexatʹ)

By adding ～と思う to desiderative ～たい, an expression of intent is formed

I have an example: [3] (on 0:10).

Then I googled that. Results: [4][5][6] (not an ad), but some people says "it's polite form of ～たい", others says "～たいと思う means "to want like"". If I'll google that in Russian, I get different results (e.g. [7]).

I searched that on other Wiktionaries such as German, French, Polish, Russian, Italian, Hungarian, Chinese and Japanese. Results: Polish Wiktionary has pages containing ～たいと思う with "to want like" meaning; Russian, French, Italian, Hungarian and German Wiktionaries have no results; Japanese Wiktionary has pages containing ～たいと思う but have no English translations of that; Chinese Wiktionary (sorry I must to use Google Translate) has pages containing ～たいと思う with just "to want" meaning.

So, can you say is meaning "to be going to" for ～たいと思う correct? And why English Wiktionary has no information about ～たいと思う? Frozen Bok (talk) 14:17, 13 December 2024 (UTC)

Western Yiddish lb tag

Since most of our discussion and entries of Yiddish on here are of Eastern Yiddish, I feel like it would be helpful if someone could create a Western Yiddish category and lb tag, to demarcate words such as אָרן (orn) or האַרלע (harle) which aren't really used in Eastern Yiddish. Not "Netherlandic" though, because I think that just refers to the pronunciation of vowels of Western Yiddish as spoken in and around the Netherlands, and there's a whole separate Yiddish-speaking community in Alsace. Insaneguy1083 (talk) 08:27, 9 November 2024 (UTC)

Kyrgyz and Kazakh жаз

Kazakh entry says Proto-Turkic *yāŕ (“spring, summer”).

Kyrgyz says From Proto-Turkic *jāŕ (“spring, summer”).

Is it correct that these are from two different proto turkic roots? Zbutie3.14 (talk) 22:25, 9 November 2024 (UTC)

Fixed? Tollef Salemann (talk) 22:55, 9 November 2024 (UTC)

The new word 'Extracism'

the power of extra:extracism What's your favourite extra feature about your country or your community? At what extra length did you go towards your academic research? The economics of extracism:what is the value of the/an extra?

Bcoz there is nothing like being extra! What are your thoughts on extracism? Vocabwordsmith (talk) 17:05, 11 November 2024 (UTC)

Please see WT:CFI. This doesn't appear to be a complete protologism, but I'm not sure most Google hits pass our cfi. Vininn126 (talk) 17:08, 11 November 2024 (UTC)

отъезжать “only used in отъезжа́ть наза́д”?

отъезжа́ть (otʺjezžátʹ) has two definitions, the second of which is ‘Only used in отъезжа́ть наза́д (otʺjezžátʹ nazád, “to back up”)’. This is somewhat confusing, as it seems to contradict the existence of the first meaning. I guess that what is meant is that it only occurs in this sense in that combination. Moreover, it is not clear which of the 11 senses of ‘back up’ is meant. Could this not be better formulated? Incidentally, the sense of ‘back up’ is not given at ru:отъезжать, so far as I can recognise. PJTraill (talk) 00:43, 12 November 2024 (UTC)

I think it's also incorrect: "Я отъехал от магазина" sounds to me like "back up", not "drive away". Thadh (talk) 06:20, 12 November 2024 (UTC)

It says something about the English translations instead of describing the senses of the Russian term. This is what is wrong. Just remove the second and put up a good usage example or quote. Nobody claims a gloss to cover all possible translations. Fay Freak (talk) 15:09, 12 November 2024 (UTC)

защи́тник: defence counsel?

защи́тник (zaščítnik) says this means “advocate, attorney” but ru:защитник suggests it means the counsel for the defence. This seems to need a correction or at least a usage note. PJTraill (talk) 15:04, 12 November 2024 (UTC)

You are right, the page is wrong, you can derive the formulation in Wikipedia from the legal definition in Article 49 RF Code of Criminal Procedure; on the opposite end there is typical translator sloppiness added by Stephen G. Brown when we did not take ourselves as seriously. Fay Freak (talk) 15:20, 12 November 2024 (UTC)

warmonger

Isn't the definition of warmonger lacking (in other dictionaries as well)? It states "advocates war", generally. Could an inhabitant of country A who writes an op-ed in a national newspaper to argue for war between countries B and C (neither allied to or against A) be considered a warmonger? That seems dubious. ←₰-→ Lingo ^Bingo _Dingo (talk) 21:42, 12 November 2024 (UTC)

I'd say that descriptively it's within the realm of the natural. A warmonger is most broadly anyone who tries to "sell" the choice of making war. Even when they're not a belligerent in the sense of that word meaning one of the warring parties, they're belligerent in the sense meaning eager for war and warlike (bellicose). One of the factors here is that the word warmonger is tied so closely cognitively with monger as dealer and with arms dealer = merchant of death, someone who tries to "sell" war (= "sell" killing and death) either literally (e.g., $$$, ₽₽₽, CN¥) or figuratively (e.g., persuade, pitch, coax, egg on). As for the literal sense, people who sell weapons are infamous for the sometime tendency to sell to any and all customers, plugging back into the notion of "anyone anywhere who pitches war". Quercus solaris (talk) 15:14, 13 November 2024 (UTC)

To me, at least, it seems natural / correct to describe Op-Ed Writer A as a warmonger, if they're pushing for war (whether it involves them or not). It wouldn't surprise me if there also exists a second definition more closely tied to monger-as-merchant, though; is that what you're thinking of, or are you thinking of something else? Maybe we could search for cites that describe arms manufacturers (in peacetime and when they're not pushing for a new war) as warmongers, to try and distinguish that sense from the broad sense? - -sche (discuss) 16:17, 13 November 2024 (UTC)

I think it might not be worth splitting into two senseid values; it's more the kind of thing where one senseid contains semicolons and (sometimes) "especially". A gossipmonger is anyone who spreads gossip (either sells it or sells it), even if it might be especially someone who literally sells it (e.g., tabloid/magazine editors). Quercus solaris (talk) 16:36, 13 November 2024 (UTC)

I was a bit of time getting it done

Which of our definitions of be covers this:

• 1907, C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne, McTodd, page 232:

  The bag was crisp with ice, and with my fingerless gloves I was a bit of time unholing the buttons. But I got the flap turned back at last, and there was Ryan grey-faced and stark.

What about google books:"I was some time in", "he was some time quite covered with the cloud of dust", "He was some time Examiner in Natural Science, […] "? I don't get the sense that this use of be is uncommon, though I'm not sure if it's archaic or still current. - -sche (discuss) 16:38, 13 November 2024 (UTC)

I agree that it sounds a bit old-fashioned. And yet I hesitate to call it dated or archaic. He was a long time getting that done. If I heard that in speech, it wouldn't draw my attention. If someone had said that to me today, before I read this Talk thread, I would not have thought twice about its form. Quercus solaris (talk) 16:45, 13 November 2024 (UTC)

Which of the definitions of be covers this? (Are we missing a sense? The meaning is sort-of similar to, but is not, 3.4 "occur, take place"; in the phrases I can think of, it is more like "spend (time)", but perhaps the same sense can also be used in other phrases and the meaning is more general.) - -sche (discuss) 02:04, 14 November 2024 (UTC)

I think of it as "UK", especially "a bit of time". Couldn't one say "I was four hours getting it done."? In the US one might say "I got it done in four hours." or "I was done in four hours." DCDuring (talk) 15:42, 14 November 2024 (UTC)

Is this the same "to take a duration of time" sense as "Dinner will be 10 minutes", "It was an hour before he returned" (which I also don't think we have). If so, I'd say this is a very common current sense, but some constructions using it now feel a bit dated. Smurrayinchester (talk) 16:40, 14 November 2024 (UTC)

What's different I think, is that the subject is an agent, not the patient. DCDuring (talk) 18:28, 14 November 2024 (UTC)

I took a stab at adding a definition to cover this; please improve it if possible, revert if there are major problems, etc. - -sche (discuss) 20:52, 16 November 2024 (UTC)

Unsupported titles/S:t Michel

Would it be possible to remove the backslash from the head, so that instead of "S\:t Michel" it would say "S:t Michel" and still link to Unsupported titles/S:t? Mölli-Möllerö (talk) 11:27, 15 November 2024 (UTC)

Should be fixed. Smurrayinchester (talk) 14:47, 15 November 2024 (UTC)

the collectively referred to, again

This entry and this entry have a noun sense "(preceded by the) [Such] people collectively." Based on this RFD, should these be removed, because you can do this with any adjective (past participle, etc) as a feature of grammar? ("The wounded were mostly the unaffiliated, who were generally the poor, the religious, and the recently divorced or widowed, but not the formerly ordained or the chastised, the blind or the ethnically Latvian.") Or does being able to use at least the second of those words as a count noun change anything: do we want to have the 'collective' sense in cases where we already have a ===Noun=== section, for completeness? - -sche (discuss) 20:28, 16 November 2024 (UTC)

I don't know how directly useful this comment is, but "aged" is a funny one, in that the two-syllable version has a slightly different usage from the one-syllable (for me, anyway). Our "Old people, collectively" sense would be two syllables for me, whereas there is in theory also a one-syllable sense meaning "ones that have matured or undergone the effects of time", e.g. "We have two whiskey stores, one for the aged and one for the unaged". Although we have that as an adj sense, we don't have it as a noun sense. Mihia (talk) 10:08, 30 November 2024 (UTC)

I agree with Mihia about the two pronunciations of aged. In general, I think we have to be sensitive to the possibility that what is collectively referred to might be only one of several senses of the adjective (pp, etc.) or that there is some other shift or restriction in meaning.

I really doubt that all of the definitions at transgender#Adjective are attestable as adjectives and really distinct. Some just look like the normal range of attributive uses of nouns. DCDuring (talk) 16:58, 30 November 2024 (UTC)

to have another thing coming

Although definitely a derivative of "if you think ____, you have another think coming," this phrase sometimes has a bit of a different connotation in my experience.

"If you think _____, you have another think coming" has a similar connotation to "guess again."

It is fair to say that when "another thing coming" is used in the construction "If you think ____, you have another thing coming," the connotation is usually the same.

However, "have another thing coming," in my experience, can in certain contexts seem to have a quite forceful, sometimes almost quasi-threatening connotation.

Even if one considers a sentence like "If that punk thinks he can mock me, he has another thing coming!" the suggestion could be that the "punk" will be subjected to violence or otherwise a bad time. That, then, would be the "thing" that he has coming to him.

But I am certain that I have heard (rare) constructions like "Get ready, because you have another thing coming!" or "He has another thing coming to him!" or "Oh, let me tell you, she has another thing coming to her!"

In those cases, I would argue that "have another thing coming" is a bit different from "If you think ____, you have another think coming."

Does anyone else have thoughts on this? Tharthan (talk) 20:34, 16 November 2024 (UTC)

My take on it is that it refers to someone's arrogant assumptions being forcefully refuted. You wouldn't say "if you think π=22/7, you have another thing coming!".

It's not necessarily part of an if/then-type construction: I'm sure one could attest: "X thinks/believes/would have us believe/asserts,etc. […] X has another thing coming!". My guess is that the syntax is dictated more by the requirements of the semantics than by anything lexical. I can even see it as a response to something happening or being described that demonstrates unustifiable arrogance as far as the speaker is concerned: "[interjection]!", do they have another thing coming! Chuck Entz (talk) 22:09, 16 November 2024 (UTC)

The original (eg see Ngrams) is "you've got another think coming". The reason some people have converted this to "another thing coming" is 1) easy confusion between thing and think (see sumfink as a common pronunciation of "something"), but 2) more fundamentally, the use of "think" in "another think" was seen as ungrammatical, because "think" should be a verb and not a noun (or so such people reasoned). In fact the original phrase was deliberately humorous and deliberately used think as a noun in an ungrammatical way - that was part of the fun of the phrase - and then the prescriptivists moved in and said "think is not a noun" and reformatted it as "thing". As far as I know both forms are now common in England. 86.168.46.85 13:25, 17 November 2024 (UTC)

There's a difference between the etymology of the term and how it's used. Think about expressions like "the exception proves the rule" where the original meaning (the exception tests the rule) has been replaced by (the fact that there's an exception shows that there's a rule") I would contend that usage in the US has become disconnected from the original "think" expression. I'm trying to arrive at a description of this new formulation based on my intuitions as a native speaker of US English. Since I haven't looked through the current usage online, I could, of course, be quite wrong. Take it for what it's worth. Chuck Entz (talk) 01:23, 18 November 2024 (UTC)

@Chuck Entz: I have often encountered the claim that "another thing coming" makes no sense, on the grounds that there could not have been another thing coming, if there had not first been an initial thing that came. However, if a phrase like "If that punk thinks he can mock me, he has another thing coming!" is interpreted as "That punk may have a notion [thing one] that he can get away with mocking me, but he will find that something quite different [thing two] is going to occur," then arguably the "another thing coming" construction can be said to make sense. Tharthan (talk) 18:14, 17 November 2024 (UTC)

@Tharthan. Of course, no one who's ever claimed that English always has to make literal sense has gotten very far in the long run. Anything that's the result of milions and millions of people from all over the world adding their own variations over half a millenium is going to defeat any attempts to make it tidy and sensible.

Whether this makes literal sense is beside the point. It means whatever the people who use it and interpret it think it means. One would only use either the original or altered form to point out that someone is going to have their assumptions proven wrong against their will- with the implication that the other party isn't just wrong, but deserves to be proved wrong. I think that's the underlying idea: it's a forceful rejection of what's asserted to be the other party's thinking. Chuck Entz (talk) 01:23, 18 November 2024 (UTC)

FWIW, I have always considered "if you think ____, you have another thing coming" to be merely a mishearing error for "think". I don't personally perceive anything more to it. Mihia (talk) 00:38, 20 November 2024 (UTC)

eggcup

Tagged as British. ORLY? P. Sovjunk (talk) 19:30, 18 November 2024 (UTC)

Haven't heard of it, not British. CitationsFreak (talk) 23:36, 18 November 2024 (UTC)

It's not specific to BrE (and M-W's and AHD's entries for it don't label it so). But it's an uncommon word for a combination of reasons: (1) serving and eating eggs that way is old-fashioned, and (2) having a special dedicated piece of china for it is rather … what's the word? The people who would do so would be of certain kinds … china collectors, rich people of yesteryear, … I think probably someone was guessing at why it struck them as not of their own variety and misguessed. I'm going to remove the variety label. Quercus solaris (talk) 04:15, 19 November 2024 (UTC)

I seem to have learned about them through Enid Blyton books, along with cornflowers and treacle. — Sgconlaw (talk) 05:05, 19 November 2024 (UTC)

Without wanting to post something too personal and promotional, I work for a place that sells eggcups for as little as £1 - porcelain ones at that (though obviously not fine China). There’s nothing old-fashioned about eating soft-boiled eggs in Britain. How would you go about eating them in America without an eggcup, or do you only ever eat them hard-boiled????! Overlordnat1 (talk) 06:09, 19 November 2024 (UTC)

We typically eat them hardboiled, yeah. I do know what an eggcup is, and the general method for eating one out of it (I think), but never saw one in the real world. CitationsFreak (talk) 06:47, 19 November 2024 (UTC)

When I was growing up (AmE) our household ate soft-boiled eggs out of regular cups (i.e., run-of-the-mill cups), although no doubt "we were doing it wrong" from someone else's viewpoint … but (both then and now), in the U.S., eggcup is not a word that most of us hear anyone say (at school, at work, at parties), or see written in any ads, hardly at all. But I don't think that that's because it's "not AmE" — rather, it's just that you're gonna hear it only in certain registers (e.g., in discussions of dishes/porcelain/china; among people whose households have eggcups). In diners, the breakfast menu options virtually never highlight/feature/emphasize soft-boiled eggs, although some places list it in the "a la carte" section (I don't recall seeing it recently, but then again I haven't been looking for it), and I doubt that any diner would bat an eye at making them off-menu. In my view the word is not not AmE and not not BrE. To apply uncommon to it strikes me as not the right move; what is true about it is that it is not in most AmE speakers' active vocabulary but many of us would not bat an eye upon encountering it (passive vocabulary). Quercus solaris (talk) 15:11, 19 November 2024 (UTC)

I am English and I regularly eat boiled eggs out of an eggcup. It is a word that I would regularly use when necessary. When I was a child, in about 150 BC, my mother would place an egg cosy over my eggcup egg. Mihia (talk) 22:52, 19 November 2024 (UTC)

rzehakinid

How would this be pronounced? 115.188.72.131 07:44, 19 November 2024 (UTC)

Fascinating word! It's named after w:Anton Rzehak, the surname a form of Czech Řehák, so me personally I'd attempt /'ʒehɑ:kɪnɪd/, but I have no idea how the average biologist would say it. Hiztegilari (talk) 08:10, 19 November 2024 (UTC)

paludi-

paludicolous, paludicole, paludification, paludiphile, paludiphilia, paludarium, ... is this enough to suggest a prefix paludi-/palud-? (Various reference works do assert one: google books:"paludi-" swamp prefix.)
Likewise, telmatology, telmophage, telmophagic, telmophagous, telmatic: telm-?
Or do we prefer to view these as the Latin/Greek word + the various suffixes and endings? - -sche (discuss) 18:02, 19 November 2024 (UTC)

I think the most accurate answer is: diachronically likely the latter but synchronically nonetheless the former, in coexistence. In my opinion, Wiktionary ought to enter the prefix forms, while transparently admitting (e.g., via template:surf at etym of relevant words) that they represent synchronic reanalysis even if no one is sure whether they represent the true diachronic origin of any specific word. Quercus solaris (talk) 18:17, 19 November 2024 (UTC)

I just noticed that the OED, too, has an entry for paludi-. I'll create an entry later. - -sche (discuss) 21:10, 20 November 2024 (UTC)

kimono, yukata

Our entry kimono says that in Japanese, a yukata is not considered to be a type of kimono. Our entry yukata, however, defines itself as a kimono, as does w:Yukata. Is it correct that yukata are not considered to be kimono in Japanse? (Pinging @MathXplore as a recently-active Japanese-speaking editor, who may know.) If so, how can we define yukata better, as its own thing rather than as a kimono? - -sche (discuss) 21:16, 19 November 2024 (UTC)

The best recommendation for the general case (i.e., a pair of terms where some people construe them mentally as hyponymous whereas others construe them mentally as coordinate, which [mild ontologic variability] is not rare [a famous example in English is hot dog [the whole dish including the bun] versus sandwich]) is to get sufficiently hypernymic (i.e., one degree higher hypernymically) within the def, for example, "a garment that blah blah" or "a dish consisting of blah blah". Then the counterpart term can be listed at template:cot but marked (for example) "qq:sometimes hyponymous". Quercus solaris (talk) 21:54, 19 November 2024 (UTC)

Hello, I'm not an expert of this subject, but I would like to note what I found in my quick search.

• ja:ゆかた and w:ja:浴衣 defines yukata as one type of kimono, and the definition in jawiki is referenced.
• O-LEX Japanese-English Dictionary 2nd edition (published by Obunsha), Genius Japanese-English Dictionary 3rd edition (published by Taishukan), Grand Century Japanese-English Dictionary 3rd edition (published by Sanseido), and Shogakukan Progressive Japanese-English Dictionary 3rd edition (published by Shogakukan) explains yukata as a type of kimono, and their definitions are closer to w:Yukata.
• 明鏡国語辞典 3rd edition (published by Taishukan) also explains yukata as a type of kimono.
• During my quick search, I could not find sources that support the statement that "yukata are not considered to be kimono in Japanese."

I hope this helps the discussion. MathXplore (talk) 02:56, 23 November 2024 (UTC)

in regards to

I originally created in regards to as an "erroneous" form of in regard to. I see that this has now been changed to "alternative form". To me, "in regards to" is a pretty horrible error, and the first page of search results that I see for one versus the other seems to bear out the idea that "in regards to" is wrong. What do people here think? Mihia (talk) 22:45, 19 November 2024 (UTC)

I once researched all these variants (in respect to, regarding, with regard to, etc. etc.) and found that plural 'regards' was much more colloquial and much less common, but I couldn't rule it out as a mistake. In British English it is out there in the wild. In the BNC (British National Corpus) I found 1660 hits for 'with regard to' and only 56 for 'with regards to'; 286 for 'in regard to' and only 7 for 'in regards to'. There was nothing for 'with respects to' or 'in respects to', so the 'regards' ones are perhaps contaminated by the verb use in 'as regards' (but then I found uses of 'as regards to'). It's a very complicated factual situation, but as an editor of serious text I felt entitled to change the plural to the singular. But that doesn't mean it's a mistake: it's just a minority usage (and, I think, very much BrE). Hiztegilari (talk) 23:00, 19 November 2024 (UTC)

Agreed. Someone charged with editing documents for formal publication will do best to change it (so as to escape reproach), but that doesn't mean that it can be defined as erroneous descriptively. I'd put it in the same category as is comprised of: lots of people hate it, but lots of others are fine with it, and among the latter, some even pride themselves on refusing to avoid it; nonetheless, anyone who wants to avoid reproach (e.g., preparing for formal publication) had better adhere to the prescription (even if they don't take that particular preference personally either way), because the one option is bait to haters whereas the other is not. I'd also compare it to the prescription that AmE is "supposed" to change towards (which is prescriptively alleged to be specific to BrE) to toward: OK, fine, whatevs boss (give the baby its bottle, make the change), but the fact descriptively remains that many people don't consider either one objectionable, on either side of the Atlantic. To Wiktionary's credit, its usage note there, as I'm writing this, is very good and is superior to the butthurt version of the prescription (i.e., feeling revulsion and indignation about the difference). Admittedly, though, when one is editing for formal publication, one needs to apply all the standard prescriptions about AmE and BrE (whichever is at hand at the moment), to avoid being accused of failing to do so. Quercus solaris (talk) 23:37, 19 November 2024 (UTC)

I believe that we do our readers a great service by pointing out usages that are likely to be perceived as wrong. Although I personally dislike the label "proscribed", since I believe that many or even most readers will not understand what it means, and/or will mix it up with "prescribed", I recall that we have had that debate somewhere before, so I can add a label "proscribed by some" or something similar. Mihia (talk)

Wholeheartedly agree: WT should definitely let them know, without coming across as endorsing the prescription. The concern about vocabulary has an easy solution: when we do it right, the word is linked, so it can effortlessly be clicked to take them straight to the glossary entry, and then the Back button takes them back again. Quercus solaris (talk) 00:32, 20 November 2024 (UTC)

The living desert (3)

desert#Etymology_3 tells us of desert: "(usually in the plural, now archaic) That which is deserved or merited; a just punishment or reward." Its newest quotation is from John Rawls, A theory of justice, 1971. I'm now reading Michael J. Sandel, Justice: What's the right thing to do, first published 2009, which also uses desert (singular) in this sense. Admittedly, many of these instances of desert in the context of Rawls' Theory. However, what is perhaps the earliest in the book -- Underlying the bailout outrage was a belief about moral desert: The executives receiving the bonuses (and the companies receiving the bailouts) didn't deserve them. (FS&G paperback, 2010, ISBN 978-0-374-53250-5 , page 14) -- comes before any discussion of Rawls. (Later instances include The renunciation of moral desert as the basis of distributive justice is morally attractive but also disquieting (page 178).) Nowhere, I think, does either Rawls or Sandel comment on the term itself (perhaps suggesting that though it may be an archaism it deserves to be wiped clean of cobwebs). Rather, it seems to be a straightforward item in the vocabulary of each philosopher. Granted, desert is only called "archaic", and not "obsolete"; but I wonder if even the former is a good description.

(Is it perhaps just the first half of a formula, moral desert? No: And yet it may not be possible, politically or philosophically, to detach arguments about justice from debates about desert as decisively as Rawls and Dworkin suggest. (page 179).) -- Hoary (talk) 01:39, 20 November 2024 (UTC)

The collocation moral desert does put me in mind of the collocation moral hazard (as well as of course just deserts), and the two concepts strike me as perhaps belonging to a common contrast set (perhaps along with moral imperative), but I'm no philosopher. (The other thing brought to mind about the living desert is that the Western Desert lives and breathes / in forty-five degrees. Lol.) Quercus solaris (talk) 03:16, 20 November 2024 (UTC)

Quercus solaris, in recent years, moral desert has been much less common than moral panic, let alone moral hazard. (In the 1830s it was by far the commonest of the three.) Perhaps it would be fair to say that desert in this sense is now "rare". ("Well then, feel free to do something about the entry." / "Sorry, no: I've no appetite for reading up on the guidelines, etc. As it is, I don't even know how Wiktionary decides what is or isn't 'archaic'.") -- Hoary (talk) 04:53, 20 November 2024 (UTC)

Given the evidence that you've adduced, I think "now rare" or "now chiefly technical" [i.e., outside of the fossil word use in just deserts] seems more accurate than "archaic". I could be WT:BOLD about it myself, but I'll wait a while to see whether anyone else objects. Quercus solaris (talk) 05:18, 20 November 2024 (UTC)

I made the edit. Someone could overrule it, but I think it's hard to argue against, so I leaned WT:BOLD. Quercus solaris (talk) 17:23, 20 November 2024 (UTC)

And I've added a Sandel quote: it's easy to understand and almost half a century newer than the Rawls quote. The quote from Stoker uses a different template and usefully specifies the edition, etc; but it appears to do so via a Stoker-specific template. I'd have happily added that the quote from Justice is more specifically from the section "Justice, telos, and honor" within chapter 8, "Who deserves what? Aristotle"; and/or that it appears on p 187 of the NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010 edition (ISBN 978-0-374-53250-5; a year after the first edition because it's the paperback). -- Hoary (talk) 23:04, 20 November 2024 (UTC)

Not that it matters to the main point or conclusion of this thread, but some of those "moral desert" Ngram hits (no idea know how many) could be the other kind of "desert" altogether: "Where Athens, Rome and Sparta stood / There is a moral desert now." Mihia (talk) 20:14, 20 November 2024 (UTC)

Excellent point, Mihia. I was too careless. -- Hoary (talk) 23:04, 20 November 2024 (UTC)

Addition or edit request - sarnt, colloquial for sergeant

I am not familiar with etiology or the policies here. But I have identified something that should probably get either a new page or an edit of an existing page. The word sergeant is often spoken among enlisted soldiers of the US Army as sarnt or sar'nt (sarn't?). I'm not sure if it should be considered a single syllable - some people say it quickly such that the nt is barely heard, others say it a bit slower, but still faster than the full word sergeant. This also extends to other forms of sergeants, such as a drill sergeant or first sergeant (which itself may be shortened to firsarnt or firsarn). Also, the T is almost always pronounced at least somewhat, with "firsarn" being the only exception I have ever heard.

This pronunciation is very widespread, but exclusively spoken, and never written as anything other than sergeant. So, I'm not sure if it should get its own page or a modification of existing pages. If one of you could take the right course of action, that'd probably be best :) 73.130.40.254 20:16, 20 November 2024 (UTC)

I see that sarnt is well attested in informal written communication. So the form is not only a pronunciation variant orally–aurally but also has its corresponding pronunciation spelling (in informal-only use). It is comparable to nomsayin' in that respect, as well as tryna. I'll enter it sometime, via (1) a transcription for the variant at sergeant#Pronunciation and (2) a headword entry for sarnt that is quite short ({{lb|en|informal}} {{pronunciation spelling of|en|sergeant}} {{syn|en|sarge}}). Quercus solaris (talk) 20:54, 20 November 2024 (UTC)

rude (pronunciation)

Why is rude still pronounced /ɹuːd/, rather than Great Vowel Shifted from /uː/ to /aʊ/ like loud? - -sche (discuss) 21:17, 20 November 2024 (UTC)

@-sche: Because it was /riu̯d/ in Middle English, not */ruːd/. If it weren't for the loss of /j/ after /ɹ/ in (AFAIK) all accents of modern English, we'd be pronouncing it /ɹjuːd/. I assume that in Welsh English, where Middle English /iu̯/ has become /ɪʊ̯/ rather than /(j)uː/, it's still pronounced /ɹɪʊ̯d/, but we'd need a speaker of Welsh English to confirm. (According to WP there are also some working-class accents of Southern U.S. English that have /ɪʊ̯/ rather than /(j)uː/). The real question is why room didn't undergo the Great Vowel Movement and is still pronounced the same as Old English rūm. —Mahāgaja · talk 21:56, 20 November 2024 (UTC)

This is since Middle English /uː/ does not diphthongise before labials. The pertinent evidence is below; note that some words have counteretymological spellings since English orthographic conventions postdate the merger of ME /uː/ and /oː/ here:

• Before /p/: croup, droop, soup, stoop < ME croupe, droupen, soupe, stoupen /ˈkruːp(ə) ˈdruːpən ˈsuːp(ə) ˈstuːpən/
• Before /m/: room, tomb < ME roum, tombe /ˈruːm ˈtuːmb(ə)~ˈtuːm(ə)/
• Before /v/: dove, shove < ME douve, schouven /ˈduːv(ə) ˈʃuːvən/; ME /uː/ is regularly shortened in this position, thus remaining distinct from ME /oː/ > /uː/, though there is some confusion in Early Modern English.

Hazarasp (parlement · werkis) 05:37, 30 November 2024 (UTC)

Interesting. Palude and rude seem to have been used as rhymes in Middle English: is the fact that they still rhyme expected, or unexpected? (If unexpected, should I surmise that, like salute, palude remained sufficiently closely associated with the Latin etymon and its Romance reflexes which have /u/ to keep its /u/, whereas loud and lout shifted?) - -sche (discuss) 14:57, 30 November 2024 (UTC)

German -falls

@Sersovi (Notifying Matthias Buchmeier, -sche, Jberkel, Mahagaja, Fay Freak, Helrasincke): I'm not sure if I agree with the analysis of this as a suffix. Aren't all supposed derivations more readily explained as univerbations, as done here? — Fytcha〈 T | L | C 〉 21:18, 20 November 2024 (UTC)

I think the analysis as a suffix makes the most sense synchronically. It may have started out as a univerbation, but it's become a suffix. That isn't rare; it happened with -erweise as well and with -mente/-ment in the Romance languages. —Mahāgaja · talk 21:45, 20 November 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for the remarks. Just as @Mahagaja points out, I also tend to think that nowadays “-falls” has much more the character of a suffix than of a compositional (univerbation) element. It is not uncommon in German that original adverbial genitive phrases end up developing more or less productive suffixes (like the cited -erweise, but also -halber, -maßen, -seits, and others). All those lexemes are widely considered suffixes today. In the case of "-falls" there are nowadays examples that morphologically can not be explained well as an original univerbation, such as “ebenfalls” (see here) or “gleichfalls” (here). Sersovi (talk) 23:21, 20 November 2024 (UTC)

@Sersovi: Just a heads-up, for synchronic analyses, we usually put them after the real etymology using {{surf|...}} or 'Analyzable as {{af|...}}'. — Fytcha〈 T | L | C 〉 21:53, 20 November 2024 (UTC)

Thanks, I will consider this. Sersovi (talk) 23:24, 20 November 2024 (UTC)

The question has to be asked whether they are arbitrarily formed enough to be a suffix. It could well be imagined to have been a century ago already, peculiarities of jurist usage were noted, but it is still not that productive and one rather forms constructions im Bestreitensfalle, im Abweisungsfalle etc., I don’t find *klagefalls, albeit klageweise. Therefore we barely have any entries for this alleged suffix. Sure, in some linguistics textbook one can use it as an example for German morphology, as we also have reconstructions that don’t exist in diachronic books, but the dictionary entry is stuff for deletion. Fay Freak (talk) 08:35, 21 November 2024 (UTC)

The productivity of a compounding morpheme does not determine whether or not it is an affix; there are many morphemes that function as no-doubt affixes much less productive than -falls, others are not productive at all anymore (e.g. emp-, -sal) and again many whose productivity is restricted to only a certain field.

I think the question is whether suffixoids can be generally classified as suffixes in Wiktionary or not (just as mere composition). There is room for discussion here. A case for -falls would be the already many present suffixoids with a suffix clasification here that behave much like -falls (e.g. -mal, -arm, -reich). Other cases are even more dubious not to be considered compositional elements (e.g. -äugig, -heim, schein-), and still there they are.

Note aside: there are many more entries not present in the Category page (see gegebenenfalls, schlimmstenfalls, nötigenfalls, widrigenfalls, etc). And other words still do not have an entry in Wiktionary (erforderlichenfalls, höchstenfalls, günstigstenfalls).

*klagefalls happen not to (be able to) exist because it uses a nominal base, not an adjective or a pronoun. Sersovi (talk) 10:26, 21 November 2024 (UTC)

Well this shows that it isn’t in fact a suffix (but a suffixoid), if for etymological consideration the speaker needs to use an adjective (or demonstrative adjective, relative adjective, etc., which used in isolation are pronouns) properly inflected as if the noun is still there—not that arbitrary. Your page has a case no less if “derived terms” are thus displayed more tidily, and apparently editors are able to distinguish affixoids from affixes and compounded stems, so that we have to make related part-of-speech headers official. Is the same with scheiß, isn’t it. Somebody needs to think it through so we know which existing or eventual pages will be affected, at least for German. Fay Freak (talk) 11:09, 21 November 2024 (UTC)

motor

Adj. sense:

• Relating to motor cars.

  Motor insurance is expensive for youngsters.

I'm unconvinced that "motor" is an adjective in that example. AH has "motor oil" as an example for a similar adj. sense. Collins has "motor mechanic" and "motor industry". These don't seem convincing to me either. What do you think? Is this even an adjective at all? Mihia (talk) 22:43, 20 November 2024 (UTC)

No, it's a noun. The construction is that of "accident insurance" (*"accidental insurance"), "liability insurance" (*"liable insurance"), "household insurance" (....). I didn't think there was an adjectival derivative of household but looked in its Wiktionary entry. This presents the fiction that household doubles as an adjective. It does not. The attributive use of nouns is entirely normal in Standard English (and, I imagine, in any English). (Note that, unlike the vast majority of adjectives, they don't work predicatively: *"The insurance was motor"; *"The insurance was household".) -- Hoary (talk) 23:15, 20 November 2024 (UTC)

• Sent to RFD. Mihia (talk) 18:44, 22 November 2024 (UTC)

English disway; eggcorn?

Is this really an eggcorn? I thought it was simply di- +‎ sway. — Fytcha〈 T | L | C 〉 13:23, 21 November 2024 (UTC)

Hey, that's an interesting one. Synchronically analyzable as not an eggcorn (using di-#Etymology_2), although possibly diachronically an eggcorn. I would expect that it is impossible to know who first formed the word and which way they did it. The etymology section ought to get across the following concepts: "synchronically either (1) di- +‎ sway or (2) an eggcorn of dissuade; diachronically unknown." Then the def should be just "[syn of|en|dissuade]". Quercus solaris (talk) 17:59, 21 November 2024 (UTC)

Perhaps you can look at it disway or datway. Ha ha. But seriously, I cannot get my head around how "di- +‎ sway" can mean "dissuade". Mihia (talk) 21:37, 21 November 2024 (UTC)

It's because if you're diswaying them (i.e., discouraging them from believing or doing a certain thing), then you're swaying them (i.e., sway#Verb'ing their thinking = influencing, steering, causing to incline, causing to lean) away from (i.e., di-#Etymology_2 = dis-#Etymology = reverse, opposite, removal, not) the direction that you discourage. It would be equivalent to de-#Prefix-sway#Verb'ing them as well, if desway weren't a lexical gap. Quercus solaris (talk) 22:55, 21 November 2024 (UTC)

Typically if you "di(s)-verb" someone/something, it means the opposite of "verb". E.g. "disqualify someone", "disprove something", "disregard something", etc. -- or even "dissuade" itself. By that token, "di(s)-sway" would mean the opposite of "sway", i.e. the opposite of the suggested meaning. But I guess you may be right, there may be a sense in which "dis" can reinforce the "away from" sense of "sway" rather than negate it. I find it a bit of a stretch personally that this could be a "genuine" etymology. More likely it seems like a mishearing/misunderstanding, but I could be wrong. Mihia (talk) 00:14, 22 November 2024 (UTC)

It's the same way that dis- acts in dissuade. Look at dissuade#Etymology. It's directly parallel with that. Quercus solaris (talk) 00:20, 22 November 2024 (UTC)

Synchronic etymologies are "genuine" by the very nature of their unassailable mechanism; they are genuinely synchronic, regardless of whether they are diachronic. Quercus solaris (talk) 00:25, 22 November 2024 (UTC)

Oh yeah, sorry, you're right, that one does seem similar. Mihia (talk) 00:31, 22 November 2024 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ I edited the entry WT:BOLDly. Quercus solaris (talk) 01:07, 22 November 2024 (UTC)

that

• (Northern England, Manchester, Liverpool) Clipping of that is; used to reinforce the preceding assertion or statement.

  That's proper funny, that.

Is it true that "that" in this example is a shortening of "that is"? I don't perceive it that way. Mihia (talk) 19:32, 21 November 2024 (UTC)

I know what you mean, in terms of how it feels mentally, and yet when one considers he's proper funny, he is, one notices that expressing the verb is is necessary idiomatically when the pronoun changes. There's an underlying unity across those. I think an issue involved is that that is as a unit is different from that is as a sum of parts, but one mustn't let the former influence one's appreciation of the latter in this case. But clearly it is not a clipping of that is; rather, I think I'd describe it as an ellipsis of that is (SoP). Quercus solaris (talk) 20:02, 21 November 2024 (UTC)

I think the difference with "he's proper funny, he" may just be that, unlike "that", we do not use "he" emphatically in this way. It would be "he's proper funny, him". Mihia (talk) 20:14, 21 November 2024 (UTC)

I wouldn't say so. It's an extraposition of the subject with a linked pronoun inside the clause. It can go before or after the clause. "My brother, he's got this amazing collection of seashells." "They're really weird people, your parents." The extraposed part can also be a pronoun: "Me, I think you're crazy." Hiztegilari (talk) 20:10, 21 November 2024 (UTC)

• Sent to RFD. Mihia (talk) 18:39, 22 November 2024 (UTC)

Meant to add here earlier and forgot. The same thing that can happen with the following three forms is an underlying force happening with "that" above:

He's funnier than I am. [Perfectly acceptable idiomatically.]

He's funnier than me. [Perfectly acceptable idiomatically, although it has a long history of being proscribed in a misguided way that does not give idiomaticness its due.]

He's funnier than I. [Stilted; preferred by the aforementioned prescriptivism, but misguided because it violates normal idiom; it code-switches in a way that its prescribers do not adequately understand and appreciate.]

—

That's proper funny, that is. [Perfectly acceptable idiomatically to most ears.]

That's proper funny, that. [works as either subjective case or objective case with a zero morph difference marking the case]

—

He's proper funny, he is. [Perfectly acceptable idiomatically to most ears.]

He's proper funny, him. [Perfectly acceptable idiomatically to some ears, some more than others, lectally.]

He's proper funny, he. [Wholly unidiomatic; not done; not even misguidedly prescribed by anyone.]

Quercus solaris (talk) 22:40, 25 November 2024 (UTC)

if

1. Supposing that, assuming that, in the circumstances that; used to introduce a condition or choice.

   If it rains, I'll get wet.

   I'll do it next week, if I have time.

2. Supposing that; used with past or past perfect subjunctive indicating that the condition is closed.

   I would prefer it if you took your shoes off.

   I would be unhappy if you had not talked with me yesterday.

   If I were you, I wouldn't go there alone.

I am slightly struggling to understand this. What is a "closed" condition in #2?

The whole distinction would make sense to me if #1 was about conditions that may be (or may prove to be) either true or false, and #2 about counterfactuals.

However, is "I would prefer it if you took your shoes off" a counterfactual? It doesn't seem so to me.

So is #2 about something else?

What do you think? Mihia (talk) 18:20, 23 November 2024 (UTC)

I agree with you; I think it all would make sense if only the "shoes" ux were moved up/moved out of the sense where it currently resides. Quercus solaris (talk) 18:43, 23 November 2024 (UTC)

PS: Perhaps the writer of the "shoes" ux had in mind a situation where the shoe-wearer has already refused to doff them and the displeased speaker is commenting afterward. But that's a stretch, so it shouldn't be given as a ux to teach WT readers; ux items should be straightforward. I'll remove it from that spot soon if no one adduces any great counterargument in favor of it. Quercus solaris (talk) 19:09, 23 November 2024 (UTC)

I edited the entry WT:BOLDly. Quercus solaris (talk) 20:52, 23 November 2024 (UTC)

if (2)

• Considering the fact that; given that.

The drain's blocked — and if the drain's blocked, the water won't flow.

• 1596, Edmund Spenser, “Book I”, in The Faerie Queene. […], part I (books I–III), London: […] [Richard Field] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC, stanza ii, page 66:

  O what of Gods then boots it to be borne, / If old Aveugles ſonnes ſo euill heare?

I added the "drain" example (I don't understand the other example). This is the most blatant kind of example that I could think of, where the truth of the fact is explicitly stated, yet still it does not feel to me like it means "given that". Still it feels like a condition, but one that is known to be true, if that makes any sense. What do you think? Are there better (modern) examples? Mihia (talk) 10:49, 24 November 2024 (UTC)

Perhaps whenever or when makes a better definition for that sense. (The drain's blocked — and whenever the drain's blocked, the water won't flow; The drain's blocked — and when the drain's blocked, the water won't flow.) Although given that also works (The drain's blocked — and given that the drain's blocked, the water won't flow), it has a slightly different feel regarding potential versus foreclosed. (If mama ain't happy, ain't nobody happy; When mama ain't happy, ain't nobody happy; a third option also works etically even though it breaks character emically regarding register (that is, it code-switches): Given that mama ain't happy, ain't nobody happy.) This line of thought also reminds me of how German uses wenn and wann in various ways that English speakers find interesting to learn about (wenn ich den Blah-blah hätte, etc etc). Quercus solaris (talk) 19:19, 24 November 2024 (UTC)

"when"/"whenever" could be yet another nuance to consider in the definitions, but I don't personally feel that the "drain" example particularly, or necessarily, suggests this. To me it could as easily be the case "The drain's blocked. It's never been blocked before ... but if it's blocked, the water won't flow." Mihia (talk) 18:18, 25 November 2024 (UTC)

"I know you didn't" - phrase? verb?

There's a construction I associate with AAVE to accuse someone of doing something wrong, using "I know you didn't just..." or "I know he didn't just..." (as a kind of mock innocent doubt that the offending party could have dared commit the wrong). For instance:

• 2004 03, T. Fulton, Da Joka: Frisco's Finest, Xlibris Corporation, →ISBN, page 179:

  I know he didn't just call me what I think he did. He didn't just call me a stupid bitch did he? Oh kay! And he really thought he was getting some from me, please. I don't give a fuck how cute he is.

• 2017 October 13, Nikki Chartier, Moonlight, Nicole Chartier:

  "Oh , I know you didn't just go there," I snap.

• 2024 April 12, Kasey Infinita, Warriors' Alliance - Vol. 4, Youcanprint, →ISBN:

  "Dan's also killed hundreds," I pointed out. "That doesn't make her dangerous."
  Karter gave me a deadpan look. "I know you didn't just say that."

What's the best way to format that? As a verb "know someone didn't", as a phrase, something else? Smurrayinchester (talk) 14:39, 25 November 2024 (UTC)

know someone didn’t just – it looks like SOP, does it? Tollef Salemann (talk) 15:10, 25 November 2024 (UTC)

• I don't especially know this as AAVE (don't really know anything about AAVE), but I am familiar generally with people saying e.g. "I'm sure you didn't call me an idiot" when they are called an idiot, or "He definitely didn't just say that you were stupid" when someone has said just that. I would consider it jokey-ironic in the same way that many things can be said ironically. Is your particular "I know you didn't just..." definitely enough of a distinct thing to have its own entry? Mihia (talk) 18:29, 25 November 2024 (UTC)

nothing if not

Or definition currently reads "to an extreme degree", which to me seems a bit too, um, extreme. For example, "He's nothing if not persistent" to me just means "he's certainly persistent", not really "he's persistent to an extreme degree". Yet M-W dictionary also has "to an extreme degree" as a definition, so I dunno. Any thoughts? Mihia (talk) 18:23, 25 November 2024 (UTC)

I agree. A def of "very definitely" or "most certainly" is accurate, whereas a def of "to an extreme degree" is (to be fair) perhaps sometimes applicable as a second sense, but it is not the first sense. I have touched that entry before and did not think hard enough about it at the time. Quercus solaris (talk) 18:57, 25 November 2024 (UTC)

I edited the entry WT:BOLDly. If anyone begs to differ, they're free to. Quercus solaris (talk) 19:01, 25 November 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for doing that. The first definition now reads much more as I understand the expression. I'm not sure I am familiar with the second meaning as distinct from the first, though. Would it be possible to add an example for this to show how it is different? Mihia (talk) 20:03, 25 November 2024 (UTC)

There's metonymy involved in it, to a slippery degree beyond denotation, where connotation is all that's left, but it's not nothing. The more I ponder it, the more I suspect that it is subtly catachrestic for nothing but, and semantically adjacent to good and, in a way that's only connotative, not denotative, but not not a thing though. In other words, the selfsame ux can be read both ways. Kind of like the dividing line between spelling pronunciation and eye dialect — it can't always be codified in writing alone because it hinges on unspoken intent. The outer limits of what lexicography can write down. Quercus solaris (talk) 21:54, 25 November 2024 (UTC)

I believe that if we cannot show examples that fit one definition but not the other then we should not have separate definitions. Mihia (talk) 00:15, 26 November 2024 (UTC)

That's a prescription that can usually work but can't fit invariably onto all aspects of natural language as she is spoke. There are many counterexamples, anytime irony, understatement, meiosis, sarcasm, metonymy, and other forces are at play. Consider he's a bit odd, isn't he: That same utterance can be a question seeking confirmation about a slight degree of oddness or an assertion about a large degree of oddness that the speaker considers a foregone conclusion. Context is king, including the layers of context that can't be written into an isolated ux. Quercus solaris (talk) 00:34, 26 November 2024 (UTC)

I don't see enough difference to make separate senses. The entry seems over-complicated to me. Can others comment on this, please? Are there two senses or one? Mihia (talk) 15:11, 26 November 2024 (UTC)

I don't really see a difference either. PUC – 18:02, 26 November 2024 (UTC)

OK, I can rework it into a single senseid with a semicolon delimiter before the "sometimes, obliquely" flavor. Will do. Quercus solaris (talk) 18:33, 26 November 2024 (UTC)

Done. The degree connotation has refs of both MWU and Collins, as commented there. Quercus solaris (talk) 18:45, 26 November 2024 (UTC)

≐

The description for this symbol is given as "approaches the limit", but my understanding is that it may stand for approximate equivalency (≈) instead, where use of the "≈" symbol may be discouraged. I'm Canadian, so I'm curious if it is used like this elsewhere, and whether it merits being mentioned. Người mang giấm (talk) 03:50, 26 November 2024 (UTC)

Are 'word of the year' quotes suitable to be Wiktionary quotes

Yesterday I added the quote below to Enshittification,today I see it was deleted (with no contact, reason given or discussuion). To me, this well written quote adds to the understanding of the word, and its inclusion should stay. Thoughts, please? ---- Quote: "24 November 25, Macquarie Dictionary, ‎[5]: Enshittification - A very basic Anglo-Saxon term wrapped in affixes which elevate it to being almost formal; almost respectable. This word captures what many of us feel is happening to the world and to so many aspects of our lives at the moment. - The Committee for Macquarie Dictionary Word of the Year 2024. Glenn.mar.oz (talk) 23:44, 26 November 2024" --- (BTW, you may note online, Enshittification as Macquarie Dic's 2024 WOTY was written up by many newspapers globally yesterday. just BTW & fyi.) Glenn.mar.oz (talk) 00:01, 27 November 2024 (UTC)

w:Use-mention distinction. Vininn126 (talk) 00:05, 27 November 2024 (UTC)

thank you, yes, will add that if after this discussion I decide to re-add the quotation. Glenn.mar.oz (talk) 21:49, 27 November 2024 (UTC)

And here I add the more general question, are 'word of the year' committee quotations and the like deemed suitable as quotation entries? I say they are, as they say much about the word, and the word at a certain point in time. And note I mean added as quotes - I say they are quotes. (I know they could perhaps should, also exist as references, but I ask here are they deemed suitable to be quotes. I say they are quotes, therefore should be.) Glenn.mar.oz (talk) 21:38, 27 November 2024 (UTC)

@Glenn.mar.oz: Wiktionary is a descriptive dictionary based on usage, not on authoritative sources. It doesn't matter if there are 100 dictionaries, grammars and usage guides saying not to use a particular term such as irregardless- three independent, verifiable examples of usage that meet the requirements of our Criteria for inclusion mean we have an entry for it. Of course, we would fail in our descriptive mission if we didn't label it as proscribed, as well as pointing out when it would be considered a misspelling or offensive.

Quotes should show usage of the term, not what someone said about it. English is a well-documented language. We're a bit less strict with less-documented languages, but we still would use quotes that are in with the definitions to demonstrate usage and cite and/or quote references in etymologies, reference sections or usage notes. Also, per WT:NPOV, we would try to avoid even appearing to express opinions, including ones such as those in the quote. It does arguably use the term, in a very indirect way, when it says "This word captures what many of us feel is happening[...]", but it's not very good as an illustration of usage. Chuck Entz (talk) 22:34, 27 November 2024 (UTC)

OE bōia "boy" and related thoughts

Some questions about Old English bōia "boy":

• Is it really /ˈboː.i.ɑ/, with three syllables? Couldnt this instead be a transcription of an intervocalic /j/? Consider that we have it evolving from PGmc *bōjō. It would be quite unusual for a two-syllable word to expand into a three-syllable word, and then contract back to a form with /j/ in Middle English and forward.
• Can we assume the given name Boia represents this word, particularly given that it apparently once meant "younger brother"? As such it would seem likely that it was a common nickname, which in those times may have come to be used as one's preferred name. It may have even been a rare birth name for a younger brother. The same pronunciation question applies to this name.
• If the above is true, can we move the lowercase bōia out of the reconstruction space?
• If all of the above are true, I would like to mention boy on the etymology page for Boycott, which seems to bring up every theory except the most obvious one. Or else we could remove that paragraph and just have people read the etymology at Boia, which may or may not mention bōia depending on what we do above.

Thanks, —Soap— 17:21, 27 November 2024 (UTC)

Even if we cant be certain that Boia is bōia, I think it at least merits a mention unless we have some scholarly paper somewhere that's looked into it and definitively ruled it out, since it seems otherwise to be so obvious that I wouldn't think we'd need to write a research paper arguing for it. —Soap— 17:28, 27 November 2024 (UTC)

@Soap: "Can we assume[...]?". No. It's one possibility, but we don't know enough about the language and its linguistic environment to answer questions without context like that with any certainty. "If the above is true, can we move the lowercase bōia out of the reconstruction space?" No, if it's not attested as a common noun. Chuck Entz (talk) 22:49, 27 November 2024 (UTC)

@Chuck Entz @Soap I don't see any issue with adding a note in the etymology of Boia like "Possibly connected to *boia (“younger brother”), unattested as a common noun."

Pinging @Leasnam regarding the pronunciation. This, that and the other (talk) 00:20, 5 December 2024 (UTC)

I tend to agree with OP on the pronunciation. I can't imagine it being anything but /ˈboː.jɑ/ Leasnam (talk) 00:42, 5 December 2024 (UTC)

value

• The quality (positive or negative) that renders something desirable or valuable.

1. Am I missing something here? How can a negative quality render something desirable or valuable? Even if a normally negative quality is desirable in some instance, it is still positive within that context, I would say.

2. On a more subtle point, is "value" definitely the "quality that renders something desirable or valuable"? If I say e.g. "this idea has value", is it the value that renders it valuable, or is it in fact some other other quality that renders it valuable, and the "value" is the property of desirability or valuableness so obtained? Mihia (talk) 22:40, 29 November 2024 (UTC)

age

1. (countable) The whole duration of a being, whether human, animal, plant, or other kind, being alive.

Somehow I can't at the moment grasp what this definition is referring to. Can anyone give an example? Mihia (talk) 15:36, 30 November 2024 (UTC)

My first guess was that it might've been trying to cover things like "during the age of the T rex, ..." (the whole period of time when the T rex existed), but upon looking at the entry and seeing that it's sense 1, and looking through the edit history and seeing that in the early days, the entry only had this sense 1, without what is now sense 2, my new guess is that it's trying to cover the same thing as sense 2, but doing such a poor job of it that someone came along and added sense 2 as a separate sense, rather than just improving the wording of sense 1, because they didn't even realize sense 1 was trying to cover the same thing...? Does anyone see a reason we couldn't just merge it into (or remove it as redundant to) sense 2? - -sche (discuss) 17:25, 30 November 2024 (UTC)

We previously had "A particular period of time in history, as distinguished from others", examples including "the age of Pericles", which I thought might cover cases such as "the age of T Rex", but anyway I have beefed that up now with a subsense "The time or era in history when someone or something was alive or flourished", which should clearly cover your case. Mihia (talk) 18:29, 30 November 2024 (UTC)

I wonder whether the distinction between (1) and (2) is, or originally was, supposed to be that (1) is a more general sense of length of existence, that would if quantified of course have to be measured in some units of time, but doesn't have a strong sense of being or needing to be quantified, whereas (2) is a sense like "What is the age of your child?" -- "He's four". I think I might try to combine them somehow along these lines, unless anyone has a better idea .... Mihia (talk) 22:03, 30 November 2024 (UTC)

I note that MWOnline has 13 senses and subsenses for the noun age, with as many as five subsenses for a given sense.

MW 1913 has: "The whole duration of a being, whether animal, vegetable, or other kind; lifetime."

So the meaning evidently depends on the word whole. So, if a human dies after 75 years, said human is of age 75 for eternity thereafter. IOW, this def. only apply to entities that are no longer alive or in irrealis usage. If that is what was/is intended, it does not seem like the most common use of age, though it is reasonably common in: "They died (at) age 30.", "They were age 30 when they died." Its placement as first definition seems to be based on the primacy of such a definition of the Latin etymon. DCDuring (talk) 23:18, 30 November 2024 (UTC)

This puts me in mind of archaic language in the Bible; e.g. I find "And Jacob lived in the land of Egypt seventeen years: so the age of Jacob was a hundred forty-seven years", meaning, as I understand it, that he died at that age, but in another version "the whole age of Jacob" (my emphasis), as if the former might not be understood by modern readers. Mihia (talk) 00:36, 1 December 2024 (UTC)

It seems to just be a rare sense of "lifespan". I edited to add two usage examples that I could find repeated examples of and moved the definition lower.--Urszag (talk) 00:32, 1 December 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for moving it off the top and adding the examples. I think the article looks less confusing now to the average reader. Mihia (talk) 00:47, 1 December 2024 (UTC)

age (2)

2. (countable) The number of full years, months, days, hours, etc., that someone, or something, has been alive.

What is the age of your oldest child?

14. (uncountable) That part of the duration of a being or a thing which is between its beginning and any given time; specifically the size of that part.

What is the present age of a man, or of the earth?

Apart from the fact that sense 14 refers to "things" as well as "beings", which sense 2 could also usefully do, by addition of "or in existence", what is the difference between sense 14 and sense 2? I think we may assume that sense 2 includes the possibility of referring to age at "any given time" as well as "now" without needing to explicitly say so. Can anyone see what sense 14 is getting at? Mihia (talk) 15:51, 30 November 2024 (UTC)

I read sense 2 as being an extension of sense 14. If you look at the ways the usex questions might be answered, the question under sense 2 could be answered "21", whereas the answer to the question under sense 14 would have to be something like "21 years" (including a unit of measurement). Sense 2 is also restricted (perhaps unnecessarily) to living things. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 22:13, 1 December 2024 (UTC)

Right, sense 2 (now sense 1) has been reworked, including so as to include non-living things, and I have now also added a usage note to explain the point that you raised. I think sense 14 ought to be covered one way or another now, so I think I'll send it to RFD. Mihia (talk) 15:25, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

Oh, it's already been removed. That's fine then. Mihia (talk) 15:27, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

age (3)

"The people who live during a particular period."

No examples presently given. I can find e.g. "Our age expects something useful from all people" and "This age thinks well of our departed Bishop", but equally I can find "This century thinks of itself as digital and connected", so on that basis we ought to have "The people who live during a particular century" as a definition at "century". It seems to me that examples such as these are personifications of the age or era, and probably won't do. What do you think? Or are there other, better examples? Mihia (talk) 19:07, 30 November 2024 (UTC)

Rather than personification, I see it as metonomy: using the period during which people live (a characteristic of such people) to identify them as a group. Perhaps the choice between the two devices is a matter of personal attitude/philosophy.

But, as to your main point, any period of time could fit similar cases, though periods of at least a year seem required for application outside of special contexts. Unsurprisingly, the same kind of metonomy/personification(?) occurs with places (town, neighborhood, state/province/etc, country, section, region). DCDuring (talk) 20:30, 30 November 2024 (UTC)

Right, so you could say e.g. "this city believes that ...". So are you basically agreeing that examples such as the ones that I gave for "age" do not justify a separate sense? My feeling is not, else where would it end? (Of course, there could also be solid examples that I just can't think of at the moment.) Mihia (talk) 20:56, 30 November 2024 (UTC)

• Sent to RFV.

питам

@Chernorizets @Kiril kovachev @IYI681

The entry for the Bulgarian imperfective verb питам defines the perfective form as попитам, is this correct?

• The references do not mention a perfective form.
• The entry for попитам defines попитвам as the imperfective, not питам.

SimonWikt (talk) 22:24, 30 November 2024 (UTC)

age (4)

(countable) A generation.

There are three ages living in her house.

How common is this sense? The sentence given seems stilted to me, not how I recall hearing anyone speak, and google:"four ages living in" returns just three hits to me: an Indian text, a Nigerian government text, and a text (apparently relatively formal? about matrilocality and other technical terms for ways of residing) from UCLA. Is this sense {{lb|en|uncommon}} or {{lb|en|now|uncommon}}, formal, dated,...? - -sche (discuss) 16:54, 1 December 2024 (UTC)

I had never heard of it and probably wouldn't have understood the example sentence, at least not out of context. I eyeballed it recently when I was looking at this article and found just enough to persuade me that it exists (somewhere, somewhen). Mihia (talk) 18:29, 1 December 2024 (UTC)

I have tentatively tagged it as "uncommon, possibly dated". - -sche (discuss) 03:21, 4 December 2024 (UTC)

December 2024

Wrong IPA transcription for all Latin lemmas borrowed by Greek ending in -ĕ͜us

Latin never avoids diphthongs when they are possible, but it's true that root and ending are separated by hiatus even if a diphthong is possible.

But in Greek root and ending usually make a diphthong if possible, e.g.: Capaneus, from Greek Καπανεύς, must actually be divided as Cắ-pă-ne͜us (like the original Greek: Κᾰ-πᾰ-νεύς) and not Că-pắ-nĕ-us. The accent is on the first syllable. Wiktionary interprets all the Greek terms ending in -ĕus that end actually with a long syllable as a term that end with a pyrrhic/dibrach. This is not a little mistake: we have metrical evidence by poetry that those terms have a long final syllable in the nominative and not two short syllables. This is crucial because in Latin is very important the correct division in syllables to interact with literature (not only poetry but prose too) and it is fundamental to determine the stress accent's position: not a secondary factor. It could be possible that some ancient Latin speakers, in a popular speech, could have pronounced Ca-pá-ne-us, but if they did it's without doubt an hypercorrectism.

However, it is true that all the inflected forms adds a syllable: even in the accusative singular that have an apparent diphthong (but this example is right for every case and number besides nominative — or vocative identical to nominative, if it exists) must actually be divided as Că-pắ-nĕ-um. I don't know for sure whether the accent in this case could have been kept in the fourth last syllable (we know cases where some nouns apparently broke the law of the penultimate syllable, like the form Valĕ́rī with the accent on the penultimate because of analogy with Valerius: the pronunciation Válĕrī is an educated hypercorrectism; the case of ca-pa-ne-um could be an example of accent's retention by analogy with the nominative. Other examples of broken accent's rules, but less pertinent with this specific case, are the oxytone words or the words ending with a tribach or a dactyl composed with an enclitic that retains the accent in the same syllable, like lī́mĭnăque — in this case with a possible secondary accent on the enclitic -quĕ̀, but this is an other story): the three accent's laws describes with precision the accent's position of most Latin word, but not all words: linguistic phenomena could change the final product from the expectations of a only synchronic approach.

Neverthless, this is a secondary question and the certain thing is that Greek words ending in ending in -ĕ͜us scan -ĕ͜us as a long syllable. I don't have sources and I did't read sources about the possible retaining of the accent in those specific cases.

Other names are Atre͜us, Briare͜us, Eurysthe͜us, Idomene͜us, Morphe͜us, Nere͜us, Oile͜us, Prote͜us, Typhōe͜us and maybe others. Not all these nouns change their accent, like Nere͜us or Eurysthe͜us, but still the correct syllables' division is fundamental.

Please, correct this. CarloButi1902 (talk) 16:37, 1 December 2024 (UTC)

Pinging a few of our active Latin editors, with apologies that I don't have time to look into it myself: @Brutal Russian, Lambiam, Nicodene: can you evaluate whether this is right? - -sche (discuss) 16:02, 7 December 2024 (UTC)

@-sche: @CarloButi1902 is correct about all the cited forms. Nereus for instance is always disyllabic, as one can confirm by searching the name on Pedecerto. Native Latin words can also have an eu diphthong, such as seu.

However, we do not use tie-bars to indicate diphthongs in Latin headwords and inflection tables (aurum not *a͡urum), as CarloButi1902 has done in edits such as this. Nicodene (talk) 22:11, 7 December 2024 (UTC)

Pisin in the toilet

According to toilet:

Descendants

• Tok Pisin: toilet

Anyone care to venture an opinion as to whether this is a genuine entry or someone's little joke? Personally I am not averse to an occasional little bit of humour in examples, say, but I wouldn't agree with actually making stuff up, if that indeed is what this is. Mihia (talk) 22:04, 1 December 2024 (UTC)

@Mihia: See Tok Pisin toilet, which was added in 2017 by @Mar vin kaiser, who has done lots of good work in languages of China and the Philippines and has not, to my knowledge, ever stooped to adding nonsense. That said, I notice that the translation table at toilet has liklik haus and smolhaus (both literally meaning "little house/building"), but not toilet. Since English is the main lexifier for Tok Pisin (the name comes from "talk business"), a borrowing would make sense- but it's hard to say whether it's right without knowing the language. Chuck Entz (talk) 02:10, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

@Mihia, Chuck Entz: This was like 7 years ago, so it's hard to recall, but I do remember finding a Tok Pisin dictionary, and just adding words that I found there. --Mar vin kaiser (talk) 02:47, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

OK, great, just a coincidence then. Thanks for looking at it. Mihia (talk) 09:59, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

@Chuck Entz: The Tok Pisin entry uses {{inh}}, not {{bor}} (we have Tok Pisin set as a descendant of English). J3133 (talk) 16:58, 7 December 2024 (UTC)

Some collections of Tok Pisin phrases giving toilet i stap we? for where is the toilet?: [8], [9], [10]. (The last one is AI stuff.)  --Lambiam 16:45, 7 December 2024 (UTC)

Katchuu & Plate Armor

At the translations part of the page for plate armour (because I'm American and all the plate armor page has to offer is a link to the plate armour page) you can add translations of it for other languages. I'm a learner of Japanese, being able to read both systems of kana, talk in Japanese, and even read some kanji and know their meanings, and "甲冑" is one of the kanji sets I'm familiar with, reading out as "katchuu" (かっちゅう). I don't believe these refer to the exact same things, as it says katchuu means a helmet and armor, though I like reading the pages for the lists of Pokémon on the JP Wikipedia because it's fun and so I can remember Japanese information about them like their JP names and stuff and maybe even learn something new. Basically, in Japanese, Armaldo is called the "Katchuu Pokémon" (かっちゅうポケモン) but in English it is the "Plate Pokémon" which refers to plate armor, NOT a dinner plate. I think it's most likely because katchuu also generally refers to Japanese-style armor while plate armor is the western-style armor, but they both literally just refer to armor.

I was planning on adding katchuu to the list, but decided to have a tea break here and ask about it since I'm unsure.

ILike Leavanny (talk) 03:32, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

Plank bridge

Anybody know a short English name for a creek bridge made of a plank? I see it is no good English translation for Swedish spång and Norwegian Nynorsk klopp (not in Wikipedia either), but this is a common thing, and has names in many languages, so I would expect to have it in English as well. It is not a duckboard, but it is kinda duckboard brigde or what is it? Tollef Salemann (talk) 09:56, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

Do these words refer only to a single-plank-width footbridge or to a broader class of bridge designs? DCDuring (talk) 18:45, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

No, it can be two planks as well. Or even more, as long it is a primitive wood bridge over a narrow creek. I guess it calls a duckboard bridge, but if I create such entry, is it gonna be SOP? If it is gonna be SOP, maybe I can make a translation-only entry. Anyway, it is stupid to make such entry if it can be a real English word for such thing. "Duckboard bridge" sounds too complicated, there surely are many of these bridges in England and USA. So maybe it is called someting else? Tollef Salemann (talk) 18:59, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

I believe that an entry for it will have to be a THUB because there's no single compound noun in English that denotes this specific subset of footbridges. The term footbridge itself is definitely hypernymous to this semantic node, and the collocations that come closest to the desired denotation (i.e., small and simple wooden footbridge, plank bridge) are SoP. A look at w:Footbridge#Types didn't disabuse this conclusion. Quercus solaris (talk) 19:18, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

That’s why am asking this. Probably I need to go for a THUB. Tollef Salemann (talk) 20:07, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

Our (possibly redundant) definitions 5 and 6 of puncheon also seem synonymous to some degree with duckboard. DCDuring (talk) 15:04, 3 December 2024 (UTC)

As for redundancy, two valid ways to look at it: 5 and 6 are currently separated by the causeway-versus-bridge semantic/mental distinction, although that distinction can sometimes reduce to an artificial dichotomization, depending on the terrain in the instance. Senses 5 and 6 could reasonably be combined into one sense as "a walkway or road of type blah; a footbridge or larger bridge of that type"; or "a walkway, road, or bridge of type blah." Quercus solaris (talk) 15:16, 3 December 2024 (UTC)

Puncheon is not a very common word in any of its uses. Having seven definitions seems to me suspect before inspecting the definitions in detail. I also find definitions 3 and 4 redundant. Redundancy or near-redundancy of definitions in uncommonly used words (those outside the top 50,000) is common. DCDuring (talk) 15:34, 3 December 2024 (UTC)

I ascribe the persistence of the redundancy to the word not getting many visits from contributing users and a lack of enthusiasm for finding attestation for so many definitions. DCDuring (talk) 16:21, 3 December 2024 (UTC)

I take well your point about forgoable subdivision of senses, whereas "X, especially X₁" as one senseid is often better than two senseids. Granted that sometimes autohyponymy or metonymy warrants a second sense, either subsense or not. In the case of puncheon, true that a def getting across the concept of "a semifinished timber, especially one used as a post or a plank" would do for 2 or 3 of the senses there. I have edited that entry before but, to your point (about how wiki users approach editing), each time I've been there I am only devoting a certain amount of time to it, or focusing only on one aspect, and not changing others' prior/existing work unless I notice some specific problem or improvability about it. This accords with the iterative-development nature of a wiki as contrasted with nonwiki. And admittedly my top-ranked focus when editing WT is usually on defs and semantic relations more so than accruing citations, although I add citations too when the spirit moves me. Quercus solaris (talk) 19:29, 3 December 2024 (UTC)

Puncheon bridge or a bog bridge is quite close, yes! I have made THUB on duckboard bridge, maybe it is a word used same way, but Google search gives examples from non-English speaking countries. Tollef Salemann (talk) 19:55, 3 December 2024 (UTC)

User:TimothyL52's English pronunciation edits: /(d)ʒ/ -> /d͡ʒ/

Are edits such as these (dogecoin, deluge) correct? I thought both pronunciations are fine in US English but I'm not a native speaker. — Fytcha〈 T | L | C 〉 17:35, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

The acceptance of pron variants of dogecoin might perhaps be considered contentious, but not so with deluge, in which /(d)ʒ/ is a fact because /d͡ʒ/ and /ʒ/ variants coexist. MW, AHD, and ODE agree. Some other dictionaries (eg, NOAD) fail to show the /ʒ/ variant. The user might have been looking at one of those. Quercus solaris (talk) 19:31, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

I restored at deluge accordingly. I skimmed about 5% of the user's contribs and saw that almost all of them were words where /ʒ/ variants (i.e., /zh/ versus /dzh/) are irrelevant, so probably not much damage was done. If anyone wants to check more thoroughly, Godspeed. Quercus solaris (talk) 01:43, 3 December 2024 (UTC)

how

Conjunction senses:

1. The manner or way in which.

   I remember how I solved this puzzle.

2. In any way in which; in whatever way; however.

   People should be free to live how they want.

Any agree/disagree that "how" is a conjunction in these examples? Mihia (talk) 20:00, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

Regarding how the adverb senses are distinguished from the conjunction senses, yes, AHD agrees. See its entry. The key/differentiator is that the conjunction sense does the work of subordinating a clause to another clause. In fairness, definitions of parts of speech vary; CMOS agrees on that fact, as does WP at Part of speech § History § Classification and Part of speech § Functional classification. See also w:Conjunction_(grammar)#Subordinating_conjunctions and compare w:Conjunctive_adverb. Quercus solaris (talk) 20:47, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

I find mainstream dictionaries generally unreliable and inconsistent when it comes to "difficult" parts of speech. Superficially this does appear to be a conjunction, yes, linking two clauses. However, the same label "conjunction" is used for very different grammatical uses of the word, one being the uncontroversial conjunction, as in "how = that" (casual or loose usage), and the other being the sense(s) that I listed.

a) "I remember how (= that) I solved this puzzle."

b) "I remember how (= in what way) I solved this puzzle."

c) "How did I solve this puzzle? I remember now."

Usage (b) actually appears more closely resembling (c), the adverb, than (a), the conjunction. (And, curiously, "in what way" actually substitutes into both.)

A similar distinction is seen perhaps more clearly with "when":

"I remember when I'm prompted." (uncontroversial conjunction)

"I remember when I was young." (???)

As with "how", it is pretty unsatisfactory that these two grammatically very different uses of "when" could be the same part of speech. Mihia (talk) 17:41, 3 December 2024 (UTC)

Interesting. Yes, the world has no great consensus about parts of speech, although some people's consensuses are consensuser than others'. Speaking of which (or of whom), your objection makes me think of Pullum 2024^→ISBN on page 87 at "The traditional muddle". He's pretty salty at the rest of the world for falsely accusing prepositions of sometimes allegedly being subordinating conjunctions, lol. I give us all credit for trying — chipping away at iterating toward a more accurate state of the art tomorrow. I think perhaps there's something about the notion of "X is as X does" going on here: people feel that they "have to" call how a conjunction when it does the work of yolking a clause into the position of direct object within another clause, because by at least some lights, anything that does that action is labeled as a conjunction. What you're after here is to make a further differentiation within that realm. I can see what you mean. Perhaps eventually you'll be proved right. Quercus solaris (talk) 02:47, 5 December 2024 (UTC)

turkish varsın

I don't understand how to describe it. Like in "sadece sen varsın", is it a verb or an adjective? Zbutie3.14 (talk) 02:05, 4 December 2024 (UTC)

it's an adjective functioning as a predicate. Slowcuber7 (talk) 14:53, 12 December 2024 (UTC)

Determining whether "righty tighty, lefty loosey" or "lefty loosey, righty tighty" is the alt form

I see Wiktionary only has the one beginning "lefty loosey." I always knew it beginning with "righty tighty," and both are well attested on the internet. I tried to run it through Ngrams to see if there was any clearly preferred order, but it's not cooperating. Any suggestions? Cameron.coombe (talk) 05:56, 4 December 2024 (UTC)

Perhaps 'twould be as well to ask which component orb of a binary star is the dance leader and which is the follower. They follow each other in circles. With some alt forms it feels like a coin toss as to which is the principal one, if indeed either is truly principal. I too tried to force Google Ngam Viewer to work with the whole unit and found it intractable. I realize that it uses commas as the delimiter between tokens, but one might hope that one could simply enter the whole collocation minus the internal punctuation and get a result, plus or minus quote marks as wrappers, given that that's how Google Search works on the web. Alas. Seems like an odd and unnecessary hole in GNV's capabilities, but what do I know (compared with the people who built it). Also, maybe I'm just missing something and doing it wrong. I ctrl-f'd inside their help page for a hot minute but came away empty-handed. Quercus solaris (talk) 02:28, 5 December 2024 (UTC)

"Lefty loosey, righty tighty" just sounds...wrong to me. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 00:08, 6 December 2024 (UTC)

I've always heard it as "lefty loosey..." CitationsFreak (talk) 20:15, 7 December 2024 (UTC)

I can honestly say that I have never heard of this in either form. Ngrams shows the parts common enough to graph in AmE, but "not found" in BrE [11] (which might not mean truly zero, but below a "negligible" cutoff level). I wonder whether we should label it "chiefly US" ... or perhaps it's just me? Mihia (talk) 18:37, 8 December 2024 (UTC)

I’ve certainly heard ‘lefty loosey, righty tighty’ and sometimes say it myself, so I wouldn’t label it as US. Overlordnat1 (talk) 08:33, 13 December 2024 (UTC)

FWIW, a Youglish search (for "righty tighty", to find either order) finds 8 people saying "righty tighty, lefty loosey" and only 1 saying "lefty loosey, righty tighty". A quick poll of English-speaking friends got me similar results, 1 "lefty..." and 6 "righty...". Youglish also has many instances of people saying only whichever half of the phrase was relevant to what they were doing (tightening vs loosening). So, I agree it was sensible to make "righty..." the lemma. - -sche (discuss) 02:57, 14 December 2024 (UTC)

Hey, nice work — that's a fair shake at objective evidence, certainly better than the lack of any. A solid basis for choosing the right-hand-first polarity for Wiktionary's entries. Perhaps the bias against lefties is sinister, but there you go, it's also ancient, lol. Quercus solaris (talk) 07:44, 14 December 2024 (UTC)

q.v. and qq.v.

q.v. is listed as an English adverb. qq.v. is listed as an English noun. Surely they should be the same POS? (And I would think that that should be [imperative] verb….) 212.179.254.67 12:16, 4 December 2024 (UTC)

• Possibly you could argue that this is adjectival, in the sense that it means something like "which you should look at for further information", i.e. non-restrictively modifying the noun? Mihia (talk) 20:10, 4 December 2024 (UTC)

gegagedigedagedago pronunciation

The second consonant is spelled g but given as /d/ in the IPA. A simple mistake? The audio sounds wrong too (at both ends). 2A00:23C5:FE1C:3701:2138:4E06:355:268E 15:15, 4 December 2024 (UTC)

The IPA is right, the word is just spelled weirdly. -saph668 (user—talk—contribs) 15:22, 4 December 2024 (UTC)

Can you provide evidence? This seems absolutely exceptional. 2A00:23C5:FE1C:3701:2138:4E06:355:268E 22:54, 4 December 2024 (UTC)

Perhaps the second consonant is just to pwn us and the last consonant is one that we would have thou(gh)t wouldn't be an /x/ reduced to nearly nothing? Lol, I'm just playing devil's advocate. If it hadn't been for Old Nick, English would've had phonemic orthography years ago, lol. Quercus solaris (talk) 02:12, 5 December 2024 (UTC)

Here. (external link to Youtube) -saph668 (user—talk—contribs) 05:55, 5 December 2024 (UTC)

o'clock

1. (humorous) In conjunction with a term representing an action or event that occurs daily, indicates the time that said action or event occurs, first occurs.
   • 1880, Henrietta A. Duff, Honor Carmichael, page 251:

     That same evening at tea-time — (I am sorry to have to introduce you to another eating-scene, but the hours in English households are usually marked by repasts. It is a daily calendar of feasts — breakfast o’clock, dinner o’clock, &c., […] ).

   • 1904, George Augustus Sala, Edmund Hodgson Yates, Temple Bar, volume 129, page 144:

     “My sister requires your attendance at supper o’clock this evening — no excuse accepted.”

   • 1998, Carolyn Greene, Heavenly Husband, page 129:

     “It's lunch o’clock. Wanna go out to eat?”

2. (humorous, slang) Used to indicate that it is time to do a specific action, or time for a specific action to occur.

   We're here at Waffle House, and it's waffles o'clock!

   We're here at Waffle House, and it's time to eat waffles.

Before I merge them, does anyone particularly believe that we need two senses here? I would think that the second definition pretty much suffices. Mihia (talk) 19:59, 4 December 2024 (UTC)

I agree. Doesn't seem to warrant differentiation. Quercus solaris (talk) 01:56, 5 December 2024 (UTC)

• Merged. Mihia (talk) 11:54, 6 December 2024 (UTC)

at

13. Indicates a means or method.

• 1995, Richard Klein, Cigarettes are Sublime, →ISBN, page 41:

  […] to be sold at auction for sixty gold francs.

Having added various missing senses, and generally reorganised some stuff, I am left with this Cinderella item. The sole example seems quite doubtful to me. If it was "by auction", yes, sure, but I see "at auction" really as referring to the place or event (which are other senses), not clearly the means. I think it is flimsy to keep this definition solely on this basis. Can anyone come up with some more examples to beef it up? Mihia (talk) 21:07, 4 December 2024 (UTC)

I know what you mean but I also know what the def writer meant, because [thing X] is to be sold at auction feels like a special case: it is idiomatically how one normally says "X is to be sold via auction" or "X is to be sold by auction". In other words, to sell (X) at auction is idiomatically synonymous with to auction (X) off (absolutely independently of whether or not WT:SoP's quirkiness will allow the unit to be entered as a headword; I'm referring to a phenomenon rather than WT's handling of it). I tried to think of any other construction that is parallel but drew a blank; but that doesn't mean that the special case can't exist, and maybe also there's one more such oddball out there waiting to be recalled. Idiomaticness sometimes produces singularities (of the type that sometimes makes people say, "Did you realize that X is the only word in the English language [or "one of very few words in the English language"] that has Y trait or behaves in Z manner?!"). I also cannot prove the mental feel: (1) it is on a layer that is barely effable and (2) there is no guarantee that inter-speaker agreement exists for it; perhaps not everyone feels it. Which is why I wouldn't object to whatever edit you end up choosing to make. If you were to delete that sense and its ux, then Wiktionary would simply not cover that particular singularity; but that's OK, because, as one of Merriam-Webster's prefaces says, no dictionary can record everything that someone would like to know about a language. Dictionaries come as close as is practical. Quercus solaris (talk) 01:52, 5 December 2024 (UTC)

PS: to bury (someone) at sea feels like close but no cigar. But my brain is on the right track with it. Quercus solaris (talk) 01:59, 5 December 2024 (UTC)

I suppose "How was it sold?" / "At auction" does not feel glaringly wrong (though "Where was it sold?" / At auction" is possible equally). I would put "buried at sea" into a similar category, and another one very similar to "at auction" that occurred to me is "at market". Perhaps three possibles -- auction, market and sea -- are enough to justify the sense, but ideally it would be good to have more solid and productive examples, rather than just isolated idiomatic phrases, which ultimately, or by derivation, appear to me to refer to place/event rather than method/means, albeit they have acquired some connotations of method/means. Mihia (talk) 15:39, 5 December 2024 (UTC)

unprovenienced

An English entry has just been added with the definition:

1. Alternative form of unprovenanced

Provenience isn't an alternative form of provenance, so I'm skeptical that adding a prefix changes that relationship. There seems to be a real, if subtle, difference between the two. Chuck Entz (talk) 16:02, 5 December 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for bringing here. I (adder) don't truly know the definition myself; I encountered the word in an academic writing discussing the ethics of studying "unprovenienced" artifacts and just assumed it was roughly the same as unprovenanced. Hftf (talk) 18:53, 5 December 2024 (UTC)

No, alt forms should share morphemes. {{syn of}} is likely better. Vininn126 (talk) 18:56, 5 December 2024 (UTC)

aged

Pronunciation

• (all senses) IPA^(key): /eɪdʒd/, enPR: ājd

  • Audio (US):

    (file)

• (alternative for adjective sense "old" and derived noun sense) IPA^(key): /ˈeɪ.dʒɪd/, enPR: āʹjĭd

  • Audio (Southern England):

    (file)

• Rhymes: -eɪdʒd, -eɪdʒɪd

I changed the two-syllable qualifier to be more specific as I can't imagine "He is ag-ed 18" or "ag-ed whiskey"; however I see also that the one-syllable pronunciation supposedly applies to all senses. This would mean e.g. "I knocked on the door and an aged man opened it" could be one syllable. I cannot easily visualise this, not in the usual sense of "old". Does anyone say it this way? Perhaps someone else could double-check these. Mihia (talk) 19:51, 5 December 2024 (UTC)

Not my idiolect either. DCDuring (talk) 20:21, 5 December 2024 (UTC)

OK thanks, I'll change it now while I'm thinking about it, and if anyone else definitely disagrees then it can be revisited. Mihia (talk) 20:28, 5 December 2024 (UTC)

I've encountered the one-syllable pronunciation used for all senses decently commonly. Searching Youglish for "an aged man", I find 12 examples (of any pronunciation, plus 1 video of sign language): the first sounds to me like eɪdʒd 0:12; at 1:32, this reading of a poem also sounds like one syllable, as does this, 3:32, and this, at 2:40. OTOH, this (11:09) has "an eɪ.dʒɪd man" with two syllables, as does 45:01, and 1:01:31 (same poem as the preceding); this, at 3:16, also has two syllables, as does this, 2:22. This (59:47) seems to be one syllable although the coda seems to kind of fade out. (This, at 2:51, is one syllable but I believe it's an AI voice.) The last example, at 38:37, is two syllables. I count 5 with one syllable, 6 with two syllables (not counting the AI audio, one unclear audio, and one video which was sign language). IMO this could either be handled by adding a {{q}} to the end of (all other senses) IPA(key): /eɪdʒd/, enPR: ājd like {{q|sometimes for all senses, including "old"}}, or by tweaking the pre-pronunciation {{q}} similarly, or just by changing it back to "all senses". - -sche (discuss) 22:47, 5 December 2024 (UTC)

Of course, "an aged man" could be one syllable even in my scheme if it was the other sense "having undergone the effects of time" (actually our definition says "Having undergone the improving effects of time", but I question whether it is always "improving"). Do you think that your examples definitely aren't of this nature? Mihia (talk) 22:57, 5 December 2024 (UTC)

I frequently hear people read texts at church with words like "aged" in the two-syllable sense. Not long ago, I heard the same reading with the word "aged" read multiple times. Some pronounced it as one syllable and some as two. Interestingly, the age of the person didn't seem to make a difference. I suspect that the two-syllable pronunciation of "aged" is an "educated" pronunciation in many places, and since that sense of the word doesn't occur often in speech, many people have no idea that it's pronounced any differently than the more common senses. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 00:11, 6 December 2024 (UTC)

This is a little surprising to me. For all senses other than adjective "old" (and derived noun), the two-syllable version sounds so wrong to me that I possibly would not even understand what was being said: "He is ag-ed 18"; "She hasn't ag-ed well". For the "old" / "matured" sense, there is for me a clear difference in meaning, whereby "ag-ed man" just means an old man, while "ayjd man" means a person showing increased signs of the passing of time, such as grey hair; "ayjd whiskey" means "whiskey that has been allowed to mature", while "ag-ed whiskey" is a bit unusual but would just mean "old". I feel that we ought to document this as one scheme (perhaps BrE?), and as for the rest, well, I dunno. Are there other defined schemes, or is it just "pronounce it whatever way you fancy"? Or is it in fact only that the "old man" sense can be "ayjd" for some people, without the distinction that I mentioned, and everything else the same? Mihia (talk) 09:45, 6 December 2024 (UTC)

What I've done for now is label "ag-ed" as "used by some people for the adjective sense 'old' and derived noun sense" and "ayjd" as "all other uses". If anyone thinks we should divide this further then please go ahead. Mihia (talk) 11:49, 6 December 2024 (UTC)

It was surprising to me as well when I first heard it. But I'm currently living in a more rural area where less educated forms of speech are common. I think it's just one of those words/senses that isn't part of everyday speech anymore (at least not where I live), so a lot of people who encounter it don't know the standard pronunciation. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 01:52, 7 December 2024 (UTC)

Like Andrew, I suspect what's happening is that people who are unaware of the two-syllable pronunciation (one might call it a learnèd pronunciation) just use the same pronunciation as they use for the other senses. It's possible we could dismiss the one-syllable pronunciation (of this sense) as nonstandard.
Pure speculation: perhaps one factor is semantics: people may not perceive a crookèd politician as having any close relationship to the verb crook (can you crook a politician? not normally anymore AFAIK), so it remains a separate word and doesn't level out to the same pronunciation as the verb form; even parsing a learnèd man as a /lɜː(ɹ)nd/ man (one you learned about? no.) is a little awkward, providing impetus to keep it separate; but parsing an aged man as one who underwent aging does not seem to pose semantic problems. - -sche (discuss) 16:26, 6 December 2024 (UTC)

In the UK, we used to have a well-known charity called "Help the Aged". I was going to say that, as far as I have ever been aware, this is/was always "ag-ed", and in fact "Help the Ayjd" sounds slightly hilariously wrong to me -- wrong sense of the word. However, I have just found this interesting observation from someone on StackExchange:

"The British charity Help the Aged founded in 1961 was originally pronounced 'Help the Agèd' by most people but by the time it merged with Age Concern to form Age UK in 2008 many younger people were calling it 'Help the Aged' with an unstressed final syllable. Perhaps this is because the stressed final syllable is becoming less familiar. This is a shame because the difference between agèd (old person) and aged (matured alcoholic drink); learnèd and learned etcetera is immensely valuable."

Mihia (talk) 18:07, 6 December 2024 (UTC)

... I guess I didn't know any "younger people" even in 2008 ... Mihia (talk) 22:27, 6 December 2024 (UTC)

Usage of loser

In the original meaning, the word loser means a person who loses the game, especially races. In the sense ‘a person who fails frequently or is generally unsuccessful in life’ is not used in formal emails or writing essays, should be used informally and used to show disapproval. MarcoToa 0425 (talk) 03:52, 6 December 2024 (UTC)

Correct. I have added the labels "informal, derogatory". I would also probably put the following sense, "A contemptible or unfashionable person", as a subsense of this rather than a completely separate sense, but I have left it for now since I don't really understand "unfashionable". I would probably define it as "(by extension) A generally worthless or contemptible person". Perhaps other people could comment about this "unfashionable". Mihia (talk)

Actually, sorry, I undid that. I'm mixing up the senses, I think. Perhaps e.g. "I'm a constant loser in love" (one of the examples) is neither informal nor derogatory, while the other sense is both. I think I'll let someone else deal with this ... Mihia (talk) 09:56, 6 December 2024 (UTC)

Bereshit

The definition for this English proper noun entry is

1. Anglicized transliteration of בְּרֵאשִׁית (b'reishít), the Hebrew word for the Genesis (literally, "In the beginning").

This doesn't seem like a very good definition. There's a tradition of referring to texts by their opening words, so it might be a name for the Book of Genesis, or it might be a name for the Biblical creation story that forms the first part of that book, or perhaps, by extension, the concept of divine creation introduced there.

The definition dates to the creation of the entry 2008 by @BD2412, and has only been changed to add formatting that didn't exist back then. I doubt the entry would be anything like this if created today. Chuck Entz (talk) 23:30, 6 December 2024 (UTC)

I have no recollection of the research/thought process that I went through to determine the definition, but I remember that I made it because I heard a joke along the lines of "does a Bereshit in the woods?" bd2412 T 01:08, 7 December 2024 (UTC)

What about now, @Chuck Entz? Bereshit is not referring to the creation story, but to the first "book". Tollef Salemann (talk) 17:50, 7 December 2024 (UTC)

@Tollef Salemann: it certainly fits the quotes in the entry, so definitely an improvement. There may be other definitions, though. Chuck Entz (talk) 18:54, 7 December 2024 (UTC)

The Creation itself is Briye-Ha-Oylom (see בריאה). Tollef Salemann (talk) 19:50, 7 December 2024 (UTC)

That is a transciption of the Yiddish term. Shifting from Hebrew to Yiddish unannounced may make any confusion worse. ←₰-→ Lingo ^Bingo _Dingo (talk) 08:52, 10 December 2024 (UTC)

No it’s not quite so simple. Anyway, as far I understood, we don’t discuss Hebrew, but the English entry. My point was that the English transcription for the Hebrew term of creation is something else than Bereshit. Ain’t really important what the transcription is. Now we know that Bereshit may be used as a term for creation in some known Hebrew and Aramaic texts, but is it used in this sense in English? That’s the question. Tollef Salemann (talk) 09:46, 10 December 2024 (UTC)

Also, the term Bereshit is from modern Hebrew. But if you search it in a context (its use in English text), you should obviously include the Ashkenazi forms (which you call Yiddish). Tollef Salemann (talk) 09:52, 10 December 2024 (UTC)

@Sije @Taokailam maybe you know better? Tollef Salemann (talk) 20:40, 7 December 2024 (UTC)

I looked at Morfix website, https://www.morfix.co.il/en/%D7%91%D7%A8%D7%90%D7%A9%D7%99%D7%AA, the proper noun בראשית refers to the 1st book, Genesis only. Not to the creation story. Taokailam (talk) 17:55, 8 December 2024 (UTC)

Bereshit may also refer to the creation, as in the Barukh she'amar prayer: בָּרוּךְ עוֹשֶׂה בְרֵאשִׁית. See entry in Jastrow, Marcus (1903) A Dictionary of the Targumim, the Talmud Babli and Yerushalmi, and the Midrashic Literature, London, New York: Luzac & Co., G.P. Putnam's Sons, page 189. Sije (talk) 18:38, 8 December 2024 (UTC)

Since it is Hebrew, I added this sense to the Hebrew entry (marking it as talmudic). For the English entry it is needed quotes in case if this word is used in this sense in English texts (about what I doubt). Tollef Salemann (talk) 22:11, 8 December 2024 (UTC)

off

8. Temporarily not attending a usual place, such as work or school, especially owing to illness or holiday.

John's off today. He's back on Wednesday.

1. (informal, predicative only) Unavailable; unable to stay in a band or come to a club due to being busy with activities or schedules.

The singer is off. He can't come today.

I added the first sense. The second sense was pre-existing and I made it a sub-sense. I feel slightly suspicious about the second sense, or unsure at any rate. Is there really such a specific and individual meaning for staying in a band or coming to a club? Or is it possibly just a very specific and slightly poorly defined example of the main sense? Can't find much in searches. Any ideas? Mihia (talk) 13:41, 7 December 2024 (UTC)

I'm strongly suspicious, in this and many other cases, that someone young believes that any use of a term in a youth context is distinct from usage that has gone before. DCDuring (talk) 20:42, 7 December 2024 (UTC)

Logically it is just an overspecific example of the main sense. I doubt that the reason for offness in the specific example is “due to being busy with activities or schedules” rather than illness. In either case the usual place can be the workplace and the place the off person went to may be a work trip, a business trip, busman's holiday. Fay Freak (talk) 00:36, 8 December 2024 (UTC)

• Sent to RFD. Mihia (talk) 09:26, 8 December 2024 (UTC)

Microplane

Which meaning of the word plane is being used in our definition for microplane? Khemehekis (talk) 00:53, 8 December 2024 (UTC)

No doubt something derived from the "geometry" sense of the Etymology 1 noun, though in geometry planes technically don't have size, so they can't be microscopic or macroscopic. Chuck Entz (talk) 01:22, 8 December 2024 (UTC)

I think it's the "A roughly flat, thin, often moveable structure..." sense. CitationsFreak (talk) 20:16, 8 December 2024 (UTC)

No, that sense is (trying to be) about the parts of aircraft and watercraft that generate their hydrodynamics (e.g., lift). The sense that mat sci is talking about is the planes, as in geometric planes, that exist for example inside crystals (such as face-centered cubes and so on). They are of course bounded (they have boundaries), but that doesn't disqualify their relationship to the notion of an infinite geometric plane: planar things can be planar even when they have boundaries; for example, the top face of a (noninfinite) cylinder mathematically is a planar surface even though it has bounds (bounded by the circle). Quercus solaris (talk) 21:05, 8 December 2024 (UTC)

pretend

There are some issues with this article, one being the lack of the main intransitive senses, which I intend to redress, but for starters we could look at the wording of sense 1:

1. (transitive) To claim, to allege, especially when falsely or as a form of deliberate deception [with clause]. [from 14th c.]

   You don't have to pretend that the soup tastes fine.

Anyone got any idea why it says "especially"? In modern usage isn't it always so? Could it be a hangover from an obsolete usage? Or am I missing something here? Mihia (talk) 17:53, 9 December 2024 (UTC)

The online Middle English Dictionary has 6 senses and 2 subsenses for its first sense, 1a being "claim" (31 quotations), 1b being "feign", "falsely profess" (16 quotations). So, apparently, both the neutral sense and the "false" sense existed through that period, the latest quote being 1464. Century 1911 had as its definition 2 "To put forward as a statement or an assertion; especially, to allege or declare falsely or with intent to deceive.", very like ours.

Modern dictionaries seem to call some of the neutral senses archaic or obsolete. In my idiolect, falsity is always essential to a definition of current usage, though intent need not be malicious, as in acting or playing. DCDuring (talk) 21:20, 9 December 2024 (UTC)

Right, thanks, how do you perceive this one?:

• (transitive) To feign, affect (a state, quality, etc.). [from 15th c.]

  She's pretending illness to get out of the business meeting.

To me, this example does not seem correct English (although of course it can be understood). Although apparently "from 15th c.", I'm thinking from the patterns in other dictionaries that it may be now chiefly US. How does it sound to you? Mihia (talk) 21:31, 9 December 2024 (UTC)

It doesn't seem wrong to me, but I can't say that I've heard it in normal speech in the US or anywhere else. DCDuring (talk) 22:51, 9 December 2024 (UTC)

Just overheard this and thought I'd butt in. The OED has this supported with a quote from 2003 to a British newspaper:

• There is an obvious tackiness about a multi-millionaire from the richest country in the world, pretending poverty.

I'm not familiar with it myself (NZ), and I'd assume it was formal, but I wouldn't venture a label without further evidence. Cameron.coombe (talk) 04:18, 10 December 2024 (UTC)

• with a quote from 2003 in a British newspaper -- or something like that

Cameron.coombe (talk) 04:19, 10 December 2024 (UTC)

In fact, now I look more carefully, there is also a quote from a British newspaper in our article: "they cannot pretend ignorance". I must say that this one does sound a little more natural to me, though I don't know why. Another example in our article, "boys who had pretended soldiers", sounds so wrong and odd to me that it is hard to even understand, and I would naturally assume that it was a typo or some kind of editing error. But anyway, since I'm not sure, I'll leave that def alone as far as labelling is concerned. Mihia (talk) 12:43, 10 December 2024 (UTC)

In fact, it's not clear that the "pretended soldiers" example even fits the definition "To feign, affect (a state, quality, etc.)". I can find no other analogous examples, apart from our quote, either for soldiers or for doctors, nurses, policemen, anything. I wonder whether actually it is just a typo or editing error, or an author's personal oddity. Does this "pretended soldiers" sentence read like normal correct English to anyone? Mihia (talk) 17:32, 10 December 2024 (UTC)

I agree that it's not idiomatic in my variety (gen AmE). Not confusing at all, just not idiomatic. Quercus solaris (talk) 04:34, 11 December 2024 (UTC)

Yes, unidiomatic to me too (NZ). Soldiers is weird also because it's unidiomatic for the gloss too: To feign soldiers. The usage note could say something like: transitive usually a state, condition, etc.: to pretend sickness. -- You could make it sound prettier than that maybe. Cameron.coombe (talk) 10:26, 11 December 2024 (UTC)

OK, thanks, I've deleted that strange example. Mihia (talk) 12:11, 11 December 2024 (UTC)

"hyphenated compound"

I went to create this entry and it was deleted three years ago. It just says deleted per RFD but doesn't link to the exact discussion. I don't know why this entry would be deleted when we have "closed compound" and "open compound" in the dictionary. It's not as common as those two, but I'd easily fill up the quotes for attestation. Cameron.coombe (talk) 04:12, 10 December 2024 (UTC)

See Talk:hyphenated_compound. The argument was "SOP" (sum of parts), i.e. if one knows what hyphenated and compound mean, one can work out what they mean together. It is harder with "open" and "closed" because they have so many different meanings. "Hyphenated" has only one. 2A00:23C5:FE1C:3701:F9AC:CC62:6541:2A8E 04:15, 10 December 2024 (UTC)

Thanks! Cameron.coombe (talk) 04:20, 10 December 2024 (UTC)

㽥

It seems silly that we have a "Translingual" section listing two definitions that were used in particular time periods and places in China, and then a "Chinese" section with an rfdef. Can we move the definitions to the Chinese section...? - -sche (discuss) 08:06, 10 December 2024 (UTC)

yes, i agree. it should be dublicated in the chinese section. also glyph's history and stroke order stuff would improve the article, too Slowcuber7 (talk) 15:08, 12 December 2024 (UTC)

Nowel

Sense 1 of Nowel (interjection) reads: "An gleeful exclamation upon hearing Jesus being born in representations of the event." Is "in representations of the event" not too vague or formal? Another complication is that the linked Middle English dictionary does not only speak of e.g. carrols about the Nativity, but the Annunciation as well. ←₰-→ Lingo ^Bingo _Dingo (talk) 08:49, 10 December 2024 (UTC)

taco /teɪkoʊ/

Can anyone confirm or deny the claim by this IP that taco was historically pronounced with //eɪ// in the US, UK, AUS and NZ? A quick search finds me only one modern mention of an "uneducated and unsophisticated" person pronouncing it that way (in Mark Rutland's Keep On Keeping On). - -sche (discuss) 18:11, 10 December 2024 (UTC)

Sounds fishier than a fish taco to me lol; sounds like someone changing wiki to settle a bet, prove themselves "right" for another to see, or just perpetrate a good old fashioned wiki hoax. Quercus solaris (talk) 22:23, 10 December 2024 (UTC)

Wouldn't shock me if it was real, but in less-than-educated-on-Hispanic-culture eras. Maybe try old broadcasts on Mexican food, or some poem on Mexican food from the 1970s that's not written by someone familiar with the food? CitationsFreak (talk) 00:30, 11 December 2024 (UTC)

You make a good point in the respect that it could easily have been familectal via spelling pronunciation in American locales where pizzas and tacos were considered "ethnic" and borderline-exotic back then. But even under those conditions, though, it was not a widespread norm. Perhaps the IP was someone who grew up in a household that said /teɪkoʊ/ and just always assumed that "everyone" said it that way back then. But (if so), to the IP I would say, it's the sort of thing that gets an "oh, honey, you didn't know?" when people gently correct spelling pronunciations. Which is why I'm not surprised that MW and AHD don't show it as a variant. I've been, and been surrounded by, AmE speaker(s) for cough-cough decades, and I'm certain that you'd be hard pressed to find anyone in my region who would recognize it as anything other than an "oh, honey" outlier/familectal/idiolectal (or a "what're you, jokin?", if they're not being polite to the speaker). Quercus solaris (talk) 04:29, 11 December 2024 (UTC)

There is evidence that the spelling pron was widespread at the time. See this excerpt from an Oct. 1949 article in American Speech entitled "Gringoisms in Arizona": "[T]he [tourists] [...] bravely attempt to order their meals in Spanish [and order such dishes as] tækoz, a mispronunciation of the Spanish word tacos." CitationsFreak (talk) 05:41, 11 December 2024 (UTC)

That just represents a pronunciation where the first syllable is identical to the standard English word tack rather than take though, I doubt many people say ‘taycoh’. The Canadian audio sample is odd at taco too, it doesn’t match the description as it sounds too American (‘tahcoh’). Overlordnat1 (talk) 09:01, 11 December 2024 (UTC)

Millennial from NZ, it's always been taco as in /ˈtʰɑ:koʊ/ for me. Also pasta vs. pasta (UK), dance vs. dance (Aus), NZE today generally prefers /ɑ:/.

This is standard here, about 20 secs in

I don't imagine contemporary Aus be much different; can't speak to UK Cameron.coombe (talk) 10:33, 11 December 2024 (UTC)

• Always for me. Could well be older people who /eɪ/ it

Cameron.coombe (talk) 10:34, 11 December 2024 (UTC)

Well, the pron said "historical" in the first place, meaning that it isn't used now, but was in the past. Probably the wrong label, though. CitationsFreak (talk) 16:07, 12 December 2024 (UTC)

@CitationsFreak Ah, yeah sounds like (dated) to me Cameron.coombe (talk) 00:26, 13 December 2024 (UTC)

The label "historical" suggested to me that it was (being claimed to be) a formerly accepted pronunciation (and also that it was no longer found). The IP's edit also suggested the same (diaphonemic) pronunciation was found in, and then ceased to be used it, all regions of the anglosphere. As far as I can tell, the only evidence we have is that it was instead an occasional nonstandard pronunciation in a few regions within living memory, so something like "nonstandard, uncommon" seems like a better label for that...? - -sche (discuss) 06:55, 13 December 2024 (UTC)

I definitely think that (historical) is wrong, as it's used of things that we still mention today but no longer exist themselves, like the Roman Empire. It seems like a category error putting it in pronunciation. The label (nonstandard, uncommon) also works. You could (dated, uncommon) to indicate that it's both uncommon now (dated) and was uncommon at the time (uncommon). Cameron.coombe (talk) 07:09, 13 December 2024 (UTC)

seated (slang)

With all these slang words like cooked going around, it seems weird that seated (“ready, hyped”) isn't included here. I'm not the best at writing English glossaries though, so just flagging it for anyone who's able to do it better, preferably with quotations. Related: sat. Insaneguy1083 (talk) 11:56, 11 December 2024 (UTC)

@Insaneguy1083 I would happily add it. If you post some links to examples here, that'd be helpful. I'm not familiar with the term myself. No need to format them correctly or anything. Cameron.coombe (talk) 07:11, 13 December 2024 (UTC)

Belarusian words for tea

Hello,

The articles for the two Belarusian synonyms for "tea", гарбата and чай, both state that the other synonym is "more common". Which of the two (if either) is actually more common and which is less common? 170.213.22.139 19:09, 11 December 2024 (UTC)

must be some mistake Slowcuber7 (talk) 10:48, 12 December 2024 (UTC)

I've changed it to "more or less common" in both entries so that all scenarios are covered. PUC – 14:25, 12 December 2024 (UTC)

Goddamnit PUC. Vininn126 (talk) 14:28, 12 December 2024 (UTC)

thank you! Slowcuber7 (talk) 14:56, 12 December 2024 (UTC)

No, that's not a solution. Vininn126 (talk) 14:57, 12 December 2024 (UTC)

we need some sources. to me, intuition hints "чай" form would be more in common use Slowcuber7 (talk) 15:00, 12 December 2024 (UTC)

puc, your edits were reverted Slowcuber7 (talk) 14:59, 12 December 2024 (UTC)

@Slowcuber7 He wrote literally "more or less common" on both entries, which does not inform us of anything. He did it to troll. Vininn126 (talk) 15:03, 12 December 2024 (UTC)

crap.. anyways Slowcuber7 (talk) 15:05, 12 December 2024 (UTC)

oranye

having one of the longest etymology chains it should definitely be supplied with an etymon tree. Slowcuber7 (talk) 15:11, 12 December 2024 (UTC)

twoth

I found this entry from the WP article on 2... it seems to me that "twoth" is mostly likely to be whimsy (which is not strictly a dialect). But there is a reference for dialectal use in Devon so ok. But I removed this example: "The computation of êk*xk-j is reduced to a controlled twoth complementer at the expense of a reduced adaptation speed." because it is almost certainly a confusion with "twos complement", perhaps just a non-native error. Then there are examples of "one hundred and twoth" and "twenty twoth", in which the meaning is not "second", but rather a disconnected ("units digit is 2" + "ordinal marker"). Particularly for numbers like 10000000000001, both expressions, "ten trillion and first" and "ten trillion and oneth" seem dubious, and can only produced by conscious rule following. Should they remain? Imaginatorium (talk) 08:11, 13 December 2024 (UTC)

It seemed appropriate to me to augment the label "dialectal" to become "dialectal|or|whimsical". I did that. I didn't yet ponder the deeper ramifications regarding the lexicography of overregularizations in general. Quercus solaris (talk) 23:44, 13 December 2024 (UTC)

drive it down, drive something down

These have been created today as "alternative forms" of drive down. I don't think inserting an object is an alternative form. We don't generally create pages like pick something up. This practice could create a huge number of pages of almost no value. 2A00:23C5:FE1C:3701:E4F5:C417:56AC:AEAD 22:47, 13 December 2024 (UTC)

Agreed. Quite right. And the question of whether "someone" and "something" could perhaps be removed from certain phrasal headwords is not the same question as this. This one is like the broader and dumber general case of that, lol. Quercus solaris (talk) 23:35, 13 December 2024 (UTC)

Also agreed. Not alternative forms. Can be deleted. Mihia (talk) 23:48, 13 December 2024 (UTC)

value (2)

Verb senses:

1. To estimate the value of; judge the worth of.

   I will have the family jewels valued by a professional.

2. To fix or determine the value of; assign a value to, as of jewelry or art work.

Can anyone see what the difference between these two senses is supposed to be? Mihia (talk) 23:46, 13 December 2024 (UTC)

You are right to point out the flimsiness of the differentiation as it is currently presented. At the very least, if the two defs were to remain unmerged, they would need better usexes to highlight the differentiation. But even then it is flimsy. There does exist a potentially worthwhile differentiability regarding being the one who assigns a value for legal purposes versus any other kind of nonbinding estimate. But if Wiktionary were to have separate senseids for that, it would need to support that approach with refinements to the lb, def, and ux elements. Quercus solaris (talk) 23:57, 13 December 2024 (UTC)

Sorry, yes, what I actually meant to ask is not so much "what the difference is supposed to be", which is evidently that one refers to "estimate" and the other "fix or determine", but more whether there is sufficient difference to warrant two separate senses. To me it seems hair-splitting and they could be combined. Mihia (talk) 00:21, 14 December 2024 (UTC)

Agreed, because even the fine gradation could be handled inside of one senseid with the right finessing (perhaps something to the effect of "estimate blah; fix or assign blah"). Quercus solaris (talk) 00:25, 14 December 2024 (UTC)

the sea is clustered with islands, transitively

We're currently giving The sea is clustered with islands. as an example of the use of cluster as a transitive verb (with object). Is this correct? - -sche (discuss) 16:44, 14 December 2024 (UTC)

I believe that it is linguistically correct even though the reason the construction is a short passive is that, depending on one's cosmology, no agent exists. This accords with Pullum 2024:108 at "The universe was created 13.8 billion years ago. ([possible by-phrase NP =] unknown cosmic forces? God?)." In the same class will be a sky studded with stars. (And I think stud (v) needs some refinement when some one of us Wiktionarians gets around to it.) At the moment I believe that this phenomenon is explained by the concept that English and many other natural languages are built and wired such that the teleology of supernaturalism, with either implied divine agency or an implied dummy holding its place, underpins the grammar even though nonreligious people can speak the language just as easily as religious ones by holding that teleology to be merely grammatically obligate through solely figurative idiomaticness. Sadly my linguistics authority ends at the tip of my armchair, but like every speaker of a natural language, I'm allowed to operate the machine using my best understanding to date of how it works under the hood. Quercus solaris (talk) 17:22, 14 December 2024 (UTC)

My knowledge of grammar is also rather limited, but I was previously informed that the construction "[object] + form of to be + [verb]" indicates that the verb is used in a transitive sense. — Sgconlaw (talk) 18:24, 14 December 2024 (UTC)

Generally yes (though I would call it the (passive) subject, rather than object), but some past participles have a life of their own as adjectives; e.g. "I'm interested in this". One test might be to check whether "The sea is very clustered with islands" works. Mihia (talk) 18:30, 14 December 2024 (UTC)

Also, "has been clustered" sounds strange. Chuck Entz (talk)

We should test for adjectivity. -ed (~"having") is productive of denominal adjectives. This one might be pushing it, but it seems possible to me. DCDuring (talk) 19:45, 14 December 2024 (UTC)